I like the ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup App for the iPhone more than I expected.  Perhaps that's because the so-called reviewers in the iTunes App Store were almost universal in their condemnation of this free app.  That's not surprising, considering the fact that the app contains the option of purchasing significant additional functionality for US$ 7.99.  A lot of the reviewers consider these features, such as live game statistics, to be core to an application like this one.

This is the live game score between Honduras and Chile
on June 16. There is very little information about
matches in progress that's available in the free version
of the ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup app.

But when I looked at the app closely, I found a number of useful features available for free.  This justifies keeping it on my phone and looking at it regularly during the tournament.

The infamous part of the ESPN World Cup app is the "Get the Full World Cup Experience" dialog. This box seems to pop up everywhere when you first start using the iPhone app. The dialog box says Upgrade to get all of the live audio, in-game video highlights, play-by-play commentary, and alerts for all 64 matches Dig into detailed field visualization, watch studio analysis, and more! You can't miss it.

It's frustrating when this dialog pops up because the app's controls give no indication of what is and what is not premium content. All they needed to do was embed a padlock icon in each control that is inoperative without the $7.99 in app purchase. More after the photo montage and the jump.

Continue reading "Using The ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup App for the iPhone" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been sitting at my desk doing real work today, watching the unfolding controversy over the iPhone Prototype purchase that Gizmodo made. The latest development (if you have been completely avoiding media today) is that the Editor of Gizmodo had his home searched by the police for some reason and a fairly substantial amount of electronic gear was taken away.

It's hard to know what police motives were for what they did. They could be considering Gizmodo's purchase of the iPhone prototype a theft. They could be looking for information leading to the arrest of the person from whom Gizmodo purchased the iPhone prototype.

A warrant-based search of a blogger's home is scary proposition. But the Gawker's handling of the case is a clear violation of several California laws. The editor of Gizmodo and his superiors should not have bought the prototype when they were informed that the device was lost. They should not have named the Apple engineer who lost the phone.

I can understand why the first offense took place. But the second offense illustrates that these people didn't care about the engineer's career in the least.

My mother often said that "two wrongs don't make a right" and this is certainly the case here. Gizmodo never should have trafficked in stolen equipment as a way to attract an audience, and the police could have pursued their investigation by other means.

Gizmodo's sneering disregard for professional conduct undermines our technology culture. The police's heavy-handed tactics make some members of the public question whether their investigation is politically motivated (in the sense that Apple is using its extreme influence in its home county).

Most names left out of this post because providing more attention for the wrong reasons is not the point.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been wanting to talk about my experience with iPhone headphones and exercise for some time.

In my opinion iPhone headphones manufactured by Apple are consumables. I have never had a set last for more than 4 months. They get so much use from me that the rubber holding the earbuds together wears away.

I tried carrying the headphones in several different plastic containers, but each of the containers made constantly connecting and disconnecting the headphones too slow. This says nothing of the problems that occurred when I exposed them to large amounts of my perspiration.

The first set of headphones that I noticed experienced severe wear and tear was a set that I had been using during a period of heavy road biking in June and July. The action button on the in-line microphone on my headphones started to become unreliable. The button stopped working entirely shortly after that, and I suspected that sweat infiltration was the root cause.

In July I started working full-time in Manhattan. At that time I started working out at Newtown Athletic Club five days a week. My workout consisted of riding a stationary bike or running on an indoor track for 40 minutes, followed by sets of pushups and situps.

Because I was working out indoors, there seemed to be an increase in my perspiration level. The new headphones lasted less than a month.

Two major problems occurred:

• the action button on the in-line microphone stopped working,
• the rubber holding each of the earbuds together disintegrated at an accelerated rate.

I bought another new set of iPhone headphones from Apple, and a much less expensive set of headphones without an in-line microphone from a warehouse club. I used the inexpensive headphones during workouts at the gym. I used the iPhone headphones everywhere else.

The result is that the iPhone headphones have lasted a great deal longer. I think I've gotten about four months use out of this set of iPhone headphones. I'm only now beginning to consider replacing them, because the rubber gasket that holds each earbud together is wearing away.

In talking to a number of friends and acquaintances who have iPhones, the consensus is that no third-party headphones are much more durable than Apple's. For the most part, they are just more expensive.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was a happy user of AT&T GoPhone for the past three months. That ended today.

Up until November 12, AT&T provided unlimited monthly data service as a pay-as-you-go option for $19.99 per month. Once you bought this service, you could use either the 3G or EDGE wireless data networks.

I was gladly buying this service package each month because I was able to use the really fantastic JoikuSpot application to turn my Nokia E71 into a 3G-powered ad hoc WiFi access point that I carried in my pocket.

I guess enough bloggers talked about what a great deal the Go Phone monthly data service package was, because AT&T did away with this package on November 12. Some people in the blogosphere heard about this in early October, as evidenced by the article AT&T hangs up on unlimited data GoPhone option that appeared on jkOnTheRun.com. I missed it because, as you know, I've been really busy.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My latest post on O'Reilly's Inside iPhone is A Glimpse of Our Tethering Future where I recount my experiences working with a Nokia E71 and an application called JoikuSpot that turns the E71 into a 3G-powered ad hoc WiFi access point that you can carry in your pocket.

My use of the Nokia E71 is courtesy of the Nokia Blogger Relations Program.

After a solid week of 3G phone use with laptop (and iPhone) tethering, I've convinced myself that my concerns about iPhone battery consumption while running an application like Netshare from Nullriver are overblown. This can work and any increased battery use can be managed.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was on the train home from NYC tonight reading tweets on the Twitterific iPhone app. I got a tweet from TUAW that said:

i.tuaw.com

This is (of course) the iPhone-optimized version of The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Is this new? If so, it's long overdue. It takes at least a minute to load most pages from the full TUAW site. The iPhone pages load as you would expect an iPhone-optimized page to load, in a few seconds.

Wish I'd seen the tweet about i.tuaw.com before I read the story about the iPhone 2.0.2 Firmware Update from the main TUAW site.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Monday I bought my wife Kathleen an iPhone 3G. I finally figured out the new iPhone line protocol at Apple Stores, swung by The West 14th Street Apple Store on my way to work, and found the line almost pleasingly short.

If AT&T Mobility hadn't had some meaningless flag on my account, and I had remembered to pay my bill on time, I would have been in and out of the line in less than 45 minutes. Instead it took me 90 minutes and two phone calls to the Small Business group at AT&T.

I went back to the Apple Store at 5:30pm and walked out about 6:45 with her new iPhone and a new 3G-compatible case. It was waiting in the indoor line and case selection that took the most time.

I got home from work about 9:00, and Kathleen was so happy. We spent the remainder of the evening iSyncing her Treo 650 one last time, and then syncing her iPhone 3G with iTunes. All of her smartphone data made it on to the new iPhone. Her iTunes content took some time to transfer, but it was done fairly quickly.

Some friends asked me what it's like to have the inferior phone in the house. I'm more than OK with it. With my new gig writing for Inside iPhone, it's helpful to have access to both iPhone models. I just won't be carrying the new one most of the time.

Looking at it from a different perspective, Kathleen has been holding the bag for a long time. I got an iPhone when money was tight. I got a MacBook Pro right after I got laid off from my full time job in February.

Kathleen soldiered on with the Treo 650, waiting for the iPhone 3G to come out so she could run ePocrates Rx on it. Epocrates has been the key app on her Treo 650 since she started using it in residency over five years ago.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

My latest Inside iPhone post is called How an iPhone Can Help You Be More Productive When Commuting Via Mass Transit. One of the things I talk about in that post is the power of using location-based contexts within the OmniFocus for iPhone application.

I realized while writing the Inside iPhone piece that setting locations for contexts within OmniFocus for iPhone 1.0.1 is not straightforward. So I thought I would expand upon that issue here in this post.

The Fundimentals of Context Location

Each context within OmniFocus for iPhone can have a location associated with it. The location can be:

• the iPhone's current location,
• a street address,
• an address associated with a contact in the Address Book, or
• a business name retrieved from a search conducted using Google.

The location of contexts is set on a hierarchical basis, so I set the location of my home at the "Home" level of the context tree rather than at each sub-context.

Errands Context: Set locations of the contexts in the
Errands list by tapping "Edit" on this screen.

Establishing a Context Location

I set the location of a context by tapping on the "Contexts" choice on the OmniFocus home screen. OmniFocus presents the top level of my context hierarchy. I descend through the context hierarchy by tapping until I reach the list of contexts containing the context whose location I want to set.

I'm talking about my "Errands" contexts in this article. These are stores and service providers that I do business with often. Most of them have definite physical locations that I go to on a regular basis.

In this article, we're talking about my "Target" context. This is where I put my shopping list of products I buy at a Target Store.

If I want to set the location of the "Target" context, I need to stay on this screen and tap the "Edit" button. Once I tap "Edit", I can tap the "Target" element in the list and go to the screen where I set the location of the Target context.

Continue reading "Assigning Locations to OmniFocus iPhone Contexts" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the few nagging problems I've experienced with my iPhone is a photo saving problem. This has been described in several different ways by other iPhone users out on the Internet:

• iPhone "disappearing photos" bug experienced by Jeffrey Zeldman back in November 2007.
• iPhone Camera Problems: Blank White Thumbnails mentioned in June on iPhoneGuru.org

This problem started happening to me a couple of weeks ago when I was still running iPhone Firmware 1.0. I had hoped that the 2.0 Firmware Update would solve this problem, but it didn't. At that point I had to start doing serious research, otherwise my camera would have been useless to me.

Apparently there is some recurring issue with saving photos taken with the internal iPhone camera once more than 1023 photos have been saved. In my case, the problem started happening when the LastFileGroupNumber was at 1043. It is not clear to me whether all iPhones have this problem, if all first-generation iPhones have it, or if this is only affecting users of the first-generation iPhone under certain circumstances.

The best solution to this problem that I've found so far was first discussed in Topic : Camera will not save pictures to phone after snapping photo, an Apple support discussion. About a quarter of the way into the thread, a contributor named "JKeenan" said the following:

Continue reading "A Solution for iPhone Photo Saving Problems" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Screenshot of Twitterific Application on my iPhone: This
is a screenshot of the new Twitterific Application installed
on my iPhone after I performed the 2.0 Firmware Update.
[ Screenshot: Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

I found a way to access the iPhone 2.0 Firmware in advance of the official release through iTunes. I decided to give the upgrade a try and liveblog it on Twitter. You can see the transcript of this on twitter.com/daiello.

I had complete success with the installation. I was able to install Epocrates Rx, Twitterific, and Evernote. The preceding links are to screenshots of each application on my Flickr account.

The most interesting feature addition I've found in the iPhone 2.0 firmware is in the Calendar. Calendar now shows which iCal calendar each event comes from. Here's a screenshot I posted to my Flickr account that illustrates this feature.

I would provide details on how to perform the 2.0 Firmware update yourself, but Apple has asked other websites to take down the information that they previously provided about where to get the firmware image. I have no interest in repeating information that Apple is actively trying to quash.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was happy to find out that the iPhone 3G Rate Plans are in line with my previous estimate of $86 for 450 minutes of talk, unlimited 3G data, and 200 SMS messages. From the reaction on other blogs, such as The Apple Phone Show, you'd think that they expected AT&T to lower the rates somewhat below the rates signaled by Ralph de la Vega of AT&T Mobility in an interview he did with Om Malik back in early June.

I've talked to a few friends, and the affect this is having on them is as follows:

• Quite a few AT&T customers who already have iPhones will be sticking with their current iPhones for some period of time beyond July 11. They feel that they have a good deal now from a billing perspective, and think that $15+ extra per month is a little steep for the privilege of 3G speed and on-board GPS.

  This is especially the case since almost all iPhone users know that they will get most of the benefits of the iPhone 2.0 firmware also.

• Several non-iPhone smartphone users will be switching to the iPhone on or about July 15. If they are AT&T customers, they are already paying $86 per month or more to use a BlackBerry, a Treo, or a similar device.

  My wife Kathleen is in this boat. She's a Treo 650 user because she needs ePocrates for work and that application won't be available for the iPhone until the 2.0 firmware is released and the iTunes Application Store goes live.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Cool Tool: StrollAway on Cool Tools: "... Once we got this hook, rather than just parking our stroller in the kitchen or dining room, we created a set, out-of-the-way place to store it. And since it's off the floor, that gives us more space to fill up with more baby stuff. The hook is strong (we have a Quinny Buzz stroller, which weighs abouts 15 lbs.). It doesn't require drilling or mounting into anything, since it hangs over the top a door....." Great idea.
• SightSpeed Goes Mainstream with Dell Video Chat « on Web Worker Daily: "... The SightSpeed software installed easily on my Mac, and the video conversation with Mr. Csathy was crisp, smooth and effortless as compared to any I’ve tried with Skype. He had a fancy headset, but I was just using the MacBook Pro’s built-in speakers and microphone. For once, video conferencing felt approachable to me beyond Apple iChat...." This article has a good screen cap of the theme that Dell applied to SightSpeed's software. [ Found out about the Dell / SightSpeed deal from friend Andy Abramson ]
• Access And Share Files With Box.net on The Apple Phone Show: "I have tried several online file store and share solutions since getting my iPhone almost a year ago now. Box.net seems to be the one application that has endured time. I like using it to store and share my most important files and collaborate on work. I’m still getting used to moving my workflow entirely online. I am used to have files that I can access stored locally on all of my devices. But, times they are ‘a changing. The reason I think I have continued using this service and have let others fall by the wayside is because the interface is so simple...." I have to try this.
• iPhone as Pedometer on Inside iPhone: "A short while ago, I discovered that Wii Fit could be used to track my progress as I walked on a treadmill. Wii Fit has a game where you jog in place in front of your TV to travel through a virtual landscape. Instead of bouncing up and down on the floor, I put my wiimote in my pocket, hopped on the treadmill and had a much better virtual exercise experience. And of course this got me thinking: if the wii can track movement, why can't the iPhone do the same?" Cool idea. Interesting execution.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this month, I estimated the monthly mobile phone service cost of an iPhone 3G at $86. I included $5.00 in this estimate for a bundle of 200 SMS messages, because I had heard that AT&T Mobility was unbundling SMS messages in the data rate plans for the iPhone 3G.

In Apple Phone Show Episode 59 published last Friday, Scott Bourne argued that AT&T has not stated categorically that SMS messages would be unbundled. This is what was published in the shown notes:

AT&T has said publicly on several occasions that they are not done configuring the iphone 3G packages. Scott has asked AT&T twice what the deal is and every time the official comment has been we’re still working on them and we have plenty of time before July 11.

Because AT&T has not completed work on the deals, he is perplexed by the number of people reporting on what the packages look like in their entirety. Many bloggers are saying, "Oh, you get no SMS messages included with the basic package." And while they might very well be right in the end, we don’t know that yet. AT&T hasn’t confirmed what the packages are going to be.

I went back through my notes, trying to remember where I had read that AT&T was unbundling SMS messages in the iPhone 3G data rate plans. It turns out that the CEO of AT&T Mobility, Ralph de la Vega, told Om Malik that SMS messages would be unbundled in an interview that took place at the time of the iPhone 3G announcement:

{Om Malik:} Has there been a change in the cost of data plans?

{Ralph de la Vega:} The data plans are different on the 3G iPhone vs. the 2G iPhone. Consumers will pay $30 a month every month, while enterprises will pay $45 a month. This is what you pay us on other PDA devices such as BlackBerry Curve. The SMS messages are not bundled anymore, and you pay for what you want. Again, the prices are based on what you buy.

From there I went and looked up the current posted prices of SMS message bundles on AT&T Mobility's website and added the 200 message bundle to my price estimate.

Lots of other writers came to the same conclusion I did. But the panelists on The Apple Phone Show were adamant that their contacts at AT&T say no final decision has been made on this issue.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's been a lot of discussion on Mac-related websites about whether the iPhone 3G should support tethering to a laptop or desktop computer. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, Wikipedia defines tethering as follows:

Tethering in cellular wireless is the connection of a non-mobile device (e.g. desktop computer, notebook computer, laptop computer), to a mobile device (e.g. cell phone) PDA like Palm Treo, Motorola Q, BlackBerry or Air Card for the purpose of wireless Internet access by the non-mobile "tethered" device.

Several phones already on sale on the AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint networks already support tethering. The unlimited data plan rates charged by the carriers for devices that support tethering are significantly higher than the proposed data plan rate for the iPhone 3G. As a result, some people who are planning to buy an iPhone 3G say that they will pay a higher data plan rate if they are allowed to tether their new iPhone to a laptop.

I don't think iPhone 3G owners would be happy with the performance of their iPhones if tethering were allowed. The reason is that tethering would consume a great deal more of the iPhone's power than most people realize.

I've made several trips from Trenton, NJ to New York Penn Station on the New Jersey Transit Northeast Corridor rail line over the past month. Each time I arrive in Manhattan, I am surprised that the battery level on my iPhone is low. The reason is that there are dead spots on the AT&T network that overlap the Northeast Corridor right of way, and the iPhone boosts its signal to stay connected when in those areas.

Continue reading "Why Tethering an iPhone 3G to a Laptop Doesn't Make Sense" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

In the aftermath of the iPhone 3G announcement last Monday, a lot of people who are considering purchasing an iPhone for the first time are looking for information about AT&T rate plans that cover the iPhone 3G.

I've had an iPhone for a year, so I am very familiar with AT&T's total charges. Although iPhone 3G rates will be structured similarly, there are a few increased charges.

At the end of this article, I estimate that my monthly charges for using an iPhone 3G will be about $86. That's up $15 to 17 dollars per month from what I pay today.

Read on for the rate details and my complete monthly service cost estimate....

Continue reading "iPhone 3G Rate Plan Estimated Monthly Costs: About $86 for 450 Minutes and Unlimited Data" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Over on The Apple Phone Show Blog, Liana Lehua suggested that iPhone fans buy a copy of .Mac from Amazon.com now in order to access MobileMe when it goes live in July. It looks like you'll save about $30 if you do this.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Once iPhone 3G lands in customers' hands, I think AT&T is going to have some never-before-experienced issues with saturation of the backhaul supporting its mobile phone network infrastructure. A great example will be what happens at the Moscone Center next January when the Mac user community convenes for Macworld Expo 2009.

At yesterday's WWDC keynote, everybody was worried about the resiliency of services like Twitter and Yahoo! Live which people were using for live blogging. But the mobile data bandwidth needed to support the hundreds of iPhones in the room is a fraction of that which will be required for the iPhone 3Gs that will be present in the same place seven months from now.

I'm not the only one who thinks this is an issue. Over on Gigaom, Om Malik raised this issue in his article Is 3G Ready for the iPhone Stress Test?. Om said:

...With the 3G iPhone, there is little desire to wait for a Wi-Fi connection and hitting the high-speed 3G connection directly for whatever you want to do. It has happened to me: Once I got EVDO, I stopped looking for a hot spot to connect my Lenovo X300, which has a built-in Verizon connection... A flat-rate 3G data plan on iPhone would mean that the usage would start to shift from Wi-Fi to 3G...

Most of the problem, if any, will crop up at the backhaul level. At present, the current 3G networks have a backhaul capacity of between 10-to-15 megabits per second, which is enough for the very short term, but it could become a big issue as more and more 3G iPhones and other new 3G phones go online....

There are some excellent charts in that article that illustrate the potential problems, and compare the per user bandwidth use of EDGE, UMTS, the three flavors of HSDPA (which is what AT&T is calling 3G), and something called LTE which supposedly supports 100 Mbps.

If AT&T has 10 to 15 Mbps backhaul capacity in most places that are 3G capable right now, I'm guessing that 20 concurrent iPhone 3G users consuming an average of 500 kbps could make the wireless data service appear sluggish to everybody using it including iPhone EDGE users, BlackBerry users, and data card users. Not everybody will use the network that intensely, but I'm convinced that quite a few people will find a way to do it.

See the problem? Let me know if you think I'm off base.

The places I think that are going to see this stress first are:

• Sports arenas, stadiums, and other venues where public events take place in a confined area,
• Shopping malls and shopping centers designed to look like traditional downtown areas,
• Office buildings,
• Certain neighborhoods in cities where lots of technologically savvy people live or work.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the things that I was wondering when watching Steve Jobs' keynote at the Apple WWDC yesterday was, "How much will AT&T charge me for data if I upgrade from my current iPhone?"

Note to Readers: This article is about the rates AT&T will charge for data service on the iPhone 3G. If you need a total monthly service estimate, look at iPhone 3G Rate Plan Estimated Monthly Costs.

At first it appeared that the data plan price would increase from $20 to $30 per month. That's what AT&T plans to charge iPhone customers for unlimited 3G data. However, I subsequently read Om Malik's interview with Ralph de la Vega, the president and CEO of AT&T Mobility. What de la Vega said in this interview made me revise my monthly data plan price estimate from $30 to $35 per month:

Has there been a change in the cost of data plans?

The data plans are different on the 3G iPhone vs. the 2G iPhone. Consumers will pay $30 a month every month, while enterprises will pay $45 a month. This is what you pay us on other PDA devices such as BlackBerry Curve. The SMS messages are not bundled anymore, and you pay for what you want. Again, the prices are based on what you buy.

Continue reading "The iPhone 3G Rate Plan for Data is Probably $35 Per Month If You Still Want 200 SMS Messages" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continuing our theme of honoring The Tour de Georgia pro cycling race that took place a few weeks ago, our fifth free iPhone wallpaper is "Spare Bikes":

I took this photo of the Kodak Gallery Cycling Team Car and spare bikes at the 2005 Tour de Georgia. This is one of my favorite photos. I use a larger portion of the original photo as the wallpaper on my MacBook Pro.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the best techniques for using an iPhone with a large iTunes library is to use Smart Playlists to automatically select tracks from your library according to logical rules. I discussed this in Use Smart Playlists for Endless Combinations of Christmas Music. I wanted to provide an update because I see a problem with this technique.

I have some Smart Playlists for rock music that I listen to sometimes when I'm running. However, I picked up some music as part of the Lance Armstrong: Run Longer workout (available from ) that's actually part of the "Alternative" genre that I want to include in these playlists.

The problem I ran into is that Alternative and Rock music go together in my mind, but they didn't end up together according to the way I had my rock-related Smart Playlists defined. The rules for my "Rock Favorites" Smart Playlist were:

• Match all of the following rules
• Genre contains Rock
• Rating is greater than ***
• Limit to 25 items selected by most played

If you want to add the Alternative genre, you can't just add a second genres rule in iTunes without changing the selection criteria to "Match any of the following rules", and then you lose the rating criteria.

The only way to choose two or more genres and include rating criteria is to exclude every other genre but the ones you want. This was discussed by Merlin Mann from 43Folders.com in 2006 in an article called "Music Only" for your iTunes playlists.

• Children's Music
• Classical
• Soundtrack
• Vocal
• Country
• Jazz
• Easy Listening
• Holiday
• Folk
• Miscellaneous

You might have to exclude more genres if your iTunes library is more diverse than mine.

I can see why Apple would design iTunes so that there is a simple one level logic to selection criteria for Smart Playlists, but the problem of how to combine music in closely related genres is made more complicated by iTunes' simplicity.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

• How to Eat Healthily at Top Chain Restaurants on Lifehacker: "The food experts at Health magazine have scoured the menus at popular restaurant chains in search of the healthiest foods on the menu, rounding up several healthy menu options at otherwise unhealthy chains."

  They found reasonably healthy choices at Denny's, Ruby Tuesday, and P.F. Chang's, among others.
• AT&T Providing Free Wi-Fi Access to iPhone Users - Mac Rumors on MacRumors: "A couple of readers have reported that AT&T hotspots are now offering free Wi-Fi access to iPhone users. Barnes and Noble, Starbucks and presumably AT&T's 71,000 other Wi-fi hotspot locations are now offering iPhone users a custom portal to access free Wi-Fi. A special iPhone formatted page asks for your mobile phone number. Once entered, you can access the Wi-Fi access for free."

• The "missing" iPhone ringtone on TUAW: "We've all seen the iPhone ads.... None are identical, but most have something in common. Namely, that peculiar ringtone. We call it peculiar because it isn't actually included with the iPhone. Luckily, most of us have it installed on our computers already."

  The article goes on to explain how to convert the Apple Loop that comes with GarageBand (part of iLife '08) into a ringtone for your iPhone.
• In search of a GTD solution on TUAW: Brett Terpstra's take on different ways you can integrate Mac apps and utilities into a Getting Things Done system. ".... This round of solution-searching began with a post by Dennis Best titled Getting things done (simply) in Leopard. It outlined a system where iCal calendars are your contexts (or areas of responsibility), To-dos are created in Mail, Mail Notes become projects, and Smart Mailboxes were used to interesting ends. It even had a tagging system, allowing for great flexibility. This was highly appealing to me given its close integration with my primary source of tasks and information: email...."
• Interactive GTD Software Comparison Table on Priacta.com: "102 Researched GTD Software Titles and Counting. Software listed here has been verified to support Getting Things Done and related systems...." Solutions on the web, Windows, Mac, handheld, Linux, and Python are documented. I'll have to look at why they breakout Python separately.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continuing our theme of honoring The Tour de Georgia pro cycling race that took place last week, our fourth free iPhone wallpaper is "Mavic Helmet":

I took this photo of a Mavic neutral support motorcyclists' helmet at the 2005 Tour de Georgia.

This image is part of the Operation Gadget iPhone Wallpapers Collection. I'm planning to release one iPhone wallpaper per week for a while during this Spring and Summer.

I've only ridden in one event where Mavic provided support. It was the 2004 Tour of Hope Fundraising Ride in Washington, DC. I needed support that day. I broke a pedal on my old Marin Bear Valley SE mountain bike, the only bike I owned at the time. The Mavic guys offered me a bike, but I didn't have real biking shoes at that point (to fit into clipless pedals), so I had to find someone to help me.

The incredible story of how I met Dr. Steven Sharpe at a rest area along the course, and how he took me to his home nearby and repaired my bike is one that you should read if you ever want to know what constitutes a Good Samaritan in this day and age. Dr. Sharpe and his friend Greg Millet turned an unlucky break into a miraculous finish to truly special event that did a lot of good for cancer research.

The entire story of my involvement in the 2004 Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride can be found at:

http://www.operationgadget.com/2004_tour_of_hope/

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I bought my MacBook Pro at the end of February, it was one of the first Macs shipped that didn't include the Apple Remote. This meant that I would have to buy one for $30 at the Apple Store or less if I shopped around.

Remote Buddy iPhone Interface: one of the unique features
that sets Remote Buddy apart from other Mac remote
control software.

I decided that I would start using the MacBook Pro and see if I missed the Apple Remote.

Over the past few weeks, I've thought about buying an Apple Remote but not pulled the trigger. I haven't needed to make any Keynote presentations, and I don't use iTunes locally on my Mac enough to make it worthwhile because I use my iPhone so much.

One thing I hadn't counted on was finding a Mac application that made my iPhone into a remote control for my Mac. Remote Buddy provides a framework in which remote control actions for many Mac applications can live. It supports a number of remote control devices including:

• Apple Remote
• iPhone and iPod Touch
• Griffin Airclick
• Nintendo Wii Remote

This makes Remote Buddy quite similar to Salling Clicker, a program that has existed for a long time and has many of the same features.

What makes Remote Buddy different is the mini Ajax-based web application that ships with it. You can install this app on your Mac and use it to present a remote control user interface on a non-jailbroken iPhone. This is a really cool idea if you ask me.

I'm sure that lots of people who use a MacOS X-based computer and an iPhone won't need something like Remote Buddy. However, if you are using your Mac as an automation hub, you may find Remote Buddy very useful.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal Business Technology Blog reports that Apple spent $844 million on research and development in 2007, significantly less than competitors Microsoft, IBM, H-P, Sun, and AMD. This is interesting because everybody and their brother has been touting Apple as a uniquely innovative company.

I think Apple succeeds so prolifically because it is especially focused on innovation in its core competencies. Lots of its competitors invest in research that doesn't make the same impact on their product lines as Apple's research does on Apple's products.

I think people have a tendency to criticize Apple for the wrong reasons. A lot of people complained about Apple delaying the release of OS X Leopard, and waiting until recently to release the iPhone SDK. Could they have shipped those products faster if they hired more engineers?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was one of the people who bought a Mac in the fiscal quarter that ended March 29. The last time I bought a Mac for myself was over 10 years ago. I guess wasn't alone, because The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple's quarterly earnings rose 36 percent, largely on the strength of Mac sales. Revenues grew 43 percent overall to approximately $7.42 billion.

There were some aspects of the Mac sales figures that I found hard to believe. Apple reported that it sold 51 percent more Macs in the quarter than in the same period a year earlier. They sold nearly $3.5 billion dollars worth of Macs in three months. Overall PC market growth was only 12 percent, so Apple is clearly stealing a significant share of the U.S. market from PC makers.

Apple sold 1.7 million iPhones during this period, which is about what analysts that follow the company had expected. The article goes on to say:

Apple executives said a 'significant' portion of its iPhone sales continue to involve consumers who 'unlock' the iPhone to work on unauthorized wireless networks, especially overseas in countries such as China, where the iPhone isn't yet available from Apple.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continuing our theme of honoring The Tour de Georgia pro cycling race that started yesterday, our third free iPhone wallpaper is "Brasstown":

I took this photo of the observation tower at the top of Brasstown Bald in April 2005 at The Tour de Georgia with a Canon Powershot A95 point-and-shoot camera.

If you are interested in what the conditions were like that day, read this article: Living on Clif Bars and 100 Calorie Snack Packs and check out a few of the photos from the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery, particularly:

• Tower in the Distance
• Finish Line at Brasstown Bald
• View from the Observation Tower Porch

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In honor of The Tour de Georgia pro cycling race that starts on Monday, our second free iPhone wallpaper is this neat photo I call Road Tires:

I took this photo in April 2005 at The Tour de Georgia with a Canon Powershot A95 point-and-shoot camera.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alltop just launched a new podcasts category. You can find it at:

http://podcasts.alltop.com/

It looks like they are initially focusing on NPR and business-related podcasts, as opposed to the technology podcasts that I am typically subscribed to.

After looking at Alltop Podcasts, I subscribed to:

• The Web 2.0 Show
• Startup Story Radio
• PRI's The World: Technology
• World Cafe Words and Music from WXPN Podcast via NPR

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day I was looking forward to watching NHL playoff games, and started thinking about how much fun it would be to watch Hockey Night in Canada on the CBC instead of Versus.

I went over to CBC.ca and watched the HNIC Playoff Preview Show on the CBC Sports Video Player. The player is a Flash-based application that sits in your browser of choice. After a brief video introduction, the Hockey Night in Canada Opening was shown. This is a series of highlights playing over the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song. The opening sequence lasted about 45 seconds.

Occasionally I hear people talking about trying to buy the Hockey Night in Canada theme as their ringtone for their mobile phone. Nobody I know has it as their ringtone on their iPhone. I decided to try to use Mac software to create an iPhone ringtone of the actual Hockey Night in Canada Theme as broadcast by the CBC. I had no idea how easy this would turn out to be.

Before I describe this technique, I want to warn you that distributing copyrighted material such as the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song is probably illegal where you live. However, no one can stop you from making an iPhone ringtone for your own personal use using the following technique.

The software I used to make this ringtone was Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba Software ($32 direct from the developer) and GarageBand '08 which is part of the iLife '08 software suite from Apple.

Audio Hijack Pro allows you to intercept (or hijack) the audio output of any application running on your Mac, and save it as an MP3 file. I hijacked the audio output of Safari and captured the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song in about as much time as it took to locate the Opening in the program and then watch and listen to that opening.

Once I had the MP3 file, I brought it into GarageBand '08 and did the following:

1. I positioned the MP3 on the timeline so that the beginning of the song was at time 0:00.
2. I clicked the button called "Cycle Region" in the second set of controls below the timelines. That button needs to be clicked to "on" before a ringtone can be created.
3. I clicked and dragged the region of the time bar representing the music I wanted as part of my ringtone. I learned from Googling around that the sound had to be 40 seconds or less in duration, so I made sure that I only selected that amount of time in the time bar.
4. I chose "Send Ringtone to iTunes" from the "Share" menu.

This last step automatically exported the music clip as a ringtone and caused iTunes to import it. The next time I synced my iPhone, the custom ringtone was automatically transferred to it.

Once that was done, I could designate my Hockey Night in Canada ringtone as my default ringtone. Better yet, I decided to make it a ringtone unique to some of my friends from hockey and hockey officiating.

The true power of this technique is that you can capture and convert into a ringtone any sound that your Mac can play for you. This means the entire repertoire of YouTube is at your disposal, as well as things like Hulu, current programming from all of the major networks, and things like CBS Classic TV episodes.

I'm thinking of making a ringtone of the Hawaii Five-O Theme Song or the Love that Good n' Plenty Jingle from the 1960s next. [ Hat tip to The Mac Observer for their article Making Custom Ringtones with GarageBand ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past few months, I've admired the free iPhone wallpapers that Scott Bourne has published over at The Apple Phone Show. While I was driving back and forth to the USA Hockey Girls' Nationals last week, the thought occurred to me: Why not unlock the Operation Gadget photo vault and liberate some of the photos that would make nice iPhone wallpapers?

The first one I'm publishing, in honor of the opening of baseball season, is a shot of the Liberty Bell sign at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. I took this photo in May 2005 with a Canon Powershot A95 point-and-shoot camera.

I'm planning to release one iPhone wallpaper per week for a while during this Spring and Summer.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had an iPhone experience tonight like the ones that make users of other mobile phones jealous. Kathleen, Jimmy, and I decided to go to Friendly's for ice cream after dinner. We showed up at the Langhorne location only to find a standing-room-only crowd waiting for tables. We were quoted a 20-minute wait.

We're already out, so where do we go for a similar ice cream parlor experience? I get out my iPhone and tell the Maps application, "Friendly's, Langhorne, PA". I find that there is a Friendly's in Morrisville, only seven miles away. I get directions because I am not familiar with the address. We decide to go there instead, figuring we can be seated, order, and be served faster if the other Friendly's is less crowded.

The other Friendly's was a lot less crowded, the ice cream was just as good, and our waitress was very nice. She gave Jimmy a balloon and a small stuffed animal at no extra cost to us.

The total additional cost of going to the other Friendly's was 12 minutes travel time between the two locations.

The reason I'm telling this story is because my wife was completely happy with the outcome of this trip, and my 22-month old son came home happy and went off to bed quickly and quietly.

If we had stood in the vestibule of the first Friendly's for 20 minutes, then ordered ice cream in a very full restaurant, I'm sure that Jimmy would have been bouncing off the walls and would have needed time to wind down when we got home.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen, Jimmy, and I went to Roberts Ridge Park in Newtown Township earlier this evening so that Jimmy could play on the playground there. While we were at the playground, a man began flying a kite. This attracted Jimmy and another boy who is about the same age.

I took out my iPhone and started shooting photos. I was surprised at how good many of the photos looked when I got home and docked the iPhone to my Mac. You can see more in my Jimmy and the Kite photo set on Flickr.com.

I'm not a photography expert, but I am struck by how good the pictures from my iPhone look to me when I'm shooting in the "Golden Hour" right before sunset. The pictures in tonight's set are quite different from the ones I published in my First Photos with My iPhone set from last July, but a couple of the photos Kathleen and I took while we were on the Circle Line cruise around Lower Manhattan have that same sort of "Oh wow" feel for me in their unretouched state. The photo above called "Statue of Liberty at Dusk" is a great example.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Saturday's Los Angeles Times carried a front page story that made the argument that iPhone users know too much because they tend to use the Internet capability on their iPhone to answer questions that used to go unanswered in everyday conversations. The article claims that people who don't use iPhones find this behavior annoying.

The problem with this article is that Michelle Quinn got the name of her primary source in the article wrong. She repeatedly quotes someone named Erica Sadum whom she refers to as a "technology writer in Denver". She's clearly referring to Erica Sadun the author of quite a few technology books including Modding Mac OS X for O'Reilly. She's also a contributor to The Unofficial Apple Weblog and a well-known commentator on the iPhone SDK.

Newspapers like the Los Angeles Times are supposed to be carefully edited. When I see the name of a key source misspelled in a front page article I wonder if any part of this article is credible.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Scott Bourne, the host of The Apple Phone Show, saved $5750 on a new car that he just purchased by using his iPhone during the negotiation. It looks like the most productive uses of the iPhone were recalling email correspondence that had occurred between him and the dealership, and verifying the information that the dealer's salesperson offered during the actual negotiation.

Kathleen and I bought our Honda Accord in December 2006 when we both had Treo 650s. At that time, we could recall our emails with the dealership as Scott Bourne did. However I'm guessing that we had less useful information in our emails than he did.

The web capability of the Treo 650 was primitive compared to my iPhone. If the dealer had open WiFi for use by its service customers (likely at least in California), the iPhone would be that much more useful.

Scott doesn't say what kind of car he bought. I assume that in order to get a $5750 discount on the price, he had to purchase a luxury car in the range of a Mercedes or a BMW.

I think what I learned from reading this article was that I should do some introductory email correspondence with dealers before ever going on a lot. If I had corresponded with dealers prior to going to any showroom, I bet I could have gotten the ask price to move in a favorable direction.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Mac Automation: listen to a text document on TUAW: "Don't have time to read that Word, Pages, or TextEdit document at your desk? Why not listen to it on your iPod instead? In this Automator how-to, I am going to show you how to create an audio file using text that you have in an open document, then sync that using iTunes to your iPod or iPhone." This is similar to a how-to published in Macworld last month.
• Reliance Digital to Open 60 iStores Across India on Tech2.com: "Reliance Digital... plans to open 150 digital stores and 60 iStores or Apple stores across {India}. While {typical Reliance Digital} stores offer a wide range of consumer durables, iStores are exclusively for Apple's products for professional and consumer segments."
• Time Machine Now Works with Airport Extreme USB Drives on MacRumors.com: "After the release of today's Time Machine and Airport update, several readers report that Time Machine now supports backups to USB drives connected to your Airport Extreme basestation. This configuration essentially reproduces the functionality of Apple's Time Capsule product."
• Shimano buys clothing company Pearl Izumi from Nautilus on VeloNews: "Bringing premium sports apparel and footwear to its offering of industry-leading cycling and fishing products, Shimano has completed its purchase of DashAmerica, Inc. (dba Pearl Izumi USA, Inc.) from Nautilus, Inc." This actually happened a month ago, but I just noticed it.
• The Feedzone with Monique Ryan: Protect your heart this season on VeloNews: This is a great article which focuses on eating the right kind of fats and other smart food choices as part of an athletic lifestyle.
• When to Stay With Windows in Mossberg's Mailbox on AllThingsD: Walt Mossberg talks about when it's OK to stay with Windows when upgrading home computers. A couple in their 70s asked if they should upgrade to a Mac although no family members have Macs, so family support wouldn't be available to them. He points out that it's OK to stay with Windows now, but the question will need to be re-evaluated sometime this sommer, when Microsoft stops selling Windows XP to OEMs for installation on new machines.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Topeak Mini 6 on CoolTools: "This incredibly compact, bike-oriented multi-tool has five different sizes of Allen wrench plus a Phillips screwdriver head, all of which folds up into a little pod about the size of a walnut. Sometimes I'll carry it in my pocket or toss it in shoulder bag; mostly I keep it in the under-seat pouch of my bike. It really comes in handy for quick adjustments...."
• Tapping Your TiVo's Hidden Talents on The Mossberg Solution in the WSJ: "... like any old friend -- or spouse -- who has been around for a while, TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful. These tips are for everyday users, not serious hackers, and many others exist."
• 1Password. It’s All I Need…And This Remote. on Apple Phone Show: "If there is anything I love more than software that works, it’s software that helps me save time and having to type on my iPhone’s keyboard. This is especially significant when having to type my uber-strong passwords into a login password field. I’ve been using 1Password since Macworld, and I really find it helpful...."

• iPhone SDK, Apple's Touch Platform, and The Next Two Decades on 37signals Signal versus Noise: "What we saw today {at the iPhone Software Roadmap Event} was the spark. The explosion will continue for twenty years. We will all feel the warmth."

  "What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile...."



• Behind the scenes of the old school HBO intro, a video on YouTube noted on 37signals Signal versus Noise: If you have time to watch any of this 11-minute video produced by HBO about the filming of an introductory film clip that HBO used as a lead in to a feature film presentation, you will be amazed at the amount of time put into building scale models of a city, town, and countryside. Yes this was state-of-the art technology in 1982. But think of how differently it would be done today.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first book I bought to try to get new ideas on how I could better leverage my iPhone as a multimedia Swiss Army Knife was iPhone Fully Loaded by Andy Ihnatko. I have been really impressed by this book because it has some really excellent tips and techniques that go beyond many of the ideas I've seen discussed on iPhone-related blogs and websites.

Andy Ihnatko is a freelance journalist who writes a technology column in The Chicago Sun Times and appears regularly on The Early Show on CBS. He hit my radar screen through his regular gigs on The Apple Phone Show and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Some of the concepts he discussed on those programs, such as using Smart Playlists to fill your iPhone with a constant amount of music that you like but haven't listened to recently (mentioned previously on Operation Gadget), and using Handbrake to convert chapters of DVDs that you own to clips that are playable on your iPhone, are prominently featured in this book. However, there are a lot more ideas that go far deeper into Mac and PC technology to pull together content that you have access to, package it in a form that's storable on your iPhone or iPod touch, and get it transferred on to your device.

There are also ideas that didn't appeal to me personally, but were interesting to read about from a general knowledge perspective. Andy is a big fan of comic books, so he includes an entire chapter on finding comics on the Internet and transmogrifying for your iPhone. He also talks about extensively about electronics and software that can be used to record radio programs for later playback on your iPhone. I used to listen to a great deal of radio myself, so this is interesting to me, but podcasts have largely replaced my radio listening habit since I got my iPhone, and I can barely keep up with the podcasts that I'm subscribed to now.

There are a number of other good iPhone-related books, such as The iPhone Pocket Guide by Chris Breen of MacWorld Magazine, but few are as jam-packed with ideas for filling your iPhone with content as iPhone Fully Loaded. This book always seems to be sitting near my MacBook Pro, and I think it will stay there for some time.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I ordered my MacBook Pro on Sunday night. It's a build-to-order machine with a 160-Gigabyte hard drive that's based on the 2.2-GigaHertz Core 2 Duo, Santa Rosa-based MacBook Pro. If I get the machine that's currently on the market, it will be 194-percent faster than my current Dell Latitude C810, the design for which is now six years old.

I think I will be picking myself up off of the floor when I open the box and turn it on. This says nothing about the switch from Windows 2000 to MacOS X Leopard.

There are so many places where I can't really go on the web right now, just because of CPU constraints. YouTube and a lot of the Flash-based video sites are typically terrible. A lot of frames are missing when I play clips. As a result, I find myself grabbing my iPhone and using the WiFi capability to watch video. I think that's going to make a huge difference in my web experience.

I'm hoping that the web development IDEs that I use, Zend Studio 5.5 and Zend Studio for Eclipse, are leaps and bounds better on OS X than on an old, slow Windows machine. I'm also hoping that a personal organization tool such as OmniFocus or Things make me way more effective. We'll see.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• The Complete Guide to iPhone Car Integration on iLounge.com: A great article that covers nearly every accessory for using your iPhone in the car without violating the laws requiring hands-free use of mobile phones in many parts of the USA. [ via TUAW ]
• MacBook Air review round-up on TUAW: "Ah, it is that magical time after an Apple announcement: the big media reviews are starting to roll in. As you might be aware Apple loans out new hardware to technology journalists to put through their paces.... The first few reviews are up, and they all pretty much say the same thing: the MacBook Air is really thin, and a great machine so long as you don't need the ports it doesn't have." Read the reviews anyway, if you haven't already.
• Junction Networks Well Positioned In Philly Burbs from VoIP Watch: Andy Abramson pointed out this cool little VoIP company called Junction Networks right up the road from me that I had never heard of. They provide SIP Hosting, Hosted PBX, and PSTN Gateway services. The Hosted PBX stuff is the easiest thing for me to get my head around. But who knew that these guys were out here (other than Andy)?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In listening to the podcasts emanating from MacWorld Expo in San Francisco this week, a few pundits lamented the fact that the MacBook Air doesn't have 3G built into it. This is echoed by an article published on MacRumors called Lack of 3G a Deal Breaker... No, Not Talking about iPhone.

Whining of this nature is beyond tiresome.

There are so many reasons why 3G shouldn't be part of the MacBook Air at this point. One big reason is that 3G services in the United States use two competing technologies. If Apple came out with another device that was married to a single wireless carrier (AT&T), these same people would be up in arms again. If the MacBook Air shipped with unlocked 3G capability, customers would have to choose their technology or Apple would have to ship the computer with multiple wireless technology's built in. Imagine the cost of that.

This says nothing about the effect of 3G on power consumption / battery life.

People who choose to buy Apple products need to accept Apple's technology choices. 3G capabilities are available in the MacBook or MacBook Pro laptops at additional cost. The iPhone will support 3G when Apple thinks that it can build a model that has the form factor and power consumption characteristics that are consistent with the user experience they are selling.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Gmail IMAP Change in 1.13 - Apple Phone Show on Apple Phone Show Blog: "The 1.13 upgrade to the iPhone automatically changes POP configured Gmail to IMAP...." I saw the change in folder arrangement on my iPhone after I updated the firmware, but I didn't realize the implications of it until I read about the switch to IMAP online.
• The new Favicons: Making Webclip icons for iPhone on SixApart ProNet: The professional developer website for Movable Type and TypePad posted the first explanation of how to make a custom icon for a website that will appear on the home screen of an iPhone or an iPod Touch. I already made a Webclip icon for RinkAtlas, a site whose logo lends itself to doing so.

• Forty years since Masterton's death on the Globe on Hockey Blog: "Masterton, 29 at the time, was checked by Larry Cahan and Ron Harris of the Oakland Seals, and hit his head on the ice after falling backwards. The game took place Jan. 13, 1968, in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Masterton died in hospital two days later due to a brain injury."

  "His death led to the lobbying of more widespread use of helmets, and a mandatory helmet rule was passed in the summer of 1979." Anyone playing ice hockey should pause for a moment and remember Bill Masterton. His unfortunate death began a series of rule changes and other protective measures that have made our sport much safer.



• Mini-Review: Amazon Kindle vs. Sony Reader on 37signals Signal vs Noise: "There are plenty of comprehensive reviews of the Kindle floating around so I don’t think we need another one. Instead, I’ll focus on comparing it with the Sony Reader."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I expected to be wowed by Steve Jobs' 2008 MacWorld Expo Keynote a lot more than I actually was. However, I was doing other things while the event was going on (real work), and the products that I was most interested in (mainstream Mac laptops) didn't get addressed in this keynote at all.

Bummer for me. I could have bought my MacBook Pro two weeks ago if I had known that the Penryn upgrade wasn't immediately forthcoming.

Here are my comments on the other aspects of the keynote:

• iTunes Movie Rentals / AppleTV Take 2: Clearly the announcement with the most business disruption potential. I agree with one of the commentators on MacBreak Weekly who suggested that Apple is making a play to be the digital media hub in the house, usurping services like Netflix, as well as Television services providers such as Comcast and Verizon FiOS.
• MacBook Air: This is a machine aimed at people who travel a lot or who want a portable machine that is a shadow of their desktop Mac. I could see some very well off Mac users owning the big iMac and a MacBook Air. The MacBook Air is incredibly thin. It's hard to believe a machine with a laptop-like display and keyboard could be any thinner than this and still be usable.

• Time Capsule: This is an interesting extension to the AirPort wireless base station line. Time Capsule is an AirPort Extreme with a 500G or 1T hard disk in it, functioning as Network Attached Storage (NAS).

  My first reaction was, "Bummer. Kathleen just bought me the AirPort Extreme." But then I realized that I would prefer NAS that used RAID 1 or RAID 5 storage anyway. It also costs more than we want to spend on network appliances at this point.



• iPhone 1.1.3 Update: There's some good stuff here. I loaded it on my iPhone already. The cell tower triangulation in the Maps application works pretty well. That feature makes the iPhone version of RinkAtlas viable. Expect an announcement from me on that front soon.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

• The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry in Wired: Awesome story about how the iPhone made it to market. Absolutely worth reading.
• The best notebook you can buy in Infoworld: "After six months of intensive, daily use of the machine, I can state now that today's MacBook Pro stands head and shoulders above Apple's prior flagship Intel notebooks, and sets a standard for performance, features, durability, eco-responsibility, and quality that any PC vendor will find difficult to approach for a similar price." [ This is the current MacBook Pro, not the one expected to be announced at Macworld in San Francisco next Tuesday. ]
• Apple wins Best Notebook Computer of the Year Award for MacBook Pro in InfoWorld: Related article to the one discussed above.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wednesday morning 6:30 A.M. There's an eerie silence in The Home Office.

Over the next 10 minutes I come to the conclusion that the power supply on The Blogging Workstation, my four year old AMD Athlon 2500XP+ ATX Tower Machine that's the fastest PC in the house, has breathed its last.

This is the machine I use to sync my iPhone, and I'm only days away from buying a new MacBook Pro (or another high end Mac notebook, as soon as Steve Jobs tells us what the product line is for 2008). What do I do now?

Luckily I had a PC at the office that has been cannibalized for parts. I brought it home, took out the power supply, and initially thought that it wouldn't work with my motherboard. I found out that the 24-pin main connector for the motherboard was modular and could be divided into a 20-pin main connector and a separate 4-pin connector. I tried this and the machine started.

The Blogging Workstation still failed POST because I didn't connect the floppy drive and a few other minor things. I can fix those tomorrow. Hopefully then I can sync the iPhone and backup as much of my synced data, iTunes library, and other irreplaceable data on that PC to another machine on my network.

What a relief.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Washington Post reported that The RIAA is arguing that ripping CDs for personal use on your iPod or other digital music player is illegal. The argument has reportedly been made in a case against Jeffrey Howell from Scottsdale, AZ. According to the article:

The {RIAA's} lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings....

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

The recording industry can't be serious about this. In order to find in favor of the industry in this claim, a court would have to conclude that millions of owners of portable media player and personal computers are going beyond the principles of Fair Use of the digital entertainment that they legally purchased (or as some would insist, "licensed"). [ via The Drudge Report ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Apple Phone Show Weblog reports that GarageBand Version 4.1.1 (the update that was released yesterday), includes a fix for the "Send Ringtone to iTunes" feature that's found in the "Share" menu. The article implies that they tested this feature and it works.

This gives iPhone users another way to create custom ringtones, in addition to the feature in the The iTunes Music Store, and third-party utilities like iToner and iPhoneRingToneMaker.

GarageBand is part of iLife '08.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen and I have hundreds of Christmas songs that are part of our iTunes libraries. When we shared a 10 Gigabyte iPod, I had to move large playlists off of it to make room for the Christmas music. Now that I have my own iPhone, I was concerned that I would have to do the same thing because I have less available space on it than Kathleen has on her four-year old hard drive based model.

This was before I learned the secret of using Smart Playlists as a window into a large iTunes library. I got the idea from Andy Ihnatko while listening to Episode 7 of The Apple Phone Show:

Tip #5: If you have a large media library, use Smart Playlists in iTunes. Use it to sort the kind of music, etc., that you want to store on the iPhone, then sync that one playlist. You can even use it to sync a certain amount of music (say 512 megs) that you haven’t heard. Good stuff. Each time you plug in your iPhone, it’ll remove old stuff and replace it with fresh and tasty stuff....

Here's the management technique that I've been using.

1. Create three Smart Playlists: Let's call them "Unrated Christmas", "Christmas Favorites", and "Forgotten Christmas".
2. Set rules for "Unrated Christmas":
• Match all of the following rules:
• Album contains Christmas
• Rating is {zero stars}
• Limit to 25 items selected by random
• Live updating
3. Set rules for "Christmas Favorites":
• Match all of the following rules:
• Album contains Christmas
• Rating is greater than {three stars}
• Limit to 25 items selected by most often played
• Live updating
4. Set rules for "Forgotten Christmas":
• Match all of the following rules:
• Album contains Christmas
• Rating is greater than {three stars}
• Limit to 25 items selected by least recently played
• Live updating
5. Start playing and rating the songs on the "Unrated Christmas" playlist: As you rate your Christmas songs, the songs that are rated four or five stars will fill "Christmas Favorites" and "Forgotten Christmas".
6. Sync to your desktop for a supply of new unrated songs: Repeat the rating process until done.
7. Play your "Forgotten Christmas" and "Christmas Favorites" playlists for yourself and your family, and you will have a constant supply of the songs that you like best for the season.

If you think my rules that set the minimum rating for each song at four stars, either set your rules to three stars or lower, or create a fourth smart playlist which grabs a changing mix of your lower-rated Christmas songs.

This tip and more like it can probably be found in iPhone Fully Loaded, Andy Ihnatko's new book. I put it on my wish list.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

I grew up in Denville, New Jersey, a small town about forty miles west of New York City. On Christmas Eve, WPIX, television channel 11 in New York City aired a program they simply called "The Yule Log". This program was a three hour film loop showing a crackling fire in a fireplace. The soundtrack consisted of a number of "easy-listening" Christmas tunes played in rotation. I found this program on TV one Christmas in the late 1970s or early 1980s, enjoyed watching it, and looked for it again the next year.

My interest in seeing The Yule Log on TV became such a cliche in my family that I eventually received a VHS tape of a similar yule log program as a gag Christmas gift. I think I got this gift during one Christmas in the early 1990s, around the time that Wikipedia says that WPIX stopped airing the program.

A lot of other people in the New York Metropolitan Area and elsewhere apparently considered the program their Christmas tradition as well. An illustration of the strength of the fan base for the program is TheYuleLog.com.

WPIX reinstated the program for Christmas 2001 and it's been on the air each year ever since.

The other day I was listening to one of the TWiT podcasts (either TWiT 123 or MacBreak Weekly 68). The podcast mentioned iYule.TV, a video production formatted for the iPhone and a number of other video-capable media players. For $5 to $10 dollars, you can purchase a copy of a 30-minute video of a yule log complete with an original musical score by Geoff Smith. Portions of the proceeds from the sales of the iYule.TV video will go to charity.

My reaction to hearing about iYule.TV (and before I heard that some of the producers' proceeds will be donated to charity) was, "Why didn't I think of this?" I felt like this was a guaranteed money-maker, just from the novelty of being able to view it on the iPhone or the iPod Touch.

In the course of researching this article, I learned that WPIX has produced a version of their presentation of The Yule Log formatted for the Video iPod. They call it The Portable Yule Log.

I'm going to download The Portable Yule Log from WPIX and see if it measures up to my memories. More on this later.

Update: The Portable Yule Log video clip is only two minutes long and it contains no Christmas music, so it's not a personal copy of the original WPIX broadcast. If I have time, I will subscribe to iYule and see what that's like.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been listening to The Apple Phone Show since before the iPhone launched. I think this is the one podcast that I'd recommend to all iPhone owners.

The Apple Phone Show provides a good balance of features, news, and discussion about the iPhone in a concise format. Host Scott Bourne and his regular guests (most frequently Andy Ihnako and Chris Breen) cover all of the important developments in the market each week with a minimum of rambling. (This seems to be a particular problem for some of the other popular, technology-oriented podcasts).

This show could easily make the jump to syndicated terrestrial radio or satellite radio, if the right channel for it existed.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll probably end up doing some running around Newtown in the next few weeks.

Although I've had quite a few college varsity and club-level games on my officiating schedule so far this year, my schedule from December 7 to January 2 is totally empty. Part of this is the nature of college hockey scheduling: there aren't too many games between Thanksgiving and Christmas due to the holidays and exams at many schools.

This may give me the opportunity to actually begin a project I had thought about over the summer: trying to build "ultimate" playlists for a couple of different exercise activities. Over the summer I started thinking about what the ultimate cycling playlist might include-- probably lots of Kraftwerk stuff that got played on Versus during The Tour de France a couple of years ago.

My mind wandered to a similar but more intriguing project. I thought I might try to put together an ultimate hockey warmup playlist. This would include the best songs that get played during college and pro hockey warmup periods, and I would ask fellow officials as well as players for ideas. I could run to tunes like these. I haven't done anything on this project yet.

One guy who has done some work on a project like this is Jeff Perlman from ESPN. He just wrote an article called Run wild with the ultimate playlist which is his attempt to build the ultimate running playlist.

I think Perlman's list is a too rap heavy, but I enjoyed previewing the songs he chose on my iPhone using The iTunes WiFi Music Store. I think a couple of his ideas may make it on to my next running playlist, and I agree with him that nothing by Survivor is going to be part of my running soundtrack anytime soon.

If you have some ideas for songs for a hockey warmup playlist or a running playlist, feel free to comment here or just send me an email.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I updated my iPhone to version 1.1.2 on Wednesday, and I've had no issues with it so far. Remember, I am not in the jailbreak camp at all, so I am using the platform more or less as Apple intended and only using web-based applications to extend its functionality.

The things I noticed right away after upgrading were mainly related to internationalization. Immediately after the upgrade, the iPhone asked me to dock it in four different languages. This is not surprising when you consider that the iPhone was just released in the UK and Germany.

From the looks of things, Apple intends to release the iPhone in Italy shortly. I understand that France has been held up with legal issues surrounding the requirement to offer mobile phones in an unlocked as well as carrier-locked state.

One of the podcasts I was listening to pointed out that the entire UI is internationalized for English, French, German, and Italian, so I decided to switch my iPhone to French and see what it was like. This can be done by navigating to Settings > General > International > Language and then choosing the language you want to use. After a brief delay, most messages that appear on the iPhone screen switch to the language of your choice.

Local date, time, and currency formats are localized separately, which is a nice touch.

I was hoping that a bug in the Google Maps application that is holding up the release of the iPhone version of RinkAtlas would be fixed in 1.1.2, but no such luck.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The only thing I've missed since I switched from my old reliable Treo 650 to my iPhone is an onboard password / information management tool. On the Treo 650, I used a utility program called SplashID, which was great for remembering hundreds of sets of application and server credentials.

(I mentioned that I was trying SplashID on Operation Gadget back in 2005, but never wrote a full review. You can find a good SplashID review on Everything Treo.)

I had concluded that I would have to wait for one to be released after the iPhone SDK is made available until I heard about Yojimbo from Bare Bones Software. Yojimbo is an information organizer for MacOS X that can be used for password management. I'm planning to get a Mac mini to go with my iPhone in a week or two, so this software will be a step in the right direction.

Yojimbo integrates with .Mac for synchronization services. It also intregrates with a third party service called Webjimbo that provides glue between the Yojimbo application on your Mac and a website that's browser and iPhone friendly.

Yojimbo does a lot more than just manage passwords. You can also use it to manage snippets of text, images, PDFs, and similar stuff. It also integrates well with Spotlight, so it makes a lot of sense as a note taking application for people who are heavily in to the Mac platform.

Macworld did a good review of Yojimbo back in March 2006. That probably needs to be updated, but it still provides some good background on the application.

The cost of doing this is $39 for Yojimbo (or $69 for the Yojimbo Family Pack) and $29.95 for Webjimbo. I don't think that a .Mac account is required in order to use Webjimbo, but for other synchronization services on the Mac platform, a $99 per year subscription to .Mac is required.

This sounds like a lot of money to spend to keep your passwords organized and at your fingertips. However, it is a password management solution that's available to iPhone users today. I'm definitely planning to give Yojimbo a try when I get the rest of the pieces of my new computing life assembled.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are the FedEx Tracking Details
from the $30 Apple Store order
that got shipped from China.

I crushed one of my iPhone earbuds the other day in the parking lot of BJ's Warehouse Club in Langhorne, PA. I dropped my headphones while trying to load the car during a shopping trip with Kathleen and Jimmy. I apparently ran the earbud over with at least one of the wheels of my 2007 Honda Accord.

It stinks to have an iPhone with headphones that don't work properly. I don't have the money or the time to decide which aftermarket headphones are actually better than the Apple headphones. So, I took the easy way out and ordered a set of replacements from the Apple Online Store for about $30.

Here's where the story gets interesting.

A lot of times when I order something from the Apple Online Store it ships from a warehouse somewhere in Pennsylvania, so I get it quite quickly. This time, however, Apple decided to vend this item from their supplier in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in China. I have the FedEx Tracking Data to prove it:

• Nov 14, 2007
• 12:29AM | Package data transmitted to FedEx
• 9:45AM | Picked up | SHENZHEN CN
• 2:11PM | Left origin | SHENZHEN CN
• 3:55PM | In transit | LANTAU ISLAND HK
• 1:51PM | Departed Fedex location | ANCHORAGE, AK
• Nov 15, 2007
• 12:10AM | Arrived at FedEx location | INDIANAPOLIS, IN
• ...
• 6:13AM | At dest sort facility | PHILADELPHIA, PA
• 7:59AM | At local FedEx facility | BRISTOL, PA
• 8:07AM | On FedEx vehicle for delivery | BRISTOL, PA
• 9:39AM | Delivered | NEWTOWN, PA

Of course the packaged gained a day crossing the International Date Line.

FedEx delivered the package to my house in Newtown, PA before 10:30AM on Thursday, one day before they promised. All this package contains is a set of iPhone replacement headphones. I got free shipping on this order.

Imagine how much it would normally cost an individual to ship a package of any size via FedEx from Shenzhen to here at this speed?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I received my $100 credit at the Apple Store today to compensate me for purchasing the iPhone when the price was $599. To get the credit, I did the following:

1. I visited the Apple Web Site iPhone Store Credit page at: http://www.apple.com/iphone/storecredit/, and clicked the Get Started button.
2. I entered my 10-digit phone number and my iPhone's serial number (engraved in small type on the back of my iPhone, directly above the letters "8GB") into the web form, and clicked the Continue button.
3. I received a free text message from AT&T containing an access code. I put that into the next form that appears in the same browser window and hit the accept button on that form. (I can't remember how that button was labeled.)

After I hit the accept button, I was shown a facsimile of an Apple gift card with a 16-digit Credit Number and an 8-digit PIN, with corresponding bar codes. I can print this card and take it to the Apple Store, or copy down the numbers for use in person or on-line.

There is currently a small graphic on the Apple Home Page that says "Early iPhone owners: $100 Apple Store credit available. Click here." The link that this image points to gets you to the same place, so you can follow the procedure outlined above.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I solved the syncing problem that had limited Kathleen's ability to use her Treo 650 with her new MacBook. I owe a lot of credit to the book Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition, which explained the details of the interaction between Palm Desktop for the Mac OS and iSync.

During the process of getting the Treo and the MacBook talking, I got another chance to play with ePocrates-- the medical software designed for PalmOS and Windows Mobile PDAs. ePocrates is a great set of vertical market software and services. ePocrates Rx makes my wife's job (as a pediatrician) lot easier. The key feature of it is dosing recommendations and drug interactions on over 3,000 commonly prescribed drugs.

These reference materials really need to be at a physician's fingertips when they move between exam rooms. There is a huge value to having this information physically stored on the PDA in hand. No doctor wants to slow the visit down to look up drug information via the wireless web.

This was the big reason why I said "no" when someone at work asked me, "Is your wife going to get an iPhone like yours?"

Just like I don't need a large quantity of reference information permanently stored on my iPhone, she doesn't need a high fidelity web experience in her pocket in order to do her job. At one time we had "his and hers" Treos, and everyone thought this was cute. However, now our needs are best met by two different devices.

I'm sure that there are other vertical markets where an iPhone SDK and locally-installed software will be needed before there is significant iPhone penetration. However, I think medicine is one of the biggest ones.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm glad to hear that Apple sold its one millionth iPhone today. I think the $200 price cut will put holiday sales on the trajectory where Apple needs them to be in order to achieve the goal of 10 million iPhones in the first year on the market.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm one of the people who should receive the $100 credit that Apple is offering to early purchasers of the iPhone. I think this is a reasonable move on Apple's part to reduce the shock associated with the $200 price cut for the 8-Gigabyte iPhone. It certainly won't cost them $100 per customer, since the credit is for products to be purchased at an Apple Store or at their online store.

When the $200 price cut was announced on Wednesday, a co-worker asked me what my reaction was to the news. I told him that I thought the price cut was very aggressive and would result in a large number of additional iPhone sales, but that the reduced price was a bit hard for me to accept since I had paid $599 for my iPhone. I said that a $100 price cut would have been a lot less of a shock to me.

The $100 credit that Apple will give customers like me should satisfy almost all of the group. Everyone who buys a high technology product at the very beginning expects to pay the highest price and endure some pain as the bugs are worked out. The iPhone is no exception.

I'll probably use the $100 credit to buy a copy of iWork '08 or the iLife '08 upgrade to go on Kathleen's MacBook. She wants iWork so she can use her MacBook to create spreadsheets.

I can't justify spending the money to buy Microsoft Office 2004 for the Macintosh so late in its life. With Microsoft now not scheduled to ship Office 2008 until January, I can't see buying that product at any price. It will probably be way more that $100, at any rate.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow. I had no idea that Apple was planning to announce a $200 price cut on the 8-Gigabyte iPhone to $399.

Since the media event ended, I've read a number of comments on technology blogs about how much the price of previous "hot phones" dropped in the first 90 days. The example I have heard most is the RAZR. The price of that phone dropped significantly, but I doubt it fell $200 after the phone had been on the market for 69 days.

Having said this, I have gotten so much value out of my iPhone since I bought it and learned so much about developing for it that it was worth the $200 premium to me.

I think that Apple is going to sell huge numbers of the iPod Touch (an 8 or 16G device with the same form factor as the iPhone, but without the mobile phone capability) for the holidays. The iPhone and the iPod Touch are going to destroy any previous notion we had of the Mobile Internet experience. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every year or two, the hockey organizations for whom I officiate go through rule change cycles. USA Hockey, the major organizing body of amateur ice hockey in the United States, is changing their rules this year. The National Collegiate Athletic Association changes their ice hockey rules every year. Even organizations like The National Hockey League have annual or semi-annual rule changes.

Each of these organizations produce rule change videos which are designed to help players, coaches, and officials understand the new rules. They also help to explain any new rule interpretations, which have been as important as the actual rule changes over the past two or three years.

Before I got my iPhone, I would wait until an officiating seminar to see the rule change videos for these organizations. If I was really ambitious, I'd stream the rule changes from the USA Hockey or NCAA hockey websites, if they made the videos available there. This year, I have an iPhone and I want to be able to watch the videos more frequently, so I get up to speed on the new rules faster. It only makes sense for me to get the videos and convert them to an iPhone-appropriate format so I can watch them anytime I have a few minutes to kill.

I haven't found the USA Hockey rule change video on their website yet, so I don't know which formats they have already produced. I'm hoping to get a DVD sent directly to me. The NCAA Hockey Rule Change Video is available on their website in WMV format. I don't think that the WMV video format is supported out-of-the-box by my iPhone.

I'll probably end up getting a package like Cucusoft iPhone Video Converter + DVD to iPhone Suite or Video Vault for the iPod, both of which claim to convert a bunch of other video formats to MPEG4.

I'm just at the beginning of my research into this, but I wanted to mention the work I'm doing up front in case anyone wants to provide any suggestions. In any case I'll follow up with an explanation of how I get the videos on to my iPhone and whether they look good once I get them there.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I was reading O'Reilly Radar, I noticed the article by Artur Bergman that discusses some of the developments at the iPhoneDevCamp over last weekend. The most interesting part of that article for me was the discussion of Safari's handling of calls to Google Maps:

Most offensive is, however, Apple's claim to integrate with Google Maps, which means Safari intercepts requests to "http://maps.google.com/" and sends them to the Google Maps application. No other high-end phone manufacturer even comes close to this level of arrogance.

I hadn't thought about the Google Maps Widget integration in that way before, so I decided to test the iPhone's behavior while trying to use my Google Maps Mashup RinkAtlas.com. RinkAtlas demonstrates the exact behavior on the iPhone that Artur is talking about. When you get to the point of generating directions to a hockey rink in RinkAtlas, we make a call to Google Maps and pass the two encoded endpoints. The iPhone redirects this request to the Google Maps Widget running locally.

I'm pleased to note that the Google Maps Widget handles all of the parameters passed correctly, including the ones where I spoof URI options to get around API calls that didn't exist when I wrote that part of RinkAtlas. I'll eventually (hopefully) get around to extending RinkAtlas to include the directions live on our site using the new Google Maps Directions API, but Artur's analysis is absolutely correct.

I'm not as upset as Artur is about Safari redirecting calls to the Google Maps website, but I can see how this wouldn't be ideal if the Google Map Widget ever fell behind in terms of its API support. I also know that Google talked extensively about how the ability to call specific versions of the Google Maps API was a feature that developers on the cutting edge should use. I think this approach has been undermined by Apple's interception of calls to the Google Maps Website.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Back on January 10, I asked Is OS X the Key Component of the Apple iPhone? The first point I made in that article was about multitasking:

Elegantly-implemented multitasking on a handheld device: Windows Mobile handhelds have this capability already, but none devices I've seen have a UI that comes close to what Jobs demonstrated. Treo handhelds from Palm running the PalmOS don't do multitasking at all. It isn't clear to me whether RIM or Nokia have true multitasking OSes on their smartphones, and I've used both quite extensively.

I'm pointing this out for two reasons:

1. I've got an iPhone, and I'm more impressed with the multitasking capabilities of the iPhone after actually using it.
2. Marc Hedlund from O'Reilly Radar brought up multitasking on the iPhone last week as a "new-ish" thought about the iPhone. I'm not sure it qualifies as a newish thought anymore.

I think Hedlund's article is very insightful for some of the other points he makes. He compares the iPhone to several of the Treo's best features, and tells why the iPhone comes out pretty favorably. He's saying a lot of things that I haven't had time to say, probably better than I would have said them.

The only thing he doesn't mention that I think is a significant advantage to using an iPhone instead of a Treo is the $20+ discount you get on "unlimited" wireless data plans that AT&T gave me when I switched from my Treo 650 to the iPhone. I kid you not.

I think AT&T offers less expensive data plans for the iPhone because they realize that the iPhone will be in the hands of more individuals who pay their own mobile phone bills. These people will have a harder time expensing the monthly wireless bill than the average Treo or Blackberry user. That's my theory anyway.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First Photos with My iPhone: I picked the best 18
photos out of the first 100 that I took on my iPhone.
See more iPhone-related photos in my Flickr
photostream.

I finally took the time to go through the first photos that I took with my iPhone and to post them via email to Flickr. The photo I chose for this article is my favorite iPhone photo from a cruise that Kathleen and I took around Manhattan on The Circle Line this weekend for our anniversary. There are also several photos from a trip that Jimmy, Kathleen, and I took to Sesame Place on the Sunday after I bought the iPhone. I even included a few photos from a fireworks show in Haddonfield, NJ that we went to with Kathleen's family on the evening of July 3.

It's hard to believe that some of these photos came out as well as they did. These photos were sent to Flickr directly from the iPhone, so they were automatically reduced to 640x480 from the camera's full resolution. I think most of these photos came out great. I chose some of them so you would see representative photos of everyday things (like a birthday cake sitting on a table and a toy trainset).

I hope to have the opportunity to upload the full resolution photos into the Flickr photo set in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy these and let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: iPhone

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On the Fourth of July the battery level indicator on my iPhone malfunctioned. It consistently registered very high (close to 100 percent) throughout the day. This should have been a tip off for me.

I expected the phone to warn me that the battery is running low, and for the battery level to be reflected properly at that time. Instead, it just shut off when it had no more juice left, and I was left to wonder what happened. When I attempted to restart it, it said that there was insufficient charge to operate and shut itself off again.

I'll have to look around the Apple iPhone Forums and see if this has happened to anyone else.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought I'd post a quick article on Operation Gadget from the iPhone to see what it's like.

The keyboard definitely isn't designed with HTML input in mind. Every paragraph tag takes four taps to generate each "less than" and "greater than" sign.

The landscape mode works well for entry into Movable Type's form fields, but the keyboard takes up 60 percent of the vertical space on the screen. This makes revision of previously-typed senences tough for me.

I tried this exercise three years ago when I got my Treo 650. I'd say writing a story on the iPhone is slightly better, but not a quantum leap. Here's where we could probably use a dedicated iPhone app. I wonder if a "Web 2.0" solution could be crafted?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)