Getting Started With The Iphone

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Getting Started with the iPhone An Introduction for Blind Users

By Anna Dresner and Dean Martineau

National Braille Press Boston, Massachusetts

Published in print, braille, and DAISY text by National Braille Press 88 St. Stephen Street Boston, MA 02115 www.nbp.org Part 4: Anna's Journal In this section, I share some of what I wrote about my experiences purchasing and learning to use the iPhone. I hope that my account of the process will give you some idea what it's like to use this remarkable device and how to deal with problems that might arise as you learn to use one. Enjoy.

March 30. I am now the proud owner of an iPhone. The process took about an hour at our local AT&T store. The guy who helped us was great -- very patient and helpful. The only thing that didn't go quite right was that he thought he transferred my phone book info from my old phone, but most of the numbers didn't get copied.

In reviews of the iPhone, several people have stressed the importance of getting a good case that protects the screen. Our salesman reiterated this. They had three cases to choose from -- the plastic shell iFrogz (I'm not making that up) the CaseMate, and the Otterbox Defender, which cost twice as much. Fortunately, all cases were 25% off, which helped. The salesman assured me that the Otterbox case is better at protecting the phone from drops. [Note that I have since dropped the iPhone several times, and it has survived just fine, so his claim was correct.] There's a hard case with a screen protector, and a rubber skin around that which covers the back but leaves the front exposed. It also came with a belt clip, which I'm sure I'll use. [It's invaluable

1 when I am reading a book with iBooks while moving around because it holds the phone steady but leaves the screen uncovered so it doesn't get touched accidentally as it would if I put the iPhone in my pocket.]

During the rest of the day, I played a playlist, shuffled it, and played an album. I made two phone calls by dialing the numbers from the phone keypad. This wasn't bad. I also tried to find a couple of contacts, and managed to type in their names with minimal errors. Not bad for the first day.

I also listened to Dean Martineau's excellent Tek Talk presentation on the iPhone (www.accessibleworld.org). It's a wonderful introduction.

I tried to use the Weather app, but I couldn't figure out how to put in my city. It told me the weather in Cupertino, California, which I guess makes sense since that's where Apple's headquarters are. I selected Add City, but the only options I found on the next screen were Cupertino and New York; I couldn't find a form to enter my city or zip. Maybe I'll have to read the manual.

While I was trying to play an album, the screen got weird; nothing was where I thought it should be. Finally I figured out that the iPhone must have gone into Landscape mode. Fortunately, having just listened to Dean's tutorial, I knew what to do; I lifted the top of the iPhone. Sure enough, the screen went back to Portrait mode. I'll have to play around with Landscape mode sometime, but just then, it was great to have it look familiar again.

April 1. One feature Dean described was Voice Commands. You hold the Home key down until you hear a beep, and then give a command. [With iOS4, wait until the iPhone says "Voice control" after the beep before speaking your command.] You can dial phone numbers this way by saying "Call" or "Dial" followed by the number. You can use a contact name as well. You can also play music. I'm having a lovely time saying things like, "Play playlist Chipmunk Rock" or "Play album Acoustic Soul" and listening while the iPhone does it. The voice recognition isn't perfect; I tried "Play artist Beatles" and got the Eagles. Still, it's a kick when it works.

I love being able to find out the battery status at any time. It's great to have a device with a real screen reader.

Morning of April 2. I was able to do quite a bit yesterday. I went to Settings, found General without too much trouble, got to Accessibility, and was able to set Triple-Click Home so that it turns VoiceOver on and off. I also worked with Practice Gestures for a while, which was great. What an excellent feature. When you make a gesture, it tells you which gesture it thinks you were trying to make, and what that gesture does. I learned that you don't have to move your finger much for a flick; a tiny quick motion is enough. The gestures I had the hardest time with were the three-finger flicks; often VoiceOver thought I was touching, rather than flicking.

I found the three-finger flicks confusing as well as tricky to do. I couldn't figure out why you flick down to scroll up, up to scroll down, left to scroll right, and right to scroll left. I mentioned

2 this to my husband, Jonathan, and he helped me figure out the frame of reference in which this makes sense. Imagine that what you are viewing is on a piece of paper, and it's too big for all of it to fit on your iPhone, which is a frame around part of the page. If the top fits, you need to move the paper up to see more. So the touch gestures are like reaching through the frame and moving the paper behind it to where you want it. I hope this makes sense.

The rotor motion confused me when people described it, and I was afraid I would have trouble with it, but it's not bad at all. You pretend to be holding a little knob or dial between your finger and thumb, and twist the knob to the left or right as needed. Pretty much every time I tried this, I was told I had entered the gesture I thought I had.

Next, I went through all the contacts in my Mac address book, getting rid of duplicate entries and making sure I had the correct info for each. I figure having a well-organized Contacts list will help me work with contacts on the iPhone.

Thanks to Google, I found out how to determine the iPhone's Mac address; it's in Settings, General, About. So now I can use the iPhone on our home network, which is good, because I understand it's faster and uses less battery than the cellular network. (We have our network set up so that only devices with known Mac addresses can connect to it.)

While in Settings, I confirmed that Bluetooth and 3G are off. Apparently 3G is faster than the other option, Edge, but it uses more battery life. Since I don't need that speed right now and I'm not using Bluetooth, I'm glad both of these are off. [I have since turned on 3G and leave it on all the time because it's significantly faster than Edge, and it allows for Internet radio to play even if it's streaming at a fairly high bit rate such as 128 KBPS. I don't think it drains the battery much, either. Some people find their phone reception is better if they turn off 3G, however.]

I managed to find a phone number I had recently called and add a contact, but typing in the name was hard. I don't know yet how to review what I've typed, so Jon had to confirm that I had written it okay. Also, I didn't know how to tell the iPhone when I was done entering information. My next plan is to finish reading the VoiceOver section of the manual, and then get a bookmark to the manual on my home screen. Then I can start working through the parts of the manual I'm interested in and learn how to do more.

I added my location -- Pittsburg, Kansas -- to the Weather application. I just had to enter the zip code, so it wasn't hard. The only problem was that again, I had no idea how to tell the iPhone I was done. It recognized the town from the zip immediately, but I didn't see a Done or Save button. When I pressed Home and then went back to Weather, the Pittsburg weather appeared, so I guess I didn't have to save it. All the more reason to start working through the manual.

April 5. It's been a busy couple of days, so I haven't been able to play with the iPhone all that much, but I have done some fun things.

I was able to put an icon for the manual on the home screen. Since I had read that there was no bookmark to it on the iPhone [iPhones now ship with bookmarks to the standard manual, but not

3 the VoiceOver-friendly version] and I doubted my ability to type the URL correctly on the iPhone, I added it to my bookmarks in Safari and then synced the iPhone. When I set up the iPhone, I chose to sync bookmarks, so the bookmark to the manual made its way to my iPhone during the sync. When I then chose Bookmarks in Safari on the phone, one of the options was Bookmark Bar. I chose it, and one of the bookmarks was the one to the manual. When I double- tapped it, the manual opened. I chose Utilities, and one of the options was Add to Home Screen. I selected that, and a text box appeared with the proposed name for the icon. I was fine with what was there. My problem, which seems to be a frequent one so far, was figuring out how to tell the iPhone I was happy with the name and to move on. I tried the button near the top left called Add to Home Screen, but nothing happened when I double-tapped it. Finally I realized that this button was simply confirming that I was on the Add to Home Screen page. I don't remember exactly what I did then, but I think I flicked right, which moves you through the available options on the screen, and came to a Save or Add button. Once I double-tapped that, the icon was added. Woohoo!

Reading the manual works pretty well. The various page elements are listed down the left, so I can double-tap near the top to start at the beginning, or find one of interest by moving a finger down the left edge of the screen. I've been using the two-finger flick up to read whole pages quite a bit.

I added a contact, and used the rotor to move by character to make sure I was entering it correctly. It was cool to have that new contact appear in the Contacts list in Address Book on my computer the next time I synced.

I wanted to be able to check email and have messages deleted from the server when I deleted them from the iPhone. [It turns out that it wasn't possible, but fortunately, you can do it with iOS4.] I couldn't figure out how to do this, so I joined the iPhone list on GoogleGroups. It's a high-traffic list, but I know I'll learn a lot, both by asking questions and by reading other people's. I think I have email set up correctly to do this now, but I haven't checked email successfully since then, so don't know for sure. One weird thing was that when I opened email, I found a bunch of messages from Saturday. I suppose they were downloaded when I was poking around in email, trying to figure out about deleting messages from the server. There was also one new message. I pressed Refresh, and the old messages didn't disappear. I thought they would since they weren't on the server anymore; I had read and deleted them from my computer earlier. But they didn't, so I deleted them all manually. Annoying. Since then, no messages have come in when I opened mail. I don't know what's up with that.

I found out today how to change the playback speed of podcasts and audiobooks. The way you do it is to click the artwork for an audiobook or podcast; Speed is one of the options that comes up. The only choices are double, normal, and half speed. Double speed works reasonably well, so I'll probably use it with some podcasts. It beats having no speed options, but something a bit more flexible would be nice.

I tried to listen to the Legend Internet radio station on Saturday by going to the site and using the Listen Live link, but all I got was a Failed Download message. I tried the Winamp stream, since the other choices were RealPlayer and Windows Media Player, and I was quite sure those

4 wouldn't work. So I guess you have to get a radio app to play Internet radio. I've heard Ootunes is good; I'll have to get that soon.

I learned how to pause audio when the screen is locked; holding down Home and saying "Pause" seems the most efficient way.

I entered our home phone number for both Jon and me. When I tested the phone by calling from that number, it said "Call from Woody or Jonathan Dresner." That's pretty cool.

I set up voicemail. It wasn't easy. I could start by double-tapping the Record button, and I assumed that once I started, Stop was selected, so that double-tapping anywhere would stop recording. This sometimes worked, and sometimes didn't, so that sometimes the message was way too long. When I finally had a message I liked, it took several minutes to save. I thought that was odd. [I would advise doing this with 3G rather than Edge, which is what I used, as 3G is much faster.] I also had trouble getting Jon's test call to my voice mailbox to play. I think I know how now, but I won't know for sure until I get another voicemail message.

I deleted the two text messages that were sent when I got my phone, but that was tedious too. It's not always obvious where the right button is.

April 7. I added another contact yesterday. It took less than half as long as adding the first one, so I'm definitely making progress.

Today I learned how to rewind or fast-forward using the iPhone rather than the earphones. The ones that come with it have controls just like the third generation iPod Shuffle and work almost the same way, except that holding down Center works like holding Home on the phone and lets you give voice commands. Pressing Center during a call hangs up, and I think it lets you answer calls as well. [It does.]

Anyway, to rewind or fast forward on the iPhone, you tap and hold the Next or Previous buttons that appear on either side of the Play button, which is just above the volume slider at the bottom of the screen. You touch one of these buttons, then double-tap and hold. A chime indicates that VoiceOver gestures are temporarily off, and if you keep holding, the buttons rewind and fast forward. Pretty cool.

I also managed to work a slider today, something I couldn't seem to do before. You double-tap or split-tap it and then flick up or down, also called swiping. I did this to move quickly through a podcast.

I think I said earlier that the iPhone wasn't getting email for some reason. I now know why. The email program on my computer is set to check for mail every five minutes. Normally, the computer goes into sleep mode if I don't use it for ten minutes, but this doesn't happen if I'm running Windows via Fusion, as I often do. I also have Mail set to take all my messages off the server when it downloads them. So my computer was bringing in all my email, leaving none for

5 the iPhone to retrieve. Such a simple explanation once I figured it out, but sometimes figuring things out is a challenge.

My next challenge is to figure out how to use the autocorrect feature. The iPhone attempts to guess which word you are typing, and since typing is annoying, I'd like to be able to use this feature properly. I couldn't get it to work Monday when I wrote Jon my first, painfully slow message.

I checked email last night. It took me about an hour to get through 36 messages, one of which included a link to a video about the iPod, which I watched. I didn't think that was too bad.

You really get a sense of how the content you use is arranged when using an iPhone. It's kind of neat being able to focus on any part of a web page, mail message, etc. instantly just by touching a part of the screen.

I just practiced controlling the iPod portion of the iPhone when the screen is locked. Jon and I often listen to podcasts together, and it's great that the iPhone has a speaker loud enough to do this. But the screen locks right away, and sometimes you might want to pause or rewind a bit, and if you tap Home or Power, then double-tap the Unlock button, and then hunt for the Pause button, quite a bit of the show will play past the point where you wanted to pause. I found out a couple of days ago that if you double-tap Home, Previous, Play/Pause and Next buttons briefly appear near the top of the screen. So I practiced locating them. I'm getting faster; it shouldn't be such a hassle to do these things next time. Last night I tried holding Home and saying Pause or "Pause music," but the results were mixed. Sometimes it paused, and sometimes it interpreted my command as a request to play something. It was never sure what I wanted it to play, but it was quite sure I was asking for something other than pause. "Pause music" seemed to work better than just saying, "Pause."

April 11. I worked through some more of the manual and have now made a couple of voice memos. The recording quality seems to be pretty good; I will play around with it more in the next day or two, so I can decide whether to use it to record a show my son Max will be in on Tuesday night. Starting and stopping recording is pretty easy; I'm glad I read the bit in the manual about double- tapping with two fingers to start and stop.

I also learned that day how to move icons around on the screen. It's pretty neat; you double-tap the icon you want to move and hold it until a tone is played to let you know regular gestures can be used, then move your finger to where you want the icon to go. VoiceOver tells you where you are: "Row 3, column 2," etc. If you move to the right edge of the screen, the icon goes to the next page. If you move to the left edge, it goes to the previous one. There's no feedback about this, and when I tried to move Stocks to page 2, it ended up on page 3. But I was able to move it back to page 2. I also moved Weather up to the top row to make it easier to find. I like Weather; it's great being able to find out the current temperature and forecast in brief when I'm trying to figure out what to wear in the morning.

6 Moving the icons is cool. I imagine mouse users have been enjoying this sort of thing for a long time, but I've never before had the experience of changing things around on a computer screen just by moving my finger. It's not something I previously felt deprived about, but it's fun.

On Friday I made my first foray into the world of iPhone apps. If you are a compulsive shopper, DON'T BUY AN IPHONE; it's way too easy to buy this stuff. I imagine it's the same for iTunes, but I haven't bought anything from there on the iPhone yet.

When you open the app store, you can search, or you can look at popular apps. When I first went there, I started moving around the screen to see what was there, and almost immediately, I landed on Pocket Yoga. This program lets you choose between three different practices, at three difficulty levels, for three durations -- half an hour, 45 minutes, or an hour -- for a total of 27 different routines. You can use the built-in music, no music, or choose your own. The program info said poses are demonstrated, but also described clearly, and that a dictionary of poses is included that has pictures and verbal descriptions. And it only cost $2.99. I had no trouble reading the reviews, which were mixed, and the average rating of 4 stars. It sounded great, so I bought it. I double-tapped the price button, then double-tapped a Buy button, then entered my password and double-tapped OK. Though the password field is secure, the keyboard still talked, so entering the password wasn't a problem. The program downloaded and installed automatically; it couldn't have been easier.

Then I tried to run my new app, and the iPhone went completely quiet. I could get no response, no matter what I did. So I reset the phone -- lucky I had read how to do that -- and tried to open the app again. I got the same result. When I brought it up again, I decided not to try opening Pocket Yoga again until someone was around who could see the screen. Later I opened it when Max was there, and it talked; I was able to accept the license agreement. I couldn't do anything more then because we had to leave, but later I opened it again. I was able to choose a practice between Desert, Ocean, and Mountain, and find out what each of these meant. I picked a level, choosing between Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. And I chose a duration, choosing between 30, 45 and 60 minutes. Then I pressed the Start button. Soft, relaxing music began to play. I settled on my yoga mat with the iPhone next to my head and relaxed. And I listened to more relaxing music. And I listened...and I listened...and after about three minutes, I came to the conclusion that something was wrong. Jon helped me do some testing. Sure enough, if I started the program without VoiceOver running, a voice spoke over that relaxing music, saying what pose to do. But if VoiceOver was running when I went to the Start Practice screen, even if I turned it off before pressing the Start button, there was no voice, just music. Furthermore, we figured out that when I thought the iPhone was going dead, what really happened was that VoiceOver stopped speaking. Toggling VoiceOver off and on restored speech. So apparently, the yoga voice was trying to use the same sound resources as VoiceOver, and they were fighting to control them.

I sent a note to the developer explaining the situation and suggesting that he change the app so that the voice only loads after you press the Start Practice button. That way, I could use VoiceOver with no problems to get to the Start Practice screen, and then turn off VoiceOver and press the Start button, so VoiceOver would be out of the way and not compete with the yoga voice. I should be able to find the Start button without VoiceOver, so this would work. He wrote

7 back right away; he hadn't known anything about VoiceOver prior to my note, but he could duplicate the problem, and he would see what he could do about it. I hope he'll be able to fix it, because I'd love to use this app.

I also downloaded a radio app called Ootunes, which has a huge database of radio stations. I found the Legend right away [this is the online station where I used to do my children's radio show]. It sounded great. I couldn't adjust the music volume without changing VoiceOver's volume, however, and it was hard to hear VoiceOver, so that could be a problem.

On Saturday I bought the famous Ocarina app that lets you play your iPhone like an ocarina. You blow into the microphone and put your fingers over holes displayed on the screen. Tilting the phone changes the level of vibrato. Once Max showed me where the holes were, I could play a little, but there are quite a few functions that seem to be inaccessible. VoiceOver has to be off when I am playing, and when it's on, a lot of buttons don't talk. It's still pretty fun, though.

April 13. I was rather spaced out this morning on the way home from walking Max to school, and I got turned around, even though I've been walking that route for a year and a half. Someone told me which street I was approaching and which was next to me, and I was fine. But it occurred to me that I had a GPS in my pocket, so I could have solved the problem on my own if I'd had an app that takes advantage of it. So I'm going to buy a navigation app. Not a major, expensive one; Sendero Group is supposed to come out with a free look-around app this month and something more substantial over the summer, and I'd like to use their solution. But there are lots of very cheap apps that can tell you where you are. I think I'll try I-Map-U, but I'm going to do a bit of looking around before I decide.

Max is in a play tonight, and I thought it would be fun to record it with the iPhone. I did some experimenting this morning and discovered that it makes clear, though rather quiet recordings, at 64 KBPS AAC, 16 bit, 44,100 sampling rate mono. It's capable of stereo with a special stereo microphone, but of course I don't have one. I think the recording will probably be pretty good. I don't know why they have it record so quietly, though.

Yesterday someone asked about adjusting the volume of Ootunes and VoiceOver, and I looked into it. Supposedly, you can stop the music, get VoiceOver talking, and then adjust the volume to change only VoiceOver volume, but I haven't gotten that to work yet. The program does have a feature to pause playback when you shake the iPhone; that helps a lot because if I need to do something with it while Ootunes is playing, I can stop the music without needing VoiceOver. Once it's stopped, I can do what I need to do, and then restart it. It's a reasonable work-around, I think.

April 21. I'm listening to Pandora for the first time. I downloaded it several days ago, but I had a very hard time signing up to use it. I tried creating an account on the iPhone. A perfectly straightforward form came up, and I filled it in, but nothing happened when I pressed the image that I was told said "Create account." That was the only inaccessible part of the page. I tried several times over a couple of days with no luck; the same thing always happened. [I found out later there's a

8 CAPTCHA on the screen that I didn't know about and no one else noticed.] So finally I went to the website at www.pandora.com. I could find no Join link. In desperation I went to www.pandora.com/iphone, the site the iPhone had said it was loading. Finally, a form I could use! I had to enter an ID generated on my iPhone and then fill in the same form, and this time it worked. The account was created. I created about 10 stations. This is easy to do; you type in an artist, composer, or song title, and then select from the list of search results Pandora finds. That's it -- you now have a station, which you can listen to either on the Web or from your iPhone.

I'm currently listening to the Weavers station, and it's great so far -- the Weavers, some Joan Baez, a Simon and Garfunkel song, and Johnny Cash with "Ghost Riders in the Sky," all in the first 15 minutes. In some cases, a considerable amount of information about the currently playing artist is available. You can give the current song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and you can skip a song you don't like. All these options are completely accessible on the iPhone. If you want to change stations, press the Left Arrow button near the top of the screen. There's also an Options button that lets you bookmark the current track (I'm not sure what that means) or buy it from iTunes. Very nice.

I've acquired another radio app as well -- NPR News. If you select this one, current news appears, all readable. There are links to listen to NPR's hourly newscast and various news stories. You can also choose Stations, and locate and listen to public radio stations from around the country. Last Saturday night, Jon and I listened to part of Back Tracks, a show we discovered when we lived in Iowa. It was fun to hear the show and our old station again.

Another app I bought was EasyRelax Ultimate, for about $3. I started with the free version, Binaural Beats, which I had heard about on a Maccessibility Roundtable podcast. It plays sounds with droning in the background that is supposed to help your brain get into certain states, such as relaxed when you want to sleep. One day when I woke early and couldn't get to sleep, I tried it, and it helped. So I bought the $3 version, which has lots more sounds, and also music. You can put together your own soundscapes with music or a main sound, and then up to 3 additional ambient sounds and a binaural beat to go with it. Max and I made one soundscape with what sounds like Native American flute, something called Mountain, which has birds and some bugs, River, and something else -- I don't remember what now. It's pretty. Then we noticed that there were a lot of annoying sounds, so we made an annoying soundscape with city sounds, a vacuum cleaner, someone washing dishes, and cicadas. I'm not sure why they included those sounds, since none of them is remotely relaxing. Maybe it's because they figured people like us would have fun messing around with them. One of the soundscapes the program comes with is Into the West. It has the Native American flute music with a campfire. It's really nice.

I bought Voice Compass and Voxtrek to help with orientation. It will be great to have Voice Compass if I get turned around on a cloudy day (I can use the sun for direction on a clear one). It's straightforward; you turn it on, and a clear voice says which way you're facing. It cost $.99.

Voxtrek is supposed to do all sorts of things, including calculating routes. That feature seems to be broken at the moment though; Voxtrek was removed from the App store a day or two after I bought it so the bug could be fixed. But if I turn on Voxtrek and walk around, it takes a while to find my position, but once it does, it will say which street I'm on, sometimes only a few feet after

9 I turn onto it. It doesn't say which street I'm approaching; I wish it did. But it would have helped the other day when I got turned around. The voice isn't good, but apparently the next release will include Acapela Heather, a voice I like a lot. I'm also looking forward to Sendero Group's GPS apps, since they have so much experience doing GPS for the blind. The general consensus seems to be that while you can use many of the current GPS apps and get a lot from them, you'll probably need more than one, and that none is ideal for blind users. None of them routinely tell you which street you are approaching, for example. Still, it's really great what's available, and how cheap a lot of it is. Voxtrek was $2.99.

Last week I walked Max to school using Voxtrek to see how it would work. This morning, inspired by that, he started announcing everything we came to in a robotic voice: "Now approaching pile of branches," "Quite close to College Street," etc. It was very funny.

Another program I bought was AidColors. It cost $.99, if I remember right. You hold the iPhone with the camera lens a few inches from the item whose color you want to identify and double-tap the Get Color button. The camera takes a picture, and a few seconds later, you can flick right and read the color. If the light is good, this program works quite well, and it's easy to use. I like the fact that unlike a color identifier I heard demonstrated on a podcast a few months ago, you don't have to turn VoiceOver off at any point while using it.

I also got Echofon, a Twitter client that has free and $4.99 versions. I chose the pay version to avoid the advertising in the free one. It seems to be good; it allows for multiple accounts and has quite a few features, and lots of people on the VIPhone mailing list are using it. I hope there's some way to tell it where you last read so you can quickly find your place; I haven't found one, but I haven't used it too much yet. I'll have to ask on the list.

I downloaded the Facebook app as well. Some people say the Facebook Lite website is better, but when I tried using it, I seemed to be missing a lot of posts, so I decided to try the app. It's free, so nothing is lost if I don't end up using it much.

I also bought iAutoHarp, a program Dean Martineau recommended in his Tek Talk presentation. It cost $2.99. It works pretty well, except that sometimes no sound plays when I move my finger over the place where the strings are. I also sometimes hit the buttons that shift it into different keys when I don't mean to. This is annoying, but I'm getting better at it. It's cool to be able to create a strum or a slow rippling effect depending on how quickly I move my thumb over the "strings." [The program has become more responsive in later updates.]

I think my Olympus DS30 could have made a clearer recording of Max's show than the iPhone did, but the iPhone recording was reasonably good. I can't understand most of the kids in the recording, but I couldn't understand most of them when we went to the show either. I can understand less in the recording than I could live, but the sound quality isn't bad.

I looked into the option of trimming the recording on the iPhone. The process is accessible; you select whether you want to trim from the beginning or the end, then flick a slider up to move the trimming tool to the right, or down to move it to the left. You are told what time in the recording the trimming tool is at, and a Play button lets you hear what the recording will sound like. I didn't

10 end up trimming this recording because it was 35 minutes long, and what I wanted to trim was the last couple of minutes. Maybe there was a way to skip through the file so I could just hear the end, but I didn't notice one. Still, for shorter recordings, this would be great.

I'm getting better at typing, but it's still slow. My next app will probably be Dragon Dictate, so I can dictate email messages and such. This app is free, and it lets you record up to 30 seconds at a time that you can put in an email message or copy to the clipboard.

My most frustrating iPhone experience so far happened last Saturday. Max played in a recital, and afterward, he and Jon played pool at the student center at the university where Jon teaches. A friend of mine had a show on the Legend Internet radio station, and I planned to request a song for Max, listen to the show, and play the request part loud enough for Max to hear. I didn't have Echofon yet, so I tried to do it by email. It seemed like I couldn't type anything right, but finally I got my message ready and sent it. Or rather, I tried to send it. But soon I got a server error message saying the message couldn't be sent. So I decided to just listen to the show. But it turned out that there was almost no Internet connection there; the pool table was in the basement, which I guess explains it. That was my first attempt to use something other than Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet. You can choose to use 3G, which is faster than the alternative, Edge, but uses more battery. However, I turned on 3G, but still only got Edge. And Edge really is slow for web pages. So no Internet radio, and no request. Oh well.

As you can see, there really is a lot you can do with the iPhone. I'm amazed at the variety. Pretty fun!

May 12. I've had some other projects to get through, so it's been a while, but there is a lot to report.

One of my greatest iPhone moments so far was on Sunday, May 25, when the new Internet radio station I'm a part of, Mushroom FM, went online for the first time. Jon's parents were visiting, and we were out shopping at launch time. However, thanks to my iPhone, I was able to listen to the station going live while standing in line at Best Buy. I checked the night before, and the station had already been added to Ootunes, so all I had to do was activate Ootunes, and I was good to go. I had already made the other necessary changes to the phone during the frustrating experience I described in the last entry when I was hoping to listen to Brian's show from the basement of the Pittsburg State student union. These changes were to allow the iPhone to use 3G, which it doesn't by default to save battery, and to allow it to play 128 KBPS streams over a cellular network, which it doesn't do by default to save bandwidth. Luckily, once you make these changes, they stick, and after that, you can listen to Internet radio anywhere there's a reasonable 3G signal.

I have continued my adventures in navigation. Voxtrek wasn't talking after I installed a new voice; this voice cost $.99, and it was well worth it because it's much better than the free voice. But after I installed it, Voxtrek wouldn't speak my location. Finally, I figured out what the problem was. When I installed the voice, it said it was successfully installed, and the progress indicator showed 100%, so I assumed that it was installed. However, when Voxtrek wouldn't talk, I pressed Reset Voice in the Speech Settings dialog box. Then I chose the voice again, and

11 it started downloading. This time, I waited quite a while, maybe three minutes, after getting to the message about it being installed successfully. A Finish button appeared, and I double-tapped it. After that, the voice worked. So sometimes an installation isn't complete for quite a while after you think it is.

Since we're traveling later this month, I decided to buy Navigon, which I get the impression is about the best GPS program for driving routes. I knew before I got it that they'd dropped the feature of having Navigon give spoken directions for walking routes, but I figured that for walking, I could use turn-by-turn directions, a list of all the streets and turns you need to take. But it turns out that you can't get a list of directions for walking routes anymore. How ridiculous! [Spoken directions for pedestrian routes were restored in the latest update.]

We used Navigon while driving to and from our synagogue the weekend before last. It took a while to get a GPS signal, at least ten minutes. People on the list said that isn't uncommon, particularly when you're moving while trying to obtain a signal. We got beautiful spoken directions the rest of the way there, but none on the way home. I have no idea why. [Probably the GPS signal was too poor to provide our location accurately.] I need to do a lot more experimenting with both Navigon and Voxtrek to see how to get the most from them. Also, I wish Sendero Group would release their GPS app. They were supposed to release a free app by the end of April, and something more substantial this summer. [They released a $4.99 app in September.] I heard a demo of the free app; it tells you what street you are on and which direction you're going, and you can get it to tell you the nearest cross street and five points of interest. If you shake the phone, it updates your position. Very nice. If they haven't released it before we leave, I'll have to get AroundMe, an app that tells you which points of interest are around. That could be very helpful on our trip.

One cool thing about Navigon is that it links to Google Local, so when I searched for Max's school as a point of interest, it told me the school phone number as well as the address. That could be a useful feature.

One thing I need to learn is how to shut down all programs without rebooting. I'm pretty sure I've read directions for doing it, but I don't remember what they were. The reason is that I'm pretty sure Navigon doesn't close completely when I press Home. I think this because the day we used it to go to synagogue, the battery life dropped like a rock. Also, Navigon found the GPS signal immediately when I turned it on for our return trip. So I think it was running in the background the whole time we were there with an open GPS connection.

Speaking of battery life, I bought a pocket-sized rechargeable battery that can be used to charge two USB devices on the go. This will be great on our trip, and any time I need to use the iPhone for long periods with GPS or other power-intensive apps. I was going to get one made by Enercell; Mark Taylor recommended it on one of his Candleshore podcasts. However, Radio Shack had another one by Igo for the same price, around $50, with more power and the ability to charge mobile phones if you have the right adapter, even if they don't use a standard USB port. Jon's getting a new phone soon. We don't know what kind yet, so this flexibility may be handy.

12 Speaking of the Candleshore Podcast, it's a great source for information about iPhone apps, among other things. To learn more, visit mark.candleshoreblog.com/category/podcasts/. A program Mark Taylor recommended on the podcast is File App Pro. It can read lots of formats, including Word and PDF, and it saves your place in some of them. Also, you can use wireless FTP to transfer files between your computer and the iPhone. It's great. You need to use it either while you're stationary, so you don't touch the screen, or have the iPhone in a stable position, such as the belt clip that comes with the Otterbox Defender case. With that case on, I was able to listen to a Word document while doing some cleaning the other day. Very cool. I had no trouble connecting to a PC and using Windows Explorer to transfer files. For some reason, my Mac FTP client didn't work with it. Someone suggested the Go to Server feature on the Mac; I'll have to try that. [It turns out I was configuring the Mac FTP client incorrectly; it's amazing what you find out sometimes when you read the manual.]

I heard back from the creator of Pocket Yoga. He doesn't have a version he can release to the public yet because when it works well with VoiceOver, the ability to choose your own music is broken. He's waiting to hear from Apple about how to fix this problem. Surely the new version of the operating system will help, if nothing else. But other than that, the program works with VoiceOver, with no need to turn VoiceOver off before starting a practice. So he offered to give me the version that works with VoiceOver so I could use the program. Of course, I said sure. The only problem is, you have to drag two files to the iTunes library to add the app. Copy and paste isn't an option, for some reason. I tried to do it, and as it turns out, I did manage to get the first file there, I think, but in the end, Max did it; I've never had much luck with drag and drop, though the ability is supposed to be in VoiceOver. [It turns out you can do this without using drag and drop; the process is described in Appendix B.]

Then I installed the app, and finally got to try a yoga session. This seems to be much more rigorous yoga than I thought it would be, even at the beginner level with the pose that I thought sounded easiest. It's nice to be able to use the app, though. I really appreciate the programmer working to make it accessible.

I found out how to return to your place in Echofon. Someone on the VIPhone list said that if you tap somewhere in the middle of the screen, it goes to the right place, so I'll try that.

Max and I had fun with Pandora last weekend. At his suggestion, I created a playlist based on the children's singer Sarah Pirtle. I was surprised that they had her stuff. As it turns out, they only have one of her four albums, but that's something. We had been listening for a little while when a song called "The Snake Song" came on, all about the joys of eating snakes. Very silly. But this Sunday's show features food, so it will be perfect. So I went to the iTunes Store on the iPhone and bought the song. Previewing and purchasing it was no problem. The only thing that threw me was that after I entered my password, no download dialog box appeared, so I didn't know for sure whether the song was being downloaded. However, I checked a bit later, and it was there. Pretty fun.

I used the calendar for the first time yesterday. It's reasonably easy to use. I even managed to do it standing up; while we were on the way to the library, we remembered that everyone needs a haircut. So I called our barber using the iPhone and entered the appointment details while Jon

13 and Max looked at comic books. I wrote "hairduts" instead of "haircuts," but otherwise it went okay. In version 4.0, I have heard that the iPhone will speak the phonetic equivalent of letters when you are typing. I am really looking forward to that, because if there's any noise at all, it becomes very difficult to tell whether the iPhone is saying D, C, V, etc.

I downloaded Dragon Dictation a couple of weeks ago. One interesting feature is that it can upload the names in your contacts list. That way, if you say one of their names, it's likely to recognize the name and spell it correctly. I also set it to stop recording after a pause so I won't have to hunt around for a button to stop recording. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, though.

I listened to a news story using the NPR app a few days ago. It's great to be able to move through news stories, double-tap one of interest, and then double-tap the Listen Now link to hear it.

I am continually amazed at the variety of things you can do with this device. As you can see, I still have lots to learn about most of the apps I've installed and about some of the apps on the phone, like the camera. And my typing is still quite slow. Still, I'm making progress and having a lot of fun.

May 14. We're going to Disneyland and Lego Land the weekend after next, so on Wednesday I checked to see if there were any Disneyland apps. There were lots -- more than 25. I'm not sure how many altogether. Some try to tell you what the wait times are like for different rides. Some provide maps and use GPS to tell you where you are. Some provide brief information about the restaurants in the park, while others include the entire menus. Some make it easy to connect to Facebook so you can tell your friends what you're doing. One claimed to tell you about all sorts of little-known places in the park, including the park bench Walt Disney was sitting on when he came up with the idea to create Disneyland. Some apps were free, while one cost close to $10. I was amazed at the quantity and variety of apps. Next week, Jon and I will go through the list and pick one. There was a mini-guide for a dollar or two; I imagine we'll end up with something like that.

I also downloaded an app a friend told me about called Tales2Go. This service streams children's stories to your iPhone. You can choose a story by age, topic, storyteller, and more. It's free for the first month, and then a yearly subscription costs about $25. I was impressed when I downloaded it. I was able to select and start listening to a story with no problems. I was all ready to write to the VIPhone mailing list and rave about the app. Then I opened it again on Thursday. I had bookmarked the story I was listening to, but I couldn't find it in the Bookmarks section. Jon looked and discovered that the story was listed, but that the only way to start it playing was to turn off VoiceOver. Another problem was that it started playing at the beginning. Surely that's not how it's meant to work. I'm not sure how long the story is, but I listened for close to half an hour on Wednesday, and I heard the first chapter and part of a second, so clearly this is a chapter book, not a short story. I can also find no rewind or fast forward buttons. There's a Next button, but it seems to take me to the next story. Obviously, being able to save your place and move around in a book is critical. I wrote to the developer; one lovely aspect of downloading the app was that they sent a welcome message including a contact email address, something I've never experienced with any other app. I haven't heard anything yet, but I hope I will. [The accessibility

14 problems haven't been solved yet, unfortunately. Some developers are more willing to help than others, it seems.]

I also haven't heard from the folks at Navigon. This is not good.

Now I'm going to read more of the iPhone manual and try to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge. I'll report anything interesting that I find.

May 17. Gremlins got hold of my iPhone on Friday night. We were coming home from synagogue, about a 45-minute drive, and thought it would be fun to hear some Beatles music. So I tried to use the Voice Commands feature, and said, "Play album Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 2009 Mono Remaster." I stumbled a bit, and maybe because of that, or maybe because we were in the car, it got confused. I tried saying it again a couple of times, but it was still confused. Eventually, it thought I said I wanted to call my future boss! Don't ask me why -- his name doesn't sound anything like that, but that's what happened. I thought, no problem, I'll just press the Power button; that hangs up the phone. But it didn't. Soon a voicemail message started playing. I tried holding the Power button so I could turn off the phone, but even holding it for several seconds had no effect. I pressed Home and the phone app disappeared from the screen. "I've got it now," I thought, and started to select the album manually from the iPod screen. But soon the voicemail prompts started coming again! Finally, I was able to get the phone to shut down. As it turned out, my future boss didn't get a message from me. Apparently their voicemail system doesn't hang up easily, but also won't let you through if it's hearing things like "What's going on?" and "I can't get it to stop!" instead of touch tones. I'm just lucky it didn't try to call anyone's home number. So I guess that if I'm in the car and want to play something with a complicated title, I won't use voice commands in the future. [I have since learned that if you start having trouble with voice commands, rebooting the phone usually solves them.]

This morning I am trying something that is probably pointless. It takes more than ten minutes for Navigon to get a GPS signal every time I try it, though it takes other apps far less time. The Navigon iPhone FAQ claims that if you back up your iPhone, erase all data and settings, and restore from the backup, the memory is reorganized in a way that improves GPS functionality. Since we're traveling next week, I decided to try this. I was very nervous about erasing absolutely everything on my iPhone; what if it doesn't restore properly or there's something wrong with the backup? But I'm also curious to see whether it helps. The part of the FAQ that advises this was updated on March 10, so, quite recently, someone at Navigon thought it was a good idea. When I first asked about this advice on the VIPhone list a couple of weeks ago, someone said they didn't see how it would help, and I get the impression no one on the list has tried it; certainly, no one wrote to say whether it worked or not. So with great trepidation, I synced my iPhone and chose Back Up from the iPhone menu in iTunes. The backup only took a few seconds, so I guess the person on the VIPhone list who said iTunes always backs up your iPhone when you sync is correct. Then, as directed by the FAQ, I plugged in the iPhone, chose Settings, then General, then Reset, then "Erase all content and settings." I had to confirm twice that that's what I wanted to do. Then I waited, and realized I wouldn't know when the erase process was complete because there would be no voice. The phone beeped and vibrated about 30 seconds later, so I figured it was probably done. I have a light probe, so I held it over the screen

15 and pressed Home. The screen was dark before I pressed Home. After I pressed it, the screen got much brighter, and about ten seconds later it went dark again, which is normal behavior when you press Home; the Unlock button comes up, but it goes away and the screen remains locked if you don't unlock. So I figured it was okay to unplug the phone and reconnect it to my computer.

When I did, I found my iPhone listed, but when I right-clicked on it in iTunes, Restore wasn't one of the options, though it had been before I reset my phone. "Oh no!" I thought, "Where did the Restore button go? What do I do now?" I started exploring the screen, and quickly came to a Restore scroll area. What a relief! It said that an iPhone had previously been connected to my computer and gave me the options to set up the phone as a new iPhone or to restore from the Woody's iPhone backup. That was the default option. I chose it, and then was told the setup would be completed in less than a minute. "What?" I thought. I didn't see how it could possibly restore in that amount of time, so I was worried that something was wrong with my backup. But it turned out that it was the settings that were restored in about a minute, maybe a little more. I had VoiceOver on the phone again! Then I checked the LCD section, where status is reported on the Mac in iTunes. I was told that programs were being installed. After that, files started being copied over. Files are still being copied over, so I think everything will be fine. Then I'll see whether GPS works better with Navigon.

May 20. Erasing everything and restoring helped tremendously with GPS. The two times I tried it, Navigon acquired a signal within about 30 seconds. Sure beats ten minutes or more. I wonder if it will keep working so well. [It has so far.]

On Tuesday afternoon, I tried the Dragon Dictation program for the first time. It works quite well. The least intuitive part was that once you press the Keyboard button and view and edit the message, you press the Send Message button. I figured you only pressed that if you wanted to send your dictation as a text message, but when you press that button, you have the options to send as a text message, send as an email message, or copy to the clipboard. If you choose the latter, you can paste it anywhere. I pasted into a tweet in Echofon. That worked fine. It's hard to talk as though I were writing, though.

I also worked on selecting text. Some of these things you can read about until you're blue in the face, but they don't make sense until you try them. I'm not very good at it, but at least it's possible.

Yesterday I finished working my way through the iPod manual. The world clock, alarms, stopwatch and timer work fine with VoiceOver. I'm disappointed that you can't set the alarm to wake you with music; it seems like that should be possible on a machine with both an iPod and an alarm clock. I was also sorry the timer doesn't do seconds. It would be handy for measuring pulse rate, for example. But if I ever really need to do that, I can probably get an app that will.

I bought several apps to help with our trip at the recommendation of Scott Bresnahan on the VIPhone list. They are FlightUpdate, AroundMe, and GateGuru. You enter your flights into FlightUpdate, and it's supposed to tell you whether they're on time, which gate to get your connecting blight, info about baggage claim, and more. It's supposed to show altitude and plot

16 your course on a Google map, but I don't see how it could do that while you're flying and have your iPhone in Airplane mode, where it doesn't use Wi-Fi, the cellular network, Bluetooth or GPS. We shall see.

Entering trip info was tricky at first. Most forms I have used have you fill out everything and then press the Save button. With this program, though, you save after every part -- the trip title, the trip dates, your confirmation number, and a couple of other optional fields. Then you add your first flight. This is mostly straightforward; you pick an airline and enter a flight number. If that flight has more than one leg, though, I can't figure out how to select just the one or ones I want. In the end, I had to put them all in and then delete the legs I didn't need. Also, I wasn't sure at first how to enter return flights, since there's no option for that. I figured out that what you have to do is change the flight date to your return date manually. I guess this is good if you are flying somewhere else between your departure and return dates. It probably took me 20 minutes or more to enter the info for the trip. I had to exit the program and start over at one point because it stopped letting me edit. But I entered the info for two other trips we're taking this summer, and entering the last one took me five minutes or less, so it was much better.

Interestingly, the version I bought cost about $4, but they also make a $10 version where you email your itinerary to them, and all the flight info gets entered automatically. If someone was doing a lot of traveling, I imagine this service would be well worth the extra money.

GateGuru is supposed to tell you what's near your gate at the airport. It's free. With any luck, we won't be able to use this app much; our layover times are awfully short (50 and 45 minutes, if I remember right). But if we just have a few minutes, being able to find out which restaurants are nearby could be helpful.

AroundMe is another free app. You pick a category like restaurants or ATM, and it tells you which things in that category are nearby. It can send the info to Navigon so Navigon can create a route. It seems like this could be helpful.

In the post about the travel apps, Scott also said you can operate the iPhone while it's in a Ziploc bag. That's great to know; I can put it in one before we go to the theme parks, and I'll know my iPhone is okay even if I get wet.

This morning we bought two Disneyland apps, each for $.99. One is maps and basic info about the park, and the other is supposed to tell you what the wait times for the rides are like. I don't know how accessible either is, but it seems like they could be useful.

I also bought Max the full version of a game called Run Stick Run yesterday. It was only $.99, and it removes the ads in the free version and adds quite a few features.

Max and I are listening to How to Train Your Dragon, courtesy of Tales2Go. It's a great app; I just hope they fix the accessibility issues, particularly the ability to choose a bookmarked story and the ability to move forward and backward in a story. We listened to an Anansi story a couple of days ago too; it was great fun.

17 June 10. It's been a while since I've written because we've been traveling; we spent a day at Lego Land, two days at Disneyland, and a week with my parents in St. Louis. We had a wonderful time, and importantly for this journal, I used the iPhone in some interesting ways.

FlightUpdate was the first new app I tried. Unfortunately, VoiceOver couldn't read the quick status info, such as "Delayed" or "On Time" that appears near the top of the screen. Who knows, maybe iOS4 will help with that. I could read the gate info, so if I were traveling alone and needed to change planes, I would know which gate I needed to go to. In one case, the gate info was incorrect, but it was also wrong on our boarding passes, so apparently it was changed at the last minute and FlightUpdate didn't know. Good to know I can't rely on it with total certainty. It seems like the question with location and navigation apps isn't, "Can I trust it?" but "How much can I trust it?"

I couldn't use the Disneyland map program I bought, but Jon and Max could. It included info about the rides, including a Jedi training school that wasn't on our paper map, so I'm glad we had it.

The Wait Times app, on the other hand, was accessible. I didn't use it much because Max really wanted to and it was easier to let him, especially since it was generally loud enough that I would have had to fish out headphones to listen, whereas he could just look at the screen. But it was accessible, and it was great. It tells you how long the wait is for each ride -- based on wait times people submit, how many people are in the park, and other factors -- and it was very accurate. It was really helpful. Max wanted to go on the Peter Pan ride, and the wait was generally at least 40 minutes. It was great to be able to check the wait time without walking over to the ride. Eventually we went when the wait time was 30 minutes.

That app has a Near Me feature you can use to find out which rides are nearby if you're in the park. We wondered what it would do when we were in St. Louis. In case you're curious, the Near Me feature disappears when you're nowhere near Disneyland.

We used Navigon to help get to my brother's house from Kansas City. It was a quirky experience. I found the Turn by Turn Directions List option, but for some reason it didn't work; I couldn't move through the directions to read the whole route. I asked about this later on the VIPhone list and was told to flick through the directions. I tried this later and it worked. I would think I would have tried that, but maybe I didn't.

If Navigon is tracking well, it gives voice directions when you're driving or bicycling [and now when you're walking, if you choose the right option.] However, sometimes these directions are so frequent they drive you crazy, and sometimes they leave a lot to be desired. Navigon will say, for example, "Follow the road for two miles," not "Follow the road for two miles until you reach Highway 40." It only tells you what to look for when you get close. It would be a lot nicer to know what the next landmark is right away.

Then there was the little matter of the unusual route. At one point, we could simply have traveled from Highway 70 to State Highway 61 to 270, but Navigon led us a merry chase from 70 to

18 Warrenton to State Highway M to State Highway OO to State Highway 61 to 270. It was a more fun route; we bounced up and down and curved around, having a bit of the roller coaster experience we missed at Disneyland because none of us wanted to go on the roller coasters. It certainly kept Jon awake. But it wasn't the most straightforward route.

To make matters worse, the battery power remaining was dropping like a rock, and the charger I bought before the trip had no power because I had used it earlier in the drive to charge my Braille Plus so I could read to Max. We hoped it wouldn't die while we were off on the back roads. But the battery didn't die, and Navigon did get us there. So if you use it, be aware that you may be in for a bit of adventure.

Another major thing I used the iPhone for was email. Reading email was fine, except that it didn't delete most of the messages I deleted from the server. A long time ago, I set all my accounts to remove deleted messages from the server after a day. This worked perfectly for my work account, but not for my personal one. Ironically, my personal account is with AT&T, so you'd think it would work, but no joy. So when I started reading mail on the computer when we got home, all 600 or so messages I got while I was away were there. Yuck.

I'm getting faster with typing on the iPhone, but it's by no means my preferred way to type. I used Dragon Dictate some, and it works very well. I find it hard to say what I mean clearly and as though I were writing rather than speaking, however. I guess it's just a matter of practice. The other difficult thing is verifying that the correct text is there. The iPhone will read it back, and I can move by character or word, but moving through even a short message a character or word at a time to be sure there are no surprises is tedious. iOS4 includes the ability to read line by line and braille display support; either of these would really help in this situation. In short, I am really looking forward to the release of iOS4, which will support Bluetooth keyboards. I bought one of these because a lot of people thought the new operating system would be released this past Monday. With a Bluetooth keyboard, the iPhone will be even better.

The Clock app came in handy a few times. We used it as an alarm clock, and it worked fine. And during the trip, I needed to contact the owner of Mushroom FM, the Internet radio station on which I broadcast. He lives in New Zealand, so I used the world clock to find out whether it would be a reasonable time to call. I used Skype on Jon's PC, however, because I didn't want to take the time to install it on the iPhone just then.

Tales2Go was a big help as well. It was great when we were taking a bus from Lego Land back to our hotel, and several mornings when Max and I were awake on the early side. There are a couple thousand stories, and it costs $25 per year, so it's a great deal. I notified the woman who does the marketing for the app of the accessibility problems, and she passed my comments on to the developer, so I hope things will improve. Maybe iOS4 will help as well.

Since we got back, I have purchased a few more apps. I bought a second game for Max called Titanic Rescue, where you try to rescue people jumping off a cartoon ship. Before the trip I got him one called Run Stick Run, where you have to keep your stick figure from falling as it runs and jumps between cars and airplanes. These are inaccessible, of course, but at times it's fun to let him use them. They each cost $.99.

19 I bought another relaxation/binaural beats program called Brainbaths at the recommendation of someone on the VIPhone mailing list. It's a bit more straightforward to operate than EasyRelax, and I like a lot of the soundscapes. You can't create your own, but the included ones sound good, in some cases better than the other app. The whale song is much better, for example; it's a longer clip, so it sounds more natural. This app cost $1.99. I have played it a couple of evenings just before going to bed, and it's very relaxing.

I heard good things about a lightsaber app, so I downloaded one called LightSaber, which was temporarily free. It should always be free; it was terrible. I had heard that the lightsaber app made lightsaber sounds as you moved your phone around, so you could pretend you were using a lightsaber. This app only made noise if you touched certain parts of the screen, and the sounds were really cheesy. So Max searched and found Star Wars Lightsaber Duel. This one is much better. It does indeed make lightsaber noises as you wave the phone around. On the screen, there's a picture of your chosen character fighting someone, and it moves its lightsaber based on your movements. The sounds are good, and you have the option to play some built-in Star Wars music or any music on your iPod, and to hear Darth Vader's voice (I don't recommend the latter for long stretches, as he only says a couple of phrases). Amazingly, this app works perfectly when VO is running. I can choose a character, etc. Okay, so I have no idea what the characters on the screen are doing during the fight, but it's a kick to hear the sounds based on my movements. And it was hilarious to be there as Jon and Max took turns moving around the room fighting their battles. The only problem is that the phone got dropped once, a no doubt common occurrence with this game. But the guy at the AT&T store was right; the Otterbox case protected the phone just fine. So if you like Star Wars and have a good case, this app is well worth the $.99.

Just before the trip I bought an app called Talking Cow. I thought it was supposed to record whatever sound it heard and play it back modified to sound like a cow. Someone on the VIPhone list said it was entertaining, and it cost $.99. So I bought it, but there was no sound. Eventually I reported this to Apple and on the developer's website. The developer wrote back right away. It turns out the program doesn't say anything; the cow's mouth just moves when you talk. So why is it called Talking Cow? Oh well, at least it was cheap.

I bought a program called GigDaddy, which is a four-track recorder and metronome, for $2.99. The developer worked closely with two members of the VIPhone list to ensure that this program is accessible, and it really is. I have played with a few of the rhythms, but haven't recorded with it yet. It will be interesting when I do.

I am following the Twitter feed of the Tales2Go marketer, and she mentioned that an app called Family Matters was temporarily free, so I tried it. It's useful for families in situations where you're waiting for something, such as food in a restaurant. You choose a category, and it asks questions and suggests activities. Questions we've seen include, "What are three things that airplanes and helicopters have in common?" "Ask your parents about what jobs they have done. Would you want to do any of these jobs?" and "Have I ever done anything that embarrassed you?" The idea is to help you communicate, rather than just pass the time. It's pretty fun in small doses.

20 Another app that was temporarily free was USA Pocket Manual. It includes biographies and famous quotes of all the presidents (except Ford, for some reason), ways to contact your senators and representative from within the app, and historic documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Mayflower Compact. It's a nice app. They really need to put in Ford, though.

I also downloaded a free BBC News app. At the moment, this app is available everywhere except the UK, which is crazy. [This has since been rectified.] I haven't used it much, but it seems pretty useful.

I am constantly amazed by the variety of things the iPhone can do. It's just incredible!

Jon ended up with an iPad a couple of days ago, quite unexpectedly. So I'll be able to play around with that as well. That will be great.

June 23. I'm writing this entry on my iPhone using a Bluetooth keyboard, thanks to the iOS4 update that came out on Monday. It turns out you cannot only type, but you can also control the iPod from the keyboard; you can change the volume, start and stop, and skip tracks using function keys. This is neat. The iPhone just got a lot more functional. I'm sitting here with a little keyboard on my lap and the iPhone in my pocket. I could get used to writing like this. And someday I'll have a braille display with a built-in keyboard; that will be fantastic!

Touch-typing is another great improvement of iOS4. It at least doubles my typing speed. Being able to hear the phonetic equivalent of letters is also great; it has definitely improved my accuracy.

Being able to see all the messages from all mailboxes together is nice, as is threads in mail. At the moment, messages about the new OS are coming in thick and fast, so this feature is particularly welcome. In short, this update is turning out to be every bit as good as I thought it would. It's always nice when that happens.

The only problem with the volume functionality on the keyboard is that it turns the system volume up and down. I can't, as far as I know, adjust just the music. The volume does turn down when VoiceOver is speaking, which makes this work, but it's a bit odd to have the music volume constantly changing; it drops when I type and VoiceOver echoes back my words, and then goes up when VoiceOver is quiet.

I'm listening to Mushroom FM via Ootunes while typing. Pretty neat. It already had the ability to play in the background via Safari, so they haven't updated to use the iOS4 multi-tasking. I just opened Echofon and tweeted to Brian Hartgen, who is doing a show on Mushroom FM. So I have Notes and Safari and Echofon all open, and I am writing using a Bluetooth keyboard. Pretty impressive for a gadget that fits in my pocket.

21 I learned a very important lesson while traveling. Never sync apps to someone else's computer unless it's authorized on your account. I did this because I wanted to test some beta software. I thought there would be a way to manually copy an app even if I didn't sync apps. There wasn't, however, so I tried syncing, hoping I could simply copy over the one app. I was warned that syncing apps would remove all the apps on my phone. I've gotten similar warnings when syncing music that turned out to be overblown, so I went ahead anyway. Then, most of the apps on my phone were deleted. So they really mean it. I did update to iOS4 using my friend's computer, however. It was foolish to try when I would have our laptop available several hours later, but I really wanted the update, so I went ahead, figuring I could get everything back soon if it failed.

While we were traveling to visit our friends, I used the iPhone to look up the address of our local paper, call them, and stop delivery while we were gone. I need to get a search app to make this easier, but at least it worked.

Jon also used the iPhone to look at a weather map at weather.com when a thunderstorm started while we were waiting for a baseball game to begin. The map took forever to load, but at least we got some idea what to expect.

I have a wonderful addendum to the Talking Cow story. The creator said he could understand my confusion about the app, and asked if I wanted to try the beta of a new program he was creating that records sounds. [The final version has since come out; it's called Talking Heads, and it's fun.] I said sure, and he sent it. This program has a Record button. You speak something, and an animal moves its mouth in sync when you play the recording back. Then if you want, you can apply affects to the sound you recorded, such as changing the speed or pitch. Pretty cute. And it even works with VoiceOver. You just need to flick right twice after starting a recording to get to the Stop button, double-tap, then flick left once to the Play button and double-tap that. Once you do, the sound plays, and VoiceOver begins speaking. Before that, it won't speak because all sound is turned off when you press the Record button. When I told the guy I liked the program, he said he wrote the original one for his little boy, who loved seeing animals read his bedtime stories. Isn't that cool? So if you have a concern about an app, or a compliment, for that matter, it doesn't hurt to contact the developer. Who knows what you'll learn.