Clay Carson

iPhone Messages: Quick Reply

For two weeks now, iPhone software 3.0 has been making it’s way onto the millions of iPhone around the world. Personally, I’ve found the software, coupled with the new iPhone 3GS, a joy to use.

A while back I posted a requested feature that I wanted pertaining to voicemail; the ability to set somewhat of an away message so that calls could be fielded with a response that was relevant to the time of day or a current circumstance. Well, I have another little something that would make life much easier on the iPhone.

Problem

First of all, let’s walk through an example. Let’s say you are playing a game, watching a movie, or just browsing the Twitter on you iPhone. Then, you get a text, “How about dinner at 7?” dinner at 7 is perfect for you so you hit reply, are taken to Messages and type your response, “Great, I’ll be there.” Now, in 3.0 after sending the message, the app you were in relaunches which is nice, but let’s say you were in the middle of a race and have to restart or you had been a few hours deep into tweets from the day and now have to find your spot again. Pain!

Maybe this is the fault of the applications? Maybe they should be designed to save your place when you receive a call or text (some do, not enough). Or maybe, this is limited due to push notification and background process. But let’s just look at a potential solution…

Solution

Here’s what I want – When the alert pops up to inform you of a new text message, there should either be another option in addition to ‘Close’ and ‘Reply’ or ‘Reply’ should invoke an expanded/drop down window (from the little blue notification box) with room for a response. Hit send and you are right back to where you were.

This would save me so much trouble and hassle and would make leaving what I am currently in the process of doing, unnecessary. I could simply respond and go on as I was.

Google Voice Invitation Request

Google Voice, previously GrandCentral has been in private beta for quite some time now. There is now a shed of light for Voice to become public soon. Sign up and be notified as soon as it is available.

Enable Emoji Icon’s For Free

In case you didn’t know or for whatever reason want to know; if you are looking to enable Emoji icons on your iPhone without jailbreaking and without buying an app, it can be done.

Simply go and download an app called “Spell Numbers”(free), enter the number…

91929394.59

Go into Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboard > Japanese. Now you shoold see 3 options; Emoji, QWERTY, and Kana. Enable Emoji and you shoold be able to use Emoji icons throughout your iPhone applications.

Notes:

Initially, the number was 9876543.21. This may have worked under 2.1 and 2.2 versions of the iPhone software but I had no luck on 3.0.

After enabling the Emoji icons you can uninstall “Spell Numbers.”

Need Screenshots?

Yes, this came out a while ago.

iPhone OS 3.0: The Details

Sebastiaan de With offers an in depth look at some of the subtle changes in the new iPhone software, version 3.0.

Arrested Development Documentary

We always find ourselves talking about the show, reciting lines and recalling scenes, which always ends in hysterical laughter. In late August, a large group of our friend were planning a trip to Yosemite. We were the only two that ended up going and we talked about Arrested Development all weekend. From this trip spawned the Arrested Development Documentary Project (this is a working name), an outlet to take our passion for the show and couple it with the countrywide fan base to educate others and make them aware of this TV gem. continue reading…

(via Laughing Squid)

Microsoft Will Help You Buy an iPhone

Bing, a search engine no one uses, is trying to lure users by offering cash incentives. One of those incentives is a 35% discount at the AT&T Online Store, which means you can get a new iPhone 3G S for as low as $130!

Now is your chance, stick it to Microsoft and AT&T in one fell swoop.

iPhone 3.0 Hidden Features (100+)

Any favorites you may have in the old YouTube app can be merged into your YouTube account when you sign in to the new YouTube app.

Now there is a different way to force quit apps. Now you have to hold the sleep/wake button until the red slider appears, then you hold down the home button to quit the app.

When a phone call interrupts you, after the phone call you are taken back to the app you were in before you were interrupted.

And the list goes on and on and doesn’t ever seem to end. But it does.

iPhone Stencil Kit

A handy tool to sketch out perfect iPhone drafts.

Apple Design Awards

Some winners include…

iPhone

MLB at bat, Postage, Topple, and Tweetie

Mac OS X Leopard

Billings, Boinx TV, Things, and Versions

Remindr: Please Remind Me To

Set a date and a time and then select to be notified of your reminder via Twitter, Jabber or Gtalk, email, or phone.

Evom Converts Video

Remember several months ago when Techspansion, the makers of Visual Hub and iSquint closed their doors. Yeah, it was a sad day. Good news though, Evom has come along to help with all those video conversions.

Check out a little overview from TUAW.

What is Google Wave?

Everyone has been linked to the 1 hr 20 min video from Google telling us all about their new service. However, no one has 1 hr 20 min to watch it. Thankfully, those who do have that time have been kind enough to summarize for the rest of us.

Mashable has also compiled a ‘Google Wave Guide’.

No Dropbox, Just Me

For a few months now I have/had been using Dropbox for backing up my files to the cloud. I knew how popular these online backup services were becoming and because of this reason, decided not to spend $100 for a full year of service and went with the monthly payment plan, $10/month which would cost me an additional $20/year to use the full service (50 GB of storage), when I knew there would be a good chance something better would come around within a year.

Dropbox

I am incredibly impressed with Dropbox, the web interface is beautiful and simple to use; much like things on the desktop. You simple drop the files you would like to backup into the Dropbox folder. I chose just to use the Dropbox folder as my documents folder – I just stored everything there and then it would sync to the web for a recent backup and access wherever I might need it.

Me

Everything was fine and dandy until I noticed that Apple’s Mobile Me was only $56 (now $59) on Amazon. I had been through a trial of Mobile Me upon it being released and like everyone who used the service in the early days, quickly dismissed it as unreliable and an outrageous failure. I felt certain, however, from things I had heard and no recent uproars about the service, that things had been resolved.

Now I was in an interesting position; I would end up paying $120 over a year for 50 GB of online storage. On the other hand, I could pay $56 for 20 GB of online storage, syncing with my iPhone, ‘web-hosting’, ‘Back to my Mac’, a .me address (which comes in handy with GMail issues lately), and all the other extras provided by Mobile Me.

So when compared, I could get more storage space from Dropbox or more features from Mobile Me. Mobile Me seemed to be the right move. I have been up and running now for a couple of weeks and have had no problems. My only complaint would be the initial sync time. It was quite a bit of data but the upload seemed to take ages. Now I have the benefits of having all my data everywhere and up-to-date to the minute.

I am also running the new, pro version of AirSharing which allows you to access your iDisk server on your iPhone.

Summary

With both of these services, I wish it were possible to just select folders and sync them. I want to be able to sync a folder worth of pictures without having to duplicate it and upload it. I want it to stay where it is but still sync. I might be mistaking but I believe this is a feature that Mozy has.

Dropbox is an excellent service and I am very impressed by everything they are doing. Unfortunately, Amazon strikes again with a great deal and Mobile Me’s features were too much.

Panic Software Sale Coming Soon

Panic makes such popular software as Coda, Unison, and Transmit. They have said that they plan to have some new things coming out later in the year but in a few days, they will be having a sale on their software.

Google Will Advertise Chrome on TV

In a very interesting move, Google has decided to do their own advertising instead of just selling it.

So today, we’re pleased to announce that we’re using Google TV Ads to run our Chrome ad on various television networks starting this weekend. We’re excited to see how this test goes and what impact television might have on creating more awareness of Google Chrome.

“Why Text Messages Are Limited to 160 Characters”

“As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters.

That became Hillebrand’s magic number — and set the standard for one of today’s most popular forms of digital communication: text messaging.”

“Twitter. Triumph of Humanity”

The Mac is dominate amongst the employees at Twitter. Apple presents us with a look inside the ways the Mac is utilized at the Twitter HQ.

“The use cases we see emerging tell us that twitter is a minimalist communication tool that is very powerful. The Mac is the same way. It offers beautiful design, simple elegance, and a system that’s incredibly flexible and powerful to use.”

“40 Awesome iPhone Application Websites”

Apparently and expectedly, the designers of some of the most beautiful iPhone applications, also make some pretty websites.

Glims for Safari

Glims gives Safari several features that enhance the experience greatly; Multiple search engine options, restore sessions, focus on search field for new windows, full screen browsing and most importantly (for me) the ability to undo “close tab” using cmd+z.

App Storm has a great overview of some of the features.

“18 Things You Can Learn From Zappos”

Robert Scoble takes a look around the Zappos offices and learns a little bit about the culture and atmosphere at the company.

Tapbots App Store Success

The guys at Tapbots outline their great success as iPhone developers and their future plans as full time developers.

“We’ve been juggling day jobs with Tapbots for almost 9 months now. As of now that’s no longer the case. This month, Mark and I both gave our respective notices and we’re now going to be able to give Tapbots 100% of our energy. I think it’s nothing short of amazing that we are able to support ourselves with $0 investment (other than time) and all of it $1-$3 at a time. Weightbot sold 100k copies in its first 100 days, Convertbot is selling at about twice that rate. To say we’re excited about the future is an understatement. We’d like to thank all of you guys for getting us to this point.”

If you haven’t already, go check out their beautifully designed Convertbot and Weightbot, both very affordable and very fuctional.

“Should Comic Sans Be Banned”

If you love it, you don’t know much about typography.

And if you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography either and you should get another hobby.

- Vincent Connare (Creator of Comic Sans)

A short (8:20) video about the excessive use of Comic Sans and the generation that has grown up with it all around. (via Lifehacker)

Design Police

See a violation? Call them out. It is now your responsibility.

Deskography

Post an image of your workspace. This is perfect for those of you proud of your windowless view and the workstation that you are in front of your entire life. (i.e. Me)

Get Your Wallpaper On

In honor of absolutely nothing at all and for no real reason, I’d like to release a new wallpaper.

To view all of my other little tid-bits of work, check out the Projects page.

Spreadtweet

Just in case big boss man doesn’t approve of tweeting on company time, it might be a good idea to pretend to do actual work.

Moving Day

I am in the midst of moving things from claycarson.net, to their new home here. Who knows how long this might take but in the mean time, if you are looking for content, visit claycarson.net.

Stay tuned.

Edit:

So here is what is going to happen – I am going through all my posts and going to do a hard clean-up and eliminate all the ‘crap’ that I wrote at claycarson.net. This way, I start things off with a solid start and some popular posts and things that I find informative.

1 Billion Apps Countdown

Apple will be giving away a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro in honor of the apps store reaching 1 billion downloads.

Behind the Scenes at Netflix

A slideshow of the goings on of day to day life at Netflix.

“Transcript of ‘HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog with Credibility!’”

Here is the text (around 13500 words) from the SxSW panel featuring Merlin Mann and John Gruber. It sure would be nice to have some audio or video.