Two:Thirty AM

Today was the day I was finally invited to Google Voice! This might have had something to do with my constant badgering on Twitter (@googlevoice), or I was just lucky. So far it is a fantastic service I must say, even though I have only been using it for half a day. That said, I can already tell this is going to be HUGE, definitely the way to manage all your phone communications in the future. When signing up, one of the first steps is picking a phone number. They let you pick a number according to area code of course, but they also let you type in letters and words and then attempt to find you a number that corresponds to those letters or word. This is an awesome way to personalize your number since it will be your single number to give out. I was fortunate to get XXX-XXX-BURK! Really excited about that for sure. After the initial setup I started looking at features. Some of the features that stick out right away are the ability to route calls according to groups and the SPAM feature which lets you mark incoming calls as spam which I believe in affect will block that person (bot) from calling you anymore. One thing I had to do since I do not use the entire Google workflow is sync my contacts with Google so I can setup the groups and routing, but no big deal, Apple’s Address Book has a check box to sync with Google. So, for now that is my mini review. I am sure I will have MUCH more to say as I use the service going forward, but already I can tell this is going to be my command center for all phone traffic going forward.

Time to get all conspiracy theory on you! This may be way out in left field, but I am just shooting from the hip here and telling you what it looks like to me on the surface.

It seemed to take forever but a couple weeks ago we finally got Skype for the iPhone! Sure it took longer than it should have but what on the iPhone doesn’t? Well, after the first install, we came up against the app crashing upon starting, consistently. Well long story short, it turned out to be some kind of incompatibility with Jailbroken iPhones and MobileSubstrate. So we were back up and running just fine after a MobileSubstrate update. So it was MobileSubstrate? Well no, take a look at the lengthly article by Saurik on the matter.

So fast forward to today, a new Skype app update, cool, so I install it. Upon launching the app, I get the following message “This version of Skype is only supported on unmodified iPhone OS 2.2″ which you can see in the screen shot.

Bottom line, what is this app doing that no other app is?
Why is this particular app so different in the way it works?
Do they not work with the same SDK that everyone else does?

I really hope this turns out to be no big deal and I have blown it way out of proportion to be honest.

With all the talk of actions being taken to make Jailbreaking “illegal” and so forth, I don’t want this app to turn into a fact finding mission for Apple/AT&T to begin shutting off service for iPhone users that are “breaking the rules”.

Comment below, tell me I am over reacting…please :)

(the app seems to work ok, but is this the beginning? Because obviously if you have Jailbroken your phone, you know that you are not going to get technical support on anything)

10 months. 6500 tweets. Addicted. Yes.

Ok, now that I have admitted it and it’s out in the open, lets move on. :)

My girlfriend and I went on a vacation to Mexico for 8 days. It was a fantastic trip!! I had been gathering up gear that I was going to need, during which I realized, I would be without the normal means of communication I have now. Internet everywhere I go, iPhone in my pocket, and so on. To normal people, this would be ok, but my addiction to bandwidth wouldn’t allow it! So instead I formulated ideas on how to twitter while being disconnected in mexico (for a reasonable amount of money). Now in all seriousness, I wouldn’t die if I couldn’t twitter (hopefully), but I took this as a challenge / project of sorts, just to see what could be done. Lets get into the details a little, here are the ideas I had..

Options:
- Peek e-mail device (possibly hacked to work outside USA).
- Unlocked / Jailbroken iPhone 3G w/ Mexico SIM card.
- Laptop with rented 3G Card.
- Rent a mexico cell phone.
- Laptop with WiFi (if available).
- No twittering at all. not an option ;)

Right away, let me kill of some of these options. Obviously no twittering at all was not an option, or why would I be writing this! Secondly, WiFi was non existent to say the least!

Ideally, the Peek device would have been perfect. It is cheap, simple, and used cell data instead of WiFi. If you setup an email gateway to sent tweets through email, you are set. The problem is that the unit is locked down to only work with the T-mobile SIM that it came with, and since the SIM is blocked from roaming it made the device completely useless.

Next we have my iPhone 3G. My iPhone is unlocked so all I had to do was get a local Mexico SIM. I got said SIM from a company called Movistar. The problem I found with getting SIMs in Mexico is that they are all pay-as-you-go, so they didn’t seem to have any that included cell data. This knocked out any hopes of using iPhone apps to twitter. Instead I was left with only SMS as an option. Great huh? well yes and no. Twitter uses a US short code which doesn’t work from mexico, so I had to setup a SMS gateway to pass the tweets through. This was the only method I tried that actually worked for me reliably.

On a last note, there was 1 single ethernet cable in the place we were staying that worked most of the time, although it seemed to have the slowest DHCP server on the face of the planet, so that was an option as well, sort of, although it didn’t allow for mobile twittering

Long story short, if you can’t get international data, SMS is totally the way to go!

The other day I had one of those moments where I realized why I switched to Mac and why I love the platform so much. It is simply put, the nearly perfect apps that are developed for the platform. There are a lot of apps out there for all platforms that do one thing or another “pretty good”. It is however rare, to find an app that is simply perfect. Although after looking through my Applications folder, I find a number of apps that are just that, perfect. This is my chance to take a little time and share some of my favorites. I would also like to give you a little background as to why they are so perfect. I realize that nothing is perfect, and there will be plenty of forum / comment trolls to flame me, calling me a “fan boy” or ready to point out all the “flaws” and bugs these apps have. Well without wasting too much time, let me address those folks, screw off and go back to living your sad and pathetic little life behind your 1337 screen name. Anyhow, for the rest of you, lets get onto the apps shall we? :)

1Password by: Agile Web Solutions. If you are looking for a state of the art password manager, this is your app. 1Password is not only a password vault, but has plugins for all your favorite browsers, and with the simple click of a button, it will recall your logon info and sign you into all your favorite sites. All of this is done safely and securely. A really nice app!

Adium by: Adium X. With all the IM services out there and all your friends and family all on different ones, you don’t want to have 3 or 4 different IM clients running. Not to mention, none of the “official” clients are very nice anyway. Well Adium solves all of that. Adium is a multi client IM app. You can add all your IM accounts into this one app and Adium does the rest. Not to mention Adium is very customizable and has many plug-ins. The absolute best in class app on the mac!

Coda by: Panic Software. Whether you are just learning to code web pages or are a seasoned pro, Coda is the app for you. Dubbed “one window web development”, Coda is laid out brilliantly to ensure you are as productive as possible. They really looked at how the workflow should be, and molded this beautiful app around that. Worth every penny!

HandBrake by: HandBrake. Want to take your DVDs with you on the road but don’t want to lug them around? Want to have all your movies in MP4 format on your media server in your house? This is your app! Handbrake will take your DVDs and rip them into many different file formats and types of compression to fit your needs. I personally rip everything into H.264 MP4s for the Mac mini media center we have. Works like a charm every time and it is beyond simple. Oh and I almost forgot to mention it is open source and FREE!!

MarsEdit by: Red Sweater Software. This app is for anyone and everyone that has a blog. It is a great app that allows you to compose all your posts offline, save drafts, edit and then post them with the click of a button. I used this app to write this post in fact. It works with a multitude of blog engines; I am using it with WordPress. Clean layout, a must have if you want to blog from anywhere.

OmniFocus by: Omni Group. It’s all about GTD (getting things done) these days, and as far as I am concerned, this is the way to do it! If you are familiar with the GTD ideology or just want to stay organized, GET OMNIFOCUS! Get your tasks out of your head, organize them, and do them. Simple as that. This is truly brilliant software.

Quicksilver by: Blacktree. “Act without doing.” Quicksilver is a launcher that allows you to be more productive in launching apps than anyone really should be. To be fair, launching apps is about 1% of what Quicksilver is capable of. All I can say is, get this app and let the addiction begin. Once you start using Quicksilver, you will wonder how you ever managed without it!

Transmission by: Transmission Project. Transmission is by far my favorite BitTorrent client. It has a super clean UI, and is very easy to use. It has a good amount of preferences for setting up your BitTorrent workflow as well. One other feature it has that I love is that is has a webserver in it that will allow you to control your active torrents from any web browser. I find this to be very useful, and use it from my iPhone quite often; really slick.

Transmit by: Panic Software. Transmit is what you need if you do a lot of FTP transfers. Transmit is made by the same folks that make Coda, so right there you know it’s awesome. Transmit is a 2 pane style FTP client. It has “your stuff” on the left and “their stuff” on the right. It has a very simple and intuitive layout, making it easy to use. The layout also makes your FTP jobs much faster and more productive.

Twitterrific by: The Icon Factory. If you use Twitter then check out this little app. There are a ton of Twitter apps out there, but so far on the mac desktop this is the one I like the best. It is very un-intrusive and sits up in your menu bar. It has a ton of ways to customize alerts. The free version works exactly the same as the paid version with the exception of an ad every once in a while, which isn’t bad at all. They also have an iPhone version which works equally well! Oh, and don’t forget to follow me ;) http://twitter.com/heartagram

Aperture by: Apple. If you are an avid photographer or a new amateur photographer (like me), this is the app you need for photo manipulation and management, everything from color management to rating images. It also adds the ability to add rich detailed meta data to your images. There is a tethered shooting option as well, to shoot and add pictures to your projects automatically. It is a little pricey for the amateur at $199, but once you use it and see its power, you will find it to be totally worth it. Free Aperture Trial.

AppZapper by: AppZapper. Need to un-install apps that you don’t need anymore? This is what you want. AppZapper does one thing and it does it very well. Open AppZapper, drag your unwanted apps onto it, and it will find all associated files with that app. At this point you ZAP it, and the app and all associated files will be gone!

Cha-Ching by: Midnight Apps. Managing your finances is not always the easiest thing. But it can become a little more friendly with the help of Cha-Ching. This little financial app is the easy to use alternative to Quicken and the likes. It’s very easy to use and intuitive. If you want something simple to use or want to replace your current software that has too many “features,” check out this little piggy.

Evernote by: Evernote Corporation. This is by far the best application for note taking and storing. It is the most cross platform app I use by far. It works with Mac, Windows, iPhone, Web browser, and Windows Mobile! With this app you can take your notes on anyone of those clients and all your notes are stored in the cloud and synced everywhere, making your notes accessible anywhere, anytime. You can tag your notes, and even add voice and pictures. One of the coolest features is the ability to OCR text from pictures! You have to check this app out for your note taking needs.

Growl by: Growl Team. Growl is a notification system for OS X. Quite simply, Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen. It is a must have for everyone using OS X. It is free and beyond useful!

Overflow by: Stunt Software. If you are like me then you hate when you have too many things in your dock! Although it would be handy to be able to have more apps in reach like they are in the dock. Enter Overflow: with overflow you have a single icon in your dock, that when clicked, will present you with a fully customizable grid of all your apps. You can set them up in categories or how ever you like. It is a fantastic companion to Quicksilver, when you know what you want but the name isn’t coming to mind to type it. Click the Overflow icon and you are launching your app in 2 clicks!

Perian by: Perian Project. Perian, dubbed “the swiss-army knife for quicktime” is a Quicktime component that adds support for many video file formats. If you have a video file that won’t play because you don’t have the correct codec, install Perian, and chances are you will be good to go.

Simplify Media by: Simplify Media. This app lets you listen to your music from practically anywhere! Simplify Media lets you listen to your home music collection in iTunes over the internet from almost anywhere. I use it to listen to my home iTunes collection while I am at work. It all streams seamlessly through iTunes, it’s like the music is on that computer. There is also an iPhone client that lets you listen on the go. One other really cool feature is the ability to add up to 30 friends’ libraries, so you can listen to their music in the same way. This gives you practically an infinite song library! Breakthrough app.

Visual Hub by: Techspansion. I was a little hesitant to put this one on the list because the developer has stopped work on it and the app is effectively dead :( But because this app is SO great, I am putting it on the list anyway. This app, plain and simple, is THE video transcoder for the mac. It can transcode practically anything into anything else. If there is any way for you to still get a copy of this app, do it, you won’t be disappointed!

Connect360 by: Nullriver. Ok, since you can’t actually get that last pick anymore, here is a bonus pick! This one is for all the Xbox360 owners out there. This little app allows you to use your mac as a media center extension so you can stream music, videos, and photos to your Xbox360 from your mac. It does exactly what it says and does it well.

There you have it, I hope you enjoyed the list and got some good info on what software to get for your mac. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Also, if you have picks that you like better than any of the ones I have listed here, send those along as well!

Day 1: The Mobile Me switch over didn’t happen quite as smoothly as every would have hoped. Although this kind of thing is sort of expected with a massive service change over of this magnitude. It was scheduled to take about 8 hours, but took more like 48 to be up and running enough to be able to use it. This doesn’t really affect my overall feeling of the new service, just something to mention.

Switching User Name: The first step (for me anyway) was to switch my main Identity (formerly .Mac) name to one that I was using as an email only account. This would convert my email only account to an individual account and leave me with just the one name. I attempted to get ahold of Apple twice during the upgrades to get this taken care of, but as you would expect they were far too busy trying to get the service going to be able to help me with this account problem. So I waited until most of the system issues were solved and tried again. After speaking with one of their reps on chat, I had the account name switched over and setup with very little pain (with the exception of the 16 security questions he asked that I couldn’t remember the answers to) but hey, thats their job and it’s good they do it.

New Features: With the switch to Mobile me, us old .Mac users were buried in new features and a completely reworked system that was actually going to be useful now. Among some of the new features are:
- Fancy new web interface
- Bigger iDisk. 20GB
- Better integration with iPhone
- “Push” email and calendar
- New email addresses of course @me.com

Although I don’t really use it, the web interface is really nice and usable, it feels very much like a desktop app. The bigger iDisk is nice, still not quite big enough, but much more usable at 20GB than it was at 10GB. The push email and calendar are great, mailing and calendaring are much more seamless between the iPhone and your desktop now. It seems that a lot of people really don’t like the “@me.com” but I am in the other camp, I really like it. I started using my new @me.com address 3 or 4 days before the launch of Mobile me and have completely switched to it being my main email address.

Overall: To sum it up I would say that I paid the $99 for .Mac and found it to be kinda useful, with the “free” upgrade to Mobile Me, I would say it was money well spent. If you never had .Mac and are thinking about getting Mobile Me for the first time, I would say definitely check it out. Apple has a nice long 60 day trial to really see if it fits your lifestyle and workflow.

If you need to sync your data across multiple machines constantly and always have your data where you are, this could definitely be the solution for you.

Apple’s 60 Day Trial of Mobile Me

So 2 weeks ago, my girlfriend tells me she is deleting all accounts that have anything to do with Yahoo! I thought about it for around 30-45 seconds, and thought this idea was brilliant! I immediately starting logging into my yahoo accounts so that I could delete them. I did have a Flickr account, So I had to first find a place to put all those pics. I ended up with SmugMug (and really enjoy it), they had a really nice tool to take all your photos from Flickr and import them into SmugMug with 1 click. They also had a 50% off coupon code (“flickr”) for people switching from Flickr. After I got all my pictures safely moved it was just a matter of deleting my Yahoo accounts. This included a Yahoo messenger account that I used for 1 person that refused to switch to something else, but they are taken care of with an alternate IM client.

So what do I think about this decision after jumping ship 2 weeks ago? I don’t miss Yahoo at all. To be completely honest I never really used them for anything anyway, aside from Flickr, which I don’t really think of as Yahoo. I haven’t looked back, and I’m sure I wont. I am glad I dropped it. It was serving no purpose other than to have yet another useless online account. Sorry Yahoo, but you just have nothing to offer.

So you may have noticed some little ads that have popped up on this page as well as HEARTaMINI.com. I have had an AdSense account for years but never used it, mostly because up until recently my webpages were static. Now that I am writing more content and the pages are cycling through content more regularly, I thought I would give them a try and see how they work. My goal was to make them useful and not too intrusive to the end user. I think that has been accomplished with these small ads. I know a lot of people don’t like ads, but these content related ads actually aren’t that bad. I clicked through a few before I decided to push them live, and there are actually some good links. Feel free to drop me a line with feedback on the ads.

I just noticed today that on my Google IG Homepage I now have the ability to have tabs! Pretty cool feature.

As some of you may or may not know my current cell phone (for this week) is the Blackberry 8700c. Yes I am back to the blackberry. I decided I wanted to fully use this device so I set out to create my own Microsoft Exchange Server and Backberry Enterprise Server. Well Today I did that and now its done! And I must say I LOVE IT. My email rocks now! I hate POP3 so I used IMAP for a while, but IMAP really just wasnt cuting it either so thats why I did all this. Try it out….you will like it!