In March of this year Apple applied for a patent on technology that enables or disables features of a phone via a config file. The tech is already in use: it’s the carrier profiles we’ve been downloading recently. On the one hand this is just an extension of the parental controls that Apple has included in Mac OS X since the early days, but it also implies some rather anti-consumer thinking at the company.

One examplar claim in the patent is that the config file can include a “blacklist of device resources to be restricted from access.”

AT&T used this this technology to block MMS until recently, and uses it now to block tethering, but the description given in the patent application goes much further:

For example, a carrier may wish to provide an enhanced service which utilizes the global positioning system (GPS) functionality in a mobile device. Carrier may wish to charge a premium for this service, so it may configure carrier provisioning profile to disallow third party applications from accessing the GPS functionality in device, and instead only allow applications digitally signed by carrier (or another entity affiliated with carrier) to access the GPS services in device.

Readers may remember the Trusted Computing video by Lutz Vogel and Benjamin Stephan that spotlighted the growing interest within the computing industry to impose new and artificial restrictions on the way we use the hardware and software we use daily.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With AT&T facing lawsuits for not delivering MMS features at the iPhone 3GS launch, they kind of had to do something. I’m not sure if I’d be satisfied by this video if I were among the plaintiffs, but I think it does a good enough job. The stat about 300% annual increases in mobile data use is pretty powerful. I’d heard it a dozen times before*, but because I wasn’t in Austin for SXSW iPhone meltdown, I don’t have quite the same appreciation as some do. AT&T added capacity then, and they seem to have been scrambling elsewhere too.

iPhone users are said to be six times as likely as anybody else to watch video on their phones, and if WiFi aggregator JiWire’s report says anything about cell data, the iPhone has certainly changed the game. JiWire’s Mobile Audience Insights Report shows that over 97% of the devices on their network are either iPhones (about 56% of the total) or iPod Touches! And all the way back in 2007 in Britain, iPhone users were 33 times as likely as other phone users to send or receive more than 25MB a month.

It will be interesting to see what happens to other carriers as they get devices that encourage use as the iPhone has.

*Actually, I hadn’t heard the 300% stat specifically, just inspecific reports of increased usage.

Those unwilling to open of their iPhone to adjust the camera focus might take a look at Griffin’s Clarifi, a case with a built-in close-up lens that can slide in our out of place as needed.

Flickr user Meine Ideenecke, meanwhile, has figured out the iPhone camera specifications. He says it’s about 37MM (35MM equivalent), though this source says it’s 27MM.

I spent some time looking for panorama-related apps for the iPhone and came up with the following:

• Panorama by Airshed
• Panoramas by Helix Interactive
• TripStitch by Byteslice Software
• Pano by Debacle Software
• Panoramascope by Phil Endicott
• PanoLab and PanoLab Pro by Originate Lab

I’ve actually played with PanoLab a bit (landscape, portrait) after seeing p0ps Harlow using it.

Option GlobeSurfer X•1 router: “a new product that transforms any USB wireless modem into an instant Internet-connected WiFi network capable of supporting multiple users.” Too bad I can’t figure out where to buy it.

Also too bad that I can’t simply do this with a jail-broked iPhone. I mean, doesn’t an iPhone have everything it needs built-in: a cell-phone modem, WiFi hardware, and enough unixy goodness to support NAT and routing?

Two interesting submissions to the Core77 Business Card Hacks Challenge: earbud speakers and a cord winder.

Native-looking chrome

Set these in the head:

// set a custom icon for when a user bookmarks the app to the home screen
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/path/to/icon.png" /> 
// hide the browser chrome
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" /> 
//set the phone status bar style; can be grey, black, or black translucent
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black" />

Caveats:

• Only works for web pages that have been saved to the home screen and opened from there.
• Portrait mode only.
• Any link will open in new browser tab. Use ajax to keep application to single page, see dashcode templates for examples.

Query this state via js:

window.navigator.standalone

Detect orientation:

<body onorientationchange="updateOrientation();">

Touchable

Touch Events
They’re different from mouse events, so we’ve gotta code differently for them. The sequence works like this:
touchstart -> touchmove -> touchend (or, if a user hits home button touchcancel)

<div ongtouchstart="function();" >

What you get when from that:

event.touches //all
event.targetTouches //this one
event.changedTouches //um...

Touch events track every finger on the screen. Gestures are a higher-level interface to that data.

<div ongesturestart="function();" >

Scale and rotation properties of that gesture are available. I’m not sure if other gestures, such as page flicking, are handled as gestures or touches.

Visually sophisticated

Apple decided that HTML was seriously deficient in the areas of object transformations, transitions, and keyframe animations.

Why render multiple rotated and resized versions of the images you use throughout your app/web page? Loading a single large version of the image may perform better than having to load multiple versions of the image at various sizes, rotations, or skews.

Here are a few options (see previous):

.transformed {
	-webkit-transform: rotate(20deg);
	-webkit-transform-origin: top left;
}

And it can animate transitions between these styles. Specify the transition duration if you like.

#myFlower {
	-webkit-transform: rotate(0deg);
	-webkit-transform: scale(1.0);
	-webkit-transition-duration: 2s;
}
document.getElementById('myFlower').style.webkitTransform = 'rotate(360dev) scale(0.5)'

Other useful properties that you can set:

-webkit-transition-timing-function
-webkit-transition-delay

It gets a lot more exciting with key framed animation. First, define one or more animations:

@-webkit-keyframes 'fall' {
	from{ -webkit-transform: translateY(-50px); }
	to{ -webkit-transform: translateY(600px); }
}
@-webkit-keyframes 'fade' {
	0% { opacity: 100%; }
	75% { opacity: 100%; }
	100% { opacity: 100%; }
}

Then apply those animations to an object or class:

.leaf {
	-webkit-animation-name: 'fall', 'fade';
	-webkit-animation-duration: 10s, 10s;
	-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite, infinite;
	-webkit-animation-timing-function: linear, ease-in;
}

Responsive

Mobile safari supports local database storage as defined in HTML5. Using it improves responsiveness and battery performance.

I’m at Apple’s iPhone Tech Talk in New York today. Info is flowing like water through a firehose, so I’m not going to attempt live blogging, but here are their suggested ingredients for a successful iPhone app:

• Delightful
• Innovative
• Designed
• Integrated
• Optimized
• Connected
• Localized

The picture is of the main theater for the event. It’s by far the most beautiful space I’ve ever been in for a tech conference.

Update: the network was hugely over subscribed at the event, causing a number of network timeouts. That caused some errors while I tried to save posts, but I’ve fixed then now that I’m on a better connection.

Re-imagined a bit, anyway. Why browse a vertical list of results when you can flip through them like pages in a book (or album covers in iTunes). Searchme on the iPhone and iPod touch does just that.

As you type your search term, icons representing rough categories appear, allowing you to target your search and helping people who’re searching for information about pythons the snake avoid results about the programming language. Though, in practice, the category results for “python” include “computer programming”, “web development,” but no obvious category for animals or zoological queries.

The results are displayed in a cover-flow-like interface, with each website represented by a screenshot image. The result is that you can browse through a half-dozen results much faster than you could individually load each page. Unfortunately, the search results are poor compared to Google or Yahoo (to engines I use regularly), and you’ll likely find yourself having to browse a few sites before you find your answer.

Despite these annoyances, and a few bugs, Searchme is a good reminder that new technologies offer new affordances. Cover flow offers a very simple method of exploring a dataset. I’m not convinced that web search results are well suited to it, but I can imagine a few datasets — photo archives, for example — that might be.

Catherine asked me what iPhone apps I recommend, so I went looking. Exposure, WordPress, and Google Mobile App are on the first page of my home screen. Mocha VNC and Band are buried a little deeper, but deserve mention.

I’m surprised to say that Loopt and Whrrl disappointed me. iPint was good for one laugh, but it appears to be gone from the store already. Morocco, a decent copy of Othello/Reversi is the only the game that’s still on my phone. BeatMaker looks interesting, and the comments don’t suggest it has the same slow response tap input (especially with the drum pads) as Band does.

Armin Heinrich’s $999 I Am Rich iPhone app is no longer available on Apple’s app store. Perhaps they felt too ridiculed by The Register to keep it listed? Heinrich says seven people bought it, two by mistake.

So, now what’s the most expensive app?

David Lynch doesn’t like the iPhone. At all. At least not for watching movies. Maybe the guy doesn’t take the subway much.

Will it be a thinner or fatter iPhone? Will it record live video? Will it have a metal cutting laser?

To heck with the iPhone rumors. We know the story, all we’re waiting on are the details. I’m more interested in what we don’t know. What aren’t we expecting? Will there be “one more thing”?

(thanks to roblef for the sweet photo.)

Last weekend, while I was putting an iPod interface into my Scion I did the same thing for my 2002 Honda Civic. Using Ben Johnson’s story as a guide, I bought a PIE HON98-AUX interface and dove in.

Aside from tools (screwdrivers and 8 and 10mm sockets), you’ll need:

• The interface adapter
• Audio wiring — I used a 6′ RCA to 1/8th inch cable from Radio Shack
• Power — I used a Belkin car charger plugged into this 12v extension cord I picked up from Radio Shack

I also recommend a sufficient quantity of good beer or other beverage. I used raspberry wheat for this project.

As I noted in my previous post, most people recommend unhooking the battery to guard against short circuits while doing this sort of thing. For my part, I usually skip that and let a fuse automatically disconnect things when it blows. Either way, though, you’d do well to find your factory radio’s 5 digit security code, as if the power gets disconnected, it won’t work again without it.

Underneath the dashboard is a panel with the car’s only power socket. The panel can be removed with some careful-but-stern pulling around the edges. Five friction clips (two on each side, one on the top center) hold it in place, but by working a flathead screwdriver around the sides I was able to pull it off.

Behind the panel are the screws that hold the dashboard console assembly in place.

With those two screws removed, I was able to push the assembly from behind and ease it out of the dashboard cavity.

Again, however, I had to fight these friction clips that held the top and sides of the assembly in place.

Once the assembly was out, I could plug in the interface adapter into the CD changer port.

I routed the interface adapter’s cable bundle behind the stereo and down to the accessory power panel. There’s enough space behind there for the adapter to sit, but first I wanted to test it.

Unlike the Toyota adapter, the Honda adapter has a separate ground wire. Fortunately, there’s another ground wire screwed in down there behind the 12v jack too.

To power my iPhone, I cut the plug end off the 12v extension cord and tapped it in to the wires leading to the existing 12v socket.

The inline taps are hugely useful.

I fished the cable for both the extension socket and the audio along the center console, hidden behind the plastic on the passenger side. The socket end of the extension emerges from the console at a convenient spot along with the audio cable. My old Belkin car charger plugs in there, the audio cable plugs into the base of it, and the dock-connector cable plugs in to my iPhone. The only thing I have to futz with is the dock connector cable, everything else is out of sight.

People have asked me why I chose to use the low-tech PIE adapter, instead of a smarter one that would allow me to control the iPod from the factory stereo. Up to the time I got my iPhone, I was sure that that was what I wanted, but the message I get every time I plug an old accessory into the dock connector is enough to make me cautious about building infrastructure around the interface. I don’t know what music device I’ll use next, but I would rather not have to take apart my car again to plug it in.

In my next post on this topic, I’ll explain how I replaced the rear speakers in this car.

Based on this story about an iPod interface install I purchased a PIE TOY03-AUX aux input adapter so I could finally listen to my iPhone without using the lousy FM transmitter. Sure, I coulda bought a new car, as the manufacturers seem to have finally come to their senses and started including such inputs, but I refuse to buy another car until I can have one that gets well over 40MPG.

The parts:

Thing is, buying all the parts is the easy part.

The dashboard:

Remove all three knobs and these two screws:

Pull the panel out from the bottom. As the hooks at the top of the panel are released, the panel should move freely:

Be careful of the wires to the A/C, defrost, and hazards. Thinking of electrics, most people recommend unhooking the battery to guard against short circuits while doing this sort of thing. For my part, I usually skip that and let a fuse automatically disconnect things when it blows.

Once the panel is clear, remove the four screws that hold the radio in place (two each side):

With the radio out, the interface adapter plugs in easily. There’s lots of room behind the dash to hide the box, and lots of open space to route the audio cable through.

But why spend so much time on this and still plug the iPhone into the dash’s 12V accessory socket? I wired the extension cable into the existing power. Getting at the wires to the power socket requires removing another panel. Easy enough, but it looks an awful mess:

With the audio cable and the new power jack, I simply plugged in an old Belkin car charger, plugged the audio cable 1/8th inch end into that, and now all I have to do is connect the dock connector to listen to my iPod in the car.

Total time for the job? If you don’t include having to run out for a new fuse, then it’s under an hour.

Aaron Schmidt alerted me to this how to sweetening up your site with fancy iPhone web clip icons.

It was cold. The air carried no scent, ice squeaked under our boots, and every little leaf and twig crinkled and snapped as we walked over it. But this was louder than that. Much louder. Neither Jon nor I saw it actually happen, but when I found Will he was mostly upside down between a boulder and tree. The trail at that point was elevated by some rocks and bordered by pines that grew from the forrest floor some distance below.

After a bit of struggle we removed Will’s 60 pound pack, got him upright, and back to the trail. He had no cuts, and his head didn’t show any signs of injury, but his left arm was about eight inches longer than his right, and he couldn’t move it. More significantly, he was now very much disabled on top of a mountain in November. The sun and temperatures were falling and all of us were at risk of hypothermia if we didn’t act quickly.

I had my iPhone, and it had a signal. I looked up “fix dislocated shoulder” and quickly read the WikiHow article that appeared on top. I passed it on to Jon for a second opinion, and he read it out loud for us all. Will choked on the line “this will not be a comfortable experience, but do not give in to the pain.” And I choked on it a few moments later when I performed the procedure as outlined and felt and heard the snapping like a popsicle stick bent too far. Thankfully, the line “when the shoulder pops back into its joint, relief will come immediately” was true.

We were prepared for a winter night, but not Will’s dislocated shoulder. The iPhone gave us access to the wealth of knowledge available on the web, and that helped us deal with Will’s injury on our own[1]. It was a cold night, and a painful one for Will, but we survived.

1: I often carry my iPhone on hikes, but what might we have done without it? If we had just a regular phone we might have called emergency services, who would have likely dispatched people to climb the mountain to rescue Will. Nobody should be hiking a steep, dark, icy trail. And if we didn’t have any phone? We would have worked from memory, which was informed more by Lethal Weapon than real medical facts. Who knows what harm we might have done to the guy?

I can use my iPhone pretty much anywhere, but ATT is going to charge me $1.30 a minute for calls, $.50 per text, and $.02 per KB for data while in Denmark.

ATT requires international activation but they do offer some tips for international roamers. I bought an international iPhone data plan (20MB for $25), but I also learned that visual voice mail counts against that (regular voice mail counts against minutes, at the $1.30 rate). I could have paid $6 a month to get a discounted voice rate, but I’d have to make 20 minutes of calls for it to pay off. And there’s no plan to give me discounted SMS.

If the news is to be believed, separate teams have found hardware and software-based solutions to unlock an iPhone.

It’s worth noting that all this is legal because of an exemption, much needed and hard fought.

iphone, cell phone, unlock, unlocked, hacked, reverse engineering, circumvention

I’m coming to learn that p0ps has a number of interesting things going on, but it was his panoramas stitched from pictures taken by iPhone that caught my attention first. Above is the J Train somewhere between Fulton and City Hall.

I’d thought the iPhone’s camera was pretty decent, p0ps’ work shows it off.

J Train, panorama, p0ps, photo, iPhone

It’s likely Phil Carrizzi could make a broken tire iron look good, but his series of the iPhone with the Newton Message Pad and eMate is geek-sweet eye candy.

iphone, newton, emate, apple, photo, gallery, pr0n, porn, photos, eye candy

Cliff and Vasken wrote up some link bait complaining about how the iPhone doesn’t meet their expectations or is a lesser competitor to a crackberry. But I challenge them to find a device that offers what they say is missing or even matches what the iPhone has.

Still, I’ve been using mine for a month now, and I can say there are few things it’s missing or could do better. None of them are deal breakers; in fact, it’s only because the device is so generally good that I’ve got any complaints at all. Call me a fanboy if you want, but I’d be interested in hearing from anybody who’s spent significant time with an iPhone who’d rather go back to their old phone.

Like Cliff, I’m frustrated that the built-in GPS isn’t user-accessible or integrated with the Google Maps app, but having used it a lot in my travels recently I can say that the maps are hugely useful even without the GPS. (though this is funny and useful too) The lack of Flash support is frustrating, but I’m not aware of any mobile browser that fully supports it, and the YouTube app is actually much better because the stream dynamically adjusts its bandwidth based on the connection speed (EDGE is way slower than WiFi, though not nearly as bad as some are reporting), and the high bandwidth stream looks much better on my iPhone than in Flash on my desktop. And despite some whining that not all the YouTube content is available, the Apple press release on the subject did claim that all YouTube content would be available by fall.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have complaints. I already noted issues with data getting lost after a firmware reset, but that post missed a few more general issues:

• No copy/paste/clipboard
• Browser doesn’t save passwords, or synchronize passwords from the big-screen browser
• Form auto-fill seems a little dumb compared to the big-screen Safari, perhaps because the history isn’t sync’d?
• The .Mac RSS reader is pretty good, but it can’t display aggregated feeds the way Safari on a Mac can
• The email inboxes aren’t aggregated as they are in Apple Mail, and I must instead check each account individually
• When using GMaps, is there an easy way to switch out of route-view to search for a single point?
• No search tools — especially useful for finding music or contacts

All of those can be fixed in software. My list of hardware-realted complaints is tiny by comparison. I mean, I’ll agree with those that point out the phone can’t properly orient itself while in orbit and doesn’t have a metal cutting laser, but my own complaints were smaller scale. I was surprised to learn that my Belkin car audio adapter didn’t work, somewhat less surprised to find my camera adapter didn’t (wouldn’t it be cool to offload pics from the camera to iPhone, then view them and upload the good ones to Flickr?) and I’m eager for somebody to develop a small external keyboard (hey, check out Pogue’s iPhone keyboarding tips).

iPhone, complaints, early adopter, version 1.0, progressive refinement, user feedback, apple, smartphone

A long time ago somebody started the Newtons Around The World gallery, and it came to symbolize the love we Newton users had for the little device as well as our geeky pride.

The trend seemed to continue with iPods Around The World, and now iLounge wants to start a gallery for the iPhone. I was about to submit when I noticed the legal fine print:

By submitting, you agree that all photographs, and private information you submit are entirely yours at the time of submission, become the property of iLounge upon submission, and that you have not submitted and will not submit such images to any other contests.

The thing is, I give my photos away to anybody who wants them under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike License, and I’ve granted commercial use to pretty much everybody who’s asked (the exception was somebody who appeared to be setting up a splog and wanted some of my food photos to illustrate it). But the idea of entirely giving up my photos to iLounge stopped me in my tracks. I would happily offer them a non-exclusive license, but willfully removing my work from the creative commons and even my own use isn’t something I’m about to do.

Fortunately, photosharing services have exploded since the Newton and iPod galleries were created, and tagging allows us to opt into the gallery without having to give up our works. Here’s my iPhone on the summit of Mt. Monadnock (yes, I had connectivity), and here’s a collection of iPhones around the world on Flickr.

iphone, iphones around the world, travel, photos, gallery, copyfight, creative commons

On Thursday I had trouble answering a call. By Friday night it was clear my iPhone was seriously porked. A visit to the nearby Apple store got me a swift replacement, and a promise that once I synchronized the new device it’d have all the info the old one did.

Hrm.

Well, the Mac Genius did ask if I had any photos I hadn’t offloaded, as those would be lost in the swap. But, as it turns out, there’s a lot of info that gets lost when an iPhone is either swapped or gets a firmware reset (my phone first got the reset, then when symptoms persisted, replaced).

Things that should be simple to back up on an iPhone, like contacts in the favorites list aren’t, same for special ring tones I’d set for various contacts and they were all lost even after the restore. It may be less surprising that various settings and preferences, the default ringtone or whether to sound an alert when new email arrives, are lost. Those are fairly easy to reset, but a real shock to me was that any data in the notes application is lost. And, unfortunately, I’d started to keep a lot of info in there. Everything from ideas I wanted to followup to trivia that, well, like any trivia, just couldn’t be filed elsewhere.

The loss of those notes was a painful surprise, and a reminder how delicate my digital world is.

Then, while enjoying the iPhone as a diversion between flights in PHX, I realized that my browser cookies weren’t backed up. Cookies aren’t expected to be persistent, not even by me, but it was just another thing and a reminder of my frustration that the iPhone doesn’t save website passwords the way big-screen Safari does (though some websites leverage cookies to make it less troublesome, but when cookies aren’t sync’d…).

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on my iPhone (so don’t ask if you can have mine). Some of this is part of the bargain early adopters take on, but I also expect these issues will be addressed in software soon.

Extra: oddly, the replacement iPhone was retail boxed, and this receipt is very different from how I’ve seen them handle repairs/replacements of Mac products. The best part is the receipt shows my warranty was extended a few weeks.

[tags]iphone, complaints, early adopter, replacement, reset, lost data[/tags]

Games

Tilt, described in programmer Joe Hewitt’s blog:

…Christopher introduced me to a very talented video game designer, Nicole Lazzaro, who had an endless stream of ideas for games that would use the iPhone’s accelerometer. Nicole’s ideas quickly ran into the limitations of the phone, as we discovered that the browser doesn’t rotate when you hold it vertically upside down, nor is it possible to distinguish the two horizontal orientations. When we realized that her four-sided Tetris idea was not possible, we initially tried to compensate by adding in button pressing and other methods, but decided that we wanted to make a game that was very simple and used only the tilt sensor for input. Nicole’s philosophy is to focus on the emotional ride a player feels while being challenged and rewarded at just the right times, as opposed to just realistic graphics and long monotonous missions. From an engineer’s standpoint, I was overjoyed to focus on the psychological impact of my code instead of trying to build a technical or artistic masterpiece.

Hewitt also developed iUI: “As much as possible, iUI maps common HTML idioms to iPhone interface conventions.”

Meanwhile MacMost and iGiki both offer a number of iPhone optimized games.

Chat

JiveTalk, a web-based AIM/iChat, MSN, Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Jabber client. The public alpha is online at iphone.beejive.com, though one imagines the company will eventually charge for use (they sell a chat client for Blackberry).

Gear Live offered instructions on how to cobble together IRC access on the iPhone with Colloquy on your Mac (you do use a Mac, don’t you?), the Colloquy web add-on, a bit of configuring, and a visit to http://YourIP:6667 on your iPhone.

I’ll probably tweak some Twitterers by categorizing them under “chat,” but we should at least be happy to see Hahlo and PocketTweets, two apps that make it east to Twitter via iPhone.

Remote Control

Telekinesis and Remote Buddy both make it easy to control your Mac with your iPhone, but Nate True’s WebVNC hack brings remote desktop support to the iPhone (Windows only).

Application Manager

How can we keep track of all these apps (and so many more not mentioned); how can we get to them quickly? AppMarks promises a sweet solution.

iphone, applications, chat, IRC, AIM, IM, games, remote control