missingmanual.com -- Pogue's Awesome iPhone Period-Typing Shortcut

missingmanual.com — Pogue’s Awesome iPhone Period-Typing Shortcut

A Few iPhone Observations

Some cheers and jeers:

• First and foremost, the reason that the thing is so cool is because it doesn’t feel like technology that should exist quite yet. It’s like holding a sci-fi movie prop that actually works.
• Rich text fields (like the compose fields in Vox and Gmail) don’t work in iPhone’s Safari. Vox lets you email in posts, and of course there’s the Mail app instead of Gmail, but it’s a bug that needs fixing.
• I feel like the “iPod” functions should be called “iTunes” instead.
• If you don’t have headphones plugged in, play songs or movies over the speaker. Great for demos or for sharing YouTube videos.
• EDGE isn’t as slow as everyone says it is. It’s great for email, and in limited tests the maps application works fine.
• Connecting to recognized wireless networks is seemless.
• iTunes gives you the option to sync the “most recent x episodes” of a show. That’s great if you’ve watched all but 3 episodes, but, for example, I’d imported the entire series of Firefly from DVD to my computer and I haven’t watched any yet, but it’ll only sync the last few b/c they were added most recently. There should be an option for “oldest unwatched.”
• The screen is very nice for watching video, but the blacks aren’t quite black. Darker scenes in Firefly are a bit muddy. This is a general problem with all LCD and plasma TVs, too. Bright videos, like Pixar’s short films, are beautiful.
• Google Reader defaults to its mobile version. The standard interface with its multiple AJAX frames would be difficult to use in the tiny Safari, but the mobile Google Reader is more primitive than it needs to be for the iPhone.
• Safari is a bit crash-y. Presumably this will get ironed out with software updates. Fortunately crashes are low impact. You just wind up back at the home menu, slightly confused but unharmed.
• Having a physical switch to turn off the ringer is very nice, rather than having to go all the way into Settings when you’re in a movie theater.
• It won’t sync my email properly, because I use Google Apps and it can’t understand that I don’t use @gmail.com even though I’m on Google’s server.

Phantom Hourglass Dated for the US

Phantom Hourglass Dated for the US

Comes out October 1. Sweet.

Ta-da List for iPhone - (37signals)

Ta-da List for iPhone - (37signals)

To fill the lack of a to-do list feature on the iPhone.

Taste Visualization FX Designs and Animation for Pixar's Ratatouille

Taste Visualization FX Designs and Animation for Pixar’s Ratatouille

"In the Fall of 2006, I was contacted by Brad Bird to create a series of animated vignettes for his movie Ratatouille. The concept was to design and animate abstract representations of what the character was tasting."

iPhone Not Quite the Cash Cow eBay Sellers Were Hoping

iPhone Not Quite the Cash Cow eBay Sellers Were Hoping

Supplies were fine, so all the speculators who tried to sell them on eBay are going to have to take them back to the store.

Kwik-E-Mart - a photoset on Flickr

Kwik-E-Mart - a photoset on Flickr

A few 7-Elevens have turned into Kwik-E-Marts to promote The Simpsons Movie.

Pachelbel Rant

Pachelbel Rant

Found this revisiting the Canon Rock videos. Hilarious, if you know much music. (Not that we didn't all know that chord progressions are few.)

Ratatouille

Ratatouille’s up to 95/100 on Metacritic now, which is exactly right. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s damn close. I’d rank it below Finding Nemo, my favorite Pixar movie, and about even with The Incredibles.

It’s a bit of a shame, really, that Pixar isn’t putting more weight behind this one. I’ve seen some advertising, but not much. It’s coming out right before Transformers, which will probably hurt its box office earnings. Cars got a lot more press, but I guess the subject matter speaks to lots more people than a movie about fine food, despite that Cars had a terribly flat, predictable story. I guess it’s hard to compete with Shrek, with its stars and its franchise power, but the effort that Pixar put into the storytelling of Ratatouille is as palatable as the food its characters produce.

Anyway, I recommend this one. One small thing: for some reason I can suspend disbelief that all these French characters are speaking English (and of course that rats are speaking in the first place), but it bothers me that onscreen, diagetic written material isn’t in French. What’s wrong with me?

AppleInsider | How to port 'ineligible' mobile numbers to AT&T and iPhone

AppleInsider | How to port ‘ineligible’ mobile numbers to AT&T and iPhone

Interesting. Problem comes if your current area code doesn't match your billing zip.