Sky Remote Record iPhone.App request

I’m leaving for a longer business trip (3 weeks in total) this Sunday. During that period, both the NFL and NCAA football seasons start. My problem: the EPG on my Sky HD box doesn’t have the programming information for more than a few days. And as a result, I’m not able to schedule to record the games I might want to see when I return.

Sky offers a great service called Remote Record. On their website I can schedule the programmings I’d like to record and then that information is transmitted to my Sky HD box. Works great and I will definitely use this to record the games. But it would be much cooler to have a native application on my iPhone that connects to Sky for the EPG and allows me to select the programs to record. This shouldn’t be too hard to do for the engineers at Sky and the web interface they have right would work on an iPhone as well.

Well, hopefully we’ll see an application for this soon. Not because it’s the killer app for the iPhone, but just because it’s cool to show off to your mates in the pub.

 

Apple removes ‘push notifications’ from iPhone 2.1 firmware beta

According to Ars Technica, Apple removed the push notification functionality from the current iPhone 2.1 firmware beta. While it’s certainly true that there are more pressing matters to fix in a new release (my Mail.App crashes very frequently when sending mail via my Exchange account), this functionality is definitely needed quickly. The value of an applications like AIM is now very limited and I’d like to see those apps coming for MSN and Yahoo as well.

While it’s not the biggest issue in the world, it would be bad if Apple can’t keep its promises and misses the announced September release for this functionality.

 

iPhone battery

I’m not completely sure yet, but it looks like my iPhone battery is lasting shorter everyday. It’s a first generation model, updated to firmware 2.0.1. And it certainly feels like it started after the update.

Of course, there may be good reasons for this. First, GSM coverage at the beach is unstable, so the phone is searching for a signal a lot. And then there is the added usage of applications. I particularly use the Mail.App a lot, pulling in all those messages doesn’t help either.

So, I’ll see what happens when I return to the UK.

 

RDP Client for iPhone

I’ve just read an article on Doug Brown’s site that there is a RDP client now available for the iPhone. While it hasn’t shown up yet in the Dutch AppStore (and I don’t have access to the US AppStore for another few days), I can’t test it. But it does look very interesting and I’m curious to see how good it works.

Perhaps this means an ICA client for the iPhone is nearer than we expected.

 

Bug in WordPress for iPhone

There seems to be an issue with my copy of WordPress on my iPhone. I’ve upgraded to iPhone firmware 2.0.1 yesterday (after Stefan Pieters convinced me it was safe to do while being on the road) and now I can’t save posts anymore. The only way to save my drafts is by leaving WordPress and let the post auto-recover.

Perhaps I should check for an update in the AppStore.

Update: The behaviour is weird. Sometimes I get the Save button, sometimes I don’t. Luckily I can recover all my posts, but this is anoying.

 

iPhone 2.0 issues

I’m experiencing some issues with the new firmware. First, applications have been crashing on me. And not only the shady apps from the AppStore, but also Mail and Safari. I didn’t have any issues before the upgrade, my iPhone was very stable (even with all the homebrew apps).

More importantly is the other problem. The iPhone becomes unresponsive for a few seconds (just experienced a period of about 10 seconds). The apps most affected by this are Contacts and Notes. I might be one of the few users of Notes, but I use it all the time to collect my thoughts when I’m on the Tube or on a plane (I don’t want to get my laptop out for 30 minutes). And what’s the deal with opening the Contacts app and having to wait a few seconds before you can look up the person you need?

As Apple got me hooked to the platform and I totally love running those apps, there is no way I can return to an older firmware. So my only hope is Apple to release an update real soon.

 

WordPress for iPhone

The WordPress application for the iPhone has made it to the AppStore. As a matter of fact, this post is being written on my iPhone. Not sure if it will be functional or not, but I’ll give it a try. Now I’ve got to figure out how to use hyperlinks and such.

 

Citrix XenDesktop on an Apple iPhone

Running Windows XP on an Apple iPhone? Not quite, but look at the cool demo we did in Australia.

While the screen might not be optimal for delivering a Windows desktop, being able to do so certainly raises the coolness factor of XenDesktop. Not that it needed any, as it’s a hot product on its own, but it doesn’t hurt to have it. And who knows what the future brings, perhaps Apple will launch a range of mini-laptops based on the iPhone OS. And then it would be a killer feature to connect to your Windows desktop, which is humming nicely and securely in the data center.

So now I’ve got to find out who can give me an internal release of this software and get it onto my iPhone