Cloudiness » Phones

Windows Phone 7 Series

Art — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:08:08 +0000

Very pretty and pleasing to look at, but why can’t it show me today’s date entirely? Aggressive styling becomes a low-grade irritation when routine information is obfuscated, even where the full message is easy to guess.

(Update: Luke Wroblewski considers this in more detail, via Daring Fireball)

IPhone frenzy in the mini-sausages…

Art — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:18:41 +0000

The iPhone’s touch screen works by conducting a small electronic charge through your fingertip; most gloves that are effective insulators from the cold are also pretty good at electrical isolation, so you have to take your glove off and your hand gets cold.

South Koreans have solved the cold-weather iPhone problem: Buy a particular brand of mini sausage that’s approximately the same shape and conductivity of a human finger.

Clusterflock has a concise summary of the iPhone sausage finger. The Google-translated article leaves us with this thought: “Maekseubong tagitcheung and this just fits the iPhone user base, while the poisonous celebrity, Max is on the stick.”

Google’s Nexus One muzzles the foul-mouthed

Art — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:07:49 +0000

While they’re at it, why not use “fudge”, “darn”, and “shucks” instead of replacing the offending words with hash symbols?

iPhone headphone mic works with [late 2008 Mac] laptops

Art — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:43:46 +0000

This evening I wondered whether the four-conductor iPhone headsets (headphone plus microphone) could be used as conventional headphones on my computer, nevermind the mic. As it turns out, they not only work on Apple’s laptops, the mic does as well, as does the play/pause clicker. Now you can use Skype without taking off your earphones. (They’re also compatible with almost all of Apple’s iPods.)

Apple’s own documentation is sparse bordering on nonexistent. Product descriptions for their iPhone headsets only mention iPods. The most Apple has written about this is on page 25 of a PDF of the MacBook Pro user’s guide: “Audio out port: Connect external speakers, headphones (including iPhone), or digital audio equipment.“

If you haven’t got a compatible laptop, you can make an adaptor that splits into Mic In and Stereo Out plugs, or buy one.

Ta-da List

Art — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:23:17 +0000

A free web service from 37 Signals for you to make and manage checklists. It’s personal organization stripped of complication and methodological orthodoxy.

This site has been around for a while but it never crossed my path until namedropped by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber the other day. I’m already fond of it; I can add to-do items from whatever device (computer, phone, netbook) I’m on at the time and check them off from any other. It has a custom UI for the iPhone and possibly other mobile devices. It’s unrelated to 37 Signals’ other fine products, some of which I use, aside from the one-line ads for them in the computer browser version.

It does one thing and does it well.

Am I 3G Yet?

Art — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:31:52 +0000

If you’re in the States, and you want an iPhone 3G, and you’re curious whether you’ll be paying 50% more per month for an unavailable service, here’s some help. Note that what AT&T says you’re getting and what you think you’re getting are not necessarily the same.

AT&T’s interactive map of cellular coverage. Tick the ‘Show 3G Coverage’ button to see whether the big blue smear of high-speed data covers your house, workplace, and coffeeshop.

Cities Supporting AT&T 3G/Mobile Broadband. This doesn’t necessarily agree with the map — for example, my city’s covered on the map, but not named on the list. Click on your nearest city and see what the map indicates.

As of this posting the site’s getting hammered.

Ugh, the ringtone

Art — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:01:54 +0000

This is my sole attempt at ringtone composition. The Sony Ericsson T616 phone had a little-known ringtone editor built in, where you could build a sequence out of a variety of musical snippets, each a couple seconds long.

On a long car ride a couple years ago, I attempted to make the most annoying ringtone possible. Here’s the original MIDI file, seventeen seconds long. Ugh! the ringtone