jofo.com » tech

Favorite iPhone apps

jofo — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:50:54 +0000

These are the apps that people may not know about, and/or are the ones I consider to be “best in class” at what they do.

WhatsOn – TV Listings. Allows you to set up various locations, configuring the channels shown in each,and allows you to set shows as favorites so you get a nice list of what’s airing. Makes it really easy to find the channel number.
Paper Toss – Free game where you throw a wadded up paper into an office waste basket. watch out, because there’s a small fan that’s will blow the paper in one or direction or the other. They also make
Ragdoll Blast – puzzle game where you blast ragdolls out of a cannon trying to hit a target, but there are obstacles in the way, such as walls, or sticks that need to be blasted out of the way.
Tweetie is my favorite twitter app, but I’m checking out TweetDeck’s iPhone version. it has the concept of “columns” that you swipe left or right to get to, and the columns can be your timeline, DMs, mentions, or searches.
iTrans NJT Straightforward train schedules for NJ Transit.
Crosswords – Guess. Best interface and downloading of puzzles
Now Playing – Movie times, with Netflix if you want it. Seems comprehensive but I use…
iPhlix Netflix management. Multiple queues, and instead of loading a whole queue, it offers to load 25 at a time. Also lets you default to Search view for quick searching.
MovieStar – Did you know there’s a IMDb app? I didn’t know until about a week ago. it’s not official but it’s pretty good.

Cool stuff in iPhone 3.0

jofo — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:42:21 +0000

Some little known improvements added in iPhone OS 3.0… Some stuff here is listed at Apple’s site but only for some context. Thanks to James O. for confirming pre-3.0 behaviors.

YouTube – You can login to your YouTube account to access your own favorites, but also:

Bookmarks in the YouTube iPhone app are merged with your YouTube favorites.
Your YouTube playlists and subscriptions are fully available and editable on the iPhone.

iPod

Podcasts no longer have shuffle as an option (which makes sense for most podcasts), therefore they will play in order without having to turn off shuffle mode.
Scrubbing speed is adjustable by sliding your finger up and down the screen (for instance, “grab” the slider, move your finger down, then slide left and right to scrub slowly, or slide back up to scrub more rapidly).
Podcasts have a 30-second instant replay button.
Podcasts can be played at 2x or .5x speed (I believe only Audiobooks allowed this previously).
Search is now available (just like Remote, and several other apps in 3.0).

General

Search is a double-press-home option.
Search targets are customizable (you can omit Audiobooks, for instance).
Camera app’s “roll” button shows your last pic.
Rotate Stock app to get bigger chart. You can tap a point to see the price at that time.
Notes (and possibly other places) will parse addresses for linking to Google Maps.
Screenshots view is integrated into the description page. Scroll down and immediately scroll left/right.

Phone app (and/or Contacts)

Outgoing calls have an special icon in the list view.
The line items with multiple calls (”Josh Forman (3)”) will list duration and time of each call in a nice table format.
Share Contact option emails a VCF.

Standard tv listing preferences

jofo — Sat, 30 May 2009 05:00:28 +0000

I’ve probably registered or used nearly a dozen or so sites or applications that provide tv listings, and each time I have to choose my provider (is it Cablevision of oakland, or Cablevision of bergenfield?…rebuild or non-rebuild?), pick a line up, then select a list of favorites. It’s always a hassle. There should be a single web site where I can do this. I think it would work like this:

1) Go to mytvfaves.com (or whatever this would be called) and register an account there
2) Pick my provider and line up.
3) Go through the lineup and remove channels I don’t get, and choose my favorites from the ones I do.
4) Name that setup.
5) Repeat steps 2-4 for all locations I would use (for instance, my parents’ house or my sister’s which are completely different lineups, etc.).

Now that I’ve got them all set up, I’d go to tvguide.com or titantv.com –or WhatsOn or i.TV on my iPhone — and instead of being asked to enter a zip code, I am asked for my mytvfaves.com username, and lineup name. It downloads my list of channels to include, and channels to highlight (favorites), and it can then do whatever it needs with that info.

I feel like I have a new iPhone

jofo — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:13:20 +0000

Go here and follow frgough’s advice. It’s nice to have some new tracks for a change instead of just having my top-played, top-rated, and a few static playlists. I’m hearing stuff I haven’t heard in a long time.

Also I finally bought byLine (http link | itms link), a Google Reader client. I held off because I thought I wanted to have separate views for each feed or tag. It now has a tag view; no feed view but I can live without it. (I’d use the feature if it was built-in)

What really sold me is its built-in browser with Reader controls. This allows you to visit a full web page linked in a feed item, and then star or share it. Safari likes to refresh a tab upon re-entry at seemingly random times (that is, you can be away from a tab for a minute and it won’t refresh when you come back to it, yet be away for 10 seconds at another time and it does refresh). This causes the item I just read to disappear from the listing (because it’s y’know, been read).

I also like how I can swipe an item to mark it read. I can mark a bunch as read leaving a few unread so i could refresh and see just the ones I’m interested in.

Testing 123

jofo — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:03:46 +0000

Ignore this post. Testing Wordpress for iPhone

Syncing an iPod/iPhone with two comps

jofo — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:11:10 +0000

I discovered (new to me, that is) something recently that will really help me when I get the new iPhone. It also could have helped me over the past year with my current iPod.

Basically, each data type in iTunes can be synced to one computer but it doesn’t need to be synced on the same computer as the other types. This means that I can sync my calendar, contacts and podcasts on one computer (my PowerBook), while syncing Movies, Music and TV shows on another (my mac mini). Now I don’t need to find a syncing solution to keep two computers in sync, and I don’t have to manually manage my iPod just to add something to it from my PowerBook.

Cablevission impossible

jofo — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:50:04 +0000

For my birfday, i got a HDTV, so I decided to get the HD DVR from Cablevision. I knew it would pale in comparison to my ReplayTV but I wanted to be able to record the HD content in its native format. Also it turns out the DVRs have dual tuners so I can be tuned to two channels while watching a recording.

It’s been a PITA ever since. The box I picked up at a Randolph Cablevision store did not work in Bergen County (well it worked fine for about a minute but then decided I wasn’t authorized). That took until the weekend to get a guy out to bring me a new one which worked, for about a week or so and then said I was unauthorized again and only gave me some basic channels The problem was resolved by a guy coming out to the property but he didn’t need access to my apt.

Throughout all this, interactive channels (on demand, OPtimum Autos/Homes, iMSG, etc), did not work, so I am now trying to get this resolved. Also, now that the season has started, I’m recording a lot and the box is rebooting a lot (probably once a day, maybe slightly less).

I’ve tried some things with Cablevision and have an appt set up to replace the box if necessary. Here’s what’s bugging me. They have two types of DVRs: ones by Sony that have Firewire, and ones that don’t have firewire by Scientific Atlanta. I have the SA box but want Firewire. (Incidentally, it’s an FCC reg that they provide customers who ask with a Firewire-enabled box) These are my options:

1) Have guy visit. get new SA box: Free
2) Have guy visit. get new Sony box:46.95
3) Go to an Optimum Store, get Sony box: free

I dunno, I think it’s reasonable that if:
a) CV offers free swaps to customers,
b) CV carries Sony boxes, and
c) CV is sending a guy over to swap my defective box for free

then I could have a free swap to a Sony. It’s not any more work for them and it’s not an ‘upgrade’ otherwise they’d charge for it.

The whole thing just makes me want to ditch it and get a Tivo HD (fully betraying my ReplayTV and making my journey to the dark site COMPLETE! – sorry for the spit). However I would get the CableCards, which cost $46.95 to install.

Tags: tv, consumerist, entertainment

Captain Obvious

jofo — Thu, 31 May 2007 23:49:18 +0000

At my old job, we used to jokingly make up obvious-sounding solutions for customer issues. for instance, if someone says they couldn’t double-tap a field, we would ask each other if perhaps they had DoubleTapDisableHack installed….or we would say we left CrashWindows set to “true”.

::flashback ends::

Earlier today I had discovered that my profile manager on my 8525 was setting the volume to 100% duringa phone calls. I changed this to “Leave unchanged” so that the volume is not affected when switching to this profile. Shortly after, I remarked to a former co-worker via IM:

2:56:05 PM joshforman: mental to do list: find out why my phone vibrates when a call connects

At dinner I was flipping thru the prefs when I discovered this entry:

Vibrate when outgoing call is connected

I OMGLOLWTF’ed.

The True Power of the Dark Side

jofo — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:11:42 +0000

So, I decided to get a new phone. After looking at standard flip phones, I decided to finally consolidate (again) my existing Phone and PDAs). settled on a Cingular 8525, running Windows Mobile 5. I figured I had 30 days to figure out if it was going to work well or not. Right now, I’d say I’m at 85% confidence level.

Here’s what I love about it:

Internet Explorer does a great job with relatively complex websites. I tried opentable.com (restaurant reservations), and although I didn’t go all the way to booking something, I got much farher than I got on the Palm.
Multitasking OS: I can run many apps at once
A good built-in keyboard that triggers landscape mode. It’s pretty comfortable to type on.
Convenient buttons for IE and Mesaging and 3 more programmable buttons
A Comm Manager app for toggling data connections, Wifi Connections, ActiveSync
Flight mode quickly disabling all wireless features at once (I guess in lieu of a Power button)

I’m also glad that there’s are apps for PPC that I used on the Palm (Handyshopper, Plucker, Metro) , and that they use the same DBs as the palm version.

What I don’t like about it:

Not a lot of built-in memory for installing apps
I couldn’t get the push email feature (XpressMail) working right away. It seems to have been a server issue but i went through a few reinstalls and even an upgrade to the company’s beta (which is nicer anyway).
It doesn’t have a standard audio output jack,so I can’t plug in my cassette adapter, in the event that I wanted to use it in the car. i guess I could use a headset instead.
Networking on windows mobile is sooooo confusing. Certain apps use my data connection, some use wifi. Some need a proxy (I think just the Media net web site). That’s all fine, but the OS should let you define an order to try them in, and seamlessly cycle through them as needed.
It frequently gets in a various states of funkitude, usually cured by a soft reset. Minor annoyance.

Woo……t?

jofo — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 02:57:37 +0000

OK, enough about my ankle.
I bought my first item off Woot the other day: a SanDisk Sansa e140 (refurb) for $30. I had planned to use it with Rhapsody. Shortly after submitting my order, I started to doubt the intelligence of it. I fired up rhapsody to ensure this (most likely old) device would work with the latest Rhapsody; it seemed that it would but I couldn’t add it to the app. That turned out to be insignificant since I could just plug-n-play when I got it.

So I got it, it works fine, but then I realized that I could’ve spent the same amount of money to upgrade PocketTunes and use my Palm instead.

Worst case scenario, I paid $30 for 1GB of removal storage, a pair of headphones, am FM radio….and something that plays Audible and Rhapsody tracks on occasion.