I remember the days when I steered very clear from Apple products.  Everything I needed in a computing devices came with PCs and Windows, and still do.  After winning a iPhone 2G from a White Elephant gift exchange my work organized a couple years ago, I’ve slowly discovered the allure of iDevices.  Having just recently finally upgraded to an iPhone 3GS I find it’s versatility outweighs it’s drawbacks almost every day.  From all my music in the car with my Jabra Cruiser to games to extremely useful Apple-approved and jailbreak apps plus a quick and responsive phone for SMS, MMS, e-mail, and phone calls, this pocket-sized device connects me to almost everything and everyone.  Now it gets better with VideoStream

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Being an avid believer in “where there is a will, there is a way”, I’ve finally discovered a solution to a moderate annoyance I’ve had with an otherwise fantastic device – the Jabra Cruiser.  I picked up one from Amazon for about $40 a couple weeks ago and it’s a vast improvement over any FM transmitter (roadtrip/itrip) I’ve used so far.  It turns out the issue isn’t actually with the Cruiser itself but with the iPhone’s half-assed support for the AVRCP bluetooth protocol.
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Good thing I’ve been under the impression that encouraging patience in my own personality will eventually prevent me from going completely ape-shit.  I’ve been having a hell of a time with iOS4 and my iPhone 3G.  The folders feature was really the only thing that got me hot and bothered about iOS4 especially since a lot of the more helpful features weren’t even supported on the 3G.  Unfortunately that came at the cost of overall speed.  It took at least 10 seconds, every single time, to open up just the SMS app and I experienced that same blazing fast performance for every app.  Some apps wouldn’t even open at times or they would just hang all together and just trying to answer most phone calls made me want to skip the phone across pavement instead of having a phone at all. Read more

The iPhone keyboard hasn’t been the most difficult keyboard I’ve tried to use but any mobile keyboard generally isn’t built for speed. In a jam, I could find using a full sized keyboard useful if the battery in the netbook is dead and I need to get an important email out or even if I just want to write out extensive SMS messages. At a mere $5 I had to check out how well this jailbreak bluetooth keyboard app worked and now I’m writing this blog post from my phone on my bluetooth keyboard. It works well and I can use it in all the apps I’ve tested so far. No lag and best of all, I have more screen real-estate because the onscreen keyboard doesn’t need to be up while I’m using a physical one! The author of this app also created the mono headset bluetooth app I briefly wrote about recently.

I’ve never liked those silly bluetooth headsets people leave in their ears all the time.  To be honest, it just looks a little lame, even when you are using it but especially when you aren’t.  Despite that opinion, I actually have one but haven’t used it in over 2 years which is right around when I got my first iPhone.  Well apparently, a few months ago, a jailbreak app was released that lets you route all audio through the bluetooth connection.  Now I can listen to a horrible quality version of all my music should I misplace my headphones!

Windows Live Mesh?  Heck no… Ubuntu One?  Still not doing it for me.  What’s this?  A file synchronization client for Windows, Mac, Linux (GNOME), and iPhone?  *faints*

Enter the Dropbox (dropbox.com)

Since I’ve recently gone back to school I’ve had a hell of a time keeping my files synced between my desktop and netbook.  The band-aid was to use a USB stick but to be honest it’s been such a pain.  From keeping track of it, making sure I always had it with me, just having to plug it in and unplug it, and hell… I’ve even lost one or two of them before but with Dropbox all I need is an internet connection once in a while to synchronize files and I’ve got everything I need where and when I need it.  Your first 2 GB are free!

Dropbox – Home – Online backup, file sync and sharing made easy..

Remember all those iPhone tethering apps that were on Cydia/Icy?  Forget ‘em!  I know most of my posts aren’t necessarily ground-breaking material but I couldn’t find one forum post or blog that had both information about tethering your iPhone and linking it to Ubuntu 9.10 so here goes. Read more

Out of all the cool iPhone apps I’ve tried out lately this one is the most useful one that I’ll probably rarely use (yes, confusing) – it’s the WordPress 2 app. If I really wanted to make a post worth reading I would probably wait till I was sitting in front of a full blow computer or laptop/netbook to do so. It is a cool little app though, some minor rough edges in parts but totally useable!

[edit: I just discovered a really fantastic feature of this program after it had a little hicup and crashed while I was editing a post. After relaunching it, a message displayed informing me that the changes I made to the message I was working on had been restored. I was able to resume editing the message right where I left off. I really don't mind apps crashing now and then, let's be honest, even the built in iPhone apps crash from time to time (like SMS) but when a free app like this does then gracefully recovers it's a beautiful thing! ]

I used to have a much simpler app back in the days of firmware 1.x that used VNC – as a server on the desktop and a viewer on the iPhone. It didn’t show the desktop background on the iPhone but allowed for remote cursor movement and keyboard input. That was free and only available to the brave mass of people who have jailbroken their iPhone at the time. Back then the process was a little more hairy than it is today but I digress.  Before Mobile Air Mouse I really wished they had updated that other app to work on the 3.x firmware but now that I’m done whining I’ll get to the point…
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