Frames - from the chaps at Studio Neat, is a Time-Lapse and Stop Motion Movies maker, on your iPhone. I do love the advert.

iPhone UI Vector Elements - If you’re creating an iOS application, this little download is an absolute essential. Shame not many people have linked to this resource.

Sparrow for iPhone - Is coming soon. Click on the link for some screenshots. Sparrow has made me love sending emails from my mac again. I don’t do it as often as I would like, but the process is much more enjoyable using sparrow, especially for multiple accounts.

Pixeled Mind - Go and download some excellent wallpapers that honestly fit in with my design requirements on my iPhone. Also I really love the post-it note png that has a ‘thanks for downloading’ message in it. Just a lot of class in that.

Last week was the first time that I actually considered my iPhone as an actual computer. The reason for this was actually out of necessity rather than me trying to be clever. I had the morning to myself, and I’d decided to go the mall, do some writing/creating. The issue was that my computer’s battery was completely drained and even so, it doesn’t typically last more than like 2-3 hours depending on what I’m using it for.

I solved my battery issue by dusting off my wireless keyboard (originally bought 4 years ago for my mac mini) and decided to use my iPhone instead. Bluetooth’ed the keyboard to my iPhone and I was off. The really surprising thing is of course that the size of the screen was more than adequate for my needs. In fact I was on such a roll that I reduced my inbox down to no emails (by replying to all the people that I kept putting off), wrote 7 scripts for my comic strip, wrote the previous post and this post - in short, a lot of writing.

Then I got to thinking why I was able to do this? Why was I able to focus so distinctly? Basically this setup is the ultimate in distraction free computing. The iPhone will allow you to work in one environment at a time. There is a focus that comes into play in the constraints of such a system. There are no other things that can distract you from actually doing other things. No comics you’ve downloaded, no music you could be fiddling to download. Hell, my computer system can be a distraction in and of itself.

This setup stops that dead in it’s track. The biggest part of the whole setup is the keyboard, and that is without a doubt the smallest keyboard on the market. 4 years later it’s still and industrial marvel for me. Sure it would be great to have a larger screen, but it’s not terrible. It’s a minor constraint. The great thing that you get from such as set up, is carrying is much much less and the battery life is INSANELY good compared to any single computer.

So I sit here actually computing while listening to internet radio (which I’m recording as well), while typing on a bluetoothed keyboard wirelessly and can go on for hours without having to really think about battery life or whatever.

The whole thing really blows my mind.

All the keyboard fuctions work as well, from the volume controls to the brightness functions. The elegance is insane. For those that have the above items, I strongly urge you to give it a go sometime, you might be surprised by what you end up coming up with.

The “q” trick - Posted over a year ago, but I’m only now starting to get into Notational Velocity and Simplenote so it’s all starting to make sense now.

So I've been on an iPhone for a little over 7 months, and I've kinda stumbled my way through most things on my first iDevice. As of late, I've decided to sort myself out and by extension sort my iPhone out as well.

Email and Calendar Sync

The first thing that I sorted out was converting my email/calendar to a push notified Gmail account. The way you do that is not by using the Gmail option to creating an account, but rather using the Microsoft Exchange option on the iPhone which basically does that automatically. That I've found to be completely awesome as opposed to the Fetch protocol that I was using before, with my Mail app being updated every hour or something.

The next thing that I needed to sort out is my calendar options. I will use my Google Calendar on occasion, but will rarely use iCal really. In fact I probably use my office Outlook more than I've ever used my iCal application, it's just not something I'm used to doing at home. Calendars are definitely something I do throughout the day, rather than the evening.

Photos Mess

The last part of the puzzle that needs to be sorted out is my photos. What a complete and utter mess these things are in at the moment. The thing is they're also taking a whole slew of space on my iPhone as well. Ever since I migrated over to my new macbook install I basically put aperture...big mistake. Thought I was doing something clever. As it turns out I screwed myself as Aperture doesn't allow for the files to be deleted from the iPhone when you're synching. There are other options, but honestly I'm not all that enamoured by Aperture and it's just as slow as iPhoto (so I've not gained much in way of performance).

I need to get a few older files from my previous back, get iPhoto up and running on my mac, migrate back to iPhoto completely and then clean up my photo folder.

iPhone Applications Purge

Once that's done I just need to clean up my Files folder and also my Scanner Pro folder as it's got a bunch of additional stuff that doesn't need to be there, and I think my minimal setup is complete.

It's also probably time to purge a few applications off the phone as well, as the number of applications creeps back up to 45, which obviously I don't use all the time.

Also while I'm talking about iPhone applications, there are a couple of serious keepers for the forseeable future:

• Piggie: This is a direct change from MoneyBook
• Simple Note: Just can't believe I did without this application for so long. It's basically the gmail of notes. I'm finally bloody organised enough to have all of my notes with me all the time in a way that is clear and synced across my machines. Game changer.
• NightStand Central - The only alarm application that you will ever need. Or at least till something simpler comes along, but I have to say I love this application and the way it uses the hardware is excellent.

The Web Designer’s Guide to iOS Apps - This should be an interesting read. Not heard much from anyone about this, but I’m sorting out my wishlist, so this is definitely on there.

TeuxDeux - To do lists are one of those things that every person does in a different way. What’s funny in my mind is that there definitely seems to be a trend of white and red apps designed in a certain way, <a href"calvetica.com">Calvetica is another solid example. Strange that they’re created by two completely different parties, although the Calvetica app is slightly more polished I feel.

Nexus S - The new Android phone from Google. Not that it matter to me as I’m set with my iPhone for the next 3 years I would imagine. The thing is it’s always interesting to see what Google is up to because they’re the only real competition to the iPhone, and if they get better then you know Apple will need to up their game. Currently I think it’s all about the software, and iOS does a ton of stuff well, but needs a ton of stuff to make it better.

What do I think of the industrial design of the S? I personally don’t like it. I loved the Nexus One (and the Desire). HTC have something that Samsung really don’t. Samsung always have this really plasticy feel to their stuff, from their TVs to this high end smart phone. Plasticy.

While it’s been pretty quiet over here on the site, it’s mainly because life has gotten in the way. This includes work, finding a house to buy, sorting out a wedding and a few public holidays with family obligations have all had their toll on my time.

One thing that has happened in the last couple of days however is the fact that I’ve finally started using my iPhone for something other than consuming data and information. It’s now become something I am creating art on….I know. I basically bought Brushes, which after testing out Sketch Pro and Adobe’s Ideas is by far the single best art creating software app in the app store. Simply because of the work follow process and the fact that the creators seem to understand how someone using the iPhone would go about creating art.

One of the things that I absolutely love is the fact that in contrast to something like Photoshop the toolset is limited (as you would expect) but having less things to think about, actually means that by limiting yourself you become more inventive with how you show things, you stop depending on the software and trying to solve a problem by thinking. One thing I’m thinking is stuff life layer effects. Apart from transparency there isn’t much more you can do. You can merge layers down and rearranging them, and that’s about it. The limitation increases the boundaries.

My current tool of choice is the Pogo Sketch Stylus. It’s a tiny little thing, beautifully designed, although I’m honestly all that sure about the nib. I know, the most important part right? Well the nib on this is a fluffy spongy ball, which is pretty responsive. As I’ve not seen or tried any alternative I have no idea which one works better. I would have imagined that a hard rubber tip to be better for this sort of thing, but without a sample from somewhere I can’t tell. I might ask someone to lend me an old Stylus (nopefully something that’s a little meatier than the traditional thin metal strips that came with most Palm handhelds.

Speaking of limitations, I think the size of the actual phone means that feature creep will be limited, but hopefully they will provide additional features. Personally I would welcome the following features:

1. More layers. I think 4 just isn’t enough. I know the iPad version has 6. While I like the fan formation of the layers, doing them in a row might save on space and allow for additional layers.

2. I would like to be able to move things around on a layer easily. The way this could be done is within the layers view.

3. The ability to choose a colour and add them in a favourite dock (I think the iPad version has this, which really means they need to bring that somehow to the iPhone. As I am using the same colour palette for the project I am working on, I’ve created a layer with the colours I generally use, how it’s a whole layer, and when you’ve only got 4 it’s creates an additional limit, which I can see they’ve resolved on the iPad version..

Since I bought this app, it is by far my most used one on my phone. The blog is pretty quiet at the moment (they’ve not posted anything since August) which is a shame as I’m sure there is a ton of stuff that people have been creating since then.

How many images have I created so far? So far it’s 5. I’m aiming for a minimum of 1 a day. I don’t think it’s too difficult as some of these images I’m able to create pretty quickly. There is a purpose to all of this. It has nothing to do with my main graphic novel, which has been coming along slowly but surely. It’s great to see the pages slowly taking form, but this is a side project that provides me with a great deal of liberation and pretty quick gratification of creating a character, then another, then a world that they live in, all within a week.

Watch this space as I will be talking about this a lot more in the coming weeks and months – I honestly have a good feeling about this.

So yesterday I made to purchases. The first was the Pogo Sketch stylus. The second was Brushes. The obvious reasoning is to start making a comic on my iPhone. I know probably not the best medium for this thing. Maybe getting an iPad for that sort of thing would be better, but I’m not getting a first gen iPad (that’s another post for another time).

I’ve actually have several drawing applications on my iPhone, but I’ve found that Brushes is the best for actually creating, even if the icon sucks many many balls. Adobe Ideas doesn’t provide you with enough options for the brushes (you have one), and Sketch Pro (from Autodesk) I found to be incredibly annoying with it’s unresponsive zooming in and out. This is a major issue on a small screen as you’ll be doing that a lot to get the finer details. Also the layer system on Brushes just works nicely and five layers should be about enough to deal with things.

All of this is my attempt to create a daily comic from my iPhone. I’m going to try and build a few weeks worth of material (don’t even know what I’m going to be drawing at the moment) but hopefully it’ll be fun while I continue to toil away at my other comic book work (on the 7th page of my second draft, slowly but surely people, slowly but surely).

So I’m looking for an iPhone stand, and I happen upon this little thing, the iAngle. Clicking around to see how it actually works, I came onto the little quote from Mac|Life magazine:

The “iANGLE charms me by pulling double duty. One side lets you coil up your earbuds as usual, but the other side serves as an iPhone holder that props it at a nice angle for vegging out to a movie”

Who the fuck does that? Vegges out to a movie on their iPhone…seriously. I can imagine you watching a few clips or whatever on the move…what a bunch of idiots.

Still haven’t found my idea iPhone stand btw.

Broken Kode, there’s an app for that - not really, it doesn’t exist but if you like having websites as icons on your Iphone (you known by making a bookmark in mobile safari and then saving it to your homepage), the ‘Kode now has a customised icon just for that.

The way to do it is pretty simple, here’s a couple of links to help you with the “technical bits”, templates you might want to use and how to hide the address bar in mobile safari to show more of the site straight away:

1. Making an website icon without the gloss

2. Iphone 4 icon templates PSD

3. Hide address bar in mobile safari