endperform.org

I had an issue with my iPhone yesterday which I thought was highly unusual. I had upgraded to the 3.0 release of the firmware last week, and things were going fine until yesterday afternoon. While sitting on my desk at work, the phone all of the sudden lost connection to the network completely, which never happens because there’s an AT&T tower on the roof of the building. I figured it was just a random service issue, and to back that up a coworker’s phone was also having problems. Eventually for him, the service came back. For my iPhone, however, the service kept coming and going.

I figured once I’d leave work it would clear up, but my assumption was wrong as I didn’t have any service the entire way home. What’s worse is that when I tried to launch any app, other than the apps the phone came with, they would crash. Multiple reboots later and I’m thinking that my poor iPhone has given up on life. After a bit of research, I decided to do a full-blown restore to factory settings, and to my relief, my phone is working once again. I think part of the problem is that iTunes crashed out in the middle of a sync the previous night, which could have caused some corruption that I didn’t see until yesterday. At any rate, the only loss was the music I had on it, but that’s easily replaced.

Sometime next week I’ll be posting about my top 5 favorite apps on my phone.

Beth and I had recently took a trip down to Columbus to see her father, which is about 1.5 hours from where we are. On the way home, we encountered a traffic backlog that looked to last forever. Beth whips out her iPhone and brings up a map of our current location (thank you GPS and Google Maps) and found that we could jump off 85 at the next exit, follow a side road and bypass the issue. Sure enough, we followed the route and got around traffic, saving us from sitting for about an hour. On a separate occasion, we were heading downtown for dinner and I, being the one who always messes up going somewhere, made a wrong turn. Again, one look at the Maps application and we were back on course.

It’s nice having that peace of mind with us when we go somewhere.

I’ve been evaluating different web gallery solutions for the site since I got my new camera. One reason is that I expect to be taking a lot of photos this year, and I want something that is fast and relatively easy to use. Currently installed is Plogger. It’s relatively lightweight and seems to be functional, but I’m not too keen on the upload interface. I might test it a bit more, but then again I may switch it out for something else. I tried Gallery, but I found that it’s just too slow for my tastes on Dreamhost, and I’d rather not overtax the server. I’m still searching out options, but I may look at Zenphoto again (I noticed that they merged CMS aspects into it, which I’m not thrilled. I just want a gallery). I could always use a web service as well.

Google added a cool feature which now allows iPhones to sync to Google contacts and calendars. I have mine set up just to sync to the Calendar, which is something I had been wanting for a while. I’m slowly beginning to keep more and more in the calendar, so it’s nice to be able to have it available to me on the phone so I can keep track of things. One thing I’m horrible at is remembering dates, so this is a big help to me. I’m not sure what, if anything, I’m going to sync my contact information up with yet. I don’t use Windows a whole lot anymore, so there’s no real point with syncing it up there. I’m just not sure about Google’s contacts either. We’ll see, though.

I’ve have my iPhone for about a month now, and so far it’s been a joy to use. The phone itself hasn’t locked up, the applications are pretty simple, and believe it or not, the on-screen keyboard is pretty efficient. I had my worries about that initially since I have larger hands, but it hasn’t been a big issue with me. Typing out emails, SMS and web addresses hasn’t been a problem. The phone does feature an auto-correct option which tends to get in the way sometimes, but other times it’s spot on.

My favorite part of the iPhone is the fact that I can get at anything web-enabled anywhere. Sure, I could have done that with my Razor, but we all know what using one of those browsers is like. The Safari browser in the iPhone functions like a normal browser, and I haven’t seen any weird render problems in the sites I’ve visited. The zooming is easy, and while it won’t replace a netbook or laptop, it’s still nice when you’re on the go. Along with Safari, I can also update Twitter with Tweetfone, update my Flickr account with Klick, and check weather with the Accuweather application. Speaking of, I’ve added my Flickr stream to the site so you can see when I update that. I’m actually glad AT&T makes you get an unlimited data plan with an iPhone. If not, we’d be paying a bundle in data fees. It’s fairly simple to rack up a lot of kilobytes with one of these things.

Believe it or not, you can actually use it as a phone, too! The sound quality is quite good, the contacts options are nice, and it’s generally a joy to use to make a call. It does support custom ringtones, but you either have to buy them via iTunes or make your own, which is rather simple to do. There are guides on doing that, so I won’t bore you with the details here.

We took the plunge this year, and Beth and I are now the proud owners of a pair of iPhone 3Gs. So far, they’re working pretty darn well in both their use as a phone and also as the multi-function devices that they are. I’ve loaded my music up and have pretty much moved the Nano to backup status as the iPhone’s capabilities worked out just fine in the car this morning. Granted, the cell phone bill itself is going to rise, but with the uses of the phone I think it’s going to more than pay for itself over time. I can remember a few times where we both wished we had a map or some way of figuring out where we were. The Map feature of the phone is great, and from what I see it’s been pretty close as far as pinpointing where I am, and having a map of your immediate location is a nice touch.

After I get some time of using some of the apps, I’ll post about some of my favorite ones. Oh, and there’s a new Life with Emacs in the works, and it should be out this week sometime.