Tag Archives: iphone

Workflow with Pocket

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I have recently fallen into a peculiar workflow arrangement between various social networking applications and Read It Later’s Pocket application. When I am following the flow of status updates from my Twitter stream I prefer to stay in-the-moment with the stream and select interesting-looking tweets that have links attached to them, but instead of actually following them in a browser, I send them to Pocket. My preferred Twitter application, TweetBot makes this as easy as tap and select “Send to Pocket” with a happy little sound confirming that my action worked. This really works well for me and doing this has spread beyond the confines of Twitter out to Facebook – however there is no convenient interface between Facebook status posts and Pocket so the workflow is a little more convoluted. I command-click on perhaps-interesting Facebook posts and this opens them up in tabs. Then I switch to the tab, click the Pocket extension, send the link to Pocket and close the tab. I don’t really want to see the links right now, I’d rather send them all off to Pocket and then queue them up that way.

Another really neat web tool that I’ve fallen in love with is IFTTT.com. This site allows you to connect a huge collection of services to their site and then construct “If This Then That” rules. This has actually simplified the Twitter-to-Pocket interface, in so far that if I like a Tweet then that is plucked by IFTTT and sent off to my Pocket automatically. This particular bit does muddy the waters between TweetBot and Twitter itself, but it’s not really a problem, just a build-up of near-miss convenience. IFTTT in this arrangement shines when it comes to Google Reader. I have subscribed to quite a lot of RSS and ATOM feeds from various sites and manage them all in Google Reader. If I “star” something in Google Reader, then IFTTT notices and copies that entry to my Pocket for later reading. As I am quite fond of having my cake and eating it too I’m always on the lookout for multi-product synergy and convenience. I really do not like Google Reader’s web interface, in fact, I really don’t like many “Web Interfaces” for products and would prefer the gilded cage of specialized client software instead. So there is a nice synergy between Reeder on my Mac computers which presents my Google Reader contents in a visually appealing way as well as Flipboard, which is the preferred way to view Google Reader on my iPad. By using IFTTT as the middleman-behind-the-scenes I can funnel all the stories that catch my interest and collect them right into Pocket.

All of these things can also be done with Instapaper and I was an ardent fan of Instapaper for a very long while, but I’ve switched over to Pocket. I still regard Marco Arment and his product to be very good, but for me personally I found that Instapaper on my 1st Generation iPad would jettison too much for my liking. It wasn’t as much a problem with Instapaper as it was the iPad itself. Embarrassingly outclassed by the applications that I was trying to force on it. I’d be able to stand by this, but Instapaper on my 3rd Generation iPad also jettisoned. I didn’t really want to bother the author with the yackety-schmackety bug reports and Pocket edged out Instapaper when it came to displaying video and audio media. The core functions between the two are quite similar and the only other small feature that pushed me over to Pocket was the ability to search on my Pocket list and perform actions on multiple items. I have no doubt that Instapaper will catch up and may already have caught up. The money I spent on Instapaper was money well-spent and I would suggest that people look at both apps before deciding for themselves.

So back to the workflow, this is how I naturally started navigating my social network stream of information. In a way, I follow sources which curate the noise of Reddit and other news aggregators into categories that I find most interesting and then I self-curate the longer pieces into Pocket for later consumption. As I used this workflow it occurred to me that what was happening was an emergent stratification of curation. Living generates a noisy foam of information, which crashes on the coral reefs of StumbleUpon, Reddit, Engadget, HuffPo and the like. Information seagulls, like @geekami (for example) fly over these coral reefs of information and pluck out the shiniest bits, linking them to tweets and shipping them out. Then I come along and refine that for things I really find interesting and all of this ends up crashing into Pocket. Arguably, Pocket is the terminal for all this curation, but it doesn’t have to be. I could (but I don’t) cross-link Pocket and Buffer using IFTTT and regenerating a curated flow of information turning me into an information seagull. I suppose I don’t follow that path because I already have enough to do as it is, reading, comics, FOMO, work, gym… the list goes on and on.

For all the apps and people I mentioned in this blog entry, I really do recommend that you Google them and see if any of this fits in your life as it did mine. If It works for you, or you found a better way of managing this flow of information foam, please comment with your workflow description. Just more curation. Lexicographers and Encyclopedists eat your heart out. 😉

Confusing Worthless Passbook

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Apple has stepped in it quite badly when it comes to their Passbook app. It comes down to which metaphor they’d like to use and please, stick to whichever it is. I write specifically after updating my Starbucks app on my iPhone and the app asked if I wanted to add a card to my Passbook. So far my understanding of Passbook was that there was a stump-app which led you to the App Store to “buy” apps for different companies, so Target, Walgreens, that sort of thing and that those “Apps” were to be eventually organized in a Passbook folder.

So I start the Starbucks app, and it prompts me to add a Passbook card, so I figure there will be another app icon called “Starbucks” that I can put in the folder with all the other unused “Passbook” apps that I don’t use. And there is nothing. Huh. So I looked at the app for a while and couldn’t find where it put my Passbook “App” icon. I figured it must have been broken. That the download was buggy or broken. I completely ignored the Passbook app itself, because it was just a stump, why the hell would I use it again? It led to the App Store and that was how you entered the App Store if you wanted to waste time screwing around with Passbook bullshit. So I tapped on the app expecting to see the lame text and the link to the App Store, and there was my Starbucks Passbook card. As an added bit of huh, the link to the App Store is gone. So, okay. No more Passbook apps then for me, which I guess is fine.

It’s this really loopy “It’s an app” versus “it’s a card” metaphor that I’m griping at. It could have been more elegant, as for usefulness, eh. I don’t think of my phone when it comes to buying things. Phones don’t do that sort of thing, except now they do.

When it comes to Starbucks, we have a host of other problems that are going to pop up. I can’t use my Starbucks card at Barnes & Noble because it’s not a true Starbucks store, it’s B&N’s Cafe that serves Starbucks products. How many people will try to use their Starbucks card or this Passbook app? They’ll get irritated and be disinclined to use Passbook again. I know that feeling because I tried to use my Starbucks app at a Starbucks shop in McCormick Place in Chicago and was told they only accept cash or credit cards. That was the last time I used my Starbucks app except for just this morning to engage with this whole Passbook bullshit. So, even if you walk into a store that sells Starbucks, is a Starbucks, they may or may not use what you have. So having your phone out and ready to go and make things speedy utterly fails and you walk away without what you wanted, angry at the embarrassment. Then what are you supposed to do about some of those Starbucks that have drive-thru service? Do you honestly think people will hand their iPhones to a clerk for scanning? How stupid do you have to be to hand your expensive iPhone to anyone else? What if a compromising text pops up while they are scanning your iPhone? What then? I know why Apple would like Passbook to be useful and I’m all for new ways of addressing old problems, but there has to be a better way to do it. I suppose this really would only work well if you walked up to a Starbucks store, and there was some icon stating that the Passbook card would be accepted for purchases on the premises, then maybe then. But at that point how irritated would you be that you had to go hunting and searching for it? Then would you really even be interested in buying anything or just skipping it altogether?

So, the worthless Target and Walgreens apps, the weird App/Card thing with Starbucks, and how you can’t even be sure that any of it would work leads me to think that this is all just so much DOA technology. You aren’t going to use it because it’s too much bother. I can’t wait until some airline thinks they can stuff a boarding pass into this thing. Do you seriously think that a thieving TSA drone will give you back your iPhone? They’ll hand you back your Photo ID and pocket your phone. But that touches on the criminals that work for the TSA, but it’s still a REALLY BAD IDEA. Perhaps there will be something eventually that makes Passbook worth anyones time and trouble. I wouldn’t hold your breath.

SupportPress

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I just rolled SupportPress out to the rank and file at work. Or at least I thought I did. My day was going so well, so smoothly. I got my introduction email with graphics sent out (or so I thought) and I got all the invites shipped out as well. Everything was going just peachy – until I looked at the sent mail and noticed that when I sent the message by copying all the discrete addresses that only the first address took. So I didn’t send out any message at all!

To really get a grasp on how irritating this was, I couldn’t send a message to the LDAP alias that expands out to all the people I work with, the address is dar-staff@wmich.edu. The SMTP server at WMU was rejecting it out of hand. Turns out I figured out why – it was the screenshot graphics. That system they have rejects mail with pictures. So I had no choice but to copy down all the addresses from our Wiki and do it manually. Turns out when you copy that kind of information into Sparrow, it only looks at the first address and ignores everything else. It was my thinking that it would see the commas and figure out I was copying in 48 addresses. No, just one really long address.

When I noticed this, all I had was my iPhone and I was having lunch with Scott. I was cursing Webmail Plus and the LDAP directory for placing artificial limits on email and so I figured I could get the list of addresses and paste them into my iPhone and use the Mail app in my iPhone to do the heavy lifting. Turns out it suffered the same mental block, treating the addresses I pasted in as one giant address. So after lunch was over I was in my car trying to tap and copy one address at a time in. This is another bad idea because if you tap and don’t hold the iPhone thinks you want to email to just that one person and so dumps the draft you were working on and starts a new draft with an empty email. The forwarded bit with all the text and graphics? Lost. Three times lost. I was successful in the end, shipping my intro email out to all my coworkers despite all the technology surrounding me meant to make things easier.

Alls well that ends well, so we’re up online with SupportPress and I have to say that I am very happily surprised with what I see. Clients see a very simple version of the site and it’s compatible with every browser, every computer, including iPhone and iPad to boot! Now that I’ve let the genie out of the bottle it will be very interesting to see how it is received. There has been lots to say on that topic before, and in another post, a more private one, I’ll go further into the nitty gritty details.

So despite technological hurdles, I was able to get my automated help desk system off the ground and show it off to people. Monday is going to be a rip-roaring day, indeed!

Serenity

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At work I get two 15 minute breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I usually just work right through them paying no attention to the time I could be devoting to other things instead of work. I get into ruts where I put my head down at 8am and pick it back up at 5pm and the whole time in between I’m engaged with something work related.

This can sometimes lead to irritation, aggravation, and this maddening buzzity restless feeling that sticks with me and starts to wear me down. If the weather is good and I’m in the mood for it I will take a jaunt around the campus which can help. Recently however I’ve been trying to find room in my life for meditation and it struck me that if I could find the right place, that I could get away for half an hour. I figure nobody would have a problem if I bound my two breaks up together and used it for something possibly good for me.

That’s exactly what I did this afternoon. Around 3:45 today I polished off the last of the tea I was drinking and grabbed my iPhone and found a little out-of-the-way place here where I could relax and meditate. I didn’t fall asleep, but I was able to get to that magical place. Each time I do it, it gets easier to reach it, each and every time. There are two apps that help keep me focused and keep me from running out of time. The first app I use to create natural sounds around me is called Naturespace and I went ahead and bought the “Entire Catalog” program option which unlocks all of their soundtracks. I especially prefer the track “Zen Wind and Water” as it features windchimes which I really like listening to. The program works with my earbuds to mask outside noises, so there is nothing to upset me while I’m trying to relax. The second app I use is Chronology and I set it for 30 minutes with a double-horn alarm at the end. When I prepare for my session I find a nice quiet place to sit, one that nobody is using and nobody would go looking for me in, and I start Naturespace and Chronology, get everything started and start to concentrate on my breathing. As usual when I’m coming down I can feel the relaxation hit my shoulders and neck first. As I’m trying to quiet my thinking my mind starts tossing stray noise at me to get me to do something else. At first it took a long time for that to quiet down, but after several sessions it doesn’t take that long and once I achieve my goal it’s as if my mind fits into a groove in my consciousness. The stray noisy thoughts are gone and they don’t bubble up. It feels almost like a physical ‘fwump’ as it clicks into place. I could try to bring in some noise but it doesn’t work. It’s just me and my breathing and nothing else. If I stay very still I can even slow my breathing down, I start to lose proprioception and unless I’ve got joints under stress I start to float away. It has nothing at all to do with falling asleep. There are no hypnic jerks, and there isn’t any loss of consciousness. I’m able to act if I must, but it’s quite nice just to exist in that state for a time.

When I hear the double-horn from Chronology I know that my 30 minutes are up. When I open my eyes and shift posture my proprioception snaps right back together but my mind retains this quality of serenity for a long while afterwards. I’ve found it’s easier to read and easier to concentrate afterwards, as if I’m still carrying crumbs of that meditative state around with me for hours afterwards. I still feel it even now, and it’s been about twenty minutes since I left that state. If nothing else, I feel much better afterwards than I did before. The maddening buzzity sensation is gone and I don’t feel quite as busy as I was just an hour ago.

If I notice any other differences, I’ll be sure to blog about them.

Spinning Governor

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I’ve come up with ways to cope with the network connection throttle that I recently discovered was behind a lot of my network woes here at work. In my regularly scheduled workaday use of the Internet I usually find myself consuming at least 150 connections if not more because everything I use was built with the assumption that establishing multiple connections is free and easy. There is no parsimony when it comes to using the network, and you see this exemplified most of all in the design of browsers like Firefox. When you fetch a page, most modern browsers will attempt to also-fetch possible pages you may want so that they can appear faster. This is fine if you have an unlimited number of connections that you can make to the network. That isn’t the case here.

I can live with the throttle. I understand why it’s in place and knowing that it exists helps in that it keeps me from questioning my sanity when I didn’t know it existed and thought the problem was with me or my computer. It’s neither. So there are some ways to address my problem. Specifically the route to a better life is ironically through the same devices that are at the center of the entire ‘running out of IP space’ problem, iOS devices. My iPhone and iPad have apps that can bring me interfaces to Internet resources that I need to use, and they can free up my computer so that I can help avoid the connection quota throttle. For example, instead of opening up Toodledo in Safari I can open up the Toodledo app on my iPhone. Different device, different connection quota. My iPhone doesn’t make so many connections and if I did need that feature I could very easily drop wifi and use the 3G data circuit. I can do a lot of other things too, like manipulate Asana, run my eMail through my iPad, that sort of thing.

So, in a way, the connection throttle has shifted the load from one device to three. At first this was kind of a pain in the ass, but over time I’ve come to see that this could become more efficient. It frees my computer up for the heavier things, like Google Reader and such. We’ll have to see how it goes.

Tech'now'ledgy Expo

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I attended for a little while the Tech’now’logy Expo that TotalTech puts on every year. In attendance was my friend Matt Merrill with CDW-G and Chris Doemel with Apple.

They are pretty much two out of maybe a handful of vendors that I do not want to pitch into a swirling abyssal vortex. The expo itself was a little lean on actual vendors, but HP and Dell were there, and my CDW-G vendor was flogging Lenovo pretty hard. I hadn’t the heart to really bust down Lenovo despite it being a cross between an IBM Stink-Pad and Cheap Chinese Plastic Crap. I can’t really get down on Lenovo too harshly, at least there wasn’t a Lexmark pusher there! Lexmark gets pitched into that aforementioned vortex.

Apple was pleasant as usual. I really love the company, and AppleCare itself can’t be beat, but my previous run-ins with Apple Sales has left me feeling a little quixotic. They aren’t as hold-your-hand as the rest of Apple is, but they are attentive and the reflected glory from the mothership in Cupertino does them a lot of good, but while I’m seeking out the ARD Development Team for body-breaking hugs, the sales team has always left me feeling rather tepid. They respond very positively when you tell them you’re sending clients their way, but everything else isn’t really that exciting for them, which I totally understand, but it is a little surprising that sales isn’t as rabid as the rest of them are.

Something that is coming up is iOS management. I’ve got a new systems contact at Apple, a fellow by the name of David Seebaldt. Should be interesting to see what he is going to recommend for us. Currently we’ve got 6 iPads in play and 3 iPhones. I fully expect that level to rise with time. I think one of my first queries will be why iPhone, and no other iOS device displays a single-Library preference. iPod Touches, iPod Nanos, and even iPads can touch as many iTunes Libraries as they like, but iPhones? One central library, the first one they see, and that’s it. It’s as if the iPhone imprints on the first Library it sees and that’s it for life. Odd.

I certainly hope that they get more foot traffic, because the lunch-time period wasn’t so rah-rah-rah.

iPhone App Review

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In an earlier post I wrote about how I promised you all an iPhone App review, so without further waiting, here it is. In this review I will be skipping any apps that also appear on my iPad, as I’ve pretty much exhaustively covered those apps, unless the iPhone brings a fresh perspective that I didn’t have with my iPad. Just so that everyone is on the same page, my iPad is a 16GB Wifi only model, and the first generation. My iPhone is also a 16GB model and linked to Verizon, it’s fourth generation. On with the show…

iPhone 4 App Review

  1. Evernote – The recently updated Evernote app is without a doubt one of the single most awesome and compelling apps on my iPhone. The new interface works so much better than the previous iteration of the app on the iPhone device. I am patiently waiting for this kind of refreshing redesign to happen for the Evernote for iPad app as well. Every time I open Evernote, I can’t help but think back to struggling with the very same app on my old Blackberry. The difference? Night and Day.
  2. Photography Group
    1. Camera – The baked in Camera app for the iPhone 4 comes with the device. The controls are very easy and it was a definite pleasure to see that the app does stills and video, and can be configured for either camera, the front-facing or rear-facing.
    2. Camera+ – This app borrows a lot of structure from the plain Camera app. It has a different zoom feature, timed shutter, burst mode, advanced flash handling and a pretty neat focus-fixing gesture system which I’ve yet to really get into. The app also has it’s own “Camera Roll” beyond the plain system one, and this allows you to edit the photos, crop them and apply some pretty cool filters. You can of course export any photos you take from the apps “Camera Roll” to the system “Camera Roll”, so it’s quite handy.
    3. Panorama – I haven’t really gotten a chance to play around with this one, it was free, eventually I’ll get to trying it out.
    4. Instagram – The collision of social media and photography! This app is great. You can configure Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Flickr, Tumblr, and FourSquare all from the app itself. Take a picture, apply one of its old-timey filters if you want, and then send the photo at once to all the services or specific ones you choose. So far very happy with it.
    5. FoodSpotting – This is more niche than Instagram. It works a lot like Instagram but it’s for food in restaurants. You take a picture and you can share it. The only gripe I have about FoodSpotting is the setup for the social services aren’t very clear, it’s nothing like any other app I’ve used and I kept on hitting my head against a mysterious login box until I realized I had to put in my FoodSpotting.com username and password. Oops. Once it’s off the ground, it’s very handy.
  3. Utilities Group –
    1. Clock – The clock app is one of those baked-in apps that come with the device. I almost never review the baked in apps, except for this one case. There appears to be a gremlin that still lives in this app. I have a handful of alarms, and whether the alarm is on or off doesn’t matter. So far it doesn’t suffer from the previous problem of “alarm doesn’t fire”, but it’s odd in that alarms fire even if they are “Off”. I think this app is still a work-in-progress for Apple’s iOS team to work on.
    2. Voice Memos – This app still has a use for really long audio recordings. It’s lost a fair amount of power when Evernote redid their app and added audio recording – so you could technically audio-record right into your Evernote system. I suppose you could use this app and then email the audio into Evernote later, perhaps it’s six and one half-dozen kind of thing.
  4. Facebook – The Facebook app is odd. It’s there for the iPhone but not the iPad. I’ll never understand that. The app works well enough, it’s pretty straightforward and if you have a facebook account, you should get it. I don’t know many people who don’t have a facebook account any longer.
  5. Social Group
    1. Glympse – I wrote about Glympse when I had it on my iPad. The system really shines when you have a 3G network connection or if you insist on running it on the iPad, to have a 3G-to-Wifi bridge as you are mobile. I used Glympse with my mother and she loved it. She thought it was really neat. You send a “glympse” to an email addressee and they get a link they can click on and see your position, speed, and path in real-time. The only part of this app that irks me is the expiration to “glympses”. I would prefer to hand my mother a link that would always work if I was running “Glympse” on my iPhone, she would know where I am whenever she liked. Some people see this as an invasion of privacy, but really, what do you have to hide? Come on.
    2. Bump – I got this free app to share some pictures that Scott had on his iPhone. Bump works well when the datasets are small. If you want to share a LOT of data, like a bunch of pictures in a Camera Roll on the device, prepare for disappointment. Bump really didn’t work out for me. Another app, which I reviewed on my iPad, called Transfer works much better for moving big data sets between iOS devices.
  6. Travel Group –
    1. Trapster – Before the price of fuel went to obnoxiously high levels I used to have a relatively leaded foot when it came to driving. I regularly find myself pushing 76 in a 70 zone and I’ve been caught “Not Paying Full Attention” to speed zones in the past. This app allows you to share socially the presence of speed traps and other road hazards. Since I keep my speed now pretty much below 60MPH to save on gas costs most of the reason to use this app have gone out the window, but I keep it around, it’ll likely be really helpful on long-duration trips.
    2. StreetPilot – Garmin’s Nuvi interface designed for iOS. I can enter in an address or do a Google Location search and have yet to find something it can’t route me to. This app has vocal turn-by-turn directions and is as “helpful” as a Nuvi. One of the nicest things is that the maps will never go out of date as it downloads map data from Garmin automatically. When I start this app my mind goes back to the Sprint Navigation app on my Blackberry, powered by Telenav. This app, StreetPilot, blows that old Telenav application out of the water. Again it’s night and day. I would never use the Telenav junk because it never worked. So far StreetPilot has not let me down once. Again it’s because an iPhone is a supremely more advanced and better-equipped phone than the Blackberry could ever dream of being.
    3. TripIt – Making big trips, with airplanes and hotels usually is handled somewhat well using Evernote, but not any longer. TripIt is a free app and free web service that enables you to organize all your travel details through one very well designed app. What really blows my mind is the web service provides you with an email address that you can forward your confirmation emails to and the service will automatically extract the details from what you forwarded and populate your trip for you. Incredibly handy. The fact that it’s free blows my mind.
  7. 1Password – I have this app on my iPad, my iPhone and every Mac I own. Without a doubt the single BEST purchase and BEST investment I ever made, beyond buying into the Apple Digital Lifestyle. What makes it shine? Sync with Dropbox. Everything is the same on every device. Everyone should buy apps from 1Password, then use the app to change each site they have an account on with the random generator in 1Password and control them all from that suite of apps. When one site suffers a security breakdown, your loss is microscopic. You lost 1 of thousands of 16 digit random passwords. This app is worth its weight in GOLD. I’m so happy my mother pushed me towards it!
  8. Business Group
    1. DraftPad – If ever you needed just a quick place to jot down some text, this app does a pretty good job. It’s free, it’s very simple to use, and does one thing, taking quick temporary notes, very well.
    2. CamCard – I downloaded the Lite version of this app. It enables your phone to take a picture of a business card and then it scans in the details, does OCR, and populates your Contact List with the details from the card. Very useful. I got the Lite version because I almost never get business cards but when I do, it’s nice to have this as an option.
  9. Scanners Group
    1. Qrafter – This app from Kerem Erkan is free on the App Store and is the BEST QR Code scanner I’ve ever had the pleasure to use. It’s professional, free, and the way it scans, presents the contents of the scan and all the extended features that it can pick up from a QR code is wonderful! There are a few other QR scanners and they are okay, but this one is the top of my list without a doubt!
    2. QR Creator – Kerem Erkan, on his website, also has a QR creator page which has a special mobile rendering on iPhone devices. I browsed to it in Mobile Safari and then made an app-icon-bookmark. You can create custom QR codes and save them to your Camera Roll and print them using AirPrint or send them to someone else via email or even Evernote or Dropbox! Quite nice.
    3. PriceCheck – This app from Amazon.com is a great way to check on local stores profiteering. Just grab an object from the shelf, open this app, scan the bar code with the camera and Amazon will spit out it’s best prices for that item. I’ve yet to use it for more than simply checking on things to see how the scanner worked, but it does work. I’m pretty sure you can one-click order through the App if you set it up with your Amazon login information. That would be too-funny. Especially for Best Buy, Target, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Low prices my ass. 🙂
    4. RedLaser – This works a lot like PriceCheck but isn’t tied to Amazon.com. I have used this app and it’s saved both of us some money and aggravation. There is a scented candle that Scott really likes in the bathroom and it’s a big one, the price tag from BB&B was $22 bucks. He wanted another candle just like it for the bathroom but couldn’t remember what it was called or who made it. While I was in the bathroom I fished it out of the garbage and scanned it using RedLaser. Not only did it find the right make and scent but also found it online for HALF THE PRICE. I then tapped the option button in RedLaser and right there was “email this info” option, I sent it to Scott and minutes later he was thanking me. Don’t thank me, thank that app! 🙂
    5. Color ID – I have what I regard as accurate color vision. Scott on the other hand can from time to time run into trouble identifying colors. This free app is cute, you start it, point the camera at an object and press the shutter button. The phone will calculate the color, give you its “creative name”, its hex code for inclusion on websites, and it will read the color off via voice from the speaker. I spent half an hour identifying all the colors in my bathroom. For anyone challenged with color blindness, this app is a godsend. The only oddity with the app is that it doesn’t like being sent to the background. Once you put it in the background and then call it up again the scanning part doesn’t work. You have to quit the app and restart it. Even with this oddity it’s still quite useful.
  10. GroceryIQ – This app is sort of a scanner, sort of a listmaker, but it floats outside of other groups because it’s different. I like using this app more than ShopShop because the way it’s designed fits better with trips to the supermarket. I love it’s listmaking and check off features. The scanner is quite dumb, and while you can scan an item and put it on the list, it’s just as easy to type it in by hand.

So that’s that. Those are the apps on my iPhone that differ from my iPad apps. It’s nowhere near the exhaustive list of all the apps I have, but these are the ones I felt warranted the most discussion and I think other people would benefit from using. I’m open to reviewing other apps, if you are an app developer please feel free to drop me a line or make a comment and I’ll check out your app and give you my honest opinion or even a review. If you find something in my reviews that helps you, please comment and let me know!

iPhone 4 on Verizon – Delightful!

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While re-reading my old Blackberry / iPhone / Droid post (which is my #1 most viewed page!) I started to chuckle at my May 10th 2010 self versus my February 16th, 2011 self. What has my experience been now that I’ve had my iPhone for a fair bit?

I am in love with this device.

Now I can fall pretty hard for a pretty face, especially when it comes to a new gadget. I categorize myself as a “use it all” kind of iPhone user, the curious geek who refuses to stop fiddling with a device until I have it just so. I don’t go as far as the GPL/FSF folks who want to take a phone and turn it into an Adirondack chair, but I do take my gadgets for pretty intense rides.

So what do I think now? Blackberry is dead. I rescued all the data I cared for out of my old Blackberry device, I wiped it clean and I removed the battery. I haven’t even looked back or even thought of it since then. I imagine in my mind’s eye, a giant crematorium where I open the giant door and start pitchforking all the useless memories and upset feelings and anger and close the door to watch it all burn to ash. I used to fantasize about annihilating my Blackberry. Now that I have my Verizon iPhone 4, I don’t really care to go back there anymore. I don’t care for Blackberry Enterprise Server, or RIM, or any of the other silly things that having a phone with a network endpoint in Canada means.

As I look out now, I respect Droid for its user base and how well it’s progressed. I’m still quite critical that certain manufacturers are keeping their customers from upgrading to the latest and greatest version of the Droid operating system in order to squeeze as much money as they can from them. I can appreciate the Droid, but I don’t espouse it’s use or recommend it to anyone I know. Most people aren’t seeking my recommendations when it comes to mobile device operating systems anyways. One small problem I have with Droid is the kill-switch that Google maintains on the devices apps and the laissez-faire style with which the Droid App Store is policed. It’s too wild and too uncontrolled for my tastes and I don’t think exposing people who aren’t interested in the hows and the whys is a very wise move. These people get it in their head to download something hazardous like a trojan horse and then the show is over.

How about the iPhone? It’s amazing. The devices display, the two cameras, all the apps! It’s kind of overwhelming. There are so many things I can do now, now that I am using a real network with a real device. I can browse the web the way I want to, not the way that my old Blackberry forced me to do. I can read my emails, including HTML emails with ease and pleasure. The network is snappy, nice and quick and about the same speed as Sprint when Sprint was in its heyday. Those days are done, by the way. This device, this iPhone does everything that Apple promises and does it exceptionally well. Everything from fit, finish, to overall quality is as I expect from Apple, beyond my wildest expectations. Of course, every cute puffy cloud does have it’s darker sides as well. There are only a few of those, and mostly it comes down to ringtones, using the iPhone on multiple machines, but beyond that, which none of them are show stoppers. Instead of wanting to throttle the Blackberry devs to death with my bare hands I just want to tousle the hair of the Apple devs who baked these oddities into their device.

Soon I will write a review sheet about all the apps I’ve gotten for my iPhone. Instead of duplicating all the apps that I reviewed already for my iPad (as there is a huge overlap) I’ll only review those apps that are unique to my iPhone and why I chose them. That’s coming up soon, keep an eye out for it if you like my reviews.

Being Without

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This past weekend I was without my Blackberry as the number port took through Verizon and the phone was in a box en-route to Kalamazoo through FedEx. It was an odd feeling, being potentially connected through the fail-a-licious Blackberry and then suddenly not having anything. No phone, no sms, no alerts, no twitter. It was rather humbling. There were some seriously good moments of comedy that I was going to share but couldn’t, some of them were:

  • At the GR B&N, they had a sign up for Black History Month and right underneath it a load of product from the BBC.
  • The Apple Store at Woodland Mall in GR, a packed madhouse! It was if it was a fresh release day and people were starving for the sleek and shiny.
  • Scott’s test drive of the car that has caught his eye, the Nissan Juke.
  • Browsing the Pioneer Wine Trail, which runs north and south of Jackson, MI.

Of course, throughout all of this I’ve been impatient for the delivery of my new iPhone. Waiting has been uniquely annoying, especially since FedEx doesn’t really update their package status as well as UPS does, so for the past few days the shipment has been cooling it’s heels in Grand Rapids, until just a few moments ago when it turned out to magically appear in Portage.

I did enjoy myself immensely this past weekend however, got in a lot of mallwalking, bought a few bottles of very good (and cheap!) wines from the Pioneer Trail region, saw the Juke which was exceptionally cute, and had a chance to spend time with friends.

 

Why I'm Thankful for Caller ID

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peace dove

Of all the people who could call me, I am avoiding none of them. I am dreading none of them. I remember a great quote that speaks to this. Worry is a lot like a rocking chair, you move a lot but you don’t get anywhere.

There is a little part of me that laughs, of all the people who could call me, few of them I think would get through. Remember, my Google Voice number pretty much routes to my good-for-nothing Blackberry device. Once I get rid of that albatross around my neck, and switch to an iPhone, things will get much better. Even still, once they are better, I still don’t have anyone I am avoiding.

I suppose another part of it is that many people in my life aren’t using voice traffic much anymore. Text and other messaging methods take the cake because either they are 100% signal or not, there isn’t any garbled noise and the worst thing that can happen is a hilarious auto-correction. With voice, on Sprint, I usually end up sounding like I’m a welshman trying to scream for my life through toilet pipes. It’s that bad.

I used to dread. Calls from car repair, those big expensive calls, those I used to dread but then I realized that it’s all part of the color of life. The excitement. Even ruin and disaster are teachers and there is no point to worrying, even though anxiety is pretty much a guaranteed thing. The only calls I dread anymore are ones about the health of loved ones. But so far everyone is healthy, that I know of, so yeah, no worries.

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