Archive for the ‘iphone’ Category

Posting from my iPhone

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Just a quick post here. If you have an iPhone, and have updated to the 2.0 software, be sure to checkout the new Wordpress application. It’s a lovely little app for blogging on the go.
It supports wordpress.com and self hosted domains and will store your drafts locally if you don’t have time to finish them.
You can easily add multiple blogs so now there is no excuse for me not to post
Wordpress for iPhone is free from the App Store.

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HOWTO: Install WiFi Certificates on your iPhone

Friday, July 11th, 2008

So I now work where they employ the use of certificates for wifi security, and I want to use the wifi on my iPhone since the data connection sucks. But how?

Well with iPhone 2.0 software, there is support for certificates. But how do you get it on your phone?

Well…

1. Go to http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/iphoneconfigurationutility10formacosx.html and download the iPhone Configuration Tool. Install

2. Open up the Config tool from your Utilities folder.

3. Select Configuration Profiles and click New

4. Fill in the details on the General Tab.

5. Click Credentials. and click the plus sign, and navigate to the Certificate file (in my case a .cer file). Click OK.

6. Check the details look correct, and give it a name.

And thats it! Done.

Well not quite. You need to install it on your iphone. You have two/three options but the third involves Mac OS X Server which many personal users won’t have. So your two options are host a file on a website somewhere, or email it to yourself. If you want to host it, click the Export button, save the file to disk, and then upload it somewhere. Then navigate to that file online and it should ask you to install.

The second easier option is to email it to yourself. So click Share, and wait for Mail.app to open a new mail and punch in an email address you can access on your iPhone. Click send. Wait (or go and check your mail).

Then in the email, click the file, and you will be asked to install the file. Do so and bingo. Success. Now go test it and make sure it works!

Update: I have tested this at work, and it worked perfectly. You have to make sure you enter your username as Domain\username and your password as normal or it won’t authenticate. So now I can use the internet connection at work. Only thing is that IMAP and POP3 ports are blocked so can’t use the Mail.app to check them, but everything else works a treat!

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Posted in iphone, macosx, work | 1 Comment »

My iPhone - One Month In

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

Its th 16th of December and I’ve had my iPhone for a month. So what are my thoughts so far?

Well overall I’m really pleased. I can easily say the main features I’ve used are Mail and Safari . Since Gmail opened up IMAP, I’ve got my gmail accounts set up in Mail.app so I get all my mail straight to my hand, so I can keep on top of the Google Groups, blog comments, and various other emails I get.

I really love the Maps. While I had Google Maps on my last phone, its nothing compared to the experience on an iPhone. The scrolling is fantastic, and even though its on EDGE, loading of the maps seems so much faster. Its also really easy to look up people in my contacts list, or look for business (which came in handy recently) as they appear in the search box as you type. The routing is great, and really well animated which makes it so much nicer to use.

The SMS conversations are great. I would like to be able to forward texts, send multi-recipient messages. I’d also like to be able to clear conversations up to a point (to save a specific message), but besides that, its a hell of a lot nicer dealing with texts in a chat form, rather than an email format.

There isn’t much else I can say that hasn’t been said a hundred times on a hundred blogs. I look forward to the future software updates and am excited to see what Apple offer for new features.

For what its worth, my thoughts on Macworld are this: No iPhone 2.0, no 3G iPhone announcement, more likely details of the SDK, software examples, the coveted ultra-thin Macbook or Tablet, maybe a power boost on the rest of the line.
One thing I’d like to see is a bump on the Airport Express, and see it taken up to 802.11n, although I have just bought one of eBay so that would upset me a bit.

Well we’ll be discussing the topics of the keynote at MMUG that night so if you’re in the area, come along.

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iPhone Questions

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

Two things I wanna know.
1. Why doesn’t the ring volume match the SMS volume? My Glass SMS tone is SOO much louder than my ring tone (Marimba) when its on the quietest setting.
2. Why isn’t there an easier 1.1.2 hack rather than downgrading? I just want iPushr or something to send to flickr, rather than email.

Wish I knew more people with iPhones. I’ve only seen one out on the streets, and only one other person at MMUG has one.

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My iPhone Review

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

Ok. Its sunday lunchtime. I’m currently doing a custom install of MYSQL and its time to start my review.I’ve been using my iPhone on and off for about 2 days now. So lets go through things.

Phone

I’ve only had some brief use of the actual phone call aspect, but from that I can say that its really easy getting to a contact to call. It may be more actions than another phone, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. Flicking through your contacts is so much nicer than repeated scrolling through a long list using the down key. Even searching is easy. Use the side bar to jump to a letter if you want.The actual call quality sounded great. The volume is very good, much higher than my N70, the speakerphone is loud enough, even on a mid-level volume. As you will see on the video, the screen dims when you put it to your face to help save battery power, and avoid pressing buttons with your face. When it is away from your face, there are large buttons for muting, speakerphone, ending call, and going to contacts.You can set up a favourites contact list, and select any number from any contact for quick access. Like speed dial really. And if you want the normal keypad you can.

Visual Voicemail is nice. I’m still waiting for a message but going into it for the first time, you’re asked for a voicemail PIN which you punch in, and you’re then asked to make a custom greeting or use the default. If you choose custom, hit record, speak at the phone (like its in speaker phone mode) and hit done. Then play it back to confirm or save it. Thats it. No dialing up, navigating a menu, waiting for a beep. Its all there on the screen and its really simple.

SMS

I love SMS. I text loads and now that its in the natural way, in a conversation stream, its so much easier to deal with. Sending one is as simple as adding a name or number (start typing a name and your contacts are filtered to narrow the choice then tap to select a name/number) Type your text, and then hit send. A nice little bar shows the sending progress and its gone. A little swoosh sounds and your message appears in the conversation. When you receive a text, your alert sounds (now customisable) and you get an on screen alert. The sender and a preview of the text is shown, and you get the option to view or ignore. If you ignore, a new message count is shown over the SMS icon on the home screen.Downside: So far no multiple recipient support, you can’t even choose a group of contacts from Address Book. Hopefully coming soon.

Calendar

Nice looking calendar view. Not much to say here. No multiple calendar support/multicoloured calendars. Again, hopefully coming soon. Oh, and there is no week view, only day, month, and list (handy to just see your appointments).

Mail

Love Mail. Its beautiful. Reading email is clear, you can double tap to zoom or pinch to zoom. Links are automatically make into clickable links, numbers are interpreted as phone numbers (if they are the right length) so tap to call. One thing thats very cool, when you click delete within a message, it is sucked into the trash icon, where the lid opens up to the side, and the message goes in, then it closes. Cool. Who else would put this much though into deleting an email?Multiple account support is great. I have 2 IMAP and 2 POP running and they work fine together. I have it set to check mail every hour so I don’t need to logon to Gmail online any more.

Safari/EDGE/WiFi

There has been a lot of moaning in the British media about the lack of 3G saying browsing outside of a WiFi hotspot will be slow. Let me say this. EDGE IS NOT SLOW! I have used both WiFi and EDGE here in Birmingham, and its been fantastic. It is slower than WiFi but thats to be expected, but is it too slow to deal with? Not at all. It took maybe 30 seconds to load a decent size webpage and is just as quick on smaller pages. I ran a speed test against my Nokia N70 on 3 (3G network connection) and surprisingly, my N70 scored an average of 79kbit/sec and my iPhone on EDGE (supposedly slower) scored 100kbit/sec. I can’t explain it, but browsing the web on my iPhone is infinitely better than the browsing experience on my N70.Seriously.

This is a big selling point. Page loading speeds aside, being able to view full web pages, formatted correctly is invaluable. Trying to get movie times on my N70 is laborious, having to navigate the specially formatted pages to go through city, cinema, film, then times is a pain, and compared to a simple Google Search, there is no contest. I can see all the local cinemas, whats on, every show time, the genre, and even run time in one page.

Wifi is just fantastic too. O2 offer free TheCloud WiFi which is great. That includes BT Openzones and should hopefully also include Starbucks (yet to be confirmed. More reports tomorrow once I try it). Using home Wifi is easy. Turn it on, it will ask you to select a network to join, enter the password if you have one. And thats it. You’re conected. And the iPhone remembers your network settings so will join the network when it sees it. And there is no requirement to verify your WEP/WPA key.

Future Features

There isn’t much I would add at the moment but here’s my list

  1. Copy and Paste
  2. Multiple recipients for text messages
  3. Week calendar view
  4. Video recording
  5. To Do Lists

Luckily, most of this could come with a firmware update, or even via third party applications. Thats it. Not much more to say from me. I’ll probably post some more thoughts as they come to me as I enjoy my iPhone.

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iPhone - Setup, and First thought

Friday, November 9th, 2007

So I am home, I’ve got my iPhone and its all working.Setup was  simple. Plug in, go through the iTunes registration, select price plan, give your iTunes Account ID, and give any number transfer details. Once that was done, you wait for activation, and for me this took less than a minute.Once thats done, you can go ahead and sync. Like everything else, choose your playlists, your bookmarks, email accounts etc, to sync. and thats it. iPhone sorted.So far I’m just trying to reduce my music so I can get some videos on it. Apart from that its great.I’ll be giving it a true test run this weekend so a more detailed report soon.  

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