What a laugh - there's an app for that

The NZ Comedy Festival app. Photo / Supplied

The New Zealand International Comedy Festival 2011 launches with its flagship Visa Comedy Gala kicking proceedings off on April 29th. In terms of technology, people keep in touch with Social Networking websites and online media facilities like YouTube - and now there's an iPhone app. The NZ International Comedy Festival launched an iPhone application a while ago.

Developed by LookOut Mobile, the NZ Comedy iPhone app hooked punters up with the full Festival programme in your pocket, had show information, a daily diary, a personal planner and the latest new.

This came out for last year's festival but no longer seems to be in the App Store.

But a related new app that is available represents Notorious Comedy (home to Dai Henwood, Steve Wrigley, Ben Hurley, Jeremy Elwood, Justine Smith and Irene Pink). The new app has interactive QR code capabilities, like those used in the CreativeTech conference ticketing last year.

The QR Codes allow users of the iPhone app to scan in to unlock a host of additional content from the comedians, and from Notorious. Part of the festivities around this years Comedy Festival is an associated Notorious Comedy Scavenger Hunt.

Users of the iPhone app scan in the QR code to unlock a video of one of Notorious' roster at the location, giving them a code word and letting them know where the next location is. Having ventured around a number of locations, those winners will be given all the codes to email in to win a grand prize. Notorious Comedy are providing this service in both Auckland and Wellington.

The App is called Notorious Comedy and has been live since early March.

The app free app was put together by Notorious Management, an independent company which manages comedians and produces shows as part of the Comedy Festival. It has profiles on the comedians NM manages, along with their show information, videos, news updates and exclusive content. It will serve as a source of information on these comedians throughout the year.

Once you've downloaded the free app, you'll find the QR two-dimensional bar codes are printed on the posters and marketing for the Festival - these unlock the specific videos within the application, giving you details of special competitions and offers.

The Notorious QR Scavenger Hunts take place around the key venues of the Comedy Festival. People scan the codes, unlock the video and get their code word and next location.

Notorious also plans to make it available to Android and Blackberry in the future.

Farmer app
A Martinborough startup company is building smartphone inventory applications applicable to farming.

Inventory Applications Ltd has one product already live on the iPhone platform and there are version son the company's site for Blackberry, Android and even Symbian.

IFarmer is a real-time inventory control and reconciliation app with the convenience of being pocketable on your mobile phone. Whether you manage a single farm, multiple farms, multiple clients or all of these together, IFarmer is designed to handle it and make your work easier.
You can record and report on sales and purchases of stock, keep track of their locations, add notes, photos and other attachments - and it's all all backed up to Inventory's server for viewing from your desktop or in case of loss or damage to your mobile, as an added fillip to what is otherwise a fairly pricey app.

This gives farmers and farm workers up-to-the-minute farm information. You can structure your data any way you want and it's flexible to suit farmers, managers and stock agents.

You can use IFarmer to record sales and purchases, births and deaths, record by total weight or cost, cost/head, cost/kg etc, and to coordinate transfer of stock within the farm.

It has reports with stock-on-hand summaries by stock type; sales and purchases with fully selectable date ranges; weight gain for each stock type and automatic stock ageing.

It also has some calculation abilities - you can use IFArmer to reconcile transactions as receipts and waybills come in.

IFarmer also features geo-location information - you can locate stock on a map with support for both google maps and your own farm images. It can attach photos, notes, contacts and more and set alarms on important tasks or events.

Coming soon from Inventory Applications Ltd: NAIT compliance and RFID support; the ability to import map images and diagrams and integration with CRS, MYOB and other major accounting packages.

The Martinborough firm is also working on applications for related industries - cropping, manufacturing, retail, warehousing and distribution.

IFarmer was actually invented by farmer Daniel Smith; Telecom has actually produced a video to show you the app in action - it's on YouTube.

The app currently costs $64.99

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com