bioneural.net » iphone

Gearing up for SSL to WordPress with Safari

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

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 :

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.

Fire Eagle from Yahoo! aids location sharing

Bruce — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:32:51 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Fire Eagle is a free service from Yahoo! that provides a conduit for updating a centrally-stored current location, permitting delivery of location-aware services by means of an API allowing developers to resolve and share user location across various applications. Care has been taken to address privacy concerns by keeping choice in the hands of users, who can update their location manually or automatically from "anywhere". For example, Fire Updater on your MacBook might put you in a London hotel, while subsequent telemetry from SearchQuest GPS on iPhone tells your mates which pub to find you at; a least one WordPress plug-in is in development.

First track logger for iPhone released

Bruce — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:55:08 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Hot on the heels of the first geocaching tool for iPhone, iTrail by Justin Davis (£1.80) records your position and altitude over time to calculate speed and distance (horizontal and vertical) travelled during sports activities—a great addition to the growing list of fitness-related apps for the device. Tracks are stored locally for comparison, but GPX and KML export is planned (and should permit use for geotagging with a "real" camera). Meantime you can graphically plot distance vs. speed or altitude (preview) and view your tracks on a Google Map (preview) within this very cool app.

Medical and health app bonanza for iPhone

Bruce — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:28:42 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

A year ago I bemoaned the lack of third-party native iPhone apps and could suggest few workarounds for absent medical applications. Looking back at The medical Palm (written in 2004) serves to illustrate how stagnant the Palm platform has become—my list of software was essentially unchanged when I retired my Palm from clinical practice earlier in 2008. Although I did experiment with Windows Mobile and tried equivalent medical applications, it wasn't a relationship with a future. Following the lukewarm reception of Web apps Apple's native App Store for iPhone/ iPod touch opened on July 10, and the mobile medical landscape has been transformed in the space of just three weeks. Already we have seen the release of some impressive tools aimed at doctors, medical students, and patients/ well-being enthusiasts. iPhone apps for clinical practice Epocrates Rx (free) is a cross-platform drug formulary featuring monographs, a new visual "Pill ID" tool, an interaction checker (something I found especially useful on home visits using the Palm version), prescribing formularies (downgraded to US-only), and free wireless updates: Which "little white pill" do you mean Mrs Smith? (© Epocrates, Inc.) iChart EMR (£80) is an electronic medical record manager with patient lists, lab reports (manual or automated* retrieval), electronic prescribing*, diagnostic/ procedure codes and billing, and notes (with drawings and graphing of vitals) modules (* requires additional $US100 pa subscription for sync via a web-based application): A clinical information system in your pocket (© Caretools, Inc.) MIM (free) will appeal to referring physicians who can download non-diagnostic radiological images for ...

RouteBuddy To Go for your iPhone

Bruce — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:48:43 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

I've been spending a lot of time lately using RouteBuddy (more on that soon), and also too much time playing with various apps from the App Store for iPhone/ iPod touch. Among other functions RouteBuddy allows you to create high-quality road maps upon which you can plot custom points-of-interest (waypoints), or display track logs and route plans. While these maps may look stunning on a 23" Cinema Display as you zoom in and out, that's not hardware you can tuck under your arm as you explore unfamiliar streets on foot. True, you could just print the maps, but Apple's iPhone offers a high resolution yet compact viewport—so why not go paper free? There are several native apps for iPhone that make this prospect enticing; here's how to fake your own RouteBuddy To Go and how to create waypoints in RouteBuddy using your iPhone's location awareness. Take your RouteBuddy maps mobile Firstly, this method assumes that you have purchased RouteBuddy and have licensed suitable mapping (you can of course use other map data e.g. Google Maps) and that you have purchased FileMagnet from Magnetism (or, pending release, an alternative file sync solution and viewer for iPhone). Open RouteBuddy and maximize the map view to encompass the area you are interested in. You can capture this map in one of two FileMagnet-compatible ways: Enter Command-Shift-4 on the keyboard to bring up the crosshair tool and drag it across the dimensions of the map view then release to make a screen capture. Rename the Picture 1.png file ...

First geocaching tool for iPhone released

Bruce — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:29:41 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Geopher Lite, available from the iTunes App Store for £2.39, will help you find nearby geocaches from Geocaching.com using a directional arrow and location awareness on your iPhone. It doesn't support Bluetooth GPS receivers/ data loggers and is extremely basic compared to GeoNiche for Palm, but is a welcome development nevertheless. A more complete app is promised in due course.

WordPress for iPhone

Bruce — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:29:17 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

WordPress for iPhone is now available via the iTunes App Store and is compatible with both self-hosted and WordPress.com blogs. Photobloggers will appreciate that images taken with their iPhones can be included in posts and previewed with Safari. As with desktop clients, changes introduced in WordPress 2.6 mean you'll need to enable "insecure" XML-RPC services to permit remote publishing/ editing, otherwise will get an error (preview). It appears this 1.0 app ignores your ramblings after the more tag (preview), severely limiting its use.

iPhone geotagging good for a laugh only

Bruce — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:59:23 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Geotagging outdoors with the original iPhone—which uses triangulation of cell tower signals—seems to be as entertaining as some of the "productivity tools" in the App Store. In other words, laughably useless. While the iPhone did somewhat erroneously relocate a pavement sign to the North Sea shipping lanes, it also managed to pin a photo of a rose to within 1.4km of the actual location. How can it be so inconsistent, and are things really as bad as they seem? The new iPhone 3G features built-in GPS, which although limited at present offers the prospect of enjoying a growing number of location-aware applications. One of these is geotagging using iPhone's built-in camera, and the good news is that those with first generation iPhones can update to version 2.0 firmware and experience similar functionality. Similar, not the same—because the original iPhone contains no GPS receiver hardware, and for reasons unknown Apple's Bluetooth implementation is currently neutered so iPhone cannot be paired to a data logger. The image below was recorded in Chesterfield, pretty much in the middle of the UK. To plot the iPhone-geotagged location you'll need to download the images using iPhoto; it's no use e-mailing them from the phone, because the EXIF-GPS data are stripped out. Something for Apple to fix! iPhone now includes "location awareness" for candid photography Aside: The "pick up or pay up" pavement graffiti is put down by the local council, using biodegradable spray paint. Despite such signs it's still a case of "eyes down" in our neighbourhood, as most ...

Silent and grey iTunes movie rentals

Bruce — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:47:51 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Well behind the American iTunes Store, earlier this month (June 2008) Apple gave iTunes Store customers in the UK the chance to rent (or purchase) movie downloads. Initially I wasn't sure I'd want to watch movies at my computer, even though I have a good screen and sound system. But I had to try it. With a 17Mbps downstream broadband connection getting the movie onto the computer posed no problem (a typical 1GB movie takes a few minutes). Trouble is all I see is a grey box with no audio. Now that I can't do it, of course I'm more inclined to want to. My iTunes Store account allows me to playback my DRM-protected iTunes music, a free TV episode, and a purchased short film with no problems. I'm running the latest version of OS X (10.5.3) with the latest version of iTunes (7.6.2) and QuickTime (7.5). I've now tried renting two films, hearing nothing and seeing only this during desktop playback: Hmmm.. if I wanted to look at nothing but dull grey I shouldn't have to pay for it—I can just look out the window at English skies. Oddly, when I moved the movie onto my iPhone I could watch it (and hear it) as expected. It seems I'm not alone having this issue, according to discussion in the Apple Support Forums. A number of suggestions have been made, most of which I have tried to no avail: Re-installed QuickTime 7.5 (on top of the previous: there is no "uninstaller"); Re-installed iTunes; Removed ...