April 2008

6 Best iPhone Tips

April 21, 2008 by Ellen

Yes, the iPod Touch is very easy to use right out of the box. But I’ve been frustrated, both by the on-screen keyboard and by using it as an mp3 player while I was walking. And I thought - it’s supposed to be easy to use; I must be missing something. So I poked around, and found some slightly hidden features that really helped.

I figured everyone else knew these already, so wasn’t going to publish them, but it turned out that wasn’t true, at least around here. So in case anyone else might benefit from them, here are the 6 most useful things I’ve learned about using an iPhone or iPod Touch. In the tradition of top 10 lists everywhere, they’re in reverse order, so you might want to read bottom-up if you’re impatient.

Update: the 2.0 version of the iPhone and iPod Touch software changed some of these. I’ve made a few changes, below. And I’ve put all the tips here, as well, which I may be a little better about maintaining.

6 - Hold and double-tap gestures are recognized and useful in several places. I won’t list them here, but try holding your finger, or double-tapping, on a screen where you want more options. For example, holding the N on the keyboard gives you Ń and Ñ as well as N. On iPhone and iPod Touch 2.0, holding the .COM key gives you .NET and .ORG options, though not on the earlier OS. It’s probably worth upgrading just for that. And I believe that holding down the period key when entering an email address also gives you those options, but I can’t verify that until my iPod Touch comes back.

5 - Tapping space twice in a row on the main keyboard will put “. " (that is, period space) into your input.

4 - If you’re frustrated because your VOIP voice messages show up as .WAV files in your email, and your iPod touch can’t play them, you can send them through iphoneconvert, and you’ll be able to hear them right on your iPod touch. OR get the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade, and they’ll play automatically.

3 - To quickly add a punctuation or number key without changing keyboards, tapping the key, and changing back, you can instead drag your finger from the .?123 key to the key you want. This will insert that character, and change the keyboard right back to the alpha keyboard. Also, tapping the space key after most characters on the punctuation/number keyboard will send you directly back to the alpha keyboard as well.

2 - If you’ve having trouble getting the screen to change orientation, be sure you’re holding your iPhone perpendicular to the ground, rather than flat. That one’s saving me 3 or 4 swear words a day. Thanks, Marc.

1 - Double-clicking the Home button on an iPod Touch brings up a music controller, with volume, play/pause, next and previous buttons, that you can use without unlocking the device. This is extremely useful - it means I don’t have to turn it on, unlock it, and wiggle it until the screen is vertical just to change the volume or skip a song. I realize it’s less useful on the iPhones (it does work on the iPhone too, but only when you’re playing music; otherwise it brings up Contacts), that have hardware controls for music, but for me, it fixes what had been my biggest frustration about using the iPod Touch for mp3s.

Except for the one about how to hold the Touch to get the screen to change, these were all published on the internet, so many thanks to everyone who put them up originally.

Were these helpful? Got any others?

Customizing Web Output from ListPro

April 14, 2008 by Ken

So you’ve decided to export some of your ListPro lists in HTML format to publish on the web but you’d like a bit more control over how the published lists look… If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty with a bit of HTML and CSS, then check out the article in our new Knowledge Base on customizing ListPro for the web.

Let us know if you find this type of article (or others) useful; we want to continue to add information that you’ll find helpful.

Ilium Software is Windows Mobile 6.1 Compatible

April 8, 2008 by Marc

Windows Mobile 6.1 is officially out and we’re pleased to report that all of our products for Windows Mobile 6.0 are 100% compatible with Windows Mobile 6.1. We’ve put the products through their paces, tested the software, and verified that when you move to Windows Mobile 6.1 you can count on your Ilium Software products being there for you.

Worst New Mobile Idea Ever

April 8, 2008 by Ellen

NTT Communications has announced a pilot test of its new Mobile
Fragrance Communication service. Apparently this lets people download a “Fragrance Playlist” of recipes for specific smells, and then transfers the fragrance data to a dedicated device similar to a plug-in air freshener that is loaded with a cartridge of base fragrances.

I know it’s tempting fate to call this the worst new mobile idea ever - it’s like calling a movie released in January the worst of the year; you just know something even nastier will come out and prove you wrong - but if someone’s going to come out with something worse than this, I really don’t want to know about it.

If this takes off, I may as well go turn myself in to the nearest police station, because the first time someone sits near to me in a restaurant, plane or theater and starts broadcasting their favorite smell, I’m going to get violent.

No, it’s not an April Fool’s joke, I checked.

Definitely Not April's Fool

April 2, 2008 by Julie

It was not some strange or intentional April Fools’ trick that our monthly blog contest went unannounced yesterday. I was out at a conference, learning lots of great stuff. Incidentally, it was all about you - the user, the reader, the site visitor. But one thing I know, without needing to be taught, is that if there’s a winner to be chosen, you just want me to get right down to it and tell you who it is. So, here we go:

For March, the lucky comment came from Sumo, on the post Thanks for Asking. Congratulations! I just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it, reply to this post and let me know.

To everyone else, don’t go away! Keep visiting and leaving those comments, because I’ll be picking another winner in May. Somebody’s got to win, and wouldn’t it be great if it was you?

New Windows Mobile Site: My Today Screen

April 1, 2008 by Ellen

It’s April Fools’ Day, but this isn’t a joke: there’s a great new Windows Mobile site officially launching today. It’s called My Today Screen, and is run by Doug Goldring and Tariq Bamadhaj, two people with a lot of experience in the area. Their mission is to:

provide users with an all-in-one resource for Windows Mobile, providing reviews, tips, guides, and other expert analysis, all designed to help you realize the full potential of your Windows Mobile device.

I’m delighted to see a new Windows Mobile site - it seems like lately there haven’t been many new ones, and at least a few of the old favorites have gone away. This one looks very promising, and they’re giving away over $1000 in total prizes this week, so stop by and check it out! Maybe you’ll win something!