Category Archives: iPhone

Responsive Web Design

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As part of my fundraising effort for the Tour de Cure, I registered the domain “ridewithdavid.com”. I wanted an easy to remember domain that I could use as a portal to the fundraising page that the ADA provided.

So I created a basic web page that would redirect the visitor to my fundraising page after a few seconds pause.

I designed the page with some graphical elements and got it to a point that I thought it looked good.

The problem was, while the page looked fine on a normal desktop or tablet browser, it looked horrible on a mobile phone browser.

Here’s a screen shot of the page that is displayed on a desktop or tablet browser … notice the two graphical elements on the sides?

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Flight Status, Siri?

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OK, I admit it … I kind of like Siri on my iPhone.

Some of the features are darn right useful … being able to tell the phone to remind me about something based on location, get the current weather, send a text message by voice, etc.

Recently I found a case that Siri seems to know how toparse … but can’t answer.  Which I find very odd.

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Verizon iPhone

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Lots of people are clamoring about the fact that Verizon is going to offer the iPhone.

There are a lot of good reasons to get an iPhone from Verizon … better network, better packages, tethering, etc.

One significant reason NOT to get the Verizon iPhone is: It doesn’t work in the UK and Europe.

The UK and Europe use the GSM system for cell phones … and the Verizon iPhone doesn’t support that.   It uses CDMA.

I know from personal experience that the AT&T iPhone does work fine in the UK (although it’s pricey).

I’ve also seen comments mentioning that the CDMA can’t handle data connections at the same time as voice connections.

So if you travel to the UK or Europe much, think twice about getting the Verizon iPhone.

I did see a rumor that Apple is going to offer a “World phone” that will, theoretically, have CDMA and GSM capabilities.

We still have a number of months left on our AT&T contract … so I’m going to hold off on jumping over to Verizon.   Ginny & I travel a fair amount and really like the UK & Europe.

AT&T Microcell

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We’ve never had good cell phone coverage at home … even when we had Verizon service.

The coverage with AT&T is even worse … but, we do like the iPhones.

I was pretty interested when AT&T announced they were rolling out 3G Microcell devices.

Basically, a Microcell is a tiny 3G cell site. It provides 3G service to up to 10 authorized cell phones. The 3G service is provided using VoIP like service (if not exactly VoIP). The range is about 40 feet in all directions.

The Microcell has a built in GPS unit so that it can verify it’s in the correct location … for E911 service and, I assume, so the AT&T systems can tell which cell towers to hand the call off to when you leave the devices range.

Setting up the device wasn’t hard … although it took quite a long time to activate. The instructions indicated that it could take up to 90 minutes, but ours took about 3 hours.

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eBooks Readers

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I just finished the 12th book in Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series … Changes.

The book was quite good … very intense … and a shocker of an ending.

I thought this was the last book of the series … but I’ve read somewhere else that there are eight more books planned for the series.

I got hooked on the Dresden series when SciFi (currently known as SyFy) was showing the Dresden TV series.   I was quite disappointed to see the series end.   It had a lot of potential, in my opinion.

One significant thing about this book was not the book itself … but how I read the book.   I purchased it as an eBook from the Apple bookstore and read it on my iPhone.

I have to say … I was surprised how easy reading the book on my iPhone was.

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iPhone for WordPress

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This post is being written with the WordPress app for iPhone.

As expected, it’s pretty awkward to use, but functional.

  • Documentation is non-existent … but that’s coming, according to the announcement post.
  • Decent integration with the camera & photo roll, although there doesn’t appear to be a way to position the pictures.
  • Can’t see a way to do trackbacks or even enter URL’s.
  • It’s not clear if the text is entered in HTML or just plain text.

It’s going to take some getting used to … but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the next ‘killer app’.

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FWIW: This post was originally entered on the iPhone, but edited in regular WordPress.

2.0 iPhones Upgraded to 2.0

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Ok, I got both iPhones upgraded to the 2.0 version of the iPhone OS.

Initially, I had some trepidation about upgrading a day early … and my feeling seemed to be valid when a co-worker tried to upgrade his phone and had a bunch of problems.   He kept getting an “Unknown error (6)” message.   I don’t know if he actually got his upgraded.

Regardless, I decided to throw caution to the wind and upgrade my phone anyways.   Luckily, it worked without a single hitch.

When I got home from work, I proceeded to upgrade Ginny’s phone.   This, of course, is where I ran into problems.

I started the upgrade process by first upgrading her iTunes to 7.7.   That worked without any problems.   Then I proceeded to upgrade her phone.

Initially it was going OK … then I got an “Unknown error (10)” message.   Figuring that I would just restore the phone to it’s previous OS version, I tried the restore option … but when I did this   I got an “Unknow error (20)” message.   Tried a few more times and got the same message.   This is not good.

I Googled around a bit and found a thread in the Apple support forum that said that, if I pressed Option (shift in Windows context) and clicked the restore button, I could ‘Recover’ to the 2.0 firmware.   Luckily this worked.

About 20 minutes later I had Ginny’s iPhone working fine.

Five minutes after that, I we were both playing with the “Phone Saber” application.