Out of Town

I am out of town this weekend, so the posts may not be as involved, but I am going to try and keep them coming. I am putting the iPhone to the test right now. Here I am writing for my blog, while I listen to the Chili Peppers in the back seat of a Tuarus headed for Kansas City. No big deal with my iPhone, how did I live without it.

I still wish I had the GPS and 3G, but it is hard to complain when this thing is so awesome.

Thanks for reading!

Don't Get Ripped Off with Voice Dialing

AT&T offers a voice dialing service that is available for a monthly fee. This is not a good business proposition in my opinion. You have to ay extra every month to have something that the phone should have had on it anyway.

It makes me mad that Apple did not include this feature on the iPhone, but there is no way that I am going to pay for that. I will wait until Apple either comes out with a software update that makes this happen, a third party app that makes this work, or just wait until the next phone. It really isn't that important anyway in my opinion. Maybe if this feature is something that is really important to you, then you should fork over the five dollars a month, but remember that it does not work off of the contacts on your phone. The contacts have to be stored on a network somewhere else and you have to import them to that system. This will make it a more frustrating experience since you will have to make sure that anyone you add gets added to the database out there.

So this post was a rant, but I guess I felt that it was necessary. I really hate the idea of cellular companies finding more ways to get money out of people when they are providing things that should be free features with the hardware.

I am done for today, thanks for reading.

Another Applicatio Installer Works With Version 1.0.2

Apple keeps updating the iPhone, probably in hopes to stifle the hacks that people have developed to put there 3rd party applications on it. Apple has not been successful yet however. It is still easy to hack the iPhone and put the apps that you want on it. Another application that does that is this Mac OS X application with a GUI. This is a great application to get 3rd party apps on your iPhone with ease.

All you have to do is download the program to you Mac then turn off iTune and iPhoto and hook up your iPhone with the program running. It is as simple as that to get started.

I have tried looking for GPS for the iPhone, but have been unsuccessful. The best way so far seems to be to go to Mologogo and signup for free GPS tracking of a device. Then you have to get a cheap device that can be tracked and use that. Then you go on to Mologogo and sync the device with Mologogo and receive a link to your location. Then you type that url into google maps on your iPhone and you can see where you are currently located.

The problem with this solution is that it is not easy to get directions from where you are and it does not really keep track of where you are going unless you update it. this is a great idea, but it has not gotten me that excited since it is not quite to the point I want it to be and it still costs more than what I am already paying for. $600 for a phone should include GPS. Hopefully Apple has a GPS expansion application and hardware in the works.

Big Update In Store For Apple iPhone

There was another update released recently that has seemingly little or no advances. It will however stop lots of hacks from working, which may interfere with iFuntastic which I talked about in the last post. So, if you want to continue to use iFuntastic or other hacking softwares, then you may want to hold off on updating your iPhone until they get the new version of the hack released. I am sure they will be working quickly on it.

The rumor is (and yes I have to classify this as a rumor) that Apple has a very big update in the works for the iPhone. There lots of things that are missing on the iPhone in terms of software and Apple realizes this. I am not sure if I believe all of the things that I have heard about this, but I am sure that Apple is working on a lot of them. Some of the updates are going to include:

- A file browser to allow transfer of files without iTunes and to use just like a flash drive
- Real Apple applications such as an iPhone version of iWork and iChat
- A mobile version of Spotlight to search for files
- Widescreen keyboard in all applications
- A copy and paste function (honestly Apple, this should have been here already)
- Ability to add email accounts without iTunes
- The ability to share files with others around you just like file sharing on Macs
- Syncing with .Mac accounts (this has already happened which makes me think that the rest may be true)
- Ringtones (this makes me wonder)
- Camera Stabilization feature
- AND Flash Support (What a novel concept)

Again, this is not verified by a good source. I just found this surfing out on the web out there, but most of it makes sense. However, a lot of these things have been in discussion for a while and I wonder why it has not been as definite before. Also, what do they mean by ringtones, does that mean that we are going to get more options for ringtones, the ability to buy more ringtones, or (the one I actually want to have) use our songs for ringtones. The last would make the most sense to me. I think that all of the listed features should be coming to the iPhone, but I just wonder if they are since they were not already included. Maybe Apple just wanted to get the iPhone out there and in people's hands so that they could work on making it better according to what people want. This is a great idea in my opinion. I trust Apple, and even if these things are not coming, I am sure that more great things are coming in the future. It's Apple!

Finally Customize Your Apple iPhone The Way You Want

There is now a great way to customize your iPhone and put the things that you want on it. We have been talking about apps for the iPhone, but they have been web applications rather than applications that run on the iPhone when it is not connected to the Internet. There is a great easy to use application that you can use to do this called iFuntastic. I have used this application a lot already and love it.

The first thing that I did with it was to put some songs in the ring tones section so that I could use the song that I wanted for my ring. Say goodbye to the standard iPhone ring tones (they were good, but I really wanted the freedom to use my own). You have all the drag and drop freedoms you want with this.

The next thing was to change the arrangement of the icons on the iPhone home screen. You can actually arrange them however you would like and hide the ones that you do not want to have on the screen. This is great to clear the screen up or just put often-used apps where it is easy for your finger to hit. I just did some rearranging rather than actually hiding any of the apps.

Then I got rid of AT&T on my network bar. Instead of AT&T it now says iPhone. I know it is not a big deal, but it is just one of those "hah, what do you think about that" kind of things. I still know I am using AT&T, but I can more easily ignore that fact.

All in all this is one of the best things that has happened to the iPhone. The application is very user friendly (however it only works on an Intel Mac) and it just unlocks the iPhone so you can customize it, then locks it back up so that you can sync with iTunes just like normal. This application should keep you going for a while. There are applications that you can put on the iPhone now using iFuntastic, which means there are only more to come.

My next goal is to get GPS working on the iPhone. This is going to be tough, so if there are any ideas, let me know. There is actually one great idea, but I have to try it and I will get it on the blog.

Until next time, have a blast with your iPhone and iFuntastic!

SeeqPod May Tide You Over Until Pandora Works On iPhone

Apple's iPhone lacks one vital key to its internet, FLASH. I am sorry to say this, but it has frustrated me that the iPhone does not have flash. This has caused me not to be able to use Pandora. Pandora has to have flash to work, which is dumb on their part, but never the less I have to live with that. I cannot use Pandora, but SeeqPod has an iPhone application that will actually do similar things as Pandora, but with less "flash". Sorry, the pun was necessary.

SeeqPod is an online application that allows you to search for a band on the internet and find artists that are similar. There are a few things wrong with it, but hopefully they will work on a new version soon. The two major flaws I see are that it does not have a user friendly view for the songs that you find and it lists some of them more than once usually. The other problem is that it does not let you listen to more than one song at a time. This is very frustrating to me. I would love to use this like Pandora on the computer and just skip songs I do not like, but I can't. There is not even the feature to go to the next song after the first one stops playing. I am hoping that this will someday be the answer, but only time will tell.

Until we get flash though, I guess we have to use SeeqPod. It is a great Application overall and has helped me find a couple of new bands that I did not know about that I like.

Apple Is Updating iPhones over EDGE or WiFi

It now seems that Apple is actually able to update iPhones or just unlock features for iPhones over the network. Apple has not confirmed this to be true; however certain functions have appeared this way. The send photos to web gallery function was added to many iPhones in this manner. The update was required and you have to have a .Mac account, but then it should just automatically update the iPhone even when it is not plugged into iTunes.

This is big news as far as I am concerned. This means that Apple has complete control over what is on your device. Scary? Well, maybe, but it is also very cool. This means that Apple could have certain things updated on your iPhone immediately if it was necessary when say troubleshooting the device. Apple may be able to notice that a certain update has not been made and unlock it at that time to make it work and you would not have to have it connected to the computer and iTunes.

This could be a great feature in the future, but we will have to see what Apple ends up doing with it.

New iPhone Update Release

There is a new software update available for the iPhone that may help with some audio problems that people have been experiencing. I have not had much trouble with the audio on the iPhone, but it has seemed a little quite when I am in the car. The new update is supposed to have fixed this for many people along with making the iPhone compatible with more devices.

The iPhone has some troubles with iPod devices sometimes. For instance, my wife is not able to use her FM Transmitter/charger for her iPhone because it was not designed for the iPhone. This new update may have fixed it, but am I not sure yet. We will have to see.

As for the flash update that I so desperately want, it was not included in the update. Hopefully another update will come soon with flash. I really don't care if it is slow performance, since I would at least have it. If they made a way to turn off flash, then I do not see any reason not to include it. This way you could use flash to view websites that required it and then turn it off if it becomes troublesome. I would love it for Pandora. Pandora requires flash, but the iPhone does not support it. Other than that, flash is really not that important to me.

Until next time...

Flash For iPhone Internet

There is currently no flash for the internet on the iPhone. This has been a big hassle for me. Ok, it really hasn't hendered me that much, but it has made me think about how much better the iPhone would be with flash. I think the most important thing that the flash feature will bring for me is the ability to use Pandora. I love to listen to music on Pandora and have it find new music that I like, but it requires flash. I am sure there are a lot of sites that require flash that willl not work with the iPhone, but this is the one that really gets to me. I have heard that there will be an update with flash on it soon for the iPhone though.

Can you imagine that you would be able to listen to your own created stations all of the time with Pandora on the iPhone. I will have to get a dock to connect my iPhone to my car so that I can listen to it all of the time. This is going to be great. Be on the look out for the new update, hopefully it is coming soon.

Applications For the iPhone

I have found a slew of great apps for the iPhone. Go to the website www.AppLists.com to see them all for yourself. I have gone through a few of them and love what I see. Some of the apps are games of course and others are weather and stocks and that kind of stuff. For the most part these are apps that make some things that you would normally get on actual webpages easier to look at and interact with. There is a Fandango app that makes the fandango site very iPhonish and makes it a lot easier to read everything and search. That is one of my favorites. Also, I tried out some of the shopping list apps and they work very well. I like the idea od use the iPhone for everything, so everytime I find out another thing that the iPhone can do I get excited. This is great news for all of you that had already spent hours and hours on all of the standard iPhone embedded apps. Enjoy all of these apps!