Tuesday January 12
 
15:01
 
Record video on the iPhone 3G

Finally an app which allows videos to be recorded on the iPhone 3G. Low res quality at 10fps, high res quality at about 2-3fps – not the best, but better than not having the functionality at all.

Competing with iVideoCamera is ShowTime, also $1. Apparently the high res quality is a bit better than iVideoCamera but it lacks the low res option and some say it’s buggy. Hopefully iVideoCamera will improve the framerate for the high res option in the next release.

Thursday January 7
 
13:56
 
A special message from me to you

If you have an iPhone you can read this with BeeTagg Pro (which is free). You can generate your own QR code (with URLs, phone number, or whatever text you want) here.

Wednesday January 6
 
17:17
 
Redownloading paid apps on Apple’s AppStore

For a company that is usually good at interfaces, the way the AppStore handles redownloading paid apps makes me squirm.

Take this app. I paid for it in the past and deleted it from my phone:

I can download this for free, but to do that, I have to click the price, then click BUY, then enter my AppStore password. Only then do I get a popup saying the app is a free download. I shouldn’t have to commit to buying it before finding out I can download it free.

Here’s a case where this is relevant. I “purchased” Ping when it was free, then during a New Year clean of my iPhone, I deleted it. But today I wanted to try it out again, so I went to the AppStore. Now there are two versions of Ping – Ping Lite and Ping. Ping now costs money. Do I have to pay for it even though I’ve “purchased” it before? Maybe the developer renamed the old Ping to Ping Lite and release a new paid version called Ping - do I have to download Ping Lite instead?

In the end I took the plunge and after “buying”, I was told the download is free. Not nice at all.

In fact, there’s no clear indication on the AppStore of which apps you have purchased. I have only found one way to confirm - attempt to write a review. The AppStore will only let you write reviews on apps you own.

Very poor design Apple. Don’t make people commit to buying apps they can download free.

Don’t bother downloading Blocked – it’s crap. I used it for the screenshot above because with the exception of Ping, it’s the only other paid app that I’ve deleted – and I’d already reinstalled Ping before writing this.

Thursday December 3
 
17:04
 
Windows 7 monitor problem

I had the weirdest display problem with Windows 7. If I switched off and on my LCD monitor with Windows then all the windows would be resized down to 1024×768 and moved to the top left corner of the screen. Turns out that when I switched off the LCD, Win7 was defaulting to a standard VGA monitor.

I typically never powerdown or sleep my PC so that I can VNC into it from my iPhone – instead I just switch off the monitor, so this was a big problem for me. And I’m not the only one it’s a problem for:

My issue is that every time i turn my monitor off, Windows 7 rearrange and resize my desktop windows. This probably happens because win7 change the resolution of the desktop when the monitor gets ‘un-plugged’ (in reality just turned off).

I tried everything fix this – even disabling TMM (Transient Multi-monitor Manager) didn’t fix it. In the end I found a workaround using VNC and my iPhone!

1. With VNC running on my PC, I switched off the monitor. Real VNC free version works in Win7 if you run it in User mode and not as a Service.
2. From my iPhone, use Mocha VNC to connect to the PC. (VNC also allows connections via a standard web browser - if you don’t have an iPhone you could try that.)
3. In ATI Catalyst, under Monitor Properties – Attributes, untick “Use Extended Display Identification Data (EDID)” and set the resolution to 1920 x 1200 (the resolution of my LCD) and refresh rate to 60Hz. (If you don’t have an ATI card, look for the relevant option to force display resolution in your graphics card driver software.)
4. Go to Control Panel – Display – Adjust Resolution – Advanced settings. Under “Monitor”, uncheck “Hide modes that this monitor cannot display”, then under “Adapter” click “List All Modes” and select one of the 1920 x 1200 options.
5. After applying this, I get kicked out of VNC. Very quickly I need to VNC in again to click OK on the “Do you want to keep these display settings?” box.

Voila! Now when I switch off my LCD, Windows 7 still detects the monitor is gone and switches to the default monitor – but because that resolution matches my LCD display, the windows dont resize.

Funny that I used an iPhone to fix Windows though – haha…

If you want to disable TMM under Windows 7, here’s how. This didn’t work for me, but I know there’s a lot of people out there who want to disable TMM for KVM switches.

1. Open Windows 7 registry editor by clicking Start, type regedit.
2. Right click on regedit, click on Run as Administartor.
3. Navigate to the location: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TMM
4. Click UseIViewHelper in the right pane.
5. Set the value data to “0” {zero} to disable TMM feature in Windows 7.
6. If you want to re-enable TMM feature, set the value data to “1”.
7. Click OK and reboot you computer for the changes to take effect.

Tuesday November 17
 
10:21
 
Free iPhone 3G 3GS ringtones

No, this ain’t a scam where I get you to text me an SMS for a free ringtone and then charge you 10 quid a month for eternity because you can’t unsubscribe. But if you want to do that, please send an SMS to:

816 8008135*

That’s a joke – honest!

I finally found out a way to create a ringtone – and alarm tone, because they are the same things – for my iPhone for free. And direct from iTunes, with no extra software to download. It’s so simple I can’t believe anyone click those links to pay for ringtones in iTunes or buys those crappy ringtone apps.

I’ve written a page on wot u need 2 do 2 cre8 ur rt (that’s txt spk that is): Create iPhone ringtones for free

I’ve got my iPhone walking me up to Keane - Somewhere Only We Know, and my ringtone set to my favourite ringtone from when I lived in Korea: Fantastic Plastic Machine – Hello and Goodbye. It feels so good to have my iPhone waking me up and ringing to music I know – a small thing, but also a big thing.

Shameful that Apple doesn’t make it easier to make ringtones for free.

* large knockers