Interactive Ads, I Like It

Well this is an interesting feature. The free New York Times app has full page ads now… I know what your thinking, “great”… But this one ad, the first one I saw, is actually interactive. You can shake your iPhone to change text in the Flash-like ad.

I think that’s a very smart way to grab your audience’s attention. Now I still, of course, didn’t read a **** word of the ad… but it’s still neat.

Peace, J

My iPhone OS 3.1.2 Hangs On Boot UP

Check it… today’s Sunday, and yesterday, Sunday… I mean Saturday (I’m still tired from playin’ Gears of War 2 ’til 7 AM) I planned on going down to Bradenton, Fl. to hang with a bud. We planned on playing some new games on my new Xbox 360, kinda’ spend a “guys day” in just doin’ nothin’ but playin’ some co-op games together (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Gears of War 2). We had to go out and get a second controller and a memory card, know you, run here and there.

Well I had the Neocell 3GS’s bluetooth on, and it was connected (via bluetooth) to my Tomtom 910 in my Lexus. We also were charging it and playing Pandora through the stereo of the Lexus. I received a call from my mother (routed through the GPS’s speaker phone system), just callin’ to say hey, when the call dropped.  No big deal, it happens. I called her back, but the call dropped again a minute later. That’s usual for Tampa, at least in my apartment, but it’s unusual for Bradenton. I tried returning the call, but the GPS said “dialing failure”. Checked the iPhone and it said I had no signal, even though Pandora was still streaming music. Very odd. Signal wouldn’t come back, and I knew for a fact the area we were driving had full coverage for AT&T. And Pandora was still streaming (although my bud explained that Pandora buffers ahead of time, so even if you have no internet connection, it will still play).

You know what that means, right? Time for a reboot.  So I rebooted and then put the Neocell into my pocket, since we arrived at one of the places we needed to shop at. We do our thing, and by the time we get back to the Lexus, like 30 minutes later, I take out the Neocell and I find that it’s still stuck booting. 30 minutes booting… Wow. I restart again to restart the boot. Still don’t boot. This goes on for another hour. Crap, what’s goin’ on? So, I tried putting the Neocell into “DFU” mode, knowing that I’m not connected to a computer… and still nothing. I figured it might shake it out of the issues it’s having. But nope… The Neocell just ran itself outta’ power after a few hours from constant, endless booting.

So I was down in Bradenton for the weekend without the Neocell. Now it wasn’t the end of the world, considering I was spending most of my time indoors, so it didn’t ruin any plans, which is good. It would have been much worst if this had happened while working with a client or driving somewhere with important information stored on the Neocell.

What I’m doing right now is charging the Neocell (from a dead state, where it shows the battery meter while not actually booted). Once it’s charged, it’ll automatically try to boot, which it’ll get stuck. But I’m then going to enter DFU mode and then try to restore. I’m sure everything will go fine, but if it don’t, you’ll be hearin’ about it.

Peace, J

theneocell.com guyPhones Interview

Check it out, there’s two guys who have made iPhone costumes… not a “Look, I made a paper mashay iPhone costume…”

crap like this goofy SOB here, but an working iPhone costume.

Reko Rivera (left) and John Savio (right) setup an LCD TV screen running on car batteries and fed the video output of an iPhone directly to the TV screen. Check out the video here.

Turns out the guys are located in Tampa, Florida (USA for those of you in other countries), same city I’m located in. So I decided to track them down and do an interview for theneocell.com. Check it…

J: What’s been the wildest reaction or response, good or bad, that you’ve gotten wearing the Guyphone?

guyPhones: John had a Ninja Turtle come at him with a sword and whack his plexiglass screen because we won.

J: What the freak holds the LCD TV screen in place?

guyPhones: Our friend John Matthews helped us out with the design and the wood/medal structure that holds the television and the battery to our bodies.

J: You ever worry about the LCD screen’s costume mount breaking or anything else happening to the screen itself while walking?

guyPhones: Not really, we really reinforced the inside structure to take a lot of abuse. We overdid the size of the screws and bolts ect. Never once did we feel like it wasn’t stable.

J: I recently bought the Neocell 3GS from the same Apple store at the international mall in Tampa, Florida that you and your bud visited in your costumes. Tell us about your experience walking into the Apple store and the reaction of the customers and the employees.

guyPhones: Mouths wide open, people stopped mid sentences, lots of stares, then all the iphones come out and start snapping pictures. Employees said good job.. and took pictures with us. Then the manager on duty asked us to leave the store.

J: I get attention with the 24K gold plated Neocell 3GS from time-to-time, but this Guyphone costume, let’s be real here, is it a giant walking chick magnet? (Or should I give a “no comment” option for ya?)

guyPhones: Absolutely. Our buddy who had it on got a few numbers within an hour or so.

J: So, for those that don’t know Tampa, Florida, it can rain without warning. So if your outside and it starts rainin’, are you screwed or is there an app for that?

guyPhones: There’s an app for that. iCar or iShelter. lol

J: You hear that the next new iPhone model could be this rumored “Worldphone” iPhone? A new hybrid model that could appear on both Verizon and AT&T at the same time in 2010. If true, would you go with Verizon or stay with AT&T? And, would you (wisely) try to get one of the stores to sponsor you and your bud on release day?

guyPhones: Well AT&T has been really good to me and despite the recent commercials I get 3G service most everywhere.

J: Last question. My friends and family say I’m an iPhone fanatic. I simply respond by showing a Guyphone YouTube video and say “Hey, at least I’m not dressed like them…”. Haha, na, but serious, are you addicted like I am to your iPhone?

guyPhones: Not just the iPhone but Apple everything. iPhones are hands down the best phones out there, their like baby computers. You can do everything with them. I could never go back to anything else.

‘Ight, thanks for answering my questions guyPhones. You can become fans of them on Facebook, “The guyPhones!“. I gotta’ say, that’s a pretty tight costume… all I did for Halloween this year was write “BOOK” across my face and went as “Facebook”.

Peace, J

Wordpress App 2.0

I saw, featured in the app store, that a version 2.0 of the Wordpress app came out.

Edit: Ok, I don’t know how well this speaks for the new version… but see the images above there? This new version of the Wordpress 2.0 app messed up my post. It lost 90% of the post I wrote… just for no reason, so I’m having to jump on the Neocomp (my desktop) to write this post again.

A new version of Wordpress came out, version 2.0, but the odd (messed up) thing is that it’s not an update from 1.x but a separate app. Meaning, if you have Wordpress 1.x, you won’t get an update notification to upgrade to 2.0. You have to actually go out, find Wordpress 2.0, install it, and then uninstall Wordpress 1.0. Yes, you will have two different Wordpress apps installed, 1.x and 2.0. I don’t know why they did it like this… but it’s ok, we outta’ be thankful they provide us with a completely free blogging system and completely free blogging app.

As far as the app itself, not much has changed. They’ve fixed (I’ve confirmed) the picture order issue, where you would select from your iPhone pictures in order of “A,B,C” but they would be order on your post as “C,B,A”. The work around for it was to select your pictures in reverse on your iPhone, which the Wordpress app would then reverse the order and you’d get the pictures ordered the way you wanted. But they’ve fixed that issue, so “A,B,C” will be ordered “A,B,C” (“as easy as 1, 2, 3…”).

It’s got a great new comment managing system, which is really nice. But other than that, there isn’t much that’s been changed as far as features go. They have fixed a lot of bugs and polished the over all improvement of the app… but the fact that the very first post from the app, a post about the app ironically, messed up and lost 90% of the text for my post kinda’ worries me… But let’s hope that was an isolated thing, ‘ight?

Peace, J