How smartphone users see themselves

Source: brianshall.com/content/smartphone-warsin-animated-form

Vimeo’s new iframe embed code

As a follow-up to a previous post about embedding Vimeo videos and having them work on Apple’s iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch), Vimeo just announced their Universal Player which will deliver the appropriate video format for the device being used. Vimeo’s FAQ page has more info on it, but the new method uses an <iframe> HTML tag to frame in the content, and the player will detect the device to serve the right video file. YouTube has recently rolled out something similar. Vimeo’s code looks like this (line breaks were added):

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/12345678?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;
portrait=0&amp;color=CC6600" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0"></iframe>

I did some quick testing and it worked fine. Both the iPad and iPhone were delivered h.264 versions, while Mac and PC still get the standard Flash player. I would like to see Vimeo offer some embed options to include serving straight HTML5/h.264 to the desktop as well and avoid Flash altogether.

WordPress doesn’t like the <iframe> tag, so if you’re using WP you will need to install the Embed Iframe plugin. In my testing this plugin has supported the new Vimeo method within a WP post. I have a test page here where I embed two videos, the first one using the new iframe code and the second one with the earlier javascript workaround.

Vimeo Tests

Test using Vimeo embed code for iPhone and iPad.

580×326

Using new Vimeo embed iframe code:

Using Javascript workaround code:

Vimeo HTML5 Embed Workaround

Many people are using Vimeo.com for their video hosting rather than YouTube. I’ve been using it for nearly a year. Personally, I like it better than YouTube because you’re not limited to 10-minute segments per video. I like the features they provide with a Vimeo Plus membership, and the user community that’s grown there. Also, the content on Vimeo seems to have more of an artistic focus, with some very talented folks posting quality work.

One of the limitations with Vimeo right now, however, is the lack of HTML5 embedding and the impact this has on iPhones and iPads. You can view videos on the Vimeo.com mobile site (www.vimeo.com/m) with your iPhone and iPad (neither of which will display Adobe Flash content), but if you want to embed your videos on another site, Vimeo doesn’t yet have a player implemented to handle embedding for those devices.

YouTube has a solution in place, and there’s been some push from Vimeo members in recent months to get this done there as well. Recently the Vimeo staff responded that they’re working on it, and I expect they will deliver something good. We don’t know how long it will be until it’s ready, so in the meantime I thought I would post a temporary solution to get embedded Vimeo videos working on the iPhone and iPad. This is not my original idea. I found it in this YouTube video describing the process, and decided to document it a little further and put it here. Thanks to YouTube user “optikalefxx” for posting his solution for everyone.

(It’s nothing more than a javascript browser-sniffing workaround/hack, but it works well enough and might be a good way to bridge the gap and get your videos to these popular iDevices until Vimeo delivers a proper API for it.)

Here’s a link to the code in a PDF you can download, including some notes, caveats and assumptions about using it. (If you have trouble with formatting when copying the code from the PDF, try this Google doc where I have included a complete HTML page that you can work from.) I assume you’ll know what to do with this, how to modify it for your particular video ID, dimensions, controls color, etc. As always, make a backup copy of any files before you modify, and test it across your platforms and devices before publishing. This method is intended to be temporary, and it may break in the near future as Vimeo implements their HTML5 embed solution, so don’t put this out there expecting it to be a long-term fix. Caveat developer.

Take your files mobile with Dropbox

Here’s the idea: you’re away from your computer—Mac or PC—and you want to use your mobile device to access folders and files that are saved on your computer. A cloud sync service like Dropbox can fill that gap and provide quick and easy access to your files. I’ve been testing this for a while and it works great.

The way it works:

• You have a Dropbox account (free 2 GB account, or pay for more space).
• The Dropbox application is installed on your computer, which creates a folder called ‘Dropbox’ and syncs this folder (and every folder inside it) to your online account.
• Any folders and files that you would like to be able to access on your mobile device, just move those into the Dropbox folder structure.
• Install the free Dropbox app on your mobile device, enter your login information, and have access to your online account and all of the folders and files you have synced up on your computer.

It’s important to point out that this is not some ‘virtual’ folder—the Dropbox folder and its subfolders actually exist on your computer, so it’s no different than your current folder hierarchy: your data is still stored on your hard drive. The only difference is that once a file is saved locally, a copy automagically gets pushed to the cloud. This serves several purposes:

1. A remote backup of your files. In case your computer were stolen or damaged such that you couldn’t get to your data, you could recover your files from Dropbox. This is reason enough to do it.
2. Remote access for viewing up-to-date copies of all your files when you’re away from your computer.
3. The ability to share a file with someone else, either by using the Public folder or by emailing a link to the file directly from the Dropbox mobile app.

As of this writing Dropbox mobile apps are available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and iPod Touch—according to the Dropbox Anywhere page, Blackberry support is coming as well.

I’ve found the Dropbox service and the mobile applications to be very stable and reliable so far as I have used them on iPhone and iPad. I experimented for a while with a free 2 GB account, but recently upgrade to the 100 GB service for $20 a month.

I’ve mentioned Dropbox in several blog posts—I’m not involved with the company in any way, just a satisfied customer. They’re doing a really good job.

iPhone 4

A few early observations on the new iPhone 4.

Construction

There’s no rounded plastic back like the previous two models, the 3G and 3GS. The front and back are flat, covered with a specially-engineered glass surface from top to bottom and a stainless steel frame holding it together. I think this new form factor looks much better, more solid and modern than the curved-back models. The weight is about the same as before, 4.8 ounces, but it feels heftier.

Screen Resolution

Apple calls it the Retina Display, and resolution on this screen is ridiculously sharp. It’s most noticeable to me when looking at text — there’s none of the jaggies or pixelated stuff we’re used to seeing on small screens.

Speed

This model feels much faster than my two year-old 3G. The 3GS was probably closer in terms of speed, I don’t know, but it’s a big improvement over the older model. Everything just feels faster and smoother, from app launching and switching to game performance.

Multitasking

Apple has worked out a way to allow multiple apps to run in the background (sort of) without putting an extraordinary drain on the battery. So you can stream music over Pandora while continuing to read email or browse the web, for example. What I like most about this feature is the ability to switch quickly between apps and pick up where you left off — it’s more like switching apps and less like quitting and restarting.

Folders

Folders are a great idea, and something that’s been needed since the App Store took off and people started filling their iPhones with dozens of apps. Instead of having several screens worth of apps you have to scroll through, you can group apps together in folders for quick access. I predict that many users will have a folder that’s the equivalent of the ‘junk drawer’ in the kitchen — a folder for those apps we thought we might use, and still could someday, but probably not, so we’ll just stick them in a random folder and forget about them rather than delete them.

Cameras

There are two camera lenses, one on each side of the phone, so you can shoot still photos or video from either side just by touching a button on the screen to toggle from one to the other.

Still Camera

The 5-megapixel still camera with LED flash shoots in 4:3 aspect ratio, and is probably good enough to replace many point-and-shoot pocket models, certainly good enough for casual use. It won’t come close to replacing my DSLR, but it’s not intended to, and sometimes the best camera is the one you have with you. Below is an unmodified shot from the camera.

Video Camera

It’s amazing to me that a little mobile device can shoot High Definition 720p video at 30 frames per second, but the A4 processor seems to handle it well. Shoots in 16:9 aspect. Short clip below to demonstrate the quality, this is unedited HD video straight from the phone.

PDFs on your mobile bookshelf

The new iPhone operating system, iOS4, has a smart feature that lets you store PDFs on your ‘bookshelf’ in the iBooks app. There are two sections in the bookshelf — one for books and one for PDFs — tap the button at the top of the screen to navigate between the two.

To get your PDFs onto the iPhone, in iTunes go to File > Add to Library… and import them. iTunes will put them in the right place when you sync up.

I like this because I have product manuals and user guides and all kinds of things in PDF form; this is a good way to have them somewhat organized and available wherever you are. You can selectively choose which books and PDFs you want to sync over, so you don’t have to carry them all. If you have a lot of PDFs, it’s nice to have a ‘library’ to organize them in.

Here’s what it looks like when you open a PDF on the web — you get an ‘Open in iBooks’ button at the top. Pressing this button will take you to the iBooks app, put the current PDF on your bookshelf, and open it up:

Here’s the two bookshelves in the iBooks app:

BOOKS

PDFs

Opt Out of Apple iAds

Once you’ve upgraded your iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch device to iOS 4 (it’s out today), you can go to http://oo.apple.com and opt out of iAds. It only works if you go to this link with a device running iOS 4.

Apps I Use

I’ve had a few people ask me which Mac apps I use for certain things, so I made a list of some common ones and a few alternates that are worth checking out. I will update this list from time to time when there’s something noteworthy to add. Let me know if there are some good ones I’m not aware of.

Web Browser

Safari – apple.com/safari – free on every Mac, iPhone and iPad

Safari is the default web browser installed on all Apple computers. It was developed by Apple and is based on the open source WebKit codebase. Safari version 5 was recently released and I’ve found it to be very fast and stable, easily one of the best performing browsers available for the Mac.

Alternates
Firefox – mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html – free
Camino – caminobrowser.org – free

Email

Apple Mail – free on every Mac, iPhone and iPad

Like the Safari browser, Mail is Apple’s default email program installed on all Macs as part of the OS X operating system.

Word Processing, Spreadsheet & Presentation

Apple iWork – apple.com/iwork – $79

The iWork suite is Apple’s counterpart to Microsoft Office. Pages, Numbers and Keynote are equivalent apps to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I’ve just recently started using iWork as a replacement for Microsoft Office 2008 and I think it will meet my all my productivity app needs.

Alternates
Microsoft Office 2008 – microsoft.com/mac – $150 to $400
Open Office – openoffice.org – free
Google Docs & Spreadsheets – docs.google.com – free

Image Editing

Acorn – flyingmeat.com/acorn – $50

Acorn handles most common image editing needs at a fraction of the cost of Photoshop. Crop, resize, rotate, add layers, text, gradients, color fill, draw, and more. It does everything I need and doesn’t bloat my hard drive with a thousand features I don’t use.

Alternates
Pixelmator – pixelmator.com – $59
Adobe Photoshop – adobe.com/products/photoshop/compare – $699 and up

FTP

Transmit – panic.com/transmit – $34

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is used for uploading and managing web site files on a web server. Transmit is made by Panic (www.panic.com), a very talented Mac software shop. I’ve used Transmit for years and every upgrade just makes it better.

Exchange Email, Calendar & Contacts

Microsoft Entourage – microsoft.com/mac/products/entourage2008 – $150 to $400

For connecting to an Exchange messaging environment on a Mac, Entourage is the counterpart to Outlook on Windows. It’s not exactly like Outlook, but very close in terms of functionality. It handles email, calendar, contacts and notes like Outlook. Entourage is part of the Microsoft Office 2008 suite for Mac, which also includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I’ve heard that Microsoft will be releasing Outlook for the Mac sometime in late 2010 as a replacement to Entourage.

Text Editing

TextWrangler – barebones.com/products/textwrangler – free

Bare Bones software makes the free TextWrangler as well as a premium text editor, BBEdit. BBEdit is a much more robust editing and programming environment, and sells for $125. When I was checking out BBEdit I decided to download the free TextWrangler and see what it was about, and found that it does everything I need so I’ve just kept on using it.

Alternates
BBEdit – barebones.com/products/bbedit – $125
Textmate – macromates.com – $50

Password Management

1Password – agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password – $40

I don’t know of anything comparable to 1Password for the Mac, and this is absolutely one of my most valuable and frequently-used apps. I have many logins and passwords for various web sites and applications, and 1Password keeps track of all of them. It pre-fills your logins on sites so you don’t have to manually enter anything, and will even generate new, secure logins for you and keep track of those. The app provides a convenient place for managing software licenses and serial numbers, as well as credit card info that you use to purchase online. You can keep secure notes of any kind in 1Password, and everything in the entire database is searchable. One of the best features is wireless syncing with mobile devices—I just launch 1Password on my Mac, and then launch it on the iPhone or iPad and it syncs up across devices. Fantastic app.

Photo Editing & Management

Aperture – apple.com/aperture – $199

Aperture is Apple’s pro level photo editing application. I use it for post-processing my Nikon RAW (.NEF) files, to catalog image files and various projects, assign keywords, etc. Aperture will output to various image formats and provides a tremendous amount of non-destructive editing control on source images. You can create some magnificent photo books with tools that are built right in, and purchase and upload them directly to the printer without leaving the app. Aperture is a first-rate photo editor, as is Adobe Lightroom.

Alternates
Adobe Lightroom – adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom – $299
iPhoto – apple.com/ilife/iphoto – $79

Video Editing

Final Cut Express HD – www.apple.com/finalcutexpress – $199

FCE has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s well worth it if you want to go beyond the basics and dive into some advanced video editing techniques. It falls between Apple’s entry-level iMovie and the high end Final Cut Pro, although it’s much closer to Final Cut Pro both in features and the user interface.

Alternates
iMovie – apple.com/ilife/imovie – $79

Miscellaneous Info Capture

Evernote – www.evernote.com – free limited account, $45/year for premium account

I’m not sure how to categorize Evernote, but I’m in it often because it’s really useful. I think of it as a digital bucket, a place to drop notes and receipts and books-to-read lists and films-to-watch lists and ideas and images and text clippings and the occasional something-I-want-to-save-off-the-web-but-I-don’t-want-to-bookmark-the-page kinda thing. You can organize items into separate databases, or throw them all into one database and apply custom tags to arrange things. Evernote is a cloud service so you can get to your stuff through the Evernote web site, a local app on your computer, or iPhone or iPad app—all of which sync nicely and keep your stuff and whatnot organized. Evernote also provides a unique email address for each user, so you can email things right into your Evernote database. One of my favorites.

Cloud Data Sync / Storage

Dropbox – dropbox.com – 2 GB free, 50 GB for $10/mo, 100 GB for $20/mo

Dropbox seems to be the gold standard in this space because they get a lot of positive press. Syncs with Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android. I used the free 2 GB service for a while and was impressed, so I recently upgraded to the 100 GB account.

Alternates
SugarSync – sugarsync.com – $5/mo for 30 GB up to $25/mo for 250 GB
I haven’t tried SugarSync but it looks like a good service, comparable to Dropbox. Works with Mac, Windows, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, WinMo
Box.net – www.box.net – Tiered pricing, with greater focus on business and enterprise customers.

Hard Drive Cloning (Full Disk Backups)

SuperDuper – shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper – $28

This is one of the essential Mac apps. SuperDuper creates a full bootable clone of your hard drive. This is important because if your primary drive fails and is unrecognizable by the system, you can boot into another drive without missing a beat if you have a clone. I run a SuperDuper backup two or three times a week to an external firewire drive, and occasionally boot from that copy to make sure it works as expected. This is important: don’t just assume your backup is good — test it.

Alternates
Carbon Copy Cloner — bombich.com — free, donation requested

Incremental File Backups

TimeMachine — apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/time-machine.html — free

TimeMachine is installed as part of OS X, and functions as a file restoration backup rather than a full system restoration (see SuperDuper above). You should have both. Plug in an external drive, or set a partition on an existing drive, and tell TimeMachine to back up to it. TimeMachine will save multiple versions of a file over time, so you can go back to an earlier edit, or recover a file that you recently deleted. It works well and seldom requires user intervention. The more space you can allocate to TimeMachine, the further back your recovery options can go. I use it daily.

Hard Drive Directory Maintenance & Repair

DiskWarrior — http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior — $100

If there’s ever a serious disk error on your Mac, DiskWarrior is your best bet for recovery and repair. It will detect and fix directory errors that Apple’s own Disk Utility may not handle. Every couple of months I run it on my bootable drives and rebuild the disk directories as they become fragmented over time. DiskWarrior is generally considered to be the premier Mac disk directory utility, many people swear by it.

Cloud Data Sync with MobileMe

I recently began a 60-day free trial of Apple’s MobileMe cloud syncing service. MobileMe has been around for a while but I haven’t looked into it lately, so I thought I would do the trial and see how well it works.

I don’t need sync services for email because I use the IMAP* setup on all of my email accounts. IMAP allows me to access email from a variety of devices and it will remain in sync regardless of what I use – laptop, mobile phone or web client. If I delete a message on my laptop’s email program, it’s gone when I check email on my phone.

What I want is to have my contacts and calendars remain in sync across whatever devices I use. If I update a contact record on my phone, I want that change to propagate back to my laptop and iPad automagically.

Test Results

In my initial testing MobileMe seems to work exactly as advertised. I created a MobileMe trial account** online at www.me.com, and then did the setup in my Mac’s System Preferences. From there you decide which things you want to sync — Calendars, Contacts, Bookmarks, Mail Accounts, Notes, and some other options — I just selected Calendars and Contacts for now.

** (You have to enter a credit card that will be charged if you choose to continue after the trial period is over. If you don’t want to continue after the 60 days, just go into your account preferences and cancel the account and you won’t be charged.)

For testing purposes I updated a contact record on my iPhone, and in less than a minute the change showed up on the MobileMe web site, in my Mac’s Address Book and on the iPad Address Book (the Contacts app). Then I added a calendar event on the iPad, and likewise it updated quickly to my phone, iCal on the Mac and on the MobileMe site.

iDisk & Find My iPhone

The MobileMe service also includes 20 GB of online storage called iDisk. You can allocate some of this to email and the rest to file storage – I’m not using the MobileMe email account so I just set it to allow 19 GB for storage. I copied a few files into the Documents area of iDisk and it all showed up as expected, but I haven’t done any iDisk testing beyond that. The iDisk icon sets up on your desktop and works like it’s just another file system or hard drive mounted on your machine. I’ve been using Dropbox for cloud storage, and while I think Dropbox is more mature as a storage product, iDisk is a nice addition to the MobileMe suite of services. And for most individuals, 20 gigabytes of storage is plenty for a secondary cloud backup.

Find My iPhone is pretty cool, and it also works with the iPad. Once set up, it will display a map with the approximate location of your device. You can push a message to pop-up on the screen, set a passcode lock, or remotely wipe data from the device. I tested the message service, and in about 10 seconds I saw the message on my phone. This service alone might be worth the membership price.

Pricing

The MobileMe service from Apple is $99 annually for an individual, or $149 a year for a Family Pack (up to five users). Apple’s pricing details are here. For what it offers I think that’s a pretty reasonable deal. There are some free services out there for file storage and syncing, but many of them require technical gymnastics to get it all working together. MobileMe is simple to set up and seems to work well, and it appears that Apple is committed to long term cloud services – they recently invested $1 billion in a new data center in North Carolina. There’s a big cloud play of some kind happening there for Apple.

But… you can save some money buying MobileMe through Amazon. Today I see the individual user version offered for $70.89 (30% off) and the Family Pack for $101.98 (32% off). I have also seen it offered on ebay, so you can get it for less than what Apple is charging. (There’s also some speculation going around that Apple might make MobileMe free of charge in order to better compete with Google’s free cloud services (Gmail, Calendar, Contacts), although Google’s products are filled with ads while MobileMe is not.) When my free trial is up I plan to buy it from Amazon if Apple is still charging. Based on my early testing, I’m pretty sure I want to continue with the service. It looks really good so far and does what I want.

MobileMe on Windows

Apple claims that MobileMe supports Windows PCs as well as the Mac, although I haven’t tested the Windows setup myself. They say the service will work with Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows Contacts in XP and Vista. You can also sync between Mac and PC if you have both systems in your home or office – this is good, because a true cloud sync service should be platform-independent, like the web.

* IMAP vs POP

Most email services support IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) setup, in addition to POP (Post Office Protocol). POP is fine if you always do your email from one machine and don’t have a need to manage your messages from multiple locations. For more on IMAP vs POP, see this article that compares the two.