Chad Things

Today I started using OpenID.  Even though its been around for years and major players like Yahoo have adopted it, I had trouble finding good documentation – Even I had trouble understanding how it works exactly.  So, I wrote this little blog as Overview/FAQ for OpenID.

• What Is It?
• How Does It Work?
• Why Should I Use It?
• Why Should I NOT Use It?
• Definitions
• Examples
• More OpenID

What Is It?

As the name suggests, it is an Identification system that is free, safe, secure, and open source.  Nobody owns the system, it is not and will never be a money maker, and you control your own identity. The goal is to have one identity and use it everywhere on the internet instead of having a login/password for every website out there.

How Does It Work?

When you want to login to a website, instead of giving a username and password, you give your OpenID URL. The site then redirects to your “OpenID Provider” (see definitions below) where you are authenticated and then back to the original site.  If it is your first time on the website, some new user info (first name, last name, etc) may be filled out for you.  It is important to note that safety and security are important – passwords are not transferred back and forth – it is similar to how HTTPS can make a secure connection to your online bank.

Why Should I Use It?

You don’t have to remember individual username/passwords, just your OpenID URL.  Also, you can have profile information associated with your OpenID that can be shared.  For example, when you register on a new website, you often fill out first name, last name, username, password, email, etc.  Instead of doing all that, you just provide your OpenID URL and it will automatically get your first name, last name, email, or whatever other info you have decided to publicly share.

Why Should I NOT Use It?

If you only visit a few different sites when you’re online, and those sites don’t support OpenID, then there’s no point now. Competition includes Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect, meaning those 2 major players most likely won’t support OpenID (src).

Definitions

• OpenID-Supported Site
  AKA “Relying party” or “service provider”. This is a website that allows you to login using OpenID URL. They will mention OpenID or have the logo (pictured above).   More info, including list of sites.
• OpenID URL
  The URL you provide to the OpenID-Supported Site, must support OpenID and is usually unique.  You can have more than one. For example, yahoo, flickr, blogger, and aol all support OpenID, so if you have an account with them you have an OpenID URL.  Some sites, like Yahoo, allow you to simply use yahoo.com as a shortcut to your OpenID URL (which is something like http://me.yahoo.com/a/FSegzjtnmOzMcgVI3)
• OpenID Provider
  This is an entity that verifies who you are then provides information about you to the OpenID-Supported Site. Examples: MyOpenID.com, Verisign, Yahoo.

Examples

Here are some examples of OpenID-Supported sites I use: Sourceforge.net, CareerEco.com, Plaxo, and my.pbwiki.com. I use Yahoo as my OpenID Provider.  That means I sign up by entering “yahoo.com” as my OpenID URL, the site redirects to yahoo.com, yahoo asks me to continue, then I’m back on the site signed in.  With high speed internet this only takes a few seconds.

First I enabled OpenID at Yahoo.  This is super simple, and by default shares the following information: Full Name, Nickname, Yahoo! Email Address, Gender, Time Zone, and Language .. although not all sites will use it.  You can edit that info at profiles.yahoo.com.

Then, the first time I signed up with Plaxo, I went to sign in page, and picked “sign in with openid” and entered “yahoo.com”.  Yahoo auto-authenticates you and asks to Continue, displaying the Plaxo URL.  Click on continue and you are redirected back to plaxo, with info filled out.

If you are paranoid, you might not want to use a 3rd party like yahoo to store your info.  If you have your own server on the internet, you can setup your own OpenID Provider for you or your friends using phpMyID or any other OpenID Identity Servers.

More OpenID

• OpenID on Wikipedia
• Tutorial: Change your site so your users can use OpenID
• Discussion on using emails as OpenID
• OpenID WordPress plugin

Yay. Today I finally got it working the way I want – use my iPhone as a remote control when watching movies. If you’re not a uber geek, you might want to stop reading now. Move along.

I use VLC on my mac as my media player. Why? Cuz it plays everything – all types of .avi, .movs. mp3s mpgs, dvds – and lets you program hotkeys to do what you want. For example, I use spacebar for play/pause, and “.” and “,” for jumping forward or backward 15 secs at a time (tivo has trained me well). What else do you need? Volume is done thru my stereo – laptop audio out goes there, and laptop DVI goes into HDMI on my 40″ Bravia. But it sux to have to get up to pause or rewind 10 seconds to see that scene again. So I had to get a remote.

I found it hard to find a good remote control app on the iPhone – Apple’s “Remote” app only controls iTunes, which is good only for playing music (I’m not gonna import GB’s worth of .avi’s into iTunes, Hello..). I really liked the Telekinesis Uniremote app, it has slick remote interface, but I could only get VLC to play/pause (no rewind/ff). XBMC and Movist options seem more complicated.

In the end, the free “mocha vnc lite” iPhone app worked adequately. First, you turn on Apple’s default VNC server – on Leopard, goto System Prefs, Sharing, check the box for “Screen Sharing”, then click on ‘Computer Settings’ button to the right, and on the popup check the box for “VNC .. password” and give it a password – you don’t want anybody in your neighborhood to start controlling your mac. (Tiger instructions). Make sure you remember your password and the IP address. Second, launch VLC on your mac and full screen that baby. Third, install and launch the “mocha vnc lite” app, enter the IP and password and it should connect just fine. Now, you only get a small section of your screen, but thats cool. Click on little keyboard icon to get keyboard, now you can spacebar pause/play your VLC player all night long.

Ending Geek transmission.

I was actually surprised by how easy it was to create my first iPhone app – From launching Xcode for the first time, building an application on the simulator, to paying $99 so i can legally put apps on my iPhone, and getting my app to run on my iPhone – all in one day.

The following is a summary of how to create your first app using iPhone OS 2.2 and the iPhone SDK available in December, 2008.  I write this blog since documentation can become out of date very fast (ahem, apple).

First, this is what you will need

• Intel Mac with OS X 10.5.5 or later (I used 10.5.6)
• iPhone SDK for iPhone OS 2.2 (I had build 9M2621)
• iPhone with OS 2.2
• $99 if you want to run your app on your iPhone – its free to develop and run on the iPhone simulator that comes with XCode

How to create a simple “Hello World” app on your iPhone

1. Login to iPhone Dev Center
2. Download and install iPhone SDK if you have not – its 1.56 GB (HUGE, may take more than a day to download).  It comes with XCode 3.1.2 and everything you need for iphone development.
3. Follow this 6 minute Hello World video.  Note: after a minute he launches Interface Builder – one of the windows does not launch by default, launch it from – Tools – Identity Inspector
4. Done with free section – Hello World on Simulator
5. Pay $99 to join the iPhone Developer Program – lets you install apps on 100 devices (iPhone, iPod Touch)
6. Once you’ve paid, download the “Program portal user guide” (right side, near top) from the iPhone Developer Program Portal, (links will not work unless you login and are in the program).
7. Follow the instructions in the user guide (version 2.4 is what I had).  It is mostly accurate (getting certificates, etc) up to section called “Installing iPhone OS” (pg 18) where it says
   

   To run your code on an Apple device, you will need to install iPhone OS onto each development device and “restore” each device to a development state. Note: Once a pre-release version of iPhone OS is installed on the device you cannot restore the device to an earlier version of iPhone OS. The device may only be used for development and testing purposes until that version of iPhone OS is publicly released. Please DO NOT install the iPhone OS before registering device UDIDs, as installation on non-registered devices will render them inoperable. The public release version of iPhone OS should be installed using iTunes.

   ….

   1) Download the iPhone OS Disk Image (.dmg) from the iPhone Dev Center for the Apple device you are using.
   2) Connect your device to your Mac, close iTunes and launch Xcode.
   3) Once the device is detected by Xcode, select ‘Use for Development’ when prompted.

   • Ignore.  You do not need to download or install anything special for development if you have the regular retail version 2.2 on your iPhone (normally installed using iTunes).  I assume these instructions were for 2.1 or 2.0 or earlier.
   • Just backup iPhone on iTunes, close iTunes, launch XCode, go to Window – Organizer,
     click on your iPhone, click “use for development” under summary tab. That’s it.
8. Continue with guide, create App ID (when choosing your “Bundle Identifier”, I recommend using asterisk like: com.mysite.*), install profile, etc.
9. If you follow the guide exactly, you will see this error when you try to install app on your device (aka iPhone)
   

   Your mobile device has encountered an unexpected error (0xE800003A)
   ApplicationVerificationFailed

10. Here’s how you fix the above
    • You must create entitlements.plist – On you XCode Project, goto File->New File…->iPhone OS -> Code Signing ->Entitlements.  Just name new file “entitlements.plist” (it should be created in your project directory).
    • Goto Build Info (on your main project window in XCode, right under “Groups & Files” click on project name at top, then click the big Info Icon at the top middle). Under “Build” section, look for “Code Signing Entitlements” – the Value is probably blank – double click, in the popup window type in the new file name “entitlements.plist”
    • Under Target Info (on your main project window in XCode, under “Groups & Files” Targets list click on project target name, then click the big Info Icon at the top middle). Under “Properties” section, change “Identifier:” from com.yourcompany.xxx to the “Bundle Identifier” you created  on the program portal website under App IDs – do not include the ten character “Bundle Seed ID” prefix, just the “Bundle Identifier” you picked. ex: com.chadnorwood.${PRODUCT_NAME:identifier}
11. DONE.  You should now be able to create new projects and more apps.

Links

• datasprings.com tutorial – Written tutorial, good overview of SDK, Great place to start.
• Really Big List of SDK Links
• Discussion of entitlements
• iphonedevelopertips.com – launching a URL
• Get location (lattitude and logitude) using LocateMe
• Using iphone’s accelerometer
• Using voice memo

Yesterday I upgraded my macbook pro to Leopard, the latest OS X operating system, over a year after Apple released it.  Whew.  It took me 4 days to organize, clean and backup my stuff (over 200GB), about a day to figure out how to install leopard without a bootable DVD (see leopard dmg install), and less than an hour to do the actual install.  Why now?  Not because of all the new features, but because I wanted to develop an iPhone app. Stay tuned for more on that.  Yay.

After a fresh install, here’s what I add/customize:

• Firefox 3 [Free] – fast, but I love that it remembers all URLS and you just type any part of the URL or Page Title and it shows you dropdown of possible matches.  Also love these firefox add-ons/plugins: greasemonkey, web developer, firebug, live HTTP Headers, more.
• iLife ’08 [$$] – new iTunes (love the Genius), new iPhoto (love the auto-grouping of events), and more.
• Adobe CS4 [$$] – gotta have Photoshop, Acrobat, Indesign, etc.
• VLC [Free] – best media player out there – avi, mpg, mp3, mov, wav, etc – i love “hot keys” -† its FREE
• Xee [Free] – Excellent gif/jpg viewer (don’t *need* this in leopard)
• iSquint [Free] – convert digital camera movies from big file sizes to smaller for upload, sharing, ipod, or iphone.
• Transmission [Free] – bit torrent client, so you can download movies, tv, games
• Handbrake [Free] – Rip DVDs – in one-step, create .avi movies for ipod, iphone, etc.
• iStumbler [Free] – helps you find a good wifi signal when you’re not home or office.
• SuperDuper [Free] – easy way to back up your entire laptop to external drive or network.
• Chicken of the VNC [Free] – if you have a windows or linux box, put vnc server on it, then install this vnc client on your mac, and now you can control your windows from mac!

How to install Leopard from a .dmg file – My Constraints:

• Leopard not on DVD, only 7GB .dmg file
• Tiger is available on bootable DVD
• Cannot boot on USB or Firewire drive

I am providing this because some of the more popular methods did not work for me.  If the following does not make sense, read this original guide and the digg comments on it.  Here’s an overview followed by notes:

1. Prepare.  Backup all your important files, docs, iTunes library (split itunes library), iPhoto library (split iPhoto library), etc on an external drive or network drive. Make sure you 7GB leopard install .dmg is handy (on your backup drive is fine).
2. Create a 2nd partition, 8GB or larger, where we’ll put the leopard install .dmg, then we’ll boot from that and install leopard onto big partition, see NOTE below.
3. Prepare 2nd partition as a bootable Leopard Install option, see NOTE below.
4. Reboot, hold down ALT, pick leopard install boot option, Install leopard on 1st partition – I recommend erase and install, but you can also upgrade.
5. Optional: Merge 2 partitions together – Caveat: I have not done this – delete 2nd partition then resize partition.

NOTE: Creating 2nd Partition in Tiger

Tiger’s “Disk Utility” application creates Apple Partition when I re-partitioned it, with no option for creating a GUID partition.  On Intel mac’s, you need GUID partition in order to boot the drive and to install tiger. However, http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1600 said to “erase” partition and it would be given GUID paritition – This also did not work.  What did work is using the command line program diskutil, which you can run from the terminal application.  Example of what I did


% diskutil partitionDisk disk0 2 GPTFormat HFS+ Big_Daddy 224GB HFS+ leopard_install 8GB


NOTE: Preparing 2nd Partition

Many web pages said to use “Disk Utility” to restore .dmg as source and the newly created 2nd partition as destination.  This did not work for me, and as apple support states, sometimes disks cannot be dragged to destination in “Disk Utility” from Tiger DVD.  So I installed tiger on the first partition (erasing it first) in order to get a working “Disk Utility”.  Now dragging disks worked but whenever I clicked on “restore”, “Disk Utility” gave error 2, 16, or some other number. What did work is mounting .dmg file (use hdiutil or just double click it), then using the command line program “asr” from terminal.  Example:


sudo hdiutil attach leopard_install.dmg
sudo asr restore --source "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD" --target /dev/disk0s3 --erase


In hindsight, this should all work from terminal app from Tiger DVD right at boot – you should not need to reinstall tiger.

A few days ago I mentioned I upgraded wordpress and picked a new theme. Today I am reporting the last piece – getting the latest and greatest plugins. I scanned some of the most popular ones and did some digging on my own. I must say i’m disappointed in the wordpress guys for making it so hard to find plugins. You can only search for plugins based on tags, but when there’s thousands of plugins to review, I would want to be able sort different ways. For example, I would love to see plugins in the top 10% in number of downloads, that have been updated in the last year, have at least 3 stars, at least 20 reviews, and match xxx tag. That would be great.

These are the plugins I found and liked.

• Akismet comment spam – comes by default, keeps spammers out of comments.  Great.
• Add To Any – lets people bookmark, email, digg, or do something with your post in a good way.
• flickrRSS – puts thumbnails of my flickr pics tagged “best of” on my sidebar.  Who doesn’t like pictures?
• Viper’s Video Quicktags – make it easy to embed video in a blog post, supports youtube, vimeo, flickr video, google video, dailymotion, metacafe, etc.
• Ultimate Google Analytics – This puts the GA code on every page, a must for detailed info on your site.
• Google XML Sitemaps – creates a sitemap.xml file to help search engines, scripts, and what nots find everything on the site.
• All In One SEO Pack – make it easier for people using google to find your posts and web pages.
• Search Everything – like it says, covers everything when user does a search from your site
• WP-Cumulus – makes a cool sphere of words, which are my categories on my site.  just fun
• WP-PageNavi – makes a nice page navigation at bottom.  For example, if somebody searches for iPhone and there 10 pages of results (about 10 per page), this lets users jump to page 10 right away.
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – Best of the “related posts” plugins.  Intelligent algorithm and more configurable than most.  Basically lists similar posts at the end of a post page.
• PageMash – reorder pages as they appear at the top of the blog, including parents (My Page Order doesn’t do parents)
• Search Results Summary – OK, not a plugin, but code I wrote to simply list results at top so you don’t have to scroll down to see what the results are. Works well with PageNavi.

There’s a few more I’m evaluating (like statpress vs statpress-reloaded vs wassup … last.fm .. podpress, etc) so expect an update in a week or two.

A few I tried but deactivated

• Slimbox – cool javascript that lets user see a nice big picture when a thumbnail on your blog is clicked.  Problem is when user clicks a thumbnail, I think it should act like a link and goto picture page.
• Twitter Tools -Doesn’t allow you display tweets from certain people, this mainly lets you update your own twitter account
• WordPress Gravatars – My theme, Inove, does avatars better (matches theme)
• WordPress Related Posts – Not as intelligent or as configurable as YARPP above.
• WPVideo, Youtube Favorites – Not as good as Viper’s Video Quicktags (Vipers does youtube and more).

As mentioned in my previous post, I upgraded wordpress and am using the Inove theme. I chose it because it looks clean and has basic functionality (most wordpress themes do not). When I say clean, I mean I like the use of black, white, and grey colors, I like the fonts, I like having posts be black on white with the background of the page being grey (anything but white, helps focus attention to the posts). I also like the simple search box in the header, I like the small simple icons like green dots for lists, calendar icon, categories icon, tags icon, comments icon, etc. I like how how tables are done, pre format is done, and a few other things.  However, it is not perfect for me.  So …

Things I changed included

1. Fixing bug where tag icon appears even if a post has no tag
2. Moving categories and tags to the top of posts – I prefer having all the meta information in one place.
3. Moving RSS code from top of sidebar.php to bottom
4. Removing non-widget code from sidebar.php – If a widget is not chosen for N, S, E, W, defaults are shown like archives and categories.  I don’t want 2 categories, as esserd said. If I want something, I will use widgets.
5. Tweaked styles.css to add padding to bottom of lists (.post .content ul,   .post .content ol)
6. Changed header on search results and archive (tags, categories) from 2 lines to 1 line.

Overall great theme.  Thanks mg12!!!  Also, check inove forum for other issues.
UPDATE: You can find my changes in inove-1.0.5.diff.tgz, preview the readme or diff.

Geek Warning…

I’ve been wanting to update chadnorwood.com for a while, so over the weekend I upgraded wordpress from version 2.3.x to 2.6.3 and picked out a new theme.  First I did a wordpress export of my blog as a backup.  Then the upgrade was done using hostmonster’s fantastico deluxe, an automated installing system in cpanel.  Some don’t like fantastico, but it took me 10 seconds to do the upgrade with no problems.  Success.

After the upgrade it took me almost 4 hours to figure out why my category links were broken.  WTF? Basically under 2.3 I had my permalinks setup so if the URL was http://chadnorwood.com/tag/travel/ wordpress would show posts under the tech category.  So I upgrade to 2.6, and Settings-Permalinks show “tag” as the “Category Base” but /tag/travel is broken – no longer works in 2.6.  Of course I didn’t think about changing this till I examined the mysql database tables, dug through thousands of lines of terrible wordpress code, and googled every phrase combination related to this I could think of.  In the end, I reverted back to the basics and it all worked.  I still had to resolve the 404 issue of the old tag links, which I did using template_redirect.

Picking the theme took even longer – but that was more fun.  I basically viewed about 50 of the most popular wordpress themes, downloaded and installed 10 of them, activating one at a time and testing them for functionality and style.  Only 4 seem to have all the basic functionality working correctly, and even tho I liked the wood in State of Mind, I went with the Inove theme. Inove is more clean and shayna thought the wood one was too academic.  I also tweaked Inove .. but thats in the next post.

Overall the wordpress 2.6 is not much different.  The admin pages look cleaner and are better organized for the most part, but the db has changed and some stuff is broken so I would only recommend upgrading if there was a specific theme or plugin that needs 2.6.  I really love the plugins and themes – the number of great choices makes wordpress much better than all the other blogging platforms. It’s not perfect, and the documentation could improve alot, but these wordpress guys are still actively working on making a better blogging software which is a very good thing.

Before I upgraded to wordpress 2.6, I had URLs using tags like this:
http://chadnorwood.com/tag/travel/

After I upgraded I realized I liked categories better (they can have parent categories).  So no more tags, all categories, but the problem was that google (and others) still link to /tag/travel/ which ended on a 404 page. Since I had no tags, I decided to redirect all my  /tag/xxxx to /cat/xxxx – I also prefer /cat/xxx to /category/xxx, which I changed in Settings-Permalinks.  Here’s how I did the redirect exactly:

Add the following to the end of ../wp-content/themes/<current_theme>/functions.php file

// added at the end of functions.php file, in my current theme's directory
add_action ('template_redirect', 'check_for_tag_404');

// custom function to redirect old tag links to new cat links
function check_for_tag_404()
{
$pat = '/^\/tag\/(.*)$/';

// return if this URL does not begin with "/tag/"
if (!preg_match( $pat, $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"])) return;

$uri = $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
$uri = preg_replace( $pat, '/cat/$1', $uri);
$location = "http://" . $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"] .  $uri;
header("Location: $location");
exit;
}

Big Ups to this template_redirect dude for giving me a clue.

This summer the 2.0 version of iPhone software came out, and lots more apps with it. It had some problems, so I waited till 2.1 was released. Overall the OS doesn’t seem much different (some new features, but also new bugs and a bit slower running things, at least on my non-3G non-GPS original 16GB iphone). However, there are ton more apps in 2.x, which is why you should get it. None are as cool as the basic features of the iPhone – phone, internet, ipod, and maps – but the apps are definitely worth checking out. I tried to make my list practical and useful for today, avoiding apps that would be great if only something somewhere did something also as well.

2008/12 UPDATE:  I upgraded to 2.2 and its not much difference.  I do love the new voice search on the google app – best ever – including easter eggs. I’ve also slightly changed the list below from the original post.

So forget my old list of free iphone applications, here’s my new favorites, best ones first:

1. Shazaam (MUSIC) – AWESOME. Ever heard music and wish you knew then name or artist? This app can listen and identify most any song in less than 20 seconds – from radio, your friend’s CD, or that one track on that hour dance mix you downloaded. Midomi is a similar app that tries to do more but needs to work on errors.
2. Nuevasync (CALENDAR) – OK, Not an app, just awesome for those who use Google calendar. Using iPhone’s Microsoft Exchange support and the default calendar app, setup a instant 2-way auto sync with Google calendar. Changes made to Google calendar can be seen minutes or seconds later on the iPhone calendar app, no manual synchronizing required. Likewise, edits in iPhone calendar show up seconds later on your google calendar. How to setup Nuevasync.
3. Google Mobile (SEARCH) – At first, I had mixed feelings with this one, mainly because its slow (you type 5 characters but it can take 3-10 seconds for them to appear, since the app starts to search for matches after 1 or 2 characters). However, it definitely saves time. In addition to being a shortcut to google results page on safari, its a shortcut to google maps, remembers previous searches, suggestions, and you can search iphone contacts. Google made a nice overview video. I love voice search in newer version.
4. Movies (ENTERTAINMENT) – If you like the box office, going to theaters, or just getting info on movies, Get This. This would be my favorite app if I still went to the movies – they are just too expensive. Best feature is finding showtimes for theaters near you using iPhone’s location, as well as remembering your favorite theater.  But I also love watching the trailers, finding out the biggest box office hit, and connecting to IMDB. Showtimes is a similar app.
5. Evernote (PRODUCTIVITY) – Ever wanted to record a voice memo? you know by talking not typing? Get this. Not only is this great for audio notes (up to 5 mins), but it also does picture (with text recognition ability) and text notes, rounding it off with a very advanced search. Picture notes are perfect for receipts, wine labels, or anything else with text that you’ll want to have later. Major problem is that it does not cache notes on the iphone – so if you are on an airplane or in a dead zone, you’re screwed. review.
6. reQall (PRODUCTIVITY) – Similar to Evernote, it lets you write text notes and record audio notes (up to 30 secs), no pictures, but will translate audio to text (can take a few mins). ReQall focuses on organizing notes (almost to the point of confusion), but – here comes the best part – it stores notes on both iphone and the web! (it appears to have 2k limit on text note, about 30-40 lines). No more worries about dead zones, which makes this app better for me. Still, took me a few tries to figure out how to use it. Also see Zenbe below. review and quick-start guide.
7. Facebook (SOCIAL) – Best interface to Facebook, I especially love the simple list of friends, news feeds, inbox, and update status.  Get this is you wanna give great facebook.
8. UrbanSpoon (MAPS/FOOD) – Find restaurant near you. Very fun, fast, and easy (cities covered)
9. Where (MAPS) – Brings up a map of where you are, then plots the closest starbucks, places from eventful, places with yelp ratings, gas stations, zipcar, local search, buddy beacon (like loopt) and more. I just wished their map zoom in/out/drag was as fast as google maps.  It also times out alot.
10. Loopt (MAPS/SOCIAL) – If you have friends with iPhones and want to share your location with them, get this. It’s great when you’re out on the town. works with GPS and non-GPS iPhones
11. Weatherbug (WEATHER) – More details than the default Weather app, including wind, chance of rain, and the ability to have more than one source for a city. For example, find highs/lows for SF downtown and the airport (which can vary by ten degrees).
12. Stanza/eReader (BOOKS) – Both are good if you want to read books on your iPhone, nailing down the basics like easy access to books you’ve downloaded, turning pages while you’re reading, jumping to a certain chapter or page, searching for text, tweaking color/font. Both have tons of books, all the classics, but could impove ways to search for books. I like Stanza slightly better because… you don’t need a login, a few more settings to tweak, more books available even tho eReader has DRM (copy-protected) books and stanza does not. Check out stanza – review1, review2.
13. ESPN Cameraman (FUN) – Picture game – find 5 differences between 2 similar pics, like that bar game “Photo Hunt”
14. Brain Toot (FUN) – Simple but fun game that tests memory, eye coordination, thinking, etc.  Also check out Brain Blaze for more brain exercises.
15. Aurora Feint (FUN) – Game similar to tetris or jewel quest.
16. Klick (PICS) – Flickr app. Does a good job of allowing you to upload a new or old photo to flickr, giving it title, description, tags, and location/geocode info.  In addition to upload, you can view your recent sets, tags, recents from contacts, search, etc.

Below are ones I tried and kept, but don’t use very much

1. Remote (MUSIC) – Apple’s way of controlling your computer’s iTunes from your iPhone. It’s great if your computer’s iTunes is less accessible than your iPhone, but when i’m listening to iTunes on my computer, my computer is more accessible.
2. Banner Free (FUN) -Scroll a message LED style across your iPhone.
3. Scribble (FUN) – Turn iPhone into a blank canvas and your finger into a pen and scribble. Or, instead of a blank canvas, scribble on top of a picture from your photo album. Kid Friendly.
4. Tap Tap Revenge (FUN) – Simple game where you tap to the music, kinda fun with two players, but gets old.
5. MazeFinger (FUN) – arcade style game, cool sounds and graphics, but simple and kinda boring.
6. RJDJ Single (FUN) – plug in headphones, and RjDj will tweak what it hears for you. Make it fun to walk down the street. faq. The free version comes with only one scene, and it sux – it basically echos then environment, but even with headphones at full volume you can’t hear much. Paid version seems more interesting. youtube.
7. NYTimes (NEWS) – read NY Times articles. Nice UI, I like browsing news categories, but crashes alot
8. NetNewsWire (NEWS) – read RSS feeds on iPhone, including blogs and major news feeds. I prefer Google Reader on the PC.
9. WritingPad (PRODUCTIVITY) – new way of typing. Instead of tapping each letter, you draw words, going from the first letter of the word on the key layout to the second to … the last. It works pretty well, but you can only use this interface to take notes, you can’t use it anywhere else. Why learn a new way to write when most of the time you have to write the old way?
10. Jott (PRODUCTIVITY) – Once setup, it will turn 1 to 15 second audio memo into text and email it to you. Not always accurate, but accurate enough to make it great when you need to quickly jott stuff down when you’re driving or don’t want to type. I will prolly remove Jott since ReQall also translates audio to text, but reQall is also not always accurate (and slower at translating than jott), so I’m holding on to this for now.
11. nxtb.us (MAPS/TRANSPORTATION) – bart/muni arrival predictions in SF, check out flash video on http://nxtb.us/
12. Trapster (MAPS/DRIVING) – alerts you to speed traps. Useful to locate speed traps on regular driving routes like a commute, but not something you would leave on while just driving around.
13. Twinkle – Twitter for iPhone but with location – find out what people are doing within 5 miles of you. Cool in theory, but i barely twitter and know nobody in chicago. setup could improve.
14. Shozu (PICS/SOCIAL) – shozu is the uber social app – talks to 50+ sites, sharing info back and forth.   If you spend lots of time updating various social sites, definitely check it out.  review. I don’t use it cuz it often has errors talking to flickr or facebook, my two most used apps.

Below are ones I tried and uninstalled.

1. VoiceNotes (PRODUCTIVITY) – Just records audio notes, but had no timestamp. Evernote does and offers much more.
2. Zenbe (PRODUCTIVITY) – Simple list manager – sync’s with web, which i love, but reQall does everything Zenbe does plus has voice to text translation. Sorry, you get the boot!
3. Rember The Milk RTM (PRODUCTIVITY) – Another list manager, similar to reQall, and tho its free to download you got to pay to use some web service. You get the boot!
4. YouNote (PRODUCTIVITY) – Similar to Evernote, but its not easy to backup notes or sync with the web. Dealbreaker for me. However, if you use notepad alot, this is a nice upgrade. review.
5. Exposure (PICS) – another flickr app, Similar to Klick but no uploading. Free version has ads (Boo).  Latest version (November 2008) crashes alot when i try to login to flickr (I login to yahoo, authorize app on flickr.com, then tap ‘done’ on iphone and Exposure crashes).

Need To Spend TIme On These

• Pandora (MUSIC) – stream music
• last.fm (MUSIC) – stream music
• Fring (SOCIAL) – chat with friends on Google Talk, AIM, Skype, MSN, Twitter, etc. And make phonecalls for free using wifi/VOIP (prolly great if you travel internationally).
• IM+ (SOCIAL) – another IM client
• linkedin (SOCIAL) –

NON-FREE Noteworthy Apps

• Air Sharing $5 (UTILITY) – Turn your iPhone into a wireless USB drive using wifi. Also a image/document viewer. I have this and have geek friends who love this.
• Things $10 (PRODUCTIVITY) – list manager (Todo, etc)
• Notebook $5 (PRODUCTIVITY) – todo list manager
• Syncbook $4 (PRODUCTIVITY) – another note sync manager
• Byline $4 – RSS Reader, syncs with Google Reader, better than NetNewsWire.

References

• http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/mowi/article.php/3773366/Top+Ten+Free+iPhone+Apps.htm
• http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/10/iphone-application-overview-and-demo-videos/
• http://mashable.com/2008/10/24/iphone-apps-revisited/
• http://www.didigetthingsdone.com/2008/10/21/top-5-iphone-applications-for-productivity/
• http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2008/11/07/battle_of_the_iphone_task_managers-2.html