GigaMegaBlog

I recently spent some time as a guest of the Ontario judicial system. No, not as a prisoner, something much more unpleasant: jury duty.

Recommended Reading

This is the second time in five years that I’ve “done my duty”, and in both instances the week consisted of 99% waiting around and 1% being rejected out-of-hand by defense counsel. I am, of course, crushed by the repeated rejections, but I managed to get some benefit from the other 99% of my week by reading a software development e-book.

When I went through this five years ago, I did my reading on a Dell Axim running Windows Mobile 5.0. You laugh, but let me tell you that one thing it did really well was copy and paste. You selected the text with the stylus (stop laughing), used a button to toggle to Word and pasted the text in. A task so simple even Windows Mobile could handle it.

Five years later, I’m using an iPhone. In technical terms, the iPhone is a Porsche and the Axim a Yugo. But when it comes to copy and paste, the Porsche is a freaking nightmare to drive.

The problem isn’t so much with the iPhone as with its apps. Very few of e-readers allow you to copy text into the clipboard. It’s bizarre! Do they think we don’t want that feature (we’re too dumb), or do they not trust us to use it responsibly (we’re too dishonest)? Either way, it’s insulting.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are two very, very good apps that do support the clipboard, and a growing number of e-books that are compatible with them.

Stanza - march to a different drummer

Stanza.   Stanza supports a long list of e-book formats, but unfortunately you are unlikely to encounter most of them when buying e-books. The 3 exceptions are:

1. eReader – This is a “secure” (piracy-protected) format that is used by Fictionwise and Books on Board for most of their books, and by Barnes and Noble for many of them.
2. ePub – The ePub format supported by Stanza is not “secure”, which unfortunately makes it harder to find (we’re dishonest, remember).  However, if you’re a computer geek then you’re in luck: O’Reilly and Microsoft Press offer ePub editions of almost all of their publications.
3. PDF – Support for PDF format documents was added to Stanza last week.  Unfortunately, its copy support is pretty inconsistent, often copying gibberish to the clipboard.

GoodReader - not bad!

GoodReader. GoodReader supports just one format, PDF, but that’s still the most commonly used format for technical publications. I’ve raved about this app before, and I’ve grown more and more impressed with it over time. They added clipboard support a couple of releases ago, and while its not the most convenient implementation (you can only copy a full page of text, not selected text), it is fast and reliable, just like the rest of GoodReader. I’ve yet to find a PDF that GoodReader couldn’t handle — amazingly, it loads 100 meg monsters faster than my desktop PC.

Once you’ve filled the iPhone’s clipboard, your options for pasting text are much better.

You might find that the built-in Notes app is good enough for this task. I use Pastebot – a lot of people rave about its advanced formatting features and automatic synchronization (Mac only), but I like the fact that it automatically saves the clipboard contents when you open the app. If you need to format the text after you paste it (change fonts, italics, etc.), you should consider Documents To Go. I’m really impressed with how quickly it manages to bring you back to your last spot in a document without multitasking — the app is ready to paste a couple of seconds after you click the launcher (on an iPhone 3GS).

The new iOS 4 will make the copy-and-paste process somewhat smoother with its support for multitasking and fast app switching: it might even be able to compete with Windows Mobile 5!

One last piece of good news: O’Reilly (and associated publisher, Microsoft Press) continue to make most of their books available as very inexpensive iPhone apps, generally $5 or $6. That’s the full book, pictures and all.

If you’ve bought one of these apps, you were probably disappointed to find that clipboard support was disabled. This seems to be related to the underlying version of Stanza (which their apps bundle with the e-book). For some reason Stanza quietly disabled clipboard support in an update to their app last year, then quietly re-enabled it in the next update. Hmm.

While O’Reilly continues to use the clipboard-disabled version of Stanza, it is easy enough to do the upgrade yourself. Just follow the process described in my earlier post to extract the ePub from the O’Reilly / Microsoft Press book app, then import the ePub into Stanza using their desktop app or a URL link.

I’m pretty sure that O’Reilly is OK with you doing so — as mentioned in my earlier post, it was O’Reilly themselves who originally documented the process. If not, maybe I’ll get yet another opportunity to read e-books as a guest of the Ontario judicial system!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the latest iTunes patch, version 9.1.1, fixed a problem with Audible audiobooks on my iPhone and iPod Touch.

Previously, whenever I added new content from Audible I would lose my current place in whatever audiobook I was listening to. The next time I listened to the audiobook it would start playing at the beginning of the book. I know that it seems like a nit, but since I subscribe to a couple of daily Audible “podcasts” (Charlie Rose FTW, w00t!), it was a nit I encountered almost every day.

Nice to get some noticeable value for my 102 megabyte “patch”. Considering that the bug was introduced at about the time OS 3 was released, and OS 4 looms just around the corner, I wonder if I’ve seen the last of this one. Audible announced (well, twittered) a couple of months ago that they were working on supporting wireless downloads on the iPhone — will we finally have an app for that?

This book is a top notch implementation of a questionable concept.  Like a shiny new sports car on a dealer’s lot, it looks and performs great right now, but its value will fall as time goes by.

The problem is that a book of iPhone app recommendations is similar to the “best of the Internet” books that appeared in the 90s – they were out-of-date within a year of their publication.

This book was published just last month (July 2009), but there are many excellent apps that were released after the book was written: Camera Zoom, Ragdoll Blaster, Comixology’s Comics.

Also, the book was written just before the release of the iPhone’s OS 3.0.  The new operating system made some entirely new types of app models possible, such as in-app purchases (the aforementioned Comics app) and augmented reality (Nearest Tube), while rendering some of the book’s picks inoperable (Darkroom) or considerably less valuable (Quickoffice – the first, and last, app to offer custom copy-and-paste support).

Having said all that, anyone wading into the iPhone App Store badly needs a guide of some sort, since the App Store is notoriously difficult to navigate when you are looking for the best rated apps of a specific type.

At present, you have two options: sort through the multitude of web sites that contain app reviews, or read a book like this.  For the time being, the only book like this is this (though I’m sure that will soon change too).

I found this book’s recommendations and reviews of apps I’m familiar with to be fair and accurate. In many cases I had already come across the same apps through other sources, but there were several instances where I switched app loyalties based on the book’s recommendation. The book really shines in the breadth of categories that it covers.  I discovered many apps, and quite a few categories, that I had no idea existed but now use regularly, such as Instapaper and Last.fm.

In addition to soon becoming out-of-date, the book has a couple of other drawbacks that are admittedly unavoidable for this type of publication. At least half of the app categories were ones that I have no interest in and skipped right past, making this a very short read. Also, a lot of the apps are either unavailable in Canada or of no use to people outside the US, but the book’s reviews clearly identify most of these instances.

I should mention that O’Reilly has also established a companion “Best iPhone Apps” web site.  Currently, the site only contains some abbreviated reviews of the same apps covered by the book, but hopefully they will cover new apps in the future.  At this point, the site isn’t an alternative to the book, or even a better alternative to the many other sites that publish iPhone app reviews.

The bottom line: although only a fraction of the apps covered in this book were of interest to me, I ended up using about 10 of those apps, all of them new discoveries for me. I didn’t find any of the book’s recommendations to be outright clunkers. This made the book a worthwhile investment to me. Those who are completely new to iPhone apps, or who love trying new things, will find this book to be particularly valuable.

Together with David Pogue’s iPhone: The Missing Manual, The Best iPhone Apps could be considered “iPhone 101″.  (Grad students can advance to yet another O’Reilly publication, iPhone Hacks, a book which truly lives up to the promise of “Hacks”).

I saw a rumour (not rumor!) over at iPhoneInCanada.ca.  They say that us Canadians can get our filthy mitts on those delectable Amazon Kindle books by doing the following:

1. 

   Mmmm, forbidden fruit

   Get an iPhone or iPod Touch.  (I suppose you could also try to get an actual Kindle, but that’s a different rumour).   If you’re on a budget then a 1st generation iPod Touch is the least expensive option, and you should be able to find one for about $150 on eBay.   Apple.ca occasionally sells refurbished 1st gens for about $180, and they currently have refurbished 2nd generation iPod Touches for $200.

2. Download and install iTunes as usual.  Sign up using your true Canadian address and credit card – you’ll need to do so to get your iPhone/iPod up and running.
3. Purchase a Mastercard gift card.  These are sold at Shopper’s Drug Mart and, perhaps, other retailers.  The key is that it must be a “Vanilla” brand Mastercard, which apparently does not appear to be a Canadian credit card to iTunes.  Accept no substitutes – the Visa gift card, for example, does not do the trick.
4. Follow the steps on iTunesInCanada to add a 2nd user-ID to iTunes, this time an American one. (Hint – don’t use a Canadian domain like sympatico.ca – Apple probably isn’t that stupid).   It appears that the billing address doesn’t matter, so long as it’s somewhere in America.
5. Log into the iTunes App Store using your new American user-ID.  Take a look around – there’s a lot more than Kindle to be found.  For example, they have a Last.FM client for streaming audio – banned in the Canadian App Store for no apparent reason.  They also have its main competitor, Pandora.  They have all 6 seasons of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which is 6 more than us poor Canadians are offered!  With all of these new entertainment options available, do you still have time to read books?  If not, you can stop here.
6. 

   Mmmmm, forbidden fast food

   Download and install the Kindle app from iTunes.  Surprisingly, considering how difficult Apple makes it to sync your iPhone/iPod to another computer, syncing  to another account is seamless – you won’t lose any of the apps or media currently on your device.

7. Run the Kindle app and use it to create a new Amazon user-ID.  (Note that this is Amazon.com, not .ca, so your Amazon.ca login won’t work).  Again, use a new e-mail address that doesn’t have a Canadian domain, like Gmail or Hotmail.
8. Now here’s the tricky part — things appear to have changed since the iPhonesInCanada article was written.   The Vanilla Mastercard trick no longer works at Amazon – hopefully Apple won’t catch on too!   However, since you won’t get very far without a billing address, go ahead and add your Vanilla Mastercard.  To do so, click on the Your Account link, then “Add A Credit Card”.  Be sure to enter an American billing address – the same one as you’re using on iTunes should work.
9. Logout of Amazon.com.  Then, log back in to Amazon.com using a Canadian user-ID.  If you’ve already bought from Amazon.com in the past, use that user-ID.  Otherwise, you’ll have to create yet another new user-ID, and add your Canadian credit card (not the Vanilla Mastercard) to this one, with your correct Canadian billing address.
10. 

    Loonie Launderer

    While logged in with you Canadian user-ID, buy a Gift Card.  Select the “E-mail a Gift Card” option, and enter the e-mail address of your American Amazon user-ID.

11. You should find that your American e-mail account receives the gift card within minutes.  Log into Amazon.com with your American user-ID, then go to the “Your Account” page. Delete the Vanilla Mastercard from your account (click on “Manage Payment Options”, then the delete button).  Then, from the “My Account” page, click on “Apply a Gift Certificate/Card to Your Account” and enter the code that you received in the e-mail.
12. And you’re done!  Go to any Kindle book’s page (best to experiment with a free one first) and click the “Buy Now with Click Once” link.  It should work, and the next time you run the Kindle app it will automatically download the book to your iPhone/iPod.
13. As you purchase Kindle books you will, of course, need to replenish your Amazon account from time to time, using additional gift certificates.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you go and do all this.   There are many good reasons why you shouldn’t.

Apple is becoming increasingly aggressive about enforcing the rules of the App Store, so they might close this loophole at any time.  Amazon has been known to make their Kindle books magically disappear when a publisher raises a licensing issue. Perhaps the best reason is that you don’t have to: there are plenty of other e-book retailers, including a home-grown one, who are quite happy to do business with us.

And, after all, it’s just a rumour!

Shipping included.  Seriously!

I bought one of these to protect my multi-thousand dollar (including data plan) iPhone 3Gs.  The photo pretty accurately reflects the styling (meh), but it doesn’t do justice to the fit.

The phone sits snugly in the case, which sits nicely in my shirt pocket.  The front flap has a hard (presumably plastic) insert that does a decent job of protecting the iPhone’s screen, and there is a hidden magnetic clasp that causes the flap to close tightly with a satisfying thwack.

Yeah, I know, I sound like the ghost of Billy Mays.  But wait, there’s more!  The case has holes for the camera, headphone jack and USB cable.  The flap does a reasonable job of holding the screen upright for watching videos.  Cell phone usage is fine when the iPhone’s sitting in the case – I can hear and be heard without any problems.

Things are little tight when trying to poke at the left and rightmost parts of the virtual keyboard, but otherwise I haven’t been tempted to remove the iPhone from the case.

Eventually I’ll probably give in to my iPhone’s whining about wanting to look cooooool, and buy it one of these sexy Proporta outfits — almost 10 times the price, shipping not included, but they do throw in a teabag.  (Seriously!).  I once stepped on my iPod Touch while it was protected by a similar Proporta case, and it survived without so much as a screen smudge.  But a lesser klutz could probably get by with the $4.38 knockoff.

While you’re at DealExtreme (the geek’s dollar store), you might want to fish out some change to buy their no-name versions of  the iPhone USB charger ($3.04) and cable ($1.77).  I own both and they’re surprisingly well made.  Together, with the case it will be the best ten bucks you ever spent.