Blogs about iphone:
Remember When?
Remember the time before cell phones, when you couldn't be instantly contacted by everyone in the world? Remember a time when answering the phone meant identifying who you were, not where you were?
iPhone Passcode Tips
Every six months, I hate my iPhone for a few days. My company (which does pay for the iPhone) demands that I change the passcode - which unlocks the phone before you can use it - every 6 months.
I use the iPhone for many many things - calendar, shopping list, to-do list, contact information, notes for tomorrow's meeting. I unlock it, without hyperbole, a dozen times every day. Entering the passcode is automatic - I can enter it without thinking. Except for when the passcode changes, and I have to learn a new sequence of numbers just to get to my to-do list. I find it a great frustration, and I'm not sure if the security value is worth it.
I have discovered a few setting changes so that I don't have to enter the passcode quite as often:
- Go to Settings, and then General.
- Change Auto-Lock to a longer setting, such as 3 Minutes. This is the amount of inactivity that the iPhone will suffer before going to sleep and requiring a passcode. The effect of changing from 1 minute to 3 minutes was huge for me.
- (Go back to the main settings. Choose Passcode Lock and enter your passcode. Set Require passcode to something longer like 5 minutes. This is the amount of idle time between being off and then on again that the iPhone will allow before requiring a passcode. As before, this small change makes a huge difference in how many times per day that I enter my passcode.
It seems to me that the secret to iPhone happiness lies in configuring its settings just so.
The Saga of the iPhone.
I used to have a plain old cellular phone. For $25 a month, I got 100 minutes a month, and was able to call people when I needed to. I never went over that 60 minutes. I rarely sent text messages and I never sent pictures.
Last fall, I noticed a few 12 cent charges on of my monthly cell phone bill. After a few calls and lots of time on hold, Verizon said that someone else had entered my phone number as their call forwarding number, and Verizon would happy reverse the charges since it wasn't my doing. But there was no way they could prevent those charges from happening. There was no way I wanted to call them every month, and I didn't need the cell phone that badly, so I figured I'd save myself the $25 and ditch the personal cell phone entirely.
I told my boss that I would be ditching my personal cell phone. He's only needed me outside of business hours once in 4 years. He hated the mere idea of not being able to contact me at a moment's notice, so a brand new iPhone arrived for me just a few days later.
Now, I have an iPhone 4 that the office pays for. And an extra $25 a month in my pocket.
Opera Mini on the iPhone.
Those folks at Opera appear to have an abundance of chutzpah. Not only did they port their web browser to the iPhone (it's wicked fast, too), they've also posted a giant timer showing how long it's been since they submitted the app to Apple. (Apple is notorious for not approving apps which duplicate existing iPhone functionality.) The big question is, does it have Flash?
iPhones and Flash.
You think your iPhone will never run Flash? Not quite. It is true that the iPhone won't show Flash when you're surfing the web, and it probably never will. (Though there is a small glimmer of hope).
You will soon be able to port your Flash app into an iPhone app. Scroll down to see that there are already a couple of Flash applications which have been ported and are available in the iTunes store.
For the time being, are you really missing Flash in your iPhone web browsing? (I really do want to know - please leave a comment.)
Here's a little bit of fun where Adobe tried to clear things up, but didn't do such a good job. It's worth a laugh, at the least.
