Bagel Belly Blog

iPhone must-have apps, revisited

Revisiting my list of must-have apps, here's a few more that have made the grade:

Scribble, a useful sketch pad. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a badly-drawn diagram on the iPhone must be worth a couple of dozen words. I particularly like the "shake to clear" feature. You can save your scribbles to the photo album.

Last.fm. I'm a user on the Mac, so it's nice to have it on the phone too.

Solitaire. It cost a couple of quid, but I've spent enough time playing it since then (particularly on dull train journeys) to make it well worth the money.

Chopper. Remember Choplifter? This game is a fun version of that. Love it.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, itunes, mobile, proprietary, appstore, purchasing

iPhone update

So, it's been a week of living with the iPhone, how's it going?

Mostly, pretty good. I'm still in awe of the fact that a mobile phone has some basic usability added to it, and that to do anything I don't have to navigate through many different folders or remember which obscure softkey you configured as you do in Symbian world. Mobile Safari and the iPhone version of NetNewsWire are getting the most screen time, and it's a pleasure to be connected to my favourite time-wasting solutions anywhere and anywhen.

Email-on-the-move basically means delete-spam-on-the-move, and I think I'd rather have a rich client GMail app than use Apple's Mail, since the "search don't file" meme of GMail has infected me. I find myself pointing Safari at GMail almost as often as using the inbuilt Mail, usually when I know there's a specific email I want (e.g. the one containing my train ticket reservation number).

The AppStore is both awesome and terrible, in equal parts. For ease of use and simplicity to grab cool apps and spend money, it wins triple bonus points. For frustration, take all those points away. The closed system is a real problem for users and app developers: for example, I've been using NetNewsWire 1.0 for a week, waiting desperately for the new release (it's now up to 1.0.7), but yesterday evening the only update Apple would give me was to 1.0.1. Update: Turns out this is actually 1.0.7 even though the version number is 1.0.1.

I can kinda understand the rationale behind the App Store - not every developer could scale out their infrastructure to provide seamless downloads for the millions upon millions of iPhone users out there, so it's a benefit along the lines of Apple's podcast downloads. But implicit in providing a service like that is the need to make it quick, efficient, and to focus on removing the pain points, like speed of listing new and updated apps. Apple must work harder here.

Then there's some other bad stuff:

I've renamed my iPhone 'crashPhone'. Since owning it, I've seen reboots every other day. That's worse than the Nokia N95 I'd been using! (Which crashed once every other week.)

Doing an update of a bunch of apps via the AppStore on the phone caused it to rearrange them on screen, losing all my careful positioning. Not only that, but the update seems to trash the previous version of the app, including application data, so I've lost things like user preferences.

If you remember the key selling point for me was integration with the desktop and no more badly-mangled calendars, you'll be greatly amused by the screenshot, which shows the many duplicated events that are now showing up in iCal. I now have the fun task of clearing all this up. Just what I wanted to avoid.

Sync-n-Crash: this new service from Apple displays an error every time you sync your iPhone. After the first few times clicking "Report", I gave up on the assumption that we'll see an update to iTunes/iPhone when Apple is ready, and not when we're sick of seeing errors.

My migration to o2 was not without fault (no-one could ring me for several hours, voicemails left on o2 in that time were lost). Carphone Warehouse are also doing their best to piss me off, with no less than five calls so far trying to pressure me into taking out insurance, despite refusing it on the day I bought the phone and subsequently telling them to remove me from their call list. But these are faults with the UK retailers, and not the phone itself.

Other than the few gripes above, and despite the feature downgrades (no MMS, no camera flash, no video, low megapixel camera), the phone is still a quantum leap over my previous phone. I wouldn't go back.

Technorati Tags: apple, drm, iphone, itunes, leopard, mac, macosx, mobile, osx, ical

Hmmm, upgrades

So, you may not have noticed (apart from the authentication-fu for a few hours last night) but this blog has now been upgraded to use the latest version of Movable Type. As part of the upgrade, it's also moved onto a new machine, hosted by the wonderful Bytemark (as recommended by the majority in my request for server hosting recommendations).

After some initial complaints about the MovableType install process (upload these CGIs here, upload this HTML there, change permissions, blah blah) it was pleasantly simple to migrate my old content. Just dump from the old Postgres DB, import to the Postgres DB on the new server, point the browser at the MT install, and let the wizard do the rest. As far as I can tell, everything is working, but please do holler if you see any broken links.

iPhone must-have apps

I'm sure there will be millions of posts and articles along the same lines (cool iPhone apps), but I'm adding my personal choices because I can. So:

FileMagnet from Magnetism Studios. As Jeremy mentions, this is an insanely useful app. I used it to get the TFL underground map on the phone, quickly and easily. It's £2.99 but well worth it.

NetNewsWire from Newsgator. I'm using Newsgator more and more while working on Windows machines at client sites, having long been a fan of NetNewsWire on the Mac. Although there's a few usability issues to be worked out with iPhone NetNewsWire, it largely does what you need. And you can't argue with the price!

Super Monkey Ball from Sega. Sega win the prize for stupid by not having details of this game or any other on their iphone games website - perhaps they were as surprised as o2 by the release of the iPhone yesterday? - but that does not take away from the fact that this game is awesome.

Remote from Apple. Just do it.

That will do for now - I'll update the list as time goes by.

Technorati Tags: apple, mobile, iphone, purchasing, review, software

iPhone

When the original iPhone came out I spurned it in favour of my n95. The idea of downgrading to Edge/2.5G didn't really appeal to me, but I promised myself that when a 3G version was released, I'd rush out and buy it.

And so this morning, that's what I did.

The benefits of the iPhone 3G over my current N95 are marginal: the iPhone has a better screen, but the N95 has a better camera, can shoot video, and can send MMS. The real killer for me, and the reason why I migrated (not upgraded, but moved sideways) was for the usability and integration with the desktop. Support for the N95 through iSync is average, the Nokia Multimedia Transfer utility is average beta-quality software, and sucker that I am, I have some DRM music that won't play on the Nokia.

So, this migration is all about integration and ease of use. Please, no more badly-mangled calendars and address books.

The bitter pill in all this is that I have to go back to o2. My very first mobile was on BT Cellnet, and I stayed with them when they became Cellnet, then o2. But years back bad experiences drove me to Vodafone, and more recently bad experiences with o2 for business left me swearing I'd never use them again. Ah, how easily our standards slip in favour of having the latest shiny plaything.

o2 lived up to my expectations this morning. I was outside Carphone Warehouse in Ealing when it opened, and about 9th in line for sign-up. Sadly, for almost two hours the o2 servers were unable to process credit checks (buckling under the load). I suppose they only had a year to prepare for this.

First impressions of the iPhone itself: excellent. The text input is a bit tricky for me at the moment, but apart from that it's a joy to use. The integration with iTunes and the App Store is excellent. The 3G network is fast. And most important of all - syncing of contacts, calendars, music and films all works flawlessly.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, iphone3g, itunes, n95, nokia, o2

London estate agents

For most of April and May I've been undertaking the Sisyphean task of finding suitable living accommodation in London, based on a fairly lengthy list of requirements and a rather sparse budget.

I must have seen more than 50 properties since the start of the search, dealing with more than a dozen different agencies. I now have a much better understanding of London geography (at least North and West London), and to my dismay an even better understanding of Estate Agent Psychology.

Herein some of the fun things I've learnt.

Firstly, all London estate agents are criminals. That's a little harsh - I mean to say they are lovely people, and genuine and honest professionals, as described on Greene & Co's website. I couldn't agree more, except for Greene & Co, who stood me up after I'd travelled 45 minutes by rush hour tube and walked 15 minutes in the pouring rain to a viewing. The bastards. Anyway, accept that there will be underhand tactics and dubious psychology at play when dealing with estate agents and your life will be much happier.

Foxtons are probably the worst for consistently over-valuing properties. I've seen shabby squats with them that are priced double or triple what competing agencies would charge in the area. But they do have the coolest cars (those racing colours minis) so that's ok. And actually, one property I saw with them was on for a bargain price. Unfortunately, they also required the tenants to allow potential purchasers to view the house once a week, as the landlord tried to sell it. Hmmm. Anyway, Foxtons certainly polarise opinions.

Be aware that all agents are fundamentally incapable of emailing you properties that match your requirements. Looking for 2 bedrooms? Expect to receive emails for one bedroom or studio apartments. No matter what your budget, you will always be shown properties at least £100 per week over the budget. Not keen on parrots? Expect to be sent "a parrot fancier's dream property!" at least a dozen times a week. In the world of estate agents, it's not the quality of the properties they email to you, it's all about the quantity.

Conversely when it comes to viewing time, if you show up with a list of more than three properties you'd like to see, you can almost guarantee you will be disappointed. There's a game estate agents like to play called "crap place, ok place, crap place", whereby for every nice but overpriced place they show you, they'll also bookend with two absolute horrors - often under the pretense of giving you an idea of what your money can get, but in reality to to psychologically pressure and panic you into paying over the odds for an average squat.

Sometimes getting the agents to show you properties can be like getting blood out of a stone. Especially on a sunny day, when they'll tell the rest of their office they are off to show you a dozen houses, and will then dump you after the first house and race off home for dinner or to get their nails done. Yes, this actually happened, several times. If you can do viewings early in the morning, you have a better chance of seeing more than one or two places before the agent runs for the nearest Nails R Us.

Female estate agents are required by law to wear impractically short skirts, high heels and fishnet tights. (My god. Did I really just complain about that? I must be really sick of their selling tactics.)

Most estate agents can park cars in gaps that I wouldn't consider parking a shopping trolley in. The notable exception (no discrimination intended) is the majority of the young female agents, who will cheerfully try and park in spaces better suited to shopping trolleys. I actually had to shout at one agent to stop her driving us into the path of an oncoming vehicle that had the right of way. The guys can drive, but unfortunately tend to drive like they are auditioning for Formula 1. Also London streets have lots of speed bumps. This is not a happy combination.

People are diverse, and if you think you've seen it all, you probably haven't. Viewing properties is a fascinating view of life, though often an unwanted one. For example there was the viewing where two foreign gentlemen were passed out in the flat after a heavy night (and morning) of drinking. It was off-putting to look around with one of them hastily picking up empty vodka bottles in his underwear. There's the family who were just cooking dinner (sorry I interrupted you), who seemed unconcerned about an excess of bacteria in the kitchen or the clouds of smoke, and quite terrified of daylight encroaching into the apartment.

There's the people that leave their most exotic laundry out to dry. That's nice compared to the ones that leave their very dirty laundry festering all over the apartment. There was one 'bargain' two bed apartment the size of a broom cupboard where four gentlemen were co-habiting, with a kitchen that was actually a cupboard in the lounge, and a bathroom with a ceiling black with mould. I asked the agent if they were planning to refurbish the place, for example replacing the radiator leaking onto the mushrooms growing on the lounge carpet, and was not too surprised to hear that cleaning would be up to the new tenants.

You can usually tell what sort of condition an apartment will be in before you step through the front door. One place I saw went to great lengths to give advance warnings, including copious rat traps in the communal corridor and stair well. The interior didn't disappoint, living up to the forewarning in a colourful riot of discarded food and unwashed, well, everything.

It's not all bad, and we did finally find a place that fulfills almost all our criteria and is even below our maximum budget. And one agency that managed to distinguish themselves and rise above the rest was Let's Do Business, crewed almost solely by antipodeans, who were refreshingly straight-forward and honest. We didn't end up getting a property through them, but they will be first on the list to call next time around.

Some of the nicer places made it onto a Flickr photo set of rentals.

Technorati Tags: apartment, estate agents, london, moving, renting

Ch-ch-ch-changes

So, it's been a bit quiet around here for the last few months as there's been a lot of changes going on. I've now got a bit more time to post some updates, the first of which is yet another relocation.

After 10 months of living and working in Brussels, I've moved back to the UK. For the last couple of months I've been searching for somewhere to live, and last week the furniture all arrived from Brussels and we finally moved in to a place in Hammersmith. Yep, that's right, I'm now in our nation's capital, far from the sleepy relaxed pace of life in Norwich.

The move was not without challenges (a rant on the evils of estate agents will be forthcoming very shortly), but it's all done now and there's just a mountain of boxes to unpack and furniture to re-arrange.

Technorati Tags: brussels, london, moving