Posts in “mobiles”
Tether your iPhone
My Dad was asking me this morning if you can tether the iPhone yet. I said not yet, but I’m sure some developer will figure it out any day now. Looks like they already did!
Go to cre.ations.net for the instructions. AT&T’s EDGE network is tolerable on my iPhone… I can’t imagine it being tolerable tethered to my laptop, however. Still, if that’s the only way to get online then it’s better than nothing!
WordPress mods
I spent the evening “pimping out” my WordPress blog scripts a bit more. I found a cool Flickr badge replacement that is not Flash (shown to the right), added in a plug-in to easily add videos to my blogs, added in my Nike+ run widget, Twitter summary, and perhaps the coolest thing ever: the ability to blog by email/phone with photos.
I first tried the Flickr WordPress integration, but it didn’t work well at all. It did post a blog, but it completely ignored my text and for some reason ended up making 3 posts instead of 1! Weird! I ended up going with a WordPress script called Postie that does the job, and does it extremely well. The only problem I ran into was I don’t have access to cron with my current Unix host, so I found a web-based cron service that was easy to set up and works great.
This means that not only can I now send messages to Twitter using SMS on my iPhone, but now I can also snap a photo and email it to my blog, along with a headline (email subject) and a description (email body). Now that is some cool stuff.
Jesus wallpaper for the Jesus Phone
Many have referred to the iPhone as the “Jesus phone”.
Well, why not make good ol’ Jesus of Nazareth your iPhone wallpaper? Just download this image in its full 320×480 beloved glory and save it to your photo sync folder so you can select it as your wallpaper. Next time you turn on your phone you’ll be able to “slide” Jesus’ belly to unlock your phone and say a few prayers that EDGE is having a good day.
Praise the iPhone.
P.S. After posting this I found another wallpaper featuring Steve Jobs as Jesus. Go get Jesus Jobs while you are spreading the good word of the Lord (ahem, Jobs)!
How to Kill an iPhone
What is the motivation behind destroying brand new consumer electronics such as the iPhone?
I don’t mean disassembling an iPhone for research and component information, I mean taking a sledgehammer to a brand new $500 iPhone.
I don’t get it, but here’s a compilation of iPhone destruction videos. Cringe away!
#1 Blendtec, no stranger to self promotion, uses its own product (a 1,500-Watt electric blender) to answer the question “Will It Blend?” The question was posed by master blendologist Tom Dickson for toy Transformers, a can of EZ Cheese (yes, the whole can) and now, the iPhone.
Think their sales are increasing from this $500 stunt? Of course it is. That’s cheap marketing. iPhone flavored Margaritas anyone?
Update: Yes, the blended iPhone is up on eBay (currently $570 with 39 bids), and there’s already a response video proving that the iPhone does not blend.
Apple iPhone Bugs and Missing Features
After a good week’s worth of use, I’ve decided to keep the iPhone, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its fair share of problems or missing features. Most notable is its built in email client which is a terrific start, but falls short when compared to other mobile phone email clients.
My guess is that Apple has already heard most of these and my hope is that all of them will be addressed soon in updates.
Here’s my top 35 bugs and requested features/options, in no particular order. I’ll be updating this list as I discover more. Please note that this is not a comprehensive list… these are my own hot issues!
Another converted Verizon/Windows Mobile user
Exactly one week ago I took the plunge and snagged an iPhone at my local Starbucks (what, Apple didn’t tell you that you could buy one at Apple stores, AT&T stores, and now Starbucks?) After the initial excitement of having the coolest gadget in the world wore off, I began to really use the iPhone for my daily mobile phone tasks… calling other humans, reading and writing email, and surfing the web.
I couldn’t put the iPhone down, and every other person I showed it to was in awe of my groovy new Star Trek-looking device. I remember doing the same thing with my Q after I’d put a hot new app on it like Skype or the SlingPlayer. I’d show it to a friend and they would be totally impressed with the technology. The biggest difference that I’ve noticed is that with the Apple iPhone I never have to show someone how to get to the app or how to use it. I’d have to do that with the Q, but not the iPhone. The interface is the iPhone’s biggest breakthrough. Yes, it has shortcomings, but no other mobile device on the planet can touch the iPhone when it comes to its slick, finger-loving touch screen interface.
I don’t miss my Q one bit. In fact, a friend of mine who still has a Q stopped by the other day to play with my iPhone (he too was blown away). While he was thumbing through its awesomeness, I took a look at his Q. Even after a few days, I couldn’t believe how archaic the Q now felt to me. It really felt like I was stepping back in time to the dark ages of mobile phones.
So, with the hype and excitement out of the way, I’ve decided that the Apple iPhone is a keeper. No need to wait 30 days, no need for further testing, this is the phone for me. As for my Verizon contract? I had another 1.5 years on my current contract, so canceling it would have cost me $145 (they pro-rate it from $175). We needed another phone in the family, so I downgraded the mega voice+data plan I had down to an extra $10/mo on our family plan to keep it going with an older Motorola flip phone I had lying around. End result: Verizon lost $90/mo but they can still consider that contract in their mega customer count.
I never thought a phone purchase would make me leave Verizon… until I saw the iPhone. Nice job, Apple. Bad move to pass on the iPhone, Verizon.
BTW, check out this funny video, iPhone Day.
Skype on Apple iPhone now possible
Yes, according to TMC Labs‘ Tom Keating, Skype is now possible on the iPhone via an AJAX-enabled web application. While still a bit kludgey for me as it requires you to install SoonR Talk on your PC, it does enable you to keep in touch with your Skype contacts for now, until Apple opens up the iPhone to real 3rd-party development.
2 billion unread messages on my Apple iPhone
So this is, er, interesting. After deleting a few messages in one of my Inboxes on my iPhone, it reported to me that I had 2 billion unread messages. And they were all unread! Where have I been? I need to get on the ball!
Usually the bug I see is “-1 messages total, 1 unread”, but this one was definitely a new one.
–Chris
Apple iPhone Beta Tester :)
Tip: Get to those Apple iPhone punctuations faster!
I first read about this tip from waitingforiphone.com which leads you a page at O’Reilly’s website. Here’s the skinny. The keyboard layout on the iPhone is great for the most part, unless you want to get to the numbers and punctuation marks via the “.?123″ key in the lower left-hand corner. Normally this would take 3 taps to get to a period.
Here’s how to do it in one single motion.
Tap the “.?123″ key but keep your finger pressed down. As soon as you do this, the punctuation keyboard layout will appear. Now (with your finger still pressed down!) slide your finger to the desired key and then release. Upon release, the desired character will be inserted into your text and the normal alpha keyboard layout will re-appear so you can continue typing alpha characters.
This is an excellent tip and will definitely speed up typing and texting for everyone.
Finding iNemo: clown fish for your Apple iPhone
Of all the dastardly things to do, Apple forgot to include the popular clown fish background photo on the iPhone.
No problem. I found it. Click here to download it. Just sync it with the rest of your iPhone photos and set it as the background. It is sized perfectly (320 x 480 pixels) for your iPhone’s background.
iNemo found.
Slingbox/SlingPlayer support for Apple iPhone?
Slingbox is one of those “nice to have” features on my Motorola Q phone. It allows me to stream television from my home to my phone, through the Verizon EVDO network. It works very well, actually. The SlingPlayer is supported on Windows Mobile and Palm devices, but not yet the Apple iPhone.
With AT&T’s slow EDGE network, I can’t imagine using it while travelling, however when I’m near a WiFi hotspot, it would be cool.
Before I purchased the iPhone, I checked the SlingPlayer page and discovered there was no support announced just yet. I fired off an email asking “When will you have a SlingPlayer client for the iPhone?” Their answer:
Dear Chris,
Thank you for contacting Sling Media support.
I am very sorry for this inconvenience Chris. At this moment we really don’t have an estimate due date for the Po software. Please keep checking in our web page for more information about this software. If you need any other assistance, please contact us at http://www.slingmedia.com/us
/support/supportcontact-us.php or at 1-877-G0-SLING (1-877-467-5464), 7am-7pm Pacific Time, Monday through Friday
It reads like a canned response, and I’m not quite sure what “Po software” is exactly, but my guess is they are working on it. Just figured I’d post this up in case anyone else was wondering the same thing.
The SlingPlayer is also supported on the desktop, on Windows and more recently Mac OS X. So my hope is that since they’ve developed a Mac OS X version, it will be somewhat easy to port it over to the iPhone.
Only time will tell… in the meantime, at least iPhone users can sling YouTube videos!
One million iPhones sold and activated?
If this is true, it is quite incredible.
According to waitingforiphone.com, over 1,000,000 iPhones have been activated since its launch on June 29th. That’s less than 7 days… at $500-$600 a pop, you do the math.
That’s an amazing new product launch for any company. Launched only in the U.S., availability of the iPhone in other countries is expected to be announced soon.
Apple iPhone irritation #1
I understand Apple being, well, Apple-centric, but to completely ignore .wav email attachments is being a tad bit too narrow-minded, considering the Windows OS market share. My business’ voice mail system (onebox.com) sends me an email with a .wav file attachment when a new voice mail message arrives. If I’m on my Windows PC, that’s fine, but I’d expect to be able to open the attachment on my iPhone, too.
The attachment shows up at the bottom of the message, but you can’t tap it — it is not “hot”. So, in the vein of Paris Hilton, “that’s not hot.”
iPhone AT&T/Verizon phone number transfer a success
The other night when I went through the AT&T sign-up process, it took all of about 5 minutes (if that) and I was able to start loading my new iPhone up with all sorts of goodies and play with it the first time.
In order to put the iPhone to real world tests I had to use my current VZW phone number, so I opted to transfer my old phone number from my Motorola Q to the iPhone. While I was able to dial out almost instantly from my iPhone, I could not receive calls.
The sign-up process stated it would be at least 6 hours before I would be receiving phone calls to my iPhone via my old VZW number, and that I would receive a text message when the transfer process was complete.
I activated my iPhone on Jul 3, 2007 10:27 PM and received the text message indicating the transfer was complete on Jul 5, 2007 1:30 AM. Not exactly 6 hours, but there was a holiday (Independence Day) here in the U.S. so if you rule out that 24 hour period, then it only took 4 hours…
So as of now MotoQ has been turned off, calls cannot be made or received and EVDO is dead in the water. I’ll call VZW Thursday to find out what the contract cancellation fee might be, or if it just makes sense to re-activate the phone with another number and add the MotoQ onto a family plan with my wife’s phone.
Have a nice rest, MotoQ. Or is it “Goodbye Moto” instead of their popular catch-phrase “Hello Moto” ?
iPhone’s iPod cover flow missing art (and how to fix it)
Earlier I said that I would start blogging about problems (and solutions) I found with the iPhone, or really cool things I found. My first blog is about a problem and a solution.
One of the absolute coolest things about the iPhone that it has “the best iPod ever” integrated right into it. Man, Jobs wasn’t kidding! It’s incredible. The cover flow feature is amazing. Here’s the problem, though. I synced 18 albums on my iPhone, and about 10 of those albums did not display cover artwork. Having half of my albums showing a black default cover is no way to show off and appreciate a feature as cool as this.
Here’s the solution, for those of you experiencing the same problem:
- Launch iTunes and select the album under your “PLAYLISTS”
- Highlight all of the songs. On a PC you can click one song and then click CTRL+A to “highlight all”. Or click the first song, and while pressing the down arrow, keep the SHIFT key pressed down.
- Right click any of the blue-highlighted songs and then select “Get Info”. A new window will appear titled “Multiple Item Information”
- Drag your artwork to the white “Artwork” box and then click the OK button.
- iTunes will then begin to apply your cover artwork to each song, one by one. This is necessary to solve the problem.
- When it’s finished, select your iPhone device, then click the Sync button.
- That’s it! There’s no need to reset your phone. It should work immediately after the songs are re-synced. The problem now is that iTunes must re-upload every song you’ve applied a new cover back to your iPhone. This takes a long time, but it’s worth it!
Have fun “surfing” your album covers! It’s definitely worth spending the time to do this, to make this feature look its best!
Thanks to “bigdipper” and “honebee1236″ at the iLounge for their suggestions.
