The Iphone Blog

Archive for July, 2009

Editor’s note: This post was amended to reflect a later release date for this app. My6Sense for the iPhone was originally expected to be on the app store Thursday morning, although it remains in Apple’s approval process. For the purpose of this review I was using the same version which was installed using a testing provision.

My6Sense, a company that previewed its RSS recommendation technology at the Under the Radar Mobility conference back in late November, is finally ready to get its tools into the hands of users. The company soon plans to release its first native application for mobile phones (currently for the iPhone only), which pulls in RSS feeds and adjusts what it presents based on your reading habits.

To make those adjustments, the product revolves around a machine learning algorithm called “digital intuition.” As you read, it slowly builds a profile for recommendations on other items you should check out, and ranks them accordingly.

There are six levels of digital intuition in all. Any time you check for recommendations it updates a small bar that tells you how far along its cold, robot brain is to knowing your deepest reading desires. In the hour or two I spent with the app, I nearly got to level three. Apparently it takes much more browsing than I was willing to give it before it could offer expert recommendations. Nonetheless, after just that short amount of time it was doing a pretty good job pointing me toward articles I did, in fact, want to read.

Feeding frenzy

Finding feeds to begin with is quite easy. You can enter URLs manually, download packs of RSS links that have been curated by My6Sense, or import the news feed from places like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and Flickr. It’s also got a tool for grabbing your feed collection from other RSS services like Google Reader, My Yahoo, NewsGator, and Netvibes. I just used my feed collection from Google Reader, which was as simple as plugging in the credentials for my Google account. My6Sense was even nice enough to keep all my folders and meticulous feed organization intact.

Now the real heart of the app is feed reading. My6Sense wants you to give up using any other readers, and do everything inside of its app, since that’s what makes its recommendation engine tick. This would be fine, except for the fact that the app can get intolerably slow when it comes to loading headlines.

Over a healthy 3G connection it took around 12 seconds to load up a list of just 10 stories. It took even longer to pull in an additional 10 results. And this was just the text–images don’t load until you open up a story to read. In comparison, Google Reader in Safari is not that much faster, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re planning to use this somewhere with a lackluster mobile connection.

Despite its slowness, one nice feature is that once a feed has loaded, it’s cached for the next time you visit that category. This includes all of the stories within that particular feed, so you can browse even with limited connectivity.

Verdict

As a pure feed reader, My6Sense is great for beginners. It’s really easy to add new feeds and get going, even if you’ve never used another feed reader before. But it can be (and usually is) slow–almost to a fault. If this is your first mobile feed-reading experience after using a peppy desktop RSS reader, you’re bound to be disappointed.

The inclusion of the recommendation engine is a nice touch for individual articles, although I would like to see it be expanded to cover feeds as well. Maybe offering something that pops up and says “hey, I notice you really like reading about cameras–you might like this.”

The good:
• App learns your tastes, and shows how well it knows you
• Easy to share articles you’re reading without leaving the app
• Sucks in feeds from feed readers you’re already using
• Fast set-up with packs of feeds by genre
• Capability to unread things you don’t want to impact the recommendation engine
• Built-in browser for reading outbound links

The bad:
• Feeds can be slow to load
• No downloading option to read feeds offline
• Portrait mode only
• Photos and inline videos can sometimes be lost in translation
• No toggles to change text size or page contrast

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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Have you noticed that interesting and valuable ideas often pop up in your mind at a wrong time? Yes, this is an inherent feature of a problem solving and creative process. If it happens that you great ideas annoy you when you are in a waiting room of your doctor worry no further. With the help of Sparks – a cool new iPhone application you won’t lose great ideas any more. Sparks has another decent software from the creators of Firetask – professional time management software for iPhone.

Sparks is easy to use, simple but most importantly functional. First, you have categories. So you can easily categorize ideas – work or personal ideas, does not matter. You can manage them all. To give you a better idea, I’ve managed some ideas regarding this blog with Sparks. First, I added a new category. Then, I quickly noted down the following ideas.

Idea 1: Post articles more frequently
Idea 2: Increase link exchanges
Idea 3: Add more beginner tips
Idea 4: Make promotional code give-aways more regular

Then you assign criteria to the ideas based on four different dimensions: Innovation, Simplicity, Uniqueness and Potential. Sparks quickly calculates particular idea’s Score.

I also liked the feature to add notes to ideas.

The beauty of Sparks is the Analyze tabs where you can see your ideas on a sleek matrix diagram.

In terms of usability, the software is pretty good. The only not so user-friendly thing is that it’s not immediately clear what color denotes. In other words, which color identifies uniqueness of the idea. The same can be said about the size. However, with size you can assume that the larger, the more potential.

Now the bad part. Sparks is not free and costs $4.99. However, this app is worth the price.

Now the good thing. The developer has decided to provide 5 promotional codes of Sparks (can you spot idea 4 in action? . The codes will be given to the first 5 readers to send me an e-mail and quoting the price Firetask! So, the task is quite simple! All you have to do is to look up Firetask’s price and send an e-mail.

Hurry up. These codes won’t last long!

If you’d rather get Sparks right now, here is the download link: http://cut.io/pBC3

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Company hopes that payment will lay matter to rest

Apple and its Chinese iPhone manufacturer Foxconn made headlines when an employee Danyong Sun committed suicide. The circumstances were anything but ordinary. Mr. Sun had been given a set of never-before-seen iPhone fourth generation prototypes to deliver for testing. He lost one of these prototypes and was subsequently the victim of a burglary and assault, reportedly by his employer’s security division. He then committed suicide.

Following initial statements by Foxconn and Apple, new details have emerged. Foxconn has announced that it will pay off the family of Mr. Sun in hopes of laying the matter quietly to rest. It has agreed to pay his parents a lump sum of $52,000 and a yearly payment of $4,400 for the rest of their lives.

The government is still investigating the incident. Apple says it will wait until that investigation finishes before it takes action. The main subject of the investigations is Mr. Gun Qinmin a security supervisor. Mr. Qinmin insists that he’s innocent, though he admits to sending people to search Mr. Sun’s office.

The average salary of a worker in one of China’s cities was 5,000 yuan ($3,560 USD) in 2007.

[via Daily Tech]

Get a Free iPhone 3GS! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the trouble of earning enough to pay for it for you can get it the simple way …. straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free iPhone 3GS!

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Apple says terrorists could use iPhones to attack cell phone towers

Apple has tried everything to stop iPhone unlockers. Bricking iPhones didn’t work — it just generated more headaches and bad PR. Apple’s internal protection technology turned out to be just as weak and poorly implemented as its consumer security on the iPhone — the hackers quickly overcame the latest protections Apple threw at them. Now with its shiny new iPhone 3G S becoming yet the latest handset to be freed, Apple has turned to none other than the U.S. government for help.

The company has submit a report to the U.S. Copyright Office suggesting that iPhone unlocking be outlawed (and jailbreaking from the AT&T network, essentially as well as it would be impossible without unlocking) as Apple claims it threatens cell phone towers across America. Apple claims that unlocking the iPhone provides easy access to the iPhone’s BBP — the “baseband processor” software, which enables a connection to cell phone towers.

[via Daily Tech]

Get a Free iPhone 3GS! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the trouble of earning enough to pay for it for you can get it the simple way …. straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free iPhone 3GS!

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(Credit: Apple, Inc.)

Among the bevy of problems–some large, some small–reported by iPhone users following the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS lurked a bug I encountered in Find My iPhone on Apple’s MobileMe service.

Find My iPhone remembers all your devices, including any old iPhones turned off or sold after you upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. Until now, there was no way to make Find My iPhone forget that old iPhone.

Apple has quietly released an updated Apple support document, “MobileMe, iPhone OS 3.0: Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe,” which now states:

Previously-owned iPhone/iPod touch appears at me.com/account

Note: If your device is still configured with your MobileMe membername and password, the next time the device connects to the Internet, it will be added to the Find My iPhone page again.

The old iPhone 3G I sold to a T-Mobile employee

(Credit: David Martin)

If you accidentally delete a current iPhone, you can add that phone back by making sure that your MobileMe member name and password are still configured on the iPhone before reconnecting it to the Internet. Once that connection is made, the iPhone will reappear on the location page with the rest of the devices you are tracking.

You can see our previous coverage of iPhone OS 3.0 and iPhone 3GS problems here and here.

Have you or someone you know found new problems? Let us know about them in the comments.

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There’s nothing like good, old competition to keep tech prices in check. Case in point: earphones. The headphone market is heavily saturated, and that’s why there are so many worthy earbud contenders in the sub-$100 price range. Klipsch is one company in particular that has impressed us with earphones in this price range, and its latest entry is no exception. The Image S2m is a stereo headset with an integrated mic and call button that sells for a very reasonable $60. Like its Editors’ Choice award-winning sibling, the Image S4, these ‘phones offer impressive sound for the money, though audio is not quite as crystal clear.

Read the Klipsch Image S2m review.

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Spotlight search: Handy addition or forgotten feature?

Spotlight search, one of the high-profile features introduced with OS 3.0 last month, lets you search contacts, appointments, music, mail, and more without first loading their respective apps.

In other words, it’s a time-saver. In theory.

Confession time: I haven’t touched Spotlight once since installing OS 3.0 on my 3G. On a few occasions I’ve flicked past my apps and landed on the search screen, invariably prompting the same reaction: “Huh. Forgot that was there.”

I have used Mail’s new in-box search, which frequently proves invaluable. But Spotlight strikes me as a backward approach. Maybe it’s me; I’m accustomed to running apps first and looking for data second. That’s how I do things on the desktop, so it feels natural to do likewise on my iPhone. Old dog, old tricks.

What about you? Do you think Spotlight is the greatest addition since copy and paste, or does it sit, forgotten and unused, to the left of your apps? Cast your vote below!

Do you use iPhone Spotlight search?(online surveys)
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After more than a month of waiting, Apple has finally brought its MobileMe iDisk application to iPod and iPhone users. Originally announced during Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in early July, the free iDisk app offers users of Apple’s MobileMe service a way to access files they, or their MobileMe contacts have stored on Apple’s servers.

Some of the nicer features include being able to view and send any native file types. This includes music, so if you’ve got a bunch of tracks stored on iDisk, you can stream them from the app. Movies work as well, although they have to be formatted to play on an iPod or iPhone.

Apple says that some files over 20MB won’t load, although I successfully managed to get a 198MB MPEG4 movie file to stream in. Things that require downloading, however, such as documents and photos, are capped at 30MB–even when you’re on a Wi-Fi connection. The application must first download those types of files to your device before you can even see what they are. This process is made faster by a cache you can adjust to allow for more local storage, all the way up to 200MB. Not included in that cache are audio and video files, which are simply streamed, meaning that you’ll need to be on a solid connection for the entire listen or watch.

As nice as the local cache is, it’s a long ways off from offering users the chance to manage files locally as some other iPhone storage apps have done. You cannot download anything back to your device from the app, save for photos, which can only be saved using the iPhone’s screenshot feature–not the superior copy and paste. There are also no previews before or after you’ve downloaded something to view locally, which means you better have named your files properly.

I applaud Apple’s efforts for giving users a first party way to access their files, it’s just too bad it offers so much less than third parties have provided. Besides local file downloading, I would love to see omissions like copy and paste, and quick visual previews offered. It would also be fantastic to let users copy a file from the app into a mail message without having to use the built-in e-mailer, which wraps each file in MobileMe branding.

MobileMe iDisk for the iPhone weighs in at 2.2MB and requires users to have an active subscription to MobileMe, along with an iPod Touch or iPhone running OS 3.0.

The good:
• Lets you quickly access files you have stored on your iDisk in a native application.
• Streams in audio and video, letting you bypass file size restrictions.
• You can view files in portrait and landscape modes.
• Your log-in is saved between sessions, so you don’t need to re-enter your user name and password.
•You can view files your friends have stored online if you know their MobileMe user names.

The bad:
• Certain files are capped at 30MB–even over Wi-Fi.
• There are no visual previews of what photos, videos, and docs contain.
• No way to save files for offline viewing. There’s a local cache, but as soon as a newer file needs some space, old files are removed.
•Copy and paste doesn’t work.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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When it’s not enough to let your iPhone control your life, you can have it control a robot.

An enterprising tinkerer in Japan has turned an iPhone 3GS into a humanoid robot by wiring it to a mechanical body.

Meet “Robochan.”

Check out the video. Robochan is perhaps disturbing, but undeniably cute. The anime face and leek-waving are nods to Hatsune Miku, a character created for Yamaha’s Vocaloid singing synthesizer application. Hatsune is a virtual idol in Japan; one of her albums topped the Oricon music chart last month.

Robochan consists of a 3GS wired to a Kondo Kagaku KHR-2 HV kit robot through its doc connector. The 3GS serves as the controller for the humanoid body, a popular kit which retails for about $900 with much assembly required.

Robochan can speak, dance, wake you up at a preset time, learn motions taught by hand, and react when its screen is touched. Its creator has also wired the iPod touch to a robot, as seen here.

Via Pink Tentacle

Originally posted at Far-flung Tech

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Gmail’s Google Maps link to CBSi's address on the iPhone via Smart Links’s translation. Instead of the lengthy URL, you now have the actual address with the link embedded to it.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Chances are that you have seen extremely long links when you receive an e-mail that contains a Google Maps address or driving instructions. This gets annoying, especially on mobile devices, because not only do the links take up a lot of space, but they also make it hard to find out the important information, such as the address, hidden within it.

Now that has just changed for Gmail users who use the iPhone or Android-powered devices to read their e-mail.

On Tuesday, GoogleMobile announced the Smart Links feature, a mechanism that automatically shortens a raw link and converts it into a meaningful phrase with the link embedded. Click on the phrase and the link will open just like with the original raw link.

For example, when you receive a Google Maps link of CBSi’s address via Gmail using the iPhone’s browser, instead of seeing a long string of characters, you will see the actual like this 235 2nd St, San Francisco, CA 94105. The address is hyper-linked and when clicked on will launch Google Maps showing the location of our HQ office.

Smart Links is part of GoogleMobile’s Interative Webapp series that focus on developing and enhancing Gmail features specifically for the iPhone and Android-powered devices.

Currently, Smart Links supports four types of links: Google Maps address queries, Google Maps directional queries (with one destination), Google Sites Web pages, and links to YouTube videos. It’s available only in English and, for now, only works with e-mails composed in plain text format.

In the future, Smart Links will also work with more link types, such as Google Docs, according to GoogleMobile.

There’s nothing you have to do to use this feature other than checking your Gmail account via the Web browser on an iPhone/iPod Touch (running OS 2.2.1 or later) or an Android-powered device.

Note that you need to use the mobile browser to take advantage of this feature, other mail clients, such as the iPhones Mail app, don’t support it.

I tried the new feature with on my iPhone 3GS and it worked very well. However, I wish it also supported e-mails formatted in rich text or HTML formats. That would make it more useful as most e-mails are sent using these formats.

Without Smart Link, this is how the original link looks.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Originally posted at Crave

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