iPhone Apps on my screen

iphone1I 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)

Portfolio is iPhone ready

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:

iphonealbums iphoneblue

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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Access WordPress Blogs with an iPhone/touch

WPtouch

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 😉