MobileViews Blog

Wednesday (June 23, 2010) was simply not my day. The blog I write for five days a week, MobileContentToday.com (MCT), and its parent site, mediabistro.com were unreachable during my normal writing period. This blog entry detailing my other big problem is being posted here because MCT is down with no sign of being revived anytime soon. Here’s the story.

I pre-ordered a 32GB iPhone 4 on June 15. I have an email from Apple confirming that the pre-order was processed. However, given all the problems with the iPhone pre-order process (I spent 75 minutes trying and retrying to place my pre-order before finally succeeding), This past weekend I visited the nearby Apple Store where my reserved iPhone 4 is scheduled for pickup starting at 7am on June 24. I asked one of the employees there to verify my pre-order. She could not do so at the moment. So, she wrote down my name and telephone number.

On Wednesday, June 23, at about 4:30pm, I received a call from someone from the local Apple Store who told me:

1. My pre-order was confirmed (good so far)
2. I might NOT be able to buy the 32GB iPhone 4 model I had pre-ordered I was not provided any alternative.

The only conclusion I can reach, given this information, is that there is a serious shortage of the 32GB model of the iPhone 4. This combined with the lack of any while iPhone 4 units points to a serious problem in Apple’s supply chain.

I’m still planning to go to the local Apple Store to buy an iPhone 4. I suppose I could simply not exercise my reserved pre-order, wait a few weeks, and be assured to get a 32GB model. But, I really want to play with and write about the iPhone 4 now. So, I may end up and be stuck with a 16GB model.

In Podcast 43 I speak with Dictionary.com President Shravan Goli. The main topic of this 32 minute 49 second is Dictionary.com’s recent research in how users of different mobile platforms use their mobile apps. Dictionary.com provides mobile apps for the iPhone/iPad, Android, and BlackBerry. The combined download for their apps is over 11 million. About 6.8 million of those downloads have been the iPhone version. The iPad version of their app has been downloaded by 300,000 users (there are about 2 million total iPad users).

Dictionary.com plans to release an API for mobile app developers in 6 to 8 weeks. This will let them develop word games and other word related apps based on Dictionary.com’s word list.

- You can listen to the podcast right now from your web browser by using the embedded player above.
- You can see a list of previous podcasts in an iTunes web view(no need to install iTunes)
- You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or this RSS feed.
- You can also point your smartphone’s browser at mobiletoday.podbean.com to listen to or download the MP3 file over the air to your phone.

In Podcast 40, I speak with Nuance Mobile Sr. VP & General Manager Michael Thompson about the recently released Nuance Dragon Dictation app for iPhone. This free app can record you speaking in chunks up to 30 seconds long. Multiple 30 second speech bites can be combined into a single message.

Dragon Dictation 1.1.0

One discussion item of particular note is the privacy issue. And, if you download the freshly released 1.1.0 update, you’ll note that one change is the ability to delete previously uploaded contact names from their server and to opt out of uploading contact names going forward. Nuance does not obtain any other information except the contact name. So, I feel comfortable leaving my contact names on their server to help with speech-to-text transcriptions.

Mike also mentioned that more apps are on their way from Nuance and hinted at something called Dragon Search. Keep an eye and ear out for it!

I sometimes wonder how various top 10 lists are created. I’m compiling a list of iPhone apps I use regularly as my top 10 contribution. Will do the same for Android and Windows Mobile too this weekend. What’s on your list of apps you actually use?

Apple has a great holiday treat for you: A free 20-song holiday sampler digital album. The link to the iTunes page is given below…

iTunes Holiday Sampler

Like many free iTunes offers, this is probably time limited. So, get it while it is free.

The iPhone 3G doesn’t have the native ability to record video. However, the recently released Ustream Live Broadcaster (a free iPhone app) gives it this ability. This video was recorded using an iPhone 3G.

The recently released free MarketWatch news app for the iPhone has an interesting feature: Text-to-speech to read stories on an iPhone.

MarketWatch 1.0.0

This 2 minute 5 second podcast provides a brief sound sample of a MarketWatch story being read on the iPhone 3G’s speaker.

- You can listen to the podcast right now from your web browser by using the embedded player above.
- You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or this RSS feed.
- You can also point your smartphone’s browser at mobiletoday.podbean.com to listen to or download the MP3 file over the air to your phone.

Had to soft-reset my iPhone the other day after it got “stuck” (frozen). Noticed that its status reported being connected to the old “Cingular” name instead of AT&T. Cingular was the name used before

Testing attaching a photo to a blog entry using WordPress 2 for iPhone

Looks like I can finally use WordPress for iPhone with this blog again. Testing WordPress 2 for iPhone. Too bad landscape keyboard is not supported by the app.

Here’s a situation that will affect on a small number of people. I have an iPhone and an iPod touch. I use the iPod touch as, essentially, a tiny internet tablet in my home. The idea is that I won’t drain down my iPhone battery at home by using the iPod  touch instead. Generally speaking, this works great for me. Here’s a caveat for this use case if you use the new Starbucks Card Mobile to track the balance on Starbucks Cards: You can store and use a Starbucks Card number on a single device. The app gives the message above and wipes the number from the device if you have it on two devices. In my case, I installed it on my iPhone first and iPod touch second. I received the  message above while standing in a Starbucks store waiting to order a beverage. The last device installed (the iPod touch in my case) gets precedence. So, the card info was wiped from my iPhone. The lesson leanred is to install and use the Starbucks card app on only one device (which is probably the case for the vast majority of iPhone users).

In Podcast 36, I speak with Jane Seagrave who is a Senior Vice President Global Product Development at the Associated Press (AP). Here’s what you can find in this 21 minute 31 second podcast conversation:

- Discussion of the AP’s recently released AP Stylebook iPhone app’s high price ($28.99 compared to $18.95 for the paper version which is available for $12.89 from Amazon)
- The state of AP’s mobile friendly website (apnews.com) and free iPhone Mobile News app.
- Slightly off-topic but of personal interest to me: What is the situation for bloggers citing AP news reports? Will armies of lawyers descend on a blogger who directly links to an AP news story? Listen to the blog to hear the answer.

- You can listen to the podcast right now from your web browser by using the embedded player above.
- You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or this RSS feed.
- You can also point your smartphone’s browser at mobiletoday.podbean.com to listen to or download the MP3 file over the air to your phone.