While we’ve braved the elements, a few people have come up to ask us a few questions, including Engadget, CNN, Reuters, the New York Times, and Bloomberg. I’ll be posting links to their coverage of the iPhone 3GS launch, and well, us!

Engadget: iPhone 3G S line begins in NY, weather be damned

UPDATE: 6:30 PM EDT: Reuters: IPhone to hit stores as Apple awaits Jobs’ return Matt Dodd was quoted on the second page of the article, and our plans for camping out were mentioned.

UPDATE: 7:00 PM EDT: Fortune / CNN Money: Lines form for the new iPhone in New York and Tokyo

Reuters (Again): Braving stormy weather for iPhone: well, sorta

Pocket Lint: iPhone 3G S line starts to form in New York

UPDATE: 7:30 PM EDT: The following is a listing of posts and articals after we got home. Take a look!

Fortune / CNN Money: Live from the (relatively sedate) iPhone 3G S launch

Gizmodo: Why In Hell Are People Camping Out For the iPhone 3GS?

Touch Podium: Line Ups Begin Early June 18th, for iPhone 3G S in New York and Tokyo, Most Likely Other Places Too

UPDATE 6/22/09 7:00 AM: Bloomberg: Apple’s IPhone Draws Crowds as Competition Stiffens Talks about us under ‘Camping Out’

If this is your first time at The iLife, Welcome! Be sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed, so that you always get the latest, in-depth tech news!

Photo from Engadget. Thanks!

Galaga Remix was created by Namco, and it is a brilliant remake of the original arcade game. Galaga Remix includes an updated version as well as the original 1981 Galaga. The old version of the game does allow you to reclaim a captured ship so you can have double the firepower with dual ships like in the old arcade game, however this app really shines with the updated version. The new Galaga’s graphics are much easier on the eyes, and includes new boss battles, multiple upgrades for your ship, and plenty of levels.

The rest of the review is after the break.

One feature from the old Galaga was to save a ship if it got captured, which then would give you a dual fighter, the updated Galaga takes that idea and runs with it. If your ship is captured by one of 3 different types of enemies, once you free your ship, it will give you a new ability, a different one based on which enemy captured you. You can upgrade in three different ways, a more powerful attack, a spread shot, or faster shooting. Each one of these can stack twice, or with one other ability. So, you can get yourself a fast shooting spread attack, or stack two power attacks to make a devastating super cannon. This allows you to create a total of 9 ships (3 basic upgraded ships, and 6 stacked upgraded ships).

The game gives you several different methods in order to control your ship, either with arrow buttons, a slider, or you can use the built-in accelerometers. However, due to the portrait setup of the classic Galaga, the controls are a bit harder to use due to their small size. For the updated version, since it is in landscape, the controls are much easier to use.

The only thing I could complain about is that it never is quite clear which monsters will kamikaze into you, or if they will change direction at the last moment and avoid a collision. This does keep it more true to the original, but Namco has shown they can take an old concept and make it much better, so it would be nice if they would give you a warning when you are about to get rammed by one of those buggers. Other than that, it would be nice to have some more levels, the game comes with a little over 30, but the more the merrier.

Great visuals, a good variety of gameplay, and 30+ stages, Galaga Remix is available at $5.99, so go grab it from the App Store here.

Flight Control, created by Firemint, is an addictive little game where you draw the flight paths of different aircraft to their landing strips, basically you are an air traffic controller. There are 4 different types of aircraft, a blue helicopter, a yellow Cessna type plane, and two different kinds of red jets, one being faster than the other.

The graphics are simple but clean. There isn’t any in-game music while you are directing things, and you can’t listen to music and the game sounds at the same time. The game sounds are helpful, they warn you when aircraft get close to each other, and ding whenever you land one, but if you are playing a long time it is better to listen to music. Otherwise, the game keeps track of your statistics (most likely aircraft to crash, most planes landed, last game’s planes landed) so you can see how you’ve improved.

This game could use some improvements, like a fast-forward, especially at the beginning. Every time you restart, you have to wait a long time for airplanes to show up, which makes the start of each run very slow. Otherwise, the graphics are a bit simple, a plane or helicopter landing just shows them fade away as opposed to actually landing. When there is a mid-air collision, they just blink to show they have hit each other. It would be more interesting (and a better finale to each game) if they exploded. Lastly, a few more gameplay elements would be good, like if they had clouds float over the airport to make it harder to see what is going on. However, all of these minor faults don’t hurt the game enough to avoid buying it.

Flight Control is addictive and entertaining, and it only costs $0.99, which is a great price for this game! You can pick it up from the App Store here.

WordsWorth is a fun unique game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Basically, its a combination of a solo player game of Boggle, and a ever changing word search.  Hexagonal tiles are spaced out along the board, and its your job to earn enough points to advance to the next level. It keeps getting harder, level after level, up to level 30. The game as two modes, Timed and Classic. I really preferred the classic mode, as a way to just relax and keep me busy when I had nothing else to do, since I always have my iPod Touch on me.

See more about WordsWorth, after the jump.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing WordsWorth, which was surprising because I usually dislike word games because I can never find anything. Luckily, WordsWorth has a handy scramble feature which will shuffle all of the tiles on the board. I really liked how you activated it, by shaking your iPhone, kind of like boggle. Even if you do play in a more relaxed classic mode, there are still some challenges. For example, there are timed tiles which appear every time you scrabble the board as a penalty, and also pop up as you progress through out the levels of the game. You have to be fast, and use these red tiles, because otherwise it’s game over.

The game also has other features which help keep the game interesting, like wildcards, and “buzzwords” where a random word is chosen and if you make it, you get extra points. Most of the time, the correct letter combination is not on the board, so you have to stay on the look out and selectively get rid of tiles so you can make them line up correctly, if you chose to go for it. there is no time limit or penalty for not completing buzzwords.

One thing that really annoyed me was the background music, which was pretty short (about a minute) and didn’t loop very well. So, every time the music restarted, you hear a “jump”. Luckily, you can either turn the music off in the settings, or play your own music and automatically override the background music.

I have to say, it’s great to have a game that you can always turn to, that you can always play more, and it keeps your mind active! And, even if you manage to make it to level 30, the game is completely different every time, but restarting might be a bit easy at first. It’s definitely worth the $1.99, and it’s available in the App Store (Need iTunes to view). You can also try out the “Light” version for free. The lite version only has 3 levels, and is clasic mode only, among a few other things. You can also get it in the app store.

Pros:
Ever Changing Game Play
Flex your brain
Two Game Modes

Cons:
Annoying Background music

P.S:  This game and review is real, and not an April Fools joke. Have Fun!

Time Crisis Strike is a rail-shooter, fire-and-duck game just like his arcade brothers. Your goal is to stop the evil Wild Dog from his new (unknown) plot to cause mayhem. It’s a single campaign with 3 stages totaling 23 screens, and you face off against about a half dozen different types of enemies. Controls are simple, touch where you want to shoot, tilt the iPhone forward to duck and reload, then tilt it back to stand up and continue to shoot.

This game is a lot of fun, especially because it’s Time Crisis. Its graphics are good, and the music and sounds are all great. There were no noticeable bugs or gameplay issues, the game was very well polished. They also have five unlockable “Crisis Missions”, which each challenges you to accomplish a specific task, like only shoot the yellow soldiers. Overall the Time Crisis feel of the game is great, although it does lack the light-gun and foot-pedal, it is a great port to the iPhone.

The only drawbacks to this game are that even though you have a tilt-meter for ducking, sometimes it feels like a button would be much more useful. Otherwise, the game can feel short if you only play through the arcade mode once, but honing your skill at this game can be very entertaining, plus the unlockable challenge missions, or you can challenge friend to see who can get the highest score.

Fans of Time Crisis absolutely have to get this game. Otherwise, if you just want a good rail-shooter, Time Crisis Strike is the way to go. You can pick it up from the App Store for $5.99

After the jump is a huge gallery illustrating some of the most significant changes in the iPhone 3.0 OS. The anonymous tipster who submitted the following images noted that the build is plagued with a few bugs, but nothing too serious.

Screenshot notes, in order of appearance:

*Lock screen displays album art and song title (where date normally appears) when playing a song in iPod
*Shake to shuffle implemented
*Voice Memo application allows of recording of voice, can be emailed or even trimmed later
*Voice Memo recording listing, showing “Email Voice Memo”
*Restrictions is now expanded to include a number of new services and options
*Searching in iPod application
*Pasting in Safari Google search field
*App Screenshot viewer in App Store
*Cut, Copy and Pasting in Landscape Mail
*Voice Memo listing
*Trimming of Voice Memos
*Expanded Restrictions
*Landscape Stocks view
*iPhone Home Screen with new iPod, Phone and Messages icons
*Spotlight Searching in left Home Screen
*Safari Preferences showing Fraud Warning and AutoFill
*Downloading iTunes files over 10MB over 3G network
*Landscape editing in Mail
*New text selector glass
*Copy items in Safari
*Fetch New Data menu now within Mail Settings
*Internet Tethering option in Network Settings
*Voice Memo sharing via Email
*Share Contacts via Email
*Displaying Number location in Recent Calls
*Voice Memo recording application
*About menu showing 3.0 and build number
*Messages Setting Page, showing MMS
*Safari Menu with Open, Open in New Page and Copy
*Cannot connect to YouTube error
*MobileMe Find My iPhone option
*Searching Mail in Landscape

The iPhone OS 3.0 upgrade contains dozens of changes to the already maturing iPhone OS. Not only does it add some of the most requested features like Copy and Paste and MMS, but new changes and features that pushes Apples iPhone OS software into the future. Now we can all await the forthcoming iPhone 3 this summer. A big thanks to the anonymous tipster for the screenshots!

Twitter, one of the most pervasive social networking services has grown to encompass over 6 million active monthly users. It seems that everyone from President Obama to Britney Spears is now tweeting everything from breaking news to interesting articles and cool events going on. If you’re new to Twitter, or don’t have an account, you should sign up here. If you’re on a Mac be sure to check out my previous article on “Getting the Most from Twitter on your Mac” to get started from your computer.

The iPhone provides one of the greatest interfaces to Twitter seen to date- arguably much nicer than the Twitter web interface or other Twitter (computer based) software- with its integrated camera, GPS (or GPS like capabilities) and multi-touch you can not only stay on top of Twitter but interact with it in new ways. Although there are dozens of Twitter applications for the iPhone platform, there are only a few that really stand out.

Tweetie implements the full Twitter API- which means all the possibilities Twitter offers to developers is implemented in Tweetie. Upon first glance, Tweetie displays tweets and messages making use of the iChat style bubbles. At the bottom menu you can quickly switch between your Tweets, @Replies, Messages, Favorites and More- which includes “My Profile”, “Go to User”, “Nearby”, “Trends” and “Search”.

Tweetie is very simple, easy to use and works the way you expect it to. Everything you would want to do is available to you fast- starting with support for multiple Twitter accounts, updating your location, browsing tweets by location and even Twitter searching and trend viewing. You can view links posted in tweets through the built in Safari browser or even re-tweet the link! And all links posted are automatically shrunk with the bit.ly service. Even photo uploading is simple, as Tweetie allows for quick access to your photo library or camera and will compress and upload each photo you tweet to TwitPic.com.

Until Tweetie came around in November 2008, Twitterific and Twinkle respectively held the titles of the best paid and unpaid Twitter clients for the iPhone. Although Tweetie costs $2.99, it clearly provides quite simply the best Twitter experience on the iPhone OS platform. If you are on Twitter, this application is a must have.

Bjango, an exclusive iPhone developer team is a new venture of iSlayer who developed iStat Pro, iStat Menus and Organized. The team has also published a number of high quality applications prior to iStat including Darkness, Jobs, Cities and Phases.

For those familiar with the iSlayer team and use iStat Pro or iStat Menus already know why iStat makes for a killer iPhone application. Keeping on top of your hardware is a crucial- not only will it allow your iPhone to preform better but extend your battery life. While there are a handful of other applications that promise to do the same in the App Store and even Cydia or Installer.app, iStat does it the best and with more features without question.

From first launching the application, you are presented with a well laid out screen with all of your vital statistics in a number of panes laid out before you. The first group is information pertaining to the iPhone’s memory. A pie chart of the iPhone’s RAM displays the Wired, Active, Inactive and Free number of megabytes combined with a display of Page Ins and Page Outs. You can also free up RAM by pressing the Free Memory button.

The second pane has a small graph of the disk usage on the iPhone and displays the space available.

The third pane contains the IP addresses on the Wi-Fi and Cellular network.

The forth pane contains the iPhone’s uptime, along with the past load averages for 1 minute, 5 minutes and 15 minutes.

Finally, the last pane contains the Unique Identifier and the Wi-Fi MAC Address along with three buttons “Email ID”, “Email Both” and “Email MAC”. These pieces of information are handy when registering the Wireless MAC address to a new network, or sending the iPhone’s UID to get an Ad-Hoc distribution.

While iStat organizes a great deal of information about your iPhone, it isn’t where the functionality ends. iStat can give you remote statistics on any Mac running OS X Tiger (or later) and connected to the internet. By simply downloading the iStat server and installing it on your computer you can start looking at statistics from computers thousands of miles on your iPhone or iPod touch.

The installation of the server is simple and can be found on Bjango’s website here. Once running, you simply enter a four digit number randomly generated on the server side into your iPhone, assuming all of your routing is in place. Once this is done you can now start viewing statistics of your Mac! The statistics are laid out in the same format as the stats for your iPhone, but depending on the age of your Mac, will most likely contain more information (such as the different network interfaces, battery or fan status and more).

iStat for the iPhone is an excellent application for monitoring both your iPhone and your Macs from on the go. Check out iStat in the App Store here, on sale for $1.99 (limited time only)! We would also like to thank Marc Edwards at Bjango for giving us the opportunity to review iStat.

On the first Tuesday of this month, Apple updated the Mac Pro, Mac mini and iMac desktop models, outfitting them with the latest Intel processors and NVIDIA graphics. Finally killing off Firewire 400, including mini Display Port connectors; the changes finally unified Apple’s desktop offerings with the unibody MacBook family, unveiled in October 2008. Since that “Spotlight on Notebooks” event, every Mac has seen an update. The iPod line was updated in September 2008, including the third generation iPod shuffle introduction last week. Even the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule Wi-Fi router and NAS devices saw updates recently. This leaves the iPhone 3G as one of the oldest major offering of Apple hardware on the market- if you can even believe that.

Announced at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008, the iPhone 3G replaced the original iPhone with a lower price tag (subsidized by the carriers), 3G and 2.5G cellular capability, built in GPS functionality and a refined case and audio components. Since the July 11th launch, over 15 million units have been shipped worldwide giving Apple a surge in marketshare to 8 percent of all smartphones, using the latest numbers from Gartner.

Apple has indicated in the past that early summer is the iPhone refresh period alike early fall for iPods. While the original iPhone was introduced at Macworld 2007, it launched June 29th that year. The iPhone 3G was announced at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9th 2008 but didn’t launch until July 11th later that year.

In April of 2008, iPodObserver leaked an image of the back of what turned out to be the iPhone 3G. Again in February 2009, iPodObserver published the image (shown, above and a closer up, below) of an iPhone with a curved matte finish back. While leaked images rarely turn out to be accurate, the images do look legitimate and sport a unseen iPhone model number, “A1303″.

Additionally in late January, MacRumors reported seeing server logs populated with a mysterious iPhone device labeled iPhone 2,1. Apple uses these hardware identity strings to distinguish different hardware models- the original iPhone is designated hardware string iPhone 1,1 while the iPhone 3G was labeled iPhone 1,2. Interestingly, the first generation iPod Touch was introduced with the iPod 1,1 and the second generation iPod 2,1. The second generation iPod Touch added a internal speaker, hardware volume controls, microphone support and a updated processor.

Thus, the 2 in the iPhone 2,1 might reveal that there will most likely be more significant changes in the hardware of the new iPhone than seen with the first generation iPhone and second generation iPhone (iPhone 3G). While it remains unclear at this point what the changes will be, there have been a number of rumors about updated, multi-core processors manufactured by Imagination Technologies. The company is known as the firm behind the PowerVR graphics core used in the iPhone today.

Just yesterday, the company announced new highly efficient PowerVR multi-processor chips that might find their way into the next generation iPhone. Other rumors, left over from the buildup to the iPhone 3G announcement have pointed towards the addition of a second forward facing camera and or video capabilities.

Whatever the new iPhone will bring us, both from the growing number of rumors and 3.0 firmware and SDK preview, it appears we are all in for a significant revision. As we get closer to WWDC 2009, we will most likely know more about the upcoming iPhone. Stick with The iLife for continuing development and analysis of rumors. But for now check out the following links if you want to learn more about upcoming the iPhone.

PinchMedia iPhone 2,1
New Imagination Technologies chip analysis
Major architectural changes suggested by iPhone 2,1

The waiting is finally over! After weeks of anticipation, apple has previewed the iPhone 3.0 firmware to the public. The new 3.0 firmware has many features that we have been dreaming about since January 9, 2007. They include:

• Copy and Paste
• Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)
• Landscape view in SMS, Mail and Notes (was already in Safari)
• In-application  purchasing, like extra content
• Access iPod library from your application
• Spotlight to search your iPhone
• A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth) Capability
• And more

The Firmware will be free to all iPhone users but will cost $9.95 for iPod touch users.

The new iPhone SDK has many exciting features that Apple Developers are excited about. The most notable of these is the ability to test your developed apps before releasing them into the open market of iTunes. It also includes over 1,000 new API’s!

All in all, today we witnessed the next generation in mobile devices. Many people were worried that the new Palm Pre would contain many apps that the iPhone did not and become the leader in the smartphone market, but Apple took care of these worries. The new SDK is currently available to registered Apple developers and the 3.0 firmware will be available to the public sometime in June.

The site which normally hosts the latest firmwares and SDK releases and notes is temporarily down and displays the famous sticky note reading “We’ll Be Back Soon” from the online Apple Store. In the 3.0 event, over 1000 new API’s have been opened up to developers including the Push Notification Service, which is finally making light since the WWDC 2008 preview (and promised September 2008 availability date). Apple promised all current and future iPhone developers will have access to the new firmwares and SDK builds- but is unclear at this time if that extends to non-paid iPhone developers.

Update: [3:22 PM EST] The Apple Developer homepage (developer.apple.com) and other pages (here) has been updated with new iPhone SDK information but the iPhone Developer Center is still down.

Update: [3:37 PM EST] The iPhone Developer Center is back up, fresh with new content for 3.0. We are combing through it now and will post up interesting finds soon. Note: the site is being very unresponsive.

Update: [5:02 PM EST] The iPhone Developer Center, while up, has not let us log in yet.

Update: [5:42 PM EST] The iPhone Developer Center, is still being very temperamental, but we have managed to get a look and begin downloads of 3.0 software!

More information will be coming as soon as we can get it.

This just in! Nuevasync has just gotten better!

Nuevasync has now released two of their most requested features, Selective Calendar Syncing , and multiple, separate calendars (which you can color code!). You can sync up to 8 separate calendars.

You can now also sync read only calendars, like holiday calendars or anything else your given share only access to.

Also, unlike using Exchange with Outlook, your secondary calendars can have alarms and reminders.

Scott Forstall announcing the Push Notifications

At WWDC 2008, Scott Forstall, Senior VP of iPhone at Apple announced an update to the SDK dubbed “Push Notification Service”. Solving one of the major complaints surrounding the iPhone SDK, Push Notifications would allow you, for example, to receive instant messages even when the AIM application wasn’t open. It works by keeping a persistent connection to the Apple Notification server and lets the third party such as AIM notify the Apple server of events (such as receiving an instant message) if no existing direct connection exists.

Very well received by developers and consumers alike, Mr. Forstall revealed this new feature at the WWDC keynote and said that it would be seeded to beta testers shortly and would be available in September. Shortly after the release of the 2.0 software in early July, iPhone OS beta testers indeed received a seed of the 2.1 firmware which included hooks and documentation for the Push Notification service. After the fourth iteration of the 2.1 beta release, the Push Notification service was mysteriously pulled for “for further development”.

Beyond that vague statement, over two months past the given release window, we have still heard nothing more about Push Notifications from Apple. This seems to be a recurring trend for Apple, who seems to be over promising and under delivering, which could be attributed to its growing size. Perhaps we will get the status of Push Notifications soon, but for now the consumers and developers are still in the dark. If they can’t deliver on these dates, then why give them in the first place?

There is probably a good reason we still don’t have Push Notifications, however, since Mr. Forstall took the liberty of announcing it at WWDC, why haven’t we had an update? If anything was learned from the 2.0 firmware and the related bugs, or the MobileMe launch, we should be glad Apple is keeping a low quality release from going public, but there is no reason to be in the dark about it–especially considering it is almost two months late already. There are developers and consumers who are anxiously awaiting the release of this new feature and we all just want to be in the know! According to recent rumors, due to major issues with the initial implementation, it appears we might have to wait until we start receiving push notifications to our devices.

I love the fact that my RSS reader allows me to quickly browse through all the blogs I read,—plus it wirelessly syncs up with my iPod Touch (Thank you NewsGator/FeedDemon/NetNewsWire)—however, lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. A few feed publishers have begun offering only a short summary of their articles, requiring you to click a “Read More..” link(I’m calling you out Ars Technica), forcing you to open the page in a new window. The reason this bothers me so much is that the whole reason I use RSS is that I want all the content from multiple blogs in one place. Having to open up the article in a new window is frustrating, but it’s even worse on my Touch, where I can’t quickly switch back and forth between windows. Of course, to add insult to injury the article isn’t pre-fetched, slowing me down even further.

More importantly, I don’t understand why Ars would choose this format. They were never in print media; they started as a technology blog that caters to technologists who are on the go and want information quickly. Why would they want to slow down their readers, much less force them to work to access their content? Furthermore, even the newspaper industry, which has traditionally provided only snippets of text, is starting to relax its death grip on its content. For example, The Guardian has started releasing full text in its RSS feeds.

So, to all content publishers out there remember, readers want information on their terms, not yours. This includes letting your readers selectively subscribe to your articles, which has been a request by many readers on other blogs during this election season, who think that tech blogs and politics do not mix, (cough lifehacker cough). Really, just give the readers what they want.

Keep a look out for my next post coming up in the next few weeks.

Well, now you don’t have to. The easiest solution to this problem would be to hook up an exchange server to your iPhone so that it stays in sync, but unless you’re an enterprise user, you probably don’t have access to one. It’s not worth setting one up and, if you’re a Google user, you want your info synced there, not your work place. That is no longer a problem, thanks to a free service called Nuevasync. Nuevasync creates an exchange account running only the mobile protocol, and can sync your contacts and calendar with Google.

I originally found out about Nuevasync from a Lifehacker article offering Nuevasync as a Mobile Me alternative. I use Nuevasync with my iPod Touch, so no matter where I am or how I want to look at my data, I have access to it. It also makes it easier to enter a lot of data onto your calendar, and lets you easily import from web sources. Just add it to your Google Calendar and in about 5 seconds, it will show up on your iPhone (as long as you have service or Wi-Fi). This is especially helpful if you use shared calendars in a group setting, such as a family calendar or a group project calendar, by using Nuevasync you will always know that you have the most up to date version. The only catch is that currently, Nuevasync can only sync calendars that you have edit permissions for (there is a tool to help you figure out which ones those are, the link is after the jump) and they get merged all in to one calendar on your iPhone (they stay separated on Google Calendar).

Nuevasync was started in November 2007. Amazingly its creators David Boreham and Thomas Lackey never expected the high volume of users Nuevasync receives now. The original Nuevasync was designed as a Windows Mobile sync solution using Google Calendar and Plaxo (an online address book and social networking service) as data sources, but now Google Contacts as well as the other two are supported. Once Apple announced that they would be introducing Exchange server support with the 2.0 firmware upgrade, they got a beta copy of the firmware and began testing using an iPod Touch. They only expected a few iPhone users to be trying the service. Two days after the launch of the iPhone upgrade, Nuevasync’s servers were heavily hit, their user count had doubled. After that, Nuevasync began to drastically scale their code to support the new workload. Because of this, most of the planed new features had to be delayed. The two most requested new features are the ability to select which Google calendars are synced (including public calendar syncing) and for multiple calendar support. Both of these features are currently in development and is expected to be ready for testing within the next fe
w weeks. After that, the next feature to be released will be push email support from Gmail.

Probably the biggest reason people don’t currently use Nuevasync is that when you add an exchange server, all of your calendar and contact data on your iPhone gets erased, but the easiest way to avoid this is to sync your iPhone with Google via iTunes. I’ll walk you through the entire process to show you how you can have over the air syncing, without losing any of your data. Take a look after the Jump!

Setting up Nuevasync

The first thing you really want to do is sync your current data back to Google. Open up iTunes, plug in your iPhone (or iPod touch) and click on your device and go to the “info tab” and check the sync contacts (make sure you say “Google Contacts” and enter your account info!) and sync calendar tab.

Agree to the Google Terms of Service, and enter your Google Account Info. Then Upload your calendar info to the cloud using either the Google Calendar Sync Tool for windows or Spanning Sync for the Mac, or manually importing the events using an ICal file and then importing them on Google Calendar.

Now go to the Nuevasync website at www.nuevasync.com. Click “Signup”.

Fill in the account information and hit “submit”.

Go and check the email you put in and verify it. Now go back to the homepage and click “Login”

Enter your account info and click “Sign in”

Now, click on “change” next to “calendar”

Select “Google”, click “Change”. Then click the “Click to configure your service…” link. Enter Your Google ID with the @gmail.com or @yourdomain.com if you’re a Google Apps Customer, and click “Request Account Access”. You will then be redirected to Google and asked which account you want Nuevasync to access, choose and click “Continue”. On the next page click “Grant Access”. You should now get a message saying your changes have been saved. Click “Continue”.

There should now be a green dot all the way across from “calendar” on the right.
If you did not get a green dot go to this page. It will help you solve any configuration problems and tell you which of your calendars Nuevasync can use.

Now let’s sync contacts. Click Change next to contacts.

Select “Google” (you can also sync with Plaxo if you use that service), click “Change”. Then click the “Click to configure your service…” link. Enter Your Google ID with the @gmail.com or @yourdomain.com if you’re a Google Apps Customer and click “Request Account Access”. You will be then redirected to Google and asked which account you want Nuevasync to access, choose and click “Continue”. On the next page click “Grant Access”. You should now get a message saying your changes have been saved. Click “Continue”.

There should now be a green dot all the way across form Contacts on the right.

If you did not get a green dot go to this page. It will help you solve any configuration problems. It’s the same help page I mentioned above.

Before we move on to configuring the iPhone, it’s important to note that you can use this page to see which of your calendars can be synced and also help solve any configuration problems.

Now we’re done with the online configuration, let’s move on to the iPhone.
If you’re not sure what values to enter in the following fields, Nuevasync can generate the recommended settings for you, and give you their text based setup instructions at this page.

Go to the “Settings” menu then touch the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” button

Choose “Add Account…”

Choose “Microsoft Exchange”

Enter the Email, Username, and Password you set up at the Nuevasync site. Be sure to leave the Domain Field blank. Also add a Description, the default is the Email you entered in the email field, but I prefer “Nuevasync”. On the Nuevasync site they say “it is important that the e-mail address you enter when configuring the synchronization settings on your device matches the one you provided to sign up for Nuevasync.” I also found out that if you enter the wrong email address, then your events will show up as un-editable invitations.

Touch “Next”

A warning will pop up about the security certificate at “yourdomain.com” (Normally “gmail.com” or “yourdomain.com”, but I used my theiLife.com email address for the tutorial) Just so you know why this box pops up, on their website Nuevasync says “When you enter your e-mail address to sync, your device may warn you about a certificate being invalid. This is particularly likely if you use a Gmail address. It isn’t referring to our certificate or our service, so don’t be concerned. It is part of Apple’s auto-configuration feature as it tries to guess the appropriate server name based on your info. Our SSL certificate is valid and secure.”

Touch “Accept”.

The Server Box will appear. Enter www.nuevasync.com

Now, turn the “Mail” switch off. Nuevasync does not support push Mail yet, but they hope to in the near future. They suggest setting up IMAP for now. Nuevasync also says “turn off any other category you do not wish to sync. For example, if you want to sync only your calendar, make sure “Mail” and “Contacts” are both turned off. If you want to sync contacts and calendar, you should only turn off “Mail”, but if you are reading this article, you’re probably going to want to sync both. Touch “Save”.

Now the setup is complete. Nuevasync should show up as an account in the “Mail, Contacts, Calendar” page.

Go to the Home screen and touch Contacts. Your iPhone should immediately begin to sync with Nuevasync / Google. This first sync may take up to a minute, because it has to download all of your information. Future syncs will only take a few seconds. Afterwards, all of your contacts should appear. Go back to your home screen and repeat the process for your calendar. Again, the first sync may take up to a minute because it has to download all of your information. Future syncs will only take a few seconds.

That’s it! Now wherever you go with your iPhone or iPod Touch, you will always have your up-to-date Google Calendar and Contacts!

If you ever need to verify that your data was synced or the last time it was synced, you can use this page to look at your sync status. If there has been some error in syncing (Like Google not responding with your calendar events) then the problem will be displayed on that page.

Special thanks go out to David Boreham, one of the creators of Nuevasync, for providing information for the article. You can read Nuevasync’s blog at http://nuevasync.blogspot.com/ where you can keep up with the latest news about Nuevasync, including new features and scheduled maintenance.

An article in the Wall Street Journal on thursday announced Google’s plans for their first Android based phone. It is the first commercially available phone to run Google’s Android operating system since the announcement of the project in November of 2007, almost a year ago.

The phone is said to be priced at $199 to directly compete with the iPhone 3G. Service and data is rumored to be through T-Mobile USA. At this price point the hopes are to make it more appealing to those considering the iPhone. The phone is said to be released on September 23.

Here are my notes, in chronological order since installation:

Downloading the firmware took about 7 minutes on a 20/5 Mbit/s connection. Fairly slow for Apple’s servers, probably due to heavy traffic.

My iPhone update took about 20 minutes. Note that I recently synced and backed up my iPhone with my computer about one hour prior to the installation.

This update WILL disturb a previously jailbroken 2.0 device, but will not brick it or fail to install the update on a device that was PWNED using the latest PWNAGE tool.

Things seem to be snappier. No Apple application crashes yet, no sign of sluggish performance.

Now trying third party applications. Installing an update on the device from the App Store still relocates applications to the back as if they were never installed.

After over 12 hours of extensive use, we have found 2.0.1 is a great improvement to the buggy 2.0 firmware. However, there are still some outstanding issues.

More updates coming soon.

While the enhancements found in the new iPhone OS are wonderful, native third party applications have brought along a whole new set of issues to the platform. While it has still been under a month since the public introduction of the App Store, there are a number of major issues across the platform. Hopefully Apple will formally address and fix them however, at the moment it is up to the users.

On the Device:

Applications Crashing:
Immediately after opening a third party application, the newly launched application will quit. This bug has affected a number of applications, and often can be corrected by a hard reset of the device or re-installing the application.

Extremely slow Performance:
Even when in one of Apple’s own applications such as Safari or Contacts, the keyboard will be extremely laggy and sometimes even unexpectedly quit. Another common issue is loading Settings only to find a blank screen. Try holding down the home button for 7 seconds to force quit the application and if the issue persists, reset the device.

Random Restarts:
Sometimes when using an application (usually third party) the device will just randomly restart. There seems to be no definitive cause or solution to this issue.

Application Updates:
The App Store shows new updates to your applications. It downloads the new version and installs it (however long it might take) and treats it like a new application! It erases the old version, but adds the icon all the way at the last position. The only way around this is to update via iTunes.

In iTunes:

Application Updates:
Sometimes, the App Store Icon on your device will show there are updates to applications. When you go into iTunes, it doesn’t show any updates. Even if you manually click “Check for Updates” it says there isn’t any updates available. The only way to fix this is to go and re-download each application you want to update to; or update the application on your device and have it synced back to iTunes.

Long Backups:
Backups are recommended so you can restore your device back to how it was at any given point in time. Sometimes, after installing or updating applications backups may take a very long time. The best bet is to wait it out or press the X to cancel the backup.

These are a few remedies to a bunch of large issues. If you have any more tips or tricks you think we missed, please contact us or leave a comment below!

The 3G iPhone is in high demand this summer. Lines outside Apple Stores of seven or more hours have become commonplace. Seeing entire states selling out of iPhones for days at a time isn’t uncommon. AT&T stores seem to get shipments least often, and generally flagship stores will have some models in stock, but accompanied with a long line outside. Even Apple is having trouble keeping phones on their shelves. Last week, Apple announced all stores were going to open at 8AM and have more employees helping in anticipation of iPhone 3G sales.

On apple.com/retail:

“Your favorite Apple Retail Store is making it easier and more convenient to purchase an iPhone 3G. All stores will now open at 8:00 a.m. every day but Sunday and, to accommodate demand, we’re adding staff to help you get up and running as quickly as possible.”

Like last year and with the MacBook Air, Apple has added a Store Availability Checker to their retail website which is updated at 9PM. Many sites have attempted to tap into this service, which isn’t available during the day, to provide updated iPhone availability. Apple has since changed the backend so these sites can no longer use the checker during the day. You can view the official one here (after 9PM).

Among the most effective ways to find stock at any given time is to call. Visit Apple.com/retail to find a few Apple Store phone numbers near you and start calling. This process might require some time, and you might have to call several over the course of one day and week.

Recently, Apple has also setup a “raincheck” program, where if you lineup for an iPhone, you can set aside a 3G iPhone and return later in the day to finish the activation process when convenient. Generally you have until 6PM to pickup your new device.

Finally, among the most important things to do before you go out to purchase your new iPhone is to become iReady (PDF).

To purchase and activate iPhone 3G, you need the following:

Credit card (In Your Name)
Social security number (In Your Name)
Valid, government-issued photo ID (In Your Name) [Must be 18 and older]
Your current wireless account number and password or PIN (if you’re new to AT&T)

And if these steps are too much for you, the simple answer is to wait. As the holiday season draws closer, and the device is on the market longer, production will ramp up and Apple may be able to handle the heavy demand better. If you have any additional tips or suggestions, feel free to drop us a comment below or contact us.

The 2.0 firmware adds a large number of fixes, refinements and additions to the iPhone platform. Free for existing iPhone owners and a $9.95 upgrade for iPod Touch owners, 2.0 adds the App Store as well as Microsoft Exchange support and many other enterprise level features. Below are some lesser known additions to the iPhone OS 2.0 firmware:

If you are entering a URL in Safari, for example, you’re probably aware of the .com button. In the new 2.0 firmware, if you would like to type in .edu, .net or .org, if you hold down the .com button and you are presented with “.net, .edu, .org and .com” as an option.

Like QuickTime movies, the new Safari version found on iPhone OS 2.0 allows you to see embedded YouTube videos. If you click on an embedded YouTube video, the video launches in the YouTube application.

If you see an image you would like to save while in Safari or Mail, if you tap and hold down the image, a prompt will ask if you would like to save the photo. Your saved photos can be found the Camera Roll as well.

If you want to take a screenshot from your iPhone or iPod Touch, hold down the home button and click the Sleep/Wake button at the top and the screen will flash. Whatever was displayed on your screen will be added to your Camera Roll.

If you want to jump to the top of a page in Safari, or your Inbox in Mail, simply tap the Menu bar (where the time and battery information is displayed) and it will jump to the top.

Continue reading after the jump for more new features!

Scientific Calculator:

If you launch the Calculator application in the iPhone 2.0 firmware and turn the iPhone horizontally, it will switch into a Scientific calculator!

Email Attachment Support:

PDF, Word and Excel documents were viewable as attachments prior to iPhone 2.0. Now Apple has added support for PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote and Numbers documents in the 2.0 Operating System.

Bulk Move and Delete:

Bulk Delete and Move have been added to the Mail application. This makes moving mails to a folder or deleting multiple emails at once simple.

Contact Searching:

If you’ve got lots of contacts, iPhone OS 2.0 finally adds a search functionality.

These are just a few tips for those running iPhone OS 2.0. If you know of any other, please feel free to contact us or leave it in the comments below!