The WordPress for iPhone application was recently released. It’s free and native, and so far the general consensus is that it’s nice but still has some kinks to work out. Indeed, I typo’d the password when setting this blog up in it and was presented with this broken screen:
Hello There! Thank you for visiting my site.
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So I’ve had the device for a few days, and I have to say - the iPhone was totally worth getting. I love it more than I expected I would. The UI is incredibly expressive, and if the English language doesn’t have a word to express how intuitive and user friendly it is. I treated it like a movie I wanted to see and didn’t read much about how it actually worked. As I mentioned before, I bought the iPhone early and in a direct response to my unhappiness with how well my BlackBerry Curve II synced with OS X 10.5 Leopard. Plus the calendar on the BB was so ugly that it was practically unusable. In fact for a smart phone I only used 3 applications on it: Email, which was superb and in many ways still better than the iPhone; Google Maps, where the iPhone does trump the Curve; and TwitterBerry, a decent twitter client that allowed me to send updates and read a few of the last updates of my friends, but lacked any kind of ‘Wow’ factor.
In the end, I switched to Apple’s device for the promise it offered - having one device be the center of my digital experience, and one that I would use every square inch of. And it has more than delivered.
Continue reading ‘iMpressions of the iPhone’
So… I got an iPhone 3G. In fact, I was the 2nd person at my AT&T store to walk out with one. I was planning on getting one, and had budgeted it way in advance. I was already a relatively happy Blackberry user, and had been on that platform for about 2 years. I loved my Blackberries, but there was quite a bit of functionality that I never used because it was either ugly or unintuitive. Especially the calendar, which was so much of both that it was completely unusable. Syncing with my Mac (using PocketMac for Blackberry) was always a bit of an issue, but it got worse with Leopard. To give you an idea of what I mean, it made me create a calendar called “PocketMac” just so that it could sync any appointments I entered on my handheld back to iCal. Address Book was also a bit off, as double records were not uncommon, especially if I had filled out more information on a record on one side or the other. So with all of my machines but one running 10.5, I knew that an iPhone was going to be my next choice. At least I knew it would sync seamlessly, and the calendar app was basically mobile iCal. So when 3G was announced, I was impressed enough to be willing to upgrade early (I got my BB Curve II in December). So with a fist full of dollars, and my research done (despite thinking July 11 was Wednesday, and was all kinds of mixed up until one of my team mates, who also had the iPhone lust, corrected me) - I settled into the fact that I was going to get an iPhone and pay the $200 early upgrade, no-subsidy-for-you price of $399 for an 8gb iPhone. Continue reading ‘iPhone and Me’
For the past few weeks I’ve been quietly tinkering on a new section of the ol’ xentek homestead, and I’m happy to report that the efforts are starting to bare fruit. In other words, I’ve been scratching a few itches, and have released the results under the GPLv3. The first one out of the incubator is FlareSmith. a WordPress plugin to integrate the FeedBurner Stats and FeedFlare services into your blog - without having to edit your theme.
This plugin was the result of using the K2 theme framework for most of my WordPress sites. I got tired of having to remember to patch theloop.php each time I wanted to upgrade K2. By developing a simple content filter, I could insert the small JavaScript snippet that powers the FeedBurner Stats and FeedFlare integration with your self-hosted blog.
The plugin is available here, and is also hosted at the WordPress Plugins Database - to take advantage of the new plugin upgrade functionality in 2.5.
Enjoy!
P.S. I entered the plugin into a competition. Stop by and vote for me if you get a chance.
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