Now I cannot wait for my Glif to arrive. And by the looks of the fact that the designers have raised over 1000% of the KickStarter funding they were seeking, there are quite a few others in the same boat.
I’m hoping that the Glif will be a bit more practical than the OWLE I have for my iPhone 3S.
I’ll post a full review as soon as I have the 3D printed version in early November.
Today I had a wake up call to remind me about what I already knew – the world is seriously changing. In my view this change is for the better, even though it affects the very fundamentals of life as we know it. Let me tell you a short story …
Over a month ago I became aware that the smart people at 37Signals had written another book and I immediately knew that I would want to read this book as soon as it was released.
On the day of release in the USA I checked if I could buy the book in Australia. It seemed that I could, but further investigation proved that availability in Australia was actually delayed by about 7 weeks. Worse still, the cost of the physical book from a bookshop was going to be slightly more than the cost of the book on Amazon including express courier delivery.
So that’s a first level change … Distribution methods are really changing. Why would anyone buy a book that they know they want from a local bookshop?
So I ordered from Amazon, along with two other books to offset the effect of the freight, and waited for the delivery.
But, unfortunately my credit card details on Amazon were out of date and the expected delivery did not happen.
I duely updated my order, this time saving some money on the delivery by using the USA address of my forwarding agent. But then Easter arrived and I, the last of the immediate satisfaction consumers, faced more delays in getting the ideas of Reworked into my head.
But, before I started penning this post on Easter Saturday morning, I have read the first two chapters of the book which I now own, have not spent a penny on freight, and I have not yet risen from my bed!
So what happened? Well I was reading about the launch of the new Apple iPad which kept on mentioning eBook publication and distribution and I recalled seeing that 37signals had published on Kindle in Europe.
I can’t cut this long story short now, so here is the punchline. About 45 seconds after that realisation, I was reading the book, in bed.
Some time ago I had installed Kindle on my iPhone, so I fired it up, and a few taps later I had connected with Amazon and downloaded the Kindle version of the book for a mere $12 USD.
The purchace experience was seamless and easy, although helped by the fact that I already had an Amazon account (a side note for Amazon … Buying for Kindle is still significantly easier than buying physical product).
Electronic book purchase and reading is an easy, pleasureable process on my iPhone with Kindle. It will be even easier and more natural on the iPad that I will buy on the day it is released to Australia.
And the point about change? By the end of 2010 there will be about 10 million iPad owners, and I suggest, about the same number of people who no longer buy any form of printed documents!
My conclusion, even if you are not in the market for an iPad, you can easily switch to electronic reading with Kindle on your iPhone.
In a few days time I will have three copies (printed) of Jason & David’s book which I will never open. Contact me if you’d like one of them.
Today a client asked how to make the signature on emails sent from his iPhone look like the signatures he set up on his desktop system. I had t admit that I had not gotten around to updating my signature even though I made a mental note to do so every time I saw the default “Sent from my iPhone” signature added to the end of my messages!
So we had to find a solution which was workable and easy to support. This immediately excludes anything involving Jailbreaking your phone!
Within a few minutes I had installed and configured A+ Email Signature Pro from ideasUnplugged at a cost of $5.99 which I suggest is quite reasonable for the capabilities and professionalism of the application.
Here’s a brief list of capabilities:
I suggest that you still set your default signature to something more closely resembling what you would like as some emails will still be prepared with the default. If this is of concern for a particular message, just copy the message body, exit the mail application and fire up Signature to get the desired signature added. Then paste the copied content above the signature.
There is also a free Lite version which might meet your needs. However, I did not investigate this version.
All in all a successful outcome and yet another app installed!
I have just discovered, purely by accident, that you can only install 180 applications on your iPhone. Why, there is a maximum of 11 pages of applications plus the 4 spots on every page.
And how did I find this? Reading an iPhone tips page told me that I could put a Web Clip shortcut on my home page for any website. Just select “+” in Safari and tap “Add to Home Page”. Sounds simple enough, right. No, when I pressed “+” there is no add to home page option.
Much research later, with nothing helping I wondered if a limit on installed apps could be causing the problem. Deleting an unused app brought the menu option back!
So, if you’re getting up there with your installed apps it might be time to do a bit of housekeeping.
And here’s a bonus tip… Got something on your iPhone screen that you’d like to share, or just remember? press the Menu button and then, while holding it down, press the On/Off button. Your iPhone will make an impressive camera type noise, flash the screen white and store a “photo” of the screen in your photos. Thai’s how I collected the proof of the limit.
The MacHeist 3 Bundle is a way of getting nearly $700 worth of Mac software for just $39 AND 25% of that goes to charity.
At the time I am writing this, nearly 40,000 bundles have been sold which means that nearly $400,000 has been raised for the supported charities.
I would be surprised if you cannot find more than one application in the bundle which will be a welcome addition to your applications folder. And MacHeist even allow you to gift any of the applications in the bundle before you place your order!
I’m particularly looking forward to trying Kinemac, a 3D animation package.
Anyways, I strongly suggest that you check to see if the offer is still current.
cydia
If you keep up with this blog, you’ll know that I suffered major trauma trying to jailbreak my iPhone recently
Now I am pleased to be able to give an update, after having success!
What you see below is a very short, very amateur, video made in the middle of the night with my iPhone … just a proof of concept really.
Yesterday I decided to jailbreak my iPhone. Today, I’ll share with you some things I learnt during the failed attempt!
Firstly, DO NOT attempt to jailbreak your iPhone from a MacBook Pro running Leopard 10.5.6 … all the indications are that you’ll end up with a MacBook with no keyboard or mouse, an an unchanged iPhone.
So what did I learn?
OmniFocus for the iPhone
Therefore, OmniFocus has become one of the first licenses I have purchased.
Continue reading »
The very first thing that my wife noticed about the spanking new iPhone I bought her recently was the glassy touch screen. You might have thought that her comment would be along the lines of “amazing technology”, “beautifully elegant interface” … but no, it was more like “how will I keep it clean“!
Pogo iPhone Stylus
A later observation related to the fact that she has had to develop a touch style which works with her beautifully manicured (long) fingernails. This was after discovering that several improvised “styli” did not work.
I, of course, informed her that her new iPhone’s glassy touch sensitive screen is only sensitive to human fingers. Why? Because it uses a technology called capacitive touch which I am told measures the flow of electrons through the skin. Problem is, even without the manicured nails, fingers are pretty rounded and not too precise at picking out tiny URLs in Safari.
Luckily the geniuses behind the Pogo iPhone Stylus have magically solved this problem by making a stylus that somehow tricks the iPhone into thinking it’s really a finger. What’s more, the tip of the stylus is a soft felt like material that has the added benefit of keeping your screen clean while you tap away. How do they do it? Frankly I have no idea, but hopefully it doesn’t involve grave-robbing. (Leave a comment if you know the answer).