iJustine Has Nice Apps

PHOTO: The Winnies 2007 2179.jpg by luismi1985 on Flickr CC BY

Internet celebrity iJustine has five screens worth of apps on her iPhone, and it’s really something that you have to see to believe. I have only two screens worth of apps at the moment (Twitterrific, Facebook, AIM, Last.fm, Remote, Pandora, PhoneSaber, Tap Tap Revolution, and Recorder, in addition to the standard issue apps) and even I find that excessive at times. But five screens? I wouldn’t know where to look for anything. I really wouldn’t.

In other Apple news, a man said by one insider to be as demanding as iJustine’s hero Steve Jobs has been placed in charge of the company’s shaky MobileMe service. Apple vice president Eddy Cue is now heading up the MobileMe team, writes Apple Insider.

Those who are familiar with Cue know him for managing the iTunes Store to resounding global success, but he was also a force behind .Mac and the ever popular Apple Online Store. “It’s the not-sexy part of the company, but it’s the guts that make all of the sexy front ends actually work,” says von Rospach, who crossed paths with Cue during his years of managing Apple’s email lists.

Cue’s teams have long been self-contained, von Rospach adds, spending most of their time in “uncharted territory,” implementing technology that never existed before on large scales “under really scary conditions.” Over the years, he’s earned the respect of Steve Jobs by delivering projects on time, to specification, all while keeping “the darn thing(s) a secret” in the process.

As a MobileMe user, I can only hope that the faith this “insider” has in Cue will eventually be rewarded. MobileMe has run pretty flawlessly for me, but I know it’s probably only a matter of time before it once again crashes hardcore, as it did at launch. When it does crash again, I’ll be very interested to see how swiftly and how decisively Cue takes action. 

Comment on this article here.

My iPhone Is On A Shelf, And Not In My Hands

The iPhone 3G that I ordered just about two weeks ago is on a FedEx truck right now, about to be delivered to my local AT&T store. Am I excited? In a word, yes! But I’m also sad. You see, my wife and I lead such busy lives that we probably won’t be able to get down to the AT&T store until Wednesday. That’s two whole days that my iPhone is going to be sitting on a shelf, within driving distance of my house, and not in my pocket, where it belongs (four days, if you count the fact that it’s been sitting in a nearby FedEx sorting facility since Saturday evening).

To keep myself occupied, and to get myself prepared, I spent some time over the weekend backing up the contact lists from both my phone and my wife’s. I also cleaned up our iCal calendars and organized our Safari bookmarks. Tonight, assuming that a miracle does not happen and that Stephanie and I do not end up home early enough to hit the AT&T store before dinner and bed, I am going to sign up for a free trial of Apple’s MobileMe service. MobileMe got off to a rocky start, as I wrote about on Friday, but over the weekend Apple launched an official MobileMe status blog (Mashable weighs in on this development) that reports many of the services major issues have been resolved or are finally in the process of being resolved. An online Apple Store support person reiterated that message to me during a chat about iPhone cases on Saturday evening.

My hope is that MobileMe will be ready for primetime by the time my birthday rolls around at the beginning of October, which will be, coincidentally enough, right around the time that my free trial runs out. We’ll see.

Comment on this article here.

Worth Your Consideration 012 - A GF5 Linkdump

• I really, really, really hope that Marco Zaldivar wins his lawsuit against T-Mobile over “mandatory” text-message fees. I think it’s ridiculous that the company told Zaldivar that turning off text-messaging was “impossible,” especially when, according to Red Tape Chronicle writer Bob Sullivan, “Verizon, AT&T and Sprint allow consumers to shut down delivery of unwanted text messages.” Me, while I’ve sent and received a few text messages in my time, I wish I had known I could turn them off altogether. I think they’re relatively useless when free alternatives such as e-mail, instant messaging, and Twitter exist. But maybe that just means I’m old.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine star Hugh Jackman made an unannounced appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, and he brought footage from the forthcoming film with him, footage which apparently included a fan-favorite from the comic books who has thusfar not appeared in the X-Men film-franchise: Gambit. I’ve never been as nuts about Gambit as some of my contemporaries, but Newsarama’s description of the trailer as a whole does have me excited. I really dig the X-Men film-franchise (including the oft-hated-upon third installment), and I can’t wait for this one.
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog thinks apps for the AppleTV are a good idea and I wholeheartedly agree. I probably wouldn’t turn on regular cable TV at all if my AppleTV could tell me the weather and get me some other basic information like that. And I would be giddy like a schoolgirl if I could watch Viddler videos on my TV (a suggestion that TUAW makes). Apple, are you listening?
• ...apparently not. Apple continues to face major problems with the rollout of its new MobileMe service. While MacWorld gives MobileMe a relatively good review, known Apple enthusiast David Pogue (New York Times) has some serious concerns about the way that Apple is handling a crisis that’s affecting some 20,000 MobileMe users: “This is an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn’t come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what’s being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: ‘We apologize for the inconvenience.’” I intend to give the new service a spin over the weekend, despite the bad reviews, but I’d been hoping that Apple would bowl me over with this service, and I’m not so sure that’s going to happen now.

Comment on this article here.

What Do You Use for E-mail?

Gmail seems to be the gold standard when it comes to e-mail, even if, as I believe I read recently, Yahoo’s Mail service has far more users. Trouble is, I’ve never been a big fan of Gmail. Their decision to use “labels” instead of “folders” apparently makes sense for a lot of people, but I’ve just never gotten it. Despite that, I still use Google’s Apps for Your Domain product. They offer a lot of space at a price-point that really can’t be beaten (free), and they offer IMAP access, which makes sure that e-mail I read away from home shows up as read when I get back to Mail.app on my iMac.

But the service I really want to be using is Apple’s MobileMe, which offers push or near-push e-mail access, as well as the “folder” approach to e-mail storage that I still prefer. That’s why the continued news of MobileMe outages is really depressing to me. I desperately want Apple to get this right.

Assuming they don’t get it right, does anyone out there have a suggestion for a Gmail alternative? Or is there a tutorial out there that will somehow help me learn how to use labels effectively? Geek Forcers, what do you use for e-mail?

Comment on this article here.

Worth Your Consideration 011 - A GF5 Linkdump

It may be a good long while before I am able to buy an iPhone 3G. I have the money, but when you’re looking to establish a family plan with one iPhone and one non-iPhone, a trackful of hurdles come into play. First, my wife and I need to be in the same place at the same time for something other than dinner or sleep, and that might not happen again until sometime toward the end of the month (she’s got meetings on two evenings this week; we don’t get home until 7:30ish each night anyway; and I’ve got PodCamp Boston this coming weekend). Second, we can’t go to an Apple Store, where it appears that there are plenty of iPhones in stock (there was a line forming outside the Apple Store in Boston this morning, three days after the initial launch, but I’m guessing that’s just excitement and not people trying to snatch up a limited number of devices). Instead, we have to go to an AT&T Store, where we may or may not be able to get an iPhone, because they’re totally sold out.

Ugh.

So, since getting back from camping this weekend, I’ve been living vicariously through others. Here are a few of the most notable links I’ve come across.

• News Askew has released a new iPhone-optimized version of their site. I’ve been thinking a lot about coming up with a mobile version of Geek Force Five, and I’m curious about exactly how News Askew is redirecting people to the iPhone-optimized site.
• Apple’s MobileMe can apparently sync bookmarks from a Mac to a PC. According to the screenshot featured here, you can sync bookmarks into Internet Explorer, if you see fit. I didn’t know that it was going to be capable of doing this, so I’m very excited. I’ll be much more excited if it’ll sync with Firefox instead, since that’s what I’m using on my PC. Me, I’m trying to decide whether or not to give MobileMe’s free sixty day trial a try now instead of waiting until I get an iPhone. Maybe the coolness of that would tide me over.
• The iPhone App Store opened on Thursday afternoon/evening and Jason Kottke opened up comments on his site to ask people what the “cool” iPhone apps were/are. I, of course, cannot wait until I can actually contribute to this conversation. Sigh… Until then, I’ll have to live with things like the visual previews being provided by AppleInsider and others. The Unofficial Apple Weblog believes that the App Store will change the world, in case you hadn’t heard.
• On a much happier note, Apple released an update for my Apple TV in conjunction with the iPhone 3G/MobileMe launch and it’s improved the already-impressive device significantly. Aside from the updated feature list enumerated Apple TV Junkie, I am most pleased to note that browsing my purchased movies by genre has gone from glacially slow to incredibly zippy. TUAW has a gallery of screenshots.

Comment on this article here.