Posts Tagged ‘iphone’

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iPhone 5 Launch Event Scheduled for October 4th 2011 – Let’s Talk iPhone

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
The invite for the Apple "Let's Talk iPhone" event

The invite for the Apple "Let's Talk iPhone" event

It looks as though the long awaited launch of the iPhone 5 is finally almost upon us. Apple have been sending out invitations to a special event that will take place next Tuesday at 6pm UK time. The invite says the event is called “Let’s talk iPhone” and so it is very likely to be the time that the latest incarnation of the worlds most popular smartphone is revealed to the world.

Obviously there is an awful lot of hype and rumour surrounding the new device which most people thought would be launched back in June. The launch event will be headed up by Aplle’s new CEO Tim Cook following Steve Jobs stepping down as CEO earlier this year. Many people will be looking to see if Apple will be steering a new course under their new captain. I doubt this to be the case though as Tim Cook had long been thought to be Jobs’ eventual successor.

One other rumour is that the event will also be used to launch Facebook’s iPad app and also a revamped version of its iPhone app. Apple and Facebook do seem to be getting cosier and cosier with each other. This is probably mainly due to them both having a common competitor in Google. For Apple the challenge is to keep selling more iPhone handsets and this is threatened by the ever increasing market share that Google’s Android mobile operating system has. Meanwhile Facebook are facing some real competition from Google+, the new social networking site from Google.

One commonly held belief is that the launch will take place on October 4th and the new iPhone 5 will be available in both the UK and the US from October 15th. There are suggestions that the new model will have a teardrop shape when viewed in profile.  It may also be the case that the iPhone 5 will have closer integration with iCloud, allowing you to store music, photos, apps and calendars and then push the data to multiple devices.

The wait is nearly over and I am sure that all will be revealed next week.

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Windows Phone 7 Update Went Well

Friday, April 8th, 2011
20110408-215437.jpg

My phone of choice in May, Windows Phone 7

OK, I admit it, I own a Windows Phone 7. It’s an LG Optimus 7 if you really want to know, and just for the record I love it! I have an iPhone for personal use and an Android phone (Nexus One) for work, but secretly I love my Windows phone. The camera is far better than either of the other two, and it has a separate button onthe side to activate it, which is a real improvement on either of the other two major players in the smartphone market.

This evening I decided it really was time I agreed to allow the update that the phone has been quietly reminding me about for the last month. I have read one or two horror stories about this online and so had a little trepidation about starting this process. How did it go? Pretty smoothly.

I had to first install the Zune software that handles the updates. Zune, for those that don’t know is a sort of Microsoft version of iTunes. The interface is much better than iTunes though. I was pleasantly surprised to find that all my iTunes purchases play through Zune. The update took about 10 minutes, not 23 as my laptop suggested. This was particularly encouraging as I must have one of the slowest Internet connections in the UK, let’s not get me started on that again!
The update went through without a hitch and I can now, among other things, copy and paste on my Windows phone. I have also now added my music library to my phone and am debating whether to pay £8.99 a month for a Zune pass that will give me unlimited downloads from their music repository.

There is a free two week pass to they it out and I think when my programming schedule calms down in a couple of weeks I might give it a whirl. In fact I think thatnin May I will make the LG Optimus 7 my main phone for a month to really give it thence over. I also have the perfect companion to go along with it as you can see in the pic.
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A is for Apple, B is for BBC, C is for Conflict

Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Apple and BBC iPlayer Logo

Is the BBC afraid of being devoured by Apple?

I have been getting to know my Apple iPad over the last couple of weeks and also upgraded my Apple iPhone to iOS 4.3.1. One of the features of this upgrade is Apple’s Airplay which allows me to connect either device via WiFi to my Apple TV box and stream media through it. This is useful for video that has been shot on either device and it also allows content from certain sites to be streamed onto your TV via Apple TV.

While the iPad is a fantastic media player it can be advantageous to be able to stream content to a TV sometimes when there are a group of you all trying to cram round the iPad to watch, say a YouTube video.  I was really disappointed to find that content from the BBC provided via the BBC iPlayer cannot be streamed.

I missed last Sunday’s “Wonders of the Universe” with Professor Brian Cox and thought I could catch up with it online and stream it through my TV. Well sadly this is not allowed. I am not sure if it is being blocked by Apple or the BBC but I can only think it is by the BBC who are happy for you to catch up with shows you may have missed online but do not want you to gain the full TV experience at the same time.

I have spoken to a number of people about this and one suggested that maybe the Beeb where concerned that if people could watch stuff online any time then it would lead to a dip in TV sales. This could prove disasterous for the funding of the BBC who rely on a licence fee paid by every household that owns one or more TV sets. My counter argument is that if anything this would be less likely to lead to a dip in sales as you would be able to watch your favourite programs when you wanted on the medium that it was really designed to be viewed upon.

Another suggestion was that the BBC may be concerned about the impact on viewing figures. These are currently calculated based on people watching a program when it is broadcast. However, peoples viewing habits are changing. With the onset of DVR’s, Sky Plus and cable stations we are now more able to watch what we want, when we want rather than having to watch a program when it is transmitted.

In the last decade there was a sea change in the way that music charts were calculated. They now take into account of sales of music on download as well as CD and vinyl. We do not base our top 10 on vinyl sales anymore and yet we seem to be doing the equivalent with TV viewing.

One possible solution would be to take into account the number of people who have played a program via a TV station player. This would be relatively easy to implement. When a TV program is viewed online information can be collected from the browser to say what has been watched, how many times it has been watched on that machine etc. You could even tell if the program has been watched through to the end to get feedback on what programs work the best. It is possible that TV companies are already tracking this sort of information already. In my scenario all the views of a show that were watched between Sunday and the following Saturday would be counted. This would be likely to swell viewing figures rather than diminish them.

Perhaps now is the time for TV channels to change the way that they view their output over the airwaves. As people change their viewing habits and move to a more On-Demand society then maybe it is now time for TV stations to look at how they interact with consumers. Rather than seeing a TV station as the pinnacle of programming perhaps they should adopt a different model in which the TV channel is merely a shop window of the content that they can provide. Sure, they will put the content out first on TV, but then have the facility for those that missed it for whatever reason to be able to catch up through streaming direct to their TV set. This could be just the thing that our TV channels need to adopt in order for them to still remain relevant in an ever increasingly connected society.

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Google plays a trick on smartphone users?

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
This only works if you have a smartphone. Go to Google and type in either “tilt” or “askew”. You might be surprised with the results page that is displayed. Looks like somebody in Mountain View had some fun last Friday! Undoubtedly this was an April Fool, it works on iPhone’s and Android but not on Windows Phone 7 or the iPad. So it looks like the page checks which browser you are using and then if it is either an iPhone or Android phone works it magic. My question is did they do it with CSS or HTML 5? If you have any theories on how they achieved this I’d love to hear them.
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Weekly Round Up 19th March 2011

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

This is the first in a new series I will be adding to the Blog in which I give a quick once over to some of the more interesting stories I have come across in the preceding week with a link through to the original article. Feel free to leave your comments about each story that has been in the news.

iPhone 5 to have Near Field Communication(NFC)?

iPhone 5 rumoured to be getting NFC technology

Will you soon be able to make payments using your iPhone?

Rumours are gathering pace that the iPhone 5 may have NFC (Near Field Communication). This is the system that allows pinless payment transactions to take place. At the moment the only major company offering this type of service in the UK are Barclaycard. You are able to make a payment by simply holding your NFC enabled credit card close to the payment terminal and do not need to enter a PIN number. The transaction is automatic. Barclaycard currently limit the maximum payment amount using this technology to £15.00. This suggests that they are minimising the risk of fraudulant transactions that could take place. Will this be a good technology to use in the iPhone? Possibly, at the recent SXSW conference in Austin Texas one of the most popular apps in use was one named “Uber”. This allows users to hail a cab from their iPhone. Cab drivers with the Uber app receive updates that somebody is waiting to be picked up and they can go and collect the user. The user then pays for the cab ride within the app. While this is not NFC technology the fact that so many people were prepared to use it would suggest that there is a demand for this type of transaction. One other point is that NFC technology makes payments easier and therefore is likely to lead to increased sales. Who remembers student days where you felt if you paid by card rather than cash it was like you had not really spent anything?

http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-5-might-have-nfc-chip-after-all-2011-3?op=1
European Union Warns US Giants They Must Comply With Upcoming Privacy Laws
The European Union has told companies such as Google and Facebook that they must comply with soon to be implemented data privacy laws or face court action. One the new rules will be a users “right to be forgotten”. This means that you would not only be able to deactivate an account on Facebook as you can now but can actually delete the account and in the process remove all images of yourself. This sounds like a good idea, but implementing it may be a nightmare. Deleting photos that you have uploaded to Facebook is one thing, but what if you have been tagged in a photo uploaded by somebody else? Does that person have to delete their picture of you? Another development is the fact that tracking cookies must be explicitly accepted by a user before they can be set on your machine. Google Analytics stores five separate tracking cookies on a users machine. This legislation, due to be introduced at the end of May could have profound implications on the accuracy of data from Google Analytics. However do not panic just yet. The European Union’s justice chief has already said that the laws will not be fully implemented upon introduction and companies will be given time to comply with the new regulations.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110317-151000
Curebit Adds Social Media to Online Shopping
Curebit is a new social service that will integrate with many shopping carts and provides the ability to generate sales through social media sharing. The quick pitch for how the service works is as follows. A user makes a purchase from a site, when the order is placed the user receives an on screen referral offer. The user is given the option to share the offer with their friends via social media. If those friends purchase something via the link then the original user is credited with something such as cashback or a discount.
http://mashable.com/2011/03/17/curebit/
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Two Web Design Fundamentals

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
Web designer planning a project

Planning your project properly will save you time

Today has been one of those really busy days where one minute it is 08:30am and the next it seems to 21:00 hours. I am currently working on a web based bespoke programming solution for a client and it is one of those jobs where you really appreciate how much planning can help a project run smoothly.

Without going into too much detail and breaching the clients confidentiality what at first appears to be a site needing about 20 pages does in fact require somewhere in the region of about 150 pages by the time you have worked through all the “minor” functionality that the site will need such as a reset password page.
The database itself is relatively simple and did not require a lot of effort to normalise the data.
At the moment I am focussing on the back office functionality. It has been secured and the pages are starting to roll out. It is however very functional and I have not really considered anything about the eventual look and feel of the site so that I can focus on making the site work before applying a bespoke template and stylesheet to the site.
I have also this evening finished off a design for another clients site. I say finish off, what I actually meant was started over. I spent a couple of hours working on the design last night and I am not ashamed to say that I have had a real block with coming up with something suitable for this site. Finally I started to feel that things were coming together. I had changed the logo, the colour scheme, the layout of the menu, you name it and I had changed it.
I looked at it and thought to myself “It might not be perfect but it’s a lot better than it was earlier”. I was content with the design if not necessarily completely happy with it. Then disaster struck and my PC froze. There were phrases such as “Oh dear” and “Gosh, that’s rather inconvenient”, or words to that effect as I realised I could not save the design. Having racked my brain for what I could do, I even considered taking a picture of the screen with the camera on my iPhone to at least give me some idea of everything I had changed, I eventually sloped off to bed feeling rather dejected.
I left the PC on over night hoping that it might sort itself out during the night and I could save my work in the morning. Duly the sun rose today and I sprang out of bed, showered and then went into my office to see if I could rescue my work. Alas I could not save it. The design was still there on my screen and I felt that my PC was in some way taunting me. I did the only thing that I could, took a deep breath and turned the PC off and then on again.
The bright light that shone out of this is that this evening I was able to recreate the design from scratch and indeed made a number of improvements. I was grateful that I had been writing the colours that I used down on paper and so I could get the look and feel back to how I wanted it.
There are two lessons that any aspiring web developer can learn from my experience today:
1. Make sure that you plan your projects properly. The time it takes you to paln things properly will be more than compensated by the fact that you will run into far fewer unexpected situations when you do start to code.
2. Make sure you save your work regularly.
By following these very simple rules not only will your jobs run more smoothly it will probably help prevent you from suffering from high blood pressure!
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App Review: Vlingo (iPhone & Android)

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Vlingo on the iPhone

Vlingo on the iPhone

Vlingo is a nifty little app that allows you to search the web, update social networks, write texts and emails using your voice as the input method. The way it works is that the first word you utter tells the app what you want to do. For example, if you say “Search Freelance Web Design Blackburn” then the app will search for freelance web designers in Blackburn. You can also choose which search engine the app will use, Google, Bing or Yahoo.

I have been playing with this app for about five days and have found it to be really useful. I am getting to that point in life where my fingers have started to press two keys instead of one on my smartphone keyboard and so the ability to not have to type is fantastic.
I do find that you have to speak slowly and clearly but even so the voice recognition software has virtually no trouble understanding my Lancashire accent. My main use has been to use Vlingo to update Facebook and Twitter. I have learnt that the longer you speak for the more likely Vlingo is to make mistakes in its voice recognition. However, if you keep things short and sweet (can you do anything else with Twitter?) then it is very accurate. Vlingo displays it’s interpretation of your commands in a text box allowing you the opportunity to amend the text if it has made a mistake before you post your update to the world.
The app is freemium. The free version allows you to search the web, update Facebook and Twitter. The paid version also allows you to send texts and emails. The cost is £3.99 for either text or email or £5.99 for both.
There is a syntax that you need to get the hang of to really get the most out of this app but it is worth the effort. Vlingo is a great app and one that I would thoroughly recommend.
Vlingo is available from both the Apple App Store and the Android Marketplace.
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App Review: Cover Orange (iPhone & iPad)

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
Cover Orange for iPhone and iPad

Best Game of 2011... So Far!

Every now and again there comes along a game that really gets its hooks into the general population. In the run up to Christmas that game was Angry Birds. In the early part of 2011 then surely that game would be Cover Orange.

Cover Orange is made by FDG and follows a simple premise you have one or more oranges that you have to prevent getting rained on by a toxic cloud. It is a combination of platform and puzzle game. You must ensure that all your oranges are under some form of shelter. To help you with this you are given a set number of items such as a crate, wheel and oil drum. These items appear one at a time and you have to drop them onto the playing area below. Positioning is all important. Crates and oil drums are useful for forming the walls and roof of a shelter while a wheel can be used to set an orange rolling in order to get it into position.
Words do this game no justice at all. Everything about this game is good. The oranges look very cute (I never thought that would be something I would ever type). The music is infectious and will run round in your head for days. The levels balance out well between easy ones to help you learn new techniques and some fairly fiendish ones that take a bit of brain power to figure out exactly what order and where you need to dsrop your items to make sure your oranges are safe. The oranges are always very grateful when you do save them and when you don’t? They sould like a guy with Manflu.
The free version has 120 levels and the paid verion doubles this. Believe me when you’ve played the free version you will be frothing at the mouth to get your hands on the new levels. There is currently a  free bonus version out with a Valentines day theme that gives you 10 more levels to try.  The graphics are smooth and the physics engine is very good. You do need to keep your eyes peeled sometimes as you may find something like a small ramp that will give a wheel a bit of extra momentum when dropped on it to move your orange a little quicker. On various levels there are bombs. Bombs can be very beneficial, the explosion launching an orange over an obstacle, but if your orange is too close then it will get blown up.
This is definately my favourite game of the year so far, give it a go and let me know what you think.
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iPhone Security Breach

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
iPhone security breach

Bad Guys can take advantage of a security breach in iOS 4.1 and 4.2 Beta to use your iPhone to call, text and email

Earlier today I read an article that advised users of the iPhone running iOS 4.1 and 4.2 Beta that even with a passcode on your phone it was possible to bypass the code to make a call. The way this works is that you need to go to the Emergency Call screen enter any number (not 999 or 911 or whatever your local emergency call number is), press the green call button and immediately press the power button. Surely enough when you do this you are taken through to the phone option on that device. You can then either dial one of the user’s contacts or use the keypad to dial another number.

However, not only can you then make a call but you also have access to the users contact list and can also send emails. This can be achieved by accessing a contact and then selecting Share Contact. Next choose email and you now are into the users email client. Though you cannot access their emails you can send emails to whoever you like.

You can also use the same Share Contact option to send an MMS. This then lets you text another number.

You will also have the ability to listen to and delete any voicemails that the user may have. I know I have just done it to myself.

You cannot get out of the phone again until you have attempted to make a call from within the breach. When the call is disconnected you are taken back to the Enter Passcode screen. You can, of course, repeat this procedure as many times as you like. From now on if I lose my phone I will not be relying on the fact that it has a passcode on it to protect myself and would advise anybody with an iPhone 3G, 3GS or 4 to contact their carrier immediately if they lose their phone and have it blocked to prevent the possibility of some bad guy making full use of your contract.

This seems a fairly major security breach and I flaw how long it will take Apple to patch it.

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New Facebook Places Launched, but do you get it?

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Facebook announces launch of geo location service Facebook PlacesFacebook have announced a geo-location feature for the worlds most popular social network. It will allow you to check in to locations very like other geo services like Gowalla and Foursquare. In fact both of these companies were at the launch and talked about their plans to integrate further their products with Facebook. You will also be able to tag places as well as people in photographs. The fact that you can tag a person to a place has already raised privacy concerns.

Facebook released a new version of Facebook for the iPhone, which I downloaded this morning. Unfortunately the new service is being rolled out to users over time and needless to say that Blackburn has not been part of the initial roll out. So I know that Facebook Places exists, but cannot do anything with it yet. There is no update to the Android version of Facebook and I am reliably informed that the BlackBerry version has not been updated either. Nor can I see it in a browser on either my laptop or the touch version on my Nexus One. In short, I’ve got it, but I can’t get it!

I currently use both Gowalla and Foursquare, but I am the only person out of my circle of friends to do so, most of who are on Facebook so it will be interesting to see whether they adopt this new feature. Personally I think that they will. The reason they have not used Foursquare or Gowalla is doubt to ignorance of their existence. By having the facility within Facebook it will allow them to take advantage of the service without having to go to any other sites.

So I guess this is the real reason that Facebook are doing this. If you can keep people on your site for longer you stop them using other services. If you can stop them using other services you start to gain control of the Net in general. If you can control the part of the Net people are accessing then you can charge a premium rate for advertising in that space. At the launch yesterday Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that they had no plans to monetise Facebook Places. He won’t need to, if things go his way then he will be able to bring in more advertising to Facebook in general.

Slightly off topic, I noticed that after I updated the iPhone Facebook App that when I update a status there is a little padlock icon under the input box that allows me to choose who I share this status with, Friends only, Friends of Friends, Everybody. Good little addition I thought. It is also on the main Facebook site, but as I tend to only access FB through my phone I do not know if this is new or has been there a while.

Will you be using Facebook Places? Can you use Facebook Pages? Leave me a comment and let me know.

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