Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

680 News now availabe on the iPhone: Does it get any better?

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Just last week one of Toronto’s top News Radio station, 680 News, became available for the iPhone. Although it was already available for the Blackberry, iPhone users like myself were wondering when the iPhone version would be release and how it would meet our expectations. I will review the application below and hopefully if you are a fan you will give it try.

News:
Obviously being a news application, there is a section that has the latest news. The great thing about it is that the news is local. If you are like me and you like to know what is happening in your city in short burst, 680 News articles are just right for you. They are short articles that seam quite relevant to people living in Toronto. The section in the application is done quite well, with an indicator that shows whether you have read the article or not. There is an ad at the bottom of the articles that is not overly obtrusive and seems to work. There is a feature in the app preference that allows you to select the age of your news. So if you don’t ever want to see news older than one day you can have that setting programmed. All in all, it is pretty easy to navigate and get your news.

Weather:
The weather section is quite simple. It is just one screen with a five date forecast. It shows the high and the low. Only problem is that you can only get weather for Toronto. If you live a bit outside, you do not have the option to get your weather.

Traffic:
The traffic section is fun to use. It has the MTO camera shots throughout the city and you can bookmark your favourite cameras that fall within your route. It is nice to use before you leave for your drive to work or home.

Live Audio Stream:
Although the rest of the application is quite good, the live stream is really the best part. You can listen to 680 live anytime on your iPhone. I always have the problem where I only listen to news or traffic when I get in the car. This application lets me listen from anywhere and get a quick update when and where I need. Truly a useful feature

Availability:
The biggest downfall about the application is its availability. It is only available to Rogers and Fido users so if you want to listen to 680 on your Bell or Telus iPhone you wont be able to do that. Hopefully there will be plans to open this up to everyone all 680 News listeners.

Posted on January 31st 2010 in Mobile Apps, iPhone | No Comments »

iPhone App helped save a life in Haiti Earthquake disaster

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An iPhone application helped save the life of an America filmmaker who was trapped after the earthquake that devastated Haiti about two weeks ago.  Dan Wooley was trapped beneath rubble for 3 days and his iPhone may have had a hand in his survival.   When the earthquake hit, Mr. Wooley was in his hotel and the earthquake left his leg fractured and his head profusely bleeding.

Having installed a medical application on this iPhone prior to the earthquake, Mr. Wooley was able to search for treatments for “compound fracture” and “profuse bleeding”.  He found recommendations on how to treat his injuries.

” So I used my shirt to tie my leg and a sock on the back of my head. And later used it for other things, like to diagnose shock,” Woolley told MSNBC in Miami after being pulled out alive by French rescuers.

The developers that created the application should give themselves a pat in the back.  After all, how often can we say that our application saved a lifer today.  Bravo developers, bravo iPhone and I guess Apple can now claim that there REALLY is an app out there for just about anything….even SURVIVAL.

Posted on January 25th 2010 in Apple, Mobile Apps, iPhone | No Comments »

Google AdSense for Mobile Optimized for Smartphones

Google just announced that they optimized AdSense for Mobile for smartphones.  You can now use standard AdSense formats to target smartphones or “high-end” phones like the iPhone and Android.  Both standard text and image ads will be available for display on mobile apps.

This is of course great news for all developers looking to generate revenue from advertising or marketers looking to target mobile devices as part of their usual campaigns with AdSense. The program is still in “beta” mode and more information is available here.

Here’s the demo / announcement video from Google’s Laren Usui:

More information can be found on their blog.

Posted on October 6th 2009 in Advertising | No Comments »

Bell and Telus to start selling iPhones as early as next month

It started out as rumors yesterday and before the day has even come to an end I am seeing “almost” official news that says the iPhone will soon be available on Bell and Telus.

It has been a known fact that both Bell and Telus have been advancing their 3G technology but the news that they will be ready earlier than anticipated is definitely a surprise to many.   My personal opinion is that both companies have seen what the iPhone has done for Rogers and the Canadian mobile industry as a whole and they knew that they had to get there fast.   This says a lot about Bell and Telus and their ability to speed through innovation when it seems necessary but it says more for Apple as a company that creates markets.   Apple is not a company that tries to gain market share, they are a company that creates their own markets and then enjoys the fruits of its work.  Congratulations to Apple for single-handedly developing a market for mobile data consumption.

Posted on October 6th 2009 in iPhone | No Comments »

Facebook launches iPhone Application 3.0

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There is no doubt that the importance of on-the-go online connection is important to the working business person, but I am slowly starting to wonder if the younger generation will surpass mobile data usage sooner rather than later.

This question comes to me with the release of the new Facebook 3.0 application upgrade for the iPhone. Obviously, Facebook is seeing a benefit in upgrading their application and enhancing their mobile offering. Why would they do this unless either their main demographic is quickly adopting mobile usage or they see the future potential in this area. Either way, mobile usage and application usage is increasing at an alarmingly quick rate and young generation is right at the centre of it all.

Posted on September 2nd 2009 in application development | No Comments »

Urbanspoon style UIPickerView

A requirement for a recent application we worked on was to produce a spinning picker view for randomly selecting items similar to the popular Urbanspoon application.  There were several parts to our solution, making the picker components circular, blurring and animating the spinning, and correctly displaying the final result.  This post will deal with our solution to these items.

The solution to the circular picker came from this post on Jeff LaMarche’s iPhone Development blog.

To achieve the spinning effect we use a series of images animated using UIImageView and placed on top of the UIPickerView.

The most challenging part of the solution was properly displaying the UIPickerView after the animation was complete.  On our first attempt we were seeing random rows of the picker were left blank as in the image below.

missing-rows

The reason for this appears to be due to the fact a view cannot be drawn on the screen twice.  When setting the selected row any rows that were  displayed before the new selection would potentially be drawn blank.  Our solution?  Landing on the final selected row is a two step process.  We know the row that we will land on, and how many rows are displayed at once. The first step is to select a row far enough away from our destination  so that all the rows that will be displayed are not.  In our case that was six.  Then we select the row that we want to end up on.  The code to this would be something like this:

-(void)selectionReadyRow
{
[pickerView selectRow:(selectedRow1 -6) forComponent:0 animated:NO];
[pickerView selectRow:(selectedRow2 -6) forComponent:1 animated:NO];
[self performSelector:@selector(moveIntoPosition) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.5f];
}

-(void)moveIntoPosition
{
[pickerView selectRow:(selectedRow1) forComponent:0 animated:NO];
[pickerView selectRow:(selectedRow2) forComponent:1 animated:NO];
//stop and hide animating image
}

Note the delay of 0.5s using the performSelector:withObject:AfterDelay method.  This seemed to be necessary or else the row selection performed in moveIntoPosition would not always occur.

In writing this post I though another solution to the missing row problem could be to have two copies of every view.  This would eliminate the need of having to position the row twice.  You could choose an alternate copy of a view each time it gets displayed.  This seems like it could be a better solution when you have fewer views to display.

If you use the solution detailed above or the alternate proposed solution we would love to hear how it works out for you in the comments.

Posted on May 8th 2009 in Sample code, application development, iPhone | No Comments »

SMS should remain top of mind in the mobile space

Undoubtedly, the mobile space is drastically changing and particularly as a result of the changes that are occurring in the smartphone category.   With the release of the Apple iPhone and the growth of BlackBerry handsets, people are starting to browse more on their mobiles and data plans have shifted in Canada to allow for this.  Mobile company’s like us (Plastic The Mobile Agency) are really excited about this shift and see all the great possibilities that exist to expand and grow the mobile industry.  More and more we hear our competitors, clients  and industry experts speak about browser capabilities, applications and new technologies that are taking advantage of these better devices.

The technology and the possibilities excite our curiosities and stir our imagination but we also also have to consider the analytics.   How many people can be targeted?  What is the reach?  What is the engagement level? What is the ROI and what is the per user acquisition cost?  Unfortunately, we are at a time with little access to mobile analytics and looking at handset usage and penetration rates paints a gloomy story.  There are still millions of people who don’t use their phones to browse and even more people without smartphones so how can you really get maximum reach?  For this reason I still believe in the power of SMS and campaigns oriented around text-messaging.  In fact, SMS is superior to other modes of communication such as email or direct mail. There are many benefits to SMS campaigns and these can be used by brands to communicate with their audiences:

SMS allows you to:

  • Reach a greater number of people as an overwhelming majority of mobile handsets are SMS enabled (95%+)
  • Allows for better use of marketing spend. SMS is as very cost effective way to reach users and is far cheaper than traditional print advertising
  • have effective campaigns since SMS campaigns are estimated to be 10x more effective than print advertising
  • Track and evaluate your interaction with users whereas print advertising does not allow for responses.
  • to targeted towards 13-35 age range.  It is estimated that about 1742 SMS messages are sent per month in the (13-17 age group) and 790 sent in the (17-24 age group). The third highest usage is  331 messages per month for the  (25-35 age group) according to Nielsen.

With a greater reach,  more user interaction, better response rates by your audience, better tracking and more cost effective, it sometimes blows our minds why some companies are not taking advantage of this great mode of communication.

Plastic Mobile Agency located in Toronto Ontario helps our clients evaluate their mobile needs and understand their targets.  We provide mobile strategies that are suited for our clients and suggest to them with the most effective use of their marketing budet.

Posted on March 31st 2009 in SMS | No Comments »

Mobile blog is not a blog without APPLE NEWS!!!

Thanks to BoyGenius there is report focused on the a recent patent application by Apple.

So the patent covers biometric and other embedded authentication systems and this has the tech community all riled up.  How can Apple work so hard to hinder jailbreaking and then as part of a very official document, contain images of a jailbroken device. See the images below and lets just wait and see what this is all about.

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Posted on March 28th 2009 in Apple, iPhone | No Comments »

Apple iPhone 3.0–Today was big day for the mobile world

Apple made their announcements today regarding the anticipated release of their iPhone 3.0 and Mobile enthusiasts can’t wait for what is about to come.  Some really great and exciting new features, over a hundred new added in the new release (I will not go through them all), but here are some of the big ones below:

  1. The long anticipated Cut & Paste is here and in a good way.  You can double tap over your selection and a prompt will pop up asking whether you want to cut, copy or paste. You can expand your selection area using your thumb and if you make a mistake when you are pasting, just shake it away…I love it..like eraser dust!
  2. The famous spotlight on a mac is now going to also be available on the iPhone and you would be able to search your entire device.  That is handy!  Search will also be available in Mail and Calendar.
  3. 3G tethering– this is available so you can use the internet on your phone through your computer….no word on whether the carriers are supporting this.
  4. Landscape keyboard has been added to some of the applications, most notably Mail.
  5. MMS now available for the iPhone (this should have been available on the 1.0 but I guess better late than never)
  6. Shake to shuffle music in iTunes
  7. Safety features such as anti-phishing and parental control
  8. Voice Memo application- allows for voice recording
  9. PUSH NOTIFICATION– this is a big one and it is long overdue

There are more features where that came from but and I am sure we will hear all about them in the coming weeks. Come back and I will keep you posted.

Posted on March 17th 2009 in Mobile technology | No Comments »

Can the iPhone really start a car?

Would you ever have believed it 5 years ago is someone told you to take out your phone and start your car?

You wouldn’t need a car starter and your phone would do it for you.  Living in Canada and having to warm up my car in the dead of winter would mean that an iPhone car ignitor would be my dream come true.  Ok before we all get carried away and run out in a trek to find this ignitor we have to understand it only sits in one concept car at The Geneva Motor Show. Rinspeed, the maker of the iChange concept car revealed an impressively revolutionary, highly innovative concept car with jaw dropping features that revolve around the iPhone.  The iChange is an an electric and solar powered that is aerodynamically designed to reduce air resistance and lesson its fuel consumption which in its case it electricity.  Not only is this car environmentally friendly and appeals to the tree-huggers but its also technically innovative to appeal to the geeks.  Especially us!

The entire vehicle is built around Apple’s popular mobile handset, which hooks into the dashboard and acts as the car’s key – locking and unlocking it, as well as turning on the engine and performing other functions.

The iChange which has been supported by the Swiss government, might seem far-fetched, but the team behind it say it is intended to stimulate the struggling car industry into innovative thinking.  As the entire world faces challenging times, innovation will lead companies out of touch time.
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Posted on March 6th 2009 in Mobile Innovation | No Comments »