| | Posted in: iPhone by Michael on 09/04/08. | I've been using Twitteriffic on the iPhone since it was released. Sure, I've tried the others - Twittelator Pro and Twinkle - but neither of them were as comfortable as Twitteriffic to me.
A couple of days ago I was looking at the new apps in the iTunes App Store and stumbled across TwitterFon. It is simple, fast, and useful. It doesn't do pictures, it doesn't update your location, but it does what it does well.
You can see the tweets of your friends of course, your replies, and your messages. Your friend's stream is two shades of blue - darker blue is unseen, and lighter blue is previously seen.
TwitterFon keeps lots and lots of history too which is something Twitteriffic doesn't do. There's even a "Load all stored Tweets" option at the bottom of the list if you need more.
I like it a lot. You should give it a shot. Simple, fast, and cheap.
Download it here: TwitterFon - Version 1.1, Free | | |
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| | | | Several years ago I signed up for a service called .Mac (dot Mac). My intention with .Mac was to have an @mac email address for life, have a place to back up important files, and to have a way to sync bookmark/address book/calendar data with several computers. You know what? It did all of those things really, really well. Sure there were outages, but they never really affected me since none of my uses were mission critical.
The day the iPhone was announced (Macworld, January 2007) I was extremely excited at the prospect of over the air (OTA) syncing with my iPhone. Push email on the iPhone wasn't really of interest to me, mostly because I never understood the advantages (I still don't get it). Regardless, OTA syncing with .Mac was never to be.
Then the world brightened. MobileMe, the renamed an much improved .Mac offers everything .Mac did, but so, so much more. Now when I add a date to iCal, it shows up on my iPhone automatically. Am I bothered fact that it isn't instant? Not in the slightest. What it means is that the next time I add an event on my phone, it will automatically show up in my iCal on my Mac, and at MobileMe.com. I don't have to plug my iPhone into my computer. Neat.
My address book is also in sync, as are my bookmarks across my iPhone, my laptop (MacBook Pro), and my desktop (a pc running Windows XP).
Remember just three years ago how horrible the land of data syncing was? I don't have to think about this syncing stuff anymore.
MobileMe is everything I need, and it works flawlessly. | | |
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| | | | After our successful modding of the Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset for use with the iPhone, I realized that there may be others interested in the pinouts for the iPhone headphone plug. I've seen other places that mention the external iPhone plug functions, but to do anything productive you need to know which colors go to the plug itself.
What are the iPhone headphone plug pinouts?
Green is 1st contact/left headphone
Red is 2nd contact/right headphone
Red/Green Combo and both coppers are 3rd contact/ground
White is 4th contact/microphone - the white wire is inside the red/green combo wire
If you would like for us to mod a headset for you, leave a note in the comments and I'll get back to you. The process should work with any headset that uses the 3.5mm plugs for input and output. It is just a matter of determining what the wires do in the headset itself.
I also found that the Verizon stores carry a 3.5mm to 2.5mm adaptor for US $3.99 - it has the same pins in the same positions, though I haven't tested it. The Verizon adaptor option is way cheaper than destroying a US $29.99 pair of Apple iPhone buds. If you try it and it works let me know and I'll update this post. | | |
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| | | | The short answer? Yes. The iPhone will tether, and not just the 3G iPhone, the 1st gen iPhone will tether too.
Setting up tethering with the iPhone is a bit technical, but I think you can handle it. The instructions below don't mention creating a new location in the network settings for this purpose, but I highly recommend it. I have several locations, each with a specific use. For example, I have a home location that uses a static IP to get around the Leopard DNS issues (pokey lookups). I have several locations with static IPs for the same reason, actually. Anyway, I recommend that you set up a new location with just the AirPort interface in it, named something creative like "Tether." When you want to tether, switch to that location, and if you have problems you'll be assured that other interface settings aren't interfering.
The application is $9.99 and can be found here: NetShare. Appropriately, some of the commenters in the App store suggest that you keep an eye on your usage as AT&T has a ceiling on the "unlimited" bandwidth plan.
The simple instructions for Mac users on Leopard are here: Macrumors.
Let me know if you need help. I'll do what I can. | | |
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| | | | On Thursday July 31, 2008 Apple released iTunes 7.7.1 - which fixes bugs and improves performance. But wait, there's more.
Upon further inspection of the strings in iTunes, I noticed a cool new setting available in the hidden preferences. If you had used my instructions for setting DeviceBackupsDisabled, the option to back your iPhone up at all was gone. Even from the contextual menu on the device itself in iTunes.
It looks like some iTunes engineers agree that the iTunes iPhone backup process still takes to long, but they want to be sure that you can still backup your devices if you use these hidden preferences. Enter: AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled. This too is a boolean value, but leaves the option to manually backup your device in the contextual menu. Excellent.
Here are the new instructions for disabling automatic device backups in iTunes 7.7.1. I wasn't able to locate a way to set this with the iTunes GUI, so I'm providing instructions for the command line again.
This command will change a hidden setting in the iTunes preferences that will force it to skip the automatic backup process, leaving the option for manual backups.
1. - Quit iTunes.
2. - Open Terminal.app
3. - Copy and paste this in, then hit return: defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
4. - Copy and paste this in, then hit return: defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false
5. - Open iTunes
6. - Plug in your iPhone (2.0 or 3G) and sync.
The iPhone sync will take a few seconds, assuming you don't have a ton of music or podcasts. Changing the 'true' in step 3 to 'false' will re-enable the automatic backup feature.
Let me know if you have any problems with this. Please Digg this if it works for you. Everyone needs to know about this new feature. | | |
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| | | | With the release of iTunes 7.7.1, Apple has acknowledged that the backup process takes too long. See my new/updated post for iTunes 7.7.1 users.
While I understand that some people like the idea of having a backup of everything on their phone, I'm comfortable knowing that I have backups of all of my important data elsewhere. I use MobileMe for OTA (over the air) syncing, and I have Time Machine running whenever I connect to my wireless network. Text messages, and other stuff on the iPhone just aren't all that important to me.
With the introduction of the iPhone 2.0 software and the 3G iPhone, the backup process can take a long time. People have suggested that the time it takes is dependent on the number of applications you've installed from the App Store. I have 30, and it takes forever. My friend Bracken has 4 and it took seconds.
I found a way (using the strings command in the terminal) to disable the backup function. This means that YOUR PHONE IS NOT GOING TO GET BACKED UP. Let me repeat that. If you do what I list below, YOUR PHONE WILL NOT GET BACKED UP.
This command will change a hidden setting in the iTunes preferences that will force it to skip the backup process.
1. - Quit iTunes.
2. - Open Terminal.app
3. - Copy and paste this in, then hit return:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
4. - Open iTunes
5. - Plug in your iPhone (2.0 or 3G) and sync.
It will take a few seconds, assuming you don't have a ton of music or podcasts.
Changing the 'true' in step 3 to 'false' will re-enable the backup feature.
Let me know how it goes by leaving a comment here. I will not be held responsible if your phone takes a crap and you have no backup. :)
Enjoy! | | |
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| | | | I've been asked a number of times what my favorite iPhone apps are, and rather than telling everyone over and over, I thought I'd just share them here.
1 - Google Reader - Web App
This is the only item in the list that isn't actually an application. I'm aware of exactly one RSS reader that will use Google Reader as a source on the iPhone. While I'd love to list it as a favorite, it is really short on features. The author has promised a far better release at the end of the month. Until then my favorite RSS reader (made for iPhone) is still Google Reader. It stays perfectly in sync on my phone and desktops (platform independent) and ties to my Friendfeed as I share items.
2 - Twitteriffic
I may have 15 applications open on my computer at any given time, and one that is consistently open is Thwirl. What that means more than anything is that Twitter has become a very important part of my communications world. Since there is no Twhirl for iPhone (yet), I've had to try other things. Twinkle is fine, and was the best on a jailbroken phone, but things have changed. I'm not at all a fan of the colors, or the foul sounds in Twinkle. Neither of them can claim stability, but I pick Twitteriffic FTW! For those that care, I bought it for $9.99.
3 - Loopt
Location based services are a huge business. In Boulder we have Brightkite, but they have yet to release an iPhone version. If they had, there are enough users in the area to make it quite useful. As it is, many of my friends are now on Loopt making it my winner. I use it a bit differently than most in that I leave the update text to "Loopt update" then just have it update my location when I open the app. I'll leave Twitter to do what Twitter does best. On a side note, I've heard that Facebook and MySpace are integrating location based services soon. When that happens, it is likely that all of the players around now will quickly disappear. Everyone I care about is on Facebook, so I'll have no reason to use anything else. Get on it Facebook!
4 - Evernote
Until the iPhone 2.0 software was released, I had been using Google Docs for all of my "cloud" word processing. Now I have Evernote which has the advantage of having stand alone applications for Mac and Windows, as well as the web interface for portability. The iPhone app isn't simple read access - but provides full on editing too! The best thing of all, is that they all stay perfectly in sync from environment to environment. This entry was written using Evernote on my laptop.
5 - AOL Radio
Many of you love Pandora, but I' have yet to create an account (no name calling please). While this app isn't something I use a lot, I listed it here because it really is a game changer. This, combined with apps like Pandora and Last.fm are changing what "radio" means. Having these things in your car in a useful way was unheard of two weeks ago. Today, all of my friends are tweeting about it. Watch out old media. Oh, I almost forgot, AOL Radio uses Location Services to find streaming terrestrial radio around you. It works on EDGE, 3G, and of course WIFI.
Here are other cool iPhone apps that I didn't list: Facebook (super interface to Facebook), Remote (a great replacement remote for the AppleTV that give you a "real" keyboard or interacting with the AppleTV), Mocha VNC Lite (for controlling other computers remotely), Movies.app (for finding movies and details near you), Trism (an interesting accelerometer aware chicklet game), and Restaurant Nutrition (nutrition information on several of the more popular restaurants.
In addition, here are a few great iPhone/mobile formatted web apps that I use all the time: Calorie King/The Daily Plate (for finding nutrition information on just about anything. I use these *in line* while ordering), Amazon (duh), Powerset (searches Wikipedia and formats the results perfectly), and Seeqpod (for finding and listening to music on the fly. It isn't peer to peer, or made for pirating music). | | |
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