Mobile Radius

5 useful iPhone tips and shortcuts

andreliem — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:41:01 +0000

Compared to most mobile devices, the iPhone is a fairly intuitive device that takes little time to learn and use. The downside of this is that you likely haven’t taken the time to learn some basic short cuts that can save you some time. Here is our current list of useful iPhone shortcuts (for 3G) that should be useful to you.

1 – Safari link utility
While using Safari, you can open up a link utility to open, open in a new page, copy, and view the full details of a link.
Hold the link for a few seconds and the box will popup.

2 – Scroll through contacts
Hold your finger down on the letters then move up or down to scroll faster in a controlled manner.

3 – Music – show play controls quickly
If you’re using your iPhone for listening to music and the screen is off you may find it annoying to change tracks by having to navigate to the music library. Instead you can popup up the play controls by pressing the main home button twice.

4 – Caps Lock on and other keyboard tips
The standard keyboard has some hidden helpers that you can activate. First, go to Settings->General->Keyboard. Here you can enable the shortcuts for things like enabling Caps Lock on.
To enable Caps Lock mode, simply double tap the up arrow caps key and it will turn blue to signal caps lock mode is on.
To see a ellipse or domain shortcuts hold the respective icons and a bubble will popup.

5 – Auto Sleep your music
If you’ve ever wanted to play music before you go to sleep, perhaps some nice soothing tunes, and have it turn off after a set amount of time, you can do this quite easily. Simply follow these steps:
Home – Clock – Timer – When Timer Ends – Sleep iPod

This completes our current list of tips for this post, we’ll be posting more as we find out other cool things you can do with the iPhone. If you have any useful tips that we should know about, please comment below.

DropBox for the iPhone – the new killer app?

andreliem — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:51:06 +0000

DropBox is a file storage program that functions as its name describes, it’s a place to drop files into a folder (box) that is immediately sharable on the web. Their desktop application (cross platform) which has been around for a while can be thought of as a sharable network drive mapped to your computer, except the network drive is the web.

The magic behind DropBox is that it uses cloudstorage (S3), encryption technology, and advanced syncing methods to keep everything working up to high standards. Their free account provides you with a generous 2gigs but you can always upgrade with paid accounts.

While their desktop app is great, the addition of their iPhone application changes the game completely. You can access 2 gigs of data from your iPhone, share files with peers, sync remotely, and view various types of documents. I was quite impressed how dropping a Word document into the dropbox turned into a readable RTF on the iPhone. In addition, the documents almost appeared instantly, but of course this would depend on size and your connection.

To me, the DropBox application is as useful as the standard iPhone applications that come pre installed. When I first used my iPhone, I was surprised it was not particularly easy to move files on and off, or to view various types of common files. With the DropBox app, you have a file explorer, large remote storage, and a viewing program all in one.

If you don’t have this application yet, you should get it right now, it’s free after all.

Mobile coupons – have you cashed in yet?

adrian — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:34:52 +0000

One of the oldest traditions in the world of retail sales has spread to the digital world of mobile devices: coupons! Offering discounts in digital format isn’t a new concept, and it still remains to be seen how successful mobile coupons will be now that our phones have all gotten a lot smarter, but there might be some winning formulas out there in the world of mobile apps.

While there are a handful of apps already delivering mobile coupons such as Yowza, Coupon Sherpa, and Cellfire Mobile Coupons, two challenges facing digital discounting are readily apparent: getting retailers to pump their coupons into the app, and making the collection of available coupons localized enough to be useful to the consumer.

All three of the previously mentioned companies, for example, are only available to residents of the US – Yowza and Cellfire Mobile Coupons aren’t even available to download outside of the US, while Coupon Sherpa currently only lists US-based businesses. Sure, the US is a big market, but the bigger point is that location matters, and localization will really matter when it comes to digital coupons.

Mobile coupons are all about localization

You would never use a digital coupon from your mobile device to make online purchases – if you’re buying something online, you would get direct access to the discount right there in the online checkout. The only time you will ever use a mobile coupon will be when you walk into an actual store, phone-in-hand. It stands to reason, then, that a mobile coupon app will only be useful if businesses are able to offer their coupons regardless of where they are located.

Where things could get really interesting is with how mobile coupons will play into other mobile marketing-related applications such as foursquare where geo-location offers the ability for retailers of all sizes to offer promotions at a very localized level. Granted, foursquare itself is only available in select cities at the moment. But the broader underpinnings of how small businesses have been able to offer their own promotions via the mobile game (as we’ve covered earlier) essentially capture one of the easier ways to offer deals to your customers through mobile devices – use mobile as a communication tool to offer your promotions, that’s it, easy peasy.

Another area where app developers might get more bang for their buck would be in providing a complete platform that bridges the full spectrum of the retail promotion process: provide customers the means to easily to opt-in promotions from a retailer (in exchange for providing their contact information), and give retailers a means to make their offers and even accept payments – a model similar to how Starbucks is reportedly testing some apps including one that allows you to load up your Starbucks Card and even make payments all with your iPhone. Not all retail outfits can afford to build their own iPhone app the way Starbucks is, but this is the opportunity for a new suite of apps to emerge or maybe one app to rule them all.

Given there are now reportedly 2 billion iPhone app downloads along with 85,000 iPhone apps to choose from, maybe this is out there already. Have you seen it? What do you think?

Taptu, google for mobile search?

andreliem — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:10:38 +0000

Taptu, a specialized search engine for mobile phones is an interesting idea that actually makes sense. As many iPhone users will know, browsing the web with Safari is not always the most pleasant experience with having to zoom in and using cumbersome form controls. Unless you know which sites are designed for mobile phones, quite often you’ll spend as little time as possible on a site to just obtain that particular piece of information you came for.

This is where Taptu comes in, they have created a special search engine for finding sites made for mobile phones. Take a look at the screen shots below to see how it works.

As the pictures show, Taptu has a pretty sleek interface for finding sites. After using it for a while, the first thing you realize is a lot of sites are not in the index. I’m not particularly sure how the indexing works or how active it is, but it didn’t pick up mobileradius even though our site has been optimized for mobile viewing with the wptouch plugin.
[Update: Submit your sites to taptu's index http://taptu.com/a/submit ]

Take a look at how wptouch can turn a wordpress site into a mobile site with one button:

Perhaps Taptu takes a while to index, but at the moment it feels more like a mini version of Yahoo’s portal home page in mobile view. You get access to a lot of popular sites but it feels like… well a portal. It’s likely it will take another few years before most sites cater to mobile viewing, so it’s hard to say how fast Taptu will take off.

Either way, I think Taptu is a move in the right direction and a taste of things to come. As we move towards more compact screens, and multiple views of the same data, the new trend for technology developments is going to be streamlining this for content producers. I would recommend trying out Taptu, it’s free and a fun app to use.

Click here to get the app.

Why is my iPhone slow? Tips for speeding it up.

andreliem — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:13:51 +0000

Is your iPhone slowing down or a lot slower than it used to be? Like most computers, the more things you install on your iPhone and the more you use it, the slower it becomes. You may not notice how slow your iPhone is until your play a more graphic intensive game. For example, I noticed that Tetris was running super slow on my iPhone after a month of usage.

Here is a list of four things you can do to speed up your iPhone. If you have any tips please comment below and I’ll add them to the list.

1. Clear your text messages
This one is pretty easy, just pop into your text messages panel and delete them one by one.

If you have a jailbroken iPhone you can follow this link for a delete all add-on: http://www.utternerd.org/Delete+all+SMS+Text+Messages+off+your+iPhone+at+once

2. Clear your Internet Cache
Go to Settings -> Safari and clear all your cache. (more if you like)

3. Power Down and restart your iPhone
-Press/hold the top power button (first) and then the home button right after.
-Wait until the power slider comes on and slide it off.
-Wait until the screen loader is done.
-Hold the top power button to turn the iPhone back.
-Let go once the Apple icon shows up

4. Restore your iPhone if all else fails
If your iPhone is still slow, then you will have to restore your iPhone through iTunes. Unfortunately this is not particularly fun as you can lose some of your settings and it can take a while. Refer to the official apple support article for this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414?viewlocale=en_US

Well that’s all the tips I have for now, I would like to hear of other ones if there’s something that worked for you.

What’s the deal with foursquare?

adrian — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:16:55 +0000

More than just a new game, foursquare is a potential game-changer when it comes to the intersection of digital life with the real world. Foursquare initially comes across as being as innocent as its namesake – a game we called “four corners” in my neck of the woods where you bounce a ball around, eventually moving your way up to being the king of the corners. But some notable people are all abuzz that foursqure has the potential to be bigger than Twitter.

The premise of foursquare is simple: you go to places in your city, check in with your mobile app, SMS, or the mobile site, and as you check in you get points. You also get points for being an active user and doing things like contributing new locations. To reward you for building your points, you get badges and if you become the reigning point-getter for a particular place, you become the “Mayor” for that location. Points are reset every week, helping to keep things interesting, fresh, and alive.

The folks behind foursquare have hit a real sweet spot by delivering an interface, icons, and tone that makes the game simple yet fun to play, all the while tapping into a potential gold mine for virtually any business with a physical presence in the real world. Some businesses have already begun to tap into the marketing potential of foursquare by offering their Mayors special offers or promos. Unlike other businesses that fumble trying to find a business model, it seems like foursquare was conceived from the very beginning with the business model in mind.

Creating a custom ringtone for your iPhone (for free)

andreliem — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:43:35 +0000

Have you ever wanted to make a custom iPhone ringtone without downloading programs or paying a fee? If you answered yes, then keep reading as this article will show you how in a few simple steps. By using a free audio sampling site Audiko (http://audiko.net/) and iTunes, you can create a 30 second ring tone quite easily. Follow below to get started:

Step 1 – Visit http://audiko.net

Step 2 – Upload a music file you would like to sample

Step 3 – Select the starting point for your sample with Audiko’s sampling tool

Step 4 – After the file is converted, scroll down and save the mp3 to your computer

Step 5 – Open up iTunes and add the track to your library

Step 6 – Make sure your audio import settings are set to AAC (very important)

Step 7 – Find your 30 second track and click Get Info

Step 8 – Go to Options and set Start Time to 0:00 and Stop Time to 0:30

Step 9 – iTunes will create the new 30 second sample. Right click and click “Create AAC Version”

Step 10 – Copy this file to your desktop (or locate it) and rename the file extension from “m4a” to “m4r”

Step 11 – Import the new “m4r” file back into iTunes, add to RingTones and sync your iPhone!

You have now created a ring tone for free!

Additional Notes:

You don’t need Audiko if you know the exact start and end time.

i.TV – a tv guide, movie finder, and remote control in an iPhone app

andreliem — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:10:57 +0000

i.TV is a free iPhone application that acts as a TV guide, local movie finder, and even a remote control. Out of all my free apps, I find I use i.TV quite often as I do not receive the listings and always forget what’s on TV. You just load up the app, provide it with your general location and it pops in the daily listings. One of my favourite features is the ability to view the listings horizontally like a regular tv guide. Another nice feature is the way it links up to movie listings in theatres nearby. Look at the screen shots below to see how it works.

Out of all the free apps I’ve downloaded, I find myself using this one quite consistently. It serves a need and works well. If you watch TV at all or like to watch movies, I would highly recommend trying this app. It’s free and you only have to deal with some basic advertising that doesn’t take away from the user experience.

Click here to download the app.

Disable Cellular Network Data on iPhone with unlockit APN (How To)

andreliem — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:39:54 +0000

This article is for those iPhone owners who didn’t sign up for a data plan and are being charged for packets of data sent from your iPhone when a WiFi connection is not around. Normally, your provider can disable data transfer for you, but they do not guarantee it works. I found out the hard way and was charged excessive amounts for data packets being sent. After two attempts from my provider, data was still being transferred and the best they could do is credit my account 50% of the additional data charges.

To the rescue, there is a free iPhone application called “APN Changer” which changes your iPhone APN to an invalid APN. In short, your iPhone will not able to access Cellular Network Data because it is in effect configured incorrectly for this, don’t worry you can disable it easily. This application has worked for me and a lot of other people.

Here’s a quick how to:

From your iPhone visit www.unlockit.co.nz
Select Continue
Select Disable Data (FakeAPN)
Click Install
Install Profile will install (try again if it doesn’t work).

Here are some relevant screen shots to assist:

You can verify that it is working by disabling WiFi and trying to access the Internet. You should get a popup screen like below:

Lastly, you should check your data usage to make sure it’s really working. Look at the last category in the screen shot below “Cellular Network Data”. All zero bytes is a good thing!

Some may ask why someone would buy an iPhone if they don’t want a data plan. My answer is that a large majority of people have WiFi at home and at work, so the only time they would use a 3G/Edge network would be during transit, or perhaps during lunch/coffee breaks. Data plans (in Canada) cost at least 25 bucks additional per month which in one year adds up to the cost of of buying an iPhone through a plan.

If you found this application useful, you can thank Craig Whitmore and can paypal donate by visiting www.unlockit.co.nz.

AppBox Pro – a swiss army knife for the iPhone?

andreliem — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:37:29 +0000

AppBox Pro is an app of mini apps that comes with 18 apps (plus 3 semi apps). For $0.99 it didn’t take much for me to try this app out. Here’s a quick list of what you get:

Battery Life check - based on activities
Clinometer – levelers
Currency – converts currencies
Dashboard - holidays, global currencies, etc…
Date Calculator – days between days
Days Until
Flashlight
Holidays – a list for your region
Loan Calculator
Period Calendar
Price Grab – compare the value of two items
Random Number – generates a number
Ruler – a plain old ruler
Sale Price – Calculate the savings
System Info – Memory and Storage for your iPhone
Tip Calc – a tip calculator and splitter
Translator – translate a language to another
Units – converts units for all types of occupations

Plus these 3:

Google Books – short cut to google books
Collapse – a math game
Apple Web Apps – quick link to apple web apps

After using AppBox Pro my favourites are the Price Grab, Tip Calc, Units, and Clinometer. On the other hand, some of the apps I would rarely use at all, such as the Period Calculator, Translator (because it hardly works), and Days Until.

To answer the question, is this the Swiss Army Knife for the iPhone? The answer is yes, like a Swiss army knife, you’ll find some tools completely useless but a few of them very useful. If anything, it looks cool to have one and can impress your friends in time of needs.

Mobile Radius Verdict: is to Buy It
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Google’s mobile app market is here

andreliem — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:10:38 +0000

Wow, Google’s market place is almost identical to the iPhone’s App Store, and that’s not a bad thing. With the contentious issue of Google Voice not coming to the iPhone anytime soon (or ever), and Google’s software prowess, it will be interesting to see if the Android can match or surpass the iPhone.

My take is that Google will do what they do best, build very smart and useful applications that make your life a lot simpler. The adoption rate from developers will depend on their Developer API, but it’s likely to attract more developers as it’s not limited to Mac only.

Although iPhone development is changing with new “wrapper like” technologies for iPhone development such as Mono or PhoneGap. PhoneGap is a very cool development environment created by Nitobi that allows developers to create iPhone apps in one language (Javascript) for many platforms. Currently, PhoneGap targets the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

All I can say is that, as a consumer, I would expect the rate of application growth to increase dramatically in the coming year.