Sometimes I'm that stupid. (Let's play chase that app)

I upgraded my iPhone 3g to the new iOS4. I know that I cannot have a background or multitasking but I wanted three of the new capabilities.

1. Being able to see all my email inboxes in one place - this in invaluable. It used to to take too many clicks to get from one inbox to another. Now I can see everything in one place. 
2. Zoom on the camera - OK, so the quality of the camera is not that good to start with but a little zoom makes a big difference sometimes.
3. Most important! I loved the idea of having folders for my apps. 9 pages of apps is a lot go to through and I wasn't really good at organizing them. 

Number three sounds good in theory, but that's where the trouble started. In order to put apps together in a folder, you have to hold one of the icons until they all shake, then move on app on top of the other. They will create a folder with the category based on the second app. Ok. I move my blackjack on top of blocks and get a category called games whoo hooo! It worked! Now to add all my games to this folder. But wait, my games are all over the place. When you move an app across more than one page all the other apps move all over the place. It's kind of like trying to catch a goldfish with your bare hands. Forget trying to get an app from page 9 to page 3 where I started the games folder. 

I played this ridiculous game of catch that app for almost 30 minutes and finally said forget it. I pictured Steve Jobs laughing at the world as we all try to wrangle these apps from one page to another. 

Then I remembered that you can organize apps when you connect your phone to the computer. You can move from page to page without all those apps wiggling away. 

Yeah, sometimes I'm that stupid. 

p.s. you can only have 12 apps in a folder. If you try to put more apps in the folder it just wriggles away. 

My Apple flag is not waiving today.

I was one of the multitudes who did not get to pre-order my iphone 4 yesterday. I'm not usually the first in line, but I was very excited about the new phone and figured I would join in on this one. The Apple store signup failed so I went on to the ATT site....fail again. After trying a dozen times over the course of the day, I gave up. The real burn was when they started announcing that all the pre-order phones were sold out. Okay. I can take the hint. I'm not supposed to be first in line. Perhaps I should give up on the upgrade for now, get an ipad and wait until they work out all the kinks. Yeah, I know it's sounds like sour grapes...it is. :P

Coffee and free wifi. I may never go home!

OMG.....Starbucks will be offering free wifi on July 1st. If I ever get my ipad, I will probably move into a Starbucks and never leave. Being the coffee and computer addict that I am, I don't know if this is a good thing.
When I want to hang out at a coffee shop, I usually don't want it to be that busy. I take my ubuntu laptop and surf while I'm killing time until whatever it is that I have to do.  I love the Tuscan Sunrise coffee and tea store in Poway. It's the quintessential coffee shop where the owner is the person behind the counter and she makes really good tea from fresh tea leaves. Her scones are great too. Then there is always Packards in Ramona. Both have free wifi and good coffee. You can also find free wifi at the Ramona Cafe (great breakfast food but their coffee isn't very good.)
However, Starbucks still has the best coffee for my taste. Nice to know I can surf there too. Perhaps it's a good thing that the nearest one is 15 miles from my house. I might never go home, or sleep for that matter.

Communication Overload

Fun surprise in my email this morning. I finally received my invitation to Google Voice. I requested it 6 months ago so I was really excited to be one of the "chosen few."

Now I have mixed feelings. I already have a home phone, way more than 5 email accounts, a cell phone with text, skype, more than 4 instant message services, Mobileme,  Facebook and now Google Voice. Is this too much? I've managed to consolidate all my instant message services into "Adium" on my iMac and "Empathy" on my Ubutnu Laptop. These work great. I can see who is online and chat with anyone on any service from one place, except it looks like I'm on facebook even when I'm not. I've also managed to consolidate all my email accounts. I forward most of them to my gmail so I only check that and mobileme. I chose those two services because I can use them from any computer and they are the best at keeping out the junk mail. They also feed into one inbox on the mac.

I've been in an unclutter mode lately so I'm wondering if adding one more service is a good thing. Will I be able to consolidate everything into one place and will Google be it? I have concerns about privacy but I'm pretty sure there is no real privacy anymore, at least not digitally.

Well, feeling honored that I was finally chosen to receive the illusive Google Voice, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I will post more as I start to use it and get more acquainted with what it really does. I did get to pick a cool number, though.

More apple fun! iphone 4

I spent two hours at the DMV today only to find out the computer is down and I have to come back. Good thing I had my iphone 3g to keep me occupied. The new iphone 4 was announced today, so I spent my time streaming the marumors.com live from WWDC.

Yep, it looks exactly like the one that was lost by an apple employee and found it's way to gizmodo.com
It's also really neat.

Here are the major points:

• Design is new - steel rim around the edges, smaller but not lighter, longer battery, faster processor, flat back.
• Front and back camera, video conferencing (as far as I can tell both parties have to have iphone 4) imovie functions on 5 megapixel and 720 hd video, with flash. That's a huge improvement over the old one. 
• The new screen is clearer. They call it "retina" but it's really just more pixels in the same space. 
• The new operating system. Of course, you will be able to update a 3GS or 3GS iphone to the new iOS 4 but obviously all the features won't work. It will also work on the ipad, but there a bunch of new cool features.
• Multi tasking is great. I would love to be able to flip to the web to look up something and come right back to where I left off downloading an app or whatever.
• I'm also excited about being able to organize apps into folders. I would like to put all the games in a folder so they don't clutter up the screens. I don't use them that often. Travel would be another good folder.
• Best of all are the new email features. You can view all your email inboxes in one screen. A must for me and my 4 email addresses. Mail will also recognize dates and addresses with integration to your calendar and contacts. 
• Streaming Netflix should be interesting too. 
• No Verizon option....We new that was just a dream.

For you FB junkies, Zynga announced the real Farmville on iphone at the conference. It will be out at the end of the month and you will be able to interact with your FB friends there.

Well that's all I have on the iphone 4 for now. Of course this puts another kink in my plan to get an iPad. I really can't justify both now, can I?

Clutter War

I'm now trying to unclutter my office. I have these visions of a perfect minimalist workspace. You know, the kind you see in magazines and on Lifehacker or Unclutterer.com. All the books are covered in white paper, sparsely placed photos of beautiful black and white photography on nearly empty shelves and an ikea chair and desk with nothing but a white bud vase and perfect flower. But then there is the annoying reality that is my office. I can clean up and put things away and organize. I will finally get it to where it looks like no one lives or works here. Then things just seem to creep in. Files, papers, business cards etc have migrated into my workspace. Right now, there's my coffee cup, of course, and the stack of bills that need to be opened, the stack of stuff to be filed, cleaning spray from my intention to clean as I unclutter, my borrowed label maker and a host of receipts that have found their way to my desk and that little remote that comes with the mac, among other things.

All the websites devoted to organization tell you to break it down into manageable tasks, so here I go.
1. The file drawers: Business Files and Personal Files separated and labeled and purged of old stuff.
2. Take all the photos that line all the shelves and put them in an album. I love my family but I don't really need them staring at me while I work.
3. Put all photo's, printer paper, disks, extraneous cables, memory cards etc in those nice white boxes from ikea.
4. Promise myself I won't let it get out of hand again.....and do it all over in 6 months.

Wish me luck!

PS The suggestion came up about scanning all my documents and storing them on cd, but there is something about keeping the papers that I can't let go of. It seems somewhat time consuming to receive papers, scan them into the computer, organize them into related directories and then remember where I put the cd when I'm looking for something.