Facebook Client Updated for iPhone/Touch

I now find myself using Facebook much more than I ever have in the past. So I was very interested to see that the Facebook client application for iPhone/Touch has just been updated. The new version has a completely redesigned interface and features big improvements in the news feed, notifications, viewing profiles, searching, photo tagging, and messaging. This application has really been vastly improved. If you use Facebook, be sure to check it out.

Finally – Usable IM for the iPhone/Touch

BeejiveIM is a new application for the iPhone/Touch that nicely addresses one of the current limitations of our devices – the lack of a notification mechanism for applications not currently running. This feature is supposed to be added in an upcoming firmware update soon, but so far it’s not available.

The Beejive appication gets around this limitation quite imaginatively by using the one “notification” mechanism we now have: push email. If you are using Exchange, IMAP, or MobileMe, you can get email delivered virtually immediately and are then notified of its arrival by the distintive “email bong”. Beejive takes advantage of this fact and utilizes email as an IM notification mechanism.

How is does this is as follows: when you start up the application it logs onto the Beejive IM server. After you quit the application your session stays active, even though you aren’t running the application on your iPhone/Touch. The amount of time that it stays active is configurable by you. During this time if you receive an IM message you are sent an email message informing you of it. This gives you an opportunity to quickly restart BeejiveIM and respond to it. It’s quite an ingenious answer to what appeared to be an insoluable limitation of current iPhone/Touch IM applications – you weren’t informed of incoming IM messages unless you were actually running the application. I’ve tried BeejiveIM with GoogeTalk, my IM client of choice, and it actually works quite well!

In addition to GoogleTalk, it supports MSN/Windows Live, AIM, Yahoo, MySpace, ICQ, and Jabber. It costs a little more than most iPhone/Touch applications, but to my mind it is certainly worth it. It finally makes the iPhone/Touch into a usable IM platform.

A Walk into the Woods and Back in Time

Yesterday I attended a pretty unusual event: The Legacy of Mary Ingles. It’s an outdoor drama and 18th century encampment. It starts at the encampment, which featured a group of historically correct shelters with fiddlers, cooks, gunsmiths, and other miscellaneous inhabitants dressed in historically accurate clothing. Then I walked a mile-long trail where I encountered people and events from the period of 1755 through 1800. I met and interacted with friendly and hostile Indians, settlers, scouts, land agents, salt makers, and Mary Ingles herself. Mary Ingles is a woman famous in West Virginia history. She was abducted by Indians in 1755 and taken 500 miles away from her home. She managed to escape capture and walked the entire 500 miles back to her home in only 42 days.

The event is held yearly in Putnam county and was extremely enjoyable. It’s an opportunity to really experience what life was like in the 18th century here in West Virginia.

FlyTunes is Now FlyCast

The already impressive FlyTunes Internet radio application for iPhone/Touch has gotten even better and been renamed FlyCast. The interface has been improved and the application now provides access to over 1000 streaming Internet radio stations. If you can’t find anything you want to listen to with this program, you must have very unique tastes! It’s free, so be sure to check it out.

Timers for the iPhone/Touch

 

The timer functionality of the built-in Clock application is pretty limited: only a single timer with accuracy only down to the minute. The Chronology application provides you with up to a dozen timers accurate down to the second. What more can I say; it’s a simple and inexpensive application that does what I want!

Listening to Streaming iTunes in My Car

Last night while driving around town I was listening to music streaming from my iTunes music library located at home over my car radio. How did I do that?

First of all, I recently purchased the Griffin iTrip AutoPilot iPhone/iPod FM Transmitter. This device, pictured above, broadcasts audio from an iPhone or iPod to an open FM channel on your car’s FM stereo radio. It even has a SmartScan function that picks out the three best frequencies to use and saves them. Most importantly to me, it will charge an iPhone 3G. It’s a little finicky regarding optimal placement within the car to get the strongest possible signal to the car’s radio, but once you find the proper location it’s a real breeze to use.

To get iTunes music streamed over 3G to my iPhone, I use the amazing Simplify Media application. It enables my iPhone to play any music that is on my home computer (I happen to have my music stored on Chocolate Shake, my Asus Eee 1000h) by having it streamed to the iPhone over WiFi, 3G, or even Edge. It even displays all my playlists, and can view artist bios and song lyrics. I say it can stream from my home computer, but it can actually do more than that. It can also stream from up to 30 friends’ computers if they have the free Simplify Media server installed on their machines, too. (Clarification: I just found out that music purchased from the iTunes store is blocked from playing on an iPhone, although at least one of my purchased albums slipped through Simplify Media’s filter, which is why I didn’t immediately notice this. So you can’t play all of your iTunes music on an iPhone, just music you’ve ripped into iTunes.)

This is an incredably handy feature for me. Since I have quite a large video and music collection stored on iTunes, I’ve had to split it up between my iPod Touch and iPhone 3G. The iPhone contains all of my video files, while the Touch contains all of my music. The Touch normally sits at home where it serves up music over my in-home wireless speaker setup. With Simplify Mediia I can now listen to all of my music on my iPhone, too, even though none of it is actually stored on that device.

So that’s how I managed to be listening to streaming iTunes music over my car’s radio last night. Isn’t mobile technology wonderful!

I Now Own a Domestic Robot

Woot had a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner available at a very good price last week, so I ordered one. I received it on Saturday and on Sunday I gave it a try-out while I watched football.

It’s really an amazing device, and yes, it actually works! I set it to cleaning my fairly cluttered living room, my dining room, kitchen, and the hallway leading to my upstairs bedrooms. I live in a fairly large house and these rooms are all quite sizeable. It took a total of about 2 hours for it to get them all clean.

It’s really fascinating to watch in action. It uses a variety of touch and infrared sensors to navigate about the house. It seems to use some simple algorithms to determine where to go along with some pseudo-randomization to make sure it covers the entire room. Leave it alone and it will eventually manage to traverse every square inch of a room. It vacuums quite well, whether on rugs or hardwood or kitchen floors. It actually did an outstanding job, even along the baseboards where it used its wall-following algorithm. It even manages to navigate well underneath tables and any other furniture it can fit under. When it encounters what it considers a dirty area, a bright blue light goes on and it spirals around in that area until the area meets the robot’s cleanliness standards, and then it continues on its way. Overall, it did a much more thorough job than I would do with my Hoover vacuum cleaner. It took longer than I would have taken, but I was able to watch football from my couch while it did all the work. Not a bad deal!

The picture shows Robbie (what other name could I give him?!?!) sitting in his charging unit. He finds it himself when you tell him he’s done, and rolls up to it, turns himself off, and starts recharging. Also in the picture are the two Virtual Wall units that came with him. They allow you to wall off areas that you don’t want Robbie to go into. They will project an infrared beam up to 8 feet in length that Robbie treats just the same as a wall. Robbie is also smart enough not to fall down stairs. I purposely left the downstairs stairway door open in the kitchen and watched him approach the stairway a couple of times and then gingerly back-off and reverse course.

So far, I’m one very happy robot owner. Robbie has taken over one chore I find somewhat tedious to do, and he does it better than I do. My house is now going to be cleaner than ever!

I Went to the Symphony Last Night

Last night I attended the opening night of the WV Symphony Orchestra’s 2008-2009 season. It was the first time I attended a concert of the WVSO and I was amazed at what a fine orchestra we have here in Charleston, WV. The performances were top rate, with Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, Saint-Saens’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor OP 22, and Holst’s The Planets on the program. The Planets was definitely the highligt of the program for me. This piece requires a very large orchestra and women’s chorus and the WVSO has the musicians and chorus to fit the bill.

The performance hall at the Clay Center, where the concert took place, is also amazing. It’s a very modern facility with excellent acoustics. During intermission I walked all around it and there isn’t a bad seat in the entire house, even in the second balcony. The performance hall is small and intimate and my orchestra seat provided a great view of the entire orchestra and wonderful listening pleasure.

The WVSO and the Clay Center performance hall are just two more examples of the surprisinig cultural assets that are available in the small city of Charleston, WV. Once again, I’m so happy to have decided to come and live here!

Linksys Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives

I recently purchased a Linksys Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives NSLU2 from Amazon for the amazing price of $41. This is actually a tiny Linux computer that allows you to mount up to two USB disk drives and/or memory sticks and access them as network drives. It also provides a Web-based interface for administrative functions. From what I’ve read on the Web it’s also eminently hackable so that you fairly easily get into the Linux OS and turn it into a Web server. I’m actually quite happy with just its network drive capabilities. I’ve got a 160 GB portable USB drive hooked up to it and am using it for backups of my Asus Eee 1000h. I think it’s an outstanding bargain!

X-Plane Flight Simulator for iPhone/Touch

A couple of days ago I purchased the X-Plane flight simulator for my iPhone. I did it mainly out of curiosity, since the PC and Mac version of this application is so highly rated (it’s actually certified by the FAA). I must admit that I haven’t been disappointed at all by it. This is one simply amazing iPhone/Touch application! I am looking forward to seeing how this application further evolves over time, but the first version is an outstandly good flight simulator and works extremely well on my iPhone.

By the way, if after using it for a while you start feeling a little cocky just go ahead and turn up the wind and turbulance settings a bit and see how well you do with landings!