Skype is Approved

Skype just came out with an iPhone version of their app. It allows calls over Wifi - i.e. it doesn't use up your mobile phone minutes. Calls to other users on Skype are free and there are low cost plans for calling landlines. The international calling rates are especially low compared to other long distance options.

The iPhone app is great for a 1.0 app. It's existence prompted me to set up an account and install the Mac and Windows versions as well. Calls on the iPhone are very clear. The one call I've done on my iMac was very good as well (even using the builtin microphone).

I'm a believer. This thing has legs :-)

Views on Flickr

No, not some treatise on Flickr but literally some comments on view counts on my photos...

This shot of Vancouver from Stanley Park is my most popular photo, even though taken a long time ago. It has nearly 2,000 views. Most of the traffics is driven by image searches on the word Vancouver. No surprise, eh?


Next up is a photo I titled Long Goodbye leads to the Doorway to Heaven. This photo's popularity is quite surprising to me as I took it using my iPhone, which isn't the best quality camera for sure, and the subject isn't exactly a happy one. Frankly I am not sure why it is so popular and Flickr is unable to really track back visits to its page. This is one of my photos I'm sure is being used without my being notified.


The number three photo is another that has a surprisingly large view count. In this case I know it's due to usage on this web site (scroll down a few times to see it). I took this photo on a whim and just posted it for fun. Never thought it would be seen by so many folks.


Not much to say about number 4. It is a happy image from the holidays. But I did find it is being used on a couple of different web sites (one for cooking and one for BJ Club employees!).


And rounding out the top 5 is a second iPhone photo of a somewhat dramatic sky. Part of its popularity is the fact it has a UFO tag as well as having been featured on Flickr in a iPhone set. But the majority of the traffic can't be tracked so the main driver of views remains a mystery.


Flickr has been an eye opener for me as a photographer. It has been a great way to see how other people see my photographs - and their reactions are often a real surprise.

Twitting on Twitter...

... or whatever the verb form is! For my peeps (ha!) I now have a twitter account. twitter.com/road_fun. Giving Twitterific a try as a iPhone client.

First discovery, Twitterific doesn't necessarily update its location info when you ask it to add it to a post.

Anyway, this is at least today's shiny new toy.

PCalc - a free version available now

Awhile back I wrote about a great iPhone utility called PCalc. I wanted to let everyone know that JT has put up a Lite aka free version of PCalc. Don't let the fact there is now a free version fool you. It also packs a ton of functionality and is the best iPhone calc app out there. And don't let the "RPN" in the title of the full version scare you either. PCalc works great as both a traditional and RPN calculator. If you don't know what RPN is you'll be just fine. Check it out!

Storming Pogue aka Blackberry Cult

My previous post was on the Blackberry Storm which has been marketing as oh so much cooler and better than an iPhone. As a BB user it was pretty obviously desperation marketing and I saw today that Pogue wrote a negative review in the NY Times. (This is the link but you can't get to it unless you sign up for free access).

Turns out on his blog today Pogue writes that a lot of folks commented in firm agreement with my (er his) conclusion. Not surprising since I'm always right. The amusing part is he has discovered there is a virulent strain of fanboy much stronger than the Apple variety - the Blackberry adherents. Apparently this new strain has never even used the Storm but is quite certain his review was fundamentally (and fundamentalistly?) wrong. Poor David...

N.B. oh, and the iPhone share tripled last quarter (via TUAW).

Storming the iPhone

RIM is introducing the Blackberry Storm to (finally) counter Apple's iPhone line. Years ago I thought BB's were da bomb. Problem is even the Storm is still a yesterday model.

E.g. they are hyping that it can play mp3s. Big whoop. That is ancient functionality at this point. Part of the greatness of the iPhone is the ability to do so many things effectively. iTunes brings with it movies, videos, video podcasts, etc. I can sync family photo albums - no more dealing with crappy wallet photos. And all this is so easy and for syncing is completely automatic.

Bored in line or some other twiddle-thumbs situation? Play a game. Don't have one you want to play? Fine, download one. 

The RIM browser totally sucks...

For those completely committed to RIM, or stuck with it because of corporate rules, Storm is a minor step forward. For the rest: skip this one.

He's here!!!

Starting...

Hopefully we will fill this later today...

Lovely...

way to spend Sunday.

iPhone Takes over the Earth

Great news for my iPhone peeps! Google has released it's Earth application and in fine fashion indeed. It takes advantage of the motion sensors built into the iPhone to adjust the view as you move your iPhone around.

Read all about it at TUAW.

iPhone Life (battery, that is)

I've had my iPhone 3G for several months and read a lot of complaints about its battery life. Most of the complaints seem to be - if I use it a lot the battery doesn't last a day and that makes me cry. Wah wah...

I've had Crackberry and Smartphones/(aka dumb Windows Mobile) for years and I can assure you the iPhone's battery life is in reality best in breed when used like a BB or WM device.

But I can also confirm if you use it "for all it's worth" the battery won't make it to bedtime. In my case "for all it's worth" would mean a number of phone calls, checking email on it regularly, and running applications requiring net and location signals. Also throw in some podcast/video watching to the mix. When I do all this I come up an hour or two short on battery life.

I needed to travel to San Jose for several days of (boring) meetings and knew I'd make heavy use of the iPhone on the plane and to entertain myself while there. I needed extra battery power and after searching around selected the Richard Solo DX001 for the trip. I'd heard good things about the item and the price wasn't too bad (though more than the old AA battery pack I used to use to extend my iPod's life).

Having had the DX001 for a few weeks I can say that it has worked without issue and as advertised. If not for the trip I probably would have tried to wait a few more months as I expect more aesthetic solutions will eventually make their way to market. But if, like me, you need something now I do recommend the DX001. Not only does it work but also the customer service response to my pre-sale questions was very fast. Non-expedited shipping brought it to my door in 2 days == happy camper :-)

iPhoneApp Winners

I've gotten questions from several newer iPhone 3G owners along the lines of "I'm too lazy to browse the App Store, just tell me which apps to look at." Well, actually none of them admitted being lazy :-)

Rather than continue to answer these one at a time I think a blog entry is in order. So without further delay here is the list. Click the app name for more details:

• Klick - best Flickr companion
  
• PCalc - best utility belt for anything involving numbers
  
• Jott - best to-do and list application
  
• WeatherBug - multi-locations, radar, alerts and more
  
• Bloomberg - world wide market indexes and news
  
• Facebook - missing some key features but still convenient
  
• Where - finds events, friends, cheap gass, etc nearby based on GPS
  
• 2 Across - crossword puzzle app, a free lite version also available
  
• Wikipanion - guess what, this is a Wikipedia front end. Surprised, aren't you ?
  
• Now Playing - find movie times, theaters etc near you
  

All are "Ron Approved" and receive near daily use. Oh, did I forget to mention all but one of these is free? :-)

I got a bunch of others I use less frequently. I'll get around to posting on those soon.

PCalc - a great iPhone utility belt

I've long been a user of PCalc on the Macintosh. I love it's feature set and most of all the elegance of its implementation. James Thomson, its author, has shown great commitment to his products and so I was very interested when I heard a iPhone implementation was available.

PCalc for the iPhone exceeded my expectations and has earned a place on my iPhone's home page. I'll first cite one of the coolest innovations and that is James' undo implementation. To undo an entry you simply swipe your finger right-to-left across the display area. To redo simply reverse the motion. Multiple levels of undo are of course available. Very natural and efficient since no screen space is needed for buttons or menus. Another innovation is the use of the shake "operation" on the iPhone. Simply shake the phone twice to clear and three times to do a clear all.

Some of the other features that set it apart from Apple's version, and the iPhone app crowd in general, are its support for RPN, operations in a whole range of bases, a simulated tape so you can see the history and result of interim results, and finally a very convenient and comprehensive set of unit conversions as well as constants. 

Highly recommended! Check it out here or look it up in the Apple App Store.

Another thing to love...

When you downloaded an app update on the iPhone it used to always dump it in the first available spot on the first home screen page with available space. This meant I was constantly having to move updated apps back to the desired page.

I did some app updates this morning and lo and behold they were updated in place on the desired page (although the download still shows up in front while it is in progress). One small step for users...

Contacts are like Greased Lightning!

The new iPhone 2.1 is out and I did the update from my Windows XP laptop (I normally sync with a Mac). The update was flawless. A number of the fixes, like better battery life, 3G coverage, and fewer app crashes can only be verified over time. But...

The claim that the Contacts app is faster is awesomely true! It is like greased lightning - everything about the app is more responsive. I have a large list of contacts and previously it was painfully slow. The update has completely turned around this situation and I am one happy camper :-)

Hope the other fixes are as solid!

Good Morning Gustav

Driving to work this morning and the outer bands of Gustav had arrived overnight. The sky is ever changing today - a day where I could sit outside and watch it like a movie. Instead I have to work like most the rest of the world :-)

Image is copyright, all rights reserved.

iPhone 3G - small things matter

Having blasted a few aspects about the iPhone and MobileMe I thought I should add a little balance and add some things I really like. I'm going to start with a few points that show why Microsoft and their Windows Mobile just don't get it. Today's two points talk about what to me were major annoyances with WM 5 and 6.

First, in WM if you hit the volume key on the phone/PDA it is ambiguous exactly what volume is being adjusted. It depends on the "mode" the phone is in as well as the handset vendor's implementation. You might be adjusting the ringtone volume, key click volume, speakerphone volume, earpiece volume etc. On WM there is absolutely no visual feedback on exactly what is happening. One of the first things I noticed about the iPhone is that when I hit the volume keys it shows a speaker icon, shows the resultant volume setting, and also has some text below the speaker icon telling me what volume is being adjusted (e.g. ringtone). Some people may not care but I really appreciate these user friendly touches.

A second "small" item is one that caused me problems on a regular basis with WM's email client. Like most people even with 3G service I don't normally download entire attachments when looking at email messages. I regularly get attachments that are >1MB and especially on the small WM screens there is no point in trying to view them. However I routinely need to forward the message on to someone else - to hand off a issue, or pass on an FYI, etc. Now, in WM if you don't manually download the entire attachment before forwarding the message it will send it without the attachment. I got numerous "there was no attachment" responses due to this silent decision by WM. The iPhone, blessedly, handles the situation properly. When you forward a message that has attachments it asks you if you want it to include them. Wow, imagine that - letting the user decide what to do.

These small touches, which are a couple out of hundreds, that Apple includes in its products are why it is kicking other technology companies' butts in consumer products.

MobileMe does NOT do Windows

MobileMe has gotten a lot of bad press since it's introduction. Initially over service unavailability and instability. I never had too much trouble in that regards. But it's claim of working with Outlook on Windows is very nearly unfounded. I'm not saying it is impossible to get it to work but it is improbable for a tinkerer to get it working and impossible for the average "Joe/Jane". This is one of the latest threads over at Apple documenting the mess.

I'm a software R&D guy myself so I am familiar with the many challenges in producing large scale commercial products. For this reason I am often a lot more tolerant of issues I see. But in this case I can only conclude serious irresponsibility or incompetence was at play.

First, MobileMe on Windows will not work through a standard company firewall. At all. Now, there is nothing in the docs to say it will work. But that is no defense. Any use case around Outlook has to assume the user is on a corporate network. Now, I'd be willing to work around this but for the even worse defect - even on a completely open internet connection MobileMe syncing from Windows just DOES NOT work. Worse yet there are no error messages or any other helpful feedback on what is going wrong and/or why. This is a feature that is claimed to be supported. Worser and worser is Apple's silence about the problem happily letting its customers thrash around wasting time and energy on what is documented as a simple "for the rest of us" feature that is an unmitigated disaster. If you poke around the support threads you will see a few people say they "finally" got it to work (without a firewall/proxy) but there is always a caveat like "except for calendar syncing" or some such. You can be sure that if any of the kludge solutions posted was fully functional Apple would long ago have published a FAQ or Knowledge Base article with the solution.

Very hard to take Apple seriously in the enterprise software space given the severity of this issue and their response - or rather complete lack of substantive response. I still love my iPhone and am using MobileMe from my Mac. But I am completely warning my Windows-using friends away from MobileMe.

N.B. I am using Google's calendar sync app for Outlook as a kludge solution for calendar access. This has a lot of failings but at least it does allow me to view my work calendar from my iPhone...

Jott Multi-tool

Like many new iPhone owners I quickly downloaded a number of free apps when the AppStore opened. Many were removed as useless or after a period of benign neglect. One of the definite keepers is an application called Jott.

Jott is actually a free service that bills itself as providing "voice to text" transcription. I had checked on it awhile back, when I was using a Windows Mobile phone, and didn't find the value proposition appealing. When I noticed a free app for the iPhone I decided to download it and give it a try. Boy has this app caused me to completely re-evaluate Jott! The change is something akin to finding out the unassuming-looking guy next to you on that coast-to-coast flight is actually a professional story teller willing to entertain you! What makes the difference?

The iPhone has a number of missing features, like all smart phones. One of which is the lack of a real to-do or list application. The Jott application provides a powerful list/to-do capability that can be accessed anywhere since it syncs to a cloud on the backend. Some use cases to illustrate its usefulness:

• Open the Jott app on the iPhone and add a few tasty tidbits to your grocery shopping list
• Call Jott while driving and use your voice to send an email to you office address reminding you to complete that action item that slipped your mind
• Access the Jott website and create a new to-do list of tasks you want to do in preparation for the birth of your son
• While driving call Jott and tell it to add a meeting to your Google calendar
  

Jott does this and much more. You can create as many distinct lists/to-dos as you wish to keep parts of your life compartmentalized. When you call Jott to send yourself a note it will ask if you'd like it to set a reminder.

Jott's list features, without voice transcription, are superior to most of the fee-based iPhone apps I looked at. When combined with the web/cloud backend and voice transcription this blows those away. Neither the list nor transcription capability would likely have sold me on Jott. But the combination is killer. And did I mention free? Visit jott.com to learn more.

Bringing Aperture and the World Together

Most digital cameras still lack GPS and hence their photos are not geotagged/location-aware. I've long made the effort to manually tag location info on photos I upload to Flickr but it is cumbersome in their UI. My iPhone has geotagging on its photos which has whetted my appetite for a convenient way to add this info to shots with my far superior Nikon D40x.

You can imagine my delight when Maperture was released. This is a plugin for Apple's Aperture tool that works with Google's mapping feature. So far this new plugin looks great and even better it is another freebie.

Thanks ubermind!