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No love from Apple iPhone Developer Program

03.14.2008 at 9:58 am

iphonesdk.pngLast week when Apple announced its iPhone SDK, I immediately downloaded it and began playing around with it, even though I don’t know how to develop a single line of code in XCode. It was still worth the time because it is actually very cool, especially with the iPhone emulator. At the same time last week Apple announced their iPhone Developer Program. Again, I immediately applied–which was a simple process of filling out a form and waiting for a response. Today I was excited to receive and saddened to read this:

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Looks like the response was so overwhelming, even during the first few hours, that a lot of people will have to wait, including me!

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How to create a custom iPhone or iPod Touch WebClip bookmark icon

01.16.2008 at 2:41 am

Now that the iPhone and iPod Touch allow a user to save a WebClip bookmark to your site on their Home Screen, most web developers are wondering, “How do I customize this so it doesn’t look so horrible?” To specify a bookmark icon for all pages of a web site, place a PNG image named “apple-touch-icon.png” at the root directory of your web server - similar to the “favicon.ico” which appears to the left of your URL in your web browser.

To override the site bookmark icon on a specific web page, insert a <link> element similar to <link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”/apple-touch-icon.png”/> within the <head> element of the page.

<head>
    <title>chrisTHIS!</title>
    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png"/>
</head>

The bookmark icon dimensions should be 57×57 pixels. If the icon is a different size it will be scaled and cropped to fit. My examples are shown to the right. Design tip: leave space around your artwork since Apple crops the edges to make the icon round.

Safari will automatically composite the icon with the standard “glassy” overlay so it looks like a built-in iPhone or iPod application.

Note: I have noticed that the <head> element is not needed for this to work. Just put the .png file in your root folder! Perhaps this isn’t needed if you use the default “apple-touch-icon.png” file name in the root folder? I went ahead and did it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

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zunePhone Advertisement

10.15.2007 at 10:19 pm

Kathy sent this one to me… pretty funny for you Microsoft bashers out there.

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Verizon’s LG Voyager an iPhone killer?

10.04.2007 at 3:35 pm

This week Verizon announced several new phones and one of them is very iPhone-like. Check out this video of this dude demonstrating the new LG Voyager with touch screen, due out next month.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

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How to disable the iPhone shutter camera sound

09.25.2007 at 4:03 pm

Earlier this year when I had my Motorola Q I posted this entry about how to disable the shutter sound of that phone. Now that I have the iPhone, I was trying to figure out how to do the same thing since the shutter sound effect is loud and annoying.

As long as you have iBrickr (Win) or Breezy (Mac) it’s very easy. Just install the Mobile Finder app through the Installer.app. The Finder app allows you to browse all of the folders and files on your iPhone, just like you can do on your Mac or PC.

The solution is to find the offending sound file and rename it so when the iPhone’s OS looks for the file it can’t find it. It still takes the picture without failure.

Before you continue, note that using any 3rd party app or modifying any system file can cause problems with your iPhone, so if you bust your phone while messing around with it, don’t go crying at me. Just restore your iPhone using the restore feature in iTunes if you screw something up.

Navigate to the folder /System/Library/Audio/UISounds. There you will find all of your system’s user interface sound files. Scroll down to the “photoShutter.caf” file and double-tap it to view its file properties. Now tap once on the Filename, then rename it to something else. I renamed mine to “photoShutter-old.caf”.

Now exit the Mobile Finder.app and take a picture. Now sound will be heard!

Now before you ask, I do not know how to change these sound files to something else, but if you know, please post a comment!


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Change your iPhone carrier graphic with ease

09.20.2007 at 3:56 pm

Do you like staring at your “AT&T” or “cingular” carrier graphic at the top of your iPhone? Well, I don’t, and apparently others are joining the carrier graphic changing party. Today The Spicy Chicken released a new app for the iPhone that does a lot more than their previous DocSwap app. It allows you to change the carrier image, the dock background, plus the ring, mute, silent and speaker graphics with ease.

Read the Rest of ‘Change your iPhone carrier graphic with ease’

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iPhone Leopard theme rocks

09.19.2007 at 9:09 pm

I’m totally digging on this new Leopard theme that was released today for Summerboard. I especially love the rounded corners at the top.

If you haven’t already, go get iBrickr (Windows) or Breezy (Mac) and then install the Installer app. Once you have that puppy installed, you can install a ton of third-party apps, games, and themes for your iPhone over the air!

And yes, that’s a Pirate app there toward the bottom… figured I’d mess with it since it is, after all, International Talk Like A Pirate Day!


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Donkey Kong on the iPhone

09.19.2007 at 8:59 pm

photo.jpgMy favorite all-time game, on the iPhone using the NES emulator. Controls aren’t the best but it works!

In order to make this happen you need iBrickr (Windows) or Breezy (Mac) and then the NES app. You can also install this “over the air” using the Installer app if you have that installed.

If you need games for the Nintendo emulator, just head on over to this ROM download site — there are over 900 of them.  Some of them work well with the iPhone NES emulator, while some of them are unplayable.  I’ve had good luck with Donkey Kong, Galaga, Galaxian, Pacman, Space Invaders, Super Mario Brothers, and Dig Dug.

I have loved playing Donkey Kong since I was a kid playing the original coin-op version. One day I have to convince my wife to get me the original coin-op for Christhis (er, Christmas).

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Syncing Google Calendar with iPhone

09.17.2007 at 11:15 pm

When it comes to the Apple iPhone and Windows iTunes, you can synchronize your bookmarks with Internet Explorer or Windows Safari, and contacts from Outlook or Yahoo! but when it comes to synchronizing your calendar you are severely limited, unless all you use is Outlook, because that’s all you can directly sync with at the moment.

I was an Outlook user for years until I gave Microsoft the (thunder) Bird. The biggest problem with making the change from Outlook to Thunderbird was the loss of my synchronization between my iPhone and my calendar, because I don’t use Outlook anymore. I do use Google Calendar (GCal) because it allows me to access my calendar from anywhere (like Gmail) and share calendars between my family.

So how do you sync the iPhone with Google Calendar?

Well, you can’t. But through some sneaky workarounds, it is possible. Since the iPhone only knows how to sync with Outlook, the trick is to get your GCal appointments synced with Outlook.

This is possible with some commercial (pay) services such as ScheduleWorld and SyncMyCal, however the route I went after trying his free trial was David Levinson’s gSyncit. It’s a whole 10 bucks and it works great. After throwin’ down $10 via PayPal and instantly getting the registration code by email, it got rid of the nags, enabled automatic synchronization, and allowed me to add the other 3 GCal calendars that I needed to sync with Outlook. Plus, you don’t need to touch GCal and copy ICAL URLs. Just supply gSyncit with your GCal username and password, then it gives you a list of Google Calendars to sync with.

You can sync both ways, too… from GCal to Outlook, and vice-versa. I am currently only syncing one-way (from GCal to Outlook) so I can’t comment on how well it works the other way.

After configuring gSyncit and clicking the Sync button on my Outlook toolbar, I was able to sync my iPhone through iTunes with ease. Now all my Google appointments are on my iPhone!

…now if I could just figure out a way to get the Chargers to beat the Patriots…

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Apple OK with iPhone hacking

09.11.2007 at 5:38 pm

Interesting stuff:

“In an interview given to Gearlog, Apple VP of Hardware Product Marketing Greg Joswiak confirmed that the iPhone and iPod Touch run the same software, and said that Apple is not bothered by the flood of native, third party software for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Joswiak defined the Apple stance as neutral, and while they will not intentionally break the apps with firmware updates, they will not go out of their way to prevent updates from breaking apps either. So iPhone coders, rejoice, you’ll live to hack another day.” - Gizmodo

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iChris: How many iPods do you need?

09.11.2007 at 11:05 am

Well, my new Nano arrived today directly from Shenzhen, China, a day early. I ordered it Sept 5th, the day Apple announced their new line-up of iPods. I’m glad I skipped the 2nd gen iPod Nano because it wasn’t much different than the first gen model. The 3rd gen model, however, is crazy different… shorter, wider, does video and games, and if you can believe this… it’s thinner than its predecessor.

Featured is my 8GB iPhone, 1 GB iPod Nano (1st gen), and 8GB iPod Nano (3rd gen).

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Tether your iPhone

09.10.2007 at 1:13 pm

My Dad was asking me this morning if you can tether the iPhone yet.  I said not yet, but I’m sure some developer will figure it out any day now.  Looks like they already did!

Go to cre.ations.net for the instructions.  AT&T’s EDGE network is tolerable on my iPhone… I can’t imagine it being tolerable tethered to my laptop, however.  Still, if that’s the only way to get online then it’s better than nothing!

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My iPhone home screen

09.07.2007 at 12:09 am

photo.jpgWho says you can’t customize an iPhone? Check out my updated home screen!

Notice the background image and the 5 (not 4) dock icons?

(This post and screen shot brought to you completely via iPhone/email).

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iPhone screen shot blogging

09.04.2007 at 9:00 pm

photo.jpgI’m in geek heaven.

Check this out… with the help of iBrickr and the Dock iPhone mod I can happily take screen shots from my iPhone and blog them via email and the Postie WordPress plug-in.

It takes full screen shots and saves them in my camera roll so I can then transfer them to my PC or email them.

Here’s my first one!

Plus, the Dock mod provides a very innovative menu option that I think the iPhone should adopt as a standard feature. Makes app selection a helluva lot easier!

A great list of other third-party apps for the iPhone can be found here at lifehacker.com.

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WordPress mods

08.31.2007 at 1:44 am

I spent the evening “pimping out” my WordPress blog scripts a bit more. I found a cool Flickr badge replacement that is not Flash (shown to the right), added in a plug-in to easily add videos to my blogs, added in my Nike+ run widget, Twitter summary, and perhaps the coolest thing ever: the ability to blog by email/phone with photos.

I first tried the Flickr WordPress integration, but it didn’t work well at all. It did post a blog, but it completely ignored my text and for some reason ended up making 3 posts instead of 1! Weird! I ended up going with a WordPress script called Postie that does the job, and does it extremely well. The only problem I ran into was I don’t have access to cron with my current Unix host, so I found a web-based cron service that was easy to set up and works great.

This means that not only can I now send messages to Twitter using SMS on my iPhone, but now I can also snap a photo and email it to my blog, along with a headline (email subject) and a description (email body). Now that is some cool stuff.

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