caffeine, ramblings, and tech

Weekly Review – What did you read this past week? 2/20

February 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Fill up your cup of coffee, sit down, take a deep breath, and read something interesting.

Filed Under: Weekly Review Tagged With: , , ,

iOS4 – Where do I get it and What’s New?

June 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

UPDATE:  Unfortunately, most of these links no longer work… Sorry!

If you’re like me you may have waited until after work or even school to download the latest iPhone OS.  You might also be a little disappointed like me in the download times for the 378MB file.  First, DON’T DOWNLOAD FROM iTUNES! – It takes way too long!  Try downloading it directly from Apple (links below).

current version date found
iPhone (iPhone1,1) 3.1.3 (7E18) 04/08/2010 21:05:48
iPhone 3G (iPhone1,2) 4.0 (8A293) 06/21/2010 13:03:02
iPhone 3GS (iPhone2,1) 4.0 (8A293) 06/21/2010 13:03:03
iPod Touch (2G) (iPod2,1) 4.0 (8A293) 06/21/2010 13:03:04
iPod Touch (3G) (iPod3,1) 4.0 (8A293) 06/21/2010 13:03:05
iPad (iPad1,1) 3.2 (7B367) 04/08/2010 21:05:48
iPhone 4 (iPhone3,1) 4.0 (8A293) 06/21/2010 13:03:06
last updated: 06/21/2010 13:15:01 EDT. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/9LCSAt

If you need help with installing the above software package you can reference another blog post of mine.

So… What’s new?

  • Multitasking
  • Folders
  • Unified Inbox
  • Threaded Email
  • Gmail Archive (instead of delete)
  • Integrated Spell Checker
  • Custom Home Screen Wallpapers
  • Digital Zoom w/ Camera (5x)
  • Bluetooth Keyboard Support
  • Search Yahoo or Bing vs. Google
  • New Contact UI when Editing
  • and much MORE!

Sources:

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: ,

#Minnebar – Titanium Mobile – Native Mobile Applications in JavaScript

May 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Presenter: Kevin Whinnery
Email: KevinWhinnery@gmail.com
 Twitter: @KevinWhinnery

In lieu of learning Objective C or Java to develop an iPhone/Android app there is another way! Kevin’s presentation encompassed the use of Titanium Mobile (TM). TM allows anyone to build apps faster by allowing the developer to use web technologies (JavaScript) to build native mobile applications.

Developer Note: In order to develop with TM you will need to have the native SDKs installed. It was recommended that you preload the Android SDK prior to TM (supposedly it takes a while to load).

Titanium Mobile Benefits/Features:

  • Cross Platform
    • iPhone
    • Android
    • Blackberry (soon!)
  • Real Native Apps
  • Open Source (free!)
  • Social API integration – there are some good Facebook examples
  • Data Access – connect to SQL databases
  • Integrated Analytics

Here are some real examples of apps that were created using TM:

A dditional Help/Resources:
http://www.developer.appcelerator.com
http://www.vimeo.com/appcelerator
 http://www.github.com/appcelerator/KitchenSink
http://www.appcelerator.com

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,

Restore an iPhone from a Backup (The Hard Way)

February 18, 2010 By 6 Comments

I wish that I had an easier time restoring Erin’s iPhone but there happened to be some misfortunes along the way. i.e. iPhone crashed (firmware chip?), not backing up the phone often enough, laptop crashing, and weird folder structures for Apple/iTunes.

This entire process started with obtaining a new iPhone, recovering the laptop hard drive, and locating all the important information.  Below I will describe the steps necessary to recover an iPhone with the backup files iTunes creates when the user uses the “backup” button.

PC Instructions

  1. Locate the backup file you want to restore from.  I would start looking in the default backup directory: C:UsersuserAppDataRoamingApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup  – SEE NOTES BELOW
  2. Load iTunes
  3. Plug in iPhone- wait for it to mount
  4. Navigate to the iPhone and select “Update” / “Restore” while holding the Shift key. (Hold Shift key + Click Update/Restore)
  5. This will prompt you to choose the backup directory.  Refer to Step 1 and where you found your backup file.
  6. Restore!
  7. Restore and Good Luck!

Notes:

  • Depending on what version of Windows you’re running the path might also be: C:Documents and SettingsuserApplication DataApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup
  • The folder name for the backups is rather strange.  Here is an example of mine: 2869abaa23e687eb5bdb0dde76dcae8472a74f0d

Mac Instructions

  1. Locate the backup file you want to restore from.  I would start looking in the default backup directory:  User/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ – SEE NOTE BELOW
  2. Load iTunes
  3. Plug in iPhone- wait for it to mount
  4. Navigate to the iPhone and select “Update” / “Restore” while holding the Option key. (Hold Option key + Click Update/Restore)
  5. This will prompt you to choose the backup directory.  Refer to Step 1 and where you found your backup file.
  6. Restore and Good Luck!

Notes:

  • The folder name for the backups is rather strange.  Here is an example of mine: 2869abaa23e687eb5bdb0dde76dcae8472a74f0d

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,

WordPress Plugin for iPhone Users

November 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Tonight I found an awesome plugin for WordPress that will optimize your blog for mobile users. Specifically, readers that are using an iPhone. Take a look at the following screenshots.

Features:

  • Optimized loading compared to loading a “standard” theme.
  • Apple-esque icons (comments indicator).
  • Clean interface.
  • Easy to install (just like any other plugin).
  • FREE!

For more info please refer to the plugin website: http://www.bravenewcode.com/wptouch/

Filed Under: Mobile, Wordpress Tagged With: , ,

iPhone Wishlist Part II

September 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment

With the whole AT&T debacle with the MMS and tethering I started thinking of other features that I would appreciate.

  • Stop a text while sending.  What’s the purpose of the sending bar anyways?  Is it there to appease the person that their text is actually sending?
  • Create new photo albums and have the ability to organize your pictures.
  • Emoticons, corny I know.
  • Basic formatting in the Notes and Mail application: ordered/unordered lists and bold/italics/underline.
  • Better email sync.  I utilize the All Mail folder in Gmail quite a bit and whenever I read something in that folder I have to re-sync or go into my Inbox to clear the new message.
  • Ability to edit Notes in iTunes.  Currently I have it sync to Oulook.
  • Over the air updates. This might not work with AT&T’s infrastructure :(
  • Custom text message sounds.
  • Support for multiple Exchange accounts.
  • Additional button the side of the phone to take pictures.
  • Support for multiple email signatures.
  • Process Monitor/Task Manager to kill hung processes and to clear RAM.
  • New carrier?
  • MULTITASKING!

My two cents for now.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , ,

Train Brain – iPhone App Review

September 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Train Brain has one purpose in life and that is to help you find the next light-rail train in Minneapolis and tell you when that train will arrive at your destination.  The light-rail currently has 17 stops between downtown Minneapolis and the Mall of America.  Train Brain covers all of these stops.

If you’ve every used the Metro Transit website or their mobile web app you know that it can be cumbersome and sometimes time consuming when you’re on the go.  Fortunately, Train Brain is here to help will all your light-rail needs.

Train Brain utilizes the Metro Transit light-rail schedule and GPS to give you  an easy to use interface to find out what time and where your next train will arrive.  Lets say you’re not at the light-rail station and you want to know when a train will arrive at any of the 17 stations.  You can do that too!  The interface allows you to select from anyone of the available stations.

Key Features:

  • GPS integration
  • Covers all light-rail stations
  • Ability to choose northbound or southbound routes
  • Get directions to the light-rail station via Google Maps
  • Cheap! $1.99 and well worth it!

Additional Note: This will work with iPod Touches as long as you have a data connection (Wi-Fi).

Train Brain Website: http://trainbrainapp.com/

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: ,

Finding a House (Part II)

August 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Not having a real estate agent at the moment (we now have one :) )we’ve resorted to using some online tools for looking for houses.  Below are the ones we have used thus far along with some comments as to our experience.

Zillow.com

Overall Experience: Great place to get ideas for prices in certain neighborhoods and how many houses are for sale.  Easy to use and very interactive.  It’s also interesting to see what houses have sold for in the past.

Pros: Easy to use, interactive maps for neighborhoods (ability to focus on certain areas of the map), and I was able to get the results I wanted using the many different fields for defining your search.

Cons: It was easy to use but loading can sometimes be an issue.  Navigation back and for from page to page can also be a little clunky.

Zillow iPhone App

Overall Experience: Awesome!  This was a great tool when we were out and about driving around without any direction.  Very often there were houses for sale but there was not a flyer available.  With this app we were able to quickly load it and find out the house price using the GPS.  I would estimate that greater than 75% of the time the house was listed at the time.  However, the status of the house was not always correct as in, the house could have sold recently but the Zillow database was not yet updated.

Pros: Utilizes GPS to find your current location.  Same type of interface and options as the website.  Easy to use and would recommend for those random house hunts.

Cons: There were numerous times that I got frustrated because the app doesn’t save your search criteria or settings when closing the app.  (I may have missed this in the settings if it were available)…

Various Realty Websites

Sites: EdinaRealty.com, Century21.com, ColdwellBanker.com, etc

Overall Experience: More often than not, we were able to find all the same houses on all the realty websites.  The kicker was that each interface was a different experience.

Suggestions:

  • Allow multiple zip codes, cities, or neighborhood queries.  There were times when we were limited to looking at one area at a time.
  • Cleanup the layout of some of the content.  Some content was squished together, especially when maps were involved.  If possible, make the the layout a little wider, open up in a modal window, new window, etc.
  • Better integration of maps.  I would say 80% of the time I found it easier to copy the address into Google Maps to see the street view of the house than to use the map that was integrated into the website.  If you are going to offer maps I would suggest using both Bing and Google Maps.  Bing has an awesome aerial view compared to Google Maps.  However, Google Maps has street view.

The MLS Online

Overall Experience: This is probably my favorite choice!  MLS Online has a some really great search options, easy to use, and gives you a ton of results.

Pros: Extremely easy to use.  Email notifications for new houses that meet your criteria (if you set it up).  Detailed house information and a clean layout.  Ability to save multiple search criterion.  Added the ability to search for foreclosures.

Cons: Does not provide the # of days on the market.

Sorry for the novel.  Hope this helps the fellow house hunters out there or even the developers for the above sites.

Filed Under: How To, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Finding a House (Part I)

July 6, 2009 By 2 Comments

Source: http://azbigmedia.com/tags-15

For the past few weeks the process of finding a house has been in progress.  Some of the initial steps that we’ve tried before working with a real estate agent are:

  • LMS/Zip Realty.
  • Zillow – for those that have an iPhone, I would highly recommend their app.  The app allows you to use the build in GPS to navigate to that are listed with them.
  • Edina Realty, Century 21, etc.
  • Craigslist.
  • Driving around neighborhoods we like.

I would like to share that we have had success finding houses for sale either through the web and just driving around looking for “for sale” signs.  Through some of this initial process I would like to share some of the struggles that we’ve had thus far.

  • If you have a “brochure box” on the top of your “for sale” sign, please keep brochures handy.  I understand that printing in color might be a little pricey but there are alternatives (I’ll list a little later on).  Today, about 15% of the houses we wanted additional information via the brochure box was empty.  Dear sellers, consider this a possible lost customer.
  • Not all websites were up-to-date with the status of each house.  There were many houses that were sold but the website was not updated accordingly.  Result, more time driving and more gas wasted.  Result, we found more houses to look at :)
  • If you’re selling your house, please keep up with the landscaping and please clean up the crap around your house/garage (This also includes the banks that own foreclosed houses).  There were a number of houses Remember, curb appeal is HUGE!
  • There nothing that can really be done about this but it was a tad confusing when there were the “services signs”, aka Bob’s Siding Co. Installed the Siding on this House.  This was kind of a false positive when looking.  “OH!, there’s one down that street. NOT!”

Enough griping.  Homeowners, here are some recommendations that would have hooked me in today or might help others.

  • Keep up with landscaping and keep your yard neat.
  • If you have low hanging branches are other foliage hiding your house, you might want to clean this up.  First impressions happen with houses too.
  • If there’s paint pealing take a weekend to scrape and put a fresh coat on.  It helps!
  • Keep plenty of extra brochures in the brochure box and check daily!
  • If you want to go extra cheap on brochures but super informative consider having basic information on your brochure but have a website setup with additional information and pictures.  Creating a simple website can be done easily in an evening and in most cases free.  Some internet providers give website space for free to customers and other solutions such as Blogger and WordPress could be used.

Image Source: http://azbigmedia.com/tags-15

Filed Under: How To, Technology Tagged With: , ,

Sell your iPhone 3G Fast (updated)

June 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Note: Since the original post the price has dropped from NextWorth.

NextWorth Logo

Now that the iPhone 3GS is coming out this Friday (June 19th) and AT&T has declared some outrageous prices (especially for current AT&T customers) and you need a way to make some quick cash to buy the new model… here is a solution, if you currently have an iPhone 3G. You can sell it $280 $221.75 to a company called NextWorth.  It should also be noted that they buy other devices besides iPhones.

The criteria for the $280 $221.75 is as follows:

  • Condition:  Light Wear
  • My iPhone is fully functional: YES
  • My iPhone is engraved: NO
  • The headphone jack is working: YES
  • Accessories included:  Docking station, Earbuds, AC Adapter, and USB/Firewire Cable
    • The accesorries only give you an additional $5.50.  I would keep them and use them with the 3GS or sell them elsewhere.

The steps that you need to follow are:

  1. Find your product (in this case an iPhone 3G)
  2. Print the prepaid shipping label
  3. Pack and ship your item (using the prepaid label of course)
  4. Upon receiving the item NextWorth will assess the condition and compare it to your claim
  5. If everything goes ok, you’ll receive payment (there are multiple choices for payment)

I haven’t actualy used the service (yet) but am thinking about it if I wish to upgrade to the new iPhone.

Some other place to sell your iPhone 3G are:

  • Craigslist
  • Ebay
  • Facebook
  • Friends

and…

Picture 2

gazelle is very similar to NextWorth in that you select the product your wish to sell, select the condition of your product, send it away, and get cash.  For the iPhone 3G gazelle is looking at the following criteria:

  • Makes calls successfully: YES
  • Free of water damage: YES
  • Rate the overall condition: GOOD (comparable to NextWorth’s “Light Wear”)
  • I have: AC Adapter, Original Manuals, and Original Cable

Price result: $190

And the winner is NextWorth (until the prices change again)…

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With:
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »