I got an e-mail over the weekend from a reader who read my earlier post, "Does the iPhone need a real keyboard?"
Ed writes:
What I would like to see is a portable keyboard for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This would be very helpful in meetings and/or traveling.
For what's essentially a minicomputer, a compact external keyboard would seem like a simple and logical accessory and would be especially appealing to those who haven't mastered--or aren't comfortable--typing on the iPhone's virtual keyboard, as good as it is. Travel-friendly, fold-up keyboards are available for the old Palm Pilots and Treos, but a quick search on Google reveals precious little on iPhone keyboards.
The $100 BTKeyMini is still in limbo.
(Credit: MacAlly)Way back in January 2008, Macworld wrote up some notes from the now-defunct Macworld Expo under the headline, "A Bluetooth keyboard for the iPhone?" The article referenced the small MacAlly BTKeyMini Bluetooth keyboard ($100). At the time, MacAlly reps claimed that when the BTKeyMini arrived in March of 2008, it would be compatible with the iPhone. But alas, Apple has never provided Bluetooth keyboard drivers for the iPhone and the BTKeyMini has never shipped. A note on the Web site AValive, which sells the BTKeyMini, says:
The BTKey Mini for the Apple iPhone will not ship until Apple updates the iPhone to accept Bluetooth input. No date has been given as of yet. THE iPhone 3.0 UPDATE DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS PRODUCT.
Of course, the lack of Apple support hasn't stopped hackers from getting Bluetooth keyboards to work with the iPhone. Back in January of this year, Ars Technica had a report on the Bluetooth keyboard hacking efforts of iPhone expert Ralf Ackermann. And more recently, in March of this year, a couple engineers at Perceptive Development managed to connect an infrared keyboard to an iPhone using a 1,200-baud modem via the headphone port. iPhone Central called it, "One of the most unnecessarily complicated hacks in iPhone history." Ars Technica described it as "clever," partially because it didn't require a jailbroken iPhone.
So, there you have it, Ed. Yes, it would be nice if there was an external keyboard option for the iPhone--wireless or wired--but it looks like you're going to have to wait for Apple to decide it's ready to supply the drivers for it. ... Read more
The city of Boston is set to launch an official iPhone application for residents to file complaints about "neighborhood nuisances--nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street lights," according to The Boston Globe.
Called Citizen Connect, the app will let Bostonians send pictures and tips right to City Hall.
The app was built with the help of a New Hampshire mobile development firm called Connected Bits.
Citizen Connect has been submitted to Apple but hasn't made it into the iTunes App Store just yet. When it does, it will be free.
Beware, Citizen Connect: complaints about this 'Aqua Hunger Teen Force' ad campaign turned into a huge mess for Boston two years ago.
(Credit: Boing Boing)The Boston Globe said Citizen Connect is the first app of its kind, but other cities have also been turning to new technology to make the minutiae of municipal government run more smoothly. New York's 311 nonemergency hotline for residents now has a presence on Skype and Twitter. New York also now accepts photo and video submissions for 911 and 311.
But the iPhone app has a few advantages. Per the Globe: "The application, which will be free to download from Apple, will allow residents to use the Global Positioning System function on their iPhones to pinpoint the precise location of the problem for City Hall. After submitting a complaint, users will get a tracking number, so they can pester city officials if the problem persists." Ooh! Pestering city officials sounds like fun!
That said, the idea of a complaint-filing iPhone app for Boston is particularly hilarious: the most famous instance of Boston municipal complaints in recent history happened when people started calling in concerns about suspicious-looking devices that turned out to be an ad campaign for the cartoon flick "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." This fact, however, did not come to light until the city had already shut down all traffic on the Charles River.
Or, as one blogger has pointed out already, the system could easily get flooded with photos accompanied by captions like "Please send a cop over to make these Yankees fans leave this bar."
Kolonists looks and plays a lot like the boardgame classic 'Settlers of Catan.'
Good news for fans of the board game Settlers of Catan: There's an app for that. Specifically, the new iPhone game Kolonists offers decidedly Settlers-like gameplay.
In other words, it's a strategy game of empire-building for 3 to 4 players. (If you've never heard of Settlers, check out the Wired story, Monopoly Killer: Perfect German board game redefines genre.)
Like Settlers, Kolonists unfolds on an island, which here fills in for Roman Empire-era Rome. Your goal is to rise to power by developing and capturing territories, which involves resource-gathering, trading, bribery, and some inevitable plundering.
Unlike Settlers, Kolonists plays without dice. That reduces the "chance" aspects of the gameplay while increasing the strategic elements--and makes the game go quite a bit faster.
Settlers die-hards may object to that change, but it's a safe bet that if you like the board game, you'll like Kolonists. And if you're new to both, you'll find the latter thoroughly engaging. After the initial learning curve, it's easy to play and endlessly entertaining. Love the grandiose soundtrack, too.
Unfortunately, version 1.0 has a few significant issues, most notably the lack of a save-game feature: If you exit for any reason, you can't resume.
Making matters worse, Kolonists is fairly crash-prone. Imagine the aggravation of investing, say, 20 minutes in a game when poof, it unceremoniously quits on you--and you can't even return to where you left off.
According to the developer, Kolonists 1.1 is already under review in the App Store, bringing with it an auto-save feature, crash fixes, faster AI, and various new gameplay options.
It can't get here soon enough. With those tweaks and fixes, Kolonists will undoubtedly rank as one of the best strategy games ever to appear on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Grab it now, while it's still at the "introductory" price of $1.99.
Just as America gears up to celebrate Independence Day comes news that iPhone 3GS owners are getting some freedom of their own.
This is the site for purplera1n, which enables the installation of third-party software not approved for Apple's App Store.
George Hotz, who you may recall as the teenage hacker who originally unlocked the iPhone, has let loose a jailbreaking app for the iPhone 3GS code-named purplera1n. It enables the installation of third-party software not approved for Apple's App Store.
For now, purplera1n is Windows-only (but not Windows 7) and requires the latest iTunes installed, as well as an iPhone 3GS with the 3.0 firmware. In a Friday blog post titled "I make it ra1n," Hotz says a Mac version is "coming shortly."
Hotz notes that he normally doesn't make tools for the general public and would rather wait for the iPhone dev team to do that.
"But guys, what's up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played," he chides on his blog. "We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn't worth waiting because you might have the 'last' hole in the iPhone. What last hole...this isn't golf. I'll find a new one next week.
John Biggs over at CrunchGear is among those who have already given purplera1n a go and declares the jailbreaking process "amazingly simple."
Why do we get the sense jailbreaking is going to be part of a whole lot of Fourth of July agendas? But take note: Hotz does caution that purplera1n is in beta and suggests backing up your data before running the app.
OK, folks, it's time to step back, take a deep breath, and relax.
(Credit: Apple, Inc.)There has been a lot of talk today about Apple supposedly admitting it has heat issues with the new iPhone 3GS. The simple fact is that is not true.
What Apple did do is update a previously published tech note advising customers of the safe operating temperatures of the iPhone. Now, why would Apple do this? Because it does it every time it releases a device like the iPhone 3GS. It's standard procedure for the company to continually update tech notes for all its products.
If you're not familiar with them, tech notes are a way for companies to offer advice, best practices, workarounds, and other tidbits of information for their customers. They are not a way to advise customers of disastrous heat issues that they may have with a device.
For whatever reason, some people picked up the tech note today and wrote that Apple had admitted to an overheating issue. Here's what the tech note actually says.
Apple recommends that you don't:
- Leave the device in a car on a hot day.
- Leave it in direct sunlight for extended amounts of time.
- Use certain applications in hot conditions or direct sunlight for long periods of time, such as GPS tracking in a car on a sunny day or listening to music while in direct sunlight.
I hardly see that as an admission that there are heat issues. Best practices for operating the iPhone, sure.
I've been through several incidents over my 15 years of covering Apple where warnings were issued about products. Whether it was a notebook battery or a power cord, we usually learned of the problem from Apple, and they were always quick to respond and to offer replacements.
It is true that Apple has been quiet about this so far. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because they have not been able to replicate the heat issues some users are reporting.
You will know when Apple acknowledges a serious problem like this. It won't come in the form of a tech note. It will come directly from a company representative.
Apple expects to have a fix later this month for a vulnerability in the iPhone that could allow an attacker to gain control of the device remotely via SMS, a security researcher said on Thursday.
An attacker could exploit a weakness in the way iPhones handle SMS (short message service) messages to do things like use GPS to track the phone's location, turn on the microphone for eavesdropping, or take control of the device and add it to a botnet, Charlie Miller, co-author of The Mac Hacker's Handbook and principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, said in a presentation at the SyScan conference in Singapore. The presentation was covered by IDG News Service.
Miller said that under an agreement with Apple, he was barred from providing too much detail on the vulnerability. He plans to give a more detailed presentation on the hole at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas at the end of the month.
Despite the SMS hole, which "could be a critical vulnerability," the iPhone is more secure than OS X on computers, Miller said. That is because the iPhone doesn't support Adobe Flash and Java, only runs software digitally signed by Apple, includes hardware protection for data stored in memory, and runs applications in a sandbox, he said.
Apple representatives did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.
(Credit: Apple, Inc.)Apple has updated a support document that details MobileMe enhancements for an iPhone running iPhone OS 3.0. The updates include the following features.
Mail
On an iPhone or iPod Touch, a user can search all messages including those stored on the MobileMe "cloud" (server). You can search in the From, To, and Subject fields.
Gallery
- iPhone 3GS users can publish videos to a Gallery album.
- If no Gallery albums exist, an album is automatically created when publishing a photo or video from the iPhone.
Push Contacts and Push Calendar
- There's an option to merge existing contacts and calendars on first sync from iPhone/iPod Touch.
- Deleting a MobileMe account or turning off contact and calendar sync on iPhone/iPod Touch allows users to keep a copy of the data on the device.
- iPhone contacts that sync with MobileMe maintain ringtone associations.
Details regarding Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe are included; we've covered both topics previously.
Apple has a complete list of MobileMe service updates since August 2008 .
Last week, Apple revised a support document about iPhone temperature to include the iPhone 3GS. The June 25 document cautions iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS users to operate their handsets within acceptable temperatures. It makes the following recommendations:
Recommended operating temperatures
Operate iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between zero and 35 degrees Celsius (32 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit). Low or high-temperature conditions might temporarily shorten battery life or cause the device to temporarily stop working properly.
Recommended storage temperatures
Store iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between -20 and 45 degrees Celsius (-4 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit). Don't leave the device in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed this range.
Symptoms of overheating
- iPhone will no longer charge
- iPhone display will dim
- Weaker cell signal
- iPhone temperature warning screen appears (see below)
Apple's recently released iPhone 3GS pulled out a victory in Consumer Reports' latest smartphone showdown.
(Credit: Apple)In handing the iPhone the top spot in this year's smartphone list, Consumer Reports on Wednesday praised the iPhone 3GS for its "superior display, reinforced by top-notch multimedia, navigation, Web browsing, and battery life." However, the iPhone didn't win in all of the categories.
Consumer Reports gave high marks to the Palm Pre and BlackBerry for their messaging functionality. The organization also praised the Pre as a "superior multitasker" for its "deck-of-cards handling of multiple applications."
In light of the changing features and needs of the smartphone category, Consumer Reports changed some of the criteria for this year's showdown. The changes helped some older phones--like the iPhone 3G--move up in the rankings, while other phones--like the Samsung Blackjack II and BlackBerry Pearl Flip--dropped due to the changes.
Changes include putting more emphasis on things like the display, navigation, multimedia, and messaging, while putting less of an emphasis on features such as talk time and voice quality.
It's unclear how the iPhone 3GS would have rated, had MMS messaging been available from AT&T at the time of the tests. AT&T said functionality would be available sometime this summer.
The full report is available to Consumer Reports subscribers.
You've probably heard of Mobile Air Mouse, the clever app that turns your iPhone into, well, an air mouse. (It's currently on sale for $1.99, by the way.)
JumiMouse is a bit different: It turns your iPhone (or iPod Touch) into an oversize touch pad, complete with left and right mouse buttons, tap-and-drag support, and so on.
The free JumiMouse app turns your iPhone into a roomy touch pad controller.
Why would you want such a thing? For starters, JumiMouse could take the place of a laptop touch pad that's worn and no longer working properly.
It could also solve the common problem of accidentally grazing the laptop touch pad with your thumb, causing the cursor to jump and your document to get messed up. Just deactivate the touch pad and use JumiMouse instead.
Finally, JumiMouse is an ideal replacement for netbook touch pads, which are notoriously tiny. The iPhone screen is ginormous in comparison.
JumiMouse communicates with your PC via local or ad-hoc Wi-Fi. To use the app, you must first install the free Jumi Controller utility. It's currently compatible with Windows XP and Vista (32-bit). I tried it with Windows 7: no go.
(Mac users should check out SnatchTest, a similar utility that duplicates the Mac touch pad. It's free.)
On a Vista system, JumiMouse was a snap to set up. My iPhone immediately detected the server, and a tap later I was controlling the cursor from my screen. Everything worked perfectly, and I detected no lag between my finger movements and the cursor.
At first I was disappointed by the lack of options for things like pointer speed and size. But it turns out that Windows recognizes JumiMouse as hardware, so all you do is hop into the Control Panel and tweak the standard Mouse settings to your liking.
This is a fabulous little app for anyone looking to control a PC--for any reason--with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Amazingly, JumiMouse is free.
