Wordpress App for iPhone finally arrives

Today I was pleased to discover the Wordpress App on the App Store. With six apart having a Typepad App available from App Store launch day Wordpress users had been feeling a little left out. This was especially frustrating as using Wordpress from the iPhone Safari browser was near impossible with unedutable forms and crashes.

Summary
Liked:
+ Easy to use
+ includes all important fields (even tags & categories)
+ Saves a draft of your work if you get interrupted by a phone call
+ all work done locally so don’t have to worry about losing signal/connection when writing
+ Can insert photos from camera or photo library
+ has a preview mode that even downloads you wp theme where possible
+ Accepts HTML tags

Didn’t like:
- Crashes if you switch connection type in the middle of submission (e.g. Switch from GPRS to 3G or wifi to edge)
- no control over image placement
- HTML is hard to write on iPhone and no shortcuts are provided in the app. Would liked to have seen buttons for open/closing common tags like strong tags
- impossible to demonstrate code as even & amp and & gt gets converted to & and > when you save.
EDIT:- images get resized to 300px wide regardless of whether image was larger/smaller before

More
Setting up was easy enough. Just provide the URL of your blog and login details. The App doesn’t seem to handle http or www prefix so make sure you start with the domain/subdomain. Seems to support both wordpress.com and self hosted wordpress blogs. You can add multiple blogs and switch between them in the main menu. I don’t think you can post a single entry to multiple blogs though.

Once you enter your chosen blog you see your last 10 posts which can be editted or deleted. You can if course create a new post. The interface is simple to use with fields for title tags and you main text. You can also choose which category to post in and add new categories. Be warned view categories or adding new ones requires Internet access and if you witch from 3G to edge/wifi or vica versa while connecting the app locks up. It appears to be continually trying to submit/retrieve data but never finishes. This is more of an iPhone bug than a problem with the App. A timeout fail would be good though so you can save your work and try again.

The app doesn’t try and be too flash with graphics or effects. This is good as stability of the app is very important as a lock up or drop out can loose your hard work. Apart from when connecting to the blog and having the crash I described above the app has been stable. So although I still recommend saving often you should have problems with losing your work. Just don’t submit you post until you have a solid connection and are not moving.

At first I thought the app only supported plain text posts. However, after hitting done the virtual keyboard is replaced by a new menu which give the options of Write, Pictures, Preview and settings. Pictures allows you to insert images from you camera or photo library. Seeing as you can save images from the web into your photo library and this really gives you a lot of freedom to add imagery to your posts. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to control image place lment though. All images get inserted at the end of your post.

The Preview mode is very useful it downloads your current Wordpress theme from your site and renders your new post in context. Unfortunately it didn’t manage to retrieve my theme and so a simple preview was used. This was still helpful as I was then able to test if the HTML I used would render correctly or show up in the post. The HTML I tested worked fine. Unfortunately, the app is a little too enthusiastic with rendering HTML as even code you want to display is converted. For example & amp becomes & if you put the symbol with text, even if you do not finish with a semi-colon.

The settings option let’s you modify the time stamp and password protect entries, so even less commonly used settings are available.

Actually posting your blog when finished isn’t immediately obvious. There is no SUBMIT/make it go button. Just a status you can change from local draft to Published. It also allows you set status to online draft so you can finish off at a Desktop computer before making it live. For the purpose of testing I am posting this direct from my iPhone.

Overall a great App that every Wordpress blogger with an iPhone should have. A few minor quirks than hopefully can get worked out by future updates. Most importantly it is stable and works. This App recieves a FFE gold award.

iPhone: The Phone of Choice for Super Heros (and Villans)

This weekend I spoted the iPhone being used by various celebrity heroes and villains. Seems to be all the rage:

Lord Vader still can’t get used to working without a stylus

Supergirl calls up Superman and complains about him swapping costumes again:

Batgirl checks where she parked the Batmobile on google maps:

Captain America watches videos of Wonder Woman on YouTube:

Batman likes that it comes in black (matches his outfit) but still keeps his in his pocket:

For a more serious look at iPhone 3G check the reviews at testfreaks.co.uk

The App store spells death to Jailbreaking the iPhone?

I’d love to say that the quality of Apps on the Apple App store is so superior to those made for jailbroken iPhones that no one would bother jailbreaking anymore. However, this is definitely not the case. While a few of the apps are quite polished a lot are on par with their jailbreak equivalents and many jailbreak apps will never make it to the Apps store as they will upset network providers or apple - e.g. the app that allows you to create multiple iTunes library’s on the phone so you can sync with more than one computer, or VoIP apps that allow you to make calls without getting charged a penny by your mobile provider.

Add to this the fact that most of the apps on via AppTapp on a jailbroken phone are free and it makes jailbreaking your new iPhone 3G very tempting. Some have already managed it as seen in this video:

So what are we waiting for - lets unlock our phones and get lots of free App goodness. BUT WAIT Jailbreaking was tolerated before and some of the jailbreak app developers have been welcomed on to the App store… however, before Apple had no competing service to rival the jailbreak apps and now they do. They will not want users to be able to choose between a free jailbreak app when they are trying to sell a similar App for $9.99 in the App Store.

So what will Apple do. Expect a lot tighter policing of iPhones. Regular updates closing loopholes that hackers have used to jailbreak, and even bricking of phones that it detects have been tampered with. While not illegal it will be a lot riskier jailbreaking your phone this time round.

O2 loses iPhone 3G order

After both my brother and I received a confirmation email from O2 for our iPhone order we were both happy and expecting delivery of our phones today.

It seems a confirmation email is not enough. Concerned that I had received a follow up email confirming dispatch of my phone and he had not he called O2 today. Despite his confirmation email they explained they had no record of his order and they were out of stock so couldn’t help him! He now joining the queues outside an O2 store somewhere.

I double checked tracking on my order and it still shows my phone has been dispatched and picked up by DHL at 12:15 yesterday and it has reached Dartford at 6:21 this morning so fingers crossed.

iPhone 3G hands on

I got a very welcome email from O2 advising the status of my iPhone order:
We’re pleased to inform you that your O2 upgrade order has now been dispatched.

Your delivery details are:
Option: STANDARD DELIVERY
Cost: £0.00
Date of Delivery: Next working day

I then got hands-on an actual iPhone 3G. It feels completely different in the hand - partly because it’s shape is different and also because the back is plastic and not metal. I can’t say whether it feels better or worse- just different. I’m definitely less likely to drop it as it fits in the curve of the hand better.

First port of call was to check out the GPS on google maps. I didn’t manage to get a blue GPS dot but it was quick to locate me based on my wifi connection. Found maps to be overall more responsive.

I next checked out the app store. This works like a combination of the jailbreak appTapp and the iPhone iTunes store. It was quick and had quite a few apps already available to download. Most were chargeable.

The camera was not mentioned during the iPhone 3G announcements and tour and for good reason. It is just as bad as before - no noticeable improvement except again response time is slightly better.

I only had a few minutes with it so didn’t get to test out 3G speeds but I’ve had 3G phones before so know what to expect there.

Not sure if improved responsiveness was because there is better hardware or because I’m comparing to my iPhone which I’ve jammed up with about 30 jailbreak apps.

Will write more when I have my own one tomorrow, then I can download Apps.

More reviews at testfreaks.co.uk

iPhone 3G out of stock in UK

First Carphone Warehouse Pre-orders went out of stock. Then there were rumours that O2 had gone out of stock. Now 2 mins after I got my order in the O2 site is confirming that they have sold out of online stock. This means that any remaining stock is reserved for launch day and is likely to be in high demand. Looks like those out camping aren’t so crazy after all.

There are also rumours that some stock intended for Canada may find it’s way over to Europe. Whether this is true, or if it has anything to do with the backlash against Canadian phone operators excessive rates or just because of higher demand in Europe no one knows.

As my pervious post indicates - as to whether my order or others went through successfully remains to be seen.

Continue reading »

O2 remove validation to spare customers continued iPhone 3G upgrade misery

If you are a UK iPhone user looking to upgrade or if you have been following the story on this blog you no doubt know the problems O2 have been having taking orders from their customers wanting to upgrade.

Now rather than trying to validate each order against their existing accounts and/or taking payments/credit checks at the time of order it seems the order form has been changed. Now all visitors to https://upgrades.o2.co.uk are pushed onto the failover form and the details are taken without processing and the user is greeted with this message: Thank you for your order. We are processing this and will contact you if there are any complications with the details you have provided.

While not a fix this is an improvement that spares users continually re-trying the site and allows O2 to process the information off-line at their leisure and contact users that have entered erroneous data or could not be validated.

Fingers crossed my details are not lost.

iPhone 3G O2 upgrade update

After 5hrs of failed attempts and hearing rumours that the iPhone 3G 16gb sold out already I was getting rather angry and frustrated. I called up O2 who reassured me that they had not sold out and that they have sufficient stock to cover all existing iPhone users. However, the stats worry me.

She advised that 80k text messages were sent out this morning.
She also stated they had a total of 80k iPhones in stock.
She said that they have 9000 calls from users complaining about the website so far this morning.
I also said I had heard Carphone warehouses’ pre-orders had sold out which she said isn’t true - but checking their site it is still showing as sold out.

What worries me is
1) If they have 80k iPhones in stock this will mostly include 8GB models so the rumour that the 16GB is sold out is possibly true
2) If they have 80K instock how much of that is reservered for the launch day? They are not going to open stores with no stock are they? So is this figure reserved for upgraders - I doubt it
3) If 9000 users have called to complain are the other 71k getting their orders in?

It is looking less and less likely that I’ll be getting an iPhone on release day and it’s not for want of trying. Apple must be shaking their head.

O2 botch iPhone 3G upgrade release

O2 are anticipating long queues at stores this Friday as the iPhone 3G is launched in the UK. To help reduce congestion existing iPhone customers are being forced to place their order online rather than come into store on the day.

This morning O2 users that had signed up to be notified when they could order their upgrade received a text message advising orders could be made from 8am today. The problem is O2 upgrade site couldn’t handle the demand and soon fell over and now there is only a maintenance page.

O2’s response when questioned about it was that the site went down due to “high demand”. Where they not expecting high demand? There will be very few iPhone owners not looking to upgrade to the 3G so they have to have expected a large number of people ordering. However, despite this rather than set up a robust site to handle the many orders the site was hosted in the US and they used a flash interface with frames!

Many users will not even have seen the flash interface as it often timed out and failed over to a HTML form that could not be processed by the back end system. I personally tried the form 4-5 times and the Flash interface I managed to get 2- stages in before it failed too. O2 eventually put an end to users misery by putting up a maintenance page.

Did they offer telephone orders to compensate for their lack of a site? No - infact the upgrades option on their phone system has been disabled and their sales team have been told they cannot take iPhone upgrade orders over the phone.

It’s embarassing for O2 and for Apple that they do not have the infrastructure to handle a big launch like this. Lets hope that Friday’s new customer release will be handled better. I suspect the majority of the demand for the phones will come for Apple fans who will already have an iPhone rather from the new user but we will see by this time next week.

Review: Gelaskins - protection for iPhone

As gorgeous and slick as the iPhone looks it can very easily have it’s looks tarnished by scratches and marks. That’s why one of the best selling accessories for the iPhone is the screen protector. The thin sheet of plastic protexts the screen from scratches but what about the rear of the phone. Often the phone is lying on it’s back on a desk getting scuffed while the protected screen is face up and unharmed.

I have tried several leather cases but always end up discarding them and going back to an unprotected phone. This is because one of the main attractions of the iPhone is it’s compactness and sleek curves which are lost when a chunky cases is added. No one likes the unsightly bulge in a suit pocket from a chunky phone or wallet.

So when GelaSkins contacted me about their protective skins for iPhone I was very interested to see if this could be a good solution. I must admit that when I first saw the skins they appeared to simply be colourful stickers, I was a little sceptical as to their value. However, after using it I would definitely recommend them.

Firstly the initial attaching of the protective sticker couldn’t be easier. I am not the most skilled at applying stickers correctly as I ruined several screen protectors in the past trying to get it to line up with the iPhone screen without bubbles, so was surprised with how easy it was to apply. The GelaSkins uses 3Ms special adhesive that allows you to remove and re-stick the skin without leaving a residue or losing stickiness. It also doesn’t bubble and I got it in just the right spot first time. My Brother-in-law had less success as he claimed there was some bubbling for him but when he tried to show me the bumps had worked themselves out so he had a perfect finish to.

GelaSkins offer a range of designs from over 50 artists. They really do look eye catching on the phone and make your phone stand out from other plain iPhones. You can also download a matching graphic from the GelaSkins website to use as your phone background image. Then the design appears on both sides of the phone. As several of my friends have the iPhone it’s great to be able to pick mine out from the bunch when they are all lying on the coffee table.

The skin is thicker than a screen protector and has a nice feel to it. It definitely feels touch and despite my best efforts I was unable to scratch it, let alone the iphone underneath. The skins add very little thickness to the iPhone, infact I was still able to use the same leather cases with the skin on.

I was a little worried that the skin would cause the iPhone to overheat as it already gets very hot when using wifi/edge for extended periods. While the iPhone got very warm no more so than usual.

Although the skin is great for protecting the iPhone from scratches they do little to protect the phone from being dropped. If you are looking for protection from dropping the phone then I recommend getting a padded case and phone insurance.

One downside with the skin is that it covers over the most expesive component on the iPhone - the Apple logo. For me this is not a problem - for hard-core Apple fans that might be put off by this they’ll be pleased to know that it is easy enough to remove the skin and show off that Apple logo again without leaving a nasty stick residue.

Gelaskins also make skins for the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP), Nintendo DS, iPods and laptops. The 15inch laptop skins look fantastic.