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From the monthly archives: December 2009
Note: I originally posted this over at Chai Life, but felt it deserved a place here as well.
Emoji Icons are a rather extensive set of icons (Emoji being the Japanese word for what we call emoticons or smilies) that are common in Japanese text messaging and web sites and are essentially have been standardized in Japan. They are available on the iPhone and are very fun to use, but it takes a bit of trickery to get them unlocked. Here’s a step-by-step on how to unlock them. Once unlocked, you can sent them in text messages, emails, or whatever else you can type on the phone and they will be viewable by anyone who has a phone or computer that supports them. Even other iPhone users, even if they haven’t done these unlocking steps themselves. So, without further ado, here’s how to unlock them:
- Install the “Spell Number” app at the iTunes App Store. Don’t worry, it’s completely free.
- Once installed, launch the app.
- In the box, type this exactly: 91929394.59
- As soon as you have that typed in, without doing anything else, press your ‘Home’ button.
- From your home screen, go to Settings -> General -> Keyboards.
- Choose International Keyboards, then scroll down to Japanese, click it, and turn on Emoji.
- That’s it! You’re done! Thought it might be harder? Too bad. You can delete the app now, unless you feel you need it for other purposes. Whenever you’re typing, there will now be a little icon on the bottom left to switch back and forth between Emoji and English (or whatever other languages you use).
Here’s a small selection of the 461 emoji icons now available to you:
As with pretty much every tablet rumor to date, this is pure speculation, but Apple has apparently recently acquired the domain name iSlate.com which has fueled the tablet rumor frenzy machine in to overdrive with name speculation. This seems like a perfectly logical name choice for Apple, but if the tablet rumors are true we’ll know quite soon.
The following record was what the whois info for islate.com used to show, although it now points to a domain registrations and trademark protections company named MarkMonitor, which Apple has used in the past.
It’s been a long time coming and after months of slowly chipping away at the market share of actual units sold, the iPhone has, according to comScore statistics, surpassed Windows Mobile in the actual number of total users. This huge step for the iPhone is due to the usage of Windows Mobile devices holding ground over the last year but not really gaining any additional users, whereas the iPhone’s userbase has been continually growing.
Here’s the raw data, for those that like numbers:
| Month: | February | May | July | October |
| No proprietary OS | 206,825,938 | 203,920,230 | 200,981,682 | 196,773,054 |
| Apple | 5,258,504 | 5,744,018 | 6,630,298 | 8,970,049 |
| 427,914 | 797,633 | 894,159 | 1,020,364 | |
| Microsoft | 6,807,554 | 7,040,584 | 6,659,579 | 7,131,797 |
| Palm | 2,398,755 | 2,406,244 | 2,626,151 | 2,843,534 |
| RIM | 9,668,977 | 12,202,058 | 13,080,555 | 14,963,238 |
| Symbian | 888,532 | 889,232 | 1,042,052 | 1,297,965 |
| Source: comScore | ||||
IMDb
Category: Entertainment
Last Updated: December 8th, 2009
Current Version: 1.0.0
Size: 0.5 MB
Price: Free
IMDb likely makes just about anyone’s list of the absolute best websites on the Internet, but for an extremely long time there was a void for users of smart phones or other mobile devices. Not only were there no decent applications that could access it’s formidable database of everything related to TV and Movies, but there was no officially supported mobile website. That era, however, is now at an end.
With the release of an official IMDb app for the iPhone, you can now easily and quickly access virtually any information from your phone that you would be able to access from your computer. You can quickly and easily access movie show times at a theater near you, see what’s on TV, read about upcoming movies, see the latest box office results and there’s even a fun little page called “Born Today” which will tell you which people in their database share a birthday on whichever day it happens to be. The real gem of the app, however, is the search box at the top of the first screen that allows you to search IMDb. This is where most users will likely spend their time, looking up actors, directors, movies, shows, or any other information you could possibly want to know in regards to just about any movie or TV show ever created and everyone who worked on them. This is exactly what makes IMDb the Internet gem that it is. There is no way for me to count the number of times I have used IMDb while watching TV or a movie (not in the theater, of course) to read about the actors, see what else they’ve been in, or just learn some fun trivia about them. Having this app available makes that habit much easier to do. Anyone who has an iPhone and is a fan of movies should be installing this right now, if they haven’t already.
I saw this elsewhere on the ‘net and absolutely had to share it here. Want your own copy? Click it to buy it from Amazon.com
When addressing investors at a UBS conference in New York yesterday, AT&T’s head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega, reiterated AT&T’s focus on improving its network, while simultaneously slamming their line of smartphones, specifically the iPhone 3GS, as being the cause of poorer quality service. This, as anyone familiar with AT&T will already know, is not new news. What was intriguing about what he said, however, is that they will inevitably be charging that high-bandwidth users more for what they use. Wait, what!? Isn’t the whole point of buying an “unlimited data” plan that you get unlimited usage? To be fair, according to de la Vega, 40 percent of AT&T’s network capacity is consumed by a mere 3 percent of smartphone users. Most of which can be attributed to activities such as streaming video and music by apps on the iPhone.
In hopes that someone high up at AT&T is reading this post, here’s a quick definition that you clearly don’t understand, courtesy of Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: un·lim·it·ed
Pronunciation: \-?li-m?-t?d\
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century1 : lacking any controls : unrestricted (unlimited access)
2 : boundless, infinite (unlimited possibilities)
3 : not bounded by exceptions : undefined (the unlimited and unconditional surrender of the enemy — Sir Winston Churchill)
Admittedly, new media, streaming, and heavy smartphone usage is a huge drag on the network, but for AT&T to continue prospering in to the next decade the correct solution is not to charge the heavy users for what you already market as unlimited. Smartphones are not a fad and are not going to go away. They’re going to keep evolving and the demand for higher data rates is going to continue to grow, so stifling your users will only push them in to someone else’s arms.
The news on the Apple vine today comes from Yair Reiner, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., who is making the prediction that Apple will begin ramping up production of a long-rumored Tablet in Februrary, to prepare for a March or April release. His report claims that the tablet will include a 10.1″ multi-touch LCD display using LTPS LCD technology, which is the same tech used on the iPhone.
Among the juiciest of the new rumors is his claim is that Apple has been contacting publishers to discuss a deal that would allow them to release their content through online stores, such as those for Amazon’s Kindle
As with any Apple rumor, nothing is written in stone and only Apple knows for sure what its plans are.
If you’re one of the many, many, many iPhone users throughout the States who are tied to AT&T and getting frustrated with the endless dropped calls, AT&T has a solution for you. There’s a free new app available for your phone called “AT&T Mark The Spot” [iTunes Link] which was developed any deployed by AT&T themselves to help them figure out where trouble spots are an, hopefully, improve their coverage map and reduce dropped calls. Simply put, the app allows you to send the location it happened along with any info about the problem (Dropped Call, Failed Call, No Coverage, Data Failure, or Poor Voice Quality) directly to AT&T. Chances are, the more people that download and start using this app, the quicker and more motivated AT&T will be to improve their network. Needless to say, be sure not to use this while driving and instead wait until you can use your phone safely.
Not everyone is aware of this, but virtually anything that you can print within Mac OS X can also be saved as a PDF. Here’s how to do it.
- Open the document, website, or any other printable item you wish to save as a PDF.
- Choose “Print” from the File menu, or hit Command-P.
- In the lower left-hand corner, click the button that says “PDF”.
- Choose “Save as PDF…”
- Name your file and choose where you want to save it, then click “Save”.
You’ve now saved what you had open as a Portable Document Format (PDF).
A calendar is a huge selling point for any smart phone and the iPhone is no exception. The iPhone’s calendar is an integral to the phone and is used by casual and business users alike. It is not, however, anywhere near perfect. Here are five simple suggestions that Apple could incorporate to make the phone’s Calendar app truly shine.
- Unlock Screen
When you wake up your phone and it shows the “Slide to Unlock” screen, there is an alarming lack of information. Date, Time, Battery Life, and a background picture are nice, but there is generally just unused space that could be better put to use by displaying a upcoming calendar events. - Icon
It’s nice that the icon changes daily to display the day, but that’s kinda gimmicky. What would really give the it a boost is if that little red number that appears in the upper right-hand corner of other applications (Showing the number of unread mail, messages, missed calls, etc) also showed up in the corner of the Calendar app to indicate the number of events left that day. - Alternate Alerts
That soft beeping noise the phone makes is completely useless. I’ve had the phone in my pocket in a not-that-loud room and not heard it. Simply allowing custom alerts would be a huge improvement. Doubly so if you can set alerts on an event-by-event basis. - Sleep Timer
It beeps, then it’s done reminding you. How about a sleep timer for those of us that can be a bit forgetful. This goes right along with the need for customizable alerts and should work just like the sleep timer in the Clock app does, requiring you to physically unlock the phone to stop it from repeating the alert. - Landscape Mode
Virtually every other built-in app can be viewed in landscape with the larger, easier to type keyboard. I simply cannot comprehend why this didn’t make it’s way over to the Calendar app as well.
Do you have other suggestions for improvements you’d like to see in the iPhone’s calendar app? Please leave a comment and share it with us.
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