Baggas' Blog

Thought I’d mention a nifty piece of Mac OS software I’ve been using. Read on if you have a Mac and either an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3… if you don’t have those you might as well save time and stop reading this now!…

Right, now that we’ve got rid of those non-Mac and non-Gaming console people we can continue with Rivet. This program basically enables your connected games console to access your music, video, and photo libraries on your mac. These consoles talk nicely to Windows out of the box but unfortunately they are not designed with Mac OS in mind. Rivet takes care of this smoothly and easily. Set it to load when your Mac starts-up and it just sits in the menu bar. There are no extra steps – right away I was able to browse and play my media content from my Mac on the Xbox 360 and PS3**. It’s very handy if you have a large collection of video files (home movies, TV shows, movies, whatever) as they can be immediately accessed and played on the console. Podcasts (video and audio) are handled as well, and all your iTunes playlists show up too. This last feature is very useful at this time of the year so I can pump my gigabytes of Christmas Mp3s ‘all through the house’

So if you have a Mac and a console download the trial version of Rivet and give it a go.. there’s a good chance that, like me, you’ll soon be going back for the full version too.

** Yes, I now have both consoles. I was in the market for a Bluray player and was soon convinced (despite my initial hesitation) that a PS3 was the way to go.. As far as gaming consoles go I still like the Xbox better – the interface is nicer and easier to navigate, and there is a better and easier to find selection of downloadable demos which the kids like playing. The Xbox360 interface has been hugely improved over the last year or so and the new avatar section is really good. I believe it’s due for another big update any day now as well…

I can’t really contrast the actual games though as I haven’t played much on the Ps-3 – my feeling is that the graphics and games are comparable. I did enjoy stuffing around with this funny game called Little Big Planet on the Ps3 last night. Oh and it has this interesting feature called Playstation Home which is similar to Second Life.. something to explore when I’m bored… but mostly the PS3 has become our home theatre media hub – great for playing Blurays, DVDs, and streaming videos and music (via Rivet). One big plus is it’s a lot quieter than the Xbox which makes it better for that application.  So there’s my haphazrd initial review of the PS3

*** Hey, and if you know me and have an xbox 360 or  PS3 let me know who you are and maybe we can add each other as ‘friends’ Presently I have no PS3 friends and only some random people on Xbox that I played a game against like once a few years ago, so having some people that I actually know would be cool. (here ends the pathetic appeal for friends..lol)

Today a piece of software was released which I’ve been waiting for every since I got my iPhone – Laridian PocketBible. I’ve been a long time user of Laridian software on my Palm and Windows Mobile PDAs and phones and have acquired quite a large “library” of Bible versions, commentaries and other books from them. The great thing about this company is that when you switch to a different platform you don’t have to re-purchase all the books – you can download them all onto your new phone for free. So now I have my Laridian library on my iPhone at last!

The bibles and books are stored on the memory of the iPhone, thus once you have downloaded them initially, an internet connection is not required, unlike the YouVersion Bible software I have been using over the last couple of months. Some of the books I have on my phone include :

• Bibles – NLTse, NIV, TNIV, ESV, NRSV, NASB, MSG, NKJV, Amplified, and God’s Word (of course) plus many more..
• Study Bibles – ESV, NIV, NLT, Life Application study Bibles. Also ‘antique’ ones like Scofield and Ryrie (for curiosities sake) etc
• Commentaries – IVP New testament commentary, Life Application Commentary, Ancient Christian Commentary, Matthew Henry etc etc
• Devotions – My Utmost, Morning and Evening etc
• Books – Foxes Book of Martyrs, Pilgrim’s Progress, Imitation of Christ etc
• Dictionaries – a number of Bible and Theological Dictionaries, Greek and Hebrew, Bible maps etc etc

So as you can see, a big part of the appeal of this software is the range of resources you can have at your fingertips on your phone. Flipping between books is easy. There are powerful search functions included. Highlighting and bookmarking passages is simple and these can be categorized for later retrieval and sorting. The Settings page is well populated giving a range of options to customise the view. Font type and size can be changed, you can have red-letter on or off, view Strong’s numbers, set your preferred translation, dictionary etc, choose to show or hide the status bar, title, and buttons.

There are a few features that I feel could be improved but some are just things that I need to get used to. For example text does not scroll in the usual iPhone scrolling style, rather you advance text by pressing the left area of screen to advance a page or a verse at a time. I’m sure I’ll get used to this but it still would be nice to have the option of more traditional style iPhone scrolling. Another thing is it doesn’t seem to support having more than one book open on the same page, like previous versions of PocketBible on other platforms. I found this a really valuable feature, being able to view two bibles (or a bible and a commentary) at the same time – I really hope this gets introduced soon. Logging into your Laridian account and downloading books is very easy, but it would be nice if they somehow incorpprated the ability to purchase new books directly on the iPhone, rather than having to do so on their website as at present. This is not a big issue for me (since I already own most of their stuff) but for new customers would be a great feature. Plus I’m sure they’d sell more books that way!

Another possible idea for them would be to consider implementing some sort of social networking feature. This is one of the few things I liked about the YouVersion software – for any passage you can link to a section called Contribs which includes other people’s submitted thoughts/blogs etc – almost like a ‘wiki-commentary.’ Obviously this is quite a big step outside what Laridian software have done to date though. Another possibly easier suggestion (which YouVersion doesn’t have) would be to allow posting of verses to Twitter/Facebook etc. This would be in keeping with these ethos of a wide range of other iPhone apps which allow posting of all sorts of things. These are just pipe-dream suggestions though.

Having said all this, Laridian have made it clear on their blog that this is just the first release, and they have a number of updates already planned in coming months – so hopefully we will see some of these issues dealt with, plus other cool new features coming soon. (EDIT : I’ve already been informed on facebook that the split screen feature is  definitely in the pipeline).

Overall this is a great piece of software that finally makes my iPhone experience complete in a way. Even on it’s first version PocketBible is far superior to any other Bible software for iPhone in terms of both it’s functionality and the amount of resources you can get for it. If you are looking for Bible software for your iPhone then look no further – go and download this straight away and start building your library. Laridian also regularly offer good discounts like 20% off all books so make sure you subscribe to their email newsletter.

Here’s a few more screenshots from the program. I love the fact that it’s so easy to take screenshots on the iPhone (hold down home button and press the top button..)

For anyone who, like me, didn’t catch the Apple event last week with Steve Jobs et al, here’s an incredible, really nice, abbreviated version where they discuss their fantastic, great products…

Apple released iTunes 9 today, and it is probably the most significant update we’ve seen for the software in some time. New features include a redesigned iTunes store, enhanced ‘LP’ albums, improved library sharing over a network, and further improvements in the Genius function (which I have increasingly grown to appreciate..). But the feature I like the best is the new ability to arrange iPhone applications. You can now rearrange the App screens on your iPhone from within the iTunes software. Much easier dragging and dropping the app icons using a mouse on my iMac than using my finger to push them around on the screen. Very impressed with this update!

Note : make sure you update your iPhone to the 3.1 software to take advantage of this feature.

I’ve had Snow Leopard on my iMac for a few days now, and aside from having to update a couple of programs, I haven’t had  any major problems. And it certainly seems to me to live up to what I expected. Generally faster load times for most applications including Safari and Mail and a few minor enhancements which I am gradually discovering.

Sadly though, it seems that I am one of the lucky ones. For a sizeable minority of users, Snow Leopard has been a bit more of a scary experience…

This article from ilounge chronicles some of the woes that people have been having. It’s an uncharacteristic and unfortunate let down from Apple, particularly badly timed in view of the upcoming release of Windows 7. Windows “fans” (had to use inverted commas as it’s hard to imagine a true “fan” of Windows) are sure to gloat if Windows 7 has a smoother release, which I imagine it might.

So while personally I’m happy with Snow Leopard, I might decide to wait until the next point update before I install it on my MacBook Air as well – I’ll just stick with the warmer climate Leopard for now and hope they get all the bugs ironed out fast.

SO next week (on 9/9/9)  we finally get some remastered CDs of The Beatles’ albums, according to this story :
A Splendid Time is Guaranteed for All: The Beatles Remastered

What’s notable is that they are releasing mono remasters of some of these albums, more like they were originally heard back in the 60’s. Apparently these mixes carry lots of little differences and details to give a quite different experience to the current (1987 era) CD versions. Very tempting, but perhaps for the time being I’ll just stick to my 1987 box set (complete with roller door… hehe – take a look at the picture. I still love that box – has pride of place in my music wall) – hard to justify spending that much on a bunch of albums I already own, even if they are much better versions. Sooner or later I’ll have to get them though as I do love The Beatles.

Also on 09/09/09 we’ll see the release of The Beatles RockBand game, which looks cool. I’m not a serious gamer but this is very tempting too… maybe something I’ll look at getting later in the year when I’m not so crazily busy.

And coincidentally on 9/9/9 there’s also a big music related Apple event scheduled where they are likely to be releasing new iPod models. Usually these events are held on a Tuesday so the fact it’s on a Wednesday on the same day as these other Beatles may herald the long overdue addition of The Beatles’ catalogue to iTunes. I won’t be buying them, since I already ripped my 1987 CDs into iTunes a long time ago, but it’s an important step so the younger generation of non-CD-buying iPod listening youths can have better access to some of the most important popular music ever made… Will also be interesting to see if Steve Jobs makes his first post-transplant public appearance here..

Another test post, this one. I just downloaded the wordpress app onto my iPhone, which is cool. Now I can write or edit blog posts, check comments and much more from anywhere, even my bedroom where I am now. The photo below is of my bedside table – posting it only for the reason of testing this app… Hope it works… If you can see this I guess it means it does

Spent the first part of the evening playing with Apple GarageBand – such a fun and easy piece of software. The new version makes recording guitars so much better as it gives visual representation and control over virtual amps and stomp box effects. I also added in some nice clarinet and organ sounds. It took 2 clicks to send it to iTunes and now I have the fruits of my labour on my iPhone. Very cool. I could easily waste a lot of time on this program…

Anyway typing on an iPhone is a little slow and I have stuff to do so I’ll end this now.. hope it works

Interesting piece on Slate here about ebooks and the Amazon kindle, a devide we are yet to see here in Australia but which has started to take the US reading market by storm. For the first time, after several unsuccussful forays by companies like Sony, ebooks are starting to get some mass traction.

I can see the advantages of eBooks, especially from the point of view of not having to carry books around, copying and pasting notes, purchasing books instantaneously etc. Especially for students the benefits are potentially huge.

However I’m still sold on the idea of “one-device-to-rule-them-all” – phone, book reader, media player, computer, camera, video recorder etc If only we had such a device so we don’t have to carry all these other things around… the iPhone is the closest we have (although it’s camera/video functions remain grossly inadequate) and there are some good ebook readers available for it. The best I have tried is Stanza, which links to a lot of free and commercial online catalogs to download books. You can also sync with your computer for books you’ve downloaded elsewhere. I’ve found it to be quite usable for novels – quite easy to read and navigate. At present I have the Stainless Steel Rat on there which I am slowly reading when I get a spare moment, plus I’ve downloaded a load of classic literature as well. The biggest downfall of the iPhone for book reading is that it’s small screen makes it unusable for textbooks…

Perhaps the rumoured upcoming Apple Tablet computer will be the ideal device for book reading – smaller and easier to carry around than a laptop, but with full computer functionality (in contrast to the Kindle and other ebook readers) and with a touch screen please! I digress but imagine if they make it so you can use your nifty iPhone apps on the Mac tablet as well, thus bringing the coolness, utility,  and diversity of the App store from the smartphone world to the computer world! Now that would be cool. And I’m only guessing but it probably wouldn’t be too tough on the programmers as the iPhone and OSX are built on the same basic core anyway (or so I’ve been led to believe…) If you haven’t already thought of that Steve Jobs and crew, you can thank me for the idea… (I’m sure Steve’s a big reader of this blog so he’s sure to take notice…)

[take a look at this concept picture.. how awesome does that look. I want that!]

Anyway back to eBooks… there’s still a big big reason why I’m not sold on the whole idea – I love books. And not just the content of books. I love the physical cardboard and paper things which sit in my library and cause me the constant challenge of shuffling them around to make room for new books. I love just sitting in that room surrounded by them looking at all the cool ones I’ve read and have yet to read. I love having a book on my lap, with a led pencil handy to underline useful or witty insights or quotes (still haven’t come up with an effective solution to remember my underlinings though…) I like collecting and hoarding books that I think one day I might find interesting, or fancy well bound ones from the Folio Society. I love big books with hard covers. I love all my leather bound bibles. If I had more time and money (mostly time) I’d be one of those people who likes looking in secondhand bookshops trying to finding classic antique books. If I had more money I’d be buying classic guitars, but that’s another story.

SO the gist – ebooks are a good idea; still need the right device to be released (c’mon Steve!); but will never replace the charm of actual, physical books for me..

Partly I’m just doing this post to test my blog after I upgraded to the newest version of WordPress today at work (where are all the sick people?), but to make it at least slightly interesting for some people, here’s a useful link I discovered : 25 (Most Wanted) Tips For iPhone 3G

Some of these tips are genuinely useful, like switching quickly between alphabet and punctuation keys. If you’re an iPhone user take a look – you might discover something you didn’t know. I did.

Ever wished there was an easy way to save YouTube clips on your iPhone or iPod, or even to have them download automatically?

Here’s a great website I’ve discovered : http://www.rsshandler.com This site allows you to enter the details of a YouTube Feed or Playlist, and then creates a URL which you can use to subscribe to a “podcast” of the clips in that feed. That might sound a bit complicated but the instructions on the site are very easy to follow. Once you’ve generated a feed URL on the website, open iTunes – go to the ‘Advanced’ menu, then ‘Subscribe to Podcast’.. copy the URL into the box that comes up and Bob’s your uncle.

It works great. You can susbcribe to YouTube’s feeds (eg Featured, Most Popular etc) or create your own playlists (for example I’ve created a Humour, Music, and Family playlist. The only drawback is it seems not all clips can be successfully converted into iTunes format, but most can.

Give it a try! If you need any advice about it send me an email and I’ll try to help.

Cheers

Now this is an area where I think I’ve only barely scratched the surface yet, but the iPhone is a veritable treasure trove of useful apps for musicians and music lovers. Here’s a few of the ones I’ve tried so far…

Shazam

This is one of the Apps that iPhone users love whipping out to impress their friends. And there’s a reason for that – it’s just cool. Basically if you hear a song playing and want to know what it’s called and who sings it, Shazam listens to the song through your iPhone’s microphone, processes it, and then gives you the answer – as well as the option to purchase the song for yourself on iTunes or search for it in YouTube. Seems to work about 90% of the time. I’ve used it in the car, and even in a crowded restaurant, with surprisingly good results. Definitely worth downloading.

ooTunes

This is an internet radio program which you can use to listen to streaming radio stations from around the world. I first downloaded this when I wanted to listen to the JJJ Hottest 100 live instead of our usual 2 hour delay here in Perth, but have since discovered plenty of other cool stations from Australia and around the world. There is something cool about being able to tune into country radio live from Nashville, plug my iPhone into my HiFi and enjoy. Some stations are very high quality and even support listing of the currently playing song, lyrics display and links to buy the song. Other stations are poorer quality and some don’t even work so it takes a bit of experimenting to find the best stations. Also a warning this is probably an App you’d only want to use when connected to a WiFi network as I’d imagine this would use up your 3G download quota pretty fast. But keeping that it mind it’s well worth downloading.

Y! Music

Another app suggested to me by Deano, this is a similar program where you can tune into a range of radio stations. Seems to be less range than ooTunes (though still huge) but in general the stability is better with less drop outs and fairly good quality. I’m just tuned into a Reggae station at present. This program offers the ability to skip forward tracks so must work differently somehow. Free, and very useful.

Guitar Toolkit

There’s a myriad of guitar related apps out there. This is a paid one which I think was $9.99 – you can probably get much of the same functionality by getting a few different cheaper ones, but I found this to be the most elegant and powerful one I saw. It combines the following features :

• Tuner – accurate, works well, allows alternate tunings
• Fretboard / Scales – playable fretboard where you can display a huge range of different scales in different positions along the neck
• Metronome – Set your bpm and time signature (from a large selection) and off you go. Very useful
• Chord library – extensive chord library showing a large number of inversions/positions of just about every chord you can imagine. certainly more than I would ever use. And you can strum them all too.
• Instrument – this app can be used for 6 and 12 string guitars, 4 and 5 string basses, and includes a huge library of alternate tunings, as well as settings for left handed players

As I said, this is not free, but it’s an incredibly versatile and powerful app that I would recommend to all guitarists…

I still need to find a similar app with chord library and scales for my Mandolin. Must add that to my to-do list.

MiniPiano

Free single octave piano keyboard. Works fine, but very simple.

Piano Sharp

Similar to mini-piano but allows you to switch to higher and lower octaves. Also includes a library of classical tunes that it will play for you, and you can record your own compositions. Worth investing a few $ if you’re a keyboard player.

My Songbook

This is a very cool litte program, which basically stores a library of songs with lyrics and chords on your iPhone. Perfect for sitting around the campfire or a small group singalong or if you just feel like playing some music (I always keep a spare guitar in my car boot for such an eventuality…) It includes a built in search function so you can find songs on Google or Chordie.com, which has a large database of user submitted songs. You can also add your own songs but the uploading process is a little convoluted. There is an auto-scroll feature so you can use it hands-free while playing, and it will also transpose for you so you can find the perfect key to suit your voice. Definitely a great app to have. I’ve got 100s of songs ready on my iPhone for whenever I need ‘em

iPod

Ok, so this is not an App you can download in the store, because it’s a standard part of the iPhone, but I had to mention it because it’s just cool. This is about my fourth iPod to date, but it takes things to a new level. I love having my music constantly in my phone in my pocket. I can play any song in an instant and don’t even need to carry headphones around (although the sound is so much better with them – the in-built speaker is not too bad). Navigation on the iPhone (and iPod touch I guess) is a vast improvement over the classic iPods – I can find what I want so much faster. Also scrubbing within a song to find a particular part (eg a guitar solo I’m trying to learn) is easy and efficient. Cover Flow is just cool, like flipping through CDs on a shelf – great for getting ideas if I’m not sure what to listen to. And I really like the Genius feature – pick a song and it will create a playlist of related stuff – and the playlists are really good. Having access to the iTunes store on the phone is nice too in case I ever want to purchase a new song when I’m out and about.

This iPod is becoming much more a part of my daily experience than my old ones. The only limitation is that it only has 32Gig or less or space, but I still have my 160 Gig iPod classic for when I want to carry a more exhaustive music library around (or when I want to save my iPhone battery) – look forward to a 64 or 128 Gig iPhone in the years to come perhaps?

Been very busy since getting back from Queensland just over a week ago, and this week promises to be even busier with work, study (picked up an extra unit – studying Diving & Marine Medicine now), church (out 3 nights this week), and family things to fit in.. but I want to keep this blog ticking over and work is mercifully fairly sedate at the moment so time for a quick post about iPhone games.

I’m not what anyone would call a serious gamer, but I have found since getting my iPhone that I’ve been playing games more than usual. Perhaps it’s just having quality games constantly at my fingertips which load instantly on my 3GS and can be played for just a minute or two… or for much longer. So here’s a few of the games I’ve played around with so far.

Fieldrunners

This is a brilliant little game, recommended by deano and ob1. Basically you set up defenses against invading forces to stop them getting across a field. Lots of fun, starts easy and then gets more challenging. An easy way to waste hours of time. Owen loves this game too.

Real Racing

Excellent car racing game. Brilliant graphics and sound. Amazing that such a high quality game can be played on a phone! Works like any other console racing game – you work your way through a tournament with a series of progressively harder tracks and better cars. You steer by tilting the phone side to side like a steering wheel. It offers internet league races and local wi-fi challenges with your friends as well. Definitely the best graphics I have seen so far on the iPhone and well worth a few $$.

Waterslide

I just downloaded this one yesterday for free. Another game where you control the movement of your character by tilting the phone. In this one you are sliding along these massive waterslides which arch above a city landscape, trying to earn points, avoid obstacles like crabs, and not fall off. Reasonably good graphics and fairly simple fun for a few minutes here and there. And it’s free! You can’t beat that.

Paper Toss

This game was number 1 on the iTunes games list I think. Not sure why. It’s harmless enough, reasonably good graphics. You just flick a paper ball across an office trying to get it into a bin, taking into account the wind speed and direction from the office fan. Kinda amusing for five minutes or so at a time. Once again, it’s free, so you might as well get it.

Galactic Gunner

This game is a crack up. You are a gunner in a space ship shooting bad guys by touching the screen where they are. Think Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica. The graphics aren’t bad but the funny thing is the dialogue. Your commander has a strong Aussie accent and uses a lot of slang, which seems kinda weird in the context of a space battle. Once again, reasonably fun for a few minutes at a time. Worth getting just so you can laugh at the dialogue.

TowerBloxx

Another cheap game with nice graphics. You have to build skyscrapers by dropping blocks onto them with a crane. Sounds boring but is actually quite amusing. Also involves some planning as to where you are going to build towers within your city to maximise profits/population. Quite good if you like that sort of thing.

Bejeweled 2

Surely I don’t have to explain this game to anyone? If you’ve seen this game on consoles, or PC, or facebook then you know what to expect. This version seems just the same. As always I love the encouraging voice telling you when you’ve done something good or excellent. I even caught Jenni playing this one last night … yes, we’re a two iPhone family now

Pac-Man lite

Didn’t want to spend $7.99 for the full version so I went for the free-lite version to try it out, but this is a pretty faithful rendition of the old classic. I love the little joystick graphic at the bottom. Very retro.

And I’d have given anything
To have my own PacMan game at home.
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade;
Now I’ve got it on my phone.

~ Brad Paisley “Welcome to the Future”

It’s a week now since I got my iPhone 3GS so a good time to post some of my thoughts about it. I’ll post more on some of the apps I’m using in the coming days/weeks.

Firstly let me say that the iPhone is a revolution. I’m been a long time PDA/Smart phone user (moving form Palm PDAs to the brilliant Treo which my wife still loves through to a couple of fairly good Windows Mobile HTC phones) but I’m a fairly late adopter to the iPhone. Part of the reason for this was being locked into my old contract and the other part was feeling that the iPhone was far from being mature, lacking in basic phone functionality like MMS, Video, Cut and Paste etc. The recent release of the iPhone 3 software and the new 3GS hardware dealt with most of those reservations.

I’ll discuss various aspects of the iPhone separately but at the outset let me say that two of the biggest reasons why this is such a joy to use are speed and integration. By speed I mean the speed at which programs load and run – there is virtually no lag or delay – almost everything loads in less than a second. Obviously there can be delays relating to the speed of your internet connection but that’s an network issue, not a problem with the iPhone itself. I’ve gone with Vodafone here in Australia and have found that 90% of the time internet connection/speed is more than adequate.

Integration is the other awesome thing about the iPhone – just how well the mail, messaging, calendar, contacts and related apps talk to each other, and how smooth and simply it all works. This is no real surprise though, coming from Apple. Having a Mac computer and a MobileMe account makes this whole experience even easier and smoother. Through push notifications all my contacts/calendar/bookmarks/email etc are instantaneously kept in Sync between my iPhone, my iMac and my MacBook. Push email through MobileMe works very well – there is virtually no spam and the email client is very easy to use. Using this hint I’ve been able to easily set it up so it sends as my main baggas.com email address instead of @me.com, which is nice.

As a phone it seems fine.  Call quality is good. As I said previously integration with the address book is fast and smooth. Visual voicemail is a cool feature where you can see all your voicemail messages on the screen and choose which one you want to listen to or just delete, without having to listen through them all in order or follow a bunch of menus (ie “press 3 to delete”) – it’s all there on the phone, just like SMS/MMS. Very cool. I don’t think all phone networks offer this functionality though.

The Camera is still probably the iPhone’s Achilles Heel. Apparently the 3 megapixel camera has been improved compared to the old iPhone 3G but it’s still not great. I like the autofocus or touch to focus feature. Photos of still subjects in good light actually look pretty nice, but in lower light or subjects that aren’t perfectly still (like 1 year old girls) the photos are blurry/grainy. Even compared to my old HTC phone there is a massive lack of settings here – no ability to adjust the camera in any way, and no ability that I can find to edit the photos at all. I’m really surprised at how little attention Apple seems to have given to this, given their excellent desktop photo software. It may be that there are third party photo editing Apps available for the iPhone but it’s one area I haven’t looked into… yet.

Taking Video recordings is a little better than photos. The videos aren’t bad quality for a phone, and you can do some basic editing like trimming your video clip which is implemented nicely. And sending your videos onward via email, MMS or uploading to MobileMe or YouTube is handled very easily and elegantly. Here’s the one and only video I’ve done so far, as a test mainly of the uploading process. The light in this room was a bit dim but it gives you a rough idea. It took me only a couple of minutes to take this video, trim it, and upload to YouTube. Very simple and smooth process – ideal for if you are out and about and want to share a video right away… I’ll try and take another video out in the sun in the next day or so to get a better idea.

Media playback is through the iPod section. What can I say about this? It’s an iPod! Music playback is flawless. The genius feature works well to create instant playlists of related music, you can flip through album covers using CoverFlow (never been a huge user of this on the Mac but on the iPhone it’s very nice). Searching for music works well and is very fast through the global Spotlight search (which you can also use to search the enture contents of the iPhone for just about anything). You can shake to shuffle which is kinda cool, and you can use voice controls (more about that later). Glad I went for the 32 Gig version so I can fit plenty of stuff on there. It won’t completely replace my 160Gig iPod classic, but it’s a nice option for when I only want to carry one device (which is most of the time actually). Media controls and a mic are built into the new headphones, which are fairly good.  Video playback is very nice on the widescreen – very usuable for watching TV shows or movies while commuting/travelling.

Voice control is another new feature on the iPhone which other phones have had for years. I’ve never been a huge fan of voice recognition stuff but the iPhone adaptation works fairly well. It gets it right for phone control about 80% of the time (eg “Call Jennifer mobile”) but probably only about 2/3 of the time for iPod control – maybe because the iPod database is many hundreds of time bigger than the phone database? I still haven’t quite learnt all the commands it recognizes yet. There’s also a nifty Google search App you can download which enables voice searches and is location aware, so if you say “Movie show times” or “Chinese restaurant,” it will fairly reliable bring up local results.

GPS seems to work well. Satellite fix outdoors takes only a few seconds. You can now buy turn-by-turn navigation software for the iPhone (I haven’t yet). The new iPhone also features a compass which you can see in the stand-alone compass App, or use in Google maps to orient your map. There are a  number of GPS apps you can download but this seems to me to be a relatively under-explored area of functionality.

Web browsing on the iPhone is a dream. This will not be news to previous iPhone users but compared to Windows Mobile the difference is immense. It’s great to be able to see the whole page rendered and then smoothly zoom in to view the sections you want. The text magnifies and renders beautifully and scrolling vertically and horizontally is easy and smooth. I love the way the iPhone responds to touch. It’s so easy to learn and use. The new iPhone 3.0 software also supports tethering where you can use the iPhone as a modem for your laptop via USB or bluetooth. Old news for other phones but I found this so much easier than it ever was on my old WM phone. Within 30 seconds I had my MacBook Air accessing the internet through my iPhone over blueooth. Simple. With a decent sized data plan road warriors may consider making this their preferred method of accessing the internet. Vodafone currently seems the best for this in Australia – I’m on a plan which includes 1Gig of data but you can add on more data if necessary. Optus have decided to charge people extra for tethering, and Telstra I’m not sure about, but the amount of data in their plans is paltry (a shame since they have the best network – offer a decent value data plan and customers would flock to them). Another beauty of the iPhone is it’s implementation of WiFi – if a network is available it will always either automatically connect or give you the option to, thus potentially saving a lot on your 3G usage.

Anyway that’s enough for now. If you couldn’t tell, I love this phone. It’s not perfect, but still amazing. The other awesome feature I haven’t mentioned yet is the App store, where you can download a myriad of free or cheap Applications for a multitude of uses, from games to networking to productivity… over the coming weeks I’ll start blogging here about some of the Apps I think are cool.

Like many, I’ve been watching the release of the iPhone 3G with interest. At present I have no definite plans to get an iPhone although I’m sure I will end up with one in the next couple of years. The main thing holding me back is that I’m less than halfway through my current phone contract and I’m fairly happy with my current HTC TyTnII phone – but if I found a way to get an iPhone cheap without having to pay huge contract fees I would jump at it. The other thing is, even in it’s second iteration I’m still not convinced the iPhone is a complete product – as a phone it lacks simple things like a decent camera, video capabilities, and MMS – I still cannot fathom why it won’t work with MMS. So for now I shall continue to bide my time, whilst still envying those cool people who have the iPhone already.

The other new release from Apple is their MobileMe service, which is an upgrade of .Mac which allows automatic over the air syncing of calendars, contacts, email and more between your Macs, PCs and iPhone. I’m quite excited about this one, having tried to achive similar things previously with Google with limited success. If I had an iPhone I would sign up for this in an instant but even without one I am quite tempted to do so anyway. Will be nice to have synchronized calendars on my Work and Home PCs and my MacBook Pro, which I can then sync to my phone with Missing Sync. I’m also planning to invest in a MacBook Air in the next couple of months to use for my Masters degree study and travel (just booked flights for my first Uni trip over to Townsville in October) – so keeping that in sync as well will be great. In fact, I think I’ve just talked myself into trying MobileMe. I’ll sign up for the free trial and let you know how it goes.

United Airlines offers in-flight iPhone and iPod Connectivity | The Apple Blog

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent many hours on planes, huddled over my iPod watching shows and movies on the little screen. In fact I watched the first three seasons on Battlestar Galactica (awesome show) in this manner. And almost invariably if you look around the cabin on any flight you will see several people with those characteristic white earphones in their ears. So the above story definitely appeals to me and I’m sure many other travellers. In a nod to the increasing ubiquity of these devices, United Airlines have installed iPod connectors in some of their planes so you can browse your iPod or iPhone and watch or listen to your own content on their screens, as well as keep your device charged. Certainly beats huddling over a tiny screen and definitely good to have more choice beyond the usual in-flight entertainment. Hope this comes to Australia soon…

In other iPod news, I noticed today that you can now purchase some TV shows via the Australian iTunes store. Only a couple of years behind the rest of the world! Hopefully movie rentals will follow. My guess is they’ve finally got their act together and done this because of the upcoming Australian iPhone launch.

• The Exigent City – this is a fascinating in-depth article from the New York Times on the history, sociology and architecture of refugee camps around the world. They also have a good article on the groth of new cities.
• Ben Witherington writes an excellent post on God’s freedom, love, and human free-will. I’ve been pondering some of these issues lately so this is very timely.
• On the US election, this article compares the online presence of Obama and McCain, and this article looks at McCain’s strategy in searching for a Vice President – Google!
• Apple News from the WWDC conference. A better, cheaper iPhone with 3G and GPS, coming to Australia soon (wonder how long I will be able to resist?). An upgraded .Mac service (no trouble resisting that) and a new Mac OSX ‘Snow Leopard’ next year. Read a summary of some of the buzz here. My only disappointment is that I was hoping to see an upgraded version of the MacBook Air with more storage and RAM – guess I’ll keep waiting for that one… until the next Stevenote..

So ob1 is raving about Apple again, specifically how much of a pleasure it is to use the Apple store.

My latest Mac win is another piece of great software I downloaded last night. After the fire the other day (which actually didn’t even come close to threatening our home – my brother’s house was much closer to his fire) I got to thinking a little bit about insurance and replacing all our stuff if it was lost. Aside from the fact that the insurance probably wouldn’t come close to covering it all, I was reminded of the need to keep track of things – specifically all my books, CDs, DVDs etc. Well books are already taken care of by my online catalog at LibraryThing (which I have recommended a number of times already – awsome site). Unfortunately I couldn’t find any comparable online catalog for my DVDs and CDs – if anyone has any suggestions I’d be glad to hear them. So I decided to go with a software solution.

After looking at a few alternatives I settled on the ‘pedias’ from Bruji. They have a suite of four programs CDpedia, DVDpedia, Bookpedia, and Gamepedia for cataloguing those things. Very powerful software with a host of options I haven’t explored yet. Data entry is easy – you can scan the barcodes of your CDs using the iSight camera on your Mac – which works quite well, just takes a few goes to get used to. Or you can use a handheld scanner like a cuecat (which I have and works reasonably well). It then uses the barcode data to look up your CD, DVD, book etc on an online database like Amazon (or many others) to retrieve the cover art and lots of other info. You can customize your library with various custom fields and of course tags. All of this is integrated with spotlight for easy searching. There’s plenty of other features which you can check out on their website but already I’m finding this software a joy to use.

One feature I’m yet to try is the web export function which lets you export your catalogs to a website. I’ll do this once I’ve entered all my data and will post links in a few days. But this is perhaps my one disappointment with this (and other similar) software. What would be really great would be if you could somehow dynamically synchronise your library from this software with an online catalog (akin to LibraryThing) so as to have your data permanently available on the web and up-to-date. Maybe this is possible somehow but I’m yet to see it. If not perhaps they could look at making this part of a future version.

But overall, yet another very useful piece of Mac software

I’ve begun using Apple’s Time Capsule as my network storage/backup solution and thought I’d make a few comments.

If you’re unfamiliar with it Time Capsule is a network hard drive (500 Gig or 1 terabyte) and wireless router. It’s designed to work seamlessly with Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard and the Time Machine software to backup your Mac, but also works well with Windows as a network attached drive and print server.

Basically I’m using it as an extension of my existing network. I plugged the time capsule WAN port in to one of the ethernet ports of my existing router/ADSL modem. I shut down the wireless radio on my old router and am now just using Time Capsule’s faster 802.11n for my wi-fi connectivity. Through the Time Capsule’s USB port I connected a USB photo printer and another external hard drive (via a USB hub). After running the AirPort setup program on my MacBook Pro and my Vista PC both computers spotted the Time Capsule drive straight away, although for some reason it took a few restarts of the capsule before the USB printer and hard drive would show up. Aside from this, setting up and using Time Capsule has been a breeze. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get my network running the way I wanted to with it.

I decided to use the USB hard drive as my backup disk for my Mac. The first Time Machine backup took several hours but now it does a quick background backup every hour. I have not yet had the chance to look back into the history/restore features of Time Machine but from the demos it looks pretty good. The 1Tb Time Capsule hard drive I’m using as a media server and backup for all my music, movies, photos, home videos etc, and for any other content I may want to access from either my Mac or PC. I’ve now created a second library in iTunes on my Mac which contains my complete MP3 collection so I now have thousands of songs which I have rarely or never listened to before. Expect to see an eclectic mix of tracks in my “Recent songs” list on this site (which is generated using last.fm by the way)

So Time Capsule is great. Combined with Time Machine it is an incredibly easy and effective storage and backup solution. Gives me even more incentive to consider switching my desktop PC to a Mac when I next come around to replacing it. Imagine a 100% Mac household… I wonder if I can?

If you’re a musician then this piece of software is almost reason enough to consider switching to a Mac. GarageBand is my new favourite piece of software. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this program can do but basically it’s a powerful multi-purpose recording studio that can be used for anything from podcasting to creating a demo CD or just jamming around. We started off with some simple vocal stuff (Jenni recording some stories onto CD for the boys to listen to) and then mucking around with the boys using various vocal effects (like echoes, monster, mouse, and chipmunk voices). Now I’ve got myself some decent quality digital/analogue interface hardware so I can connect my guitars to my MacBook Pro. Even the basic level guitar effects included are not bad. The nice thing is you can lay down your raw guitar tracks and then change the effects after so as to experiment with different sounds.

For those instruments that I don’t possess and/or can’t play myself, Garageband fills the need, with a huge range of software instruments and a nifty “musical typing” keyboard for adding piano or any other virtual instrument. Of course you can also plug in a Midi piano but I’d have to work on my keyboard skills to make much use of any of that. One of the coolest things is that there is a huge database of pre-recorded loops to jam along to or I can create a “Magic Band” in moments in a range of styles – an instant backing band! It also integrates well with other iLife software like iMovie and iTunes so any tracks I record are instantly available to download to my iPod or mobile, or to use in any video projects – watch out YouTube!

As I said I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this software can do but so far I’m having a lot of fun

This week’s been a little quieter at work – no babies born so I’ve managed to keep well away from the hospital. Taking advantage of the odd bit of free time I’ve been working on getting my office a bit tidier and better organised. Now my office is by no means that bad – some of the other doctor’s rooms are incredibly messy. Even so, it’s been good clearing out the shelves and drawers and getting rid of all manner of odds and ends – mountains of drug company post-it notes, pens, out-dated drug samples, old books, drug information sheets, referral pads for services/specialists I’ve never used, various useless gizmos and other drug company paraphenalia, amazon.com boxes, and much more. Some of this stuff was 5 or 6 years old, from doctors who are long gone. I now have all this empty space that I can start filling up again – it’s wonderful.

On the subject of organisation, I’ve been doing some similar stuff at home – getting the garden tidied up, organizing the garage a little bit, tidying my study, organizing my music, doing 6 months worth of filing. Maybe it’s some sort of nesting instinct

I’ve also found an awesome piece of software to help get me organized on my Mac laptop. After trying a few similar options I’ve settled on a program called Together, for Mac OS X Leopard. Basically this is a great way of organizing my thoughts and various pieces of information, documents, pictures etc that I find as I surf the web from day to day. If I find something on the web I like, I just drag the URL to a little tab at the side of the screen, and the Together software will store an archive of that web site for me. Or I can just cut and paste a bit of text and store it as a note in Together. All this can be done through the little tab without needing to open the main window of the software itself so I can keep my focus in the browser or whatever else I am doing. When I do open Together, I can easily categorize webpages and notes etc through various Group and Folder settings, as well as tagging. For example in planning our trip to Denmark tomorrow I was browsing various websites and came across some good information and maps etc – I’ve just dragged these into Together so I now have an offline archive of all this info that I can easily retrieve, even if I am down in Denmark with no net access. I’ve also decided, with the aim of making my book reading more effective, to start typing the odd note or quote into my laptop – Together looks after this for me too. It also handles a large range of other file types, including email (handy to drag an important email across from mail) and media files. Another way of sending info to Together is using the Print command in any other application, and “printing” as a PDF file directly into the Together archive – very neat. I like the way Mac OS is so well integrated with PDFs. Anyway it’s a great piece of software. I don’t think I’ve really done it justice here so if you are a Mac user I’d definitely encourage you to check it out.

Continuing to work with my Mac – now starting to deal with connectivity to various devices. Firstly I was pleased to find that I could get my Windows Mobile 6 PDA phone to sync with my MacBook without too much difficulty. All it took was a download of a beta version of a program called Missing Sync and within minutes I was able to use Bluetooth to synchronise my calendar, contacts, to-do list and more with the relevant applications on my Mac. Changes were reflected accurately in both directions. It also enables you to sync a whole lot of other items including photos, videos, call and sms logs etc, but I haven’t really explored that. But being able to get this working so quickly was a bit of a bonus. I hadn’t expected it to be so painless.

A different story with my Digitech GNX4 guitar effects board. For many months I have had problems with this since Digitech were extremely slow in releasing drivers for it to work with Vista (they finally have within the last few weeks). And now it seems I can’t get it working with my Mac. Not sure if this is a problem relating to the new Leopard version of OSX or what but it’s quite frustrating. Not only can I not install the X-edit software for editing my effect presets on the GNX4, but I cannot even use it as a recording input via USB. It shows up in audio preferences and I can even “see” the sound when I play guitar on the little input meter – but when I load up recording software like GarageBand or Audacity it complains of MIDI driver clashes and refuses to work. Very frustrating – mostly I blame Digitech for this – releasing a product and not providing adequate software support to ensure it works on all platforms. I’m still exploring the forums and hoping for a way around this but I’m not holding my breath.

Finally I’ll just mention the cool iSight camera that is built in to the MacBook Pro. Very handy for recording little video clips like in the intro to the video below of Luke playing piano. The picture quality is very good and it’s quick and easy to use. The iChat software for video chat seems pretty cool, with some fun background and picture effects the kids enjoyed playing around with. Sadly it is not compatible with MSN which is where my few chat contacts hang out – but I’ll see if there’s a workaround for that. I’m not a heavy duty chat user anyway, but this camera may well come in handy for other things.

In the meantime, enjoy Maestro Luke…

One of the news stories that has been sadly neglected in the midst  of our current Australian election campaign is the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which is taking place in Kampala, Uganda, at the moment. I was hoping to see reports of our Prime Minister attending and some news coverage of Kampala, but sadly John Howard has more pressing issues on his mind. At present the Queen, Gordon Brown, Canadian PM Stephen Harper and a host of other world leaders are descending on Kampala. To date I’ve seen one story in the Australian media, who are understandably pre-occupied with our own election tomorrow. Might have to check out BBC news later to see if they have any stories. Anyway, here’s a view of Kampala that the Queen and other CHOGM delegates will most likely never see – the view from the back of a boda-boda motorcycle taxi. These are the quickest and easiest way of getting around Kampala and weaving through the often chaotic traffic. Although on this video, filmed by Watoto team member and lab guru Dennis and myself, the traffic is pretty mild. You will get to see some of Kampala’s nicest streets in the CBD, cleaned up “getting ready for CHOGM”

This is my first video edited on my MacBook Pro in iMovie (is it just me, or does Apple seem to have copyright on the letter i ?) Took me a little while to get the hang of it, but I’m pleased to say there was not a single crash or even a significant delay in the whole process, which is a huge contrast to my efforts with Windows Movie Maker a couple of weeks ago on my Vista PC. I’ll be playing around with the video capabilities of my Mac more over the next week or so as I upload more of my Uganda videos. 

Day 2, and here’s some more thoughts on my Mac experience. The initial combination of “wow!” and “what the?!” has now given way to an increasing feeling of confidence, as I’m starting to get my MacBook organised, work out what does what, and set it up the way I want it. It’s getting late, but I’ll touch on a couple of topics that spring to mind :

Networking

I was a bit unsure as to how my MacBook would go on my network with my Vista PC, but so far things haven’t been too bad. Firstly, wireless internet connection through my router took about 30 seconds to setup and has worked fine. Secondly connection to my networked HP all-in-one printer (which plugs directly into my router) was very easy – much smoother than Vista which keeps losing the printer. I haven’t tried using the scanner component of it yet though.The next thing I tried was iTunes. On my PC I have set the iTunes software to share my music on the network. Loaded up iTunes on the Mac and immediately I could see my library on my PC and start playing songs. Just had to authorize the MacBook on my iTunes account to be able to play purchased tracks. Obviously Apple software likes talking to Macs – this was so easy!The next part was not quite as easy – accessing the contents of my PC hard drive from my Mac. I’ve had problems with sharing on Vista before, even with my old Vista laptop. But this only took me 15 minutes or so to sort out thanks to a bit of googling – just needed the IP address of my PC, set-up a new user account on the PC with a password, and re-set some of the sharing permissions on the PC and I was good to go. Not quite as painful as I thought it might be.Final step is if my Vista PC can access content on my Mac hard drive. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Spaces and Shortcuts

Quite impressed with Leopard’s native ability to run a multiple desktop setup. Not that the high-res screen isn’t plenty big – but it’s nice to be able to assign apps that I want running but don’t need to see at all times (like iTunes or Messenger or Mail) to another desktop “space” that I can instantly get to with one keypress. And I can drag and drop applications between spaces. Very handy feature that illustrates one of the key diferences with Mac OS – keyboard shortcuts are way more important. In Windows most everything is done with a mouse – keyboard shortcuts are available but I was always too lazy to learn more than a few. In MacOS the keyboard shortcuts seem to take a much greater prominence, something that I imagine, as I learn them over time, will speed up the way I work. Mousing on the Mac is more versatile than you might think, given that there is only one button. Some useful hints on my previous entry have shown me how to scroll and “right-click” and get more use out of my trackpad.

After a long wait, my journey into the world of Apple Macintosh began today when the agonizingly slow courier service delivered my MacBook Pro, which I ordered on eBay over 2 weeks ago, and which was shipped one week ago. But it’s finally mine. I’ll blog some of my experiences exploring this strange new world over the coming weeks, but first a few preliminary thoughts before I shut the lid for tonight and head to bed.Most of this is externals, concerning the computer itself rather than the OS for now. 

Firstly, the packaging – like everything else from Apple, it’s sensible, minimalist, and cool. Unlike other computers I’ve bought which come in large brown cardboard boxes, this came in a cool box similiar to the iPod ones, with a handy carry handle.Easy to open, unpack, and within a minute or so I was up and running. 

The computer itself is beautiful to behold. It’s a MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2Gig of RAM, 160Gig 7200rpm hard drive, and a high res  1920 x 1200 17″ screen. And it looks cool from every angle – from the lit up Apple logo on the back, to the backlit keyboard with great sounding speakers alongside, even to the very thinness of it – the whole thing with the screen closed would only be around 2cm thick. Once its been switched on and booted up (which is nice and fast), the high res screen, which has a matte finish so there’s no glare, is stunning. Everything, even small fonts, is clear and easy to read. Photos and video look awesome. Websites render just so much better – it’s hard to believe just how much nicer the web looks when viewed from a Mac. It’s like transitioning from VHS to DVD.  

So my first impressions are very good. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing but I haven’t had any errors, crashes or problems as such. The only difficulties I’ve had have stemmed from my unfamiliarity with the Mac Operating System. I’m still missing the windows taskbar and especially right-click context menus but it’s not taking me too long to discover how to get things done. Give me a week or two and I don’t think I’ll be looking back. One omission that surprised me is that of any sort of intro or tutorial to working with Mac OS. I never payed them much attention but Windows over the years has generally always had these “Getting Started” type tutorials. I’m surprised not to find something similar here. But there’s a few good websites to help make the transition easier.

Anyway time to close the lid and head to bed. I’ll blog more about my new toy soon