I’ll probably order the 32gb model with 3G radio. Not 100% sure I’d use the 3G network option but I’d rather have the option…especially since it’s unlocked – which is a big deal by the way. This could also be foreshadowing of the next iPhone device. The fact they even mentioned ‘unlocked’ is huge.

More later…like when real humans actually get their hands on it.

Update: This guy nails it with a great post on the iPad as well as a lot of things on the internet.

The form factor of the Juice Pack Air is very similar to the iPhone…it’s a similar shiny hard plastic case that completely envelops the iPhone. I kind of wish it wasn’t so shiny as for a case, it doesn’t offer any slip protection like most cases do. I’d prefer a matte finish or even a rubberized coating. All the iPhone’s buttons and switches are still accessible except the dock connector:

In its place is a micro USB port and a slider switch. The Juice Pack comes with the necessary micro USB cable that facilitates charging the Juice Pack and allows you to sync your iPhone while in the case. I wish it was a more common mini USB cable but at least it’s not a proprietary plug/cable although I don’t believe I have any other devices (or cables) that are micro USB so it’s one more cable you need to carry and hope you don’t lose. At least Mophie sells replacement cables inexpensively on their website.

The switch allows you to control when the iPhone receives its charge from the Juice Pack. You can charge it up and leave it in standby mode until you need it.

As I mentioned earlier, everyone on the iPhone is still available to use, including the camera as you can see above. The photo should also give you a good idea of how much extra bulk the case/battery adds to the iPhone. I have to say, when I first held a Juice Pack, it seemed bulky but after having this one for a couple of days, it’s really not a big deal.

The Juice Pack has a ‘fuel gauge’ and button on the back of the case:

This is similar to Apple laptops that display how much power is left in the battery. While charging, these light up and blink to indicate how far along the charge is. Press the button at any time and you’ll know how much juice is left in the case.

The only real shortcoming this device has is the inability to charge the iPhone battery directly through the case while plugged into your computer (or similar USB power port). You can only charge up the Juice Pack and then charge the iPhone by depleting the Juice Pack. I would have preferred to be able to charge up both (sequentially is fine) so that you have both fully charged up before heading out. The way it is now, you have to charge them separately. Removing the iPhone from the case is easy enough but it would be easier if you didn’t have to.

I don’t plan on using the case all the time, just on those days that I know I’ll be out for an extended time and don’t want to worry about my iPhone dying while using it heavily.

UPDATE (Jan 7, 2010): Thanks to C.K.’s suggestion in the comments, it does appear that the syncing while in the Juice Pack Air issue is related to a bad cable. I swapped cables and it worked fine. Contact Mophie’s support to get a replacement. Mine is on it’s way.

As the post title implies, it doesn’t end well.

First of all, a little background. The useful iPhone app I found is called Cardstar which allows you to catalog all your retail reward cards in one little place. You simply find your merchant in the list within the app (they support a lot of major Canadian stores), enter the number from the barcode on your reward card and it creates a nice little screen on your iPhone that displays the merchant logo along with your barcode like on the right.

Pretty simple little app that means I don’t have to have a keychain that resembles the high school janitor’s or a wallet like Mr. Constanza. I’m pretty indifferent to these rewords programs…but they can save you some cash on sale items so it seems to be a necessary evil…plus I don’t like paying full retail if I can avoid it.

I was pretty sure that the scanning technology in my local grocery store wouldn’t be able to scan off the highly reflective iPhone screen but I wanted to try. So a few weeks ago, I went to Save-On Foods which is close to home and bought a few things and asked the clerk if she could use this method for my rewards card. She said she had never been asked before but would try. As expected, it didn’t work no matter what she tried. Cardstar says that in the event your info can’t be scanned, the number is there in a large, readable font (unlike on some of the rewards card) and the clerk should be able to simply type it in, which she did. No problem.

My wife also tried the same thing after I told her of my success and she had no problem getting the clerk to type it in.

So today, after being shut in for 5 days thanks to the flu that I seemed to have picked up while at PAX, I decided it might be a good idea to get some supplies since the cupboards were empty after being stuck indoors for almost a week. I spent about half an hour picking up stuff then went to checkout.

Me: “can you try this? (I show her my iPhone with Cardstar screen up) My card is at home”
Clerk: (tries) “it’s not working”
Me: “Can you type it in? The number is right there”
Clerk: “Oh no, I could lose my job if I did that”
Me: “Seriously?”
Clerk: “Oh yeah, we can only use the card numbers if they scan in since you could change it. They even changed the system so I can’t enter the number in manually”

Then the woman in line behind me offers the clerk her card.

Me: “then can you use her card?”
Clerk: “No…then she’d be benefitting from your purchase”
Me: (incredulously) “I’m okay with that…it’s not that much stuff, I just don’t want to pay full price for some of these items”

By now, the supervisor (or manager – I’m not sure) has come over and wants to tell me why I can’t do something that I’ve already done a couple of times recently. She mentions that I signed a contract to get the rewards card that I wouldn’t alter the number and only produce the real card to benefit from the reward. She (and the clerk) also mentioned that I could bring my receipt in and get the difference back later. So instead of paying about $35 for what I had in my basket, I’d get to pay 20-30% more now and have to remember to bring in my receipt (and real card) to get my refund. No thanks.

Perhaps if I wasn’t hungry and still a little out of it from the flu I would have argued with her but decided it wasn’t worth it and told them I wasn’t going to argue with them about it and simply go somewhere else…and that’s what I did, leaving all my stuff right there.

Strangely, the Safeway clerk didn’t appear to lose her job when I gave her my phone number for their rewords program which she manually entered. I haven’t had their card in my wallet for years because of this simple, easy method of delivering it to them.

I don’t blame the employees at Save-On for my experience…they were just doing as instructed. I can also understand (on some level) the desire to only scan real cards. But to not even accept someone else’s card behind me? That’s just stupid.

Fortunately for me, there are plenty of other stores nearby that I can shop at.

Of course, I immediately downloaded it…I opted for the Pro version ($19.99) which has a lot more control options than the $1.99 lite version which is basically just a remote shutter.

First you download the software onto the iPhone and another app for your computer. This is a screenshot of the Mac version:

then you attach you camera to your computer via USB cord.

Launch the iPhone app and it should present a screen with your computer listed on it if everything is setup right. Your iPhone and the computer need to be on the same wifi network for everything to work. Click on it and then you’ll be presented with the control screen which works in either portrait or landscape mode:

Landscape mode is just basic ‘Fire’ operation. Portrait mode has a lot more options:

The settings screen (lower left hand corner icon to activate) has a number of options,

including one of the main reasons I bought the app – an intravalometer option for taking controlled shots over time.

So far, I really like the functionality the app has and the speed when running on the iPhone. Once you take a shot, you see it immediately on the iPhone screen and it saves the file (in my case, a RAW file) on the computer…there is also Live View support. You can even swipe to scroll back and forth between taken shots on the iPhone’s touch screen.

I’ve got a couple of studio shoots coming up in the next few weeks so I’ll be experimenting more with the app very soon.

They only had the kalidescope version in store but have a number of options available online. They sell for $8US online or $10Cdn instore (not cheap considering what they are). I was able to find them on ebay for as little as $4Cdn delivered so shop around if you’re interested…ebay also turned up complete sets of different effects for under $20 – just search for ‘jelly lens’.

This is what the kalidescope model looks like:

which results in something like this when attached to my iPhone 3GS:

Here’s a super short video so you can see the kalidescope in action:

Some fun possibilities are possible with these simple and relatively cheap addons. I’ve ordered the fisheye version from ebay so stay tuned for a future post that is sure to come once I have it.

Even cooler than that though was the fact they used one of my photos, with attribution, of the iPhone in the article:

and on the homepage of Wired.com:

The geek in me is happy today…even if the photographer in me wishes they used a better photo ;)

That’s when I stumbled across the Griffin PowerJolt Reserve ($45 @ Future Shop) which seemed to be the perfect thing. It’s a small little battery pack that ‘lives’ on a dock that you leave in your car which also has a pass-thru USB port in case you want to actually charge your iPhone while driving too which is a nice touch. Even cooler is the dock actually uses inductive charging to top up the battery pack – it literally just sits on the dock – no cables or pins to line up and it magnetically stays put while charging it up.

It charges while you drive and then when you get to that night time outing after a day of work, you just grab the battery pack and take it with you. If you run low on juice, plug it in…no bulky case to weigh you down.

I actually mentioned this item when I was on Couch Beers with Jordan…I had actually just bought it minutes before being on the show and hadn’t even opened the package or tried it yet so this is the follow up review.

The battery pack has a single button on it which lights up the five leds on it to let you know how much juice is left in the battery pack. On my iPhone 3GS it seemed to charge it up at a rate of about 1% per minute – while still using it. I’ve used it a couple of times now when my iPhone is down to about 20% and a fully charged battery pack will easily get me beyond 50% in no time while I’m still using the device.

It has a kind of strange shape when not in the dock but easily goes into your pocket while charging it up without too much trouble.

Another added bonus of this pack being small and not a full sized case – you can easily share it with your iPhone toting friends. I was out for drinks with a bunch of folks and we were all running low on juice and we just passed the pack around each grabbing a few minutes of charge each….not a full charge but certainly enough to finish out the night or to make it through the bus ride home.

Griffin also makes a wall plug version, called the PowerBlock Reserve as well as a Powerduo Reserve which includes both the car charger dock and the wall plug dock. Had I seen the Duo first, I would have probably bought that instead.

I’m pretty happy with this item and I don’t have to worry about charging my iPhone on the go after a long day of use. I bought mine at Future Shop but it seems you can find these anywhere that sells iPhone stuff – I’ve seen them at the Apple Store, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.

Modmyi.com has a Mac tutorial already up for the new Purplera1n.

As with all these types of things, use caution and expect things to go sideways. Worse case is you do a restore via iTunes in most cases….but proceed with caution and at your own risk.

When you shoot some video, you have a number of options to get it online. Unfortunately, all of them seem to currently suck unless you post the original footage yourself.

Here is the same video cross posted to a number of sites that I shot on the first ride with my new bike along the PoCo Trail. I think it’s a good example because there is a lot of movement and objects (aka rocks) that really highlight the differences in compression quality:

YouTube (posted directly via the iPhone YouTube conduit):

Flickr (uploaded via Email directly from the iPhone):

Flickr (original video uploaded from computer):

Vimeo (original video uploaded from computer):

and finally, the original uncompressed source video (opens in a new window – 8.5mb)

I’m pretty sure it’s an unoptimized codec for the iPhone’s video being used on these sites….the compressed video from all the sites looks horrible with artifacts and blurriness compared to the source footage and yet there is no way to get that footage to these sites without some sort of compromise either directly from the phone on the go or via a sync/download/upload process.

I can only hope this changes soon.

We chatted about Jordan’s upcoming iPhone acquisition, MobileMe, steps to secure your iPhone, some of my favourite applications and a new piece of gear I just picked up (which will be an upcoming post topic).

Here’s my little behind the scenes video shot with my iPhone 3GS….peeling back the curtain to show you what we were looking at constantly during the show:

It was a lot of fun…thanks to Jordan for having me!

YouTube:

This video is the full trip across the bridge…once home, I pressed the ‘Send to YouTube’ button on the iPhone and it compressed and sent it to YouTube as you see above.

Flickr:

I trimmed the video down to 1:30 on the iPhone using the new trim feature. Flickr seemed to handle the video just fine.

Vimeo:

Note there is no sound on Vimeo…this is probably a codec issue that I’m sure Vimeo will fix very soon.

Both Flickr and Vimeo were manual uploads of the same source file so in theory they should be higher quality than the YouTube version since it was compressed on the phone before upload. I also tried MobileMe but couldn’t get the video to playback properly from my account, as well, there is no embed option on the video there so I’ll keep trying to play with it.

So far, I’m very happy with the camera/video upgrades the 3GS has – I’d probably upgrade just for those alone, nevermind all the other new things I’m still exploring on the phone. I can’t wait to try more things with the new camera!

I’m still expecting some surprises from Rogers/Fido for current customers….last year they relaxed the upgrade rules a few weeks after the initial launch…most likely to boost sales after the initial rush.

The thing most people aren’t realizing is that they got the iPhone 3G was a subsidized device….the initial iPhone cost $499US when it launched in 2007 from AT&T then dropped to $299 in 2008 under a subsidy. I would expect those with a high monthly iPhone bill to get a break on the ‘rumoured’ full, no-contract prices for the 3GS of $699/$799 for the 16gb and 32gb respectively since they’ve most likely paid a fair bit of their subsidy down. But since Rogers/Fido uses a fairly complex tier scheme to catagorize their customers, the prices will most likely vary by individual account…possibly another reason why they are keeping the prices quiet since they may not have a blanket price for all 3G owners that want to upgrade.

On the bright side, it looks like there will be a full unlock/jailbreak by the weekend for the 3GS….hello Ultrasn0w!

I guess we’ll have to see what transpires over the next couple of days leading up to the release on Friday of the 3GS.

UPDATE: As I predicted, Rogers came out with decent upgrade pricing for iPhone 3GS. You can read the specifics on the Rogers and Fido websites. Pricing varies by your account specifics but assuming you got an iPhone 3G last year before September and have a certain level of voice/data plan combination, you should be able to upgrade for the ‘new customer’ price of $199/$299.

As I said on Twitter to the Rogers PR person, “RogersKeith“, I hope that he relays to his superiors the frustration felt by many customers (not just me) by leaving the pricing details to the last minute. It’s not a good way to engage and endear customers to your brand, especially in the fast moving social media world we now live in.

While not quite the angry mob like last year, anger was certainly growing online because of the lack of information when other carriers around the world had made their plans known in advance. Hopefully they learn from this experience for next year when Apple will inevitably release another version of the iPhone and all the 3GS owners will want to upgrade. RogersKeith said on Twitter, “iPhone launches aren’t typical” to which I replied that iPhone users aren’t typical either….this isn’t your daddy’s Blackberry hardware refresh.

UPDATE 2 (June 20th): The good news is that I finally have an iPhone 3GS. The bad news is that it took over 6 hours of wasted time to get it. I went down to Wireless Wave bright and early on launch day (19th). I was first in line of about 5-6 people. I expected the computer systems to be totally overwelmed and of course they were so the dealer wasn’t even able to log in and see my availability for a long time. I’m pretty sure Rogers computer systems are running on Vic-20’s. I waited about 4 hours at the store for them to be able to process my phone upgrade which they were unable to do. I don’t blame Wireless Wave, I blame Rogers unpreparedness for this portion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait at the store any longer as I had to leave for Whistler. Since I was leaving town, I basically had to give up the phone I had on hold – I was hoping to get one from a dealer en route to Whistler but alas all were sold out. I came back from Whistler on Saturday morning and called the same Wireless Wave to see if they still had stock. I was told they didn’t over the phone. A friend had called the Apple Store and was told they were doing upgrades as well as new activations so I stopped by there on the way back from Whistler and was told they weren’t doing upgrades in the store right now. I then had a friend check in with Wireless Wave if they had any stock left and they did so I was back in the line for one. I was told they would process the order and it should be ready by the time I got to the store. It wasn’t. They basically set it aside for me and were going to process the paperwork when I actually showed up. Then began the 45 minute wait on hold for the Rogers dealer person to confirm that I was in fact eligible for a hardware upgrade (at $299). Once the dealer finally got through, they confirmed I was eligible. There was a problem though – the Rogers computer system (Sales Central) didn’t show that I was eligible for any kind of upgrade. The manager at Wireless Wave wouldn’t process a manual transaction for the phone because it’s their policy to not do them as there is a chance the paperwork will fall through the cracks and they won’t get their commission. The manager did call his bosses who confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to sell me the phone despite being eligible. A visit to another store in the mall confirmed the same thing. It wasn’t until I got a tip from Gary that there was a store in another mall that had staff that should be able to help me as he had a similar issue with his upgrade. I drove over to that mall, and within ten minutes of dealing with Thomas and Kelsey, left the store with my 32gb iPhone 3GS. They appeared to have no issue doing a manual transaction with the approval of the dealer call centre.

So what are the issues here? Well, inconsistent policies for handling customer upgrades – even between stores of the same dealer. I really suspect that the reason Wireless Wave didn’t want to sell me the iPhone was that because I wasn’t a new activation, they weren’t going to make as much commission. The fact that they led me on for over 6 hours also pissed me off. I know the systems were busy but I didn’t get a sense they were really trying too hard to get the answers they needed to get. There seemed to be a lot of policies that threatened termination if not followed correctly that the staff kept bringing up. The fact that other customers were able to get iPhones also pissed me off as I know that some of those people had the same account setup as me. A couple of friends that came with me to the store on launch day all had different experiences with getting the upgrade but had similar account/upgrade configurations as me.

I even decided to reach out to the Rogers PR person on Twitter who ultimately wasn’t needed to help me get the phone but did result in my getting a call from an advisor from the (Rogers) President’s office who wanted to know the full story. We had a good discussion about the problems I encountered and had I not been successful the day before, I’m pretty sure he would have helped me get a phone today. I wanted to make sure they understood this iPhone thing isn’t a fad and there will be another update next year so hopefully they will fix some/all of these issues – which are really more communication issues between Rogers and their dealer network. Customers shouldn’t have to run all over town to get a phone upgrade if they’re eligible.

Overall, I feel that Rogers did everything they could *for me* given the situation. Twitter was instrumental in helping me get in contact with the right people to escalate my concerns. So we’ll see what happens in 2010…I sure hope I’m not writing another deja vu post.

This is a big deal for a number of reasons. I won’t get into all the new features of the device (and 3.0 firmware update), just a few that stand out to me since there is a lot to talk about.

First of all, for me personally, it means that I’ll have a new, faster, bigger iPhone in less than two weeks as my iPhone 3G was stolen last December so I’ve been getting by with my first gen iPhone for 6 months now. While it hasn’t been that bad, I really do miss the 3G speeds, the GPS and having double the storage space (16gb vs 8gb).

We also finally get an improved camera now at 3 megapixels with touch auto-focus and macro! While 3mp isn’t the most amazing thing ever, it’s still an improvement. I’ve been a big fan of the iPhone camera and all the fun apps that have taken advantage of it. I can’t wait to have a little more pixels to play with. With it also brings the ability to shoot video (too bad it’s only VGA quality and not HD). It also will be able to do some minor editing on the iPhone itself. It’s unclear if the video function, combined with new APIs will open up the app store to Qik and UStream type applications. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Apple approves.

The new Voice Control feature also comes with the 3GS. I’m going to reserve judgement on this one until I get to play with it myself…voice apps have always been disappointing and you ALWAYS feel stupid yelling at a device in public because it doesn’t understand your mumblings…although the voice activated bluetooth feature in my car is making think that voice recognition software may have improved a fair bit in recent years.

Pricing has been set at $199/$299 for the 16gb or the 32gb iPhones respectively and that appears to be the price in Canadian dollars according to the ‘Social Media guy’ for Rogers which is hopefully a welcome sign that Rogers might be catching on. Unfortunately as I write this, specifics about the upgrade path for those that got the iPhone 3G last July (11th) haven’t been released yet. Considering it’ll be about 3 weeks shy of a year between those dates, hopefully Rogers allows those that waited in line on launch day to simply extend their contracts from the July date forward and pay the new customer price. Rogers and Fido have also stated they will be reintroducing (for a limited time), the 6gb for $30 promotion. With tethering now a fairly straightforward affair for those with the 3.0 firmware, having that much bandwidth may finally start paying off.

It’s also interesting that the ‘older’ iPhone 3G will still be available at the very attractive price of $99 at Rogers and Fido on June 19th.

And finally, something that I’ve been eagerly awaiting is TomTom’s iPhone application which was finally announced today. Until the 3.0 firmware, iPhone developers were restricted from creating applications that used the iPhone GPS for turn by turn directions. TomTom even created a nice iPhone windshield mount which extends the GPS antenna and charges the iPhone. It can also rotate to hold the iPhone in portrait or landscape…which is also a nice touch for watching video in your car (while parked of course). I’ve used TomTom GPS units for years…I even had the software installed on my Treo 650 and used it with a bluetooth GPS module on my dash which worked perfectly since you could search for a location and even get and dial phone numbers for stores and restaurants.

Here’s their video demoing the application and windshield mount:

It will be interesting to see how they price both the app and the windshield attachment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take advantage of the new subscription model (for the map data) the app store now allows under 3.0 not to mention the fact that the dedicated in-car units have seen quite a price drop over the last few years thanks to competition.

So all in all, a big day in iPhoneLand.

So if you or someone you know wants to know more about iTunes and using it with your iPod, iPhone and Apple TV, this might be for you (or them).

It should now be available in London Drugs (I believe in store only) and for purchase online directly from MacVideoTraining.com with more retail stores coming soon. Apparently a few clips from my course are playing in a loop in London Drugs so if you hear me talking about iTunes while you’re checking out the computer department, don’t be alarmed.

I’ve got a few copies to give away so drop a comment below and tell me why you want a copy and I’ll pick the best ones and send it to you.

You will most likely need a camera to actually be able to see the effect. A slow shutter shot will allow the full message to be displayed and your movements while displaying it can further enhance the effect:

You simply enter your message, choose your color(s) and then move the iPhone infront of the camera – it’s accelerometer will start displaying the message once it detects movement. It can take a lot of tries to get it to work right…I’ve got lots of shots of a blur of light rather than the message because I was moving the iPhone too fast.

The rainbow mode is interesting too:

Of course, there is a group on Flickr to see more action shots. It’s $0.99 on the iTunes App Store.

Oh well, it crashes anyways:

Update: Looks like the crashing is only a problem on jailbroken iPhones…updating Cydia seems to stop the crashing!

You basically just have to unscrew the wide angle lens and it breaks down into two parts – the macro piece and the wide angle piece (which only works when attached to the macro).

It has a crazy short depth of field but it pretty clear considering how tiny it is. It costs a little more than my previous macro option, but arguably works and looks better.

It’s from the same guy that created the CameraBag app that I previously mentioned and it’s just as fun. It basically lets you set a timer and it takes a number of shots in sequence (you specify the delay between shots) and can choose the effect (vivid, B&W, high contrast with more coming) and it then creates one image in your camera roll based on the shots it takes. These images should convey the effect pretty effectively:

It can also do eight shots at a time:

It’s only $1.99 for a little while but it’s worth much more to me…tons of fun!

Update: Takayuki left a comment correcting me about not being the creator of CameraBag. He actually developed Toy Camera which I mistook for CameraBag. You should definitely check out Takayuki’s site for QuadCam too…he’s got a cool animation tool (desktop app) for animating photos taken with QuadCam.

You can either just hold it up to your cameraphone’s camera or use the included metal rings (with tape) to attach it magnetically to your phone:

Here’s a shot taken with the iPhone normally:

Here’s the wide angle lens attachment:

and the fisheye lens attachment:

which was a little misaligned when I took the photo :(

Pretty cheap cameraphone fun.

Update: corrected the link to the proper Wide Angle lens I ordered.

It’s a package available via Cydia which gets installed when you jailbreak your phone with QuickPwn or Pwnage. You will need to add a new source to Cydia as well (http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com). The unlock tool will only work with the latest firmware and baseband versions. So if you waited for a QuickPwn update when the 2.2 firmware was released and then jailbroke your phone, you’ll have to restore and reupgrade via iTunes in order to have the latest baseband which the tool requires.

Sadly I had my iPhone 3G stolen earlier this month so I can’t use this….my 1st gen iPhone is already unlocked but is stuck in Edgeville. I’m hoping to get a 3G replacement soon. Perhaps now that the unlock is out, prices will start to drop for iPhones since there will be more options globally now.

Head over to the iPhone Dev Team Blog for the full scoop and the necessary download information as well as the usual caveats and known issues.