iphone

Mar 5, 2009

7 Must-Have Additions for Next iPhone: iPhone Wishlist 2009

I don’t know how you feel, but I think the world is ready for a new and improved iPhone. Yes, it was the best phone that 2008 brought out but with the likes of the Palm Pre, HTC Touch Diamond2 and HTC Magic about to hit town, the title for Best Phone of 2009 may just go elsewhere.

via 7 Must-Have Additions for Next iPhone: iPhone Wishlist 2009 | Mr.Gadget.

As loathe as I am to post a link from Mr Gadget (bad publicity will do that to your business), almost every reason on this list can be fixed via a software update;

  1. Turn-by-turn – this is fixable via software.
  2. Larger capacity/removable battery – obviously, this isn’t fixable via software.
  3. Cut and paste – this is also fixable via software.
  4. Bluetooth file transfers – this is only half-fixable via software, AFAIK. Needs some sort of blutooth protocol stack.
  5. Multitasking/background notifications – this is fixable via software.
  6. Voice recognition – fixable via software, although I don’t know why you’d want this as a feature. Bloody MS users.
  7. Bluetooth A2DP – provided the hardware is there, this is also fixable via software. We’ll see this feature when Apple release a set of stereo bluetooth headphones.

So folks, what does the next-gen iPhone actually need, in terms of hardware? Shout out in comments.

Feb 22, 2009

The Perfect Week

Just had a pretty excellent week, if I do say so myself.

Monday was all about postage. My Just Mobile Gum Pro (extended iPhone battery, RichardSolo competitor with 3.8X the capacity of the iPhone 3G’s internal battery) arrived via registered post from Hong Kong, and it is good. Thanks, Expansys! I also get some excellent news on a couple of items that I’ve been expecting for a while.

Tuesday wasn’t as busy – after starting to write up the review for MacTalk on the Gum Pro, I got a message from none other than Mrs Schuth saying that the School Magazine was back from the printers and was available for collection. Naturally, I don’t have my Ps yet, so I got a friend to pick me up and collect the magazine from school. Thanks, Christo.

Wednesday, and yet another thing arrives in the post. This time, it’s my LogMeIn.com t-shirt that I’ve totally forgotten about – I did some beta-testing for them a while back, and they send me a free t-shirt from the US as a gift. Works for me. Thanks, LogMeIn.com! Apart from that, Chris and I take a trip to Sandy Bay to see what the parking situation is for Thursday’s Orientation day for us who are studying in the Faculty of Science Engineering and Technology. It’s not too bad – we finish with a Hungry’s Lunch, and that’s about it.

Thursday, and it’s the day for us Science, Engineering and Technology guys to head to UTas to Orientation Day. There, I pick up my Student ID, take a tour, and setup my School of Computing and Information Systems account. Easy day, but it’s great cos I get to catch up with some old friends from Calvin whom I haven’t seen in a while. Later on, I get into town, buy a Nerf Maverick, and trade with a fellow MacTalk member – Nicolas Cage is awesome in Next, and Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin are impossible to resist, especially when bundled together.

Friday, another easy day – I pretty much do nothing. Later on, I get news that the thing that I ordered on Monday has arrived – but along with this comes the devastating news that I can’t take it home.

Saturday, work. Training is excellent – I don’t finish the class too early, and I recieve a ton of compliments on my training from the guys who attended. I also grab a copy of iLife ’09 – review to come shortly.

Now, it’s Sunday. The first day of Uni is tomorrow, and I’m not quite sure I’m ready yet. I’ll be able to pickup my thing tomorrow, though – so there’s a good start to the week already!

Comments below.

Feb 10, 2009

Malaysia 2009 – Part II

Dactyl Highscores

Dactyl Highscores

So, I finally managed to beat Turk’s high score on the iPhone game, Dactyl.

As you can see from the image above, he’s managed to rack up quite a lot of scores – and finally, I’ve managed to beat him in a fit of epic boredom when I was in Malaysia.

Now – the next thing is to crack the 500 mark. Shouldn’t be too hard, considering that I got 492 without putting in much effort.

Maybe I should tell him that there’s already a sequel  – Dactyl 2 in the App Store – then again, maybe not…

This has been Malaysia 2009, Part II – brought to you by Benny Ling’s Bling.

Previous entries can be found at their respective links below:
Part I (Don’t Sweat It)
Part Ia (Keeps Getting Better)

Feb 9, 2009

motionally.com | inexpensive HD motion graphics | WELCOME

Motionally.com provides inexpensive royalty-free HD motion graphics templates you can use immediately within Final Cut Pro.

We produce finished templates — mostly lower thirds Master templates — that you can use directly in Final Cut Pro without further tweaking. HD 1080p, 1080i, 720p and SD resolutions at PAL or NTSC frame rates, 16:9 or 4:3 title safe — no problem.

via motionally.com | inexpensive HD motion graphics | WELCOME.

Iain Anderson, from motionally.com did me a huge favour: he enabled the emoji keyboard on my iPhone for me.

The emoji saga as I’ll call it, happened when I saw the thread on MacTalk forums saying that a particular iPhone app (since removed from the App Store) enabled the Emoji keyboard for you – even if you weren’t with a supported Japanese carrier.

I then contacted Iain, who was willing to make a small ad-hoc app that ran the “Emoji-enabling” code when opened. All I had to do was send him my iPhone’s UDID (easy with apps like iStat for iPhone), and he did the rest.

Sure, there are now free apps on the app store that will enable the Emoji keyboard for you – just search “emoji” on the app store. I think there’s a $1.19 typing program that does it (as well as a free one).

To actually enable the emoji keyboard, though: Launch the app, hit the home button, go to Settings –> General –> Keyboard –> International Keyboards –> Japanese and then change “Emoji” from OFF, to ON. It’s that simple.

So, there you have it. Emoji will now be enabled, and you’ll be able to send cute animations to all your iPhone-friends. For the full FAQ, hit up the Mactalk link here.

Thanks once again, Iain. Your iPhone-registered developerness was much appreaciated in this instance! :P

Cheers.

Jan 9, 2009

iPhone games summit coming in March

This conference, which will take place in San Francisco, will give iPhone developers a platform to discuss some of the ins and outs of working on the platform.

via iPhone games summit coming in March.

AHA! I will take your “wow” features, Linux operating system, and copy and paste and raise you one iPhone game developers conference.

Take that, Palm!

Jan 9, 2009

Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone

There was a glow on the face of every Palm employee we saw today, and deservedly so: the new Palm Pre is a hail mary product. It’s probably going to save the company.

And it is, in many ways, better than the iPhone.

via Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone – Boing Boing Gadgets.

UPDATE 3: Video courtesy Ars:

UPDATE 1: Oops, forget the all-important specs… Kudos to iLounge.

Palm today introduced its latest handset, named the Pre. Featuring a 3.1-inch, 480×320 touchscreen, a dedicated gesture area below the display, a vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and more, the device is aimed at the same market as the iPhone. Other technical features include high-speed wireless (EV-DO Rev. A or HSDPA, depending on the model and carrier), GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB connector, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP, 8GB of internal storage, an accelerometer, ambient light and proximity sensors, a removable rechargeable battery, and an optional wireless charger. Pre is exclusive at launch to Sprint.

Folks, I’m not going to kid you on this one – Apple actually have a real fight on their hands here, for these three reasons:

Firstly, it runs Linux. This, in and of itself, will silence all those “the iPhone is locked down, proprietary, user’s can’t do what they want without jailbreaking, etc, etc” people who think Apple is the worst thing since the drop toilet. SQLite features as the database here.

Secondly – it has all the “wow” features needed to knock the iPhone of it’s most gigantic pedestal. The menu bar *cough*DOCK*cough* apparently has this cool feature where you slide your finger up from below the screen, and the dock pops up with your finger. This is possible because the touchscreen (with built-in) multitouch actually extends BELOW the actual LCD – which makes for cool features like this. And you thought Shazam was cool… this feature blows Shazam out of the water. Like Shazam, it’s one of those “OMGZ THATS AWESOME” times when words escape you and you’re left with nothing but pure adoration.

And finally, Facebook and Gmail – the integration is said to be “top notch”. None of this “have facebook as a seperate app on another home screen” business like the iPhone – instead, imagine being able to send a photo or text to Facebook from withthin every photo management app, every mail application, every web page, with the same features being applied to Gmail. PLus, you can choose to pull down your contact’s Facebook’s profile pic, so that when they call you, you can see their lovely face as it shows on Facebook. ZOMG! AWESOME!

…and I lied, there are actually four things. System-wide COPY and PASTE is the last feature that will make this a serious “iPhone Killer”.

Hopefully, it’ll have the hardware to match up to the software. The only way I can see this becoming a massive fail is due to a sloppy processor, or a battery life that just doesn’t quite cut it.

It’s for these four reasons that Apple had better make iPhone OS 3.0 a dammmmed good release. A couple of things for them to work on: MobileMe (integration? Don’t make me laugh), iWork.Com (a mobile version is a good start, now we need more integration), App Store (it’s far from perfect), Push Notifications (please don’t make this into another MobileMe fiasco…), and FRIGGIN COPY AND PASTE! SRSLY!

…and hopefully, something awesome that will blow us all away, like battery life that doesn’t actually suck, full-bluetooth capabilities, a user-accessible file system (instead of each file storeage app having it’s own… wtf) or even a dash of multi-core iPhones…

I’m scared. Scared at how badly Apple could have just lost the smartphone war, especially after it was doing so well… Scared at how easily it was to expose and exploit the disadvantages of the iPhone… Scared at how much of a contender Palm have come back as. Scared of how Android will respond to this new opponent.

UPDATE 2:
Links for further reading:
gdgt’s Palm Keynote live blog (lots of pics)
Engadget’s Hands On with the Palm Pre
Engadget’s In-Depth Impressions on the Palm Pre
Engadget’s Ominously Titled “The Palm Pre”

Apple. Do us proud!

Jan 6, 2009

Beejive IM updated to 2.0

Beejive IM, the Swiss army knife of instant messaging on the iPhone, was recently updated to version 2.0. Beejive allows you to connect with many different instant messaging services including: AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN/Live, Myspace IM, and Yahoo messenger. This application was already top-notch in the previous versions and this new version just makes things a lot better. Let’s take a look at each of the changes to Beejive.

via Beejive IM updated to 2.0, includes audio messaging – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).

[iTunes Link]

Beejive IM is the best IM client for the iPhone, period.

Shame that it’s sooooo expensive! WHY?!! :(

Jan 5, 2009

DoYouFeed.com WordPress plugin causing site lag?

Well, I figured there was something wrong when my website was taking over a full minute to load.

I used Safari’s Web Inspector to narrow it down to one file: load.php

Now, that file is a part of DoYouFeed.com’s wordpress plugin.

For the uninitiated, the DoYouFeed plugin allows wordpress users to activate a iPhone/iPod Touch friendly version of their website – using specialised User Agent calls and so forth.

Unfortunately, the plugin was making my site lag like hell – freshbytes, too – so I have disabled it for now.

If anyone knows any wordpress-friendly iPhone/iPod Touch friendly content formatters/aggregators, then get in touch with me, either via comments on this post, or the Contact page.

Ideally, I’d like something like the tumblr-optimised iPhone/iPod Touch specific version, ala Adam D’s tumblelog in iPhone format. That’s seriously ultimate.

Jan 2, 2009

Edge by Mobigame – iPhone Game

YouTube – Edge by Mobigame – Iphone Game.

MUST BUY!!!

Jan 2, 2009

iPhone 3G unlock – yellowsn0w is out!

As reported in the Dev Team IRC channel, Vodafone works. 3 works. (now just need Telstra + Optus/Virgin to be tested) :-)

via iPhone 3G unlock – yellowsn0w is out! – MacTalk Forums.

See original source here.

AFAIK – all Australian telcos who support the iPhone work. This includes Telstra, Optus/Virgin, Vodafone, and 3.

I’m still deciding… Do I really need my iPhone AS A PHONE when I go overseas?

It can function perfectly otherwise… Just needs Wi-Fi for data (which is admittedly scarce where I am going), but otherwise, it’s a small iPod.

Dec 18, 2008

Sim City for iPhone – Out Now on App Store!

Sim City!

iPhone!

Now available!

iTunes Link

via Sim City for iPhone – Out Now on Aus App Store – MacTalk Forums.

Well, if this isn’t one of the most highly anticipated iPhone games, I don’t know what is.

Decisions, decisions. Should I buy this?

Just in case the above iTunes Link doesn’t work, try this one.

Dec 17, 2008

iPhone-Optimised Search Results from Google Toolbar

So… props to Daring Fireball for this one.

If you hit the Google something from the Google toolbar in Mobile Safari on iPhone/iPod Touch, then it doesn’t automagically format the search results for your device – until now.

Seems to only work for google.com searches, though, not country-specific ones as per this flickr comment.

Bummer, indeed.

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