Another Tech Blog

Apple announced at WWDC 2009 that the iPhone 3.0 software will be available to current iPhone users on June 17th.  At the same event Apple announced that the iPhone 3GS will be available for purchase June 19th, 2009 in 16GB and 32 GB models for $199 and $299 respectively.  They also reduced the price of the 8GB 3G to $99.

While none of this is unexpected, it’s nice to have a real release date.  Apple announced more final features of the 3.0 software, here are some highlights (full description here).

• Copy and Paste text – When you double tap text, you will get a dialog box to cut/copy.  Double tap again to get a paste bubble.  Works with Photos too.
• Spotlight for search – Now you will be able to search across all the information on your device.  What took them so long to add this?  This really should have been a day one feature.
• Landscape Keyboard – Will work in mail, notes, safari, SMS
• MMS – Big swing and a miss here – AT&T isn’t ready for the release, so this feature will not be ready until late summer.
• Improved Calendar – Support for CalDAV is added.  This is BIG.  CalDAV is what Google and Yahoo use, so this is a big win for Gmail users.  In addition to CalDAV, you can now create meetings – another why wasn’t this done before.
• Internet Tethering – Another HUGE swing and a miss by AT&T.  This will not be available in the US.  Please AT&T, get your network in order.  Your clients, who pay you a lot of money, demand this.
• Sync Notes – You can now sync notes from your phone back to your PC via iTunes.  Another about time, Apple.  I’d like to see an OTA sync for this to Exchange though, that would be useful.  Syncing via iTunes is ok, but not all that helpful.
• Automatic Wi-Fi login – This will (may) really help.  Now when I go to Starbucks I won’t have to login to their hotspot every time.  In theory.  I’m skeptical about this one, but I’m hopeful.

There are other features that seem fun like Shake to Shuffle,  improved iTunes store, voice memos etc.  Overall it seems like a LOT of new software, I hope it all works as advertised.

iPhone 3GS features

See more here.  There are a bunch of new features that look cool, but I’m not sure I’ll shell out $199 (or $299) for them.  The main improvements are:

• Speed – Apple claims that “everything you do on iPhone 3G S is up to 2x faster and more responsive than iPhone 3G”.  Call me Skippy Skeptical, but I’ll believe it when I see it, thank you.  If true, this is compelling.
• Video – You can shoot VGA in portrait or landscape mode, edit start and end points, then share it via email, post to MobileMe or YouTube.  Of course, you can also save the video to your PC when you sync.  I like the idea here – I use my iPhone camera way more than I thought I would, so I imagine that the video feature would be just as useful.  That said, in a corporate environment, cameras are problematic on enterprise devices.
• Improved Camera – 3 MegaPixels, Auto-focus and a tap to focus feature.  Very neat improvements.
• Digital compass – I like this a lot, but it doesn’t look like they’ve improved the turn by turn directions at all.  I’d like it to function more like a “real” GPS in that if you deviate from your route it will auto correct to get you back on the right path.

All in all I’m excited about the 3.0 software and intrigued by the new hardware, I’m just not willing to shell out $199 for it yet.  Now if my current device happens to fall in a puddle…

I’ve been looking for a way to sync my Google Calendar to my iPhone using the native iPhone calendar app.  Google has come out with (I have no idea when this came out, so I may be late to the party here) a calendar and contacts sync to the iPhone native calendar and contacts apps using Microsoft ActiveSync.  Cool!

I set up the Calendar as a test – ActiveSync is a proven technology, so I expect this to work well.  So far it does.

Detail instructions on the setup are here http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html.  The setup is very simple, just set up an exchange account on your iPhone, give it your google credentials and sync to m.google.com.  

Only contacts and calendar are available at the moment – it will give you an error if you try and choose to sync your email.  That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see google turn up  activesync for email too.

This is the kind of thing I love about Google.  Most other mail providers would not go the extra mile to allow contacts and calendar sync without a cost.  This is totally free and works well.  Score!

I get asked this a lot – what is the difference between POP and IMAP, and why would I want one over the other?

To put it simply, IMAP stores email on your mail server, POP stores email on your local email client.

IMAP is better for a TON of reasons.

POP or Post Office Protocol, is the most common protocol to get mail from a server to a client.  The protocol has been around forever and is in use by just about all email providers.  IMAP or Internet Message Access Protocol is newer and was designed to plug the gaps left by POP.

POP was designed to work in “offline” mode, meaning that a client would connect to a mail server, download new messags and disconnect.  The messages would then be removed from the server.  This works very well if you connect to your mail server from the same computer all the time, but if you have multiple computers and or mobile devices, POP just doesn’t work well.  Messages once downloaded to one client be it computer or mobile device are then no longer available for download to another device.  There are options to leave messages on the server, but since POP does not have the ability to add state to a message (read, unread etc) leaving the messages on the server is messy.

IMAP was designed to take advantage of the mail’s state in the inbox and to be able to work in “online” mode meaning that the connection between the mail client and the server can be interactive.  Since IMAP can remember the state of a message, I can mark a mail as read on one device and have that information picked up by a different device later on.  It can also sync folders between mail client and mail server.  If you file messages to folders, IMAP will pick up this state change and synchronize between client and server.  This means that when you file a mail on your iPhone, for example, when you go home and look at your mail the filed message will be right where you expect it to be – in the folder in which it was filed.

While POP was great in the early stages of email adoption, IMAP is a more functional way to retrieve your mail.  If you can mange it, use IMAP instead of POP, you will be much happier.

Some resources for you:

http://www.imap.org/papers/imap.vs.pop.brief.html

http://www.imap.org/papers/biblio.html

After using the Kindle app for iPhone for a few weeks now, I’m totally hooked.  At first, I thought the small screen would be annoying, but I’m really loving this app!!  In my less busy days I used to read a lot.  These days life has taken over and I don’t make the time time read as much as I used to.  The Kindle App has changed that.  Since I have whatever I am currently reading in my pocket at all times, I can pick it up and read a few pages at times whenever I have a spare few minutes.  To do this with a book I’d have to have it with me always – not practical.  I have my phone with me all the time, so it’s easy to just open the app and read a few pages.  In line at the store, sitting on the couch ignoring commercials, whatever.  I don’t have to have a physical book on my hip, I can just reach for my phone.

I still love the feel of a book, that will never go away, but the huge advantage of having my books with me at all times is hard to ignore.  Why pack bulky books on a plane when I can load up as many as I want on my phone?  I don’t think that I’d spend the money on a Kindle just yet ($350 is way too much) because the main advantage for me (having the books with me at all times) goes away if I have to remember to bring the Kindle.

A friend said that he thinks this is just technology for technologie’s sake.  I disagree – this is a classic evolution of technology scenario.  Digital storage of media has been around since the first word processor was coded.  The end of print media was implied almost immediately and it never happened because people are too tied to physical media.  I don’t disagree with this – I love a good newspaper as much as the next guy, but I find myself moving more and more away from traditional print media toward online sources.  News media made the move to the web a long time ago and is thriving while traditional print media is slowly dying.  The iPhone Kindle app is just the evolution of books into the digital world in a way that makes sense, is functional and practical.  I don’t see this as the end of printed books, I see this as an augmentation of digital media to include books, a source that was looking for the right hardware and application combination to make people want to read books digitally.  I think the Kindle and the Kindle app hit the nail on the head.

If you are like me, you have too many email accounts. Work account, personal account, account for public use (spam mostly ends up here), blog email account, side business account, test accounts from various services. Too many to check all the time. What do I do to manage them all? Truth be told, I don’t check most since they are for all intents and purposes inactive. I have 5 or so that I do care about, so I need to see when I have mail in any of them at a glance.

I do this in two ways, the iPhone and through Microsoft Outlook.

Setting up multiple accounts on the iPhone is a snap.  All you do is go to the Settings application, then go to Mail, Contacts and Calendar.  Choose Add Account, then choose your email provider from the list.  iPhone has default settings for MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and MS Exchange.  If your provider is not in the list, just choose Other.

On the next screen, enter your name, email address, password and a description of the account (this is just a label), then touch save.  The iPhone software will look for the account and verify it.  If you are using an account from one of the default services that’s pretty much all you need to do.  If you are adding an account for which the iPhone has no information (a GoDaddy account for example), then you will need to enter the incoming and outgoing server information from your mail provider.  This information is specific to each provider, so go to your provider’s website and search for IMAP/POP settings.  For example, for GoDaddy accounts, the incoming server is pop.secureserver.net and the outgoing server is smtpout.secureserver.net.  Once you have the server information, enter it on the iPhone.  You will also need your userid and password for your mail provider.  In many cases this is just your email address or, if you have web access to your mail, then the the logon credentials you use to get in to your webmail is likely the user name you will need on the iPhone.  Again, check with your email provider to be sure.

Once you have all of the credentials entered, just touch save and you are done.  There are advanced settings you may need to adjust if things are not working (there are several outgoing SMTP ports – the default may not work, so try one of the others), or if you want to use SSL (and your provider provides SSL access) you will need to change port numbers and/or server names.  Check with your mail provider for connection details.  To change the SSL settings, go back to the list of email accounts in the Mail, Contacts and Calendar Settings and touch the account you want to change.  Scroll down and touch Advanced.  Turn the SSL slider on and be sure that the port settings from your provider are correct.

If you want to add another account, just go back to the list of email accounts in Mail, Contacts and Calendar Settings, click Add Account and go through the steps above for each account you want to add.  Currently I have 5 active accounts on my iPhone.  The nice thing is that the unread email count on the mail icon sums the number of unread emails across all accounts so I know if there is a new mail on any of them.  I can then open the mail app, go to the accounts listing and see which account has new mail.  Very convenient and helpful.

I won’t go into detail in this post, but setting up multiple email accounts in outlook is easy too – just follow the wizards ;)  The Outlook 2007 wizards are especially helpful here, and the 2007 version handles multiple accounts far better than Outlook 2003.

My current favorite is FlightControl by Firemint.  It severley addicting.  The gist that you are a flight controller and you have to land planes and helicopters byt dragging a flight path from the plane to a runway.  Sounds easy, right?  It is, for the first few planes.  Then more planes come, and planes of differing speeds.  Pretty soon, CRASH, a mid air collision.  The graphics are simple but clear, and the interface is nice.  I’m sure I’ll be burning through my battery on this instead of working on the train ;)

eWeek is reporting that a Microsoft Executive, Stephen Elop, while speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo hinted that Microsoft will eventually release a version of the Office suite for mobile devices, specifically the iPhone.  I think this is important for a couple of reasons.  It further emphasizes MS’ current move away from desktop based toward web delivery of applications.  In the statement, Elop also eluded to an Ad supported web based version of the Office suite.  For a couple of years now Microsoft has said the the future of their software  is not the desktop but the web.  This move, along with the recent Office Live releases, are proof of that directive.  As an aside, I’ve been impressed with Office Live – it is a great collaboration tool, and is free – essentially you get sharepoint for nothing.  Very cool.

Back to the Office apps for iPhone – if this is a reality, it would be another rung up the ladder to getting more business away from Blackberry.  There are already apps on the Blackberry that let you edit Word and Excel docs; on the iPhone you can view documents, but not edit them.  There are apps on the way that will give users the ability to edit docs on the iPhone, specifically QuickOffice, but a release from Microsoft would likely trump any third party contenders.

As for the utility of native Office apps on a mobile device, that is another discussion entirely.  Personally, I think there is limited use for this – maybe editing a word doc for a word or three, or correcting a cell or two in a spreadsheet, but I can’t imagine trying to do any real work in Word or Excel on a mobile device.  That said, this “announcement”, if it becomes a reality, is good for Apple, and good for Microsoft.

I took a deeper look at the 3.0 release and there will be landscape mode for email and SMS messages.  Check out the preview here.  It’s about time that Apple put this out, but the proof will be in the pudding.

On a related iPhone note, I installed the Skype app for iPhone today.  I am really excited by this, and so far so good.  I don’t have good cell reception at my home, so having the ability to make calls while at home via a low cost service like Skype will be great.  Unfortunately, Apple is restricting Skype traffic to Wi-Fi only to protect AT&T’s revenue stream for calls.  Chat will work over 3G, but calls will not.  I understand this, but it is really anti-consumer.  Apple has said that they do this for all VoIP apps for iPhone, so it’s not like Skype is being singled out, but this feels very heavy handed and to me comes close to a monopoly power (AT&T is the only US carrier for iPhone at the moment) marginalizing a direct competitor.  The app will be very useful, but would be so much more useful if it worked over the 3G network.

Unfortunately, this is another example of Apple almost getting it right.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why we love and hold on to technology gadgets when they are not necessarily all that great.  I can think of several things I’ve bought or used at work that were “the next big thing” or just new and cool that turned out to be more trouble than they were worth.  Did I stop using them?  Sometimes, but more often than not, I’d keep plugging along, being frustrated and annoyed by something that didn’t quite do what I wanted it to.  Why?

I guess I, like a lot of tech guys, love technology.  When something new comes along, you want to believe the hype and be the first one in the pool.

Take the iPhone 3G for example.  I wanted to get an iPhone for a long time, but didn’t before active sync was available – I needed to be able to use the device for work in order to justify the expense.  When I got it, it was clear in the first couple of hours that the phone was no match for my Blackberry for email, and the phone was noticeably worse.  Since I was evaluating the device for use at my firm, I put together a list of probably a dozen or more issues any one of which was enough to prevent me from recommending we adopt the device as a blackberry replacement.  I told lots of people NOT to get the phone as a business device, and to this day I don’t think it is an enterprise class device and that Blackberry is much better at corporate service.  But I kept the phone.  And I love it.  Why, why why?

Because it almost does what it needs to.  Because it almost gets it right.  And because I’m hopeful that over time the issues with the device will be worked out.   That has already happened for many of the early issues (dropped calls are not the issues that they once were, battery life is better) and I’m hopeful that more software improvements are coming.   We will see with 3.0 what happens, but I’m hopeful.

Office 2007, IE7, IE 8, Vista, Windows 7.  All are things I beta tested or installed as soon as the release candidates were out.  Some were huge disappointments (Vista, IE 8 ) and others were really neat, but a big pain in the rear (Office 2007).  I still kept using Office 2007 even though I had to have a separate machine to run things that just didn’t work with ’07.  Why?  Again, the promise of improvement and the cool features that did work outweighed the problems.  As a tech guy I can overlook/tolerate stuff that others can’t because I can find a way around the problem.

It’s like the girl who dates the bad guy even though she knows it will end badly.  Or the guy who dates the really hot girl who treats him like crap.  You hope for the best and ignore the immediate problem because you think it will eventually get better.

Hope lives!

It’s is about time – Apple just announced that version 3.0 of the iPhone OS will have, among other things, cut and paste.  This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time, and frankly I can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet.  I don’t understand how it was left out in the first place, but I’m glad that is will be available soon.

Interesting addition to the OS is the ability for messages to be pushed to the device.  I’m excited about this for lots of reasons, but mostly for mobile IM.  I’ve yet to see this done right on any mobile device, so I’m hopeful that this will actually work this time.  Time will telll…