July 2007 Archives

Through the magic of del.icio.us I was handed a link by my friend D'Arcy Norman to allow WordPress blogs to auto detect the iPhone and simplify the intrface for use on Safari. I know it doesn't help us here in the Blogs at PSU, but if you are running WordPress the iWPhone plugin may be worth a try. My personal site, Learning & Innovation, is a WordPress powered blog and I have the plugin working over there. Take a peek with your iPhone and see the difference.

In general browsing the web on the iPhone is a good experience, but I am noticing how much better it is as more and more people start deploying iPhone friendly versions of their sites.

I have fallen victim to the thing I said I wouldn't get myself into again -- too many places to post. Its not that I can't find things to post, it is that I am running into the wall of not knowing where to post things. This is an organizational issue as well ... as we all start blogs we are met with a decision -- where to post?

At ETS we have a blog-based Intranet that we've been using for quite some time now. With the Blogs at PSU tools becoming available to all of us, there is now a fork in the road. Throw in the fact that I maintain a blog outside the walls of PSU, post thoughts about the iPhone to my iPhone PSU blog, and that I have a couple of other places/tools I use to store thoughts, links, documents, and more and it is clear that the one thing I don't have is posting clarity. It doesn't take a half dozen or so places to post to make life difficult ... I have heard it loud and clear from my colleagues that they face the same troubling decision point. Is it simply common sense about where to post, or are we to use some sort of flow diagram with decision points? I just don't know.

What I do know is that sharing thoughts, content, links, and updates is a very important part of the kind of organization I want to be a part of. How do we help others make the decision of where to post? How do we do that in the face of the fact that those of us who are supposed to know that answer, don't? Did that make sense? I can be clearer on that point -- I don't have the answer. All of this is a grand experiment ... and it is an experiment that I think will pay dividends to a more open and connected community. I see it happening and I hear people on campus talking about the things they are reading and hearing from us. That is exciting ... but at the same time it is hard to make sense of it all -- on both sides. RSS makes organizing it a bit easier, but it isn't easy.

If it sounds like I am spinning on this it is because I am. The one thing I am going to do in the next day or two is consolidate once again. I am going to try and get all of these posts down to maybe three public spaces -- When it happens I'll have to post in all of the half dozen places I am currently posting about where those places will be. Comments welcome ... clearly I need help with this.

I blogged about Ta-Da List last week ... it was one of the first web apps I had found that had been optimized for the iPhone browser. Next week I am going to try to use it as my calendar replacement. The syncing of Oracle Calendar and iCal is just too time consuming and the one directional syncing isn't going to cut it.

I'll report back, but so far I am digging the way the whole thing works. Safari on the iPhone keeps sites open even when you are not using the Internet so I can keep it open at all times. It gives me very quick access to a combination of meeting dates, times, and locations as well as standard to-do list items. The browser only needs to connect to fetch updates or when I mark an item complete. The interface moves completed items to the bottom of the list with a "strike" through them. I will be reporting on how this model works for me.

It has me thinking about a web view of Oracle Calendar that is optimized for the iPhone. Any smart developers out there up for that challenge?

Lots of discussion about iPhone development over at my other blog. Big debate going on ... I don't know enough about it all to chime in.

Prior to the iPhone hit last week I set out to switch to IMAP mail. Before I worked in ITS I was over in the College of IST ... for better of for worse (mostly worse) we were all on an Exchange server. There were problems, but I have to say I had missed the mail functionality since coming over a year and a half ago. I missed having an identical view of my mail no matter where I looked at it. I am not a fan of webmail -- of any sort, not just PSU's -- I am mail client kind of person, so that's never been an option for me.

I had settled on dealing with the situation by only ever checking my mail from one machine -- not something that is all that feasible given the fact I have a few different machines. When the iPhone pilot became a reality I knew I needed to get off POP and onto IMAP. Hence the switch. I have to say, the PSU IMAP service is rocking! My mail is always in sync, I never get the annoying error messages I was getting before, and I can feel confident that if I am away from my MacBook I can grab email. IMAP at PSU carries a small fee, but it isn't all that expensive.

IMAP on the iPhone is the only way to go (IMHO) ... I like to get mail on the go and have its "state" be identical when I get to the desktop. I only wish I had my MailTags plug-in on the iPhone, but you can't have everything. At any rate, email on the iPhone is a pleasure and having my mail synced up with my desktop is wonderful. I am checking and sending more and more mail from my iPhone, so having it all work so nicely is very cool. If you are going to go down the iPhone path, I highly recommend switching to IMAP.

Apple has created a website that gives us the info we need to create the right kinds of web apps, but that is as far as they'll go with it. What kinds of apps should we be thinking about? One I could use would be a better view of my calendar.

I have a more extensive post about this over at my other blog.

Here's one that was stumping me this morning -- how to not connect automatically to a wireless access point. It seems logical that you'd want the iPhone to switch over to an open wifi hotspot when it encounters one. The problem I was facing was that it was trying to connect to the PSU wireless (which requires VPN that iPhone doesn't do) or a for-fee "getwireless.net" hotspot that is somewhere close to my building. These are open in that you don't need a password to access the access point, but you must authenticate to join the network -- either via VPN or a web page.

So this morning my iPhone refused to stick with EDGE and kept trying to join one of these two "open" wifi hotspots. I turned off wifi on the iPhone, but that is silly as I want to join truly open spots. I looked all over the Apple Support area and was unsuccessful at finding a fix. Brad Kozlek mentioned to me that there is a button on the iPhone that you can touch to "foget a hotspot." Very cool. To find it:

• Go to Settings > Wi-Fi
• Let it bring up your available access points
• When/if your iPhone pulls up networks you do not want to join, first join it by touching its name
• Once you are joined (there will be a check mark by the name), touch the little blue circle with the arrow in it
• In the next screen, touch "Forget the Network"

That's it.

In ETS we use 37 Signals' project management/tracking application, BaseCamp. It isn't perfect, but what app really is? What it gives us in an online hub for project tracking and communication. The other thing it gives us a great UI for working with.

37 Signals also has a free list manager called, Ta-Da List that helps people get things done -- since GTD is all the rage these days, having access to a very well designed list manager from the iPhone is good thing. I am going to experiment with how well it can handle my daily calendar -- again another step to manage, but until I can figure out (or more appropriately, someone who is smarter than I am) how to make our Oracle Calendar work more fluidly with iCal/iPhone I will continue to explore other options. 37 Signals has redesigned Ta-Da List so it is optimized for an iPhone browsing experience ... I think we are going to see more of this. Accounts are free, so if you have an iPhone give it a try.

I know it is backwards, but that's how PhotoBooth shoots it.

I didn't actually try to sync anything, but I did plug my iPhone into my laptop today to charge it and was surprised that it appears as though I can selectively sync content from multiple machines. I'll have to investigate further, but if that is the case it will make my life a little easier. I keep all my media on my iMac at home and all my contacts and calendars on my MacBook Pro. Right now I am managing all of it by using .Mac to kepp the two machines in sync ... that is a step I'd like to eliminate. I will test it more and see what happens.

At Apple's WWDC, Steve Jobs the crowd of developers that to build apps for the iPhone they could use standard web 2.0 technologies -- I understood a lot of people were disappointed, but as a former Treo user, I like the fact that I can't download a bunch of unstable applications to my perfectly running device. I am however very interested in seeing what apps are written that take advantage of the Safari browser on the iPhone.

This morning I read of a new site Apple is offering to browse their extensive movie trailer site. I know it isn't really an app, but it is one of the first iPhone specifc site I have seen thus far. If you go there with your iPhone you get access to the same content on Apple's standard trailer site ... if you go there with a browser, you get bumped to the traditional URL.

Apple's iPhone Movie Trailer Site: http://apple.com/trailers/iphone

I am avid iPod user, so I am very familiar with how I can use iTunes to manage media on my iPod and Apple TV (and now, iPhone). I wrote about a lack of advanced feature a while back at one of my other blogs as it related to the Apple TV, but now that I only have 8 GB of space to play with (instead of 80), I'd really like more control. Take for example the fact that I cannot control how many episodes of each TV Show I want ...

Some shows I watch over and over when I travel -- like old episodes of the Office or Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I'd like to be able to choose exactly which ones I want from my collection. Other things, I want just the most recent unwatched episodes and so on ... I guess what I am saying is that Apple should give us a way to really manage our media. How about a little checkbox next to each episode and give me the control over how I want my content moved to my device. Now that they are pushing content to smaller devices like my phone, they'll need to rethink the paradigm just a little bit.

I am settling into using the iPhone for all sorts of things now. A full day into the experience and I am getting very comfortable with the features and how to navigate the interface -- I am discovering the usability is even better than I expected ... the thing has Apple's elegant design touches all over the place.

As an example, I set up my voicemail today and was so surprised at just how easy the whole experience is. I am replacing a Treo 650, so you'd think this thing wouldn't be all that much better than my old smart phone ... well, let's just say that everything is so much clearer on this phone. On my Treo, just finding how to setup and activate voicemail took me way too much time. With the iPhone, you just touch "voicemail" while in the phone interface to get started. The iPhone actually provides real instructions that let you get started ... you type in your password twice and then are able to just record your greeting. Want to review it? No problem ... you are able to that with a little slider and standard audio controls. Took seconds.

Voicemail itself is amazing ... it has "visual voicemail" so you see the person whose call you missed and are able to listen to them as if you are picking up email -- in any order. Each message has its own audio controls as well, so if you miss a number or other important information you can just scrub back and listen. The last feature that is so simple, but so effective is a little button that allows you to re-record your greeting. Seems so trivial, but I have no idea how to do that on my Treo, or on my work phone for that matter. If I am going to be away from my phone for a couple of days, just having the ability to instantly update the away message is a life saver.

The total package of the iPhone is the real deal, but as I discover new things I am amazed at how all the little touches are adding up.