evardsson.com: stuff that w0rks » iPhone

iPhone updated

Sjan Evardsson — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:22:59 +0000

I am a bit late in posting this, but things have been a bit hectic around here. However, I have finally update my iPhone, now that TouchTerm is available from the iTunes store. I tried using the tool from modmyiphone but had terrible results with it. Thankfully I had a backup of my firmware (1.1.4) before trying it and immediately went back to using that. Now that I am on the 2.0 bandwagon, however, I have wasted no time in amassing a bunch of tools that I use daily.

Some of my favorites:

TouchTerm, for ssh access to my servers. This was the big show-stopper prior to now. Worth it to me to pay for. (And cheap, too!)
Bookmarks for quick acess to my del.icio.us bookmarks. Massive time saver, and the layout is useful if a bit stark and utlitarian.
Palringo for chat. There have been some concerns voiced on the comments in the app store about security, and such. I’m not so worried about it. I have a password I use for chat and different ones for more important things like email and such. I don’t use chat (outside of the jabber at work, which is not in my Palringo account) for anything important.
TouchCalc for its hex and binary modes. There is an octal mode as well, but I haven’t had need of it (yet).
Stanza for reading books on my iPhone. I read a lot, and it is nice to have half-a-dozen books at hand. And with the desktop app I can convert just about anything I can get online into a readable book for the iPhone. Very nice.
Twinkle for keeping up with twitter.
Tankbuch for keeping track of mileage and gas usage. My Forrester gets an average of 23.2 MPG in the city, and 30.4 on the highway!
Zenbe Lists for my shopping lists. It means that my wife can update the list from her PC while I am on my way to the store and I can sync when I get there and see everything I need to pick up. It also means that I can sync after checking everything off and I don’t have to relay the entire list of what I was able or unable to find when I get home.
Lots of games. I like the free ones, partly because I am cheap, and partly because I don’t generally play a single game long enough to warrant paying for it. The exception is Sextuple Word Challenge – a word game very much like TextTwist. (I have a bit of an addiction to word games, and hey, it’s only a buck.)

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Why I won’t upgrade my iPhone firmware (yet)

Sjan Evardsson — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:11:05 +0000

Ok, the iPhone 2.0 firmware (actually 1.2.0) is out, and the app store is up and only works with 2.0 firmware and iTunes 7.7 but I won’t do it. Not yet anyway. I am waiting for a jailbreak solution for 2.0 or some additions to the app store before I upgrade. I have been using Zibri’s ZiPhone up to now and actually have quite a few apps that I use on a daily basis.

So, am I just too cheap to pay for apps? No, that’s not it at all. In fact, if the apps I needed were on the store I would upgrade and buy them (and possibly have some support options) and be done with it. While there are some apps that are in the store that I currently use (Shopping List, Twinkle, Book Reader) there are others that aren’t (Terminal, anyone?).

So, until I can jailbreak 2.0 or until the app store catches up with what I actually use, no dice.

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iPhone icons for your site

Sjan Evardsson — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:09:48 +0000

Adding a shortcut to a favorite site on an iPhone (or iPod Touch) is as easy as tapping the “+” sign at the bottom of the Safari browser on the phone and selecting “Add to Homepage” – but the icon is not so appealing. In fact, the iPhone defaults to a tiny, cropped screenshot of the site unless it finds a 57×57 pixel png file in the site root. This is similar to the concept of the favicon.ico for web browsers. The file needs to be named apple-touch-icon.png.

The iPhone (or iPod Touch) will round the corners and overlay the glass look to make it blend in to the overall look and feel of the “Springboard” (their name for the desktop on these devices.)

Mine looks like this (before the modifications which take place on the device itself):

And this is what it looks like on the iPhone:

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