07.10.07
Posted in iPhone Tips at 7:01 pm by mc
I came across something I did not know and it would have helped me this weekend. When on the road, I wrote a blog post, but could not place it in the correct category in Wordpress, because the selection of categories is a scroll box. So yesterday when I started using BeeJive IM, I noticed you could use two fingers to scroll the chat box. So today I decided to do a quick test in Wordpress and yes indeed, you can scroll any box with two fingers. Simply place both fingers in the scrollable area and slide them up or down to scroll.
I do not know if everyone knew this, but I certainly did not, and that is what I get for not reading the instruction manual for the iPhone.
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07.06.07
Posted in iPhone Tips at 5:18 pm by mc
Several people have complained about the responsiveness of the accelerometer in the iPhone. The key to making it work is to hold it perpendicular to the ground when rotating it and not parallel. Try it yourself. Hold your phone at a 90 degree angle instead of tilted or flat and it will rotate without fail.
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07.05.07
Posted in iPhone Tips at 6:54 pm by mc
Well I wrote a little blurb about my battery life this morning here. Then I came across this tip on MacRumors here. Essentially it advises you shut down your applications when not using them. The way to do this is to simply hold the HOME button down for 8 seconds or so while you are in the application you want to close.
For me personally I enjoy being able to flip back and forth between open applications. But to save battery life it does make sense to close down those you are not using. So if they do change this in the future, hopefully they make it an option. So if you are finding your battery draining faster than you would like and you have application that are open in the background that you are not using go ahead and close them down.
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Posted in iPhone Tips at 1:06 pm by mc
There has been a lot of discussion as it relates to the iPhone battery. I was not paying much attention to it the first few days, but once I buckled down I discovered a few things. For one it is not entirely clear how you get the gauge to actually start working on the settings screen. I did it by using only the wall charger. My experience tells me the USB charger is significantly slower then the included wall charger.
So once I got a full charge and got my timer reset I decided to see what kind of results I got. At first I kept it off for a day, but the battery was still at 50% so I kept it off a charge for 2 days.
The results:
~5% battery life remaining
Usage 5 hours 17 minutes
Standy 1 day 12 hours
So over those two days the phone was on or in standby the entire time. WiFi was never toggled off as I use it a lot and had no interest in turning it off. Most of my usage was e-mail, browsing, and some of the widgets. Did not use the iPod at all. On the second day I used it much less than the first day, as I only had a little over an hour of usage during day 2.
I don’t know if this match up with the specs as it is hard to mix and match usage, but I was not disappointed with the amount of time I got out of the device over nearly 42 hours. That is how long with my normal usage, WiFi always on, never turning it off, that it took to get the battery down to about 5%. As for the percentage, personally I am quoting a number based on a visual guestimation. If there is an actual way to see the % of battery life left I would love to know what it is.
Finally, I think it might take a couple full charge ups before the battery is workingup to specs. The first day or two it seemed my battery ran down quickly, but after I got a few good charges into it, it seems to be lasting longer. Based on some of the complaints I have seen from others, this seems entirely possible.
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07.02.07
Posted in iPhone Tips at 7:19 pm by mc
In case it has not been specifically said, one of my favorite features of the iPhone is its WiFi capabilities. So when I struggled with getting WiFi to work initially, I was bummed. You can read about what I did to fix it here. Regardless, now we move on and really start to see how WiFi is going to work with the iPhone. So Sunday morning I was going out to breakfast, and WiFi hits were popping up all over the neighborhood. I could see all the local routers. I even tried to attach to one unsecured network to see what would happen, but I got out of range too quickly.
Then today I was in the center of nearby McDonalds that offers WiFi, and noticed a pop-up for their network. I connected up, and in a few seconds I was browsing on their WiFi network. The great thing about this, though, is the iPhone remembers these things, so anytime I am in range of this WiFi in the future it will automatically switch over and use it. So anywhere you go where you can tap into a WiFi (that you are authorized to use), I recommend setting it up. Then in the future, even if you are not thinking about it, you can get all the benefits and speed from going through the WiFi network.
I am really pretty excited about this. I know a lot of people like to take about EV-DO and 3G and the rest, but honestly, the future of mobile communications is not going to be tied to cellular networks. It is going to be WiFi Maxi WiFi, Broadband WiFi and the rest.
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Posted in iPhone Information, iPhone Tips at 3:24 pm by mc
One of my last hurdles to overcome in fully utilizing my iPhone was setting up e-mail. I have been essentially dreading it as my set up has me getting a lot of mail every day, with a significant portion of it being spam. I have essentially been relying on Thunderbird to deal with SPAM which is not the best solution. After mulling it over for a day or so, I came upon a solution.
I decided I would try to utilize Gmail as a Spam filter for my E-mail. Then I would either pick it up from Gmail or forward it back. My original plan was wanting to forward it back to the same address. This is doable, but I would to muck around with my mail on the server, and my main mail account is actually hosted on a shared server that I do not own, not on one of my own servers. I attempted some half-hearted hacks with Cpanel, but suffice it to say it did not work how I wanted it.
So while still trying to crack the nut of having Gmail sending mail back to the same account that was forwarding to it in the first place, I decided to try the Gmail setup on the iPhone directly. You have to use POP3 with Gmail and the iPhone. This is fine, but the problem for me was that it does not honor the changed “From” field when sending mail. So when I sent mail even though I wanted it to show coming from “me @ mydomain.com” it showed coming from “Mynick @ gmail.com”. This simply was not workable as it made my e-mails potentially confusing to recipients. I really needed a solution that would allow me to send out mail and have the from and reply-to line set to what I wanted, so it would appear to be coming from my original address.
I finally settled on using a second email account. I just set up a second account on my server and had Gmail forward the mail to that account.
So to explain how it works:
Mail comes to my server at “me @ mydomain.com”
My server automatically forwards all mail for “me @ mydomain.com” to “mynick @ gmail.com”
Gmail takes all that mail runs it through their very good spam filtering, and then forwards the remaining messages to “me-secondary @ mydomain.com” and then also archives the messages on Gmail.
I receive the messages at “me-secondary @ mydomain.com” with IMAP both through Thunderbird, and through my iPhone.
So far it has been working excellently. There is no filtering or ability to create new folders on the iPhone, so I have to do all that on Thunderbird, but it has not been a big deal so far. Gmail has been doing an amazing job filtering out the spam, leaving me with a reasonable inflow of mail that can be effectively used on the iPhone. I will ocassionally go to Thunderbird and run my mail filters, but I can access the same mail from both locations now.
The only thing I had to change on the iPhone was what some of my default boxes were. For Trash and Sent boxes, I had to choose the ones I was using on Thunderbird, to sync them up. When people get messages from me it shows as coming from my original address and replies get sent back to the same address.
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07.01.07
Posted in iPhone Tips at 3:00 pm by mc
I have seen a few people complain about their Visual Voicemail not working on their iPhone. In some cases people reported it was because their account was still tagged with their old data plan. In one case someone said their Blackberry plan was still active and it was blocking Visual Voicemail from working. Someone else here, reported that is was not set up properly. It could have potentially been the same reason and they just fixed. Regardless if you are experiencing this problem you should contact AT&T and have them take care of it for you.
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Posted in iPhone Tips at 9:02 am by mc
Since this is a blog and a blog about iPhone, it stands to reckon that I would eventually try to write a blog entry on my iPhone. I was not sure how it would go and how well the latest revision of Wordpress would work. So I was in a parking lot away from home dutifully on the EDGE network when I decided to give it a go.
It was easy enough to log in to Word Press and choose “Write Post”. The problem came, however when entering my post. My Wordpress defaults to the visual editor, which is great when using my computer, but I soon found out that with the iPhone, at least on the edge network. Apparently it is redrawning the entire text box with every key stroke. This makes sense as it is a WYSIWYG editor. The problem on the iPhone is after pretty much every keystroke the focus flies all over the page and makes it virtually impossible to type anything in.
Fortunately I did not struggle with it for too long and I was able to switch to the Code setting and was good to go right away. I did not have any fancy formating, images or anything else, so it maybe a bit more of a challenge if you want to do anything beyond basic text. There is always old-fashioned HTML in the Code window. If anyone figures out how to overcome the issue in the Visual editor on the EDGE network please let me know. Otherwise it is completely possible and relatively easy to blog from the iPhone.
My first iPhone posted blog was about it not supporting 64-bit Windows OSes.
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06.30.07
Posted in iPhone Tips at 2:54 pm by mc
I tried to submit a story via the iPhone earlier and ran into a few problems. The first problem is that there is no Cut and Paste on the iPhone, so when using the Submit a Story URL you have to type it all in. That is where the problem comes in. When I hit the backspace/delete button on the iPhone it erases the entire line including the “http://” that is pre-entered. Since I am still getting used to the keyboard, it was difficult for me not to make at least one mistake when entering a 60-70 character URL.
By the way the funny thing is the story I was submitting to Digg was something someone else had already submitted so I would have ended up canceling the submission anyways.
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Posted in iPhone Tips at 10:09 am by mc
Since WIFI was one of the biggest features for me, it was frustrating that the first 15 hours I owned the iPhone I could not get Wifi working. I figured a few things out on my own, and also got some great advice from others. I am compiling those here for others who might have trouble with their home WIFI.
1) WEP Password. If you are using WEP encryption on your network, you have two choices, WEP Password, or WEP hex or ASCII. Notice the little bar at the top that says “WEP Password” with an arrow next to it. If you are entering the Hexadecimal code for your WEP network, you need to toggle it to “WEP Hex or ASCII”.
2) WEP Hexadecimal Password part 2. Another problem I had, even with the above toggle was it still would not take my code. If you are still having this problem, preface your code with a “$” so you might enter: “$D0EBDEED2101555CF5123AEB56A” This worked for me.
3) WIFI Still Not Working? This was me. My WIFI was still not working. My phone would only use the EDGE network. Fortunately Mav over on EverythingIphone.com was able to create a list of steps that got me working. Very much appreciated Mav.
A) Remove yourself from your Network. Go into your network and select “Forget This Network.”
B) Turn WIFI Off. From them Settings Menu for WIFI, you need to toggle the Blue On Button to the Grey Off Position.
C) Reset/Reboot your Wireless Router. Wait for your Router to fully reboot.
D) Turn WIFI back on, on your iPhone.
E) Re-Connect to your WIFI Network. Re-enter your encryption information as needed.
I have been forced to use the EDGE network since I had the phone, and it is not horribly slow, but it was very nice to finally get the phone sailing on my WIFI and using my DSL connection. Very well done. In all honesty all of those above steps should not be necessary so hopefully there is a bug that affects some people that is preventing the devices from properly communicating without a full reset. My 2Wire router has been unbelievably reliable, and I throw all kinds of devices at it, and have never had to reboot it to get one to connect. Regardless, I was able to get it working. Again thanks to all those who provided the tips, suggestions etc. If anyone has any more wifi related tips let me know and I can add them to the list.
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