iPhone

A note about LOLCats

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I’ve received a few complaints about some images that showed up in the LOLCats application.

Unfortunately I have very little control over which images appear (except for the one that appears in the initial loading screen, which is my own cat, Cody). I simply search Flickr for the tags ‘LOLCAT’ or ‘LOLCATS’ and present any images it returns. Since I’m not logging into Flickr, it will always do a safe search, although that depends on the images being tagged as not safe. Perhaps requesting the results sorted by relevance or interestingness may improve the results; I’ll experiment with that for the next version.

I’ve been asked to make the OFFISHUL LOLCATS application, which will use the feed from icanhascheezburger.com and several related sites. I will continue to maintain both applications.

I have a few fixes planned for an upgrade. Most importantly, it will verify Flickr’s reachability, so it won’t simply hang if it has no network connection. Since it can take long to load images over an Edge connection, I’ve also disabled user interaction while the image is loaded, since swiping during that time can cause the image to disappear.

Checking Apple’s daily stats, it ‘sold’ almost 2400 copies in one day, including 2200 in the US, 159 in Canada, 19 in Mexico, and a few in several other countries. Since this is a free app, I’m not getting paid for it, of course. Not bad for something I just wrote for fun and as a proof of concept for testing the Flickr API 🙂

LOLCats is live!

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LOLCats is now available in the App Store. This is a fun, free application I wrote to try out the Flickr API. It simply searches Flickr for public images tagged LOLCAT and lets you browse them. You can also open the Flickr page for any image in Safari.

iPhone app update & install bugs

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AppleTell writes about one bug involving application updating on the iPhone, which I can confirm.

The problem is with how iTunes installs app updates. Like I said, I had already updated Cro-Mag Rally once before. What I didn’t realise at the time was iTunes didn’t actually overwrite the original file—it creates a duplicate! Yes, you read correctly. iTunes created another file in the Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications folder called “Cro-Mag 1.ipaâ€? to sit along side the original ‘Cro-Mag.ipa’ file. I checked the info of the app currently in my iTunes library at that time, and sure enough, it’s file name was “Cro-Mag 1.ipa.â€? Now we’re getting to the problem. You see, when iTunes is checking for app updates, it must be going by file name rather than app name. So, in this case, iTunes has been
checking for updates for “Cro-Mag 1â€? instead of “Cro-Mag,â€? and, of course, it won’t find any.

To prove this, I removed Cro-Mag Rally from the iTunes Library, but kept the file. Then I deleted the original “Cro-Mag.ipaâ€? file and re-named the other, removing the “1â€? from its name. Then I added it back to iTunes with its new name of “Cro-Mag.ipaâ€? by dragging it to the iTunes window. Immediately, I had the message at the bottom of the window telling me of an update available!

However, I’ve found two much more serious problems.

Applications purchased in iTunes are handled differently than applications purchased on the iPhone. If I purchased an application in iTunes, I can only update it from iTunes. If it was purchased on my iPhone, I can only update it from the App Store on my iPhone.

Far more serious, I find that apps I purchased on my iPhone aren’t being backed up to my Mac and can’t be managed from iTunes. If I try to delete one of those applications from the iPhone, it warns me that the application hasn’t been backed up. Has anyone else seen this?

iPhone 3G sold out everywhere

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According to Apple’s iPhone availability checker, the iPhone 3G is sold out at every Apple store in the US (except 8G at the Kahala store in Honolulu, HI and 16G white at Rockingham Park, NH & Fifth Ave NYC).

Last week in Vancouver I saw lines of people waiting to buy iPhones at every Rogers & Fido store, including a kiosk in Pacific Centre. The iPhone 3G appears to be selling even faster than the original model.

iCrapps

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After my last post, I decided to create an entire site dedicated to bad iPhone application reviews, done with humor. If you want to gripe about the iPhone crapplication you just bought, come to iCrapps.com. If you’d like to post your own application reviews, contact me and I’ll sign you up as a contributor.

My first victim is Go Figure Lite. Enjoy!

Lots of free crap

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I’ve downloaded a lot of free applications for my iPhone from the App Store, in fact I have 4 screens almost filled. Unfortunately many of them are worth exactly what they cost.

My worst experience so far has been Go Figure Lite, a simple calculator with built-in unit conversions. Instead of a keypad, it uses sliders to enter values, which are nearly impossible to set accurately (one of the reviews in the app store points out that double-tapping will bring up a keypad). Aside from that, the first conversion I tried was wrong. I entered the current temperature, 68F, which it correctly converted to 20C. However, when I went the other way, it converted 20C to 99F.

I also found that many of the location-based applications such as Yelp & Where don’t work here in Vancouver, since they seem to have US locations only in their database.

Stuck in the airport with an iPhone

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My flight left Fort Lauderdale an hour late because of the heavy rain & thunderstorms, causing me to miss my connecting flight in Houston. Luckily they got me on a later flight, which leaves here at 8:55PM and gets me into Vancouver at 11:30PM.

I kept checking the flight delay with the Travelocity iPhone application. I even helped another passenger find out about her flight, which she also missed, with my iPhone.

I find that 3G really eats up the battery fast. After less than an hour my battery was down to 20%. The iPhone also gets very hot during heavy use. I finally switched off 3G to save battery life.

I also found that location services don’t work in an airport. When I tried whrrl, it had no idea where I was. Same with Vicinity and even the built-in Map application.

iPhone 3G tip: soft cases

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Just a quick tip before I leave: Since iPhone 3G cases are still in short supply, I did a little experiment and found that my old Jam Jacket fits very nicely on the iPhone 3G. I suspect many other soft cases should also fit.