When I met Matt Mullenweg recently at WordCamp NYC (WordPress WordCamp NYC part 1) I told him that WordPress blogging had helped sell me on the idea of switching over from TMobile to ATT because I now have the capacity to do a decent post, using my mobile device.

However, the first version of WordPress for the iPhone is somewhat limited in what it does - there’s no formatting controls and you can only place photos at the bottom of a post - plus you can’t put any hyperlinks in because the iPhone OS does not have that capability currently.

But I told Matt Mullenwag (who was on his way to a business meeting that concluded with the purchase of Polldaddy by Automatic, Matt’s company) that WordPress ought to make improving the iPhone application a priority, and he was receptive and suggested one might be upcoming soon.

However, I wish I told him to do one more thing - and I’m using this post to test it out - currently the Wordpress appication on the iPhone does not capture blog posts that are in draft mode - it will, however, capture those that are published.

In lieu of having that functionality - and preparing for Emetrics DC, I decided to prepare many of my posts for sessions I plan to attend beforehand, putting in the marketing notes, tags, hyperlinks, all from my laptop, then publishing my post for one minute, getting the data to sync on the WordPress application, then unpublishing my post before Google Reader or Google Alerts can pick it up. Most of the time I was successful but one - darn - my unfinished post was picked up by Google because I must have published it at an interval when Google was crawling my site.

So the first part worked - I could get my post, done on my laptop, transferred over to my iPhone Wordpress application - but …… I had not tested the post to see, if, on the iPhone, I could update the post, and then publish it from the iPhone.

So that’s what I’m going to try to do now - and I’ll write a line or two below this one - this will be proof of concept that my “workaround” for WordPress and the iPhone actually did work.

Ok, I am writing this text from my 3G IPhone and here’s the steps I took.

1. Write the parts of a post ahead of time on laptop or desktop, then publish it.

2. Immediately go to IPhone Wordpress app, sync posts with blog, the blog post should appear in the local draft listings of posts ( however the post has a status of “published” at this point.

3. Unpublish the post from the laptop or desktop.

4. Edit post from IPhone ( this step is what I did just now, here).

5. Finish blip post on IPhone then publish it.

Worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No problemo. I just finished the post back on my laptop, because I wanted to indent - everything worked perfectly.

So …. we now have a way to prepare a post, for say .. a conference session, beforehand, with a bunch of links and formatting - send it over to the iPhone - take your notes and finish the post without dragging around a laptop!!!

Thanks Matt Mullenweg for creating this application for the iPhone - and Matt, feel free to improve it, when you get around to it, so I don’t have to publish and unpublish my posts to get them over to the iPhone.

And this last line, I’m writing, again, from my iPhone.

WordPress Rocks -Especially on my 3G IPhone!

I was thinking of writing this post about the 3G Iphone anyway, as I had discovered some things that are helping me have a better experience with it - and just as I was about to begin - Deep Jive Interests - when ahead and did his own critique of the 3G Iphone (though I missed meeting Tony Hung when I was Tornoto last May for the Social Media RoundTable and Third Tuesday - we did try to hook up).

Tony Hung’s post on Some (Late) Thoughts on the iPhone 3G: Its Good, Bad and sometimes Ugly was just published - and he noted the bad battery life - well ….. there’s actually a work around for that one as mentioned earlier this month in Gizmodo - Apple’s iPhone 3G Fix: Turn Airplane Mode On and Off - I’ve been doing that when I’m not home or somewhere that I know I can access the wireless network without a password (not that many places) and it’s doubled the battery life!

Of course, if I’m on the phone much - I’d say, more than an hour - that will eat away about half of the battery right there - but the ATT 3G Network works OK, most of the time, if you run into trouble, just Turn Airplance Mode On and Off - as mentioned in the Gizmodo article and that seems to trigger a reconnect to ATT which restores my connection, 9 out of 10 times.

The last firmware update helped as well (don’t keep track of the exact release number) and another coming in September will help even more, so I’m told.  And a post just published by Gizmodo on August 28th gives the reason why the latest firmware patch helped with the 3G Network - Power Consumption (but it had to be more than this, I feel) -The iPhone 3G’s Problem May Have Been Found and Fixed:

Essentially, the 2.0.2 updated the iPhone to ask for less power from AT&T’s towers for UMTS voice and data transmission.

Essentially, the 2.0.2 updated the iPhone to ask for less power from AT&T’s towers for UMTS voice and data transmission. Apparently iPhones were simply asking for too much power—more than the handsets actually required—and when many iPhone users were stacked on one base transceiver station tower, the tower simply ran out of power. No/low tower power equals dropped calls and poor 3G connections.

However, since it’s a power problem, most of the 3G Iphones need to get the update so that all benefit - as it’s also the cellular towers that are losing power (did I get that right?).

About the rest of what Tony has to say in his post on Some (Late) Thoughts on the iPhone 3G: Its Good, Bad and sometimes Ugly I agree with most of it - except that I was not even expecting to use the iPhone camera for much, to be honest with you - and have lately, in the WordPress Application - where I have been able to take a picture and post it along with my thoughts.

Darren Rowse wrote a post about blogging on the 3G Iphone - The iPhone 3G as a Blogging Tool - My Review

“…. as a blogging tool, the iPhone meets the expectations that I had when I bought it.

I didn’t expect it to be ever be a primary blogging device - and it isn’t - however it will be a very useful device to use as a secondary and supporting blogging device. It will save me time, allow me to be aware of important events that are relevant to my blogs and help me to connect better with readers and other bloggers.

I’m certain that other mobile devices can do similar things (in fact some like the Nokia 95 have a number of the things in my wishlist below) but for me, at least for the next little while, it’s the iPhone that I’ll be carrying in my pocket.”

My thoughts are that I’m happy to have a way to finally blog to my WordPress blogs, for a change, even if buggy, and even if I can’t spell check what I write very well - it’s much appreciated.

I’d say, in a year from now, with an external pluggable Keyboard and some more improvements in Battery Life, the 3G Iphone released then (next year) will become a viable laptop replacement.

And one more thing Tony, you say the battery life of a 3G Iphone is awful - and it is - but have you been carrying around the outlet plug so you can change it up from a normal power outlet?

I carry mine everywhere I go now.

I'm kinda leaning to buying a 3G Iphone that just went on "sale" yesterday.  Too bad the rumor from @chrissieb of Steve Jobs waiting on line at the Apple Store on 59th Street wasn't true - he should have waited on line, what a story that would have been.

I'm testing all this out on my iPod Touch - but …… but ….. but… what do you do with an iPod Touch without interent connectivity half the time - you kinda have to end up with the iPhone, esp, with some of the new Social Networking and Directional software that's been made available.

Still, I'm only willing to buy one if I can get at $199.00, I'm not spending $500+ that many are still shelling out on it - we'll see once I try to sign up - but I'm not waiting on line for 5 hours like most of my friends did, yesterday.

When SNL’s Take On The iPhone Ads is written about inTechCrunch - it's hard for me to ignore it.  

I guess the iPhone makes it all happen, according to the SNL iPhone Commercial which - as Techcrunch notes, is actually better than the real iPhone commercial.

Skype Cell Phones are coming on the market now and that is a big deal, especially for international calls according to Last 100, but the first offerings are skimpy in must have features like WiFi and a full keyboard:

"..The handset itself won’t win any prizes on the style-front. It’s a bog standard candy-bar design, with a slightly cheap looking trim. This isn’t a phone for the tech-savvy early adopter crowd to rival the iPhone, but is squarely aimed at younger, more general, price conscious consumers.

• Despite offering first-of-its-kind native Skype functionality, the phone doesn’t feature WiFi. Duh!
• Sending Skype-to-Skype IMs maybe free, but there is, sadly, no QWERTY keyboard.
• Presence — the ability to see who is “online” and ready to receive a call — is a great feature on a cell phone.

Now that I have an iPod Touch the iPod/iPhone capababilities and stories are more interesting and relevant to me - there's been an update to Gmail to make it work better with the iPhone as shown in this YouTube video:

Sometimes the way a blogger writes is actually more interesting than what is being said; if only because it creates an image in my mind's eye that is amusing; but had I owned an iPhone and had unlocked it, I'd be enraged, not amused by what Apple has done.

In ReveNews, Sam Harrelson writes a post titled: iPhone Debacle Provides Learning Moment for Marketers and Advertisers:

"…However, the actions of Apple in this week's firmware release, which wipe out 3rd party apps that a user might have installed on their iPhone at best and "bricks" (renders useless) at worst is reprehensible. Forget $200 price drops, this move by Apple is rotten to the core."

 

I'm not even sure if that's a rotting Apple, above, but it might as well be one - for all that Apple did by messing up unlocked iPhones with it's newest patches.

It's easy to build good will, but it's just as easy to destroy it.  If anyone has a question on weather to buy an iPhone now or wait a while… I think what Apple did this week answers the question.  Wait.

Don't buy the iPhone yet, according to CNET Videos (though it's an older clip - the sentiments are still accurate, even more so). Yet today a Salon article says if you care about your rights, don't buy an iPhone as Apple is blocking Unlocking the iPhone by temporarily disabling many of it's features and enhancements; even worse, Apple is breaking the law - as "cell phone portability" is supposed to allow customers to use a different network with their mobile devices, if they so desire:

"…On Monday Apple issued a press release warning people who had unlocked their iPhones from AT&T's network that they were in for big trouble. When Apple issued an update for the iPhone, all unlocked phones would become "permanently inoperable," the company said.

It wasn't lying; the update came out on Thursday, and reports from all over suggest that when people synced their unlocked phones to their computers and then installed the new software, their iPhones were rendered unusable. "

Besides, a Digg Post iPhone Re-Reviewed by Gizmodo (Verdict: Don't Buy) has 1775 diggs today, based on a Gizmondo post iPhone Re-Reviewed (Verdict: Don't Buy):

"…It's understandable for Apple to wage a war on unlocking the iPhone, since the company shares revenue from fees with AT&T. But the truth is, if cellphone service was awesome, like it is on iTunes, there wouldn't be a need to unlock the iPhone. Secondly, bricking these things is totally uncool, and apparently, malicious—according to some early code investigations by the independent iPhone Dev Team, Apple could have avoided this entirely.

I get that Apple might not have wanted to wage a long back-and-forth war with hackers, as the PSP developers are. And this kind of big blow is going to be a devastating and effective scare tactic, even if a fix comes a few days later. Unlike a Sony PSP, people can't go a few days without their phones, without social or work hiccups. This is why I never unlocked my main iPhone, only testing these hacks on a spare 4GB test dummy. But I don't want to be held hostage like this. Did I buy this phone or am I just renting it?

So Apple, in an imperialistic move, would rather disable all iPhones rather than make their services more attractive by adding features that drove many to hack the iPhone in the first place.   In other words, Apple is punishing the wrong thing - they should have allowed all the cracked services and programs to remain until they could provide equivalents…..and they didn't.

Just as I'm getting ready to buy an iPhone or iPhone Clone, one of these days, there's a lot of news about ways to unlock the iPhone (see Unlock iPhone - iPhone Unlocking for the rest of us).

I would really just like to have an iPhone Clone that runs on TMobile and now, maybe I can (I'm not sure about the TMobile part though) because Nokia Unveils iPhone Clone which I just read about in Cybernet.   Here's a short video that shows how much alike the iPhone and the Nokia iPhone Clone are:

iPhone Unlocking is a big deal to a lot of people who bought iPhones but don't want to be stuck with AT&T; according to iPhonesTalk:

"… Last night the impossible was made possible: right in front of our very eyes we eye-witnessed a full SIM unlock of our iPhone with a small piece of software. "

People trying to unlock their iPhones had a guide in Unlock the Apple iPhone - A Definitive Guide to links to listings of links which will automatically provide updates when a solution is found; like http://iphoneunlocking.com/ requiring an invite code quickly sprung up while other sites promised to unlock your iPhone with One Click.

Here's a video of how one can make a change to iPhone Hardware and Unlock the iPhone:

Also iPhone unlocking claims mentioned that "…A few claims of a successful iPhone sim unlock – most notably from George Hotz and iphonesimfree – have been made over the last couple of days. "

But now, a software solution that was to be announced this weekend, was quickly halted by threatened legal action by AT&T as reported by iPhone Unlocking Blog.

"…iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com). was poised and ready to release remote software unlocking services for the iphone today at 12 noon EST. The sale of unlocking codes is on hold after the company received a telephone call from a Menlo Park, California, law firm at approximately 2:54 a.m. this morning (GMT).

After saying they were phoning on behalf of AT&T, the law firm presented issues such as copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination. Uniquephones is taking legal advice to ascertain whether AT&T was sending a warning shot or directly threatening legal action. The logistics of different continents as well as it being a weekend factors into how the situation develops."

I'm told this story is set to blow up next week according to Gizmondo (which is why I'm interested in it - since I don't own an iPhone yet, but do plan to get one later this year).

I don't honestly know the merit of this situaiton, or not, but I thought I'd track the Buzz, since I feel, more and more, that Social Media and Buzz are what SEO used to be 5-10 years ago (but that's just my opinion). 

Besides, it's far more intersting to be part of the "debate" that be passive and on the sidelines - depending on what the debate is - and it's important to catch the debate as it begins or boils to a head, which it may do next week.

Overall, the Buzz seems to be rich with anticipation and desire for unlocking the iPhone and one blog even mentioned there was 4 ways to unlock the iPhone 

My guess is that most people who buy and iPhone want to get rid of AT&T.  We'll see how this story develops next week and if there's metrics to wrap around the unfolding story, I'll update this post.