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Copyright © 2009 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/31/happy-new-year/.

Image Source: plrang via stock.xchng

With 2008 just about done (in my neck of the woods) and 2009 about to begin, I wanted to wish all of you a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. I’m ready for – even looking forward to – 2009, and I hope all of you are as well.

Also wanted to say thank you, thank you – for visiting the site, for subscribing to our feed, for commenting. We’ll do our best to make JAiB a great iPhone site to visit in 2009.

I hope you’re all cozy and safe and enjoying the end / beginning of the year

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/31/iphone-dev-team-interview-at-mobile-crunch/.

Before the release of the iPhone I used to use Symbian devices (mainly Nokia) and I would always be
looking for the next device, the next upgrade, the next vendor. These devices held my attention for a couple of months and I’d be spending my money on a new handset to get the next gadget high. This all changed with the iPhone, for my needs it is an almost perfect device, my eyes have not wandered at all.

Mobile Crunch has done an extensive interview with Pytey of the iPhone Dev Team, just hours before their much-anticipated iPhone 3G Unlock package is due to launch. It’s a very good read, with the topics covered including:

• How the team work together at great distance and largely via IRC
• Their relations with Apple
• Thoughts on the App Store and Apple’s restrictions on apps / developers
• Some insight on where the ‘yellowsn0w’ nickname for the upcoming 3G Unlock tool came from
• Thoughts on Android

It’s also good to see that, as per the quote at the top of this post, the Dev Team still loves the device they spend so much time working with.

The interview is definitely worth a read – give it a look HERE …

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/31/iphone-apps-for-kids-butterflies/.

Butterflies is a visually stunning and fun iPhone app for kids (especially those who like butterflies) …

I’ve got a 5 year old daughter, and she is a huge fan of butterflies (and all sorts of insects and animals generally) – so when I first spotted Butterflies in the App Store I thought it might provide a gentle and maybe short-lived distraction for her, and went ahead and grabbed it.

A pleasant surprise has been that the app’s charm for her has not been short-lived. She goes back to it just about daily, and still seems to enjoy the heck out of it after a couple of weeks.

Butterflies boasts ‘hyperrealistic’ butterflies that will land on your finger for you in response to your taps on the screen as they flutter past. You can then lift your finger and watch them perk up and fly back off into the overall scene again.

The colors of both the butterflies themselves and the background scenes are striking – and featuring everything from Monarch butterflies to some that look like pure fantasy creations in wild colors.

There’s not a whole lot more to this program, but a few other features include:

• Options to change the color of the background scene and the butterflies
• Tilt to rotate
• Landscape and portrait views

That’s about it – the app doesn’t boast any other bells and whistles, but it does what it does quite elegantly.

Oh, and my daughter says the app is relaxing, and that the butterflies feel quite real on her finger. We like it.

Butterflies is available now in the App Store, at $0.99.

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/31/recommended-check-out-iphone-life-magazine-for-free/.

Read the exact digital replica of the entire premiere issue of iPhone Life
for free on your Mac, PC, iPhone, or iPod touch at
< http://www.smartphonemag.com/iphone/freeissue>.

iPhone Life is a new magazine devoted entirely to our favorite mobile device – covering iPhone related news, tips, application reviews, and more. It’s published by the team that has brought out Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine for many years (sadly that ceased this year), and is an excellent read.

I’ve heard that pages 54/55 and 88 are especially good in the debut issue Well, actually that’s a snidy lead-in to saying I may just be a tad partial on this one – I’m one of the contributing writers for iPhone Life. I did some mini-reviews of several apps, and a story on how I use the iPhone in both my day job and in running this site. My good buddy Dan (author name danc here, and an owner at the WOIP site) and a bunch of other good people are helping to make iPhone Life the best iPhone publication around.

I hope some of you will get a chance to give it a look …

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/31/why-pay-for-one-speed-dial-app-if-you-can-pay-for-26-instead/.

*** This is a Proxy Rant. A small rant delivered on Brandon’s behalf while he is unable to get to a post editor. It’s a subject that both of us find appalling though. In fact, I just did a similar post last night on the ridiculous 30 ‘DaysTo’ apps.

Do you need to have a quick, easy speed dial icon to call Ashley, or Christopher, Jessica, or one of the other 26 names currently offered by the ‘Call One Name’ series of apps? If you do, you don’t want to be able to use one application to meet your speed dialing needs right? You’d far rather have to get 26 apps for your 26 individual names, and pay $0.99 for every single one I bet

How stupid is this getting for the App Store? I mean, this developer has put out Twenty-freakin-Six apps already, each associated with ONE first name. There are a whole lot of names not yet covered. Dozens, hundreds, I don’t know. Is Apple going to allow 100 apps in this ’series’??? And let the ‘born every minute’ folks out there pay $100 and litter their Home screens with this stuff?

Oh, and perhaps the stupidest little irony on this particular set of ‘apps’: they are located in the ‘Utilities’ section. Unbelievable. So we’ll head to a section intended to be full of useful items, and have to wade through page upon page of ‘Call Amber’, ‘Call Bill’ and so on to get to anything worthwhile.

I know one thing – I would *not* like to be one of the people at Apple who has to try to manage and control the App Store, trying to figure out where you draw the lines for what should get sanctioned and what should be rejected etc. – especially with nonsense like this to cope with …

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/30/30-number-of-daysto-apps-in-the-app-store/.

DaysTo Mardi Gras is the simple, easy-to-use app that gives you the instant gratification of knowing exactly how soon you’ll be celebrating the final day of Carnival. The information can be at your fingertips, any time you want to find out. Simply tap the colorful app icon and you’ll immediately know how many days you have to create the festive Mardi Gras you really want this year, and afterwards, in the years to come.

That’s from the description of the ‘DaysTo Mardi Gras’ iPhone app, recently added to the App Store. I’m not into Mardi Gras anywhere near enough to find this useful, but hey – there may well be folks who find this a great way to spend $0.99.

What blows me away though (I’ve got to start being much more cynical about all things App Store!) is that there are 30 of these DaysTo apps – Thirty! They all do this same thing – as in, count down the remaining days until: Birthday, game, wedding, anniversary, movie, concert, exam, baby, and so on and on.

Now I am not a developer, and I hugely admire the skillz it takes to be one – but it strikes me that maybe you could build ONE app that allows you to count the days to any and all of these sort of events, rather than pumping them out at $0.99 apiece.

Or, I could just decide that calendars and reminders will cover me just fine for any of these ‘how many days left until’ sort of moments I may have

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/30/featured-iphone-site-walmart/.

In addition to recently beginning to sell iPhones, the world’s biggest retailer – Walmart – has now got an iPhone optimized web site …

And a very good one at that. Well, I should qualify this right off by saying that it’s a very good one IF you like iPhone optimized pages. I like them very much. The glory of seeing the real internet notwithstanding, I find it much easier to work with sites that are specially (and intelligently) formatted for the iPhone – sue me

Read on for some reasons why I like the Walmart iPhone site an lots of screencaps …

The Walmart iPhone site’s home page presents you with 3 simple navigation choices – Products, Holiday Specials, and Prescriptions (as shown in the screencap at the top of this post). I think these may change regularly, as they were different when Joe first posted on the new iPhone site.

In addition, there are four navigation buttons that stay constantly on the primary top nav bar – Home, Shopping List, Store Finder, and Search. The Products section offers big, clean buttons to tap for individual product categories:

As you drill down through a main section (Products for example), you also get a further status bar just below the top nav bar, which shows the page you’re currently on and the position within the hierarchy of sections – and you can tap on the words to move back up the hierarchy (on Electronics for example, in the screencap below):

Pages load smoothly and pretty quickly, with only a very occasional hickup:

The Store Finder works well, and the Shopping List feature actually seems pretty handy, and is easy to use:

Same goes for the product search ability. A search for iPhone today brought up a range of relevant accessories – though interestingly, no actual iPhones (guess maybe this hasn’t been updated since they started selling iPhones last Sunday):

Individual product pages are also done well:

So there’s a lot that I like about the Walmart iPhone site. There are also a couple of things that I don’t like at all though. The first is that it seems that to buy anything, you are always forced across to the full site. That strikes me as awkward and more than a little surprising as the site’s been up nearly two months. The other is that there is no big / bold / easy link to switch to the full site. I know there are lots of folks who do not appreciate iPhone optimized sites, and one of the golden rules of optimizing sites for iPhone is (or should be) making it dead simple to switch back and forth between optimized and full versions.

Overall, the Walmart iPhone site is very nice to use. If you’re a big Walmart shopper and you’re Ok with optimized sites, this is a very good one to bookmark.

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/30/imacworld-all-your-macworld-info-on-the-iphone/.

iMacworld provides exhibitor information and product information, and also integrates a messaging service. It lets you browse exhibitor lists, looking at vendors by name, hall and aisle number. You can also check exhibited products by name, category and exhibitor.

If you’re an iPhone owner and you’re planning to attend Macworld next week, then iMacworld looks like quite a handy (and free) little iPhone app to get hold of.

The app checks the web for the latest exhibitor and event info and saves the data locally, so you should be able to get to it offline as well – and should by now have a feature that lets you navigate using a show floor map.

The Macworld Expo is on from January 5-9 (all next week) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

iMacworld is available now in the App Store, and is a free app.

Via: iPhone Central

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/30/eic-everythingicafe-iphone-forums-fans-update-your-bookmarks/.

Effective today, all links to everythingiPhone.com will not be forwarded to our new home here at everythingiCafe. Please update your bookmarks and/or links to reflect the change. As some of you might remember, we announced a rebranding from everythingiPhone.com to everythingiCafe.com last November …

We told you about the need to update your bookmarks for the MMi iPhone forums earlier this week. If you’re a fan of EIC – the ‘everythingicafe’ iPhone forums (and news, and social) site – you need to make sure all your bookmarks for the site point to the current and correct address, since as of yesterday, the old address no longer redirects.

So your bookmarks need to point at http://www.everythingicafe.com – not everythingiphone.com.

If you’re not a fan of EIC yet, why not? They are my favorite iPhone forums site, and they are also kind advertising sponsors of this site! It’s a great site for iPhone tips, getting your iPhone questions answered, and just good conversations on all sorts of topics (iPhone and off topic). I visit every day and spend a lot of time there. Hope to see you there …

Copyright © 2008 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/29/new-years-app-blowout-offers-lots-more-apps-on-sale-in-the-app-store/.

The New Year’s App Blowout!
To celebrate the coming new year, iPhone application developers have banded together to bring the world a little bit of holiday cheer. We’ve all heavily discounted our apps as our gift to you! These applications will be discounted heavily for at least 48 hours from Dec 31st to Jan 1st- so act fast to get these deals!

More end of year iPhone apps sales goodness, this time from a group of iPhone developers offering some significant price drops on their apps during the coming days surrounding the new year. There are currently 19 apps included in this blowout package, with many offering discounts down to $1.99 from $4.99 and similar (and others dropping down to $0.99 and even free).

One of the organizers of the New Year’s App Blowout tells me that they are expecting to add further apps to the offering over the next couple of days, so it’s worth checking their site periodically leading up to the new year. And that site you want to check is at:

New Year’s App Blowout link

Via: MMi