I think this is cool? Hmm I think so?

The Mentalists play Kids by MGMT on their iPhones and iPod Touches, using only apps downloaded from the Apple App Store. Apps used Ocarina, Retro Synth, miniSynth, DigiDrummer Lite

Old Skool meets new School

This is seriously one of the coolest and silliest things I have ever seen on an iPhone.

http://www.macosiphone.co.cc/

“Welcome to the MacOS iPhone Project! We are Dedicated to putting MacOS on the iPhone”

Remember this, ‘Safe to Turn off Your Macintosh – ah the simple days.

Boy I hope these guys succeed, this is pure genius for the sake of the insanity of it, I don’t know why but it makes me so happy to see so much endenvor into something this silly.

Upside, my hold HyperCard stacks will live – like Frankenstein’s Monster.

All power to these guys, I just love this.

iPhone App organiser?

http://www.veronicabelmont.com/2009/02/the-iphone-app-organizer-i-would-lov-to-see/

Great post about how important/cool it would be to have an app organiser for the iPhone. Anyone like me with way too many apps on their phone know how slow it can be organising apps by different criteria (news, sport, games etc), and how frustrating it is to add a new app then to have BBC News 4 pages away from the rest of the news apps.

Bored one day, I was even as frivolous as organising by colour and taking screen shots. Icons too big for any ideas of ASCI styled art, my Las Vegas Elvis was barely recognisable even to me. Still there has to be a project out there for me one day.

iPhone The Missing Manual

Why Are iPhone Users Willing to Pay for Content?

“It may be no surprise that the best-selling computer book so far this year is “iPhone: The Missing Manual,” by my colleague David Pogue (O’Reilly, 2007).

But here is something that did surprise me: The most popular edition of this book isn’t on paper or the PDF file that O’Reilly Media also sells. It is the downloadable application for the iPhone, according to Tim O’Reilly, the chief executive of O’Reilly Media.”

Excellent article on NY Times on the sensitivity of price point marketing on the AppStore.

“The book, which sells for $24.99, was initially offered as an iPhone app for $4.99. When the publisher raised the price to $9.99, sales fell 75 percent. O’Reilly quickly dropped the price back down to the lower level.”

I have this book and I can vouch for it, excellent.

Full Article

Geocaching App

“Geocaching is a global treasure hunting game where participants locate hidden containers, called geocaches, hidden outdoors and then share their experiences online”

Happy Birthday Steve

54 Today.

And to celebrate Steve’s birthday, Apple have (not related) announced massive cash reserves for the company.

Two days before Apple’s (AAPL) annual meeting — the first in more than a decade that Steve Jobs won’t attend — Financial Alchemist’s Turley Muller offers beleaguered shareholders a statistic that should provide some comfort:

Apple’s cash holdings have grown at an annual rate of 50% (year-to-year) or more every quarter for the past two years.

Once again full article here from Apple2.0 Blog

Next iPhone killer? again…

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/02/21/a-taxonomy-of-iphone-competitors/

The always fantastic Apple2.0 blog by Philip Elmer-DeWitt has a great piece on a Taxonomy of iPhone competitors.

Well worth the look, but in the end, if you want one fine, but it’s still not an iPhone (and that’s fine if you don’t get it).

Deleted Apps?

Interesting article via JemimaKiss

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029471,49301195,00.htm

“Just 30 per cent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased, according to Pinch Media, which analysed over 30 million downloads from Apple’s App Store.

The numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than five per cent of those who have downloaded an application are actively using it. The drop-off is even greater for free applications.”

There are amazingly Apps on my iPhone that have never been used, but sit there just for the ‘what if one day I’ll need it’ factor. But then again they are the free Apps. The paid Apps get plenty of use, so I guess I’m going to skew their findings a little.

Yet another iPhone killer app

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/02/23/the-day-itunes-died-spotify-is-working-on-a-killer-iphone-app/

Supposedly the day iTunes died (yeah how many times have we heard that one).

Interesting though, seems Spotify are getting serious about iPhone app development.

But alas like all things it’s not available in New Zealand, yet. As the song goes, ‘one day we’ll know’…

Nice web site thought.

Screen Clicking

Argh,

my screen is clicking. I know it’s touch technology, but it’s not click technology, and I don’t want my screen to click.

This issue came up last year in the Apple Forums, with a great result for the person in question.

“I have noticed that with my iPhone when touched to the left of the home button (no contact with the home button) that the screen clicks… Took it to the store today, one look was taken at it and I was presented a new iPhone, signed some papers and was on my way. Great service”

Full thread here (love those apple support forums)

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6275074

Unfortunately in NZ we don’t have the luxury of heading to a Genius bar, but Magnum Mac in Dunedin is stunningly good service, lets see what they have to say.

Anyone got similar issues, I’ve read over and over about the back casing cracks (which I too have, but could live with – just). Let’s hear your response.

I’ll update this when I know what Apple will say about it.

Happy Birthday Mac

Hat tip to Apple2.0 for reminder

iPhone Killer?

Not being any friend or student of the sciences, I have devised a couple of nice inventions, which I really should have put my name to. The first, rather whimsically was coloured swimming pool water, way back in 1985. Quite possibly around before that, but what kid couldn’t resist jumping into a slime or lime coloured swimming pool. I soon gave up on that one, more a case of apathy than anything else.

The other leads us nicely into the next iPhone ‘killer’. As I said, knowing next to nothing about science, more specifically physics and chemistry, but having a pet loath of power cords, I always (from about 1997) thought it would rather wonderful if the device which had just run out on you could be charged by just being in the vicinity of a power source. Most people I mentioned this too came up with the line similar to “this is why you’ll never win the Nobel Prize for Physics, you need power cords”. This idea has rattled around in my brain for years. Sure devices which wern’t solid state had some form of motion charging or powering, but for devices such as a walkman (originally) and iPod or iPhone latterly, this seemed like science fiction, I mean apart from static electricity and lightning, power doesn’t jump (does it?), and not wanting to have mini lightning bolts flying about my living room for the sake of not wanting power cords about the place, I soon laid this idea to rest.

Well long story short, this is how I introduce the next iPhone killer, my long lost invention, wireless charging!!! Bloody brilliant, why didn’t I think about that, hang on I did….

Since day one of the introduction of the iPhone people have been looking for the ‘killer’ replacement, the phone that the more traditional cell phone manufactures will come up with that will conquer the iPhone.

Since the debut of the iPhone, I’ve maintained that it’s not the iPhone itself which is so revolutionary (although hard to argue it isn’t), rather the responses to the iPhone’s revolution in cellular technology, which will revolutionise the portable media/cellular device market.

Not being of Stephen Fry’s ilk or wealth, I don’t and can’t afford to own dozens of iPhones and other cellular devices, so I’m not really in the market at looking what the traditional cell phone manufacturers are producing. That is until I read the specs of the latest offering of possibly the most punished of all ‘smart phone’ companies, Palm. The Palm Pre, is a nice looking device, somewhat more of a chubby cousin to the iPhone. Similar GUI and size for that matter, seems some people are impressed with the demonstration or hands on playing with the Palm Pre.

However for me, to see that the good folk at Palm had trawled through my thoughts in the middle of the night (either that or my revolutionary invention was to one day be discovered. The Palm Pre has, well what do you know he’s getting to the point, wireless charging. Sure you still need to lay the phone down on it’s charging station, and like the cooking pots, the induction process charges the phone. Not quite charging from a long distance, and still not setting ourselves free from the shackles of charging devices, this is a start, and a nice response to the iPhone.

I like the design, but what is the software running it like? And I still don’t get the need for a pull out qwerty keyboard, the touchscreen version is just awesome on the iPhone.

So glad to see someone has finally taken my ideas and run with it. Now if I could only get someone to listen to my word association football (see Monty Python) MP3 player….

Lame

MacWorld 2009

OK, Mac junkie (not geek or evangelist, can’t afford to have that title), I’ll get that off my chest from the start. I love mac gear, I LOVE Apple gear, but then there are people who don’t and at any chance they can they put their collective boot in.

The latest is over at Newsweek, in a piece titles MacWorld, MacBoring, Is Apples Golden Era Over? by

I agree that MacWorld 2009 (the last one Apple will be attending at this stage) will go down as a huge snooze fest, apart from the new 17 Macbook Pro, which I must have, iWork 09 and iLife 09 which are just plain sexy, the removal of DRM from the largest collection of digital music in the world (how utterly tedious).

The reviewer states “This is a company that has run out of gas” is about as perceptive as when that complete idiot and famous Apple bagger Steve Baumer laughed at the iPhone.

He’s the guy that bought you the Zume, you know the MP3 player that didn’t even need to wait till the next millennium to stop working on New Years eve.

For a more balanced (and no not biased) review of the keynote speech at MacWorld 09 delivered by Phil Schiller not Steve Jobs, try reading the more intelligent Apple2.0 Blog over at CNN/Fortune. As market analyst Gene Munster puts it “If Phil Schiller had made a significant announcement, we would have seen that as a sign of a changing-of-the-guard, but that was not the case. In other words”, Steve Jobs is still in charge.

Which to you and me, means Steve Jobs + Jonathan Ives = Insanely great products.

Cool t-shirt?

http://www.explodedphone.com/

Don’t know if I could, too much?

hat tip very cool site, http://www.coolinfographics.blogspot.com/

3G speeds

Ok been in ChCh for nearly a week and am tearing my hair out over how slow and patchy the Vodafone 3G network is here.

Makes me realise how good (if not small) the 3G network is in Dunedin. Literally the so called 3G network here in ChCh is like old dial-up. In Dunners I’d have no qualms about any surfing or web work. Here in ChCh it’s so painful.

So I know I have visitors to the site, take a minute to tell the world about your 3G network. Moan, gloat – whatever but do let us know.

{Update 1 Jan 10am – Just been on Banks Peninsula, one of the most popular places at New Years time, and Vodafone just drops off the face of the earth, everyone is on Telecom over there. Also it’s like magic, but the 3G network in CHCH ends more or less at the city boundary. Don’t talk about the blank spots all over the city – is that a flat city thing?, and why are the 3G maps on the vodafone site so awful, hasn’t the worlds biggest telco heard of information design?}

Fav iPhone App, week 1 Dec 2008

If you are anything like me, there will be more than one new app a week making it’s way onto your iPhone, some are deleted not too long after being put on there (to be fair though I do give them all time to win me over or tick me off – and some really do).

But to keep it brief, I’ll be limiting it to one new fav app a week (unless it really merrits ranting about).

So to kick things off, the one feature that was on my cheap Sony-Erriccson w200 cell phone, radio. I’ve been dying to be able to finally get the news and weather on my iPhone and now there are options to do just that. After reading about it a bit, I decided that the $8 was going to be worth it for Wunder Radio, produced by all people The Weather Underground service.

I’ll leave the full review to MacWorld iPhone Central, they pretty much have it all covered, but I’ll add that word of caution, don’t forget in New Zealand we don’t have unlimited data plans like some countries, and that cheap 250mb data plan could be gobbled up pretty quickly (although not as fast as you would think).

I was a dedicated Rock101 Vancouver fan while I lived there in 2007, and listen streaming most days at home, so now to have them in my car on the road is fantastic (if only the Vodafone 3G network didn’t have so many shadow areas).

This is my fav app for this week (closely followed by the already reviewed Google Street View on iPhone and the free Darts app).

Google Street View launches in NZ

If that’s not your wife you are kissing in Google Street View, you have nothing worry about.

Google Street View is here, and I love it. I love it for the fact that it’s also available on the iPhone for the first time too, and it’s even nicer on the iPhone than it is on the big screen – believe me it is.

I loved the irony of the woman on TV3 news today moaning that her privacy had been invaded. Didi anyone else notice the irony of her going on National TV to tell us that’s her son on the front step of her house and that she doesn’t like it. My god woman, you’ve just told the whole country about it, till then only you and your family were ever likely to know or care about it.

I love google street view for several reasons;

1) I’m a geography and technology buff. Any chance to give people a greater understanding of their surroundings through the use of technology is a plus for me.
2) I love reliving past holidays, it’s like a panoramic image of holiday snaps I didn’t take or couldn’t because of the flat battery in the camera, or even checking up on places I used to live.

I love Google Street view for warning me about the quick sand on the Champs Elysées, i found this gem on my iPhone while waiting for the dentists, and I thought I had problems.

One of the best free toys to waste the hours away waiting for that connecting flight- why not check out if your hotel actually has that beach view they promised over the internet.

iPhone 2.2 Software Update

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Apple pulled a swift one on us and has released version 2.2 of the iPhone software.

Some cool things (some things still missing – cut and paste), possibly the biggest is google street view. Yes I know it’s not available in New Zealand yet, and only people doing things wrong actually need to worry about it (I mean if that’s not your wife you are kissing, ain’t my problem buddie), but I can’t wait for it to get here. The google camera car has been spotted for quite a while cruising around New Zealand, and blow me down with a feather, one of the first cities in NZ to get street-viewed is going to be Dunedin, classic.

To see what a google car and all that equipment looks like, check this out, and how web 1.0 is the bucket on the top of the camera pole.

Anyway there’s a whole heap of other features in the 2.2 software update:

Enhancements to Maps
– Google Street View
– public transit and walking diretions
– display address of dropped pins
– share location via email
Enhancements to Mail
– resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
– improved formatting of wide HTML email
Improved stability and performance of Safari
Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular)
Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
Preferences to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard settings

Of course Macrounmors are all over this, with links about upgrades etc.

YOU SHOULD DO THIS UPGRADE.

Besides, Google St View is fun if not for anything else, going back to holiday spots and getting a ‘live’ view. I ‘walked’ from our Hollywood hotel to the Hollywood Bowl where I saw The Who play, it all came flooding back, brilliant.

New Zealand banking iPhone Apps

One of the strangest things about the iPhone is how many web based apps people are building, when you think that it comes fully loaded with Safari and full web browsing capability (aside from flash), why an App version of what you can do in Safari?

The answer is of course, an App version is usually stripped down to the bare minimum and if you want the full version, then of course just go to the web to play there. This is possibly too true of the National Bank (New Zealand) iPhone App. It’s so stripped down, you more or less can’t do anything except view balances. But then again, that is the beauty of an App, it’s fast, it’s stripped down and it’s just so easy to use. Of course at this stage if you want to do anything more fun, a wi-fi network shouldn’t be the place to say send $1,000,000 to your secret Swiss account.

Given functionality, this will be fun. For a pointer as to what it could be, we need only to look at the most innovative bank in NZ, Kiwibank. They’ve gone and developed a very nice webapp.

Link to App Store National Bank App here

As pointed out KiwiBank has a webapp version of it’s banking, and the subtle difference between a web app and installed iPhone app may be too small to have to worry about, but it is different. The KiwiBank webapp is much nicer interface and of course has full functionality – all I need now is a KiwiBank account – oh and some money.

ASB also has a webapp version for their clients.

This ties in nicely with this article about the potential for the iPhone and the format of iTunes payment for the iPhone as a micro payment platform.

Take that a step further, as we all know the iPhone is essentially a mobile computer (without cut and paste yet), it has the hardware platform and an evolving OS (all the ingredients for a mobile computer), the potential for payment and purchasing via mobile computing at this stage (security issues aside) is only just beginning and at this stage is limitless.

Voice-recognition google search iPhone App

From Stuff.co.nz

Pushing ahead in the decades-long effort to make computers that understand human speech, Google researchers have added sophisticated voice-recognition technology to the company’s search software for the Apple iPhone.
Users of the free application can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, such as: “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.
The search results, which may be displayed in seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.
The ability to recognise just about any phrase from any person has long been the supreme goal of artificial-intelligence researchers looking for ways to make man-machine interactions more natural. Systems that can do this have recently started making their way into commercial products.

(Full story)

And of course what would a good Apple story be without the Apple2.0 take on it.

For tech bloggers, this was bigger than Obama.

How else to explain the reaction Friday to John Markoff’s story in the New York Times about Google (GOOG) bringing voice activation to the iPhone, letting you search for everything from pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge to the length of a giant squid just by talking into your phone?

Markoff’s story was the No. 1 item all day on the Techmeme news aggregator, and by the time it was over more than three dozen tech writers had weighed in, from AppleInsider’s Katie Marsal to Eric Zeman’s Phone Scoop. Seth Weintraub posted a video. Several reporters spoke of it in the past tense, as if they had already had the program in hand.

So where is Google Voice Search?

(full story here)

and yet another video, let’s hope they are right. When I lived in Vancouver talking with a Kiwi accent (yes it is the Queen’s English!) to any automated voice recognition telephone service required me putting on my worst rural Tennessee meets Jewish New York accent to get any results.

How we view the world

Google have announced that their vastly popular Earth visualisation tool for the web is now available for the iPhone. Anther report here from CNet, which provides a full review.

Features include;
• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the ‘Location’ feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

This is big for me for several reasons.

Firstly my life and understanding of life is all about connections, and the increasingly hypermediated existence that I live. I love being able to call information up when and where I need it. Don’t laugh, but the free wikipedia app is one of the most used on my iPhone – how else can you settle an argument that Burkina Faso is in fact landlocked and gained independence from France in 1960. Also as a person who travels a lot and is a dedicated geography freak, the more tools that enhance our understanding of the environment the better I say.

Played with if for a few minutes now, and as I suspected, the faster connection the better, so I’m sticking to my home wi-fi at the moment.

I love being able to tilt the phone to get the oblique view of the earth, it feels more real than the action of clicking a button on the desktop version. If anything it’s a little too sensitive to movement.

So along with the latest development of the iPhone 2.2 Firmware Beta 2 which has fully enabled Google Street View, wiki and google earth, so many of my geographical craves are being satisfied.

Financial Confessions

Over the next while I’ll be starting to review sites that are great fun/design/useful on the iphone.

This one is a great little fun page that loads beautifully on the iPhone.  Unlike some pages that have mobile versions, this site loads beautifully on the iPhone as it’s full version.

The site is a for fun, you can confess your financial vices, and people will either give you a hug or a slap depending on your vice. As I said it’s lots of fun, but I’ve been slapped for moaning that one coffee just isn’t enough – wow how do people display such strong control, one coffee is never enough.

Anyway stop on over and confess your financial vices and have some fun.

http://www.financialconfessions.net/

so what can the iPhone teach desktop computers

For a start, how boring is it to scroll back up to the top of the page. I have this incredible desire to double tap the top of the page to get back to the top (you know the navigation and links etc).

There are many things that people learned from HCI, user interfaces and GUI, all from the traditional laptop/desktop OS method of doing things. But this is now changing and the GUI and HCI that is created by mobility of technology and ideas, has created a whole new way to interact with our technology and information.

More to come, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about what the iPhone is now teaching us about technology and information.

So number 1 for me is;

Double tapping top of screen to get back to top of long web page (or desktop window for that matter, and forget keyboard strokes, I want mouse interaction baby).

iPhone kill(ed) my twitter desire

Not that I was a big twit, I’m way to verbose to be so succinct as twitter dictates, as Reggie Perrin used to say, “why say it with one word when two in the bush is more fun.”

But recently as I’ve gotten over the glow of the iPhone and started thinking about what it is that has fundamentally changed the way I communicate and interact with technology and people as a result of the iPhone, I’ve discovered a couple of things.

Twitter is more or less a thing of the past for me now. I WordPress from my iPhone with a coffee at my fav cafe (here in NZ we don’t have free wi-fi in faces – yeah prehistoric I know). Why twitter when I can spurt out the ills and delights of the world with WordPress.

There are some bugs, like when you press the wrong button and there doesn’t seem to be any way to get a draft back. Some sort of automatic saving to the phone would be best.

But then that’s me, and there are plenty of apps for twitter out there, and it’s not dying any time now.

The years best gadget

Stuff Magazine’s readers have voted the iPhone 3G as it’s gadget of the year.

Story here, here, here, that is due to the stuff web awards site being down at the moment.

It beat out the following competitors: Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Nintendo’s Wii Fit and the B&W Zeppelin iPod speakers.

Seems this has caused a stirr (from the great Kiwi knocking machine), in the reader feedback section of the stuff.co.nz (no relation) web site.

One of the silliest moans was

for $6k-odd that the iphone costs, i could have bought hundreds of other gadgets that individually do the iphones job and still had some spare change

So if you have a shopping trolley to push around with you all the time to carry a playstation, xbox, wii, the tv to run it on, a portable DVD player, an ipod touch, a phone, a laptop at least to have true web browsing experience and full email, and you didn’t mind the exercise of hauling all of that and the portable electric generator needed to power it all across the beach (as I took my iPhone to the beach the other day), then yes you could have saved money.

Hey you developers

Now there is a place to go to see how the big bucks are developing iPhone companies, apps and games.

http://ifundvc.com/

Is the blog for iFund, brand new today. It’s the (as blogs tend to be) informal meeting place for people to come and discuss many of the important technical and commercial developments that surround the iPhone.

For those who don’t know, iFund is a $100m USD capital fund by venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and managed by KPCB Partner Matt Murphy among others.

Already iFund has 4 companies up and running, and they are (as you would imagine) in talks with others as to future developments.

iFund companies include:
GOGII – A new social interaction and marketing platform.
iControl – Stay connected in real-time to what matters most—family, property, home, and business—from anywhere in the world, anytime, day or night.
ng:moco – The first iPhone-only games publisher.
Pelago – Discover the world through the eyes of your friends and other people you trust.

As Matt Murphy states in his first post

“While these changes have been dramatic, we have only seen the first few pitches of a 9 inning game. The iPhone has changed users’ expectations of what is possible in a mobile device and UI and the AppStore finally showed the promise of mobile data applications”

Never a truer word spoken. The iPhone will radically change the very way people interact with each other, their environment and of course do business, I have no doubt about this. The simple reason for such a grandiose statement is the SDK and the ability developers have to create their apps to meet their and their customers needs. Apple gave us a great tool (like the hammer and wheel) we need to figure out how we are going to use it.

Should be an interesting read.

iPhone 2.1 firmware upgrade

I love it, and so it seems does most people.

The reviews have been more or less favourable right across the board.

As per usual Macrumors.com has a pretty good run down of the features and some that weren’t heralded.

justinomg, at macrumors.com forum has a massive list of features that also weren’t featured on the official update list. It’s well worth the look.

This is interesting, warning do not try to unlock after one too many beers or wines – wipe all data feature.

iPhone Atlas has more good reviews, but the first cautionary tales from the dark side.

It’s the most unexpected but fun aspects of the iPhone has been discovering all of the hidden features of the iPhone.

The best tip I learnt was the swipe action to delete emails and txt messages I no longer wanted. So fast, so simple and so intuitive, that well it just made sense.

Anyway back to 2.1 firmware. Yes I have notices speed differences in the like of installing apps. But the biggest improvement has been the speed and responsiveness of txt messages. It’s like a whole new ball game now – what a difference.

Apple2.0 over at Fortune, has a great review and round up of the firmware upgrade.

The iPhoneblog points out that 3D buildings are now popping up on google maps for iPhone – very cool.

It had to happen

With all respect to my many American buddies, but it could only happen (well first) in America.

A woman in Alabama has filed a law suit against Apple the maker of the iPhone, claiming that it doesn’t perform as well as claimed. WTF, are you joking? Of course it doesn’t perform as well as we all wish it would, but do you really need to go and sue?

My last car was well below par, should I be sending Subaru a letter? Dropped calls, isn’t that a telco issue?

Full story at ArtsTechnica

{NB this is a Kiwi perspective of the iPhone experience. I’ve never dropped a call, well that was till I went to the states, and we don’t sue people in NZ).

Vodafone NZ reacts to outrage

News this morning is that Vodadone NZ has reacted to the considerable outrage against their plans, which infamously gave them the dubious honour of the most expensive iPhone Telco provider in the world.

Today Vodafone NZ announced plans that are quite radically cheaper (up to half price) than what was previously available. The new plans still provide a subsidy on the handsets, with the biggest difference being in data and voice allocation. Vodafone claim they have listened to customer demand, which (like me) people use the device as a mobile web and data gadget with txt and talk time the least consideration.

“Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen says the plans have been put in place after customers called for a lower monthly cost but were happy with less talktime and lower text message limits, but similar levels of data.”

Now there’s a surprise, just what we were asking for right from the very start, less talk and more data. I am amazed though at how little data I am using, and how often I use the phone in a wi-fi zone (thus not using up data allocation). When I first got my phone, none of the plans met what I thought would be my needs, so I went on two Vodafone plans costing my $90 a month (more data). As it turns out (well how was one to know when everyone warned me that data would be gobbled up in a flash) that despite my heavy web and email use, I wasn’t even anywhere near 10% of the data I put myself on for 24 months. So I’m going to be one of the first this afternoon to change that’s for sure.

The new plans start at $40 for 20minutes talk time, 100txt and 250mb data.

Current usres are able to switch plans but will need to pay Vodafone for the difference on the cost of the handsets.

So while this us a great move, and I imagine a lot of people will be switching plans asap, people like me will be out of pocket to Vodafone by several hundred dollars over the last 6 weeks and that stinks. At the moment, Vodafone stores are showing the sold out sign for all iPhones, showing that it’s still selling extrememly well, and has obviously been a money boost for Vodafone.

New Plans

Old Plans

Copy and Paste coming (sort of)

One of the most frustrating elements of any UI associated with mobile operating systems, from the most basic through to the most complex has been the relative difficulty in copying information around your phone. Perviously it was neigh impossible to copy phone numbers to store. Thankfully most companies over came this issue, not Apple.

One of the most basic (possibly the most frustrating) omissions from the iPhone 2.0 software was the ability to copy and past. For what is essentially a mobile computer to not even be able to copy text in an email and paste it into the notes is startlingly frustrating.

However there have been some great suggestions as to how this could be done.

Lonelysandwich over at Vimeo produced a funny short video on how copy and paste may work on the iPhone, worth a look, if nothing else for the ending.

Now a functional App is set to appear that will offer limited text editing and formatting, including copy and paste functionality, along with things like limited fonts and text sizing. This will be available by openclip.org via iTunes very soon, and I imagine will be a big hit. The process is explained further over at macrumors.com.

I just can’t wait for the official iPhone software update which includes this functionality across all Apps, not just in one App, then I’ll go from thinking this is an amazing machine, to literally being blown away by it.