iPhone + Google Voice = Love July 23, 2009

This past week, after waiting years, I was graced with a Google Voice invite. I immediately set it up to use my new number as a forward to my iPhone. Things were looking good and I was adjusting the settings within GV so I could avoid little annoyances such as SMS messages being forwarded etc, when I started to wonder what developers had already done with the technology (after all it had been in existence awhile as GrandCentral). So I found two apps on the iPhone App Store that would dial out, playback voicemails, send and view SMS messages, and a few more common things. One of the big features I found missing was the ability to receive calls through the apps. One may think this is no big deal, but considering that I live on a campus without a strong GSM cellular signal I need all the help I can get! Fortunately I found a solution…

iPhone apps are loose! July 28, 2008

So as you may know I am one of those guys whose pretty fluent with the technology.

I was looking around the web yesterday and found out people are cracking iPhone/iPod Touch apps. One of the key communities I found for the “cracking” scene is a forum at haklabs.com. Basically there are two current methods of cracking and installing. One method involves modifying a file on the iPhone so you can install via iTunes and the other is through SSH. One is packed as a .ipa file and the other a .app directory. Both methods require a jailbreaked 2.0 device. I’m not going to go into how to crack or install the apps, but right now it’s not real user friendly on either end. To crack the apps it is necessary to own the file and have your iPhone/touch jailbreaked. You’ll also have to use terminal and SSH.

I spoke to one of the crackers and he let me know that while its difficult at the moment, a GUI version will hopefully be out soon.

Waiting in line again July 25, 2008

Right now I am waiting in line again! Im grabbing a white iPhone in place of my current black one. 3 people were ahead of me… pretty crazy. I’ll take a pic or something later.

[UPDATE]

So I went into the store and the mac specialist had no idea what to do so she grabbed the manager. I got the lamest manager possible. He was authoritative, but had no idea what he was talking about. Very bad combo (look at a certain someone in the white house). Unfortunately I couldn’t explain official policy to a manager for obvious reasons. I’m currently on the phone with AT&T and they let me know the policy and didn’t see this as a problem. So they’re working through this and hopefully I’ll end up with that white model.

[UPDATE TO THE UPDATE]

So I called AT&T and got a really nice guy on the phone who listened to me and agreed that the Apple Store Manager was giving false information (only the primary account holder can buy the phone… bullshit!). After awhile of talking about how we could get my situation worked out the customer service rep. said that I’d have to do a return through a retail AT&T and that if they had them in stock itd be a swap plus restocking fee (but he’d wave it cause he was awesome) but if not I could wait it out or order one via direct fulfillment. He said the system read a week to get the 3G, but when I called the store they said DF orders would take 10 – 21 days. Since I’m leaving fairly soon I’ll just call AT&T to see if they’ve gotten any in. Once they get them in, and I have one, I’ll let you seven or so viewers know. 

As a side note I’m starting to worry the Apple backlash will begin soon. With the flood of new iPhone adopters, I have to worry about how the unstable 2.0 operating system and mobileme issues will effect consumers’ views on the company. By all means I love Apple and its products, but over the summer dealing with the management in the retail stores and seeing buggy software, I’m feeling a little let down. Be cool again? Just promise not to get all Radio Shack on me.

More frustration with video files July 22, 2008

So today I continued my battle with video files and soft subtitles. I have no idea why apple hasnt posted any information about this feature. It is so useful, yet not widely used or documented. I have checked to make sure its not an error on my part. The subs display on iTunes, quicktime, and on the ipod classic. Why no iPhone love? A couple ideas:Maybe the iPhone’s new 2.0 software reads this yet used feature differently. Maybe it’s my iphone’s firmware file. Maybe it’s the fact that muxo is flawed and I’ll have to learn how to add the subs manually to get damn subs on this French movie. Whatever my answer is it should not be this hard.

[UPDATE]

I have succesfully managed to get my subs working! Just needed to do some problem solving to narrow my problem down to the subrip file (.srt). Here’s a screenchot from a test video I made with a sample clip and sample subs i made to find out that my original subs were bad.

Late Night of Frustration July 22, 2008

Tonight I have had two goals: Get “La Boum” (a french class favorite) and “Tell No One” (also in french, but I forgot the french title) onto my computer. The problem with foreign films are the subtitles. Basically I converted a split movie in two parts to one movie in iPhone format (.mp4). Now joining the two movies together isnt a big deal, but getting the subs right is another story. Basically I had to hunt down programs that’ll join subs (only could find windows prog’s…yay for the parallels) and found a couple apps that would do the trick. However then I had to deal with framerates and the imported framerate and the exported framerate and that was a real hassle. Once I finally got the subs done with each app to see if they were different I loaded up the movie with the subs via a program for the mac called “Muxo”. Muxo is an app that was most likely thrown together because its pretty buggy, but if you know what youre doing does the trick. After loading the movie in iTunes I then proceeded to play it only to find out that  my macbook pro would crash due to mismatched framerates. So now I have to reencode the movie all over again because muxo wont let me take out the bad subtitles (i said it was buggy) so I’m awake and complaining. One of the cooler benefits of tonight is finding out about wordpress.