WordPress App for the iPhone released

Automattic has released (and Apple has approved) their native iPhone app for managing your WordPress sites.

This post was created with it.

Find the app on the iTunes App Store.

Update (not from an iPhone): Here’s a video of the features of the app:

One week with the iPhone 3G

I was going to call this post “It’s been One Week…” but in light of the recent issues Barenaked Ladies frontman, Steven Paige is having, I decided to go for something else instead.

I’m not going to do a ‘full’ review since that’s been done to death already. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the differences between the ‘old’ and new iPhone, and some tips and tricks. Excuse the randomness of these observations.

The Screen Bezel
Physically, the two flavors of the iPhone (old and new that is) look very similar…except for the black bezel on the 3G model. It actually bugs me that it’s so wide compared to the 2G model. The original felt like the whole device was your screen. The new one just feels strange to see that wide black bezel. I’m sure I’ll get used to it but it’s just something I’ve noticed.

Battery life
First of all, battery life is quite a bit different than the first generation iPhone. Before, I’d normally get 2-3 days of battery life with wifi on, bluetooth off and Edge enabled. Now, it’s more like 1 to 1.5 days although I’ve charged it everyday. This is with wifi off (who needs wifi when you have 3G data), bluetooth off and ‘location services’ (the GPS function of the new iPhone) turned off - it only turns on when needed, like when you launch Google Maps but more on GPS in a bit. If you’re not using Mobile Me, you should also turn off Push as well as lengthening the amount of time between ‘fetches’ of your email which should improve your battery life a little.

Some of this battery experience can also be contributed to ’shiny new toy’ syndrome as it gets a lot of show and tell time since it’s so new. We’ll see how this plays out once things die down and normal usage starts happening.

The App Store
As I’ve suggested a number of times before, the App Store has proven to be the killer iPhone app. With over 500 titles available at launch, many of which are free, it’s been an amazing way to extend the usefulness of the iPhone. That’s not to say that all 500 apps are great as there is certainly some crap-ware. There are fortunately more than a few gems in there and I’ll highlight some of my favorites in a future post.

I currently use my US iTunes store account to get access to a bit more content than the Canadian store has to offer. At launch the US store had about 10 more pages of apps on offer. If you have the means, I highly recommend you setup a US account…you just need a gift card from the US to do so and you can put in any US address (choose an address in a state such as Oregon to avoid tax). No credit card needed. I’ve heard that you can’t create a credit card-less Canadian account if you want to buy apps though which is strange.

Keep up on the new releases via RSS - for the US Store at least.

iPhone ‘HotSpot’ access
One of the things that Rogers offered with their ‘value packs’ was unlimited wifi access at all their hotspots. Turns out this seems to work on any iPhone with the Mobile Safari browser (so all iPhones). They only look for the user agent string that Safari serves up. A little birdy told me that if you were to enable the ‘Developer’ menu in any version of Safari (like on your laptop for example via the bottom of the preferences screen), you would be able to choose the iPhone version of Mobile Safari as your user agent. This basically enables free wifi at just about every Canadian Starbucks for starters…haven’t had a chance to test this myself so YMMV and they could pull this at anytime.

Getting the 6gb data plans on 2G iPhones
For various reasons, people haven’t been able to upgrade to the 3G iPhone. Apparently later this month Rogers will have an option for people that aren’t eligible for a hardware upgrade to pay (thru the nose) for an iPhone. In the US, this seems to mean that the $199 8gb iPhone costs $499 and the $299 16gb model goes for $599. Pretty steep penalty for being an existing customer. So if you want to wait until you’re able to upgrade or are still happy with your 2G iPhone, you can simply call up Rogers and ask them to add the $30/6gb data plan to your current phone.

You can’t get Visual Voicemail working on it (at least at the moment on Rogers) but you should be able to get the data plan. The CSR may say that it’s not supported but it should work fine. You just need to put ‘internet.com’ into the APN setting in the Settings/General/Network/Edge screen. Leave the username/password section blank. There is a 3 year contract term if you do this but since this is basically unlimited data for an iPhone (AT&T’s ‘unlimited’ is soft capped at 5gb in the US), it’s a deal. You can cancel early for a $100 penalty. I’d also watch your billing the first few months to make sure they don’t incorrectly bill you for data.

The other nice thing about this particular data plan is that you can throw your sim in another phone and use it…it’s not ‘locked’ for use on an iPhone only. So if Nokia wanted to send me an N96, I’d be happy to play with it using my own sim and data plan.

Need a case?

As usual, one of my favorite shopping destinations is already stocked up with various cases for the 3G model with prices ranging from $8-20 depending on the style you like. Many 2G cases also still work with the 3G due to the very similar size and the give that a silicone case has. I’m also still using my DLO Hipcase with my 3G.

GPS
The GPS function of the iPhone 3G is pretty slick…even if there aren’t any turn by turn driving directions like what you’d find in a TomTom or Garmin GPS system. That’s not to say that it’s not a little buggy. For example, you can geo-tag your photos. When you upload them to Flickr, they automatically get plotted on a map (once you enable the preference in your profile at least). But sometimes the iPhone is a little off in it’s coordinates. Take for example this photo, taken at Spanish Banks, near UBC in Vancouver. Strangely not in Hulunbeier, Nei Mongol as Flickr shows. I’ve read a few things about a bug in the GPS software that Apple will fix in the next firmware update which is due out soon.

2.0 Firmware unlock status
Keep an eye on this site for updates on the jailbreak/unlock status to enable 2G iPhones access to the 2.0 firmware (including App Store) and eventually the ability to jailbreak/unlock the 3G iPhone. I still want to be able to use my iPhone while travelling in the US (using my AT&T Pay as you Go sim card). Somehow I don’t think Apple will allow apps like Customize onto the App Store (hope I’m wrong) so a jailbroken 3G phone will be a nice way to add this.

Money tight?
Don’t want to spend the bucks on an iPhone and a contract? Get a cheap iPod Touch and pretend as Buzz suggested. I want to make an ‘iPhone simulator’ for the Touch as a gag app so you can mess with your friends.

That’s all for now…more later.

Update: Added the App Store RSS feed link

Update 2: The 2.0 Pwnage tool has been released. I just successfully upgraded/jailbroke/unlocked my (now my wife’s) 1st gen iPhone. You need to download the restore/update file from Apple to use this tool. You should get a download only/download+install option - choose download only. You may also need a few bootloaders. More info on my new post about the 2.0 firmware.

WordCamp Vancouver

Yesterday I attended the innaugural WordCamp Vancouver presented by Tazzu at the Network Hub.

The format was not unlike a BarCamp where people could submit topics they would present on. Unfortunately I was laying on a beach in Hawaii when it all happened (the advance submissions that is) so I missed the opportunity to participate as a presenter. Fortunately the plan is to have these frequently so there should be more chances to participate. Judging from the turnout, it could have possibly been a day long affair as there was no shortage of interesting topics and people interested in learning more about WordPress.

As much as I like the Network Hub, it’s not the best kind of venue for this kind of event - it’s just not big enough to accomodate the number of people that were interested in attending. There wasn’t nearly enough chairs for everyone and it was pretty tropical in there once people started showing up. There must be some place in Vancouver that can fit a large number of people, has decent wifi and supports some kind of food/drink service. Aside from UBC, SFU or one of the other school venues, there isn’t much that works.

I won’t recap the whole event because as she usually does, Rebecca liveblogged the entire event - well almost all of it since she was also a presentor, Raul covered for her during her segment.

The one presentor that I was surprised by was John Chow. He gave a presentation on making money from your blog. I had heard some (negative) stories about him and was expecting some kind of slimy, Tom Vu-like salesman and was impressed with his openness about how he became successful from blogging. He outlined how much money he makes from his blog, detailed the pricing structures and many key mistakes people make when trying to monitize their sites. His candor and self-deprecating humour was refreshing.

While I don’t necessarily agree with some of the tactics he uses, I don’t see them being much different than what you would see people in other types of business do to be successful - figure out the system and exploit it. I’m also not sure that his approach would work for many bloggers I know but he certainly has an interesting story and I thought he told it well. The audience was certainly hanging on his every word although some folks were definitely not impressed by his methods.

As with many of the local tech events, the evening wrapped up in a local restaurant for drinks with some old and new friends.

I’m looking forward to the next WordCamp for sure. You can see some of the other pictures I took in my WordCamp Flickr set.

New iPhone friendly plugin for WordPress

My pal and nacho eating drinking buddy Duane has been working away with Dale Mugford on some cool stuff for WordPress for awhile now and has finally made available a plugin, called WPTouch, that allows you present your site optionally to visitors using iPhones or the iPod Touch.

This plugin formats your WordPress site to better be viewed on Mobile Safari that is installed on those devices. There are a number of built in features beyond the presentation layer as well. It also gives you the option to view the ‘normal’ version of the site if you edit your theme (I haven’t yet). Up until now, I’ve had a simple plugin running on my site that simple changes the view of this site to remove the left and right gray sides that are unnecessary on a small screen.

I just installed the plugin after checking out a few versions over the past little while that Duane sent my way. So far I’m pretty impressed. I need to tweak a few things in my CSS files and possibly in the plugin as I’m not crazy about how some of my posts appear but it should be a trivial amount of effort to get it the way I like it.

Compare the different presentations:

I’m still undecided if I want these customized versions of sites when I surf on my iPhone. It’s more work to maintain the site in keeping plugins like this up to date as well as it kind of goes against the whole single version of the web thing. Another downside is that if I see something on a ‘desktop’ browsed version of a site and then because of formatting changes to the layout of the site on a handheld device, it can be pain to find what I was looking for if I have to fight the automatic formatting imposed on me. At least Duane’s plugin gives you the choice (assuming the site owner has made the changes necessary to their theme template). I *DO* enjoy some things to be custom formatted on my iPhone (like a number of Google’s apps) but it sets a precedent that I thought we were trying to get away from (browser specific versioning).

If you have one of the devices, let me know what you think of this site running on Duane’s plugin. While you’re at it, why not check out Duane’s other WordPress goodies on his newly launched site (with Dale Mugford), BraveNewCode.com.

Northern Voice Keynote Speaker announced

Tickets are almost sold out to this year’s Northern Voice conference. It was just announced that Matt Mullenweg, creator of the Wordpress system that I use to power this site, will be giving the keynote at the conference…although there hasn’t been a post about Matt on the conference site, he blogged about it on his so it must be true.

I’ve had the chance to see Matt speak twice now: at SXSW last year and at WordCamp last summer. Like Larry Lessig, he knows how to give a great presentation. He also happens to have one of the coolest personal domain names : http://ma.tt although it sounds like it was a bit of an ordeal to acquire. Someone beat me to the one I should have gotten.

This year’s conference is shaping up to be a great one! See you at the Waldorf for the opening party!

Wordpress Admin plugin for iPhone users

A friend pointed me (via Weblog Tools) to a very cool new plugin for Wordpress called WPhone that lets you manage your site from your iPhone or iTouch. You simply download and unzip it, get it onto your site and activate it in the Admin console. Then just login with your Mobile Safari browser (make sure you check off the “Use mobile admin interface” option on your login screen.

Here’s a few screenshots of the plugin in action on my own iPhone:

The log in screen and the ‘Go’ screen

Managing Posts screen and the Dashboard

Creating a post (this one!) and the Plugin screen

Very cool stuff….might have to try liveblogging with this setup ala Miss604.