Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Wordpress iPhone app

Published on July 22, 2008 in iphone. 0 Comments

I’m writing this to test out the newly released Wordpress iPhone app. It’s functional, if a little basic. Text formatting is currently HTML only, which is extremely unwieldy on the iPhone keypad (no landscape mode yet).

It’s a novel app but I can’t see anyone doing heavy writing on this device. It’s not the sort of device for it anyway.

photo

Update: Added formatting and link to the app store. It was simply too horrible to write HTML on my iPhone (not to mention lack of cut-and-paste!)

A Chat – World Phone Day!

Published on July 20, 2008 in podcast. 5 Comments

Pete and Ben chat about the iPhone 3G, a week on. We talk about:

  • Purchase stories
  • Activation
  • Hardware
    • Plastic back
      • Feels good in the hand and doesn’t slip
    • GPS
      • A bit subtle about satellite lock
    • Reception
      • 3G doesn’t drop back to 2G quickly enough
    • Sound
      • On 2G in my bad reception it’s the best phone Peter’s used
    • Camera
      • Disappointing but functional. Lens flare if there’s any backlight
    • Battery life
      • Lasts a day of pretty heavy use
  • Software
    • App store
    • Favourite apps so far
      • Byline
        • Google reader reader (with offline)
      • iPint
        • Always gets a laugh
        • It is now the top free app
      • OmniFocus
      • Twinkle
        • Ben – The best use of location I’ve seen so far. You see people responding to other tweets locally. Normally these people wouldn’t be able to find each other. Recognised a name mentioned in one (a former colleague of some people at work)
        • Peter lives 5 miles from Ben.
        • Peter – Someone rather menacingly said “we know where you live” after I posted with GPS position outside.
      • Shazam
      • Mocha VNC Lite
      • More Cowbell
    • Crashing apps
      • Peter – AIM
      • Ben – A few apps crash. Kind of makes me wonder if it’s the apps or the OS?
    • Problems
      • Peter – Push email notification troubles
        • Stopped on Friday
        • Rebooted and then my .mac account came back
        • removed .mac and it works again
      • Ben – Push notification works from the iPhone but not the mac itself. Found I need to sync explicitly or wait for the next sync (even on “automatic”)
  • Data usage so far…
    • Peter – Sent 3.1Mb, Received 42.4Mb = 45.6Mb -> 152Mb / month
    • Ben – I can’t say since I’ve had it reset to some value twice after the iPhone restarted itself. Currently says Sent 2.4Mb, Received 24.2Mb

A Chat – World Phone Day!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

iPhone 3G Launch

Published on July 12, 2008 in apple and iphone. 0 Comments

The last photo taken on my E61i

On Thursday Siew and I lined up at the Optus Store in Sydney for the midnight launch of the iPhone 3G. We turned up just after 8 and joined the line about half way down the block on Hunter St.

The “rent-a-happy-person” people were accomodating, giving us coffee, pizza, chocolates up to the store opening time. Optus even hired the 3 Minute Angels to give the liners a massage throughout the night (I refused because of the media attention).

There were tons of reporters about, showing behaviour I can only describe as being vulture-like. I was accosted by some guy I’d never seen before from the Channel 9 Today Show. See me look like an idiot as the “number 151 guy” in the clip here (sorry no embeds as far as I can see).

All in all the experience was good up to the store opening. From then on it was a shambles. We waited for almost 2 hours to get in the store and another 40 mins inside the store itself. We waited for a while for someone to take us to a terminal (no one seemed interested), then the guy serving us didn’t seem to know what he was doing (we had to help him find some options in his interface).

Once that was done we were taken to some guy with a laptop running iTunes to “unbrick” our phones. (Vodafone couldn’t even do this for Pete) It seemed to be a small piece of software that connected to the Apple server and popped up with an OK message. While it was the usual Optus experience, it wasn’t good doing it at 2am. Surely there was a better way.

I’d suggest that they get everyone to pre-register their plans in any Optus store and have the cut-over date and time of midnight on the launch day. All we would have needed to do was walk in, pick up our allocated phone, “unbrick” and walk out. Simple.

Anyway, I’ve got the phone and the initial impression is that the App Store changes everything.

Gallery and YouTube clips are below.

Photos


Videos
Line Walk

Midnight

Obnoxious software part 2

Published on July 12, 2008 in software. 0 Comments

I accidentally hit the FlickrExport tab in iPhone iPhoto when attempting to export some photos. I got this

Hitting any of the buttons closes the export dialog. Of course what happens is my last tab is saved and when I attempt to go into the dialog again I get the beta expired message.

I can’t use the export functionality until either I’ve removed the plugin or updated!

MacBook Magic Eye part 3

Published on July 9, 2008 in apple. 0 Comments

Here’s another piece of modern art that Michael’s MacBook Pro produced today:

MacBook Magic Eye part 3

I feel a series coming on!