RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘Ipod’

My iPod Touch/iPhone OS 3.0 Review

20 Jun

Well, I can’t say i own an iPhone, much as I would want to (now they finally have 32GB!), however I was also eagerly waiting OS 3.0 with everyone else.
I own an iPod Touch 32GB (2nd Gen). It took some time to move me off the older 60GB classic, the iPod Touch just didnt have enough space for my collection. After a week spent cleaning out the kids MP3s onto their own machine, and removing all the live versions of songs (rarely does a live version sound anything near as good as the studio version), I finally was able to get it down within 32GB.

My habits almost instantly changed once I had the new iPod however, i discovered reading ebooks suddenly became appealing. The screen was big enough, the disk space was big enough, and there were plenty of great ebook readers. After a fair amount of reading online I discovered there was a bluetooth chip in my iPod Touch which was not enabled by default, but would be once I got OS 3.0.
For the next week I read copious amounts of notes on bluetooth headphones, and eventually settled on Jabra 620S set which came with an adapter to use on the iPod. This meant I could use them right away, and dispense with the adapter when I upgraded.
My only concern upgrading to OS 3.0 was that it may have to wipe it, and thus I needed to read like a hound for weeks prior to get through the series of ebooks I was reading.

So the night of the release, i sat up until midnight wondering what time the release was going to happen. Eventually I gave in and went to bed.

I woke in the morning to find the download available, however servers overloaded (to be expected no matter how well you planned!). After about 5 or 6 tries I was finally able to download and install the new firmware. Half of those 5-6 times were to accept new T&C they had added in. As per usual I did not read it but just accepted it, if they really want my soul they can just have it!

First impressions were “Great! it didnt wipe my stuff!”.
Second impression was “Oh it looks exactly the same as it did before”. Apon closer inspection there was an icon for Voice Memos, i opened it eagerly only to have it tell me I did not have a microphone.
I opened the Preferences and paired the headset. The Jabra 620S are a full stereo headphone unit with a Microphone. They support Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) and Audio Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP), which means I *should* have been able to use the Play/Stop Forward, Backward etc buttons. However only the Play/Stop button seems to work. The Microphone does not register, however i suspect this is because they paired as a headphone unit rather than headset (the difference is the sound quality, ones designed for phone, one for music).

Spotlight: well searching is handy! it searches all my movies, songs, notes, ebooks. Its very handy!

Voice Memos: Well this is just another app, It’s of no use on an iPod Touch without a headset, and probably been made before. Bit gimmicky?

Landscape Keyboard: I presume the application needs this compiled in, because half my apps don’t do this yet still. It will be great when its fully implimented, I dislike fat-fingering things!

Copy/Paste: Don’t have much use for it surprisingly, but its nicely done and works ok. Double tap on a word, then drag the ends about to highlight what you need. Then you get a popup asking if you want to copy/paste etc.

Undo: There is now a ‘Shake to undo’ feature, which I have yet to need also.
Shake to change song: This was disabled on mine immediately. Not a very handy feature if you go jogging or walking lots!

iTunes Store: I havnt used this yet, but brilliant idea! I have head several people complain that once bought items transfer to computers they have issues over which device is authorized to have that item.

Parental Control: This is a huge one for me. Im strict about what my kids see, and I refuse to let them watch R13 when they are not 13. Loving that!

Most of the rest of the new features I dont actually use (Stocks, MobileMe etc).

Overall, worth the $13.99 NZD I paid for the upgrade.

The best part for me would be the bluetooth headphones, this is invaluble when im at the gym or running and no longer have cables.

 
4 Comments

Posted in Tech

 

Ipod Touch controlled car via 3G

07 Apr

This must be my next project i think! Though i dont think i would use 3G, just straight wifi on both items. 3G is a tad slow and also pricey. His is fail if he has no WIFI available (unless of course he does like me and sets up his phone to be an access point)

 
Comments Off

Posted in Tech

 

Turning your Cell Phone into an Access Point

03 Apr

So i got an iPod Touch 32Gb the other day. I got sick of waiting for  a 64GB model.

I had the choice of iPhone which is 16GB and nowhere near big enough, or iPod Touch which is big enough but has no GPS or Phone. Other than the wireless it has no way of accessing internet if im in the middle of nowhere. I figure i had a perfectly good phone (Nokia E65, all the features, but none of the size!).

So last night i was thinking, my cellphone has WIFI …. if i can turn my Cellphone into an ad-hoc access point then I can route the iPod Touch through it … so i promptly went hunting about on the net and stumbled across joiku.

So i grabbed the free version to test it, and low and behold it works brilliantly. Then i setup the iPod to use it and it fails … turns out it has a Proxy and needs to proxy things.

So I looked about online and found that to setup the proxy on the Ipod Touch I had to click on Settings -> Wifi -> Connection Name (the blue arrow) -> scroll down to proxy and make it ‘Auto’

Then in the box below this put in http://192.168.2.1/wpad.dat – for some reason it doesnt pick this up.

So i tried manual. That doesnt work either. So now im at the frustration point. I wasnt going to pay for the good version if I couldnt even get the light version. Why did i need a proxy in the first place? that seems a pretty silly way to go about doing things. After a couple of days messing about with this I decided there must be a better option, If there wasnt I would have to write my own.

I googled about for a better solution, and found http://walkinghotspot.com/

Paid the $25USD, it sent me a URL and emailed me a pin number to use so i could download it. I went to the URL (which was just http://walkinghotspot.com/s60 ) and i was able to download without using my reg code. Needless to say this frustrated me somewhat having paid for it and any old person could download it.

So i sat down and installed it on the phone, got a tad confused with the strange setup it has, but worked it out eventually. After many hours i kept getting “connection error #2 please check network settings”. So i kept going over and over every single setting i had for both phone and connections.

Another day of frustration goes by (ok i have a day job so i cant spare more than a couple hours on things like this). So at Lunch I gave the installer to husband (hey it didnt ask for a pin number yet!), and he installed it. He also has an E65 phone (yeah yeah we are both geeks), and fairly good technical knowledge.

He starts it up, and away it goes … and it connects!! … and then asks for registration code , which we didnt have at that time  (we were in the middle of the shopping area).

So i figured if it worked on his phone, and not mine, i must have some setting wrong. So i sat down this evening with both phones side by side going through every single setting. They were all identical. grrr! I was about to fully reset my phone at this point, but I had to go out and take my youngest son to the school dance.

The oldest was texting me asking for money so i text the bank seeing what my balence was (I still had to go shopping yet). Bugger, i got the ‘you have no credit’. I was on my way shopping anyway, so i grabbed more credit ….. and then of course it hit me! DUH! it didnt work because i had no friggen credit! im such a fool!

So i promptly went home,  and tried again, same error … I got this 2 more times, then moves the phone to a different angle and tried again … it promptly logged in!

I then registered with the key they gave me, and now my ipod Touch is able to access internet using the Cell Phone as an access point.

So my main issues would be that Joiku is garbage and makes you use some proxy, I need to make sure i put money on my phone (i get free calling to family, and dont really use it otherwise so i forget), and that I live in the edge of a small town with no decent coverage :)

 
6 Comments

Posted in Informative, Tech