Christopher Allen's Ephemera Blog

iPhone Apps Removed Today

I've run out of iPhone home page slots for all of my App Store free apps and purchases, so it is is time to prune them down.

The following iPhone apps I removed from my iPhone today:

• Alarm Free:Supposedly a personal alarm device. If you move the iphone, or click on screen, an alarm goes off. Can't believe that people would think this would actually work -- it is better to call 911.
• Blip Solitaire:Sort of a one-player pong where you play both sides using a circular paddle. Didn't find it fun.
• Bluepulse: Tried registering for this one on an ugly too small font screen that looked like a web page (but Safari on the Bluepulse web site looked better then the iPhone app). It sent me an SMS, but I could never get the confirmation to work. Don't need yet another social network app anyhow..
• Bubbles: Not really that fun or interesting. Some good physics could have made a big difference.
• Evernote: I wanted to like this one, but adding text notes was a pain with the scrolling of the first line being lost over the top of the window, and no way to edit notes once written. But I'll keep an eye on this one as someday it might be a good cloud replacement for Notes, which get lost every factory reset.
• HaHaHa: I presume this app modifies photos you've taken to make them more Batman like, but it just didn't function for me. I took a photo, but then I was unable to modify the photo.
• Twittervision: I like the Twittervision web app, though it is actually more silly then useful. But the iPhone app just didn't work.

More will probably have to go tomorrow, but this is a start.

First Look at AirMe App for iPhone

AirMe appears primarily to be a free uploader to Flickr, or optionally to their more limited photo service.

The account creation process was a bit laborious, using a clunky embedded web browser pane that asks too many questions for a service that mainly connects you to another service.

I did like, however, how they handled the Flickr authorization, embedding the web pane inside a pane to enter the 9 digit numbers that the Flickr API gives back to authorize use of the application with Flickr.

The most unique thing that AirMe appears to try to do is auto-tag your photos using your location. So it looks up your location and adds say the tag "Berkeley" and then looks up the weather and adds the tag "Cloudy". You can also set other tags you wish to use. You can also set the resolution of the photos taken by the App, up to the full resolution of the iPhone, which many other uploading Apps don't support.

When you set the resolution for the highest level it only shows a portion of the photo in the preview window, which does not seem to be movable or pinchable, though it does respect orientation correctly. Thus I wasn't to tell if the photo was properly taken because I could only see a small portion of it.

It doesn't look like AirMe takes advantage of access to your iPhone photo library, so you can only take photos with it.

The app crashed several times, even though this is suppost to be the 1.01 version. I was never able to succeed in uploading a photo, so this iPhone app is going in the trash. Hopefully they'll release a better version in the future.

Trying Out TypePad's Blog It Web App

So after being frustrated with the iPhone TypePad App, I decided to check out Blog It, and came away generally being pleased. It is an iPhone optimized web application that you can't even view without using Safari on the iPhone. It was written by Six Apart, the same people that own TypePad, Movable Type, and Vox.

The initial experience was a joy, because despite being a web app, it has a great iPhone interface. I was also quite pleased by the signup process, which uses OpenID. After a day of playing around with iPhone Apps, I can really see the value of just entering a single OpenID to register with a web service, rather then being asked for a username, a password, and then later confirming your account via email or sms.

One you are in, you can set up a larger number of blog accounts (TypePad, Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Tumblr, Vox, WordPress, etc.), as well a a large number of status acccounts (Facebook, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Pownce, Twitter, etc.)

Fundamentally you can do two things with Blog It: update your status on multiple services; or post a text-only blog post to one or more of your blogs and optionally have a status message sent to your status services pointing back to the blog entry.

However, like all iPhone web apps you have no ability to upload photos, no access without a network connection, and you are vulnerable to Safari crashes (which still happen too often with iPhone OS 2.0).

Ideally I'd like the features of all three together: the photo uploading and draft creation while disconnected capabilities of the iPhone TypePad App; the comment maintenance features of i.typepad.com, and the OpenID and status features of Blog It. Of course, as long as I'm asking, supporting OAuth like the iPhone Pownce App does.

Even with its limitations, I've bookmarked Blog It to my home screen with an icon, despite of being tight on room on the Nine available iPhone home pages.

iPhone TypePad App Second Pass

Unfortunately, after my first look I'm less impressed with the iPhone TypePad App then I originally thought.

The final post somehow ended up being both of the same photo, though I was pretty sure that I picked two different screen shots. That probably was my error, but there should have been some way for the app to notice that two of the exact same photos were being sent, or a larger thumbnail to be sure I'm not sending the correct one.

Worse was that it cropped the photo image rather then sending the photo from my from my Camera Roll. The menu item is "Add a Photo" not "Crop a Photo". This makes the app useless for me for doing these reviews, as I can't post screen shots using it. I'll have to find another method to blog about iPhone apps while using the iPhone.

The picture problem combined with the fact that the app doesn't save when interrupted means that the iPhone TypePad app isn't really that much more useful for me then the iPhone-optimized TypePad web app, which is actually quite nice. It also let me manage things like comments, so I'll probably be using it instead.

There is also another iPhone optimized web app call called Blog It that I should check out.

So my iPhone TypePad App icon is being moved to Page Nine, the last page available of icons for the iPhone, for probable removal if my iPhone apps get full.

iPhone TypePad App First Look

Of course, the first iPhone App I need to write about is the TypePad app.

Setup was easy, just enter my user name and password (though it asked for my email as username when I instead have a regular user name).

Once setup you can start a new text post, take a new photo, or start a post from your photo library. Once the post is started you can add more photos.

Unfortunately, if you are interrupted, the message you are in progress is not saved in drafts.

One nice bonus feature I didn't expect was Twiiter integration, which I am testing with this post.

No editing of existing posts, and no rich text, but still seems a useful app. Probably a keeper.