It’s here. The Wordpress app for iPhone made it to the app store overnight, and at this moment, I imagine thousands of bloggers (real and wannabe, such as yours truly) are preparing their first posts using the app.

I’m going to go out in a limb here and predict that the majority of those posts will be reviews of this very app.

Of course, it has been possible, and even convenient to blog from the iPhone and other mobile devices since the beginning. But does this new application change the landscape drastically?

My guess is, just a little. I can’t see typing a long post out at 20 wpm on the iPhone. But, the clean, usable interface makes it easy to fire off quick posts while out and about, update blogs with breaking news, or even start a post to finish later.

Of course, it only works on iPhone, so there is that. But between the Wordpress and Typepad apps, the iPhone is quickly becoming a powerful mobile publishing tool as well as gaming and productivity platform.

I don’t forsee posting from this platform frequently, but time will tell. It is nice to have the option, and my first impression is that the option is nice.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, WordPress, Reviews, App Store

Often, we feel powerless to change the world around us. Sometimes, we feel powerless to even make it through the day.

Syd Lieberman tells the true story of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish man who did something extraordinary. I won’t spoil the story for you. I’ll only say that after listening to Syd’s amazing telling of this incredible story, you will never, and I mean NEVER be able to look in the mirror and say, “It’s only me. What can I do to change things?”

Go download it right now: It’s at the bottom of this page.

I’ve been listening to Syd Lieberman’s storytelling podcast for several months as part of a growing enthusiasm
for the disappearing art of storytelling. Syd is a well-known storyteller who has made waves in the industry by releasing every single recording he has ever made for free on the Internet. You can download them as a podcast via iTunes or your favorite podcatcher, or you can go directly to his website and download them at your leisure.

Technorati Tags: storytelling, heroes, syd lieberman, wwii, inspiration

I’ve been horsing around with Twitter for a week or three now, and I love it. As a result, I’ve started recruiting friends and family to join.

I decided it would be a good idea to post a few quick tips to help you get started and get the most out of the service without going completely insane.

So, without further ado, here are my tips:

Getting Started

• Sign up for a free account at http://twitter.com.
• Don’t freak out too much about your username. You can change later if you want to.
• Go to your settings and select “Devices.” Follow the instructions to add your Mobile Phone to your profile.
• Click on “Notices,” and pay special attention to @ Replies. There are three possible settings
1. all @ replies
2. @ replies to the people I’m following
3. no @ replies
• I personally use #2 right now. If you are a bit more social (and have an unlimited SMS plan!), choose #1. When someone replies to a tweet (twitter post), I see the reply only if I am following both the sender and the intended recipient.
• If you choose #1, then you would see all replies made by everyone you are following.
• That might be neat if you are looking to find old friends, or just want to meet new people, but it’s like drinking from a firehose very quickly. It is largely a matter of personal taste.
• Search for friends! Use the find and follow link at the top of the web page
• You can also send commands from your cell phone once activated. Type “follow username” from your cell phone in an SMS to 40404, and you will start receiving updates from that person
• Update your status! Either via the web or your cell phone. Send a post to twitter in 140 characters or less with what you are thinking about or doing at the moment. Watch what others do. You’ll get the hang of it!

Tips and Thoughts

• Twitter is not known for reliability. It is a fun application, but it frequently crashes. Don’t worry, it won’t do any damage to you, but don’t assume that it will be working on any given day.
• Privacy: By default, there is NO privacy to your tweets. Anything you post can be seen by everyone in the world.
• If you want to be more discrete, or private, or if you just want to experiment without the world being able to see your posts, adjust the privacy settings by going to Account on the Settings page and selecting the “Protect My Updates” box. After doing this, only people you explicitly authorize will be able to see your status.

компютри

• Update your status often. The idea is to keep in touch with friends and colleagues, even when we are hundreds of miles apart!
• Reply to individuals using @replies. This helps for everyone’s own filtering purposes and keeps conversations followable. So, if you wanted to send a message directed at me, you would send a tweet that says “@jbrett I think you are the coolest geek I’ve ever met
• Finally, if you haven’t already done it, “follow jbrett”!

I’ll update and add to this as I think to. Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or privately. This is not intended to be all encompassing. It’s just a quickstart guide for friends. Enjoy!

I know. I’m slow. But I like it. I’m testing out it’s feed aggregation now, and I suspect that Tumblr may actually encourage me to post on all of my blogs more frequently.

I’ve been twittering, iRovring and MySpace’ing lately, but haven’t settled into a routine….

I’ll delete this post eventually, but it’s a good test. I suppose I should check out FriendFeed, too, but it seems unnecessary…

Go ahead…Bookmark me. You know you want to. Especially if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch.

The developer center over at Apple tells us to simply put a 57X57 icon in the root of the website, name it apple-touch-icon.png, and voila.

The iPhone will actually trim a pixel or so in the process, so I created a jumbis icon at 53×53, then expanded the canvas around the icon itself to 57×57.

Worked out perfectly.

iPhone Dev Center - Apple Developer Connection

Technorati Tags: iPhone, web development, favicons, webclip, icon

According to ARS Technica, Apple’s DRM-Free library is expanding and will soon have a major price drop, down to 99¢ per track, just like their DRM-encumbered tracks.

At first, I was a little put off by the DRM “free” premium pricing, but I got over it. All the same, I’ll never complain about a price drop! Thanks Amazon! It just goes to show what a little competition can do to benefit the consumer. (Amazon recently launched a competing MP3 store with all DRM-Free music priced well below Apple’s iTunes.

Already, some losers are crying foul. Apparently people have forgotten that prices drop on technology all the time. Now people are actually complaining that prices are dropping too quickly. (Just read the comments here) Get a life, folks.

Will we get refunds on the DRM free price difference? I doubt it. Do I
care? Nope. I agreed to the price I paid. I could have gone over to
Amazon and bought DRM free music for cheaper, but it wasn’t as
CONVENIENT! I pay a premium to Apple because they give me the music I
want, when I think about it, without having to go through extra steps
to get it onto my device. Now that the price is dropping, I’ll just buy more music. (Funny thing is, I’ll probably spend more money in the long run. It’s just psychologically easier for me to click “buy” for 99¢ than it is to click $1.29)

When the iPhone price dropped by $200, I actually bought one. Now that I have one, I have said on many occasions that if I had known how great it was, I would have spent the extra $200 to get it sooner.

Likewise, I have a friend who bought the iPhone the first week. I asked him if he was mad about the price drop. He said “nope. I got mine before you got yours.”

You buy early, you pay more. If the business model survives, prices will come down. It’s part of the product lifecycle. It’s just moving faster with Apple than with most others.

iTunes Plus DRM-free tracks expanding, dropping to 99 cents

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iTunes, DRM, Apple

Thanks Scott: RedEye | iPhone, Therefore I Blog

For those who need another interpretation, here is the price of the iPhone, as stated up front, by AT&T and Apple:

$399 (post price reduction)
2 Year Contract with AT&T Mobility (Cingular)
Inability to load third party applications on the device

You may unlock the phone for use on another network (this is a legal mandate), but doing so will void the warranty. Apple and AT&T will not be responsible for the effects thereof.

So, in summary, if you bought an iPhone, this is the price you agreed to pay, up front. You can’t re-negotiate after you get it home and use it for a little while.

Another example: Doctor Brown certainly voided the warranty on his De Lorean DMC-12 when he installed the Flux Capacitor. I seriously doubt that De Lorean could be held responsible for the mechanical problems he faced in 1885.

So, stop suing already.

Courts: Throw this scrap out.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, lawsuit, Apple, AT&T

If you like Google’s GrandCentral service (still in Beta) and plan to make a complete switch to make your GC number your primary phone number, make sure you read this article first!

As I promised in my First Impressions post last week, I did a little testing of GrandCentral’s implementation to determine whether the service is mobile-to-mobile (or AT&T Unity) friendly.

The simple answer is…well, there isn’t a simple answer. The answer is, “sort of.”

At 1:22 on Thursday afternoon, I placed a call from my wife’s cell phone to my own GC number. I answered the call on my own cell phone (both of our phones are Cingular/AT&T phones, so all mobile-to-mobile calls are “free”). The following day I checked my online call logs, and this is what I found:

The call placed to my GC number from my wife’s cell phone was recorded as a standard long-distance call (long distance is also free, so I was only charged for the minutes against my plan allotment).

The call received on my cell phone was recorded as a mobile-to-mobile call from my wife’s cell phone! So it was a “free” incoming call. No minutes were used.

So, if a person calls a GrandCentral number, the caller will not be able to take advantage of free mobile-to-mobile minutes. The caller will be billed for airtime and long-distance charges as applicable.

The call recipient, on the other hand, will receive all of the benefits of mobile-to-mobile calling.*

So, how do I feel about this? Personally, I don’t think it’s a big problem. It just means that if I think my Wife is near her cell phone, I’ll dial that first. If I get no luck there, then I’ll dial the GC number. I’ll continue to give my GC number out as my default number. I’ll let my family and friends who have Cingular/AT&T cell phones to try my cell first, but if no luck, use the GC number.

Bottom line: GrandCentral at this point is not the only phone number I’ll ever need to give out. It is, however still an awesome service and I will continue to use it for the foreseeable future. This slight downside is, I should add, through no fault of GrandCentral (in my estimation). It’s simply a limitation of what their software can do without direct access to Cingular’s internal billing systems.

*Disclaimer: I have performed only a cursory test of the GrandCentral functionality with two Cingular phones on an AT&T Unity calling plan. Your mileage may vary depending on a variety of factors, however I expect all U.S. domestic cell phone users to experience similar results. At any point in time, GrandCentral’s technology could change this behavior, for better or for worse. The words “better” and “worse” can have varying definitions depending on whether you work for GrandCentral, Cingular or neither. Readers are advised to perform their own tests with their own calling plans, and monitor their own phone bills regularly for changes. I am not responsible for any charges you may or may not receive on your phone bill, unless of course you loan me your phone for a few minutes so I can call my uncle in Oregon.

Technorati Tags: GrandCentral, Reviews, Warning

A few weeks ago, Google purchased a “little” startup called GrandCentral. I got my beta invite a few days ago and signed up. First Impressions says, “Oh, Yeah.”

At it’s core GrandCentral acts as a centralized phone number and voicemail system. One phone number rings you at home, work and on your cell, simultaneously. When you pick up, at whatever phone you happen to be near, the caller’s name is announced and you can choose to answer or send the call to voicemail (plus a few other options). If that were all, then the service would be worthy of attention, but here are a few more:

• Add up to 6 numbers to your profile
• An online address book (there is an import/export function, but no automated synchronization tool that I can see)
• Group callers in your address book according to 4 different categories: Family, Friends, Work and Other. Each group can be handled differently, routed to different phone combinations (example:Friends never ring at the office, but always ring cell and home)
• Each group gets it’s own voice mail greeting (Professional “Work” and “Other” greeting, fun or playful for “Friends” and “Family.”
• Individual callers can be blocked, routed or handled specially
• Automatic filtering and blocking of phone-spam and telemarketers
• Easy recording of phone calls
• Visual voicemail!

And, did I mention that it’s FREE?

There are many more features than I’ve listed, and I haven’t tried them all out yet, but this is a First Impressions review.

Here’s the downside, so far:

• GrandCentral is a beta product, so not all features are fully loaded and available yet
• Many of the nicer features will ultimately be part of a paid, premium plan. However, GrandCentral does not make it clear exactly which features will remain free, which will be paid, and how much the premium plans will cost. So, be careful what you get addicted to! (To be fair, they do make it clear that unlimited inbound calls, unlimited voicemail and access to core features will always be free. What “constitutes core features” is vague)

And here’s a big potential issue: My calling plan (AT&T Unity) gives me unlimited “free” calling between AT&T numbers everywhere, even on my cell-to-landline calls, and more importantly my cell-from-landline calls. Similarly, most mobile phone carriers offer free mobile-to-mobile minutes on their own networks. So there is a big risk that routing calls through GrandCentral will essentially bypass this feature. The research I’ve done so far indicates that there is hope on this front. I’m running some specific tests today and I’ll report back on my findings.

In a nutshell, GrandCentral looks great, and works as advertised. The service is highly customizable, and there are many more features than what I’ve listed here. Google’s acquisition of the company means the service should be around for a while.

GrandCentral is only available by invitation during the beta period. But each user gets a half dozen invites or so for now, and I’ve got a couple left. So if you’d like to try it out, drop an email to jumbis at jumbis dot com.

Technorati Tags: Reviews, GrandCentral, Technology

“If you don’t wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to
execute them. You can tell yourself that you don’t have the time or
resources to do ‘em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you’ll get to later.”

-Ze Frank
The Show, 7/11/06

One of the best reasons for procrastination I’ve seen in the last 5 minutes.

So, I guess I’m like, exactly 5 days ahead of being one year behind on this.