Tips: August 2008 Archives
The question of how well the iPhone 3G may (or may not) access and maintain a wireless connection to a 3G network remains open. Be that as it may, when you do connect to the Web or e-mail via a high-speed 3G connection, the results are impressive, blowing away - for the most part - the original iPhone's EDGE-only cellular-wireless connectivity. The problem is 3G takes a toll on the iPhone 3G's battery life. A toll that can be pretty frustrating when you go to make a phone call or are waiting to receive one, only to discover there's very little, if any, juice left to keep you going.
There are several settings you can turn off in the iPhone 3G to maximize battery life. These range from Bluetooth to GPS to Wi-Fi to...3G connectivity. How important you find any of these features depends on your personal preferences. (See here for a full list of suggestions on "The Art of iPhone Battery Life.")
Notwithstanding Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, turning off 3G is the one that should have the most immediate impact on the length of time between charges. Especially for someone - like me - who uses the iPhone primarily as an Internet-access device.
Sure, the toll on cellular-wireless data performance is going to be great. However, the more iPhone-optimized sites you access, and there are more all the time, the less noticeable the difference between EDGE and 3G.
Anyway, if you're one the people who feel they've been experiencing the 3G network performance issues with their iPhone 3G, going with EDGE exclusively may not be such a bad thing to do until the problem's been fully resolved.
See how to disable 3G in the iPhone 3G after the jump.
Author: Amy Mayer
Keeping your personal finances in order with a program like Quicken means you can tell quickly how much wriggle room you've got til your next payday. But when you're out and about and contemplating an un-planned (okay, impulse) purchase, chances are you're laptop's not handy. But your phone surely is. Enter, Quicken Beam. Sign up for the free service, and whenever you want, you send a text message and receive back your balance and your last five transactions.
Rather than a full hard reset, all you need to do is hold down the iPhone's Home button for a six seconds or so writes the iPhone Blog, however. This will open up resources and return you to the Home Screen in far less time than it takes when resetting everything through a hard reset.
As with the Mac, this procedure is referred to as a Force Quit.
Tired of the iPhone's default "Sent from my iPhone" signature at the bottom of every e-mail you send? If so, it's easy enough to change it to one more to your liking or get rid of it altogether.
From the iPhone's home screen, tap on Settings --> Mail, Contacs, Calendars --> Signature.
If you don't see Signature right away, don't worry, it is located further down the page. A sweep or two of your finger and you'll see it.
Once in Signature simply delete all the text. Leave the text field empty if you don't want another e-mail signature. If you do, however, simply use the iPhone keyboard to type one in.
For an application to be compatible, developers must participate in the OpenClip program, so as to integrate OpenClip's open source framework into their software.
Applications that don't integrate the OpenClip framework can't be copy and pasted to and from in this system You can find a list of OPenClip-compatible applications here.
So far there are eight that have pledged support and a couple that are listed as coming soon. The more who adopt OpenClip the more useful OpenClip will become.
OpenClip provides a useful Faq about its cut and past solution, which it acknoledges in interim until Apple finally integrates the feature itself ,here. See the video below to see OpenClip's copy/paste solution in action.
Author: Philip L. Graitcer
As you can tell from my last post, I have downloaded six third-party applications on my iPhone that I like a lot. Most of the time, they work well, but still, they have little problems: Sometimes the New York Times app takes me back to the iPhone's home page or MLB.com At Bat 2008 just doesn't load. Here's how to troubleshoot your applications.
After each step, check to see if the problem still occurs.Author: Amy Mayer
The Internet browsing tool Zumobi has an Olympic offering. Follow athletes' progress, get Olympic news and more from Lenovo's "Voices" and "Olympic Podium" Web sites on this free mobile widget.
Author: Amy Mayer
Squeezing your fingers and/or thumbs onto the small buttons of a smartphone such as a BlackBerry, Treo, iPhone and any number of other mobile devices can cause pain and even long-term problems. Know the feeling? Don't let it get the better of you. Gail Hegeman, a hand therapist with Pioneer Ergonomics in western Massachusetts, says to avoid the relatively new condition dubbed "BlackBerry Thumb" you should:
Author: Philip L. Graitcer
Independent software developers for the iPhone have created nearly 2,000 applications for your phone. There are applications that turn your iPhone into a flashlight, keep track of stocks, baseball scores, the news, and allow you to blog right from your mobile phone.You can get many of these application for free or purchase them for $.99 up to $999.99 (that was an application called “I am rich” that actually did nothing!).
You can browse the applications on your computer or on your iPhone. Here’s how you can check out the applications on your iPhone.
First, you have to have at least version 2.0 of the iPhone software on your phone. To get that, synch your phone with iTunes on your computer, and check the version on the Summary page. If you don’t have at least 2.0, click “Update” and follow the instructions. 
After you’ve updated your phone’s software, disconnect it from your computer, and click home. You should see a blue icon with a white “A” in a circle with a blue background. That’s your applications installer. Tap on it.
Author: Philip L. Graitcer
One of the most touted features of the new iPhone software (Version 2.0, now updated to 2.0.1, as of August 12) is the ability to download iPhone applications from the iTunes "App Store." These are third party applications, that is, they were not written by Apple, but Apple does some kind of vetting process on them before allowing them to be available in the store.
Right now, there are about 2,000 applications available for downloading at the App Store. To check them out on your computer, go to iTunes, click on "iTunes store" and then on the left side of the page in the iTunes Store box, click on "App Store".On the App Store home page, you'll be shown lots of applications. There are new picks, top picks, and staff picks. There is also an opportunity to sort the applications so that you'll only see the free ones. (Yes, there are free ones!).
Sort through, until you find an application that interest you. Then click on the "Get Application" button. The rest is just like downloading music from iTunes - your iTunes account will be charged and then the application will be downloaded into iTunes and will appear under Library as an "Applications" button.
To get the application downloaded on to your iPhone (or iTouch), plug in your iPhone as if you were going to synch it. When it is connected, click on your iPhone, and click the tab marked Applications, and then check the applications you want synched/downloaded to your iPhone. Click the "Synch" button in the bottom right hand corner and the application will then be downloaded and synched to your phone.
Applications can also be purchased and downloaded to your iPhone directly, without using your computer. We'll cover that in another Tip.
For more on how to use the App Store, see the tutorial below or click here.
Author: Damon Brown
As Steve Jobs hyped during the June 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference, the new iPhone App Store launched with more than 500 software titles. It now sports well over a thousand apps. Many of these are free, while others run up to $9.99 or more. It is fairly straightforward to add any of these applications to your iPhone.
The first step is to make sure you have the latest iPhone (2.0) and the latest iTunes (7) update. You should have received a notice the first time your iTunes-enabled computer was connected to the Internet after July 11th. To check, go to the Help menu, then click About iTunes. It should read "iTunes 7". If not, go back to the Help menu, then click Check for Updates. iTunes will then ask if you'd like to download the latest version. (It should be about 70 MB.)Once iTunes 7 is up and running, a new listing, Applications, will appear under the Library heading in the far left-hand column. Click on the iTunes Store.
On the left side, right under the three big cycling ads, you'll see an iTunes STORE listing with Music, Movies and so on. The last item is the App Store.
The App Store is organized very similarly to the music and movies storefronts. Below the iTunes STORE listing you'll see CATEGORIES, including Books, Games and Lifestyle. Across from the categories second you'll see TOP PAID APPS, featuring the top ten applications of the moment, and below it you'll find TOP FREE APPS, with its respective top ten. The center area is formatted like the other stores: new products, highlighted ads, the hottest apps and the staff favorites.
Choose an application you're interested in. I'm a music junkie, so one of the first applications I clicked on was Pandora Radio, a free Web site that tries to predict new music you may like based on your favorite artists. The original version, at www.pandora.com, seems to work extraordinarily well.
Author: Philip L. Graitcer
MobileMe keeps e-mail, contacts, appointments up-to-date between a Mac, and iPhone, iPod touch, and even a PC. That means if you make a change to an appointment or an address on your home computer, it will automatically appear on your iPhone and on any other computer you've set up.
Here's how to set the MobileMe service up on an iPhone/iPod touch for use with a Mac computer:
Author: Philip L. Graitcer
MobileMe might have been an all time hit, if Apple hadn't also launched the iPhone 3G and iPhone software 2.0 at the same time, and if there hadn't been technical problems with MobileMe that made it completely unusable for a group of users. Instead, the only news that MobileMe generated through much of July was bad news.
There were technical glitches with MobileMe—some people couldn't use e-mail, others couldn't even set up their accounts—and Apple was mum for a few weeks about the problems. That just made life more confusing for users. I spent at least eight hours, two of them with Apple technical support, trying to figure out accounts.Thankfully, as of late July, the technical issues with MobileMe had been fixed. And after a few weeks of using MobileMe, I'm happy to report that MobileMe is a great product.
What makes it so great?
The iPhone saves the screen shot to your iPhone's camera roll. Don't be concerned if the thumb nail seems a little burry (see right). Tap it and a nice clear picture of whatever you had on your iPhone's display appears in all its 320 x 480-pixel resolution glory (see below).
With a BlackBerry, Palm OS or Windows Mobile device and, of course, iPhone you can have the reviews and commentaries of Zagat's restaurant guides at your fingertips wherever you are without piling up books.
Zagat's mobile package includes its trademark surveys and rankings of restaurants in 70+ cities as well as nightlife suggestions and reviews of top hotels. You can download maps and directions once you decide on a locale. Other features include reviews of golf courses, and movies and a New York City shopping guide. You can register for regular updates to make sure you're never behind.
Here’s what you do: visit Zagat.com and click on Mobile. (Going to Zagat.com on your iPhone or iPod touch automatically brings up the iPhone-friendly edition of the site. )
You can choose from Zagat.mobi, which offers mobile access to all regular Zagat.com premium members, or Zagat to Go, a software package you purchase and install on your mobile.
A year subscription to Zagat to Go is $29.95 and installation is via download to your computer and then ActiveSync. A year's premium membership to Zagat.com and Zagat.mobi costs $24.95.
