Things I want from iOS
Every so often I moan about things that Apple still doesn't do on the iPhone that folks like Nokia have done for years. My current list (other than wanting better maps) is here.
Doctor Who Ring Tones for iPhone
Right up front let me tell you that I don't have a link where you can click and download the ring tones. What I did was find some cool Doctor Who sounds embedded in a free game, and then I used some free tools to make ring tones and text tones for the iPhone. You don't need to unlock or jailbreak your phone. It's all easy and straightforward. You need:
- Doctor Who games (see below)
- Audacity (free audio editing software)
- an iPhone, iPad, or other iDevice running iOS 5.0 or later
- iTunes (the one that you sync your iDevice to)
Vodafone Mobile Broadband UK 3G APN settings
I use a Vodafone K3505 dongle on Vodafone UK's network. When I upgraded to Mac OS X Lion, it broke my installation of Vodafone Mobile Broadband. I did a bunch of searching and I finally found what I needed. It was not easy. So, here's my quick blog post about what you need.
- The latest Vodafone Mobile Broadband, which can be downloaded for Mac or Windows. I found this from a Vodafone eForum post. When you install it, however, chances are that it will use the wrong APN name.
- Correct APN settings. Unfortunately, the instructions at this eForum post are wrong. It says use "PP.INTERNET" as your APN. That's wrong. Use PPBUNDLE.INTERNET.
I had to find this page full of APN settings and look up Vodafone UK. But it is also wrong. Only a comment lower down is correct. You need ppbundle.internet as your APN name and "web" for the username and "web" for the password.
Very frustrating.
Skype for iPad as Business App of the Year? Puhleeze.
The folks over at IT Pro had their IT Pro Awards 2011 recently. They awarded a few different honours. Some innovative, others pretty predictable. I struggle to care that Microsoft won "Vendor of the Year"? What does that even mean? And if it's a category that Microsoft won, who else even had a chance of winning it? Oracle? IBM? HP? And those are 4 of the biggest anyways, so it's not like this award will create some new recognition or awareness of a vendor.
The only thing I think awards are useful for is if you understand why they are awarded. What did candidate A have that candidate B did not? The IT Pro awards appear to be a simple popularity contest. That is, random web site visitors had a set of candidates to choose from, and they chose for whatever reason. If the candidates were judged on criteria (e.g., originality, fitness for purpose, reliability, value for money) I would love to see how the winners (and losers) scored. But these awards are meaningless. There's no judging. Just popularity of clicks.
iOS5 Security Restrictions
The restrictions feature of iOS 5 are pretty weak. Here's what's wrong and what someone needs to do to fix it.