Posted on

Native iPhone Apps with AppTapp

I’ve been playing with Nullriver’s AppTapp / Installer.app for a few days now and I have to say it’s very cool. To get started you simply download the right version for your device, disable auto-sync (only temporarily) in iTunes and connect your iPhone. During the installation process, you choose which firmware your iPhone is running and things then install onto your device.

Once the installation process is complete, you’ll see a new icon on your iPhone’s screen which is the Installer application. This name is a tad misleading as it’s far more of an applications manager than simply an installer. Unlike my experience with the Nokia N800’s maemo linux, there are no repositories to learn about, everything just happens from within the program itself. By everything, I mean you can browse and install new applications, get notices on updates and remove things you no longer want. All of this is arranged in nice tabs at the top of your screen.

Keep in mind that installing applications and hacking around with the iPhone is something you do at your own risk. I had downloaded a version of the installer before the last iPhone firmware update (1.02) and ran into crashing issues as a result. I restored my iPhone via iTunes two times before realizing there was a later version available to try.

There’s still a shortage of really compelling applications, but there’s quite a bit to play with here for the adventurous iPhone user. The Mobile Twitterific application looks gorgeous and seems to work very well — though as best as I can tell does not continue to update in the background. There are some IM apps but they currently only support AIM/ iChat. I’m looking forward to seeing multiple service support with background notification which will really be a killer addition. Much of what I’ve done thus far has been tweaking the interface on my iPhone. I’ve updated my dock image background (DockSwap), adjusted the Main screen flow with SummerBoard and added some new WallPapers and Ringtones as well as used SendSong to make any track I’ve got ring. I’ve also dabbled with the just released Colloquy (IRC) and played a few games. While I’ve installed SSH, NES (Gameboy anyone!?), Books (ebooks reader) and MobileFinder I have not had a chance to try these too much yet.

There’s little to no documentation with most things listed in the Installer directory, so take it slow if you are not really sure or confident. Nullriver is planning to eventually release the system for installation as well as the package format into the OpenSource community which will be a great addition to how things work now. I’m not that familiar (as a non-dev) with what’s required to release apps, but I’m hoping people start picking up where some of the early releases are headed.

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , ,

Posted on

Thinking the Mac MS Office Product Manager’s need to think of a better reason to upgrade…

This sounds like a complete non-event…

Microsoft’s next release of Office for Mac, due in January, will include business features that PC users have taken for granted for years.

That will include the ability to set up out-of-office messages, according to a preview in Microsoft’s Office for Mac team blog.

‘With Entourage 2008, you now have the ability to configure your out-of-office settings,’ said Andy Ruff, program manager for Entourage, the counterpart of Outlook in the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office.” [CNET News.com]

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Posted on

Are we there yet?

The jokes are old with regard to blue screens of death in cars… but I can’t help but think how complex life with kids in the car might become if Microsoft controlled the infotainment… The current car systems might be far from perfect, but a MS driven “standard” is not what I am looking for to make it better. I can get my ipod / iPhone working just fine today without assistance from either Apple or Microsoft thanks to good old standard audio and video jacks.

Microsoft and Siemens will join forces to develop in-car entertainment and navigation products that should make it easier for consumers to connect devices such mobile phones and music players.

The two companies said on Friday the first Siemens products based on Microsoft software should go into production in 2009.

The market for automotive infotainment products is set to grow to about $54 billion by 2012 from $38 billion currently, according to research group iSuppli.

The rise of portable media players and content downloadable from the Internet is forcing carmakers and their suppliers to rethink their offerings, which have until recently centered on standalone audio systems. [CNET News.com]

Something about this announcement just made me think of this classic Apple commercial…

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , ,

Posted on

Nokia to integrate Twango into S60

This is great news from Nokia on how they will use the Twango assets and technology, though I wonder what this means for Mosh…

“‘We are going to integrate it with our S60 platform,’ Stephen Johnston, senior business development manager at Nokia, said in a speech to a trade fair in Helsinki.

When asked about social networking and the role of communities in Nokia’s future he said: ‘It’s really going to be the underlying layer, across everything.'” [CNET News.com]

Technorati Tags:
, , , , ,

Posted on

Video Search…Results are still being tabulated

I saw that Truveo re-launched today…

“Last night, Truveo relaunched as a consumer video search destination. Emphasizing branded content (including branded channels), it may be the most comprehensive video search site on the Internet. The site also has a host of personalization and social media features (user favorites, what’s hot, etc.). Truveo CEO Tim Tuttle contrasts the site with YouTube (which is also indexed on Truveo) as a place where branded content is presented in an environment that is favorable and friendly to professional content producers.

Tuttle also says that the organization and presentation of content on Truveo avoids the ‘noise’ that one finds on many video sites and thus enables people to get to the videos they may want faster. For example, a search for ‘Harry Potter’ on YouTube might yield scores of videos and montages put together by fans mixed with content from professional producers. Truveo calls out the professional content, while also presenting the fan content. Compare YouTube and Truveo search results for ‘Harry Potter.’ Many people will watch and enjoy the fan videos, while others just want to see the professional clip or interview.” [Search Engine Land ]

Sounds good to me … I searched for Nokia N95:

Videos that match your query: nokia n95 - Truveo Video Search

I don’t see one professional video in the bunch. I see two from me (orange cat) taken with a Nokia N95 a few video blogs by Phil Campbell and Ricky Cadden and some “other.” If you look closely you can see the tab we are on by default is Top Ranked. I call this to your attention because when I last checked my own videos, the cat outside stuff was viewed less than 1000 times (by Blip’s count) without a rank. When I look at my YouTube videos I see my N95 Walkthrough has over 33,000 views and 100 rankings (3 stars). My Viddler Browser video has over 83,000 views, Google Maps over 49,000 and the N95 Jaiku beta video over 33,000 views. Get the picture? Viddler seems absent from the results all together actually but I don’t understand why a much more viewed (and relevant) video from YouTube would not show up, while my test samples from the N95 camera (the cat outside) makes it twice as a top ranked result.

I did the same search on Blinkx:

nokia n95: Blinkx Video Results

Interestingly Steve Garfield’s iPhone unboxing (with size comparison to N95) is listed first and I saw that was actually posted today. Blinkx, it seems is leading with the most recent as an indicator of relevance which is the default search sort.

These two video search sites work totally differently and lead you to completely different results. If you are searching for something specific it seems you might be better with “the google” or simply making the rounds on the video sites you know and love to use. Search is still working…

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted on

iPhone IM – Just not practical yet

Lot of chatter today of the release of Meebo for iPhone. I checked it out and it’s nice, but think that Beejive’s Jivetalk which I’ve mentioned previously, is the superior client. They both get the job done in an elegant way, but Beejive has better contact management and enables a float on top of either your buddy list or current chat if something comes in from another buddy. Both let you log into multiple services simultaneously.

In both cases though, I find myself only using IM on the iPhone when I am checking in with something because without either sound or vibration notifications, IM on the iPhone remains a limited experience. I don’t want to leave my IM Safari window open as my primary activity unless I’m actively chatting and when you move on, IM might as well be off since you have no way of know whether something is happening.

Apparently Apple’s Web 2.0 Safari “SDK” did not include hooks into the system audio… Until someone figures this out or Apple let’s me run iChat or Adium directly, I’m leaving IM on the sidelines for regular use.

Technorati Tags:
, , , , ,

Posted on

Nokia Multimedia Transfer 1.1

Nokia Media Transfer, now Nokia Multimedia Transfer has been updated… I’ve yet to install, but the list of changes looks good. No Aperture support yet unfortunately.

  • “Name changed from ‘Nokia Media Transfer’ to ‘Nokia Multimedia Transfer’
  • Added support for Nokia Eseries devices
  • Features related to camera disabled if device has no camera
  • Improved support for iTunes Plus
  • Metadata preserved in mp4 transcode
  • Plus various bug fixes”

[Nokia Europe – Nokia Multimedia Transfer]

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Posted on

Better iPhone Gmail POP Mail

Just a quick update… not sure what was going on yesterday, but I am getting sent mail in my inbox. Damn you GMail!

I really don’t like POP email, but the last thing I want to do is create a new email account just to gain IMAP access to forwarded Gmail. I currently forward my Fastmail.fm (atmasphere.net) mail into Gmail and have gotten very comfortable with the tags, search and ubiquitous access from my various devices. Until the iPhone I was using either webmail on the N800 or the J2ME mobile Gmail application on my various Nokia mobiles. Of course there are no applications or java on the iPhone and we already know Gmail does not offer IMAP access.

Because Gmail is unique in what it does, things don’t work as you expect or don’t work at all when you leave the Gmail world. Tags are not something understood by any other mail application and there did not seem to be any way to stop Gmail’s sent mail from showing up in my in-box until today. There is also no way to get Gmail Mobile / POP to respect my preference for identity (atmasphere.net vs @gmail.com) since the settings are a bit rudimentary for each account with no advanced options available… As a result of this limitation, I’ve been keeping BOTH my Fastmail account and Gmail account on the iPhone to make sure I can send as atmasphere.net when I want, not Gmail. As a result I get multiple notices for each mail since one forwards to the other… yes this makes me nutty!

This tip is actually so obvious I can’t believe I did not think about it – though given the setup “wizard” in the iPhone’s Mail client it’s perhaps not so obvious to think out of the box a bit. To start just set up a new account – don’t pick a preset, instead choose Other. As you will see when you select POP (or IMAP or Exchange) you can set up your email address to be different from your login credentials on both incoming and outgoing servers. I used my atmasphere.net email address as my address, and my gmail stuff on the server end. Incoming should be set to pop.gmail.com and outgoing to smtp.gmail.com. The iPhone will default to use SSL on both ends… slide down to advanced to confirm it’s set, but it should be by default. One final piece you might want is to force Gmail incoming mail to default to recent mode which will make sure you are always getting the latest stuff — even if you POP from another machine. To do this just set your username on the incoming server to be recent:you@gmail.com and that’s it.

This method works great! While I can’t fix the things that don’t work outside of Gmail (tags) or add true features (IMAP) I can at least make Gmail less silly by not including my sent mail in my inbox. I can also keep a single account on the iPhone instead of multiples to make sure I can send with the right identity. I hope Apple and Google make it easier for iPhone users to have more advanced access to Gmail with a pending update.

Hat Tip to my buddy Eddy who suggested this today on IM and has brought some sanity to the situation.

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , ,

Posted on

Sprint, Google in pact for WiMax mobile Web

An interest bit of news from Sprint and Google…We already know that Sprint and Nokia are working on a device for the WiMax network and now a Google Powered mobile portal is in the mix as well.

: “Sprint Nextel said on Thursday it would develop with Google a new mobile Internet portal using WiMax wireless technology to offer Web search and social networking.

Sprint’s WiMax for high-speed wireless and its services for detecting location will be combined with Google tools including e-mail, chat and other applications.”

[News.com]

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , , , ,

Posted on

iPhone vs…

Seems today’s meme is iPhone vs. Blackberry.

Dave Winer looks at ease of use for things we all consider on a daily basis – advantage BlackBerry.

For example, I brought only the iPhone with me to a meeting in Palo Alto last week. As I was driving to the meeting I could see that I would be a few minutes late, so I wanted to call the person I was meeting and alert them. With the Blackberry I would have been able to do this while stopped at a red light. Just search for the person’s name in my inbox, open the first message, highlight the phone number, click the scroll wheel twice (once to dial the number, the second time to confirm that I want to do it).

In comparison, the iPhone only keeps the most recent 25 messages in memory, and this person’s email was not in that group. No search command. And it doesn’t have a scroll wheel or a clipboard. The light turned green long before I found the email that contained the phone number. [Dave Winer]

Mark Hendrickson at Techcrunch compares mainly email – and it’s only due to Exchange sync that the Blackberry wins. With better email / PIM sync the iPhone would have come out on top.

Despite all of these criticisms of the iPhone, our venture capitalist admits that he would switch over to the iPhone if only it supported push email, calendar and contacts synchronization, and GPS. For him, the prospect of ridding his pockets of a separate device for music (an iPod nano), as well as enjoying all of the iPhone’s slick features (such as full-featured web browsing, stocks and weather apps, and its YouTube program), makes the iPhone very tempting. However, until Apple resolves these shortcomings (and perhaps Google makes its applications, especially Gmail, work as seamlessly with the iPhone as Microsoft makes Exchange work with the BlackBerry), others are going to have to pry his BlackBerry from his cold, dead hands (his words, mind you, not ours). [Techcrunch]

In my own usage, I am finding the email experience to be more than a bit anemic. The Gmail integration (or lack thereof) is horrendous. Gmail uses it’s own system which completely messes up the way you’d normally do POP mail – something I really don’t like to begin with… While the 15 min sync interval is fine for most people, in my experience it seems the iPhone is constantly in a state of connection – trying but not downloading messages. When viewing my FastMail IMAP account or Yahoo IMAP account things are more efficient and seem to connect properly and as expected.

I’ve been working with Gmail for quite a while now and while I was accustomed to some limitations on Nokia devices (not respecting my preferred email identity and no sending of attachments) things are amplified on the iPhone. As Dave mentioned, there’s no search, but there’s also no ability to view by tag / folder. Another critical ommision is there’s only one setting for checking mail on all accounts. I’ve been leaving three accounts active, but essentially live in Gmail. As a result I get multiple notifications for all my mail – first in FastMail which then forwards to Gmail. I need Fastmail on the iPhone for when I don’t want to send as Gmail, but Gmail is my main inbox where I want to get quite a bit of other stuff.

As much as I enjoy using the iPhone for all that it does – particularly the web and iPod functions, email is seriously annoying me. We need a dedicated app to manage Gmail – not POP and that will certainly require some changes (an actual application) on the iPhone. I don’t in anyway miss using a blackberry, but thinking about how nice the J2ME Gmail is on my Nokia N-Series devices does give me some pause over which device has my long term usage in its future. Why make compromises when there a choices of devices that can do it all?

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , , ,

Posted on

SiriusMac

SiriusMac - Jam On

SiriusMac is a super cool application I just stumbled on at the Apple Downloads site. You have to install MacPython, but that’s very easy (follow the prompts) and then you are on you way. If you’ve got a Sirius Radio subscription this is infinitely simpler than browser streaming which is a royal pain for Macs. The best feature is a single CAPTCHA rather than having to enter one each time you run.

You can set alerts for artists you want to hear (like on a hardware radio) and get Growl support so it’s easy to see what’s playing as things change. You also get a popup guide which shows what’s on each station …

Happy Listening!

Posted on

What’s on a Blogger’s Phone?

Zach from Symbian in Motion tagged me in the latest meme, “What’s on a Blogger’s Phone?” Zach is curious as to how I am adjusting (and perhaps compensating) for the iPhone’s lack of true applications based on what I run on the N95.My standard set of apps on S60 has not changed in quite a while…

  • Jaiku Mobile – I love the beta… and I am sure you will as well when it’s finally released to the greater public. The beta lets you see status for your contacts, update your location, post and reply. Essentially all the things you’d expect and miss in the release version.
  • Gmail Mobile – right softkey. Just wish it would do attachment sending and respect my preferred identity when sending mail.
  • Google Maps Mobile
  • Epocware has been a standard part of what I use. Their suite of Handy apps are well designed and look great too. My favorites are HandyWeather, HandyClock and HandyTaskman.
  • I really like Shozu, though it’s been a problem for me on the N95. The official release is out and seems to work fine, but people are still reporting incompatibilities. To me this biggest drawback is only being able to upload a 10MB video file which is (not so) surprisingly small on the N95.
  • On the WiFi capable devices I tend to install either Gizmo or TruPhone. I’ve got them both plugged into GrandCentral to simplify things, though honestly VOIP is more because I can, than because I need. 99.9% of my calls happen on the cellular network when I am mobile.

 That’s pretty much my standard set of apps to install. I use the Camera a lot to take video and still shots, review in Gallery and also find myself using the Calendar, Browser and Nokia Maps a fair bit though all of these are standard on the device. The iPhone is a new beast. No way to install anything and only Safari as a path to run something more robust. So far this has not really been that much of an issue for me, though I’d really like to get at least a chat client going. The mobile web apps I’ve been trying work nicely but have no notification sounds, so you have to constantly check to see if something is new. 

  • m.jaiku.com is my door into Jaiku on the iPhone and it works really well on EDGE or WiFi.
  • Unfortunately there is no way to get the Gmail mobile app running on the iPhone… without Java and a way to install, you need to choose either the web UI or POP download. I hate POP, but it’s the path I’ve chosen. I’ve yet to set Gmail to archive what gets popped and use the iPhone to review, desktop to manage. I like the looks of the iPhone email application, but wish there were some more advanced settings to choose an account when sending a message or perhaps adjust the reply to field at the very least. Once we have file system access I’d expect the mail client to change so attachment support for something other than mailing a picture (only from within the Photos app).
  • Google Maps is awesome! I use that frequently – in fact instead of sending an SMS To Google as I’ve done many times, I simply search and then either bookmark or add the result to my address book. This is very cool!
  • Weather and Clock are easily handled by the default app widgets. I’d love to have more than one countdown timer and would apprciate some louder sounds for alarms, but these work very well regardless. There’s currently no need to view my memory utilization or launch apps more quickly on the iPhone since there are no low memory issues and launching is two-clicks.
  • To “upload” to Flickr, I just email the pictures, but the iPhone strips EXIF data (if it even captures it in the first place) and scales pictures to 640×480 which is smaller than the original. I find unless I want to do a quick image blog post I’m uploading to Flickr less via mobile. I do sync my images back to Aperture which is great and works out of the box. No need to install the Nokia Media Transfer tool, which I did not mention above, but is required to sync / download images from your Nokia to your Mac.
  • Photos is a very impressive application and my 3yr old figured it out within moments. I have well over 700 images synced from Aperture and she loves to flick through them – as do I actually. The display is phenomenal and really shows off your pics!
  • iPod – I’ve got podcasts and a few albums loaded and find I use this more than I have ever on a mobile phone though perhaps an obvious outcome as an iPod syncs so easily with iTunes. I’ve been using Pzizz to generate some sleep patterns for the past week as well and have been enjoying.
  • From within Safari… I’ve been checking out AppMarks, Leaflets, and Digg and Mowser iFeeds to find good stuff to use and read. I also like the NYT and BBC River of news sites to see the latest headlines, though at least in the past 24 hours, the news reading on Leaflets is more appealing. I’ve tried the chat apps – BeeJive, FlickIM which are both nice. BeeJive lets you do more than AIM, while FlickIM has a way to track down links to either YouTube or movie trailers with a /youtube [movie name] or /movie [movie trailer] in a message. This feature is super cool actually and something I think others will likely copy.

 

On all my devices I tend to spend a good amount of time on Google Reader mobile and have bookmarks for certain tag folders so I can quickly drill down on topics of interest. I’d like to hear what Bryan Sawler is up to on his mobiles… He’s a mobile developer and I know has both an iPhone and a Nokia or two handy.

Technorati Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted on

iPhone Browser Sync

As good as it is to have all your bookmarks with you on the iPhone I wish Safari had some of the other features you have on the desktop.

I’d really like to have some form management so it was easier to save logins and I’d like to see my keychain sync – or parts of it anyway that were relative to the browser. I suppose if we get an OTA sync and share function with Leopard as has been rumored we may be able to save logins to servers and other systems if that’s a device capability. For now, stronger management of my personal data would be most excellent.

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Posted on

Browser Comparison: iPhone vs. Nokia N95 and N800

I took a look at the browsing experience on the iPhone and compared it to the Nokia N95 as well as the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. In general, the iPhone and N800 are much closer experiences, though having used both I’m leaning towards the iPhone. The N800 is definitely still robust for handling your browsing needs – especially with the addition of Flash 9 support, but my preference is for how Safari handles things over Opera.

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted on

iPhone Application Exploration

This morning I decided to check out some apps for the iPhone… Things seem to work great actually and I’ve set up dynamic dns services to enable access from EDGE when away from my systems.

BeeJive is a Multi-IM web service that can connect you to AIM / iChat, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and Jabber / GoogleTalk nicely in the browser. Seems to be smart enough to manage the network switching between EDGE and WiFi. I’m hoping for some buddy management as they update things… it’s currently in a public alpha.

If you enjoy staying in touch via IRC, Colloquy has enabled a web server plugin which lets you connect through your Mac. I found it really works well and while I don’t do IRC every day it’s nice to know I can easily connect here.

As you may have heard there is currently no ToDo app on the iPhone for some reason even though it exists in iCal today and in Mail in the upcoming Leopard release of OSX. Omni Group has heeded the call by enabling their pending GTD app OmniFocus serve itself up through the browser. Seems to work very well – though I noticed it takes a few moments to update back on the desktop. Regardless, this is a great solution if you’ve already organized yourself or are planning to use Omnifocus.

PocketTweets is a beautiful way to stay connected with Twitter … while I’ve been using the m.jaiku.com site for about a week for my Jaiku fix, I’d love to see something similar developed to take specific advantage of the iPhone browser UI.

I’m also dabbling with iPhone Remote which lets you do some interesting things in a remote way with any Mac you install it on. You can run apple scripts, use the webcam, remote control iTunes, browse and send links to files (though they don’t work as attachments yet) and a few other tricks. This is one to watch I think as it really has the potential to extend your desktop into your mobile experience.

I’m still hoping there will be a way to get widgets if not full local apps on the iPhone though I don’t think that will happen until at least after the dust settles on the launch.

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted on

Yahoo’s Push … Mail

Using the iPhone with a few email accounts over the past few days has given me some insight into the nature of how things are getting done between Apple and Google and Yahoo. While Google has a lock on the maps, YouTube and as the initial search partner for Safari, Yahoo scored two widget home screen placements with Stocks and Weather and is also the only way to get a push mail experience.

POP Mail is horrible. I was an IMAP user for years and only switched to GMail fulltime (my domain’s IMAP forwards into Gmail) when I realized I could get a similar experience across my mobile phones and the Nokia Internet Tablet (full web Gmail). Now on the iPhone things are a different story. For starters, there’s no Gmail application. I guess I could use the web browser, but I’ve been spoiled by the speed of the application Google released and would either like that as my main option or even better an iPhone integrated Gmail mail service. This full integration is actually exactly what Yahoo has scored with their IMAP support. For starters – it’s instant! Exactly what you would have come to expect if you’ve used a blackberry or a Treo with Chattermail. The shortest interval you can get mail to check on the iPhone is 15 minutes – unless it’s a Yahoo Account and then it’s real-time.

It’s great to have Yahoo mail updating in real-time, but there’s no way to change how you appear in sent mail and Yahoo is not my preferred domain. Additionally it’s more than likely that any reply to a mailing list will be blocked as it’s not the address you’ve subscribed with. Push is not enough for me to switch to Yahoo, but I definitely want it when I can tap in from another email account. For now without a way to change my identity I’m still sticking it out with GMail. POP annoyances aside…

It will be interested to see how long this lock lasts for Yahoo as well as everything else. I can’t see Google allowing Yahoo’s exclusive on premium access to mail lasting longer than the terms of the initial deal.

Technorati Tags:
, , , ,

Posted on

Facebook: The New AOL?

This morning Jeff Pulver asks whether Facebook has become the new AOL which led to a sudden (though brief) aha! for me.

Perhaps this is why I don’t get it as much as I think I should. There are many more non-techies here than in other groups in which I’ve participated – it’s definitely got more mass appeal.

There’s been such a recent rush lately it’s amazing, but the more I’ve used it the more I just don’t see the value for me. Sure I can find some interesting people on there, but they also exist elsewhere and in many other social groups. The apps seem like more of a timesuck or annoyance really with the number of invitations to add things you get. People’s profile pages are better offer better layout than MySpace for sure, but why do I want to spend time there?

  • I can aggregate some of my life stream – also doing that with a vastly greater degree of interactivity and discussion on Jaiku.

  • I can get in touch with people I’ve not spoken to in a long time? No – not finding it very helpful there.

  • I see my friends add themselves to groups that sound interesting and I join, but often there’s no actual discussion – just joiners. If I did not already share my videos and photos elsewhere it might be fun for that, but who doesn’t already have these other places.

  • I can message people I might want to network with? Perhaps, but I actually have plenty of other ways to get in touch.

Facebook seems more like a digital playground (schoolyard perhaps at recess) than something that provides value back. What am I missing here?