weblog
Posts tagged iPhone
2010 New Year’s Resolutions
Jan 1st
In no particular order…
- Drink less coffee
- Drink more water
- Build an iPhone app and get it published in the iTunes App Store
- Write a childrens book
- Take more family photos (specifically, focus on the family unit photos)
- Take more “Nick & Jen” couple photos
- Continue to not drink soda (been a few months already)
- Learn to speak Chinese
- Have more patience
- Eat healthier
- Continue to love and cherish Jen, Sam, Lizzy and the rest of the family
Incase Power Slider – Fail
Oct 11th
Yesterday, I purchased the Incase power slider for my iPhone 3G S. It boasts that it will double your iPhone battery life while protecting it with it’s case. Since battery life is important to me and I find my self constantly running out of battery (usually around 2pm each day), I was excited to get my hands on this. Even posted a tweet about it.
The initial reviews I read indicated that it was worthy of purchase at the right price. Best Buy had it for $47, which I thought was a great deal (since it was originally priced at $99). The packaging indicated iPhone 3G, but not specifically the iPhone 3G S. I asked a worker in the mobile phone department if it would work OK in the 3G S and she indicated “yes, I use it on my iPhone 3G S every day.”. Sold.
The instructions say to fully charge the device before putting your iPhone in it. So, like a good person who just RTFM’d, I plugged it in and let it sit for a couple hours until it was fully charged. What happened next was what surprised me…
I inserted the iPhone into the bottom part of the shell (per instructions), then put the top part of the shell on. The battery on the iPhone did indeed show that it was charging, which is what the user manual said it would do. Then, without warning, my 5 bars of 3G signal, disappeared and went to No Service. I was shocked, so I power cycled the iPhone, just incase it needed to officially recognize the new battery device. Still, No Service.
I took it out and put it back in, probably about a dozen or so times. Each time, the No Service indicator came up about 5 seconds after using the Incase Power Slider.
I googled some more and found other reports of people having the exact same issue. A few people mentioned that Incase retired that model of product because of issues, but I couldn’t find anything to support that claim. Since I really need my phone, I decided to return the Incase Power Slider to Best Buy and find something different.
I ended up with the Invisible Shield. So far so good with the Invisible Shield, but that’s a different post…
Summary: Incase Power Slider = Fail (in my humble opinion)
Ghetto Tweets
Oct 11th
I installed Ghetto Tweets a few months ago. There is a pretty good review about it, here…
Overall it’s a fun little app to play around with. Minutes worth of fun.
Some examples:
Here is @BarackObama talking about Ted Kennedy. Here is the real update…
Here is @LeviPBlauvelt talking about me. Here is the real update…
Here is @LeviPBlauvelt again. Here is the real update…
Here is @scobleizer talking about @biz. Here is the real update…
iPhone 3Gs Voice Control Issues
Jul 11th
I’ve really been enjoying the new iPhone 3Gs, a lot.
The voice control functionality is very nice and helps a lot when you want to start playing music or turn on shuffle mode, or make a call. Well, call almost anybody. There is one person voice control refuses to recognize. Who? Mom.
Me: “Call Mom mobile”
iPhone: “no match found”
Me: “Call Mom”
iPhone: “no match found”
Me: “Call Jen Melchi mobile”
iPhone “calling Jen Melchi mobile”
I’ve had others try to “call mom” on my voice control, all to no avail. Voice control recognizes everyone else I want to call, just not “mom”.
Interesting, wonder why Apple doesn’t want me to call mom using my voice.
Anyone else having the same issue?
Phantom iPhone SMS Notifications
Sep 24th
UPDATE: Since I’ve posted this message, I have found several forum posts on the apple support forums indicating that the notifications are reminders of unread SMS messages. Must’ve missed that part of the release notes for 2.1 firmware. There doesn’t seem to be any way to turn it off as of the time of this message, hopefully in a future firmware release… thx for reading. /UPDATE
—–
Ever since I upgraded to iPhone firmware 2.1, I have been receiving phantom SMS notifications. I still have the default tritone sound set for SMS messages and it happens several times a day. I’ll get the vibe/tritone notification, look at the iPhone and see nothing new.
One other person has reported the same thing to me. A google search resulted in numerous people seeing similar phantom SMS messages, however, wasn’t able to find any specific to the iPhone.
Odd.
iPhone Durability
Feb 2nd
While driving, I tend to slide the iPhone under my leg to keep it secure during the car ride. If I leave it on the seat next to me, it slides around and could fall off the seat. If you put it in a cup holder, it can still rattle around.
So, on Friday, I had the iPhone tucked under my leg on the way in and when I got to work, I parked the car, opened the car door, got out of the car and the noise I heard was horrifying to me. It was the sound of me forgetting the iPhone was under my leg. It was the sound of the iPhone hitting the parking lot concrete, face down. Oh, I forgot to mention we just got 10 inches of snow and the parking lot was all slushy and there were tons of slushy puddles.
Sure enough, the iPhone landed face down in a slushy puddle. It was completely submerged in icy cold water for about 5 seconds before I stopped shreaking like a 5 year old and picked it up. I wiped it off on my coat and shook it off to get most of the water off of it. When I got into work, I used a paper towel and cleaned out the dock connector and headphone jack and home button.
So far (knocking on wood), the iPhone is working just fine. I have the crystal screen protector on it, but not sure if that played a part in it’s survival or not.
I’ve since ordered a car mount so this doesn’t happen again.
I’m thankful I don’t need to buy a new iPhone.
iPhone AFP Share
Nov 11th
Erica Sadun posted about this over on tuaw.com. Thought I’d try it out for myself. Seems to work quite nicely, minus a couple minor things.
1. Copies over to the iPhone quite easily
2. Using the command provided (/opt/iphone/afp/startserver.sh. &) the AFP server starts on the iPhone and stays running for some undetermined amount of time (one of the items that seems buggy to me)
3. Via the Mac, accessing afp://<ip address> brings up the usual apple share dialog (see screenshots on tuaw).
4. Once authenticated, you are in and ready to go…
The author talks about enabling Bonjour, which I haven’t done, yet.
The other item that I noticed was that after a couple hours, I wasn’t able to reconnect back to the iPhone via AFP. Multiple attempts crashed Finder in Leopard. Attempting to start the AFP server again on the iPhone produced a message indicating the service was already running or in use.
Only after rebooting the iPhone and restarting the service, was I able to get back in via AFP.
I’m sure we’ll see a ton more development on this in the near future. A GUI to manage the starting and stopping of the service would be a crucial next step.
Credit to creator:
http://wickedpsyched.net/iphone/afp/
Apple Searching for iPhone Hacks
Oct 29th
I see you Apple…
Someone from apple.com did a google search for IGXP2 google code and my site happened to be the firstresult.I wonder why an Apple employee would be searching for applications that only run on hacked iPhones…The first block is them clicking on my site from the google search results. The second and third appear to befrom an RSS feeder from the same person.
***Referrer:http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=igxp2+google+ code&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 ***Server Name: nickmelchi.com***Browser Information: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en)AppleWebKit/522.11.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.3 Sa***IP Information: 17.201.43.170 -> a17-201-43-170.apple.com
***Server Name: nickmelchi.com***Browser Information: AppleSyndication/54***IP Information: 17.201.43.170 -> a17-201-43-170.apple.com
***Server Name: nickmelchi.com***Browser Information: CFNetwork/129.21***IP Information: 17.201.43.170 -> a17-201-43-170.apple.com
iPhone Helps Save the Environment
Oct 29th
One way I’m “going green” is I am no longer taking a paper receipt at the gas pump. Where does the iPhone come in, you might ask?
Well, it works like this… I pump my gas and decline the paper receipt and simply take a picture of the amount I paid for gas. I then e-mail the photo to myself at home so it can be reconciled upon my return home. Yes, this assumes that I pay at the pump, which I do 99.9% of the time.
See sample photo.
