A new, lower-priced, smaller, and more adorable iPhone, with more or less the same technical specs as the original iPhone. Given that those specs include the 320 × 480 display, I wouldn’t expect something tiny, but remember that the original iPod Mini was “just” 35 percent smaller by volume than the then-current full-sized iPod. Shrink the iPhone’s forehead and chin and make it thinner — maybe a lot thinner — is what I’m thinking. Existing iPhone apps would run just fine on the new device, as it’d have similar, if not identical, CPU performance and RAM to previous full-sized iPhones.

Until this post I found it difficult envisioning a lite version of the iPhone, largely because I wasn’t separating form from features in my mind. An iPhone with the same form factor but lesser specs wouldn’t, in my opinion, be flying off the shelves the way that the current model is. If Apple were to differentiate the second model exteriorly the way that it does the iPod Nano, the case may be somewhat different. And much more interesting.

But maybe you’ve found an application that you like so much you want to alert the world about it by writing a review. In this case you’ll want to take multiple screenshots. The problem here is that currently there is no way on the iPhone to mail multiple photos, so your stuck sending out one email for every photo you want off the device or initiating a charge and pulling them into iPhoto. Both options are tedious.

The best solution for now is Aqua Eagle’s Multi-Photo Email (iTunes Link). As the name implies, Multi-Photo Email lets you mail off multiple photos from your Photos library, but it does so in an interesting way. Instead of displaying the photos in-email as the iPhone’s built in feature does, Multi-Photo adds them as attachments to your message. I’ve only tested it with my Gmail account, but it works like a charm and it’s much faster than sending one photo at a time or plugging in your iPhone. It’s 99 cents.

Consequently, I have no need to have the iTunes Store app on my iPod at all. Luckily the conscientious developers at Apple have given us a way to remove the iTunes Store app icon from our devices by way of the Restrictions pane in System Preferences. Open up system preferences and tap ‘General.’ Scroll down a little and you’ll see ‘Restrictions.’ Tap it and you’ll be asked for a password (I recommend 1-2-3-4). Entering a password will enable the mobile equivalent of Parental Controls on your Mac. From here you can toggle access to Safari, the App Store, iTunes and even to content marked ‘Explicit’ in your music files. Turning restrictions on for any will make the corresponding app icon disappear. (As you can see, I’m not a big fan of YouTube either.)

Now, how about a way to hide Stocks and Weather?

Most interesting in the article, however, is the subtle ontological conclusion that one can draw about the iPhone from the following passage:

Consider that none of the major new features in the iPhone OS 3.0 software is related to the telephone. MMS comes closest, but even that doesn’t pertain to phone calls. The “phone” in “iPhone” is much more about ubiquitous always-on wireless TCP/IP networking than it is about the 20th century conception of telephony.

The implication here is that the iPhone is not a phone as we might think of it in any traditional sense. Thinking back to the initial unveiling of the iPhone, it’s easy to see that Apple itself understood that it wasn’t merely releasing a new device, but that it was in fact defining an entirely new category of device. And we see this in the crowds reaction to Jobs’ three pronged description of the product.

“A widescreen iPod with touch controls.”

Applause and cheers from the audience.

“A revolutionary mobile phone.”

Explosive applause. A moment Apple fans have been long waiting for. And finally:

“A breakthrough internet communications device.”

Subdued applause. Apple’s ‘internet communications device,’ the importance of which is demonstrated by it’s third place in the presentation after the widescreen iPod and the phone, elicited more confusion from the audience than joy.

Despite its name, the iPhone is no more a phone than a television is a radio, or a radio a newspaper. Apple knew this and the iPhone 3.0 software proves that they still do.

Via TUAW.

Transforming the long and complicated URL from the App Store into an acceptable Twitter form, however, is a somewhat convoluted process. First open up a plain text TextEdit window and drag the app’s icon from iTunes onto the document. Next, open up bit.ly (or your favorite URL shortening service) in Safari, paste in the URL open in TextEdit to shorten it. Copy your new short link to the clipboard and you’re set to post to Twitter. (And then you can close the bit.ly page and quit TextEdit without saving…)

This process is prohibitively cumbersome. I cobbled together the following AppleScript to ease the pain of posting shortened App Store URLs to Twitter.

on open appURL
	tell application "Finder"
		set ClipURL to location of internet location file (appURL as text)
		ignoring case
			if ((characters 1 through 4 of ClipURL as string) is not "http") then
				return "Malformed URL."
			else
				set curlCMD to ¬
					"curl --stderr /dev/null \"http://bit.ly/api?url=" & ClipURL & "\""

				set bitlyURL to (do shell script curlCMD)

				set the clipboard to bitlyURL
				move appURL to the trash

				tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
					set defaultNotification to "URL Shortened"
					set myAllNotesList to {defaultNotification}
					register as application defaultNotification all notifications myAllNotesList ¬
						default notifications {defaultNotification} icon of application "Safari.app"
					notify with name defaultNotification title ¬
						defaultNotification description ¬
						"Your bit.ly URL is on the clipboard and ready to paste." application name defaultNotification

				end tell

			end if
		end ignoring
	end tell
end open

How to Use the Script

To set up the script, first copy the code into Script Editor and save it as an Application somewhere you’ll have easy access to it (the Desktop is a good place). Once your script is saved, using it is easy. Drag your link from iTunes out onto the desktop. Now drag it one more time onto the droplet. The URL will be shortened and put on the clipboard and the webloc from iTunes will be moved to the trash.

It’s really useful, although a little difficult to explain. This short video illustrates what the script does.

I created this script using two sources. AppleScript droplets cannot handle URLs dropped straight from Safari (or iTunes) so it’s necessary to drop them into the Finder first. To get the droplet to recognize the .webloc file I used the code posted here by an unknown forum member. To convert the URL using bit.ly, I used Jonathan Berger’s TextExpander script.

If you know a better way to get App Store URLs, let me know in the comments. For the moment, I’m quite happy with this method.

Guitar Chords

A straight forward app that lets you reference a ton of chords on your iPhone or Touch. If you’re like me and have had to deal with complex chord charts/books while figuring out a new song or writing one, you’ll appreciate the simple layout of Chords. I can’t vouch for the range of chords in the the app, but it appears to be loaded up nicely and I’m guessing it’ll meet the needs of many. Download it from the App Store. It’s free.

Songbook

Like many who got their first guitar and immediately wanted to rock out, I never took the time to learn to read music properly. Fortunately, tablature and a decent ear can go a long way. Songbook lets you carry around your Chord Pro formatted tabs in your pocket. Search Chordie.com (which itself has a slick iPhone friendly version) and download songs directly into Songbook with the included bookmarklet. Songbook is free on the App Store.

HandBrake, however, is packed with arcane preferences, which can make it difficult to master if you’re inclined to setting your own encoding standards. Fortunately, tucked away in a slide out drawer are some presets which makes doing so unnecessary. To open the drawer, click on the ‘Toggle Presets’ icon at the top right of HandBrake’s main window.

If you’re like me an use HandBrake to encode to a specific format the majority of the time, it’s worth your while to change the default format from ‘Basic’ to your chosen format. To do so, click first on your desired default and then scan the bottom of the drawer for the little gear drop-down menu. In this menu, simply select ‘Make Default’ and you may never need to open the drawer again, nor fear wasting time accidentally encoding to a format that you don’t want.

Besides my (very patient!) Korean friends, by far the greatest aide I’ve had for studying has been Google. Here are some of the free tools Google provides and how I’ve been using them.

Google Translate Bookmarklet

Google Translate is essential for the independent language learner. No automated translation service will be perfect, but after showing a representative sample of translations to bilingual friends, I’m confident that Google Translate does an adequate job for simple vocabulary and well formed sentences.

A really quick way to translate a web page, though, is to install Google’s translation bookmarklet. Head over to Google’s Translation Tools page and find your destination language in the list. Simply drag the link into your bookmarks bar and click it whenever you’re on a foreign language page. Boom! Instant translation. But it gets better. If you only want a portion of page text translated rather than the whole page, select the text before clicking. Google’s translation page opens with your source text pre-populated and translated. No matter how many times I use this bookmarklet, I always feel a sense of satisfaction.

Check out Google Translate and the Google Translate Bookmarklet.

Google Spreadsheets and the Translation Gadget

In my experience, there’s no better way to review vocabulary lists than with a simple spreadsheet. Numbers is excellent, but I like to have my vocab lists handy when I’m without my own computer, so Google is my personal preference here.

Much cooler for language learners on Google Spreadsheets is a gadget that will automatically translate your spreadsheet into a foreign language. Take a look at the screenshot to the right.

The best way to utilize the translation gadget is to first write a column of vocabulary you want to memorize and select everything by clicking on the column header. To translate your list, go to Insert >> Gadget and find English Translation from the popup window (it’s near the bottom of the main list, but select the ‘Web’ category if you can’t find it). Hit ‘Add to spreadsheet’ to install the gadget, set your destination language and your off. Once installed, the gadget will update in real time whenever your source language is updated. Powerful indeed.

A few caveats about the translation gadget. First, it currently only works with the source language set to English. Secondly, there’s no way to automatically embed the translations into the spreadsheet – you’ll have to do that by hand (although you can copy and paste). This second drawback is especially disappointing, since the chances of making a typing mistake are greatly increased when you’re working in a foreign language. On the other hand, it’s good practice, so the sword is double edged here.

Check out Google Docs.

Discover for iPhone and iPod Touch

Want to get those carefully made vocabulary sheets on your iPhone? Try Discover for iPhone and iPod Touch (iTunes link).

Discover is much like other applications which let you use your iPhone or iTouch as an external, wifi connected storage device, with one important difference: Discover is completely free. Moreover, both the application and the web browser interface is beautiful and solid. The app does show one small advert on the home screen, but it’s difficult to grudge the developer this given that he’s created such an excellent application and released it free of charge. Definitely an ‘impress your friends’ app.

In Discover you can upload and view any file that is supported by the iPhone OS itself. First, export your vocabulary spreadsheet from Google Docs as a .xls file. To get your vocab onto your iPhone/iTouch, install Discover and enter the local address that the app gives you into Safari. Here you’re presented with an easily navigable file system wherein you can manipulate the contents of your device. Click ‘Add Files’ and then ‘Upload All Files’ and you’re set for some studying on the go.

Check out Discover on iTunes. It’s free.

gFlash+ for iPhone and iPod Touch

But how about some real studying? Here we come to the heart of my system: an (unbelievably!) free app for your iPhone and iTouch called gFlash+ (iTunes link). gFlash is an amazing little study assistant. Log into your Google Docs account and download your vocabulary lists to your iPhone and gFlash will automatically generate flash cards for you to study with.

You can customize your flash card quizzes in gFlash to suit the needs of your present knowledge state and streamline the learning process. When I first attempt a new vocab list on gFlash, I set the app to show me only one piece of vocab at a time, virtually flipping the card over a few times to familiarize myself with the words. Next, a few rounds of multiple choice. gFlash automatically generates multiple choice quizzes by populating the wrong answers with vocabulary from your spread sheet. You can tell gFlash to display either your questions or answers as source cards, so I alternate between the two to ensure that my learning is bidirectional. Lastly, it’s back to single card studying. Using this study pattern, I can easily memorize about 80% of the vocabulary from any single list in half an hour.

There are some negative comments about gFlash+ on iTunes, but I personally fail to see where these commentators are coming from. The UI of the app does display a text add at the top of the pane, but for me this has never distracted from my studies. Secondly, gFlash has been largely stable, and the few times it has gone down, it managed to remember exactly my place in the quiz I was taking. Perhaps the best thing about gFlash, though, is it’s integration with Google Docs. Unlike other flash card apps on the App Store, your data is entirely portable and available for use in any way you see fit. There is no lock in for gFlash. And, to say it again, this app is free. I can’t thank the developer enough.

Check out gFlash+ on iTunes. It’s free.

There’s my list of free Google and Google related software to help you master a new language. It’s incredibly liberating being able to communicate with the natives in their own tongue and I hope that these apps will help you out should you ever have the opportunity. Peacefully stay – annyongi keseyo!