IPhone Cafe

For input fields on a Safari HTML form, IPhone’s auto correct and auto capitalize features can be a nuisance. You can disable autoCorrect and autoCapitalize, using the attributes below:

<input type=”text” name=”searchKey” size=”20″ autocorrect = “off” autocapitalize=”off”>

Source (Apple)

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IPhone Cafe has a Safari browser UI designed with the iPhone browser in mind and includes a Search page with an HTML text field where auto correct is disabled using the setting shown above. The text field inputs a search word from the viewer and is an example of text input where auto-correct can be annoying.  To try out the “auto-correct disabled” text field, go to the search page and enter a search word like “correct” or “import“.  Make sure to use your iPhone.

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Feb 12, 2008 - Many IPhone owners want to turn off autocorrect for every application running on their IPhone, not just for web browser applications.  Disabling autocorrect for a browser application is pretty easy. Disabling autocorrect for the entire IPhone is more involved and a bit riskier. 

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A post on ModMyiFone.com provides a solution using a package called KB. Another site to check out is the applications page of IPhone Atlas.  And, yet another site is IPhone in Canada. If you are okay downloading software that may violate Apple’s license agreement, the approach described on these sites could work for you. I’m not sure I would take the risk with my own personal iphone because I need the iPhone to function 24×7 as a telephone. Installing something that makes the phone non-functional would be a major inconvenience.  For me,  the risk of installing 3rd party software just isn’t worth it. Why turn my nice new IPhone into a brick?  For more on the risk of bricking your iPhone see iphoneMatters.com for feedback from folks who’ve installed 3rd party applications. The post is titled “3rd Party Apps: Good or Bad?”. It generated interesting comments, both pro brick and con brick. Another post which appeared on Digg entitled “Why iPhone +SDK, Firmware Is Better Than Your Jailbroken One” generated lots of buzz.  The article appears to originate from Popular Mechanics. One comment accuses the author of posting inaccurate flame bait.  Another comment from  LaSepultura points out the jail broken phone fights an uphill battle against the hardware. And there’s yet another comment from alexkehr who is excited by Apple’s SDK announcement because his jail broken iPhone constantly crashes. In a post titled Will You Hack Your iPhone Again?, the author muses on pros and cons of hacking.

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The description for KB’s solution begins with “….The only way you can do this is if your jailbroken…..”. So I’m thinking……Jail broken ! ! ! …. That doesn’t sound good…..; why does my phone need to break out of jail?  And… why in the heck was it in jail to begin with….?  Seriously though, maybe things are okay these days, and breaking out of jail is no big deal…. And maybe Apple will fix autocorrect in the next release of their software. Until then, be careful. You’re making the choice. You don’t want to brick your IPhone; and this could happen if your next IPhone software upgrade detects unauthorized software has been loaded.

Having recently purchased my iPhone, it didn’t take me more than 12 hours to realize that I would need to protect my investment.  Apple does not provide insurance to replace a lost cell phone, and while it comes with a year-long warranty, I don’t know what conditions apply to qualify the phone for warranty repair.  If I accidently drop it, will they fix it?  The futuristic rectangle of a casing doesn’t fit snugly into the palm of my hand, so I’d rate the possibility of my dropping it as extremely high.  It doesn’t exactly look sturdy, either, so I don’t have a high confidence level in its ability to survive regular wear and tear.  Even if Apple will fix that kind of issue, am I supposed to ship off my iPhone to a factory and go phoneless for a month?  I don’t think so.

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The solution is obviously to get a case, and so I went to my nearest Apple store to do just that.  I’d never been before, though I’ve walked past the place a million times and glanced in.  I’ve always been intimidated by the crowds that populate the store no matter the time of day, and I can’t tell who works there and who’s just hanging out with the computers because they all look like they’d rather be home playing World of Warcraft.  I think they knew as soon as I walked in that I was not one of them, and everyone avoided me as I wandered around the displays looking for the iPhone cases.

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I don’t know what I was expecting–maybe a three or four options, as was the case at the AT&T store where I bought the phone.  The Apple store had literally dozens of iPhone cases, some leather, some plastic, some rubber, in all kinds of colors and styles.  I had no idea what kind to get, and the more I looked, the less I liked the options.  I wanted something that would protect the face plate from scratches, as well as from a drop, but quickly realized anything that covers the plate keeps you from being able to manipulate the touch screen.  Anything that requires you to pull the phone out of its case runs you the risk of dropping it in your rush to answer the phone.  Of the multitude of possibilities, none combined the padding and hard shell of a regular case with the ability to keep the faceplate open but somehow cushioned or otherwise protected against potential damage.  In the end I settled for a slimly profiled case with velvet lining, but I think I’m going to return it, since the Apple store has a 14-day return policy…funkyfresh

I had been pretty skeptical about all the iPhone hype and had no plans to get one until the mini screen on my Razr cracked down the middle.  I tried holding it together with scotch tape, but it a) looked super ghetto, and b) wasn’t working.  So I broke down and picked up an iPhone at the AT&T store this past weekend.

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I was surprised (and irritated) to discover that, unlike every other phone on the face of the planet, you can’t just switch your SIM card out of your old phone and into your new iPhone.  The guy told me I could download all my contacts from my Outlook contacts list, but whatever, I use Gmail and anyway, it’s a pain in the ass to type phone numbers into my phone, much less retype them into my computer.  So now I get to reenter all my phone numbers back into the iPhone.  I guess it’s a good excuse to weed out some numbers though, so perhaps some good will come out of it.

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Anyway, I bought the phone and took it home to register it.  To do this, I had to download iTunes, create an account, and then plug the iPhone into my computer to begin the registration process.  This seemed easy enough until I got to a screen that asked me if I wanted to search for an update.  I foolishly clicked on the “update” button, and a couple minutes later I started getting “fatal” error messages about the software on the iPhone.  The next popup screen advised me to click the “restore” button to restore my iPhone back to its factory settings.  Fighting down a wave of panic (which feels just like drinking too much cheap tequila), I clicked the button.  Not only did this not work, but my brand new iPhone went into figurative fetal position, frozen on a screen with a picture of the USB cable and the iTunes logo.

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Up until that very day I had been wondering if I should get rid of my land line.  With my cell phone number now attached to my catatonic iPhone, I was relieved to be able to pull out my trusty home phone and call iPhone tech support (and learned a valuable lesson about keeping a backup phone line).  It was maybe 8 at night by this point, and I was sure I would get an out-sourced techie from somewhere in South West Asia.  I was pretty frustrated, and not really in the mood to not understand the person I would be talking to, no matter how helpful and knowledgable he/she was, so I was incredibly surprised to be connected with “Candy” from Idaho.  She couldn’t have been much more than my age, if that, but she was very sympathetic and told me that I probably had a corrupted file on my CPU hard drive.

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So she had me remove all the iTunes related files from my programs list and reinstall iTunes.  Once that was done, I plugged my iPhone back in and was able to successfully restore the thing back to its factory settings.  It seemed like a lot of effort and frustration to go through for a cell phone, and I can only hope that the iPhone is worth the hassle.  So far, it’s pretty cool, and I’ll check back in with more thoughts and musings on the subject…

funkyfresh

For more on importing contacts to the IPhone see  ”Generalized IPhone Contact Import“.

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Here’s a tip for IPhone owners with email configured to use Yahoo email.  It’s an easy method to move data onto the IPhone by email. I used this approach to import phone numbers from my old cell phone onto a MyDocs folder on the IPhone.

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To start, go to Yahoo email’s inbox web page.  In the folders window on the left, click Add, and enter the name of the new folder.  Click OK, and the page will redisplay showing the folder.

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To see the new folder on the IPhone, click the Email icon and navigate to the Mailboxes page where the new folder is displayed.

While reading emails, store them to the personal folder by clicking the folder icon at the bottom of the IPhone screen and moving messages into the folder.

Tony

The IPhone’s built in mapping service is a frequently used function that’s great at finding business locations. One favorite location is Norms Ale House in Fremont, Wa., but that’s a bit off topic.

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The next IPhone release, version 1.1.3, will include a new mapping service designed to show the phone’s current location by triangulating against cell phone towers. See Silicon.com and MacWorld for more.

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If the revised service works as well as current IPhone maps, my friends with dedicated GPS’s may be jealous. Their GPS’s don’t take phone calls.

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Feb 26, 2008:  iPhone version 1.1.3 is installed and Google maps are now equipped with positioning software from Navizon.  The map screen has a new button in the lower left corner.  Press it and the display will update with a blue circle approximating the position of the iPhone. It takes a few seconds for the circle to appear.  I’ve tested the locator while moving around Seattle and found it’s reasonably accurate. In the picture below, the actual position of the phone is the point where 41st Street meets the blue locator circle. I guess you could say it’s accurate to a city block.   

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Locator accuracy seems to vary from area to area.  In some spots the circle gets bigger and ranges from one to maybe ten city blocks. I’ve not  used the locator in areas with fewer cell towers but suspect accuracy deceases as the phone moves further away from areas with lots of cell towers.

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So far, I like the locator feature.  While moving through unfamiliar territory, it’s handy to press a button and see my current location.  And, it appears that a newer version of the software, Navizon version 2.0, adds a Slider mode which updates the position every ten seconds.  It will be nice when version 2.0 is availible from Apple.

Sphere (www.sphere.com) and Technorati (http://technorati.com/) are blog indexers.

March 30 2008 - For more on importing contacts to the IPhone see these pages:

• Generalized IPhone Contact Import
• Generalized IPhone Contact Import Part II
• Move Contacts - Motorola Rokker to iPhone - Part 1

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The only thing I didn’t like about my Rokker was the connector for the power charger which was lame and fragile.  After a year of use, the phone would not recharge without much jiggling of the charger cable to get a good connection. Motorola tech support sent another unit but the replacement had the same problem with the power connector.  Other than the problem with the charger connector, I loved the Rokker and would have kept it for a while longer.  It had great audio quality, a great speaker phone and it played iTunes.  However, when Apple dropped the price of the iPhone, I decided it was time to drop the Rokker for something new.

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Too bad Apple didn’t provide more options to import telephone numbers into the IPhone. Why not let owners import contacts from Yahoo, GMail, Excel or a simple, vanilla, CSV text file?

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For me, because of limited import options, moving phone numbers to the IPhone from my old Motorola Rokker was painful. The import relied on my Yahoo Contact list which wasn’t my most current list, and it still required manual rekeying.

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For Microsoft Windows users, ITunes imports contacts from Microsoft Outlook. So, if you run on Windows and your phone contacts aren’t stored in Outlook, you may have some work ahead of you.

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In my case, contacts were stored in the Rokker and in Yahoo, but not in Outlook, so I used the following workaround which isn’t so pretty.

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First, from Yahoo’s contact web page, copy / paste contact names and phone numbers into a text file. Then, email that text file to the IPhone and move it into a personal folder.

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Storing names and phone numbers in an email in a personal folder is useful, because the IPhone converts phone numbers into links which, when clicked, pops up the phone dialer. So, without re-keying names and numbers, contact phone numbers from the Rokker are available on the IPhone.  More on personal email folders.

I’d heard stories of IPhones be locked and turned into “bricks”, usually after downloading an operating system upgrade on an iPhone running software not approved by Apple. Bricking is a derogotory term for an  IPhone that has locked up or frozen up. Lots of reporting was devoted to this subject in the months after the IPhone’s release in 2007.

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Before the IPhone, I used a Motorola Rokker on a plan from Cingular. I was okay with Cingular (and liked the Rokker) but wondered if AT&T’s “buy out” of Cingular would change some things (like service). After a month or two, the level of service had not changed, so I decided to stick with AT&T and with the Rokker through 2006 and 2007.  The Rokker used ITunes and I collected lots of ITune downloads. I collected so many ITunes downloads that my next phone would need to be ITune compatible to avoid losing the investement.  Eventually, the Rokker died due to unnatural causes; e.g. a bad recharger connector (how lame). However, by this time, Apple had reduced the price of an IPhone so it became the best choice for a replacement mobile phone. I bought an IPhone and stayed with AT&T and was careful not to modify anything because I didn’t want to be “bricked”.

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I don’t have much first hand experience with bricking or locking but did find these links:

• IPhone Unlock
• IPhone Locked to Cingular
• Why is the IPhone Locked Up?
• IPhone SIM Freer

See iPhone 1.1.1 Harder to Hack? for more on measures being used by Apple to prevent hacking of the IPhone and IPod Touch.

Before choosing the IPhone holster shown below, I went through several different holster brands.  

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In the end, I chose the InCase holster (shown in the picture below) because this holster hardware provides access to all IPhone controls without removing the phone from the holster. Answering a call or playing a tune, or other IPhone functions can be performed with the phone in holster.  This matters (to me) because of the IPhone’s contruction which is slippery smooth metal that falls from your hand in a snap if you’re not carefull. A leather case with access to phone controls reduces the chance that the phone will slip and then crash/burn on a ceramic floor.  

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Like I said, I tried out three holsters before the InCase. 

Holster #1 was lame. It came from the ATT store.  Downsides:  The case covered up IPhone controls and outputs and the belt clip was high profile.  Don’t get it.

Holster #2 was cool because it looked really good, and it was a horizontal holster, however the phone had to be removed before answering calls or doing pretty much anything. So, this wasn’t good for me ’cause I tended to drop the slippery IPhone. I was using this holster when I lost IPhone No. 1 in western North Dakota.

Holster #3 (below) is a good compromise.  All functions are accesable and the belt clip is low profile.

I’m now using the Incase holster below which comes in black, leather, demen, etc. It has a low profile belt clip. If only the belt clip were horizontal instead of verical.

This simple technique for application developers uses php, css, and html to enhance a site’s search function by highlighting words that match the search keyword.

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First, define a style with a yellow background color. The stylename in the example is “normhigh”.

<style TYPE=”text/css”>
.normhigh {font-family: “trebuchet MS”; font-size: 45px; color: #000000; background-color: yellow;}
</style>

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A couple of lines of PHP do the rest of the work. The command, preg_replace(), is used as shown below to wrap a style tag around keywords. $post_content contains the text which is being searched. $highlightstring has the keyword which was entered into a field on the search page.  When preg_replace() finds a match, it uses back reference $0 to wrap the class definition ”normhigh” around the matched word.

$skey = $highlightstring;
$pattern = ‘/’ . $skey . ‘/i’;
$post_content = preg_replace($pattern, ‘<span class=normhigh>$0′, $post_content);

The links below show the text highlighter at work:

• Search for ’phone’ 
• Search for ‘car’
• Search for ‘apple’
• Search for ‘WordPress’
• Search for ‘blog’

From php.net, the syntax for preg_replace is:

mixed preg_replace ( $pattern , $replacement , $subject [, int $limit [, int &$count ]] )