iPhone Photos between Salt Lake City and St. Louis.

I flew from Salt Lake to St. Louis today and it was great weather for taking photos out the window!  Check it out!  Taken with my iPhone 6; in airplane mode, of course.

Wasatch Front from the North

Mossberg: Some Favorite Apps That Make iPhone Worth the Price

From WSJ - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123801598971341281.html

Highlights:

Despite all the economic misery, the past nine months have been a little like the heady days of the early 1980s when the personal computer was just getting rolling and new software programs were popping up like weeds.

That's because we have a new computing platform, the modern hand-held computer, which is also attracting new software and new functions in droves.

The leader in this phenomenon has been Apple's iPhone, though I expect that this year a few competitors will also begin to attract loads of apps, or widgets. These are small software programs, easily downloaded and purchased, that often connect to the Internet to perform a specific function.

We've seen this before, on a smaller scale, with third-party software for the original Palm platform, for Windows Mobile, and, to a limited extent, for the BlackBerry. But these new apps can be far more sophisticated, and they are appearing at a much faster rate.

Mossberg's list:

• Tweetie ($2.99)
• Facebook (free)
• Kindle (free)
• ICE (99 cents)
• Easy Wi-Fi ($2.99)
• ReaddleDocs ($9.99)
• Quordy ($2.99)
• Google Mobile (free)
  

Dilbert from March 10th

I don't think I am this bad. Yet.

Breaking Apple's Grip on the iPhone

An interesting read from the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629876097346481.html

How open should software be for the iPhone? It lacks a lot of obvious features it could easily have, as illustrated by the number (1.7 million?) of jailbroken iPhones out there. I am tempted to install the Cydia software on mine from time to time, but frankly, the idea that this voids the warranty or that the software might be illegal does bother me enough that I have not done it yet.

MotionX-GPS for the iPhone

I took my first hike today in a long while. My son, Alan, went with me and I tried out the GPS feature built into the iPhone for the first time in any serious way. I bought MotionX-GPS at the iTunes app store and tried it out on the hike. It is a pretty neat feature and works very well with the iPhone.

One disadvantage is the battery use. It was a short hike and I started with the battery at about 75%. By the time we were at the turn-back point 1:15 later the battery was at 25%. I probably could've done much better by turning off the 3G and some other features, but this was still a significant drain on the battery. Undoubtedly much of the drain is due to the app being in contact with either cell phone towers or GPS satellites almost constantly. This produces really cool tracks, but they may not be worth it for longer hikes. If I am going to use this for longer hikes or backpacking, I will have to turn off the phone between stops and only take waypoints.

You can either take just waypoint data, or you can also take a snapshot of the spot using the iPhone's camera. This automatically sets a waypoint at the same time. Once you are done you can email yourself the waypoints and/or the track data. These come in .gpx and .kmz formats, the latter of which imports easily into Google Earth.

A sample kmz file with both the track and the waypoints from today's hike can be found at this link . The file is 1121K in size and includes photos taken with most of the waypoints.

All-in-all the app worked great. As long as I am willing to strictly manage the battery drain I think this is a suitable substitute for a stand-alone handheld GPS. At least for the type and amount of hiking I plan on doing.

An Interesting Article on Ebooks and the iPhone

From the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13109596

"Might e-books be approaching the moment of take-off, akin to Apple’s launch of the iTunes store in 2003, which created a new market for legal music downloads?"

Using the iPhone

I got the income tax refund this last Friday and I went and bought myself a new iPhone 3G. I already have At&T service and was up for a phone upgrade, but it was expensive nonetheless. I've been getting to know it since then and have the following observations.

Things I Dislike:

1) The battery charge does not last very long. This is well-known, but it is surprizing how quickly it depletes. I've discovered that if I turn off the 3G, GPS, and other bells and whistles when I am not using them, the battery does quite well. Since it is pretty easy to turn these on when I need them, I expect the battery life to be adequate. The phone came with a car charger and that may help.

2) The phone will not take videos. It takes decent still shots for a camera phone, but won't do video. There are some 3rd party apps that will allow you to shoot video, but they require "jailbreaking" the iPhone and most likely void the warranty. This seems a very odd omission.

3) It does not come with multimedia messaging. That is, you cannot send photos or other such things to other people's phones. Fortunately, there are free apps available that allow you to do this, you just need to download them from the iTunes store.

4) The phone uses alot more data than a regular 3G phone, so the coverage is $30 per month for unlimited data, as opposed to the $15 per month with my old phone. This seems a bit steep to me, but I did agree to pay for it, so it must be worth it.

Things I Like:

1) I love the seemless integration of my email through BYU's MS Exchange Server. It took a little while figuring out how to configure it. I'm sure BYU's tech guys could've told me how to do it in a few minutes, but it was the weekend and I didn't want to wait. You have the option of syncing your contacts and calendars when you sync the iPhone over its USB connection or wirelessly the same way you sync your email. Beware if you switch from one method to the other all the old contacts are erased and rewritten. You won't lose any information, but all your custom ringtones will need to be reset.

2) I love the photo storage. In fact I will probably use it as much or more than I will the music player. Uploading is simple and the screen size is big enough to see things very clearly.

3) I like all the extra apps. I am hoping to try out some of the GPS apps on my next hike or campout just to see how much it helps. The free apps only give your coordinates, but if you have a good topographic map of the area that helps a ton.

4) I like all the internet specific apps that are available. I've already installed the ones for Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Pandora Radio. They speed things up greatly over using the standard Safari browser that comes with the phone.

Overall I am very glad I bought the phone and think it will turn out to be a good purchase.