iphone 3gs review

i've been an iphone user now pretty much since they released the first model in america and i've never looked back. it's quite weird how different it feels to other phones i've had in the past. the general mobile phone rule is about a month after you buy a phone the next generation of models come out that look cooler, have more features, better camera, are smaller, lighter, faster, better... but even since i bought my iphone in 2007 i haven't wanted to change to a different phone. sure other phones do the same stuff (arguably better in some cases). other phones have better cameras, replaceable batteries and probably plenty of other features. but overall nothing seems to handle everything as well as the iphone and this is mainly due to it's app store and it's ongoing firmware updates from apple.

i was happy enough with my first generation iphone and probably would have stuck with it alot longer had i not lost it at this years reading festival moshing. so it was time for an update so i figured i might aswell push the boat out and grab a 16gb iphone 3gs. when it was first announced it was definitely an update i could have skipped and waited for the next generation model but being forced to upgrade i'm pretty happy i did.

the main updates were the massive speed increase (it's really noticeable), improved camera, video recording, 3g internet speeds, voice control, gps and it's built in compass (to orientate google maps). so a pretty decent upgrade really, and overall this thing is pretty fucking great.

essentially this thing is just catnip for geeks.

and being a geek i love that i can use this thing for pretty much anything, anywhere. i can check my email, facebook, twitter (and take pics or videos to upload to these) keep up with rss feeds, watch youtube, check web sites, ebay, play games, find out where i am/what's around me, use as a sat nav, listen to music/podcasts, watch movies/tv shows, check train times, the list goes on.

obviously computers have been able todo pretty much all this stuff for ages but having all this on something pocket sized i just find really cool. infact for a few tasks i'm actually starting to prefer using my iphone over my laptop. some things really do just work better on the iphone. like checking train times for example. i can open up the national rail app, have it find my location and all the nearest train stations and all their train times (and which ones are late). it's just quicker and easier on the iphone than on a pc.

... oh yeah the iphone can also send and receive texts and phone calls!

another couple of useful apps i've started using recently are evernote and read it later. you can use both whether you have an iphone or not. both offer a similar service to the google stuff i mentioned in my useful web apps blog post a while ago but these seem superior (mainly 'cause google won't integrate it's services into google chrome).

the main advantage to using these tools is the changes you make are synced online so they are always up-to-date from wherever you access them from. anyway here's a couple of vid's to show what they do.




yeah she was kinda annoying but that was the best vid i could find to sum up what evernote does. but it's pretty useful and completely free so give it a go.

reading festival 2009 round up

[now updated with the bbc's tiny slice of covereage from their highlights]

delayed blogging due to a few weeks of being busy and last week was reading fest weekend! last year was my first year there and it was awesome. so far i've been to v festival 2007, glastonbury 2008, reading 2008 and 2009. v fest just felt like a big lifeless corporate money maker (kinda how you'd expect i guess). glasto is just the king of festivals mostly for it's shear size, atmosphere and diverse lineup. but band wise i'd say for me reading fest is the strongest.

last years headliners (rage, killers and metalica) seemed much bigger to me compared to this years (kings of leon, arctic monkeys and radiohead) but i'm a big kol fan and i like most arctic's stuff so that's good enough for me (sorry, i just don't know enough radiohead to call myself a fan).

probably the best news though was rumors of them crooked vultures doing a secret set on one of the side stages. there were already rumors they'd be there a few weeks before the festival but i managed to confirm the rumors were true on the saturday with the help of an iphone and twitter (it's awesome when twitter comes thru and you find a really good use for it) as they played the leeds festival the day before. so i knew where they'd be on and at what time! perfect!

here's the short clip from bbc's highlights. mcfly!? fuck off.

we got there about four bands before they were due to play so we could get right to the front for them. the plan worked brilliantly and by 4pm we were about two rows from the front - which was worth it even if we did have to put up with patrick wolf's set. by then the place was pretty rammed, the crowd were riled up and there had been alot of moshing to even bands you wouldn't expect it for.

after what felt like forever of setting up and mic checking they finally emerged. everyone went mental. and once they started playing they went even mentaler. as expected they sounded amazing. however in all the mentality my pocketed iphone somehow became depocketed. so if your wondering where my pictures from the weekend are, they are probably smashed up somewhere in that field. here's what it was lost in - there will be a handsome reward if you can spot it. was quite a bazaar experience being equally excited and gutted at the same time. but not to worry, review of my shiny new iphone 3gs is probably coming up sometime soon. plus i managed to score tickets for them at freaking plymouth in december!

after the m.i.a iphone had pissed on my festival poncho it was time to get on with the festival good times. one thing i thought was very weird this year is how the the bands before the headliners (with the exception of kol/kasiers friday night) just felt more powerful and had a better atmosphere than the actual headliners. wtf is up with that!? on saturday the prodigy were fuckin awesome, great band, great songs, the crowd went apeshit (as expected) ... arctic monkeys were fuckin dead on stage, as was the crowd. exactly the same happened on sunday with bloc party rocking the party and radiohead killing it. very weird, but i guess radiohead were never really gunna rock the party.

on friday night we dodged the kasiers and went to see friendly fires on the nme stage instead. wow, what a good call. they were infinitely better. i really like their album so we great to get to see them live. after them it was back to the main stage for some king of leon action. i'd say they were the best headliner even if they were pissed off but i would have liked to hear more from their first two albums. ho hum, t'was great to see them live again though.

and that was about my reading festival. one more thing before i'm done. it's great seeing all these cool bands in one place over one weekend but sometimes you do need something to break up all the music - which is where the alternate stage comes in. we tried to get into the tent on friday to see some of tim minchin's set. i don't know much of his stuff but what i heard was good. on sunday we caught quite a odd choice for reading which was a lecture on watchmen. was interesting to see what was basically a film studies lecture at a music festival, but did help break up the music a bit, so that was cool.

later on that afternoon we managed to catch adam buxton's bug show thing. it wasn't what i was expecting but still very cool. if your new to bug (as i was) he basically shows a series of cool music videos from artists you've never heard of with a few of his own songs/videos mixed in. here's one of my favorites from the ones he showed at reading:

now the song will go round in your head all day again and again and again and again!

ok that'll do. end blog post.

why twitter?

i've been meaning todo a twitter post for a while now so no time like the present right? i've been using twitter now for a few months. i was reluctant at first but after reading the twitter experiment blog post by david pogue i decided to get involved and start using twitter - and i really like it. but it seems difficult to get new people to get involved, and i can see why. the first thing they always say is it's just another facebook status update and on the surface it's easy to just look at it like that, but when you actually start to use it properly you might start to like it more than facebook (as i now do). however they are difficult to compare as i have different uses for both facebook and twitter.

facebook is mostly good at what it does, keeping you in contact and updated on what your friends are up to, sharing photos/videos, creating events, etc but over time it seems to be getting bloated with useless crap. i don't care about your mafia wars update. i can see why you'd join a group and become a fan of a band you like or event your interested in but i don't care if your a 'fan' of laughing or joined the group 'i need money' ... who the hell doesn't and who doesn't like laughing! it's getting ridiculous. this is somewhere twitter prevails. as soon as you read something by someone your not interested in you can just un-follow them. this instantly kills any spam. plus twitter doesn't even have adverts (how many web sites can say that these days?).

once your on twitter you should get a desktop app for it 'cause they are just better than using the web site. these allow you to get instant updates from the people you follow. you can set them up to update as often as you like and they give you a small msn style popup when new tweets are received. probably the most popular is tweetdeck. you can download it windows, mac or iphone for free via their website or the app store. one of tweetdeck's coolest features is the ability to create search columns. so if i wanted to keep up to date with say half life 2 episode 3 just create a search column and you'll receive live updates from anyone whose tweets contain 'half life 2 episode 3' - even people i don't already follow.


tweetdeck is good and has most of the features you need from a twitter client but i find it does take over my screen a bit too much for my liking so i use twhirl. it uses a smaller window and actually displays incoming tweets as they come in on the bottom right of your screen. twhirl is available for windows and mac on their web site.

i should also mention tweetie which is a good app on both mac and iphone. you have to pay for the full version but you can download a free version on mac with adverts but there are loads of different twitter apps out there so just search around and use the one best suited to you.

one of the most useful features for me is just having live updates from web sites i visit regularly. basically you can use twitter as an rss feed from news/games/movie sites, anything your interested in and receive updates as soon as they go onto their web site.

then there's obviously celebrities. alot of tv and radio shows now are using twitter as a way to communicate with their audience. it's also pretty cool following people within the industry, like someone working on the effects in a film or working on a game still in production.

i mainly use it for sharing links. it's just easier to put something i want to share on twitter than individually sending everyone i know an instant message. plus on twitter it'll reach more people because twitter is open to everyone (not just people you know like on facebook).

anybody can search twitter for anything. any topic you want to see what people are talking about. if you want to see what people are saying about a certain film, or a specific web site or event you can just search and see what people are saying about it. you can also use hashtags which work in the same way. you basically put a # in front of a word which then makes it a searchable link. if you see any weird words with a # before them check out wthashtag.com - it's like a wikipedia of hashtags and will tell you what they mean.

anyway that about covers everything i wanted to say on twitter. it's not for everyone but it is for me, so i recommend you give it a go. i guarantee there will be plenty of people/web sites you'll want to follow - so if your not already, get on twitter.

new iphone announcement

yesturday apple made some new annoucements at their worldwide developer conference keynote about some of their upcoming products. you can watch the full presentation here.

they started out with some new macbook updates adding an sd card, firewire 800 (the apple fans cheer at the weirdest things, this was one of them lol), better screen, better battery and some other stuff. after that a guy with an annoying accent showed off some of the new features from their next major operating system update snow leopard. most of it looked pretty sweet and i still think mac os x leopard is the best operating system around at the moment so i'm looking forward to the update. snow leopard is due out in september and apple is only charging $29 to upgrade to it, which will make it extremely hard for microsoft to compete with windows 7 (unless it's a free upgrade from vista - which it should be anyway cos vista's just shit).

after that they moved on to show off the features of the new iphone 3.0 software which adds loads of new features for all iphone's and ipod touch's. they're finally adding copy & paste, a landscape keyboard in all text entry apps and tethering to your computer to use your iphone as a modem to get online wherever you are. one of the features i was most impressed with was the 'find my iphone' service for if you lose your iphone - check it out:

then the big annoucement that the apple fan boys were waiting for - a new iphone called the iphone 3gs (the s stands for speed). time to get my bullet points out, aww yeah! new features include:

• an upgraded camera - still only 3.2mp tho, but the pics they showed off did look pretty good.
• video recording - with ability to upload straight to youtube.
• all the insides have been upgraded to increase speed all round.
• built in compass - so the iphone can rotate maps to the direction your facing.
• voice control - allows you to give your iphone voice commands to phone people, play songs, etc.
• available in 16gb and 32gb versions.
• and it's the same size as the iphone 3g.

the iphone 3gs does seem cool but i don't think they've upgraded enough to warrent me paying for a whole new contact when alot of the features are still coming to my iphone 2g with the 3.0 firmware - but then it took me a while to come round to the iphone in the first place, but now i'll buy almost anything if it's shiney and made by apple:

iphone apps

with the itunes app store getting alota downloads everyday and new apps being added all the time there's alota useless crap but i figured i'd do a quick post on the apps i like and use the most. i doubt everyone reading this actually has an iphone but if your considering getting one you might be interested. so let's get started...


i'll put a link to a video of each app in the title so you can see them in action. the videos aren't mine but they'll give you an idea of what the apps like. if you wanna give them a try just search for the title on the app store (obviously).

field runners - this is one of the first games i really liked on the iphone that turned out to be really addictive. it's a basic tower defence game where you have to stop these little guys from getting from one side of the screen to the other by building turrets to stop them for as long as you can. there are loads of similar apps (one being tap defence which is free) but this one is the best i've tried.

sway - this ones kinda difficult to explain and is much better just to see in action. you basically control each of your characters arms with your left and right thumb and have to swing around the level to get to the end. it's one of my favorites on the iphone at the mo and couldn't be done on anything other than an iphone.

scoops - last i checked this ones actually free on the app store so definitely give it a try. i started playing and was instantly addicted. basically you've got an ice cream cone and you need to move it around to collect scoops of ice cream and avoiding the fruit. my current high score is 160060.

zenbound - again this one you kinda need to see in action. the object is basically to wrap a rope around diffenent 3d shapes. wherever the rope touches the shape it becomes coloured. the idea is to colour in as much of the object as possible using a set length of rope. might sound boring but the touch controls and accelorometer make it work really well. very unique game that i was impressed by anyway.

rolando - if you liked locoroco on the psp or ps3 then this one's for you. it's almost exactly the same really but the main difference if the controls. you basically select the character you want to move by touching them onscreen and then tilt the iphone in the direction you wanna go. different characters move around differently and generally the object is to collect fruit and get all the characters to the end of the level.

sudoku grab - there are quite a few sudoku apps on the app store but this one impressed me most. as usual they come with a load of puzzles with the app but this one actually allows you to use the iphone's camera to add more puzzles to your iphone - and it actually works!