Posts tagged iphone

Bookmarklets I Frequently Use

By on April 16, 2010

The iPhone Safari browser is amazingly limited — no “find in page” function, no extensions, and no other search providers available (either Google or Yahoo). However the iPhone’s been gifted an amazing rendering engine and Javascript library, which is why I recommend the following Javascript bookmarklets.

If you aren’t sure how a bookmark differs from a bookmarklet, take a look at Wikipedia, or read my simple explaination: a bookmarklet is a saved line of Javascript code which provides some functionality and has all of the capabilities of Javascript on the currently displayed page, including navigating to a new page and modifying the page itself. A bookmarklet is activated when you open the bookmark (click it). On the iPhone there’s only one native way to get bookmarklets onto the phone — by bookmarking them on Safari on your computer then syncing them to Safari on the iPhone (done through iPhone). There are some bookmarklet providers which provide helper install pages to get around this limitation.

The iPhone bookmarklet installer bookmarklet: Found at joemaller.com/___
When activated this bookmarklet will add text to the beginning of each link found on the page so that you can bookmark it (see the site for more information).

The 1Password bookmarklets:
If you have an iPhone and the 1Password you can use the “lookup in 1Password” bookmarklet which automatically open 1Password with the current page address and allows you to copy your password. Immediately after copying some text you’re returned to Safari where you can input it. 1Passsword can be synced in app over WiFi to the Mac OS X version of 1Password.
OR
If you don’t have the 1Password iPhone app and have the desktop version you can make a self-contained bookmarklet which does the same thing in browser. New passwords are synced to this by the 1Password app on OS X. (learn more about option # 2 at the 1Password site)

Delicious – (see this page for instructions)
This just navigates you to an iPhone friendly way to bookmark using Delicious, pretty simple, very useful.

Find in Page – (Javascript to bookmark)
This open a Javascript prompt where you enter a phrase (case-independent) to find in the page; matches are counted and highlighted in yellow and bold.

Open Links in new Window – (Javascript to bookmark)
When activated this changes all links on the current page to spawn a new tab to view them.

Dictionary – (Javascript to bookmark)
This open a prompt to enter a word and redirects you to a definition of the word.

Wikipedia – (Javascript to bookmark)
This opens a prompt where you enter a Wikipedia query.

Mobilize This! – (Javascript to bookmark)
This bookmarklet open the currently open (or loading) page to be opened using the Google mobilizer service (shows only plain text, much quicker to load).

Read It Later – log in to your Read It Later account to find these bookmarklets
This adds the current page (or current loading page) to your Read It Late queue.


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Adventure in App-Free Week – Day 1

By on April 11, 2010

Remember as a kid what it was like to have “TV free week“? Where your elementary school class would collectively give up all TV, movies, and video games for a week to examine just how reliant we are on television. Well, this week I’ll be living app-free for a week; no Tweetie, no Facebook, no RSS Player, no Boxcar, no DoodleJump, no Foursquare, no 1Password Pro, no textPlus … none. Well, except for three apps — Autostitch and TrueHDR because they relate to a long-term project which I don’t want to compromise and the Rogers My Account app because I have a chronic fear of overage. Let’s see how this goes.

For immediate substitutions I’ll be using Hahlo for Twitter, the Facebook web app, and I’ve set textPlus to SMS.


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Apps for Lent

By on April 3, 2010

I’m a Catholic: in the Catholic Church it’s tradition to forgo something you like for “Lent,” a period between “Ash Wednesday (this year February 17)” and “Easter Sunday (this year April 4)” and as such I’ve given up the App Store.  Well we’re down to just one day left before chocolate and apps, and I’ve kept a list of interesting looking Apps mentioned by others and on App Of The Day by Jordan Satok ( @jordansatok ), here is the list I’ve come up with (fwiw this list was kept in Evernote for the longest time):

  • Boxcar (free for first service; additional services $0.99 or $1.99) – mentioned by @netspencer – Boxcar is a notification platform built on Apple Push Notifications that allows easy Twitter push (mentions, DMs, etc…), push email notifications, remote Growl notification, and soon almost anything as they’ve opened up their APIs.
  • WolframAlpha ($1.99) - mentioned on TUAW lately – WolframAlpha is an awesome tool and I use it daily (it’s an awesome aid for math class) but I’ve so far had to use the desktop web version on my iPhone (not exactly thrilling user experience).  In the mean time I’ve used the mobile web version which is an automatic step up!
  • Pastebot ($2.99) - mentioned by AppOfTheDay – Pastebot manages clipboards for the iPhone, it allows you to save snippets of text, sync them with your Mac, then save yourself time.
  • ReelDirector ($7.99) – mentioned on MBW many times  - does simple video editing on the iPhone with 27 transitions, titles, trimming, and export-to-email functionality.
  • Digg (free) – mentioned everywhere on Twitter – provides easy access to Digg content: allows digging/burrying, commenting, submitting, and viewing.

Although I will resume purchasing Apps, it’s been interesting to give them up — every day was a challenge to not buy apps I see people using or talking about.  Just a thought: it would be interesting to give up all apps, using them, buying them, talking about them, etc.. for a month or so.

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