The instructions from our friends at Google are simple enough – use MS Exchange, add in your account details and you are good to go… but must first enable mobile devices in your Google dashboard (obviously this doesn’t apply to a personal Google account, only a business or academic one). In the instructions it lovingly tells you all will be well, but doesn’t mention what to do if all is decidedly unwell.

Every time I have tried to do this, I have managed to get my main default calendar only. It doesn’t matter if it is iPhone 2.0 or 3.0… still the same. And still the frustration mounts!

Having upgraded to version 3.0 today, I was fired up and ready to try a final time. Not easily put off when facing defeat, I tried for three hours, all to no avail. What a waste of time. I then read some other blogs and came across a third party service – www.nuevasync.com – and since it is free, decided to try it.

Lo and behold, after typing in the right details to Nuevasync, my iPhone shows ALL of my calendars, not just the general one. Glory be!

Now, if Nuevasync can do this, I’m pretty sure it is possible for Google to do it. I don’t see why we need a third party in the loop here, but for goodness sake, nobody let Nuevasync go out of business!

I now get to see all of my calendars in iCal on my phone, can add events and they sync to the main google calendar, add others, and have others add to my diary (yup, it’s a preference setting for work based calendars)… it ALL works as it should.

If you are as frustrated as I was, go to the Nuevasync web site, sign up for a free account and edit the settings. You’ll be running in about three minutes where before you were plodding.

Just be a little careful with your contacts and email though – if you enable these through Nuevasync, you *will* lose everything off your phone when the first sync happens. Be sure that you have got everything you need backed up, or in Google… or both!

It turns out that in the Audi system at least, Bluetooth is built in to the system if you have got a dash mounted GSM preparation, or a centre armrest version… as long as you buy the car with GSM phone preparation, it should work.

All you do to get your iPhone connected is switch bluetooth on and let it look for devices. The Audi appears in the list very quickly, and you enter the default password (1234 in most cases). Once done the phone will work through the phone system, allowing you to make and receive calls hands free and with no need for cables or cradles.

There is a delay in the system copying your phone book to the car, and in my case with over 400 entries it took simply ages – I believe three days went by before it finally completed. Voice dialling and voice control is not activated which is no big loss; the Audi system is pretty unreliable if you are driving at anything like normal speeds as it mis-hears almost everything you say. Using a multi-function wheel you can easily scroll through your contacts (which get displayed in your driver’s information panel in the centre of your dashboard) and make the call that you need. When the phone rings with an incoming call you simply press a button to answer it.

It couldn’t be simpler… but it took three years to find and only then through a chance conversation with the salesman who got my new car sorted (Stansted Audi, name of Bert Wildman).

I wish I had known before. In short, don’t buy a cradle unless you crave voice dialling features, use bluetooth instead.

Cleveratom at BETT 09

Cleveratom will once again be attending the BETT show, partnering with City College Norwich in the new technologes zone, on stands U120 and U130.

This year we will be showcasing some tools we have developed:

• Thought Park - a superb new learning platform built entirely to support social constructivist learning. It is being used in Primary schools and secondary schools, supporting the roll out of the new Diplomas. It is also the engine underneath the excellent ‘RUGroom.net’ software that City College students will be using at the show.
• Spoke – an innovative tool for engaging people in dialogue online. At it’s most simple it is a questionnaire tool but it is able to be much more than that. You can create any scenario that you want to find information out about and invite anyone to participate. It is currently being used in Primary schools and secondary schools to support Personalised Learning, and in secondary schools to engage pupils in self and peer assessment. It is also being used as a target setting and self assessment tool. One size fits all? Not anymore!

Ask us also about ‘Mobistick’ which is a lovely web based system for collecting SMS messages from anyone. Simply provide the number and invite people to text and you can collect feedback no matter where you are or what you are doing. It also allows you to run simple polls too. We use it when presenting at conferences to allow the audience to ask a question or make a comment. It is also used by schools to engag parents in dialogue, and by conference centres to provide as a service for their clients.

We’ll be delighted to talk about any of these, and much more besides, but you can find out more by going to the cleveratom website. I am pleased to say I will be working with Stephen Heppell once again, giving presentations on his stand in the main hall, and I hope that this show will be the busiest yet. It is likely to be the last at Olympia, too… or so the rumours go. It is all moving to Docklands if we are to believe the whispers!

In the mean time, see you at Olympia – click this link and it will take you to our online Christmas card and a couple of images of the new stand so you know what you are looking for when you get there!

picture of iPhone

Google have recently released the voice search application for the iPhone as a free download from the app store (for you non-iPhone users, this is a place where you go to get the latest applications and games… lots of them free, including this one). The promotional video is quite exciting to watch, and the results are simply stunning. Imagine – you speak a search term into the Google search engine and it responds in seconds flat to give you a location aware set of results. Search for films and you get cinema listings for your location. Search for conversions from farenheit to centigrade, and once again the power of Google leaps into action to deliver almost instantaneous results.

So how does it work in practice for those of us not blessed with a North American accent? In a word, poorly!

Ok, to be fair, I am keeping my voice down and probably not speaking too clearly, but even so I searched for ‘Hal MacLean’ three times, and only one returned anything close to what I said. Mostly I get things like ‘how to clean’, ‘How McCain’, ‘Al Mclean’ (the closest), ‘Harold Mclain’ (arguably closer still), ‘How Much Rain’ and goodness knows how many other variations. What I didn’t get, not even once, was the correct results returned. I even tried in an American accent, and Australian, too. Neither seemed to work.

So I tried other people, including Matthew Eaves to get equally odd results (mac tv, macky’s dc, etc).

Not that I am disappointed in any of this.

In fact I rather enjoy using it for the fun it gives, but more importantly for all of the other apps it comes bundled with, including Mail, Calendar, Docs (you can only read, not write them or edit those you have started), RSS Reader, News, Notebook, Photos, Translate, Maps (why??), You Tube (again… why?) and Earth (I say yet again… why…?)

Apart from the fact that the last apps already exist on the phone, and some hae limited functionality, this is a fun collection to have access too.

The only thing I’d say is that you either need to have a north american friend on hand to speak the search terms (I’ve yet to find anyone willing to test this), or you have to accept that you’ll get some wild results and chuckle at what turns up. Just don’t rely on it finding what you want without reverting to typing out the query! I expect in time that this will get more and more refined, and I for one would find it really useful if it worked! C’mon Google… you can do it!

It turns out that when you connect your iPhone to your Mac and iTunes starts, it runs a backup and places some files in your ‘~Library/Applications Support/MobileSync/Backup folder. The problem is that they are SQLLite files and not easily readable in any simple way. This is where I turn to the Apple community, particularly the discussions, and ask for help. Here is the post I made.

I was so pleased with the response – almost immediate and ultimately one of the most helpful. It appears there is a Python script able to open those files and restore the folder structure from the innards of your phone. The thread answers the questions most folk will have, but I thought I’d post here too.

What you need to do is copy the backup folder and all it’s contents to an easily accessible place – I chose a new folder on my desktop. Copy the Python script into the same folder. You then need to change the permissions on that script to ensure that it is executable. You should do this through the terminal, which means you’ll probably need to use ‘sudo’ and ‘chown’ to set the values correctly. Once you have done this you can run the script. You do this by typing ‘sudo’, then the complete path to the script, a forward slash, then the complete path to the folder (you can simply drag the items into the terminal window to do this and the paths will be filled in automatically for you). Finish with a forward slash and then ‘*.mdbackup’.

What this will do is reconstruct the entire iPhone folder structure inside the place you have got the python script and backup folder. Once done you can then set the permissions for the resulting foder and copy to all items inside… you can then access and manipulate the files.

This was, in fact, ludicrously easy – I had help from Alex Blanc who is something of a star with this stuff, but if you know a few basic commands in the terminal you should be OK.

I’ve also uploaded the Python script for you all to download from here in case it goes offline elsewhere. The original is HERE. The one I used (and changed ownership on) is HERE.

I noticed that last week the hits rose quite dramatically on a particular item t do with iPhones and on further investigation it turned out that a visitor had added my site to StumbleUpon and thus the sudden influx. It was enough to encourage me to make it even easier for that to happen in future.

A quick visit to Stumbleupon.com and I had the code I needed to enter into the theme files I am using, but it needed some editing. Adding the ‘title’ attribute from WordPress code endured that the specific page or post gets tagged.

I’ll monitor traffic over the next couple of weeks to see what happens, but I am not expecting much.

Just to finish by saying I rote this entry using my iPhone, and as you can see, it has arrived safely on the site. I am a fan of the wordpress app for iPhone now… but have been a fan of Stumble Upon for years!

And as you can see… I can add an image, too. In this case it is a picture of my recently bashed car – thanks to Robert from Princes Park Manor, N11 who looks left when pulling out of a junction whilst turning right. Twit. Good job it was at walking speed otherwise the damage would be far worse.

Do I still think that mobile phones are good tools for learning? Well yes, actually, and probably more so than before. I am typing at a reasonable speed and am not struggling too much. I have Internet access, can post short texts to a site and basically do most things I would expect to do in a normal lesson if asked to research information or put some text together. Of isn’t yet perfect but it isn’t at all bad.

Bring on more… And soon!!

We were delighted to be asked to support the event through the innovative SMS text application which is currently known as ‘Walls iStream’… I know, I know… we’ll need a better name than that! Still, it will do as a working name for now, and certainly gets people thinking!

The system allows you to send a normal SMS message that appears almost instantly on a screen. We have versions which run off a local phone connected to a laptop through bluetooth, and we have a version which operates through an SMS gateway. Both are identical to look at.

What we find when we deploy this software is that people immediately find a use for it that is different to the original purpose, which was to support speakers at conferences and collect delegates’ views. Today was no exception and plenty of people talked to us about how they might use it with learners, with staff for ICT development and lots more, too.

If you’d like a copy of the software, or access to use it for an event, please contact Cleveratom on 0845 868 9020 and we will work with you to make sure it is fit for your needs.

Walls iStream currently looks like this:

However, one problem with having such lovely design is how to keep it looking lovely. For example, my 3rd Generation iPod has a shiny chrome back cover, which suffers enormously from smudges, scratches and generally getting bashed about. I keep it in the case it came in, but somehow even sliding it in and out of that has introduced wear and tear. Of course, it is a good few years old now, has had new batteries (see my article about replacing an iPod battery) and gets used almost every day. It is bound to suffer wear and tear, and I should expect no less.

The problem has moved on now though, as I also have my iPhone to protect. There are literally hundreds of cases designed to look after your iPhone, and some are remarkably expensive affairs by comparison to others. The ones I’ve seen or used include wallet type ‘fold over’ where you slot the phone in the top and there is a front flap which opens and closes like a book to reveal the phone controls, clear plastic cases that snap on, and various types of rubber or silicone rubber sleeves which you wrap around the phone.

The issue with the wallet type has been that the phone can easily slide out of the opening at the top since there is no strap to keep it in. Thus, casually hoding the case the wrong way up can result in a nasty fall to whatever surface is below. In Matt’s case that has been everything from carpet to concrete. Not good. They also require more manipulation to answer the phone and are much more bulky in your pocket. If, like me, you keep your phone in your jeans pocket then that’s not a good thing!

The clip on plastic covers also increase bulk somewhat, although not drastically. They do also protect the device, but they look, well, odd. It somehow destroys all of that lovely design work and you end up with something akin to a cheap underwater housing for a disposable camera. They are low cost, and they look it, too, IMO. The one exception for me *might* be the InCase ‘slider’ for iPhone and iPod touch.

So that leaves the silicone rubber covers, and at the moment that is what I’m using. There are lots on the market, some in funky colours, some with reinforced ribbing, some with built in screen protectors and so on. I’ve looked at most and discounted most. There’s even one made from a material designed to protect helicopter rotor blades whirring at high speed in a sandy environment. Nice. The one I am using is in fact very cheap and soft feeling that covers most of the phone, but not the front glass. This hardly affects the overall bulk, allows easy access to the controls and essentially is just plain black. It looks smart to me. I also cover the glass with a stick on screen protector (around £3.00) which is probably overkill, but I feel better about keeping my phone in my pocket with these sorts of things on. The touch screen operation is not affected in any way by such a protective cover.

The only downsides I can find are that the rubber material doesn’t slide easily over cotton and thus getting the phone out of a pocket invariably brings the pocket inside out with it! I also have two rather large holes on the iPhone itself – the headphone socket and the dock connector – and these are susceptible to that dreaded of all afflictions – pocket fluff. No matter how clean your garments, fluff collects in the pockets! The worry is that the fluff will lodge in the sockets on the phone and prevent them working as they should.

So far, one month later, that hasn’t been an issue, thank goodness.

Phone covers are pretty personal things, and different people will want different ones. I’ve found the rubber cases to be better for lots of reasons than the leather wallet types, but I guess you’ll have to make up your own mind. For what it’s worth, I spent less than ten pounds on a rubber case and a screen protector film. I’m happy with the protection, knowing I’ll never use the phone as a helicopter rotor blade, unless in some MacGyver moment I am thrown into a survival situation and that’s what I need to do to escape. Alernatively, I’ll just ring for help…

A lot has already been written about most of this stuff, and I’ll probably not say anything new. The Edge network is slow compared to 3G, and a 3G iPhone is about to emerge from Apple, if you believe all the rumours. Hence my 1 month old gadget will be out of date in no time at all, such is the way with technology. However, before the iPhone I didn’t even have an Edge connection, I refused to pay the extortionate costs for accessing the internet through my old phone, and managing email on the go was a joke. The iPhone has at least given me a connection I can afford and some excellent tools to manage the things I need to manage. So why complain about any of that?

There are some areas where I think there could be improvements, and again, lots of this has already been said. However, it’s worth repeating from a user’s perspective that whilst the iPhone is a massive improvement over my old Sony Ericsson, and a massive improvement over the call plan I was on, there are some simple wins which I think Apple could make with this soon to be outdated gadget.

Let’s make a list:

1. the ability to select and mark as read a whole lot of emails in one go, instead of managing them one at a time.
2. the ability to send a contact to another person
3. have a link through to contacts on the home screen instead of within the ‘phone’ app
4. Be able to set a default page in safari
5. better spam filtering (well, to be fair, ANY spam filtering)
6. ability to remove a single call record from the calls list
7. ability to forward an SMS to other people, or at least convert the content of an SMS to an email and forward that

Then there are the simple things I used to enjoy, such as the ability to write an SMS from my mac book pro and send it using the phone. I have been using the excellent ‘BluePhoneElite‘ for this purpose up until now, but the iPhone doesn’t play well with that, yet.

Basically, the more integrated the phone is with my laptop, the better it becomes for me. There is a suggestion that the phone’s data connection could be accessed by a laptop and then we’d have permanent internet access from any machine. However, I think that is only going to undermine the phone’s abilities, and perhaps we should avoid doing that.

Matt came up with a suggestion too -and that is for the calendar to link to the ‘favourites’ list in the phone functions so that if there is a contact listed in an event that the phone number for the contact gets put into the favourites list for three days, the middle of which would be the day of the event. This is actually a cool suggestion, I think. The number of times you need to speak to a person before and after an event would merit such a piece of functionality, I think.

And then there is the idea of the developer community now able to make apps for the phone. I think this is simply awesome and we will almost certainly be swimming in such things before too long. However, with that power comes the responsibility (to paraphrase someone else) to ensure the apps are good quality and needed, not just trite and uninteresting to all but a few people.

One of the very simple things I have found when using the phone is the ability to add web pages to the ‘Home Screen’ of the phone – a little like adding a bookmark but making it very obvious. The thing here is that the phone will take a snapshot of the web page and convert it into an icon for the phone, unless the website itself has already declared an iPhone icon in the root folder… a little like a favicon works. Such icons need to be made 57px square and labelled correctly for them to work, but when done properly they are superb ways to get to your favourite sites very quickly. Given that teh iPhone can have three sets of screens as the home screen (just flick across the screen to move between them), this makes a lot of sense.

In conclusion, this is a superb tool for lots of reasons, but it certainly has room for improvement. I wouldn’t complain about al the missing features though, as I didn’t have them before (mostly) and I can only list them because I see potential, not because I feel cheated. there are plenty of folk who think of the iPhone as a gimmick, and some who feel it is not yet worthy of buying as they can do more with other phones (Nokia N95, perhaps), but I would say that they couldn’t do them in as sexy a way as they could with the iPhone. The thing is way too nice to use, and far exceeds any other touch screen interface I have used on any other phone. I am sure the comptetition will play catch up, and that can only be good for the consumer, but until then I’m delighted with the phone, with the features and with the thought that it can get even better still.