haniblog

There are plenty of Sudoku games in the App Store but this one is a real “Look at what my iPhone can do!” game. You can photograph a game from a newspaper and Sudoku Grab (iTunes link) will digitise the puzzle… and then solve it for you. It will also let you email it to anyone who has a copy of the game installed on their iPhone.

The developer even posted how his application does it’s magic. Even though I don’t usually play Sudoku, this is enormous fun! Click on the images for larger versions.

If you have an original or a 3G iPhone and upgraded to the latest 3.0 software you must be one happy bunny. Aside from the top-tier features in what has become a brand new phone there are lots of little changes and not-so-obvious features I found. So here’s the Little iPhone Features Guide™ (mini version):

My Number

Entering your phone number in Settings > Phone > My Number will make it visible in the Contacts or Address Book apps. All you have to do is go to the top of your contacts and pull the list down. Above the Search field you should see your number appear. Nice.

Share Contact

Another new 3.0 feature is the ability to send your contacts to someone else over MMS. In the address book there’s now a Share Contact button. Tapping that will bring up the Messages app with the contact information enclosed.

Maps + Compass

This is a 3GS feature only and it’s pretty impressive. Tapping on the “Where am I” icon at the bottom right of the Maps view takes you to where you are using a combination of GPS and WiFi lookup. Tap on it again and the map rotates to show you the direction you’re facing. According to the Apple iPhone how-to pages, Maps will display a cone from the blue dot which denotes the accuracy of the reading – the smaller the angle, the greater the accuracy.

From time to time you may get a strange error whenever the compass is used, like the image below. I have to say I did get strange looks from people when I was waving my iPhone around like a divining rod!

Data Detectors

In the Notes and Mail apps any telephone number or address is automagically recognised. Tapping on a phone number will pop up an alert asking if the number should be dialled. If an address is detected and selected, the Maps app will launch and take you to that address. Very cool.

I’m sure there’s more and I’m keen to try out the Nike+ integration but the 3.0 upgrade is full of changes. It’s always the little things…

This is my Father’s Day gift from my wonderful wife and two lovely daughters.

Gillian upgraded her first generation iPhone to the 3GS, wrapped it up and the girls gave it to me this morning, along with a brilliant home-made card. She now has my one-year-old iPhone 3G along with my wonder and gratitude.

The new phone is very fast and the touch-to-focus camera is fantastic. When I read the specs on the 3GS I was a little bit underwhelmed but having it in my hand really made me appreciate what Apple have achieved: an extremely responsive device which can take great photos and videos, render web pages a lot faster than anything else in the mobile space, track your run with the built-in Nike+ capability, be controlled with voice commands, and a lot more. The innovations also extend to the charger design. Here’s the new charger on the left and the old one on the right:

And yes, I am incredibly lucky to have such a wonderful family.

Not long now. The keynote will be at 6pm tonight and the mac sites are glowing red with rumours.

What I’m really looking forward to, aside from the iPhone 3GS, is the 3.0 software update. I’d love to install it tonight!

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

For as long as I’ve had an iPod (and I’ve had one of the originals), I’ve always filled them with songs. My still-going-strong third generation 40GB iPod is full of music I felt I ought to have. I’ve always been averse to buying single tracks off albums and prefer to get the whole lot. But I have a confession to make… I’m afraid of most of my music. To be precise, I’ve been afraid of using that conceptually huge function known as Shuffle Songs.

No more. I’m facing my fear. I just stuck the iPod in the dreaded mode all afternoon and the last five tracks played are:

I know this is almost 8 years too late, but it’s like having my own eclectic radio station! Yes, I know. It is sad.

Oooh, Supergrass is on! Haven’t heard this in years!

Lots of people I know have been getting text messages or calls from O2 offering them upgrades on either their current or first generation iPhones. Naturally, there’s lots of speculation on the new version and June 8th (during Apple’s Wordwide Developer Conference, or WWDC) seems to be the likeliest release date.

And what will the new killer feature be? Video. Solid-state HD video cameras like the Flip Mino HD and Kodak’s Zi6 are selling well. I find myself looking at these and wondering if I should buy one and then I think: the next iPhone will have this built-in.

iPhone Video. You heard it here first.

Back in November I posted a quick review of one of my favorite iPhone apps, Weightbot. When the app was first released, the units of weight were either in kilos or pounds. I wanted an option for stones & pounds so I put in a request on the Tapbots support board, along with many other UK users. And they listened! A couple of point updates later, Weightbot had all three units.

I’m not 100% sure but I suspect this give the guys at Tapbots the idea for Convertbot. I bought the app just before our holiday in Bahrain to do quick currency conversions (even though there are free apps to do this). I wasn’t much surprised to see that the Bahraini Dinar wasn’t on the initial list of currencies. As before with Weightbot, I put in a request on the support site. As of version 1.1, the Bahraini Dinar is in the list!

Of course, Convertbot isn’t just a currency converter. It does length, mass, power, temperature, speed and lots more. The interface is very well thought out and nearly sublime. At £1.19 on the App Store, it’s well worth getting. Tapbots also have a free, stripped down version called Convertbot Mini.

Here’s a quick and handy tip if you want up-to-date exchange rates on the iPhone. The Stocks app lets you do that for free. All you have to do is add a new stock with both currencies three-letter codes like so:

GBPUSD=X

That’s it! You should get the current rate as well as a historical graph underneath.

I watched the iPhone 3.0 SDK presentation and kept on hoping for that Arabic will be integrated or displayed correctly at the least. Nothing was explicitly announced but I was intrigued when Scott Forstall mentioned enhanced Language features. Well it looks like the 3.0 OS will be fully Arabic aware!

Google finally switched on UK Street View in the Maps application on the iPhone and in Maps on the web. Here’s the view from outside our office.

Funny… everyone I show this does exactly the same thing: type in their postcode and go “That’s my house! That’s my car! Wow!”