Effing Finally.

Published October 2nd, 2008 in . 0 Comments

When the iPhone was first jailbroken, back in the iPhone OS 1.x days, there was a utility you could obtain from Installer.app called Taskbar Notifier that would populate the iPhone’s status bar with little icons for missed calls or voicemails, unread emails, or unread SMS messages.

Before I installed it, I didn’t really understand how much I needed it.

After I installed, I couldn’t live without it. Rather - I’d prefer, very much, to not live without it. Further, it’s something that I can’t believe is not already part of the iPhone OS.

Think of it this way: without this little hack, I would need to hit the sleep/wake button, then “Slide to Unlock” the phone, and then scan through the field of application icons to see any red badges indicating any unread emails, unread text messages, or missed calls/voicemails. WITH this little hack, I can just tap the sleep/wake button, and see the notifications. Very handy.

Back in July, Apple released their new iPhone OS 2.0, which broke compatibility with all or most jailbreak apps in order to support the new AppStore. Pretty much every jailbreak app needed to be modified or rewritten to be compatible with the newer OS. Sadly, Taskbar Notifier was one of the apps affected.

Taskbar Notifier needs to run in the background to poll the various apps for any missed events or unread items. There is basically zero chance of there ever being an officially supported version via the AppStore, since Apple doesn’t allow background processes on apps other than their own in-house stuff.

Well, after much searching and much waiting, it appears someone has stepped up to fill the void: StatusNotifier was released a couple of days ago, and man, I’m so happy.

It reproduces the biggest functionality items that I was looking for, but also introduces some fancy WinterBoard stuff that will modify the background image on the lock screen to indicate, with LARGE icons, whether you have any unread or missed items.

Many hats off to the developer for this, and I look forward to improvements he’ll make as time wears on.

You’re wrong, so shut the hell up.

Published July 17th, 2008 in , and . 0 Comments

All of these things offended my sensibilities today between the hours of 8:30am and 3pm.

In no particular order:

  • It’s “Sansom” street, not “Samson.” You should see a doctor about your dyslexia. This is even more a grievous offense if you actually live on or near Sansom street.
  • There is no letter “S” in the name WaWa. It is not “WaWa’s.”
  • It’s “DiBruno” brothers, not “Del Bruno” brothers. You were trying to sound glamorous and cool, but instead you mispronounced the name of the place where you got your fancy rolls. You instantly lacked any glamor.
  • It’s “Et Cetera” [ET-set-ur-ah], and not “Eccetera” [ECK-set-ur-ah] - yes, I know you probably don’t speak Latin, but it’s a dead language and this isn’t changing, so learn to pronounce it correctly.
  • Use i.e. and e.g. at the right times, and not in place of each other. In writing to someone that knows what these actually mean, you’d only be showing your ignorance. There used to be a really great wikipedia article on this, but I can’t find it, so I’ll break it down for you: e.g. is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase “Exempli Gratia” meaning “for example.” An easy way to remember this is “Example Given.” And i.e. on the other hand, is Latin for “id est” meaning “that is” - this is basically used when you need to provide a re-wording or further clarification.
  • Don’t try and sound British if you’re not. Don’t say “literally” as if it only has 3 syllables; it has 4. “Litrally” is not a word so stop saying it. When you make a distinction between figurative and literal, you probably don’t say “litrall.”
  • I’m sorry, I know this will make me sound like a jerk: but don’t expect me to take you seriously if you speak with a southern accent, whether real or fake. For that matter, why would anyone willingly use a southern accent in a professional context when they’re from, say, Rhode Island? The only answer I can come up with is that they’ve perhaps watched one too many of Larry the Cable Guy’s stand-up acts. How is that guy still on TV?

I’m allowed to be bitchy about these things because when I was a kid, I was extremely hard of hearing. I used to take hearing tests on a regular basis. When I was in the booth, they would say words through a set of headphones that I had to repeat. One of the words was “Cupcake” which I would always pronounce as “Pupcake,” because, well, I was partially deaf and I was a kid and didn’t know that there was no such thing as a pupcake.

In any case, if I can be corrected, then so can you. Fix yourself.

iPhone 3G

Published June 11th, 2008 in , , and . 0 Comments

As you may have heard, Apple announced the much-rumored iPhone 3G on Monday.

After the introduction of the original iPhone, I made a post detailing my predictions for what features we might expect in the next model of the device.

The new model does indeed have longer battery life, larger storage capacity (although, that was a feature bump on the old model, midway through it’s lifetime), 3G, and the A-GPS chip. While I’m disappointed that the camera didn’t get bumped up, most of my hardware predictions turned out to be spot-on. Although, I suppose it’s a little nit-picky to claim I was right about the thinner chassis: they made it thinner, but only at the edges.

The community has bemoaned the lackluster feature upgrades, but several prominent bloggers are noting the most important parts of Monday’s keynote were NOT about hardware changes. Instead, we should try to focus on the iPhone as a platform: the on-stage demos given for third-party application developers were very slick. The ease of development, I’m sure, puts the WinMo IDE to shame.

It should be very evident that Apple is not going to let the iPhone be a repeat of the Mac. This time, market dominance is their goal, and they’re gonna do it. If you have any doubt, just look at the price tag: models starting at $199. One hundred ninety nine dollars. One third the original price for the first 8GB device, one year ago.

I don’t profess to be any kind of BlackBerry expert, but with the enterprise features Apple announced on Monday, the SDK for third-party developers, the cheap price, and the fact that the damned thing is just FUN to use… well, I don’t know who would buy a BlackBerry. Any model.

The managers at my day-job all have BlackJacks by Samsung. They run WinMo and do the whole Exchange thing. But, I’ve noticed that about half of them find it a chore to use but tolerate it as a necessary evil, while the other half simply leaves it sitting on their desk after they leave for the day. However, every single time I’m using my iPhone at work, they always want to see it. They want to look at photos or surf the web or dick around on YouTube. It’s a device that demands to be touched and fooled with.

When’s the last time you said that about your phone?

It goes ’round and ’round

Published February 12th, 2008 in and . 0 Comments

This past Saturday, I went out to the burbs to check out my brothers band, The Sermon!, play at Vincents. Dad was there, and my friends George and Virginia were able to attend. A good time was had by all.

I used to go to Vincents with my brother Rob just about every Saturday to check out Papa John DeFrancesco and his organ trio. Between January 2000 and August of 2001, I probably missed six of those Saturday nights upstairs. I was going to Vincents, a smoky bar, before I was old enough to drink. In fact, one Saturday night, after being there every Saturday night for probably 13 months straight, the waitress asked me what I’d like to drink. It had been my habit all along to drink water, since I used to be what they call a “straight-edge.” Having been there every week for so long, I guess she was just being polite. When I asked for water, she replied that it was much better for me. My reply to that was that I was not old enough to drink. She looked at me like I was the dumbest human on earth (which, in retrospect, was almost a 100% accurate assessment) and with wide eyes and hushed tones she said “Shhh! Don’t ever say that out loud in here again!” and proceeded to get my water for me. It was another 2 years before I ordered a drink at Vincents that had any alcohol in it.

So anyway, Saturday night. Something that happens every time I go to West Chester, is that I run into people that I know. Or that I used to know. Or that know me. Or knew me. This time was no exception. I ran into Colin McGetrick. I haven’t seen this guy in 9 years. We graduated from Unionville together, he had an afro of the highest magnitude. I remember him being a very cool guy. We started to catch up and he shared the same sentiment of me, whether real or imagined. We both commented on how we felt that in high school, we just kept our heads down, learned, laughed, and left. He said something that I found a little shocking, “I kept to myself, mostly because I was shy.” Who knew? I guess everyone, even the cool kids, are shy sometimes. He didn’t have his afro, but he still exuded that same kind of comfortable cool.

When I asked what he was up to, he told me he just got engaged. I bought him a beer. He asked the same of me, and I told him I had gotten married almost two years ago, and showed him the wedding pics on my phone. His reply was “Congratulations, you both look so happy.”

Ten years ago we were figuring out where to go to college, pining over girls, stressing about that next pop quiz, wondering what life was like after high school. What did the future hold for us?

That is a large TV.

Published October 31st, 2007 in , and . 0 Comments

First, some background: the TV we’ve had in our apartment for the last 5 years or so, has been the very same TV that my parents purchased for the Mastrippolito living room back in 1984. When I was 5 years old. When they were still married. Twenty-three years ago.

It’s a 1984 RCA 27″ Colortrak, a highly regarded TV from that era. It featured dual composite inputs for video, and a single set of stereo composite inputs for audio, as well as the obligatory coaxial input. That’s it. Though, it also had some interesting features, like auto brightness adjustment via a sensor-eye on the front, and some screw-dials on the back for adjusting picture settings like v-hold and stuff.

I watched Transformers on it. G.I. Joe. Mister Rogers. etc. We’ve played hundreds of thousands of NES games through it. Watched a ton of VHS tapes. Mom and Dad were the first people in our community to own a VCR and a VHS camcorder, thus we recorded and watched gads of videos on that setup.

The TV has been struck by lightning, more than once, with almost no surge protection. The net effect of these voltage overages is that the upper left corner has a slight purple tinge to it. It’s only really noticeable against certain background colors, and certainly livable.

It survived a household with two scrapping boys, who constantly jumped on the furniture and threw things and were unruly in general. To this day, every time I get up from the couch, I can hear the chassis on the TV creak because of the shifted weight on the floor.

At any rate, the TV, which is now 23 years old, is finally giving up the ghost. The past two or three months have been especially bad, with constant popping and crackling, weird color shifts that correct themselves after a moment or two, and sometimes while watching DVD’s the screen occasionally goes entirely blank.

I’m a pretty sentimental person, and like I’ve said, this thing has been around for most of my life. So I’m a little sad to see it go.

However,

Now that we need a TV, I’ve spent the past month or so researching a suitable replacement. I can say that TV’s have come a long way since 1984.

I talked it over with Meg, and despite her initial hesitation, we’ve agreed that not only is it time for a new TV, but it’s time for a big, new, fancy, shiny TV. An HDTV, to be exact.

So, today, about an hour ago, I pulled the trigger and ordered a Toshiba Regza 42″ 16:9 LCD HDTV with built-in ATSC tuner. It has three built-in HDMI ports, and displays at 480i through 720p. I was a little wary of going lower than 1080, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to tell the difference on anything smaller than a 50″ set. It has a full complement of inputs in addition to the HDMI jacks, including 2 video component inputs, a VGA 15 pin D-Sub for use with a PC, S-video and RF inputs. Oh yeah, and on the side, it has additional composite inputs. It’s got composite audio out, as well as optical out.

It’ll be here in a few days. Very psyched.

Helpful iPhone Tricks

Published July 16th, 2007 in , , and . 1 Comment

After using this thing for over two weeks, I’ve found a couple handy tricks, and have read a bunch online in the usual places:

Safari
Tapping at the top of the screen (on or directly below the clock, basically) when you’ve scrolled to the bottom of the page will instantly return you to the top of the page for easy access to the location bar. I just wish they had one that did the opposite: scrolled to the bottom of any page by double tapping the top, or something.

Holding your finger down on any link for a second or two will pop up a little tag showing you the URL. If you see it’s a URL that you do not want to pursue, then move your finger up or down to scroll the page while you’re holding the link down. Otherwise, release the link, and Safari will follow it.

Weather Widget
You probably already know you can flick through your various cities in the weather widget, but what if you’re feeling lazy? Well, you can tap to the right or left of the line of white/grey dots at the bottom of the widget to advance one pane right or one pane left.

Typing
This was a big one a few days ago - David Pogue posted it, and it echoed a million times across the intarweb. To type punctuation, you have to tap a “secondary keyboard” button. Then tap the desired punctuation, then tap the secondary keyboard button again to toggle back to the alpha keyboard. This is clearly too many taps for something so basic. It would seem that Apple thought so, too - if you HOLD the secondary keyboard key and slide your finger over to the desired punctuation, and then release, it automatically reverts back to the standard alpha keyboard. One tap instead of three.

Finally: iPhone

Published July 1st, 2007 in , , , , and . 0 Comments

So I’m laying on a beach towel, soaking up the Rittenhouse Square sounds. There are a ton of people out here; it’s a beautiful day.

Two days ago, in the evening, I was standing in line at the 16th street AT&T store, behind about a hundred other people. It was my first time ever waiting in line for a tech product release like this, and I’ll admit it was a unique experience. I was also surprised by the number of people that weren’t even there to make a purchase: they were so caught up in the hype that they would gladly wait in line just to get a peek and/or feel of this thing.

Clearly, these were my people. They chattered on about edge and gigabytes and exchange and god knows what. I felt comfortable with these guys.

After waiting in line for an hour and a half, the friendly AT&T sales person came out to tell us they had sold out! I was tenth from the door.

So I went home and got mopey. Luckily my friend Mark was on his way over, so he drove me out to the Ardmore Apple Store where I was greeted with absolutely no line and super friendly salesfolk.

We sped back to the apartment, to get everything all activated and synced. An hour and a half later, we were putting the device through its paces.

I’ll write a more detailed post later, from a full sized computer.

Mercury in Retrograde

Published June 19th, 2007 in and . 0 Comments

This week has been pretty crazy.

Our upstairs neighbor had his new-ish Toyota FJ cruiser stolen, right in front of the building.  

I found out a good friend of mine is pregnant. Well, he's not, but his girlfriend is. They're stoked.

Three people got fired from work today. Oddly enough, I started on the exact same day as one of them.

I have a meeting in about an hour during which my level of popularity in this office will go even lower.

And it's only Tuesday. 

The WWDC 2007 Keynote

Published June 12th, 2007 in , and . 0 Comments

So, it was kind of underwhelming. Of course, I would guess the biggest news is the announcement of Safari for Windows.

It seemed everything shown about Leopard was sort of a re-hash. We had already seen Time Machine, already seen Spaces. I am a little grossed out by the menu bar transparency - who thought that was a good idea?

Stacks seem like a good idea, but isn't this just a variation on a folder? As it is right now, I can have a folder in the dock, and right-clicking on it will show it's contents in a menu… am I missing something? The grid idea is cool, but again, can't I just have a window set to icon-view such that clicking the folder in the doc opens a window full of icons?

I'm on board with the "new" unified interface. It's about time for some real consistency.

CoverFlow in the Finder is a good idea, but I doubt it'll be too useful. Quickview is slick, but I just can't see myself using it too much. 

The improvements to iCal look good. Long overdue.

I think the thing that is generating the most hate right now is the announcement of the iPhone "SDK" - Apple basically saying you can build robust web apps using AJAX, CSS, HTML/XML and Javascript that would work in Safari. Not exactly what developers were hoping for, but more specifically kind of an insult. Gruber puts it best in terms of a shit sandwich:

"If all you have to offer is a shit sandwich, just say it. Don’t tell us how lucky we are and that it’s going to taste delicious."

Basically, devs are crying foul over the fact that not only did Apple not release an SDK for developing apps that would function the same way Apple's native iPhone apps behave, but that Apple treated the web app method as just as good. Clearly not the case, and anyone that's ever programmed either web apps, or Cocoa knows it.

iPhone Hysteria

Published June 8th, 2007 in , , , and . 0 Comments

Yeah, I'll admit it: I totally want one, and will be in line on the 29th. 

My personal fanboy-ism aside, the hype around this single device is getting a little out of hand.

This is what's going on in the iPhonosphere, as of today:

  • People are crying foul about it's lack of 3G and lack of actual tactile keyboard. See the comments on this post on Slashdot. The 3G stuff is mostly noise from spoiled Europeans, but I have to wonder about the keyboard; that's a lot of virtual keys to fit in a very small space. 
  • Employees of AT&T stores are starting to leak the "sales training manuals" for the device.
  • A few first hand reports are starting to show up in the usual places. See here and here - Note to self, never eat at Balthazar ($400 seeming like a "light" bill? No thanks.)
  • Apple posted the first three TV commercials on their site, and many an eagle eyed viewer found that the order and placement of the icons on the home screen didn't match the rest of the standard marketing materials available thusfar. When Apple posted the fourth TV spot, it was found that all of the other commercials had been edited such that now the icons are in the correct order and with correct placement (whereby "correct," I mean matching the original marketing materials.) See here, and then here. They also removed the small-print tagline mentioning the mandatory 2-year contract.

That last bullet has lead some to believe that there's going to be some kind of mystery iPhone app announcement at WWDC on Monday (or possibly before June 29th) but just as many people are guessing that the misplaced icons were an editing snafu. I, as I'm sure you could guess, am hoping for the former.

I can honestly say that I've never been this excited about an upcoming device. Three weeks from today, I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about this.

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