Podcaster was originally rejected by Apple back in 2008 so the developer put the app on Cydia instead for jailbroken phones. Then in 2009, a slightly stripped down version called RSS Player accepted into the App Store. Finally, this past June, Podcaster for iOS4 devices was approved by Apple (RSS Player is still available for older iOS3 devices).

I love having the ability to manage my podcast subscriptions directly on my iPhone, without the need for iTunes. Setup was pretty simple: I exported my iTunes podcast subscriptions into OPML format and then e-mailed it to myself, opened the attachment on my iPhone which launched Podcaster and imported all of the subscriptions. I then removed all of my podcast subscriptions in iTunes so I’m not doubling-up on downloaded files.

I also like the ability to set up automatic synchronization schedules: I’ve got it configured for 6am and 4pm so theoretically it’s current before I leave the house in the morning, and then before I leave work in the evening. If you don’t (or can’t) download an episode, you can simply stream it.

Another cool feature is the ability to control download/retention settings at the podcast level. In iTunes you can only say you want to keep the last 3 episodes, all unplayed episodes, etc. and that is effective for all of your subscriptions. In Podcaster, however, you can set those options for each individual subscription. This way I can keep all the unplayed episodes of Buzz Out Loud but only have one (the most recent) episode of Adam Carolla available.

Some things that bug me so far, though:

• it doesn’t truly run in the background (even with iOS4′s new multi-tasking abilities) so I have to remember to leave the app open in order for the scheduled sync times to work. Since I’ve jailbroken my iPhone I’ve been using Backgrounder to keep Podcaster in the “foreground” so the downloads happen in the “background.” This approach has been relatively successful so far, except for some partial downloads (see below).
• it supports the remote button on my headphones to start/stop playback, but the double-click-and-hold (for FF) and triple-click-and-hold (for REW) don’t work in video podcasts. I really miss this ability to FF/REW from my headset (or car dock) since using the scrubber to skip through commercials is just about impossible and the 10-second skipahead is only available on audio podcasts.
• similarly, the 10/20/30 second skip-ahead feature doesn’t seem to be present in video podcasts
• video playback will be paused when an alert (or push notification) comes in. This occurs in the normal iPod app though, which started with iOS4 (and continues to bugs me).
• you can’t create a mixed playlist of audio and video podcasts
• I’ve run into problems with a few corrupted downloads where the video just hangs at one point even though I drag the slider farther. I suspect the downloads are interrupted due to poor signal (or an incompatibility with running in the background) so Podcaster thinks they are complete but they really aren’t.

So, the app has promise and is well worth the $0.99 price of admission, but it still needs some polish.

We’re in the early stages of testing the iPhone with our corporate e-mail infrastructure: Microsoft Exchange and GoodLink. Since my AT&T account has been upgrade-eligible for some time (the last time I “officially” upgraded was when my Treo 650 was the hot new device), my boss told me to go ahead and get an iPhone (16gb model, but I paid a little out-of-pocket to get the 32gb one since my current iPod is 30gb). I need to start learning how to use it so I can eventually support it as we roll the device out to other users in the office. It’s been two weeks now since I abandoned my trusty Treo 680 and I had some free time while on vacation last week to really spend some time with the iPhone. Here’re some of my thoughts …

What I Like

• the design and form factor: the iPhone is truly a beautiful thing to look at given it’s mostly screen and a single home button. Even with my Otterbox impact case on, it still fits comfortably in my pants pocket. I miss having a physical keyboard (see “What I Don’t Like” below) but the buttons that are present make sense.
• it’s a widescreen iPod: when music is playing and a call comes in, the music fades away and then the phone rings. When you’re done with the call, the music fades back in, picking up where you left off. One minor nit here, though, is that if you have the e-mail notification sound enabled, your music will fade briefly to play the mail sound, which isn’t necessary (the notification should just be suppressed). I replaced my old Belkin Tunebase FM with the new version for the iPhone so I can charge the device in my car and still listen to podcasts while driving. It includes a speakerphone for handsfree and a single button that works like the home button on the phone: click once to pause/play, twice to go forward a track, twice and hold for fast forward, three times to back a track, thrice and hold for rewind. I like being able to turn the phone sideways and watch video podcasts in widescreen too (although scrolling through podcasts is uncharacteristically choppy).
• the GPS: using the built-in GPS and compass for location-based/direction-based services is really slick. Pulling up Google Maps and watching the blue dot move along a highway as I drive is like a scene out of a spy movie. Check out Yelp’s monocle feature for a perfect example of augmented reality using these features.
• the camera: I’ve been stuck with the VGA (640×480) camera in my PalmOS devices for so long! It’s great to finally have a mega-pixel camera (with video even!) that takes pretty good pictures. I love the geo-tagging feature too.
• the speaker: being able to play music without headphones or external speakers is a definite plus.
• oh yeah, it’s a phone: when held up to your ear, the screen turns itself off. Take it away from your ear, and the screen fades back into view. You don’t have to navigate through a voice response system to record your voicemail message or retrieve your messages, just tap the buttons on-screen. It’s those little things that continue to impress me. Of course, I haven’t actually used it a lot as a phone since it does so much other cool stuff.

What I Don’t Like

• the keyboard: no one can argue that the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is better than then Treo’s. Typing on glass just isn’t the same. I’m getting better at two-thumbing it, but I still find typing (quickly) a frustrating exercise.
• iTunes: I haven’t looked into this much yet, but having to use iTunes to sync and customize the phone is a pain, especially if you’re using more than one computer. For example I sync my iPhone with my main desktop machine at home. While travelling over Thanksgiving, I had my laptop with me, but could not use iTunes on it to manage my phone. This is really going to be a pain at work when I’m trying to configure multiple iPhones for people in the office. I found the iPhone Configuration Utility but still need to read up on enterprise deployments.
• syncing (or lack thereof): requiring iTunes also makes it difficult for applications to sync their data for backup. Palm had HotSync and conduits which allowed third-party developers to create custom “tunnels” in HotSync that were basically transparent to the user. To sync my eWallet desktop with my iPhone data, I have to open each application (on my PC and the phone), and then start the sync over Wi-Fi (totally outside of iTunes). A kludgy workaround due to Apple’s control freak design. Even the photos and videos you take on the iPhone don’t sync down to your PC through iTunes, instead you have to use the built-in features of your PC since the device appears as a plain storage device (although you can sync certain folders of photos back to the iPhone from your PC if you want to carry a certain collection around).
• I miss the clickwheel: using my iPod in the car without looking was pretty easy with the clickwheel. I was even pretty good at skipping most commercials (half a turn on the wheel was about 30 seconds). The iPhone isn’t as easy since it doesn’t have a lot of buttons. Yes, you can use the home button to skip tracks, or FF/RW, but for more accurate positioning you have to use the on-screen scrubber with your finger, which is pretty dangerous to do while driving.
• lack of customization options: sure I can drag the app icons around to different pages, but I can’t rename them, can’t leave empty spaces on the grid, can only assign a few different options to the home button, etc. Sure, I could mess around with jailbreaking and probably address some of those concerns, but I need to be able to support this device at work so I can’t deviate too much from the delivered experience.
• battery life: forgive me … I’ve been using a Treo on the Edge network for almost 4 years and battery life was pretty darn good. I’d only have to charge it overnight and it was good for all day. 3G and all the other cool stuff I can do on my iPhone really sucks the battery dry quickly. When I had my separate iPod and Treo, it didn’t matter if my iPod died while listening to music during the day since my phone still worked. Now that I have this single device I need to be more careful about making sure I keep it charged. The lack of a user-replaceable battery is a downer too. It’d be nice if I could just buy a new battery and put it in myself instead of having to send the whole phone back to Apple for a “repair.”
• fingerprints: it really sucks that 5 seconds after taking this beautiful shiny piece of technology out of the box it’s covered in my greasy fingerprints. The matte finish screen protectors I got at the AT&T store do a decent job of hiding them, though, and make the screen a lot less reflective and not so glassy to the touch.
• it’s delicate: this will take some time to play out, but the Treos were solid. Not that I drop my phone a lot, but when I do, it’s usually in a bad way. The Treo might have gotten scratched or scuffed, but it kept on working. Little plastic tanks. I’m not so sure about the iPhone. I already dropped it once onto concrete but luckily I have that impact rubber case and it landed screen up. The folks in the office are pretty hard on their devices (based on the drawer full of broken phones in my desk) so it’ll be interesting to see if the iPhone is up to their abuse.

What Apps Do I Use?

There’s an app for everything, right? Another of the big draws of the iPhone is the thousands of applications available in the iTunes App Store. One of the first things I had to do was find iPhone equivalents of the applications I used on a daily basis on my Treo. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

• What I used on the Treo: eWallet
• What I switched to for the iPhone: eWallet ($10 for iPhone, or $20 usable on multiple devices including PC)

Like anyone, I have a lot of passwords, logins, and various personal private information I need to carry around with me. To keep all of this sensitive information secure and portable, I’ve used Ilium Software’s eWallet application for many years. Luckily this switch was easily since Ilium has PalmOS, Windows Mobile, PC, and iPhone versions of  eWallet, and now I’ve used them all. Migrating my data was simple, although synchronization between the desktop and iPhone versions is a little cumbersome since you have to initialize the sync on both devices at the same time over Wi-Fi. Still, being able to access all of my passwords, accounts, and other stuff I store in my wallet on the iPhone is great.

• What I used on the Treo: ListPro
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Evernote (free)

I also keep a lot of random information on my handheld: gift ideas, vacation days, clothes sizes, various house information/measurements, lists of all sorts! So Ilium Software’s ListPro was another application I relied heavily on, using it both on my Treo and desktop PC. Unfortunately, Ilium hasn’t produced an iPhone version of ListPro yet so I had to search for alternatives. I ended up trying Evernote, which has iPhone and PC versions (in addition to many more, including via a web browser). Evernote requires you to create an account on their website, so technically your notes are being stored on their servers and then synced with your different devices. You can store text, images, documents, etc. but keep in mind the only notes you can actually edit on the iPhone have to be plain, unformatted text (so no checkboxes, bullets, etc.). Creating notes on the iPhone has the benefit of automatic location tagging, using the phone’s GPS. The basic free service has a limit on how much you can upload a month, so there’s a premium service you can pay for without those limits and also includes things like extra security. I had to manually copy/paste all of my lists out of ListPro into Evernote, which was a bit of a pain, but it did give me the opportunity to clean up and re-organize some of my lists.

• What I used on the Treo: Tasks (GoodLink)
• What I switched to for the iPhone: iMTasks ($7)

With GoodLink on my Treo, my e-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes from Outlook were all synchronized in near real-time. The iPhone handles the e-mail, contacts, and calendar, but not the to do list or notes. I am a heavy user of Outlook tasks so I really wanted those synced to my iPhone. For whatever reason, Apple decided not to bake that in. Instead, I had to purchase RERLSoft’s IMTasks app. Once I entered my Exchange information, the app downloaded my to do list and keeps it synchronized (although only while the app is open). Hopefully the forthcoming GoodLink client for the iPhone will include this, but for now this was a must-purchase function for me. RERLSoft has a version that includes Outlook notes synchronization (and also allows you to manage your out-of-office setting), but since I’m using Evernote now I decided to stop using Outlook notes altogether.

• What I used on the Treo: TealAuto
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Gas Cubby ($5, free lite version available)

Some other data I keep on my phone is car information: gas mileage, repair history, etc. On my Treo I used TealPoint’s TealAuto application to store and track fill-ups, repairs, maintenance, etc. Without an iPhone version, I tried out a few of the vehicle apps in the App Store, including the free “lite” version of Gas Cubby and eventually ended up purchasing the full version. Using the Windows version of TealAuto, I was able to export all of my data from my Treo into a CSV file. Then, using App Cubby’s unsupported import feature, I was able to load it all into Gas Cubby. The import only supports gas events, though, not maintenance, so I manually entered our 2009 maintenance events into the app later (not a big deal since there were a lot less of those compared to fill-ups). If you’re a multiple iPhone home and purchase multiple copies of Gas Cubby, you can even keep the data synchronized across devices, which is a cool feature.

• What I used on the Treo: iSilo
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Stanza (free)

If you read this blog you know I do a lot of reading on my PDA. There’s not a version of iSilo for the iPhone so I had to try out a few free e-readers. I settled on Stanza. Using the desktop version, I was able to convert the book I’m reading from the Baen free library from HTML into a format for the Stanza reader and transfer it to my iPhone. Having the larger, higher resolution screen on the device is great for reading. Plus you can change font sizes, colors, and themes (black on white, white on black, textured, etc.). I’ve also installed Amazon’s Kindle Reader (free), in case I decide to purchase some new e-books. No need for a Kindle now! Interesting, though, that Stanza is actually owned by Amazon. I wonder if eventually they’ll combine these apps?

• What I used on the Treo: tussh
• What I switched to for the iPhone: iSSH ($5), iRdesktop (free)

Why do I like remoting into my Linux server from my phone? Because I can, of course! iSSH let’s me login to my Ubuntu box at home via command-line or tunnelled VNC. The free iRdesktop utility lets me connect to my Windows servers at work when I have my iPhone connected to the VPN. Amazing. There’s even a free Citrix client (but I haven’t gotten it to work properly yet).

• What I used on the Treo: iRogue
• What I switched to for the iPhone: Rogue (free)

My daughter loves playing iRogue on my Treo and I like it too, so of course I needed the iPhone version!

Some other apps I’ve purchased/installed include:

• iEmergency+ ($1) allows you to store your emergency contact information (phone numbers, medical info, etc.) in a single place and also has a helpful utility for adding ICE information to your iPhone’s lock screen.
• Using VIP Access (free) means I don’t need to carry around my PayPal football or VeriSign Secure Card since my iPhone can now act as my security token.
• The iPhone doesn’t allow for multiple e-mail signatures when you use multiple e-mail accounts. JohnHancock ($2) lets you create and switch between as many as you need. There doesn’t seem to be an elegant solution, but this app at least provides one.
• RedLaser ($2) is an amazing barcode scanning application. Point your iPhone’s camera at any barcode and the app will pull up a list of prices from other stores. The latest update even uses the GPS to find local prices. If nothing else, it’s fun to play with.
• Chess with Friends (free) and Words with Friends (free) from New Toy, Inc. are basically chess and Scrabble games you can play “online” with other iPhone users. Really cool for playing with friends or relatives who live far away. We used both of these games in the car on our recent Thanksgiving holiday trip to play games without having to pass a single iPhone back and forth.

What Do I Think?

The iPhone is a really slick device. The first few days were rough for me, since I was really set in my ways with my Treo and doing things in a certain way. Over the past two weeks, though, as I’ve had time to get better acquainted with my new shiny toy business tool, I have to admit it is a well engineered piece of hardware and software. Now I have a single device that really covers all the bases. Pretty incredible.

Got any other must-have/must-try apps for me, or other iPhone advice, tips, or tricks? Leave me a comment!

Anyway, on Dwight’s list there are only three recommendations I haven’t seen: “Brazil,” (which surprisingly I hadn’t heard of even though I’m a big Terry Gilliam fan),  “Dark City,” and “Repo Man” (Emilio Estevez … really?). I’ve added these to my personal “watch” list so I’ll get to them at some point and decide for myself if they belong on that list with the other twelve.

I heard about this on episode #859 of Buzz Out Loud and from there found the clip above on collectSPACE. Starbucks should license this invention immediately, just in case.

In the year 3016, the Second Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to the faster-than-light Alderson Drive. No other intelligent beings have ever been encountered, not until a light sail probe enters a human system carrying a dead alien. The probe is traced to the Mote, an isolated star in a thick dust cloud, and an expedition is dispatched.

Jerry Pournelle is a frequent guest on TWiT. That, coupled with a recent mention by Steve Gibson on Security Now (episode #151) and the fact that I’ve never read any of Pournelle’s work, prompted me to purchase and read “The Mote in God’s Eye” (by Pournelle and Larry Niven). This book is an excellent example of hard science fiction, about as far as you can get from the last classic SF text I read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story is about mankind’s first encounter with intelligent life: an alien probe, having travelled for hundreds of years in “regular” space is discovered. A combination military/scientific/political/religious/commercial mission is launched by the humans to the Mote system, where they meet the Moties and begin learning about their culture, their history … and their dark secret. I can’t even begin to describe the plot here with any justice, so I recommend checking out the wiki page (just beware of spoilers!) if you’re interested.

My favorite thing about this book is that the aliens are … well, alien. This isn’t “Stargate SG-1″ or “Doctor Who” or even “Star Trek.” There are no universal translators, the Moties don’t speak English (at first), they don’t look human, they’re so … unfamiliar. Pournelle and Niven do a great job of creating an entirely alien race, complete with physiology, theology, mentality, architecture, technology, the whole nine yards.

They wrote a sequel, “The Gripping Hand,” some 20 years later (“Mote” was published in 1974). I’ll probably read that one as well. I seem to remember reading and enjoying Niven’s “The Integral Trees” when I was a kid, so it’s probably time to revisit his works as well.

When I first saw it, I wasn’t impressed. “The future. Delicious.” Seriously? This is Microsoft’s counter to Apple’s hilarious “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC” ads? Churros, shoes, and moist, edible PCs? What? (Ok, I did laugh at Bill’s mugshot on his Shoe Circus Membership card).

That being said, Ryan Block (formerly of Engadget and now part of gdgt) had an interesting analysis and breakdown of the different elements of the commercial on this week’s episode of TWiT (#159). Some of it actually made sense to me, though it still sounds like a bit of a stretch. The gang starts the analysis at the 1:10:13 mark. Judge for yourself … I’ll wait for the next one.

This is the second time I’ve had an e-mail read “on-air” by the Buzz crew. My first was back on episode #521 (Veronica’s last episode) when I pointed out that Molly mistook X-Wings for TIE fighters. The fun in that one starts at right at the very beginning and then continues 32:00 in. I felt kinda like the comic book guy on “The Simpsons” after pointing that out. Sorry, Molly!

If you don’t listen to BOL (“CNET’s podcast of indeterminate length”), give it a listen!

• www.instantrimshot.com
• www.instantcrickets.com
• www.sadtrombone.com

More stunning examples of how people will register any domain name and find something cool to do with it. Liven up your next meeting with one of these!