Category Archives: Hardware

Parrott AR.Drone, The Ultimate iPhone/iPod Accessory

Hardware

Parrott have just released the Parrott AR.Drone, a four bladed helicopter or quadricopter, which is controlled by an iPhone or iPod Touch. They utilise the motion sensitive nature of the Apple products to make controlling it intuitive, with the connection handled through WiFi. It gets better though, much much better – the AR.Drone has two video camera’s, one is used by the quadricopter to aid in flight, the second streams in real time straight into the iPhone or iPod Touch.

No pricing has been released for it yet but if they can manage to make it even passingly affordable, I can’t even begin to imagine how many of them they are going to sell. While everyone thought that micro-helicopters and planes about the size of a deck of cards were incredible – the AR.Drone and its derivatives are taking that to a whole new level.

iPhone 3GS: Portable Computing

Hardware

Since purchasing a new iPhone 3GS, I’ve noticed that I’m using my phone more than I ever have before to check things on the Internet.

While I could have used the internet on my Samsung Blackjack and have done so a handful of times, the user experience just wasn’t good enough for me to want to use it unless I absolutely had to.

With the new iPhone 3GS, that has changed completely – which I think is awesome. I’m now regularly looking things up such as businesses, TV guide, email, RSS and more; none of which I used to do eith my old phone.

Using WordPress via iPhone

Blogging, Hardware, Software

I wanted to install the WordPress iPhone application, however since I couldn’t get my Apple iTunes Store Account to verify and work correctly – I’ve resorted to using WordPress via Safari.

While I have viewed plenty of blogs using a mobile device and was surprised how functional they were, I’d never attempted to use the WordPress administration area. When visiting the WordPress admin with an iPhone or another internet enabled mobile device, you are served the exact same version of the administration interface that you’d receive if you viewed it using a desktop computer. That might surprise a lot of people, however WordPress isn’t mobile device ready by default – you require a plugin such as WordPress Mobile Edition by Alex King. Even with that plugin enabled, it generates a mobile friendly reader experience and doesn’t provide a mobile friendly administration interface.

To my surprise however, it was quite a simple task to navigation around the WordPress administration area using Safari on the iPhone. Thanks to the convenient zooming functionality that the iPhone provides, it makes working with busier sections of the interface straight forward. While functional, it certainly isn’t the kind of user experience that you’d want to use daily – as a good amount of screen real estate is wasted and when you’re using a small screen device – every pixel counts.

As I tested out different sections of the interface, about the only thing that I noticed didn’t work ‘as expected’ was the text area used to write a blog post. By default, I enable the visual or rich editor in WordPress. Normally when you give focus to any form element that you can type into, the iPhone automatically pops up the keyboard. However, because the visual editor is a JavaScript implementation – nothing triggers the keyboard to show up. Of course, selecting the ‘HTML’ tab on the blog posting page fixes that immediately.

All and all, very impressed with how the iPhone handles complex interfaces – it certainly gives me a lot of confidence that there’d be a limited number of sites that I’d have problems with using Safari on the iPhone.

iPhones & Unicorns

Hardware

After having my Samsung Blackjack for over two years, I’m out of contract and in the hunt for a new phone – and iPhone to be exact.

Last weekend I either called or physically over ten different shops on the Gold Coast looking for an iPhone to no avail. Initially I was calling different Vodafone stores over the Gold Coast and I got a consistent message – “we don’t have any but more stock is coming in constantly”. It wasn’t until I talked to Optus, 3, Crazy Johns, All Phones and more that I realised it was much worst than I had first thought. It appears a though every retailer is struggling to get any significant stock for the iPhone, having them delivered in dribs and drabs instead of by the carton or pallet.

I called the new Apple Store that has opened in the recently renovated Robina Town Centre and they had stock, which was great. Unfortunately it came with a caveat of sorts, I could have one right now if I bought it outright or I’d have to book in an appointment online for one of their iPhone specialists (read: standard phone consultant that knows the process of the major phone networks). I wanted to just walk in, like I would have to a Vodafone store and upgrade my phone but I couldn’t do that without buying it outright – which frustrated me.

While the Gold Coast iPhone stock is so low, I guess the iPhone is my unicorn.