iPhone apps S/D

this is really dorky (on iphone apps thread lol) but has anyone tried the crossword puzzles one, where you can download the day's puzzles from the NYT and other papers?

snapshot: home button and top button together. presumably not for too long, as i think that's a hard reset.

hm. Jules' MacBook just has a remote control.

with way, way less functionality, and you have to be in line of sight of the laptop, too. no good for changing music completely, or changing speakers, or...

this is all very fun but the sidekick did this app store deal years ago

There seem to be a *lot* more apps that are US-only. Hmph.

ok, lack of background apps sucks! was just 3 mins into a 20 min track on last.fm, get a phonecall, have to restart somewhere different.

on a related note I used my iPhone + Yelp to find delicious tacos

you fucking live in new york goddamn city you moron
this is like saying I just used night vision goggles and a dowsing rod to find my wallet

My friend gave me incorrect directions to a taco place he didn't know the name of so I hit "restaurants near me" and found it. Carne asada and pollo verde ftw btw

re toby / Apps should be smart enough to have some sort of "checkpoint state" mechanism.

Psyched for the last.fm appp

OMG iPhone 2.0 lightsaber fight at my office

so why is my battery running flat a lot faster than it did before(100% -> 0% in about 8 1/2 hours). I havent been looking at too many apps, only two calls and no SMS? Is it AIM?

Yeh, apps are given warning before they're quit, and should use it to save state

my friend's complaints lol:

# It's an incredibly shitty phone and typifies all the things I hate about mac zealottry: people complain about X Apple product all the time as though it's the only option out there -- it's "so much better" than anything else. It's simply not true. The phone doesn't have gchat, it doesn't copy and paste, the battery lasts a day if your lucky, significantly less if you're actually using the phone, the camera function sucks, there's no video, you have to either manually check your email or pay mac extra for the service of having new emails pushed to your phone. This service also syncs up an array of desktop applications, which would be useful, except I almost exclusively use web based things like gcalendar and flickr so I don't have to worry about such things. Of course, none of these things work on the phone.
# connection speed: not bad - the blackberries I've used are much slower on this front.
# apps. This does distinguish the phone and probably makes it worthwhile to own. My understanding of the apps based on my experience using the phone: Websites optimize their display and functionality for the iphone, and you download these applications for the phone. Once there are a bunch of these out there, it will make using the web on this phone much much easier. Some may even make your phone cheaper.
# GPS. Haven't used it. Read a review that said it sucked, and one refuting it. It's not a huge deal for me since I don't own a car and you don't exactly need to be a rocket scientist to figure out which way is north in manhattan.
# Music. So it plays mp3s too....

I wish the last.fm app would allow scrobbling. I thought they'd get a wrist-slap for putting preferences in with the system, but it looks like that's allowed since the NYTimes app and AIM one do it. I haven't checked, but apparently the API doesn't have triggers for music data or something?

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2008/07/12/iphone-third-party-settings/

lol try clicking on that link, caek

I wish the last.fm app would allow scrobbling

what the fuck is the point of a last.fm app that doesn't?

i know there was mobilescrobbler for jailbroken v1s ... any news on that for 2.0?

my brief experiences so far: shazam failed on the VERY FIRST HURDLE, ie "on me not in me" by earl brutus. but it knew "navyhead" and it got "lose him" by i start counting, so tick tick pretty good. martin galway's "ocean loader" confused the shit out of it; it redeemed itself by being able to differentiate between different recordings of "senses" by new order.

lightsaber thing: :D

also: no oblique strategies yet? boo.

shazam rules. i found out the name of a song that plays over our work PA and drives me freakin crazy. Now I can hate it by name!

Proper GPS on the way. Probably.

Paying $15 for iToner is kind of redic.

-- Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃

but it's 99 cents per ringtone

shazam will suck once it's $10 per month or whatever it's going to be.

lol try clicking on that link, caek

-- HI DERE, Monday, 14 July 2008 23:05 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

that's a bug in nu-ILX URL-parsing. it doesn't understand URLs that end in slashes. luckily URLS rarely end in -- oh, wait.

Took my new telco 21 hours to provision me, two days after the launch. That's how nuts it is here.

There's a really nice app for instapaper, that lets you read any webpage offline.

why pay for iToner when you can make ringtones for free in GarageBand?

i don't know how to do that

it is a little confusing but it is also free, so i adapted

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1358

(drag the song from iTunes into Garageband first)

I am feeling left out by not buying into the iPhone. I think the Blackberry Thunder is potentially a better phone (haptic feedback screen and everything) but the applications will suck by comparison. (Can do copy and paste though).

Anyway shan't be buying a new phone for at least 6 months and probably 18.

Does the AIM app do chats?

-- Autumn Almanac, Sunday, 13 July 2008 09:36 (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

Someone please answer a poor bastard who's on the raincheck list

hmm. can't get the iTunes remote thing to work at all -- it simply doesn't display as a device in iTunes. software firewall's off so it can't be that, preferences are right ... any suggestions?

i know other people have had this problem but i can't find any answers to it yet.

hmm. it's not my router firewall, either -- tried disabling that, but no dice.

i'm beginning to get really, really fucking pissed off with apple.

That happened to me too grimly. In the end I fixed it by reinstalling bonjour, then rebooting.

bonjour?! fucking hell, i didn't even know bonjour was involved at any stage.

TBH i'm putting it down to having a non-intel mac running 10.4.11 :/

(i mean: i have ABSOLUTELY NO NEED or desire for a remote controller for iTunes. it would be pretty much less than useless. but i'd STILL LIKE IT TO FUCKING WORK :))

Okay, I downloaded Midomi and "sang" Bring The Noize, Public Enemy style, all the way from Bass! to Terminator X

How come you never do this shit around me?

Have you ever asked?

I sing Beeps Bring The Noize in the bath all the time altered to "Once again back is the incredible, the rhyme animal, the incredible BEEPS!"

:-D

pandora is pretty great for a free app, the database/matching has gotten a lot better. however, it's already frozen up on me a few times, usually when i left it paused for a few minutes

has anyone tried a project/life organizer type app yet?

Things looks pretty nice, OmniFocus too but it's expensive and ott GTD. I just care about lists, and My Lists does them pretty well, but with shitty icons.

i was already using omnifocus when i got the iphone and i love the omnifocus iphone app. i'm not sure how much omnifocus costs right now but i got it for ~$20 as a prerelease purchase because i'd already bought omnigraffle, omnioutliner and omniplan. $20 for the iphone app on top of that seems very reasonable. i'm not sure i would be so jazzed about spending $100 for the two together, though!

the thing is its very slow for anything other than entering tasks into the inbox and checking tasks off. i wouldn't want to build projects in it. i just check stuff off as i "get it done" (ho ho) outside the house and sort of drop stuff in the inbox. when i get home it's already all sync'd up usually and i can use the inspectors in the desktop version to really quickly assign due dates and contexts and just generally clean stuff up.

if i already had omnifocus i would definitely get the iPhone app to go with it. i already feel the same way about ical - like having it with you in your phone all the time makes the original app about 500x better.

I would consider an iPhone if Devon would produce Devon Think for it.

I've been using midomi to find good trance songs by making them up

the thing is its very slow for anything other than entering tasks into the inbox and checking tasks off. i wouldn't want to build projects in it. i just check stuff off as i "get it done" (ho ho) outside the house and sort of drop stuff in the inbox. when i get home it's already all sync'd up usually and i can use the inspectors in the desktop version to really quickly assign due dates and contexts and just generally clean stuff up.

This is good to know. I might try out Things, then.

How well does the "location aware" task list work?

i haven't even tried it yet because i just moved and that's not really how my contexts are organized.

TBH, i find the idea sort of confusing because i had always thought that the point of a context list was to be intentionally vague. my contexts are "on the phone" (ie while driving, ha), "running errands", "at work" and "at home".

if i had a context list that looked like "safeway on lomas santa fe", "safeway on el camino real", "whole foods on la jolla village dr", "whole foods on university", etc etc then i might as well just use a pad & paper, right?

Yeah, I couldn't follow the video. they seemed to suggest that you'd have a context called "Grocery" and it'd know when you were near any store, which doesn't sound right.

i just wonder how it might make sense to use it. i guess it might make more sense if i had a job like, i dunno, process server or traveling salesman or something where i had to spend all day every day driving all over town, and i might forget to do this one errand or other while i am in a random part of town. but if there is some task that requires more than 10 minutes travel, then with gas prices being what they are there is no way that i wouldn't already be going to the trouble of scheduling things on top of one another so that i can save trips.

Yeah, I couldn't follow the video. they seemed to suggest that you'd have a context called "Grocery" and it'd know when you were near any store, which doesn't sound right.

the yellowpages app is pretty good for this, actually. i can search for "office supplies" and use "location" and it gives me a list of stores arranged by distance or by alphabetical name. already came in handy a few times for finding things like ATMs and drugstores.

i guess yelp would be good too but i don't really trust the yelp reviewers. worst of my generation, i think.

apologies to steve shasta, jon, etc.

midomi thought mrs fiendish's utterly tuneless, can't-be-fucked-why-am-i-doing-this version of "somewhere over the rainbow" was either frente's cover of "bizarre love triangle" or, umm, "wish you were here" by pink floyd.

i like midomi.