iPhone World

I haven’t gotten a single song from iTunes, ever, but a lot of you have. Apparently, both iTunes and Amazon release free singles and sometimes complete albums on a daily basis. I installed it for this write-up, and of the currently 10 songs available, spanning 3 days worth, I have not heard of a single one of the artists. I’m not sure if it’s because of the fact that next to nothing I listen to would ever appear on any Top 40 list, or if these are just totally obscure and unheard of artists. Either way, if you find something you like here, then this post has served its purpose.

In order to install this you will need to be running the 4.x version of Chrome, and visit the extension page at http://www.chromeextensions.org/music-videos-photos/broketunes/

This isn’t really news, and is barely iPhone related, but since I’m trying to make more posts, here you go..

This is either the result of bad programming, or just a shiny PR page. A few days ago I finally registered my wife’s iPhone with the AppleCare plan. Today I got an email asking me to complete a survey. I usually don’t do those, but I figured why not.

After answering what I think was 6 questions (which Apple estimated would take me 3 minutes), I was presented with the following page. Keep in mind all of the questions were given in only English. Why? because my browser reported my language as English. The fact that I had to make it over 1/2 way down the page before I had a clue what I was looking at puts the icing on the cake.

There are a number of rumors going around about just what Apple will be announcing on January 27th. iPhone OS 4.0 and 4G device, the Apple Tablet, and possibly the most noteworthy, is that an “inside source” claims that the iPhone will finally be liberated from the clutches of AT&T, at least exclusively.

Who will Apple call on to run with the ball now? Verizon? T-Mobile? Or will we begin seeing legitimately unlocked iPhones begin to surface? Will current AT&T customers run in droves to escape, even at the cost of early termination fees?

The other big speculation is that OS 4.0 will finally feature the ability to run applications in the background. Will it actually happen? If it did, it would be a step in the direction of finally allowing iPhone owners the control they deserve over their devices, rather than only what Apple thinks you can handle.

One thing I’ve learned since I began following Apple news, is that they do not ‘leak’ information, and the rumor mill is rarely inaccurate. Apple is a media machine. Event after event, blogs all over the place speculate about what Apple is going to announce. Key bits of information always manage to make themselves known, and the rumors always seem to turn out to be true.

What do you think? will OS 4.0 be announced? Will background applications finally be a reality? Will iPhone users finally be free to choose their own carrier? Will the 4G iPhone sport dual mode GSM / CDMA? Stay tuned Wednesday, same iPhone time, same iPhone channel.

Nobody can deny the fact that the Facebook app has been quite lacking for some time. After waiting forever for an update, Joe Hewitt announced 3.0 was finally complete and submitted. After waiting in queue to get its allocated 10 minutes or so of review time, it finally showed up in the AppStore tonight yesterday (believe it or not I started typing this paragraph yesterday).

By now I’d imagine most everyone has already updated but I still have to at least give it a mention. The  functionality boost from 2.3 to 3.0 is the difference between Windows 3.1 and XP. Better notifications, notes, events, pages, chat, it’s all there. Long overdue is also the ability to now manually refresh posts, ‘like’ posts, and even the ability to apply your filters to the news feed. Along with all of this, icons can be added for profiles and pages that you might frequent.

The icons can also be rearranged the same way as the springboard icons, just hold one for a few seconds. This is cool, but if you’re like me it’ll take a while to get used to NOT pressing the home button when you are finished rearranging and closing the app. Doh!

All in all, this is an awesome update. Personally, given the bugs and lack of functionality, I would have considered everything prior to 3.0 to be beta. Now we wait for 3.1 on which work started immediately after submitting 3.0. The only change coming in 3.1 I can say for sure is that it will finally bring push notifications to Facebook.

A few people seem to dislike the new version. What do you all think? After only 5 minutes I could never go back to pre-3.0.

New Features

- Landscape mode
- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabetically

A few days ago I posted about Google Latitude. After having a while longer to play with it, I’ve determined that the fact that it is a web app is pretty much a deal breaker. Even on a 3GS with Backgrounder, it just won’t do. Folks who frequently use the Safari download toggle for SB Settings will have to re-start Latitude after each toggle as well. Not to mention the battery drain. Even if you do keep Safari running in the background (or foreground), does it even function if Latitude is not the active page?

So, enough with Latitude, at least for now. I’ve begun using an app called Navizon. It is available from Cydia for both OS2 and OS3. If it does not show up when you search, add the Navizon repo (http://cydia.navizon.com/) (or xsellize). The two main differences between Navizon and Latitude, are Navizon is a real app, and it does run in the background. Along with that it updates the location every 10 minutes, so it’s not hard on the battery, and can be turned off at any time.

One thing that would be nice is the ability to change the update interval, but maybe that will come with the next version. When active there will be a GPS crosshair icon in the status bar.

Tapping the GPS icon at the bottom left will show your current position. Tapping the buddy icon will show an overview of all of your buddies. The zoom level for buddy view is anything but intelligent. You can quickly pan and zoom on your own though.

The buddies button at the upper right will show everyone on your buddy list along with their status, last update time, and method of location.

Locations can be reported based on Phone (cell tower), Wi-Fi, or GPS.

Tapping the name of a friend in the buddies view will zoom to that person’s last known location.

Tapping the arrow next to a buddy will allow you to quickly get directions to or from their location, show them in the maps app, or email their location.

Along with everything in the app, there is also a website that you can use to view the location of your buddies using Google maps. For a fee of $10 (one time) you can also have historical locations stored, for yourself only, that you can view on the website.

On the site you can set up alerts. You can either have an email sent or a user defined URL called when a selected buddy enters or exits an area you designate. Keep in mind though, that you might want to make the radius of the alert area larger than you would think. Because the background service updates every 10 minutes, if the area is too small the person could enter and exit between updates and no alert would be triggered. Without the $10 fee I believe you can have 5 alerts per month.

As an added bonus, if you are planning a trip, you can use the ‘My Coverage’ section to view the locations of previously mapped cell towers. Wi-Fi Access Point and cell tower locations are all ‘provided’ by other users running Navizon on GPS enabled phones. As you drive, walk, etc, if Navizon finds an AP or cell tower, and has a GPS location, it will report back to their servers and make those AP’s/towers able to be used as locators for those without GPS enabled phones running Navizon. As you locate and report (all automated) new APs and towers, you receive reward credits.

• Wi-Fi Access Points discovered by you / already mapped: 3 points / 1 point
• Cell towers discovered by you / already mapped: 15 points / 2 points

If you rack up 10,000 points, you can redeem a reward of $10 via PayPal. Free users can redeem only one reward, coincidentally the same amount as becoming a paid member. If you live in an area with few access points mapped, take a slow cruise or a walk around your neighborhood with the Navizon app running to get some easy points, or look for areas with few or no cell towers mapped. In 3 days of just background use, I have gotten 67 points.

The website at times does not like to cooperate though. When trying to view coverage for a large area it can take quite a while for it to load. Setting your home area and alert areas can sometimes take a few attempts to get the bounds where you want them.

Overall, Navizon definitely beats out Google Latitude, at least for now.

The good news, you’ve already read it up there in the title. The bad news, it’s a web app. Apparently it was decided between Google and Apple that a standalone application would be confused with the standard Maps app. (Read: Apple said no).

Seeing as Safari tends to stay running anyhow, using backgrounder (jailbroken users only) with this shouldn’t be too much of an issue even for 3G owners. Perhaps even using a lightweight alternate browser app solely for Latitude with backgrounder. I haven’t explored much in the browser area so I can’t make any recommendations at this point.

Accessing Latitude is the same as signing into any other Google account. Once a friend is added a request will be emailed to them. They can then choose to accept and share their location, accept and hide their location, or deny. Once accepted, you must use an iGoogle gadget to view the sharers location.

Some folks have no idea what I’m talking about so let me explain. Google Latitude basically lets you  share your location with whoever you like so long as they have a Google account. On the iPhone side of things, you can choose if and how you want to share your location.

Choosing the middle option shown on the right, you can select wherever you’d like your location to appear as.

So far I’m not sure how refreshing works on the PC side of things. After manually setting the location I waited a few minutes and nothing changed. I refreshed the page and then the new location was shown.

Head over to http://google.com/latitude on your iPhone to check it out.

There are also plugins for Latitude. One allows you to publish your location to your blog or website. The other will show your location in Google Talk, currently listed as beta. For the website one, you can choose to share your actual location or just the city. To check either of those out visit the Do More with Google Latitude page.

Hopefully Google will release an API for using Latitude and somebody will create a daemon for running it in the background.