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I took this picture, from my iPod, of an iPad showing off my portfolio. It looks amazing. The images are actually sized perfectly for this device. But there was something weird. All the images in the night album, and the occasional other image won’t show. I get the blue image not found icon. Very weird. I wonder if they are exported with some weird settings. Not sure how that happened.

I was also able to confuse the javascript by pressing on the album and next/previous buttons. I will have to take a look at that. As noted yesterday, it doesn’t work well on the iPhone either. I also checked Kelby’s site again, and it looks great too, just not on the iPhone. I am wondering how that device reports it’s screen size. I might just need to look for that browser and then display presized smaller images.

If you want to get a rough idea of what your site would look like on the iPhone, check out iPad Peek. It doesn’t show the broken images like the iPad did, but it will give you a sense of size and how your content will fit. Just enter your site in the address bar at the top.

Adobe has released an iPhone app for Photoshop.com, their online editor. There are some cool things that you can do with the app, such as the sketch filter that you see on the left here.

There are also some other filters such as the soft vignette that look neat, but the rainbow filter that modifies all the colors on your image so that it looks like a rainbow is a little odd. I suppose my 5 year old would think it was pretty cool.

Anyway, it looks like a neat app. You can send your images to Photoshop.com, or save them back locally. The app creates a new image at the end of your camera roll, so your original picture is not changed. You can choose to take a picture right from the app too.

It is free, and looks like it is worth playing with a bit. Search the app store for Photoshop.com.

I am starting to get pretty annoyed with my iPhone. It all started after I did the carrier update to get the MMS capabilities. What happens, is that I lose the ability to send and receive calls and messages. I can still get email at least.

My wife tries to call me, and the phone goes right to voice mail. Then she emails me. If I am checking email, then I power down the phone, then power it up again. This works for awhile. If I leave it for a period of time, or charge it (that could be just time) it stops working.

The weirdest is when I try to call out. The phone gives the Calling… screen, but it never makes the call. Weird.

I have tried to reset the phone, by wiping it out from iTunes, and doing a reinstall. That didn’t seem to help.

This is not an isolated incident. I know two other people that have had the same problems. The fix? Get a new phone. I guess I need to make an appointment with the “Geniuses”.

UPDATE (10/08/09 9:00PM): I am installing the 3.1.2 iPhone update, and a “new carrier update”. That makes me nervous. We’ll see what happens.

D90 Manual

I am now using the iPhone app Good Reader. Scott Kelby had posted about this in September, but I hadn’t got around to looking at it until now. This app is a great way to view and manage pdf files. It was really easy to get the pdf files onto my iPhone. You can point to a web url, and it will download as I did with one of the files, or you can set up a file server with one button press on the phone. This is really easy. All you have to do on your computer is connect to the displayed IP address in the finder with the Go/Connect to server… menu option. I then dragged the other items to the finder window, and they transfered over. Very simple. It works well. This is what I have on my iPhone so far.

1. My Nikon D90 camera manual
2. My SB-800 camera manual
3. My SB-900 camera manual
4. 10 By David duChemin (eBook)
5. 10 More by David duChemin (eBook)
6. DLWS participant packet

It works pretty well. You can easily read, zoom, change pages, even navigate directly to a page. I like it. I haven’t used the manuals yet, but I like the idea of having them sitting on my hip within reach.

The Best Camera is the one you have with you. This is something that Chase Jarvis has been saying for awhile now, as he has been churning out hundreds of pictures from his iPhone. Some of them have pretty cool effects applied to them, and I have often wondered how¬† he got those done “in camera”. I figured he must be bringing them into Photoshop or something like that.

Nope. Maybe at first, but not any more. He has a new site¬†for sharing, and a new¬†application for the iPhone out. Here is the post where he shared it a few days ago. I just got to installing it yesterday. The picture at the top was my first shot. Goes to prove that a few new filters still doesn’t equal an unsuck filter for a crappy photograph. It kinda looks like a mouse on a golf course green, covering a¬†¬†hole…. right…. sort of? It’s actually a mouse pad. I wasn’t very creative last night.

The app is pretty cool. It has several filters that work well, and the ability to share right from that app with flickr, facebook, or the bestcamera site. I wish it had a sharpen filter, and a way to trigger the picture when the device is steadier. I find most of my images on this phone blurry. But, it is worth checking out.

“S” as in Super phone, or at least “S” as in speed. If you missed the WWDC live, you can check the recaps from the live feeds that Ars Technica and Engadget posted.

The highlights are the speed, and the new hardware bits. I don’t find my iPhone to be too slow; more network bound than anything, but I am sure for the folks playing games that the extra speed will be welcomed.

I think the compass sounds interresting, and the ability of the phone to allow accessories will allow TomTom (they demoed the app) to do turn by turn directions. The biggest hardware piece I think is the new camera. Not the most exciting, but now a 3MPix camera that can autofocus (currently fixed) and do macro, and video. Already I heard someone complaining about only 3MPix. COME ON PEOPLE! How big a sensor do you think is in this thing. More pixels than that just equals more noise!

Anyway, they are also talking longer battery life, all fitting into the same size hardware. The 3G version has dropped to $99, and the new 3GS will be available on June 19 (with the iPhone OS 3.0 available June 17). It will be $199 adn $299 for 16meg and 32 meg versions.

I am continually amazed at the applications that are created for a device such as this. I use apps on my phone (not even games) more than I use the phone capabilities. Build it, and they will come.

They also demoed voice control, but I wasn’t sure if that was a 3GS feature, or a OS 3.0 feature. Either way, voice control over not just dialing, but things like iTunes is pretty cool.

There were lots of cool OS 3.0 features demoed. The google maps service will be empedable into other apps with full pan and zoom, custom annotations, current location and geocoding. The ability for iPhones to talk to each other sounds really cool, but the push notifications are what looks to be a great feature. Not sure how it will effect battery life, but having notification from other apps would be great, although as I add more and more poeple to my twitter friends, I am not sure I want to be notified everytime someone tweets!

Find my phone appears to be only for Mobile Me users, but it allows you to locate a missing phone on a map. You can send it a code to have your phone (even if set to not ring) to make a noise. If you are convinced that your phone is gone, you can even send it a code that will wipe all your data.

I can’t believe it has taken so long to get MMS messages on the iPhone, but they will finally be here. Not on June 17 with the new OS, but sometime this summer when AT&T gets around to getting their support for it. Really? Yikes. I don’t suppose that this or AT&T blowing off tethering support all together is going to set that well in Jobs corner office. That’s right, AT&T has chosen to not implement tethering on it’s network. Shakes head. Sees new carrier in Apples future.

Well, looks like I will be doing a sync and update around June 17, but despite the new camera features, I won’t be in line on the 19th. I don’t want to be stuck in an AT&T contract and find out I can switch carriers

Update: Looks like Chase Jarvis is getting one for the camera features, but then again, he takes better pictures with his iPhone than I do with my camera… sigh…

Update: Apples guided tour via video: http://www.apple.com/iphone/guidedtour/

I was just comparing notes with another iPhone user, talking about how we don’t know how we ever did without the thing. I was checking an RSS feed, and sure enough, Ars Technica has a post about the iPhone OS 3.0 that will be out this summer.

This is not a point release. Turn by turn GPS, cut and paste, MMS messages, push notifications, bluetooth connections to other iPhone users, and more API hooks into the default apps for developers to access.

Free upgrade for all iPhoners when it comes out. Sweet. How did I live without this thing?

I started typing in a reply to someone about what iPhone apps are living on my screen, so I thought that maybe I would post the list of things that I have on my iPhone here.

First up is Flickr. They don’t have an iPhone app, but they have a mobile site that is quite amazing. Great UI.

I also use the Facebook app for accessing Facebook. Most of both sides of my family now used Facebook, so this is a great way to check in.

The wordpressapp is pretty neat. It allows you to create posts right from your phone. This is not perfect. You can’t access images that aren’t on your phone. Ones from your wordpress library would have been nice. Much better than using Safari and the admin section.

I jumped on twitter recently, and the twitterificapp works great for me. It would be even better if the iPhone would let you know when updates occur, but that is not yet in the iPhone architecture. Checking by accessing the app probably saves battery life though.

AccuWeather and The Weather Channel are much better than the included weather app.

WhitePages is great in the US at least. I look up people and phone numbers with this all the time. It lets you add addresses to existing contacts or create new ones as well as providing a map of the location.

LockBox allows me to put sensitive info into the iPhone with an additional password. There are a few with that name. Thisis the iTunes link.

Yelp and AroundMework great in the US. I can see restaurants, businesses, bank machines, and more that are near by my location.

Flixster is also pretty amazing. It has a great interface to tell what movies are playing, where, and when. It used the location service to tell you what is near by. You can also see info on the movies playing or coming in the future as well as play trailers. I don’t get to movies much, but a guy can dream.

I have craigsphone (for craigs list), eBay, and Amazon on my phone, but don’t use them much. I have looked up prices on Amazon while out an about though.

I have Pandora and Public Radio Tuner to stream audio, but haven’t found that I use them much. I drive too much I guess.

Been trying to find good lists and to-do apps. I am trying ShopShop (grocery app comparison) and ToDo’s right now.

I also started using NetNewsWire. I have their desktop app on my Macs, and the mobile version of the RSS reader on my iPhone. I created an account with them and now they all sync together. Pretty cool.

Newspapers like the New York Times and USA Today have mobile app versions. It is faster and more UI friendly than their full or even mobile sites.

My 2 year old loves DressChica and I Hear Ewe.

Also check out Terry White’s Tech blog. He reviews iPhone apps every week. http://terrywhite.com/techblog/

There are a bunch of photography tools. I am pretty cheap, and haven’t tried any of the pay tools, and haven’t found any photography tools that are free that are worth buying. Depth of Field Calculatorlooks interesting. Just look at the photography catagory in iTunes. There are lots of apps there. Scott Kelby (on photoshop user tv) recommended FocalWare to see sunrise and sunset times for landscape photographers. It is $9.99. Haven’t tried it yet.

I am amazed. These apps combined with maps and address book have become glued to my hip. In about a month I am now wondering how I lived without them. I probably use more of the data plan than my voice plan. (I only have the 400 min plan)

I now have my portfolio at christopherwardphotography.com iPhone ready. The site is heavy on javascript, and loads a lot of images at once. Makes for a slow 3G iphone experience. And the images were too small once safari scaled them. So I fixed that.

After hearing David mention a lightroom gallery plugin that was made for the iPhone, and trying to show someone that site (no flash on the iPhone), and my own (too slow), I thought I should do something. I don’t have lightroom. I have Aperture, but have never tried the web sites it can create. I just decided to create something on my own.

I wanted it to be simple, and not to use javascript. I also wanted it to look iPhoneish, and look good when the iPhone was vertical or horizontal. Also, just like wptouch that I wrote about yesterday, I wanted it to come up automaticly for iPhone users.

If you go there now with an iPhone you will see the iPhone specific site. If you don’t have an iPhone, this is what it looks like:

On the left is the first page displaying the albums in vertical mode. The horizontal mode shows all four in a row. On the right is the blue album in horizontal mode. In vertical mode the images are two wide, and you scroll a bit more. Press an image and you see just that image in the browser. I didn’t make pages for each image. Each album has that nav bar at the bottom like the bottom of the first page.

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I got an iPhone recently, and I have to say that I love the thing. I have used more minutes of data plan than I have minutes of talk time. I like checking email/flickr/facebook/rss feeds when I have a minute without using a computer, or without needing a wi-fi connection. I will document some of the other plug-ins that I am using later, but right now I want to talk about Wordpress and iPhone/iTouch devices.

I was amazed that I could read my blog on the iPhone. I had to zoom in a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. I was happy. Then I started to wonder about creating a theme that is more suited to the iPhone screen. Then I did what all good programmers do before they start cooding. They Google. Sure enough, I found WPTouch.

If you have an iPhone/iTouch, come back and take a look. You won’t believe it until you see it.

This plugin for wordpress intercepts when an iPhone is accessing your blog, and replaces it with a theme that looks like an iPhone application. Amazing. Using a little javascript, it even has menus, ¬†and the comments work just fine. It does make your site a little generic. It has the ability in the admin screen to adjust the colors, but I haven’t played with it yet. I would like to modify the header, but I’ll leave that for another day.

I installed version 1.7.5 from the plugin repository on wordpress .

So, what if you want to make a post? There’s a plugin for that too. I have installed an application on the iPone called Wordpress for iPhone. This app provides a simple interface to allow posting to your blog. There are lots of features available, but some things are left wanting. It would be nice to be able to add pictures from your wordpress gallery, but it looks like you can only add pictures from the iphone. Both your synched photo’s, and your camera. You can save drafts locally, but not edit ones from your site. The editor isn’t the “visual” editor from your site, it is the html editor, so links and images are in tags. I think it will be nice to have though.

So why didn’t I write this post from the iPhone? You type even this many words on that little virtual keyboard and tell me how long it would take you