iPhone Notification Thoughts
Apple created their Apple Push Notification system to allow applications to present information to the user, even when the applications are not running. This helps reduces the amount of CPU usage on the phone, which will help prolong battery life
I would like to see a few things added to this:
- Better support for multiple notifications. Currently only the last notification is shown. There are a few things that could be done
- Create a view that aggregates all of the new notifications since the user last looked at the phone
- Create a prioritization scheme that would make sure that the most important notifications are visible first
- Allow developers to expire previous notifications for their applications
- Support to send information back to developers. Since using Apple’s Push Notification requires developers to have a server that keeps a persistent connection with Apple’s servers. This connection could be used to send information from about the iPhone back to developers
- For example, this could be used to send location data back to developers. This would allow Loopt or Google Latitude to update a users location without running an application in the foreground.
- Having this implemented in this manner, it would allow the users to have control over this data
- Users should be able to go to settings application and disable this feature for all applications, or for particular applications
- Apple could control the frequency that the GPS would be turned on, so they could conserve power appropriately.
Google Voice for cell phones
I have been having a problem receiving my voicemail on my iPhone. My wife would leave message on my cell phone, but my phone would show no indication of a waiting voice mail message. Also when I call in to get my voicemail, nothing appears their either. I think that this is a problem with AT&T and not my iPhone.
Google made it available to use Google Voice with existing cell phones. With this you can now have your voicemail sent to Google voice, and you can listen to it from your phone or your computer. Also Google Voice will create a transcript of your message, and you can received that via email or sms.
I have been using Google Voice for a little bit, but this functionality allows me to receive messages from callers that don’t know my Google Voice number in my Google Voice inbox.
[via Engadget]
Ping!
On Friday, I saw that the Ping! iPhone application was available for free. Ping is an iPhone application that let’s you have SMS or instant message conversations with other people with iPhones or iPod Touches. Ping! uses Apple’s push notification service, so don’t need to leave the application running to keep receiving messages.
The benefit if using push over tradition SMS messages is that it is cheaper, if you only want to talk to people who also have iPhones or iPods. This is also especially true if you have a limited number of text messages per month on your plan. Also for iPod users, since they don’t have access to SMS, this may be a viable solution.
I don’ think that I will be using this application that often. Since I already uses SMS with people who are not using iPhones, I don’t know if it would be worth it to use a separate application for the subset of my contacts that have iPhones and also have Ping! installed.
EveryTrail and Trails
About a year ago, when I got my iPhone, we went on a family vacation to Greenhorn Creek Guest ranch. On one of the rides, I was thinking that it would be cool to write an iPhone application that would track my progress on the trails. I never got around to writing one, but I found the Trails iPhone application.
Trails lets you record your progress while you are out on trails. This application will record and show stats about your route, while recording. In addition, you can take pictures and set waypoints along the route.
The main reason that I bought Trails was because you can export the data from the app itself. You can either send an email with a GPX file attached, or you can export directly to EveryTrail
EveryTrail is a web site that lets you post and share routes. I have posted three of my routes from our recent trip to Greenhorn Creek Guest Ranch at the end of this post. I do like the service, and I could see using this again.
EveryTrail now has their own iPhone application. I haven’t tried it yet, but the price(free) is a lot better than Trails’ price ($3.99).
There is one thing to be aware of when using these applications. The battery on my iPhone 3G only lasted 3 hours while recording the trail. I started to use my mophie battery pack when recording. Then I didn’t need to worry about the battery running out.
GPush
The iPhone supports push notification of new emails, bit only for Exchange and for Mobile Me. Apple could implement this for IMAP accounts, with the IMAP IDLE command, but this would remove one of the features that differentiates Mobile Me from the other mail services.
GPush is an iPhone application/ service that enables push notifications when receiving new emails at a gmail account. To configure the application, you enter your gmail credentials in the application, and then it validates them with google. When you then receive a new message on that account, a notification will be sent to your phone, and the GPush application icon will display the count of the number of unread messages.
One main reason I am interested in this application is to potentially save battery. I currently have my phone set to check mail every 15 minutes. Theoretically, with this application, I can turn off periodic checks, and I will be notified when a new message is receives. Then I would launch the mail application to actually download the messages.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that well. I have only received about 10 notifications on my iPhone, for emails that I have received, even though I have received many more email messages. This seems to be a problem on the GPush servers, as I receive more push notifications on the iPhone from Boxcar for direct messages that I receive on Twitter.
Google Latitude on iPhone
I “installed” the Google Latitude web app on my iPhone, and it works pretty well. In fact, I don’t see any major downsides to it not being a native application. Apple limits the capabilities of native applications so much, that this app can do almost everything that a native app can do.
I would love to see some features added to Google Latitude and their mobile application. I think that with these minor additions, it could compete with services like Loopt.
- Add the ability to update “status” from the mobile application.
- Enable export into other social networks like FriendFeed and Facebook
Google’s Latitude has one things that the other location based social networks don’t have. With other social networks, the user has to maintain a completely separate friends list. Since Google Latitude uses your Google Contacts you don’t have to do this separate maintenance.
Evernote iPhone app when offline
I while on this flight, I wanted to review some documentation. Wanted to write some notes, so I thought that I could use the Evernote iPhone application. I figured that the next time that launched the app when my iPhone has a network connection, the note would be synchronized to the Evernote server, and the. I could access that note on any of my PCs.
Unfortunately, the Evernote application will not let you do that. Even though you can access already created notes when you are offline, you can’t create or edit them.
I would like for this to be fixed. Other applications do not have this problem. For example, Remember The Milk let’s you create, delete and edit tasks offline. The Wordpress application lets you write new posts and pages while offline ( I am doing that now). That seems like the right model as the apps are still functional when offline.
Boxcar & WHSTweet
I don’t use Twitter as an immediate type of communication. I generally don’t receive direct messages from people that I know, as I know that other people do. I still see Twitter as a passive communication medium.
Boxcar is an iPhone application that enables Apple’s push notifications to be sent when your Twitter account receives a direct message or a reply. At first I didn’t see that this would be useful for me. But then I remembered that I have installed WHSTweet on the two Windows Home Servers that I maintain. This add-in enables the server to send Twitter messages when the server has an error or warning.
Using Boxcar with WHSTweet is a perfect combination. Now my phone will let me know as soon as my server has a problem. There is less of a chance that I will miss the tweet from the server now.
Tripit for iPhone
I have used tripit for a while. I don’t travel that much, but when I do tripit makes it very easy to get an consistent itinerary for your trips. For example, if you make reservations for air and hotel at separate times, all you have to do is forward each individual itinerary to tripit and it will generate a “trip” with all of your information. In addition to that, tripit makes it very easy to share your itinerary.
Normally, you just use their web interface to access their site, and they even have a mobile version that looks good on the iPhone. But that web site doesn’t help you if you don’t have network access.
I just saw that they have an iPhone application that syncs with their site to get the list of current or upcoming trips. I downloaded it and it works great. I can access my itinerary even with out network access (for example now I am flying somewhere above Kansas.). This is great if you need to know when your connecting flight departs.
I also like the fact that they use OAuth for authentication. I could easily revoke access to this app if I ever lost my phone.
iPhone 3.0 and USASpec adapter
As I have written in my previous posts, I have been pretty happy with the iPhone 3.0 update. I have been experiencing one annoying problem.
When I connect my iPhone 3.0 to my USASpec PA15-HON2 adapter that is installed in my car, the iPhone stops playing audio and the screen flashes for about a minute, before audio starts playing. Here are the steps that I use where the problems occurs for me
- Play a track/playlist
- Connect the iPhone to the dock
- => The Radio switches to the cd changer input (correct for my setup)
- => The screen in the iPhone continues to flash the iPod graphic for about a minute
- => After about a minute a different track starts playing
Once music is playing, the interface works perfectly. It will continue to work, until I disconnect and reconnect the iPhone.
I think that the iPhone 3.0 software added some addition scanning that happens when connected to this adapter.
