CityBlogz Design Studio / Blog

I just downloaded and installed the Mozilla Sunbird desktop calendar application and tried out the Google Calendar add-on. It appears to be working. It allows you to read, write, and delete calendar events both locally and when you are online with Google Calendar. Pretty neat. Until now, there have been paid-for solutions to sync your desktop calendars with gCal. Now, we have a free alternative. If only we could write one for Lotus Notes. Hmmm. Not a bad idea.

We are getting close to the launch of the iPhone and there is no shortage of media coverage. At least we are getting some constructive criticisms along with the praises. Here’s a listing of some of the coverage that I’ve been reading…

• Zec Online Journal: Steve Jobs doesn’t understand mobility
• Steve Jobs Answers Walt’s iPhone Questions
• The iPhone’s Camera: Great Under Ample Light
• Finally Confirmed: What the iPhone Doesn’t Have

I have one comment about the iPhone’s announced rate plans. It works out the same as the current Cingular/AT&T voice plans plus the $19.99 unlimited data plan. There were rumblings that Apple and Cingular/AT&T would make it more expensive, but I think it was a wise decision not to charge more.

Check out my new toy!

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Just got it delivered to my house yesterday. I went around my neighborhood and down some back roads to get comfortable with the speed. The speedometer says it can max out at 80 MPH, but based on my first few rides, I seriously doubt that it can go that fast. Going uphill, it seemed to max out at 45 MPH. On a straight flat road, it had no trouble going 50 MPH. I did not go faster than that, as the ride started to get a bit rough.

The general consensus when Steve Jobs announced that iPhone would support 3rd party apps coded as web applications was not that positive. However, I am here to say that we should keep an open mind as to what kind of capabilities that would be opened up by doing it this way. According to Bruce Stewart’s post at O’Reilly:

It is after all a very good thing that Apple has decided to provide URL-based access to the iPhone’s telephony, email, and other services, but that point really got lost on the crowd I think, who were expecting an SDK to access these things. We’ve known all along that web apps would be one possibility for third-party iPhone development, and Steve’s “there’s no SDK, just use Safari and standard Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax to develop iPhone apps” message didn’t highlight the power of what they are actually allowing here. (As one colleague commented, “just try getting your web app to make an actual phone call on a J2ME-based phone.”) Personally, I think that there are a lot of interesting possibilities for third-party development with this kind of access to the iPhone’s main features, and I’m not surprised that Apple isn’t letting us get at the OS or place buttons on the home screen, but his message clearly didn’t go over well with the developer audience here in San Francisco. Read More.

Obviously, having access to basic phone functions isn’t entirely new as many current mobile web browsers give this basic functionality (if your web pages are coded correctly). The real meat is if web developers are given access to local persistent storage on the phone, access to iTunes, and access to mail and calendar. Another important thing that we would need is access to the multi-touch user interface events (i.e. in addition to the standard onClick and onFocus events, perhaps we would use onPinchIn or onPinchOut events to trigger actions on the web application. I have yet to see any real specifications on this 3rd party web app API, but it does hold some promise (contrary to what many see as a disappointment).

Oh, and one last thing. I also want to be able to run Java ME on the iPhone. I already have two Java ME apps that I use constantly. Gmail and Opera Mini. It would be sweet if the iPhone could leverage the Java ME space. However, I do recall that Steve Jobs once quoted as saying that Java is too heavy weight and isn’t likely to be in its future plans. Therefore, I’d assume that Java ME on the iPhone will most likely never happen.

According to a Slashdot story… National Hockey League Embraces TV Placeshifting. Ever since I bought my two SlingBox devices over a year ago, I’ve been able to watch pretty much all my favorite hockey team’s games over the convenience of the Internet and my SmartPhone. Before that, I was forced to purchase the NHL Center Ice package from Dish Network. Local blackouts were common and enforced rigorously. By the way, Dish Network’s customer service is beyond terrible. Anyway, I digress. Since I am a displaced Calgarian living in the United States, SlingBox has been a boon for me. I simply placed my SlingBox device at my parent’s place in Calgary, and registered the unit to be accessible outside the firewall. After that, I simply use their SlingPlayer application (Windows, Mac, and Windows SmartPhone available) to view the hockey games. The streaming quality is not the best, and is probably why there is no accessory for outputting the stream to an actual TV set top. Also, there is no built-in support to record streams. They have even encrypted all the streams, so that 3rd party apps cannot do that either. If Sling can partner up with Apple TV, it may even entice me to buy an Apple TV device. Technology is great, aint it?

Now that Google has breathed new life into the idea of having access to your favorite web applications offline as well as online, it has started to get me thinking of another potential benefit. We are now used to the idea of accessing our emails, calendar entries, to-dos, contacts, pictures, videos, and various other data formats in an online space. My biggest concern with putting everything in the hands of third party web applications is what happens if those companies die off. How easy will it be to export your precious data and import them into other web applications?  That is something to think about as we all move forward.