bioneural.net » iphone

Air Sharing between iPhone and Mac

Bruce — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:14:38 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Air Sharing is a fab app for iPhone that lets you mount a file store on the device to the desktop as a wireless share. You can browse your files using any decent web browser, and even upload files to the phone—albeit one file at a time. This limitation can be overcome by mounting the iPhone as a network drive (on Mac from the Finder Go > Connect to Server... and enter the server address). Rather than have to visit this menu each time, wouldn't it be nice if there were a one-click way to mount iPhone? There's a app for that. Yep, there's an app for that if you're willing to make one. Fear not, this is very simple using Automator which brings AppleScripting to the Rest of Us. The iPhone supports Apple's Bonjour networking protocol, and can be recognised by either the assigned device name or IP address. If like me you use your iPhone on more than one WiFi network, it might be assigned a different IP address via DHCP. Because of this it makes sense to use the iPhone's Bonjour name rather than IP address, which you can identify from within Air Sharing by taping on the WiFi icon: My Air Sharing app is built with three Automator actions: Get Specified Servers, Connect to Servers, and Show Growl Notification (Growl is an essential OS X add-on). In Automator drag these actions to the right side of the window in the order shown: In the Get Specified Servers action click Add ...

iPhone 2G on O2 Simplicity contract

Bruce — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:09:37 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

If you liked the concept of a new iPhone 3GS but found the contract tariffs and Pay & Go up-front costs unpalatable, now might be a good time to obtain a pre-loved iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G. I have an iPhone 2G which I previously unlocked and used on Vodafone UK, but found myself drawn to O2's offer of unlimited O2 to O2 calls—not to mention avoidance of the need to unlock the device and the hassle around firmware updates that doing so entails. I had to dig around the Interwebs and make a support phone call to discover all I needed to know to get up and running with O2 Simplicity; that knowledge is summarized below. Feel free to contribute any further tidbits! Know the limitations of your phone As a glance at this chart from Apple will show, tethering and MMS are not supported on 2G iPhones: © Apple Despite the implications of this chart, you can receive picture messages on 2G iPhones, in a roundabout way (see below). Incidentally, MMS will apparently work fine on iPhone 3G but tethering requires purchase of a bolt-on plan from O2, although can be enabled without easily enough—but doing so risks disconnection. Know the limitations of your tariff A Simplicity tariff isn't the same as an iPhone tariff; O2 couldn't really make the former too attractive or they'd cannibalise sales of iPhones on contract. For the clear benefit of a month-by-month contract at a lesser price, you have to give something up. Not a lot, to be ...

Swine flu apps pervert free informatics

Bruce — Sun, 24 May 2009 07:17:42 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Information wants to be exploited—and that's generally a good thing. Exploitation has downsides too and these seem to be manifest when you look at the growing epidemic of iPhone apps pertaining to swine (novel, Mexican, or H1N1) influenza that you can pay to download from Apple's iTunes for use on your iPhone. As of today I count nineteen paid apps (in the UK store) and thirteen provided free-of-charge (although these may include paid advertisements). Do we need so much choice? Do we need flu updates on mobile devices at all? What are the risks associated with this expeditious development? 'Greedy pigs' priced from 0.59p to £2.99. Some of the apps, such as Swine Flu Tracker Map (free), appear to be fairly well implemented, often merely aggregating content from online information sources but sometimes paraphrasing static material such as FAQs: Other apps are very clearly rush-jobs, some even turning what is a serious global threat into a game. None of these applications are produced by authoritative official information sources such as WHO or the CDC, and most have the audacity to charge for information they had no hand in producing but have extracted verbatim from freely available sources. Information that is constantly changing. Can these authors maintain the motivation to constantly update the static advice within their applications? Can Apple's App Store approval process, with it's virtually non-existant quality assurance standards, possibly keep up? Some apps—specifically those incorporating Google Maps—are in violation of the data provider's terms of use (others are using OpenStreetMap, presumably ...

iPhone 3.0 almost medical tricorder 1.0

Bruce — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:11:50 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

I was always envious of the standard-issue Starfleet medical tricorder that "Bones" McKoy would employ with no-touch relish to confirm "He's dead, Jim!". At a recent iPhone OS 3.0 sneak peak event Apple unveiled a new developer API with accessory support that was exemplified by two biomedical applications. Tricorder evolution (images © GeekAlerts, Apple) Existing options Prior to OS 3.0 iPhone users have had access to a number of "soft" tricorder options, albeit with somewhat limited functionality. There are several excellent medical knowledge management applications for iPhone, as noted here previously and recently in the British Medical Journal. One novel app, iStethoscope (video demo here), uses the microphone of your iPhone to auscultate your heart beat; there are also entertainment value-only eye candy tricorder apps. Coming soon The potential for telemedical applications to upload real-time data to remote clinical information systems could revolutionise aspects of clinical governance—the right provider (your own) offering the right advice (based on actual biometrics) to the right person (authenticating with your phone) in the right place (wherever you happen to be) at the right time (now, not next week when there's a free appointment). Apple's March 17 keynote event (787MB .m4v) introducing the iPhone 3.0 OS offered a glimpse into this future. Developers can now write applications that "talk" directly to hardware accessories, such as medical devices, via the dock connector, bluetooth, or WiFi/ Internet. For example, if the iPhone were connected to a sphygnometer it could read and store blood pressure measurements, providing historical charts and trend identification. According ...

Share Twitter locations using Google Maps

Bruce — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:44:25 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

With my tweets integrated into WordPress the next challenge was to integrate my Twitter location with my custom Google Map. This recipe uses a WordPress theme functions.php file and the excellent Geo Mashup plug-in for WordPress. One advantage of this method is that you don't need to add custom location tags to each tweet (as you do for example here using Pipes). This method simply reads the location as set in your Twitter profile until you change it (and tweet again). The code given here tested on Geo Mashup 1.1.3 and WordPress 2.7.1. Setting your location in Twitter You can manually update the text of your Twitter profile location on the web via Settings > Account > Location, but an easier way to do this is via a location-aware client such as Tweetie or Twitterrific for iPhone, either of which can optionally update your profile location in conjunction with a tweet: Alternatively if you want to update your location without tweeting use a client such as Sparrow for iPhone (which will simultaneously update Fire Eagle to the same location): Note, however, that the following code extracts your location from the Twitter user timeline so you do need to tweet before this method will reflect your new location. You should be aware of the potential privacy issues around real-time location sharing via services such as Twitter, Yahoo!'s Fire Eagle, and Google's Latitude. Best to keep your location approximate if you publish it at all. A function to get your location from Twitter Create the following function in the functions.php ...

Dropbox and iPhone sitting in a tree

Bruce — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:40 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

It's amazing how easy it is to fill an 8GB iPhone. While apps like FileMagnet (using a proprietary protocol & desktop companion app) and Air Sharing (WebDAV via your desktop or web browser) provide "documents to go" functionality, this only works if your phone is on the same WiFi network as your desktop—and providing you've enough space left after syncing that episode of Battlestar Galactica! Since the iPhone does not offer expandable storage there are two alternatives. The first is to stream media content to the device (e.g. via BBC iPlayer, Internet radio, or DRM-free iTunes tracks). Alternatively, you could temporarily cache and view a limited range of file types via mobile Safari, or download and store various documents retrieved from your FTP server (e.g. via FTP On The Go, MobileStudio)—or make use of the cloud (e.g. via Dropbox or Box). Getting your files into the cloud Dropbox software is available for Mac, PC, and Linux. When installed it creates a local folder on your desktop machine that is automatically synced to an online filestore. You can connect multiple computers to your Dropbox account so that any edits made on one machine are automatically reflected in the local folder on all linked computers: In addition to using the client software, you can access the contents of your Dropbox from any computer or mobile device with a decent web browser. The web interface is very clean and supports uploading of any file type from your desktop: The web interface for uploaded files in a ...

Add a geo field to iPhone and Address Book

Bruce — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:24:13 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Both the Mac OSX Address Book and Contacts/ Phone apps on the Apple iPhone support a custom "geo" field. You can use this field to store GPS coordinates that will open a Google Map when right-clicked on Mac or tapped on iPhone. The reverse geocoding in Google Maps isn't always perfect; this gives you the option to store a more accurate location alongside a human-readable address. Creating a geo field in iPhone Contacts If you have an existing contact with address details in the iPhone Contacts app, tap on the address to launch Maps: Maps will place a pin at the approximate location of the address for that contact: Tap the blue and white arrow on the tag to see the Info screen, then tap the Share Location button at the bottom left: In the mail message body note the GPS coordinate values and jot these down: Go back into Contacts and edit the address to which you want to add the coordinates. Tap the plus icon to add a new address: Tap the address type button at the bottom right of the next screen: Now select geo as the address type: Enter the coordinates you jotted down earlier into the first field: After editing the coordinates should display underneath the existing address: Tapping these coordinates on the iPhone will launch Maps (although you may notice odd pin labels—not sure why that is). After sync you should see the corresponding geo field in Address Book under Mac OSX: If you don't have an existing Contact address you can of course start with ...

Apple Mail To Do folder killed at last

Bruce — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:20:42 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Apple Mail in OS X 10.5 insists on adding 'Apple Mail To Do' folders to your IMAP accounts such as Gmail; delete them and they're back on the next sync. Finally someone has figured out a solution that works. Quit Mail and open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist in BBEdit or similar and search for LocalAccount (as AccountType). Copy the string under the uniqueId key. Now search for the NewNoteToDoAccount key and paste over the LocalAccountId string. You can now delete those pesky folders on the server so they won't show up again in Gmail (as Labels) or in Mail on your iPhone when you relaunch desktop Mail.

Gearing up for SSL to WordPress with Safari

Bruce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:19:01 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

A friend brought an impending WordPress security exploit to my attention, in the form of a CookieMonster. Your data might be at risk if you administer your blog from a public Internet connection (e.g. WiFi in a café). Securing your authentication cookies with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provides a defensive countermeasure for your admin loggins, and WordPress.com users now have a checkbox to "Always use HTTPS when visiting administration pages". That checkbox is absent in self-hosted WordPress 2.6.2, but here's how to enable HTTPS and accelerate your admin sessions using Google Gears via Safari. Lock up all your cookies with a secret key You may have already defined a SECRET_KEY to secure the cookies that store information about your visitors, a feature introduced in WordPress 2.5. If you didn't do this visit key generator 1.0 and copy the output into your wp-config.php file after the opening PHP tag, so it looks something like this (don't use this one):

New icons in GraphicConverter and iTrail

Bruce — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:17:04 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Thorsten Lemke's GraphicConverter is the Swiss Army Knife of image editors, and starting with v6.2 uses the Geotag Icon to clearly highlight geotag-related menu options for showing/ setting positions via Google Earth, editing GPS coordinate values, and geotagging photos via GPX files. iTrail, a track logging app for iPhone, now sports new tab bar and padlock icons I contributed to developer Justin Davis (preview). I was impressed by the extent to which the iPhone SDK manipulates white outline shapes with transparency that result in the inactive grey/ active blue icon states that you see.