This Christmas brings thoughts of good cheer and tiddings to all readers of donburnside.com, and maybe a little geekery about iPhone photography.
We all know that the iPhone is pretty amazing at taking photos. We also know that there are apps that improve the experience quite a bit, from cool effects and filters to ways that make sharing photos easy. Here are some of the things I’ve found so far, along with a couple new pieces of kit that I got for Christmas.
Apps
Hardware
I scored this Christmas! Check out these two great things Stella got me!
. I saw this when it first appeared on Kickstarter and I was sad I didn’t have an iPhone to use it with. The minute I got my iPhone, the first thing I wanted was this. Allows you to easily mount your iPhone to a tripod.
. Said tripod. This one comes with a case to use but if you have any kind of screen or back protection like Ghost Armor or a MotoringBadges iPhone wrap, it’s not a great fit. The tripod does work fantastic with the Glif!
Online services While Instagram works great for sharing photos to all of your social media sites, the way it works with Facebook isn’t that hot. Same goes with Flickr to Facebook integration. I think many FB users have those services blocked, so a lot of the time the photos go without being seen.
Enter IfThisThenThat, a service that’s been around a while but I haven’t used. You use it to build your own programs that actually do stuff. I will probably do an entire post on it later. You can even create recipes that are shareable, which is what I have done.
This will take any photo that has been uploaded to Facebook and automatically move it to Flickr including a link back to the original photo in Facebook. And, it works!
I’m still on the hunt for photo apps, but slowly. I know that some of you have more than a few you would like to share, sound off in the comments below. I’m sure Hipstagram is a favorite out there, but I’m not really a fan yet. I would love to hear others!
Driving to work this morning, I thought I would give iTunes Match another try. On my iPhone, I navigated to my songs and hit the shuffle button at the top of the screen. First song up played for 30 seconds then paused for about 10 before playing for another 20 seconds and pausing. So I turned it off, stopped for gas and gave Twitter what for.
I then resumed my drive to work and hit play one more time.
The next 8 songs played without a snag. Until I hit next too early, then it was play/pause/repeat all over again.
I want music on my phone. I don’t want to stream it, I don’t want to listen to previews, I don’t want a streaming service. I want my music. iTunes Match, for all of the awesome it can be, is still not living up to it’s full potential. At least it’s not for me.
So, off it goes.
I was reading on the internet last week about a problem with Siri and security. It got me to thinking about not only Siri, but also the Camera. Both of these functions are accessible from the lock screen now and both will provide access to your phone unless you take an easy step to correct it.
From the lock screen, if you double press the home button (under iOS5), you can activate the camera. After you take a photo or video and press the home button again, the default action is to return to the main home screen, efectively by-passing the lock screen. With Siri, the same thing happens except you long press the home button, ask Siri to do her thing and press the home button to stop. Default action is to again return to the home screen.
Unless you have a password on your lock screen. To set that, go into Settings –> General –> Passcode Lock.
Take a photo and pressing home will prompt you to enter your password before continuing to the home screen. Sweet. But what about Siri? If your phone is locked with a password, try to ask her to take you home or to locate a person. Siri will let you know, quite politely, that location services aren’t available while the phone is locked. Rad. You can also set Siri to not work from the lock screen when your iPhone is locked. Double Rad.
Another neat feature that I just discovered is the amount of intelligence that is built into the headphone jack. If I connect the aux port cable from my MINI to my iPhone, it knows to set the volume to full, even if the phone is on mute. If I plug in a headset (I haven’t tried multiples yet), then it remembers the volume level that was set before I disconnected the set. I don’t know if this is new with iOS 5 or not, but it’s a pretty neat feature.
I’m a bit more than week into using the iPhone and other than notifications, I have zero complaints. I keep hearing about users that are experiencing bad battery life which completely baffles me. For my use (light to moderate apps and camera), my shortest amount of time before having to get juice has been 12 hours. My longest was this past Sunday where I went from 3a until 10p without plugging in. That’s 19 hours and I still wasn’t getting the low battery notification. Granted, I didn’t do much short of a few text messages and Four Square checkins. This is still twice as long as the Dinc would have gone under the same useage.
So far, still very impressed. Comments are open if you have any questions.
Day 6 of my adventures in iPhone. The Ghost Armor has settled in and I’ve got a proper case on it, installing my carbon fiber MotoringBadges iPhone 4 Wrap later tonight. And I’m still digging it.
But I wanted to take a minute to be clear as to why I finally caved in and got an iPhone. And to start, it’s not because I hated Android. Because I didn’t. I quite liked it in fact. What I didn’t like about Android, and I get with the iPhone in spades, is the fact that 99.9% of all Android phones are completely, 100% controlled/limited, by the carriers that sell them. Unless you are lucky enough to be able to get a Nexus that is.
This means that ‘official’ updates* come from the wireless providers, sometimes months after they are released, if at all. My Dinc was stuck on 2.2 eventhough 2.3 was released back in April. There are also the crap apps that can’t be removed*, again put there by the carriers.
With this, my 17th cell phone since 2007 (look it up), I thought I would take some time to jot down a few notes. Now that I’m 5 days into it, I have a few.
The Good
The Bad
Apps
I’m not looking for suggestions or for any of you iPhone fans to jump to my rescue. I’m 5 days in with this device, and these are only my observations so far. Considering that I’m re-learning how to use a phone again, I’d say I was doing ok. Overall, I’m still super happy with the iPhone, just need to work through the things that I’m either not familiar with or require a different way to do them.
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