After three calls into AT&T I finally got to talk to a technical support specialist who figured out the problem. Apparently if you had an original 1st Gen iPhone on an original 2G plan and have since upgraded to a 3G or 3GS, like I did, then AT&T (most likely) didn’t actually update your account. In my case, the original IMEI settings for the first iPhone were still listed in my account. So on AT&T’s end it figured I wasn’t capable of handling MMS and shut everything down before it passed to/from my phone. Once he corrected that setting for the 3GS, everything sent to me so far today started flying through. Looks like if you’re having issues, you have to call AT&T and have them fix the IMEI settings on your account.

Note that the customer service representative who first answers the call will not have the ability to correct these settings. You’ll need to ask for a Technical Support Specialist who can make these correction. It’s also advised that you call from a different phone then the iPhone in question as my agent had me reset the phone to make sure the new settings took and then sent me a message to make sure it was actually working.

It was a bit of a hassle, but now it’s working. Hopefully this saves some people some frustration.

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If you use Twitter all day long, then you’ll see the value in this Safari add-on. Once installed, it adds itself to the Safari Preferences and gives you a few options — basically a spot to add your twitter account information and set up a template to base your tweets on, if that’s what you want to do. Then, during your normal web browsing, when you come across something you want to share with the world, hit ⌘+⌃+T (command+control+T) and the Thurly App drops into action.

Thurly App in Action

You get a few options in the app: the ability to just copy the shortened URL to use in your Twitter app of choice, the ability to enter another URL and shorten it, or, the ability to tweet a message with the shortened URL. All of the normal Twitter nuances, including the 140 character counter, are built into the app. It’s a simple app, yet one that is very useful.

The app is free, but you can register for $4.95 and that will unlock the ability to set up more than one twitter account with the app as well as use the template system. You can download it and learn more at Thurly App.

Since I was a part of the beta testing, I’ve got the cool press release, so if you’re into that sort of thing it’s included below. Give the app a try, I’m sure you’ll like it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orlando, FL — Elixir is happy to announce Thurly, a plug-in for Safari that allows you to both shorten URLs in a snap as well as post directly to Twitter without ever leaving your browser window.

With a quick keyboard shortcut (Command-Control-T) Thurly springs to life automatically shortening the URL of the web page you are on.

From there you can copy the shortened URL out to use elsewhere. Paste it into emails, forums posts, blog entries and much more.

Thurly allows you to also post to Twitter from the main interface. It populates the Status field with a shortened URL and let’s you edit your post as you like. Click “Tweet” or press Command-Enter and your post lands in your Twitter updates.

Registering Thurly is not required. You can use the base features of the plug-in, shortening URLs and posting to Twitter, for free until the cows come home.

We have added some bells and whistles though to make your life easier. Registering allows you to use multiple Twitter accounts, letting you post from different accounts on the fly from the main interface.

We have also built in the option to use a Twitter template. The template let’s you set a default message that appears in your Twitter Status field each time your open Thurly. Which can also be overridden at any time.

Download your copy today, it’s free!

Registration for a single user license is a mere $4.95 (about the price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks).

Screenshot link 1: http://thurlyapp.com/images/screenshot1.jpg
Screenshot link 2: http://thurlyapp.com/images/screenshot2.jpg
Intro Video: http://vimeo.com/5523344
App Icon: http://thurlyapp.com/download/ThuryIcon.zip

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Enough rambling. Since I won’t be here I’m going to make my predicitons and you can read them and then leave a comment telling me how far off I am. That way, I don’t have to go anywhere but here to figure out what happened. If no one comments, I’ll be a sad panda. Though, to prevent this, I instituted a backup plan. Mwhahaha.

So, bold predictions. I’m going to start boldless and get bolder as I go until the end when they’ll be really, really bold. The boldest if you will.

• iPhone OS 3.0 will be available immediately following the keynote and will be free for 3G users, $9.99 for iPod touch and original iPhone owners. It will also be may more awesome than previously thought and include some unannounced features:
  • Way better way to manage apps on the phone. Maybe a better home screen.
  • Some sort of background process allowance. Maybe not for all apps, but for a certain number. These apps will have special permission from Apple. So you will not be able to run iFart in the background.
  • The ability to not have all the default Apple apps on the phone all the time. Contacts, I’m looking at you.
• To coincide with iPhone OS 3.0, the iPhone Nano will be averrable directly following the ‘note. Smaller capacity, cheep, less a lot of features (like GPS). Basically an iPhone for the cheapskates and an economy-friendly model. Also as a means to stifle the price of the:
• 3rd Gen iPhone (perhaps called iPhone Video) to be available sometime in July. This will be the all black super-phone that has been showing up on rumor sites lately and will have the 600 mhz processor and 256 MB RAM and up to 32 GB of hard drive space. It’ll have a way better camera and all that it entails. This will be more expensive than the 3G model, more in line with the original iPhone pricing. May not have a special contract price.
• OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will be heavily demoed and it will be revealed that while most of the stuff is under the hood, a new, unified look across all applications will be implemented — think iLife ‘09. The release date will also be announced as sometime in late August or early September. Price: in the $50 to $75 dollar range. It will also come with a free year of MobileMe or, even bolder prediction, bundled with iLife ‘10 (which would obviously be announced).
• MacBooks will see speed bumps across the board, with the high-end 13″ MacBook turning into a MacBook Pro. The 15″ MacBook Pro will be redesigned ala the 17″ model, and will feature the same built-in 8-hour battery. People will obliviously complain about this.
• One more thing: Steve Jobs will come out and introduce the iTablet/NetBook/small computer that people think they want. It won’t be what people think it will be, but it will be awesome and instantly dominate the market. It won’t be available until late in the summer, presumably with the Snow Leopard release. It will be more expensive than a netbook but less than a MacBook. People will cheer and some will faint. The Apple stock will soar through the roof and fanboys will cry.
• Jobs’ appearance will cause the crush of all fanboy and critic dreams for a few minutes and then they will realize that the wasn’t announced and begin to cry and curse Jobs’ name. Apple stock will then fall citing that the product announcements weren’t good enough. True Apple fans will tell these people to get a life, and Twitter will lag 25 minutes behind all day.

Bold enough for you? These come from a mixture of things I’ve read across the internet over the last few weeks and some from my own crazy head. Namely the later stuff. I won’t really care if I’m completely wrong, though I will be surprised if the new super-iPhone isn’t somewhat accurate. After all, it is time for me to upgrade.

So, how’d I do? Was I right? Wrong? What’d I miss? Let me know below.

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Right off the bat I realized that Safari 4 looks much nicer than it’s predecessor. It seems more refined, cleaner. There are some swanky new features that make it really stand out, namely the Top Sites and search suggestion features. It’s eye candy, but it’s also functional. The Top Sites is an especially nice feature when you open a new tab.

One thing that seems to be causing a significant amount of debate, at least on Twitter, is the new location of Safari’s tabs. Instead of under the address bar, like they are on every web browser, Safari 4 has moved them to the top of the browser. I actually really like this. It’s practical, it utilizes some screen space that would otherwise be wasted and in turn allows for more of the page to be shown at one time.

There are a few things I don’t like, however. The first and foremost is that 1Password, a tool that I can’t live without, currently doesn’t work with Safari 4. I’m sure the Agile team will fix this in the coming days, but I’m literally dead in the water without 1Password. Another thing that I absolutely can’t stand is that the website progress bar, which was a nice blue bar going through the site bar while the page is loading, is gone. Now there is no real way to tell the sites loading progress. Luckily, someone already figured out how to get it back.

There is one thing that’s not currently supported that I’d like to see added in a future update, and that’s handling the domains in much the same way that MobileSafari does: dropping the http:// and www for the address. They’re useless anyway, why should I have to see them? twitter.com/justincox is the same as http://twitter.com/justincox, it just looks a lot nicer.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve got to say about Safari 4. (Can you tell I’m running out of ideas for the February Blog-O-Rama?)

Update: Thanks to 1Password’s awesome Twitter presence I have found out just how to update 1Password so that it works with Safari 4: have it check for beta updates as well. My life is once again complete. See, I told you the Agile guys would figure it out.

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Awesome!

What’s great about this comment is that while the poster, Nerd Killer, obviously has eclectic music tastes (s)he has little in the way of intelligence. You see, Mr. or Miss. Nerd Killer is, presumably, a self proclaimed killer of nerds. Though at the end of the post (s)he announces that they are a big music nerd. Awesome is right! Is that a conflict of interest or just another person that needs to get punched in the jeans?

Since that was so much fun, I decided to look at some reviews for a few “featured” yet poorly rated apps. Boy am I glad I did! The official Grammys app brought not one, but two reviews worth pointing out.

Anynomuss?

Alright. I don’t have a clue what this app is about but I can assume, by the coherent review given by “bobbyriggs,” that it involves some sort of music trivia game. The first reviewer, B2melo, brings all kinds of hilarity. Now I can understand the principal of wanting to give the app a zero star review. For not letting he/she/it play. But come on Grammys app, you didn’t play on B2melo. How dare you be so rude? I’m not really sure what Anyomuss is so whiskey tango foxtrot over, but they’re worth pointing out because anyomuss is about the coolest way of possibly spelling anonymous wrong. [Fort the record, it took me two tries to spell anonymous correctly.]

This next review comes from some sort of diet app — I can’t remember the name and it’s not worth my time to go back and find it.

To skinny? Where'd that come from?

The Rose Queen moniker is perfect. While the name makes her sound like a nice girl, you know she’s got that thorny aspect to her. And that shows up in her review. Though, the rose in question probably got hit with a bit of pesticide in the growing process. She offers up a pretty good review, until she starts talking about being too skinny. If I get a diet app and don’t like it, I don’t like it. How does that mean I’m to skinny? And there was no offensive taken. Though when the rose offensive is underway, I don’t want to be anywhere near here…

I was wondering if there was any justice for the app store reviews so I decided to see if the app’s content made any difference. Enter some $10 app that features information on every member of Congress.

Well thought out and written reviews? It's possible? Amazing!

Apparently making an app that intelligent people use will merit intelligent reviews. Who would have thought? Hum. You know what this means, right? There’s a freaking comedic gold mine in the fart app category!

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Apple changed the video editing game with iMovie ‘08 by taking out the traditional timeline view and leaving the actual editing to a drag-and-drop interface. This angered some and liberated others. Me? It didn’t matter that much. It seemed to make editing videos much easier but tweaking fine details and making pinpoint cuts very difficult.

Precision Editor
iMovie ‘09 brought some minor refinements to the new system introduced in the ‘08 model, but ones that raise the video editing bar. Added back, in the form of a “Precision Editor,” is a modified timeline that is very simple, yet allows for very precise cuts and timing. It’s very, very cool. In fact, the Precision Editor is so smooth, that it seemed to make the whole video editing process much easier.

Precision Editor

I broke iMovie ‘09 in editing a video for Operation BLIND. The original video was the same speech given by nine different kids. It amounted to about thirty minutes of footage. The task was to edit the video together so that entire two minute speech was given with a different person speaking each line. A tall task. But with this new Precision Editor I had the whole thing chopped and put together in a few hours. Thats it. I had planned to work on this for most of the week, but it took a few hours — with a break for lunch and a trip the drum store. (To see the complete video please visit the link above.) Needless to say, I was impressed.

Dynamic Themes
If you’re familiar with iDVD (which oddly wasn’t touched with this update to iLife) then you get the basic idea of Dynamic Themes. Basically it’s a themed video with drag-and-drop zones for videos or images as well as specialized title graphics and transitions to match the theme. This thing is pretty incredible.

It’s very easy to use; you can simply select a group of pictures or videos, drag them into an empty project with a set theme, and iMovie will place all the videos/images into the drop zones and add the specialized transitions and title cards. That’s it. You can refine it and tweak it from there, but you don’t have to. And let me tell you, these themes are slick. I’ll be using the photo album one for the annual senior video I make for the youth group and I can’t wait to put it together.

The only thing I don’t like about the Dynamic Themes is that there’s only six of them. As Apple expands upon the idea and continues to update iMovie, I’m sure they’ll add more. I just wish there were more to play with now. They’re that cool.

Animated Travel Maps
This new feature is also known as the Indiana Jones effect — you know, where the little red line goes from airport to airport on the map while the travel music plays? It’s a little gimmicky but still pretty cool. It seems just about every global airport is available in the setup, along with a mileage between points (in case you were wondering). The only thing I couldn’t figure out how to do was have a map show multiple stops. Not a big deal, but I might not have been looking hard enough.

Final Thoughts
iMovie ‘09 is pretty much a knock out. If you’re a video editing hobbyist like me, you’ll be very happy with the changes made. If you’re an editing purist, you might be pleased with the direction Apple is heading. Sure, it’s not Final Cut Pro, but as part of a $79 suite of apps, it’s well, well worth the cost of upgrading. To put it in context, I can see paying $79 for iMovie ‘09 by itself. It’s that good.

iMovie is a part of iLife ‘09 and sells for $79 (or a little less through Amazon — and I get a small kickback). This is part two in a series reviewing iLife ‘09. Look for a review of GarageBand sometime in the foreseeable future.

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Faces
I’ve got to say this was a feature a long time coming. Tagging someone in the keywords of a photo is one thing, but actually tagging their face is another entirely. iPhoto ‘09 allows you to do just that but takes it one better, it uses some sort of facial recognition algorithm to connect pictures based on who is in them. At least that’s the theory.

In actuality, iPhoto seems to detect about 75% of faces. This percentage is very good in my opinion. The system has no trouble at all finding faces in portraits/close ups but in candid or group shots it’s a bit spotty. If the subject is wearing a hat, glasses or even has hair in front of their face sometimes the system doesn’t recognize the face. What iPhoto doesn’t do all that well is figure out who’s in the picture.

Over the last week I’ve gone through the 10 or so years worth of pictures in my library and have tried to tag the faces of most of the pictures in there. This has resulted in nearly 150 different people, each with somewhere from 2 or 3 pictures to a whole lot. On average I’d say each ‘face’ has about 10 to 15 images. Now I don’t know if it’s because there are a lot of different people or not enough source material for each person, but I’d say iPhoto only gets about 25% of the facial recognition correct. I will say that the first person I trained iPhoto to recognize was me (is that conceited or what?) and after tagging 3 or 4 photos, it was able to find a dozen or so more and so on.

In theory the system is awesome and perhaps as I give it more input it’ll get better, but the facial recognition just isn’t quite where I’d hoped it would have been. I’m not sure if the technology behind the recognition is something that could be updated through Software Update, but it’d be interesting to see if Apple improves upon it in the future.

Places Map

Finding locations is pretty easy and there’s a fair amount of default locations built in — all cities and a good amount of landmarks/points of interest. Adding additional locations is just as easy and uses a Google Maps search engine. If that doesn’t find what you’re looking for, you can always just drag the pin where you want it to go.

It’ll be interesting to see how the map grows as I take more pictures with accurate GPS location information, and not just tag with the generic city location.

Location of individual picture.

Online Sharing
Newly integrated into iPhoto is the ability to easily upload and share photos on Facebook and Flickr. It is a very easy process, select photos and pick which service to use. The first time you use each service you have to activate each account — it takes about 30 seconds. Once everything is up and running, sharing the photos is dead simple.

One thing I was interested in was the advertised two-way communication between iPhoto and Facebook with respect to Faces tagging. According to Apple, if you tag a face in iPhoto and upload to Facebook, it’s already tagged. Likewise, if someone tags a photo in Facebook it transmits that to iPhoto. All of this works as advertised except for one feature that you would think would be standard.

When I upload a photo that has been tagged with a face in iPhoto it does tag that photo in Facebook. However, it doesn’t determine if that name is a friend or not so it doesn’t actually link to their account. For example, I tagged a photo of me in iPhoto and when it was uploaded it was tagged but in name only. Couldn’t click on my name to view my profile, etc. It was the same with all the photos I uploaded. If I tagged them in Facebook and re-synced with iPhoto, I was given the “Is this so and so” confirmation. It seems that’s the best way to go about this. Kind of a silly extra step, but one that seems necessary for it all to work properly.

The only other glitch I found here was when I tried to delete a shared album with Flickr. It showed the progress bar, but nothing happened. I quit out and restarted iPhoto and then tried again and it worked — in iPhoto. When I pulled up Flickr the pictures were all still there. I had to delete them using Flickr’s “organize” feature. Again, a strange hassle.

Final Thoughts
So is it worth it? Well, there are some things I was disappointed in, but for the most part I’m pretty happy with iPhoto ‘09. I wish the Faces technology was a bit more refined, but it’s made up for in the Places feature. I’d like to see how future updates and Apple’s infamous “bug fixes” effect iPhoto’s usability. I feel like it’s a good basis to start from and it should continue to grow from here.

iPhoto is a part of iLife ‘09 and sells for $79 (or a little less through Amazon — and I get a small kickback). Over the next few days weeks I’ll go through iLife’s other apps of note, GarageBand and iMovie, and review them as well.

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The Dashboard has been a staple of OS X since 10.4 Tiger was released. It’s concept — that you can have different widgets that do different things — has been repeated all over the internet and now in Windows Vista. With the influx of Web 2.0 website offering basically the same functionality, the Dashboard has become outdated and, dare I say, useless. I can’t remember the last time I actually opened the Dashboard willingly — the occasional accidental F12 key strike does the trick — nor actually used a widget. 10.5 Leopard brought a new feature to the Dashboard, the ability to create your own widgets from any website you wanted using a button on Safari. I can safely say, I’ve never used this feature. It’s a good idea, but again, basically useless.

The problem is not the concept, that in and of itself is okay, the problem is usage. It’s a screen that runs in the background and, when pulled up, is ready to go. The problem here is that it sucks up memory causing the entire system to slow. The other problem — and here’s the kicker — is that why would I launch the Dashboard to see what time it is, look at my calendar, check a contact’s email address or see what the weather is when I can simply do that without launching the Dashboard. So maybe part of the problem is the concept after all.

So here’s what I propose: Apple cancel the Dashboard. 10.6 Snow Leopard is set to debut sometime next year and is not actually offering any new features, but rather a promise to slim down the operating system and make it run much more efficiently. Could there be a more perfect time to get rid of something that causes bloat and inefficiency? While people will miss MacWorld, and probably Christmas too, I’m not sure if I know many people who would miss the Dashboard.

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But this isn’t going to be a review of iTunes 8 and the Genius feature. It’s a look at the name itself. I’ve got a huge problem with it. Other sites around the web are arguing over Apple’s use of the word “funnest” in their new iPod marketing, but I think the use of Genius is a much bigger mistake on Apple’s part.

Anyone who has ever walked into an Apple Store knows that the word Genius is not new to Apple. Apple uses the word to describe it’s tech support people. Computer broke? iPod showing the sad face? Go see a Genius at your local Genius Bar. Makes sense considering a genius should know what to do. Apple has effectively branded the word genius to demote support for your Mac. Now, with the launch of iTunes 8, they are telling us that it also means something that can pick songs for you. I mean, it’d be stupid to walk into the closest Apple Store, wait in line, and then ask a Genius to recommend some music for you. But maybe that’s what Apple want’s us all to do.

I might be looking too much into this, but I think Apple is making a mistake here. The iTunes feature could have easily been called something else leaving the Genius moniker for the support folks at the local store. What do you think? Did Apple make a mistake using the word Genius or am I just overreacting? Let me know in the comments.

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Maybe I’m not seeing this right. Maybe my Apple love has blinded me. Maybe. What do you think? Does this commercial make a bit of sense to you? Let me know in the comments.

Via MacUser.

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