Month: August 2010

My law firm has offices across the Gulf Coast, from Texas to Florida.  Quite a few have joked that my firm only puts offices in states that are targets for hurricanes.  (Not true, we also have three offices in Tennessee!)  Thankfully, this has been a quiet hurricane season so far, but one cannot get too comfortable with headlines like this:  Despite Slow Start, Government Still Expecting Heavy Hurricane Season.  Lovely.  But one thing that attorneys know is that if you plan for contingencies, you’ll be prepared even when bad things happen. 

There is a new $3.99 app that will help you prepare for the next severe hurricane, especially a hurricane that forces an evacuation.  The flagship app is called iVacuate, and it is designed especially for people here in New Orleans.  But there is also $1.99 app called iVacuate – Basic which is aimed at people elsewhere in the Gulf Coast region and lacks the New Orleans-specific features.

iVacuate tries to take all of the information that you would need during a hurricane and put it into a single app.  First, the app includes Twitter-style updates on the latest hurricane.  The app also includes a world map that shows you the current location of a hurricane.  Fortunately, we don’t have anything in the Gulf of Mexico right now, but here is a screen shot that I took on August 7, 2010 when Tropical Storm Colin was in the Atlantic:

  
 

You can zoom in or out on the map, and the blue dot shows your current location.  One feature I would like to see added to this map is a tail on the hurricane / tropical storm so that you can see the track.  I also wish that the app included some of the projected paths from the National Hurricane Center and the major computer models.  

The app has lots of features to help you plan an evacuation.  First, the app includes information on the New Orleans contraflow plans.  Contraflow is a system designed to speed up the evacuation of a city by reversing the flow on the Interstate lanes that would normally be headed into a city so that all lanes head outward.  The system works well to speed up an evacuation, but you need to be prepared for it because certain lanes will force you to go a certain direction.  If you plan to leave New Orleans and head towards Mississippi, you need to be careful not to be in the lanes that force you to go towards Houston.  Because contraflow is not something put into effect very often, it is difficult to remember which lanes you need to be in.  This app shows you your current location and helps you to plan for the lane changes.

  
 

To plan for a hurricane you should also prepare a disaster supply kit for those times when you don’t plan to evacuate but you know that it is possible to lose power, water, etc. for a long period of time.  The app has a section to help you prepare your kit.  The app also includes a checklist of things to do to prepare for a hurricane.

  

The app is full of interesting information, some of which was provided by Evacuteer, a volunteer organization that assists with evacuations.  Almost all of the information in this app can probably be obtained from other sources if you want to do the legwork yourself, and there are ways to duplicate some of the features of iVacuate.  For example, the app helps you get a list of nearby gas stations to use when you are driving, but you can do that yourself just by using the Maps app and searching for “gas.”  But even though you can reproduce many of the app’s features without iVacuate, the value of the app is to put a lot of information in one place.  When preparing for a hurricane, it is easy to get nervous and forget something, so having a central location for lots of important information can be helpful.

If you want more information, the New Orleans ABC affiliate television station did a short piece on iVacuate, which you can view here.

Click here to get iVacuate ($3.99): 

Click here to get iVacuate Basic ($1.99): 

 I didn’t run across very many interesting iPhone-related news items this week that I considered worth sharing here, but perhaps the quality helps to make up for the lack of quality?  I suppose that we are in the technology doldrums of Summer when not much happens of note.  Or maybe it’s just because it is Friday the 13th?  Anyway, take a look at these if you missed them this week:

• Apple released iOS 4.0.2 for iPhone this week.  The update fixes a single security flaw that could be used by a website to install software on an iPhone without the user knowing about it..  There are no reports of any bad guys exploiting this flaw to harm an iPhone, but this was the flaw that was being used by many for the last two weeks to jailbreak an iPhone by simply visiting a website. I’m sure that the jailbreakers already have a new technique planned, but I am glad that Apple addressed this serious security flaw so quickly before it was used for evil purposes.
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball shares his thoughts on a possible Verizon iPhone in January of 2011.
• Eric Taub of the New York Times reviews some new battery chargers for the iPhone.
• Jeanna Wortham of the New York Times wonders about rules of etiquette on using your smartphone to text or check e-mail.
• Nashville attorney Barry Shrum provides four thoughts on the iPhone 4.
• iSmashPhone reviews CardMunch, an app that scans business cards.
• Lifehacker posted a list of its editors’ favorite iPhone apps.  I don’t agree with all of the choices, but there are certainly some great ones in there.
• According to this statistical analysis by an online dating service, people who take their profile picture with an iPhone, without a flash, in the afternoon are more likely to have sex.  So now you know.
• And finally, following up on recent studies indicating that a huge percentage of BlackBerry owners plan to move to an iPhone, the always funny web comic The Joy of Tech shared this tale of breakup:

Have you ever found yourself out and about, perhaps visiting another city, looking for a free Wi-Fi hotspot?  Perhaps you want to download an app or a podcast that is too big to be downloaded over 3G.  Here are two quick ways to find free Wi-Fi zones on your iPhone.

First, using the iPhone’s built-in Maps app, just do a search for “Free wifi” and you will see some entries:

 

Second, you can find one of the thousands of free AT&T Wi-Fi locations (such as McDonald’s and Starbucks) by using the free AT&T Mark the Spot app.  When I reviewed that app last year, I noted that even if you never want to use the app for its intended purpose (alerting AT&T when you find a spot with poor 3G coverage), the app is a very useful way to select a spot on a map and immediately see (1) the latitude and longitude coordinates of that specific location and (2) the street address.  The address feature is especially useful — it’s a quick way to look at a map and learn whether a part of the street is, say, the 800 block or the 900 block. 

Additionally, the Mark the Spot app added a feature since I reviewed it last year to show you all AT&T hotspots on a map.  To use this, just start the app and tap the “Map” button on the main screen.  This will bring you to a map, where you can tap a button to see your current location or you can scroll around the map.  Orange icons show you where you can find an AT&T hot spot.

  
 

In my tests, the information in Google Maps and the AT&T Mark the Spot app is sometimes out of date.  You may walk to a spot only to find that the facility is now closed or under new management with free Wi-Fi no longer offered.  But most of the time these two methods have proved accurate for me, so don’t forget about these two easy ways to find free Wi-Fi next time you need it.

Click here to get AT&T Mark the Spot (free): 

 Camera+ is a very useful app
if you use your iPhone to take photographs,  It includes lots of great
editing features and gives you the option
to have the iPhone wait until you are holding the iPhone perfectly still
before a picture is taken, reducing the risk of blurry pictures.  It can display an onscreen grid when you take a picture so that you can make sure that your picture is straight.  The app also greatly improves on the built-in Camera app’s ability to focus and set white balance while taking a picture by tapping a spot on the screen; this app lets you tap once for focus and then tap a second time for exposure, allowing you to focus in one one part of the image while adjusting the white balance based on another part of the image.  That one feature alone, while somewhat difficult to describe in words, let’s you take much better pictures that you can with the built-in Camera app.

Another nice feature is that Camera+ saves pictures to a “lightbox” within the app itself so that you can later select the pictures that are worth saving to the Photos app on the iPhone.  Besides editing pictures in the lightbox by cropping them, adding borders, etc., the app comes with a bunch of great filters, far better than any other camera app I’ve seen.  For example, the “flash” filter does a great job of adding (fake) light to a picture that you took in a dark room.  Other filters can really make your pictures pop or make them much more artistic.  The filters were created by photographer Lisa Bettany.  All of this in an app that costs only $2.

  
 

But I’m not reviewing this app today because of any of the great features noted above.  Instead, I love that this app has finally enabled the feature of using the volume buttons on your iPhone to take a picture.  I find that whenever I press the onscreen virtual button to take a picture, I always move my iPhone slightly, which sometimes makes the picture somewhat blurry.  But by holding an iPhone firm in my hand and then just pressing one of the volume buttons on the side, I find it much easier to take pictures, plus the iPhone shakes less so the pictures are more sharp.

But the thing is, this feature is hidden in this app.  The developers at TapTapTap have wanted to add this feature for a long time.  The last update to this app submitted to Apple actually contained NOTHING new except for this one feature just to force Apple to focus on whether to allow it.  But unfortunately, as the developer explains
on the TapTapTap blog, Apple rejected the version of the app with this feature on the
grounds that it might cause user confusion.  I strongly disagree, and if
you do too, the post includes information on how you can let Apple know
that it should change its mind. 

If Apple rejected the version of this app with the feature, why am I talking about it?  Well, apparently a little birdie told Dan of the UneasySilence blog that anyone with the Camera+ app can enable the volume button as a shutter feature just by going into the Safari app on the iPhone and typing as the URL:  camplus://enablevolumesnap — which will cause the Camera+ app to open with the secret feature added.  If you ever want to disable the feature, just go back to Safari and type camplus://disablevolumesnap.

Is Apple going to let the developers get away with this backdoor?  I hope so.  If Apple’s only concern is user confusion, this solves that problem.  Nobody is going to type in that command in the Safari browser unless they know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.  No confusion at all.  Everybody’s happy.  Right?

I’m not sure whether Apple will let this one continue to work, but for now at least, an app that I already use all the time whenever I take pictures has now become much more useful because of this little hack.  I hope it lasts, and frankly I hope that Apple changes its mind and lets TapTapTap add this as a non-hidden feature.

[UPDATE 8/12/10: It looks like Apple removed Camera+ from the App Store.  Oh well.]

Click here for Camera+ ($1.99): 

Back in early 2009, I noted
that when an app developer tried to be cute in the descriptions of the
update to his app by adding to the legitimate descriptions of what is
new in the update the note “Extra Dragons,” Apple rejected the app
update until the developer removed that joke.  A few months later, I noted that Google updated its Google Mobile App and Apple approved an update description that included the jokes “Longer version number”
and “Ninja.”  Either the jokes slipped by Apple, or Apple is more lenient towards Ninjas than Dragons.

Last month, Bump Technologies LLC updated its free Bump app to version 2.0, and I chucked when I saw in the description the item “Extra Magic”:

The Bump app has since been updated again and the joke about magic is no longer there.  Nevertheless, it was fun to see Apple letting developers show a little sense of humor.  Either that, or Apple just considers “magic” to be on the approved list of what a developer can say, along with “ninjas” and unlike “dragons.”  After all, Apple likes to talk about its own products being magical, and is now even selling two products with “magic” in the name: the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad.  (If you are thinking about buying the Magic Trackpad, New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson wrote a favorable review.)

For the record, there is no discrimination here on iPhone J.D., and I afford full rights to magicians, ninjas and dragons.

If you spend a lot of time working at a desk in an office, I strongly encourage you to invest in a dock for your iPhone.  It gives you a specific location to place your iPhone while you are working at your desk so that you always know where it is and don’t have to hunt for your iPhone under a stack of papers.  It allows the iPhone to stand upright so you can easily see the screen to check the time or display a document or a photograph.  Although the iPhone screen is small, it allows you to have a second monitor at your desk, so that for example you can use your entire computer screen to draft a brief while your iPhone screen shows you the latest e-mails.  Plus, as long as the iPhone is in the dock it is charging, so whenever you pick up the iPhone to go someplace you know that you have a full charge.

 

I first purchased an Apple iPhone 3G Dock back in 2008 (and I reviewed it here) and that same dock worked with my iPhone 3GS.  Because the iPhone 4 has a different shape I knew that I would need a new dock, and I did not hesitate to place my order right away.  The Apple iPhone 4 Dock is $29.00, which seems somewhat overpriced for what it is.  You don’t even get a cable; just a tiny box that is barely large enough to hold the dock itself.

 

If you are like me, you have extra iPhone cables from your previous iPhone models so you won’t have to go out and buy another one.  To set up the dock at your desk, you can of course connect the USB end of the cable to your computer, but I actually don’t do that at my office.  I sync my iPhone with my Mac at home, not my PC at work, so I just need to get power to the dock.  The iPhone cable is not long enough to reach to a power strip on the floor or an outlet on the wall, but you can purchase extender cables to solve that problem.  I use this simple, $8 white 3 foot cable that I purchased on Amazon.  Place the dock in a convenient location on your desk (I keep mine right next to my computer monitor) and you are good to go.

 

The back of the dock has ports where you can plug in an Apple Component or Composite AV Cable to send video from the iPhone to a TV or video projector, or you can connect an AV cable to play the music from the iPhone on a stereo.  I have never used those ports so I cannot comment on how they work.

If you own a prior model of the dock, how does this one compare?  The size is very similar, although not quite as deep.  Because of the squared-off design of the iPhone 4, it fits in the dock more snugly than the iPhone 3G or 3GS fit in the older version of the dock.  I’ve seen some people online claim that this means that you need two hands to take the iPhone 4 out of the base.  That is wrong; they just don’t know how to do it.  Just place the side of your hand on the back of the base, grab your iPhone 4 with your thumb and index finger, and lift the iPhone out. 

 

One downside of having docks custom made for the particular iPhone model is that you may need to get a new dock when the next iPhone comes out.  The 3G and 3GS had the same shape, and who knows whether next year’s model of the iPhone will have the same shape as the iPhone 4.  If you want to future-proof the dock, an alternative is to get the $49 Apple Universal Dock.  As the name implies, the Universal Dock will work with most any model of iPod or iPhone, you just have to use the correct size dock adapter in the Universal Dock. The Universal Dock is larger; here is the iPhone 4 Dock and the Universal Dock (with an iPhone 4 insert) side by side:

 

Unlike the iPhone-specific dock, the Universal Dock comes with a remote control (the same remote that comes with Mac computers).  If you decide to hook up your dock to a TV or a stereo, I’m sure that having the remote makes it more convenient to play and pause, skip forward and backwards, etc.  Again, I haven’t tested that feature.

Currently, when you purchase the Universal Dock, it comes with dock adapter inserts that fit the iPod nano (4th and 5th generations), iPod
touch (2nd generation), iPod classic (80GB and 120GB/160GB) and iPod
with video (30GB) and iPhone 3G and 3GS.  Thus, you’ll need to also purchase an insert that fits the iPhone 4.  I’m sure that in the future, the Universal Dock will include iPhone 4 adapters.  For now, Apple separately sells a 3-pack for $9.  Since I bought a Universal Dock many years ago to use with an iPod, I just had to spend $9 to make the Universal Dock compatible with my iPhone 4.  I usually keep the Universal Dock in my bedroom so that I have a convenient place to place my iPhone 4 for it to charge overnight.

 

There are other companies that make docks for the iPhone, but I’ve always been happy with the Apple docks.  They have a good weight to them so that your iPhone isn’t going to fall over, plus they have a rubberized bottom to keep the dock in place.  

For now, I believe that the only place to buy the iPhone 4 dock is through Apple, either a store or the website.  Here are some direct links.

Click here for the iPhone 4 Dock ($29.00).

Click here for the Apple Universal Dock ($49.00).

Click here for the Apple iPhone 4 Universal Dock Connector 3-Pack ($9.00).

Click here for the white USB extender cable on Amazon ($8.07).

There was no iPhone J.D. last week, so here are some of the news items that I ran across over the last two weeks that you might enjoy reading if you missed it the first time.

• George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley notes that rape charges were dropped against a man in Australia after forensic examination of the accuser’s iPhone revealed evidence that the relationship was consensual.  You usually hear these sorts of stories in the context of a divorce (evidence of extramarital relations).  It is interesting to see it in this context.
• Neil Hughes of AppleInsider reports on a new survey of iPhone 4 owners that determined that iPhone 4 owners have fewer dropped calls than iPhone 3GS owners.  I rarely got dropped calls with my iPhone 3GS, and the same is true with my iPhone 4, so I cannot report it being any better or worse.
• Attorney Robert Ambrogi reports on an iPhone app from MSI Global Alliance that provides a directory of member law firms.
• According to Paul Miller of Engadget, Nielsen reports that 89% of iPhone owners plan to get another iPhone, but 50% of BlackBerry users plan to defect to iPhone or Android.
• Similarly, Robert Cyran and Peter Thal Larsen write
  
  in an article in the New York Times that Blackberry’s
  
  dominance may be ending now that more than 80% of the Fortune 100
  
  companies are testing or deploying the iPhone and Google’s Android
  
  operating system is also making inroads.
• On a related note, John Cox of Network World reports that according to Forrester Research, the iPhone is not quite as secure as the BlackBerry, but is now secure enough for large enterprise organizations to approve the iPhone for deployment.  (Link via Niki Black)
• Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal wrote one of the very first reviews of the iPhone 4.  Six weeks later, he writes a follow up review, explaining that as long as you are in an area with decent AT&T coverage, the iPhone is “the best of the super-smartphones.”
• The last time that Minneapolis attorney Randall Ryder wrote about
  
  the iPhone on the Lawyerist, he said that lawyers don’t need it.  As
  
  you can tell from my review yesterday, I disagree.  About a week ago, Ryder wrote about the iPhone again, suggesting that any lawyer who does use the iPhone should consider using Skype as an office phone.  I
  
  can’t imagine making Skype my primary office number, but Skype is a
  
  useful app, and I’ve used it in the past when I was in another country
  
  looking to call home for pennies and when I’ve needed to make calls in
  
  places with Wi-Fi but little to no AT&T signal.
• The Mobile Transcript app, which I reviewed this past May, allows you to view  depositions formatted for your iPhone or iPad.  A recent update added some great new features including keyword search, the ability to jump to the next highlight or a specific page, and the ability to email transcripts from within the app, including PDF versions containing your yellow highlights.
• Attorney David Sparks wrote an extensive review of OmniFocus for iPad.
• Attorney Craig Ball reports on using his iPad in trial.
• Attorney Finis Price discusses using the iJuror app on an iPad to assist with jury selection.
• And finally, Rainn Wilson, the talented actor who plays “Dwight” on The Office, has a Posterous account on which he often posts pictures that (I believe) he takes with his iPhone.  You never know what you will find there.  One day he takes a picture of co-stars at a Comic-Con 2010 panel, another day he posts a picture of a prop from The Office.  He recently posted what I imagine must be a 100% true (ahem) picture of his iPhone inbox.  (It contains adult themes, so avert your eyes if you are easily offended.)

The iPhone 4 has been out for over a month now, and there are numerous, comprehensive reviews on the Internet.  However, one topic that I haven’t seen addressed elsewhere is whether an attorney who is currently using an older model of the iPhone should upgrade to the iPhone 4.  I was recently interviewed by the Quebec legal site Droit Inc. (Law Inc.) to discuss this very question, so you can read some of my thoughts here as long as you can read French (or don’t mind reading this imperfect Google translation).  If you’d rather get my complete thoughts directly from me (and in English!), the focus of this “review” of the iPhone 4 is whether those current iPhone owners who have been on the fence ought to upgrade.  In short, if you own an iPhone 3G (or earlier model), the answer is yes.  If you own an iPhone 3GS, the answer is probably.

The screen

Attorneys read a lot of text on their iPhone — e-mails, documents attached to e-mails, web pages, PDF and Word files that you keep with you, cases and statutes in an app like Fastcase, etc.  Unlike previous iPhones that had a 480 x 320 screen, the iPhone 4 doubles both
dimensions to provide four times the pixels, and thus the iPhone 4 has a 960 x
640 screen.  But those are just numbers, what does it mean in real life?  It means that text on the screen looks beautiful.  You cannot see the dots that make up the characters; it feels like you are reading a printed publication.  The reading experience is so much more pleasant that now, whenever I find myself looking at text on an earlier model of the iPhone, I am taken aback by the difference.  (And until about a month ago, I thought that the iPhone 3GS had a wonderful screen.)

Of course, it’s not just text.  Photographs are much richer on an iPhone 4, just beautiful to look at, and apps that have been optimized for the iPhone 4’s screen look much better.

Nevertheless, the #1 reason to upgrade to an iPhone 4 is that you will love the screen.  Reading text on a small screen is often less than ideal, but with the amazing iPhone 4 screen, you won’t mind.

Speed

If you are upgrading from an iPhone 3G (or earlier model), the speed increase of the iPhone 4 is incredible.  If you have an iPhone 3GS, the speed increase is noticeable, but not dramatic.

Why does speed matter?  It’s not like you are using your iPhone to create the next Star Wars movie (although it has been noted that the iPhone is more powerful than the computers that were used way back when to create Star Wars).  It matters because the increase in speed makes the iPhone so much more responsive.  E-mails, pictures and web pages jump to the screen more quickly, you can switch between apps more quickly, everything just has much more pep.  This speed makes you forget that the iPhone is doing work for you and instead lets you just focus on the subject of the task that you asked the iPhone to do.  With a faster iPhone, you are more efficient, and more importantly you feel much more efficient.

Of course, if you are a “power” iPhone user, the speed has other advantages as well.  For example, if you want to edit video shot on your iPhone using Apple’s iMovie app, you need to have the iPhone 4 because of its speed (and additional memory).  Older, slower iPhones are not really up to the task.

The iPhone 3GS is fast enough for most tasks that it is debatable whether the speed increase alone is a reason to upgrade.  But if you have an iPhone 3G, speed is likely to be one of the top reasons that you will be happy that you made the jump to the iPhone 4.

Kids

The iPhone 4 has a much better camera.  It can take five megapixel pictures (up from three on the iPhone 3GS, and up from two on the earlier models), plus it does a better job taking pictures in low light, plus it has an LED flash to take pictures in very low light.  And the improved camera also allows you to take HD video (720p at 30 fps).  Will that camera help your law practice?  Probably not, although it is worth noting that if you ever use an iPhone to take a picture of a document as a cheap substitute for a portable scanner, the better camera on the iPhone 4 will be a vast improvement.

But we all know that your life is more than just your law practice, it is about your loved ones, including, if you have them, your kids.  The better camera on the iPhone is great for people who have kids.  You never know when you will be at the park, the zoo, or just around the house when your child will start to do something cute.  Unless you are a professional photographer, you are unlikely to have a nice camera with you at all times, but you will have that iPhone and in just a few seconds you can get it from your pocket and shoot a picture or take a short video.  The iPhone lets you capture those moments to bring you smiles months and years from now.

As a side benefit, if you ever let your kids play with your iPhone (and in my experience, most children over two years old can figure out an iPhone and love to play with it), once you upgrade to an iPhone 4 you will have a spare iPhone that you can let them play with without worrying so much about whether they drop it.  (And without a working SIM card, you won’t have to worry about them making a call — unless you left your Skype app on there!)

While I’m talking about kids, I should mention that the iPhone 4 has a front-facing camera that allows you to do FaceTime video chats.  Right now the other person has to have an iPhone 4 for this feature to work, but I’m sure that any day now, Apple (or someone) will make it possible for an iPhone 4 to conduct a FaceTime session with a desktop or laptop computer running a program such as iChat.  Once this happens, you’ll be able to more easily use video chat to tell your kids goodnight when you are traveling, as long as you have Wi-Fi in your hotel room.

Better reception

Notwithstanding all of the recent news stories about how you can decrease the bars on your iPhone by touching a certain spot on the bottom of the left side, in my experience the reception on the iPhone 4 is much better.  I now get a 3G signal in locations where I never got one before.  In my opinion, Apple’s decision to put the antenna on the outside of the phone was one of trade-offs.  It leaves more space inside of the phone so that you can have a larger battery and longer battery life, plus the antenna on the outside usually gives you a better signal — unless you are in an area of weak coverage and you place your finger in that one spot.  Those trade-offs are definitely worth it, in my opinion.

If you love your current iPhone except for the fact that sometimes it doesn’t get a signal in certain locations, I suspect that you will find that the iPhone 4 does a better job in those problematic locations.

In sum

There are lots of little features of the iPhone 4 that I also love.  For example, the new three-axis gyroscope makes some iPhone games much better.  The LED flash makes a mighty fine flashlight when you are walking around your house in the dark.  A second microphone near the top of the iPhone works to cancel background noise while the microphone at the bottom of the iPhone picks up your voice, improving the quality of phone calls when you are in a noisy environment.  The battery life is a little longer, especially compared to the iPhone 3G and earlier models, so you are much more likely to go a full day without needing a recharge.  But as nice as these features are, I can’t say that any of them qualify as independent reasons to upgrade (except perhaps for the better battery life).

The iPhone 3GS is a great phone.  It is almost as fast as the iPhone 4, and if the camera and video chat features don’t matter to you (and I know that for many attorneys they will not), then it really just comes down to the screen.  It is a gorgeous screen, and I think that the screen alone is a good enough reason to upgrade, but reasonable minds could differ on that.  Thus, I think that the iPhone 4 is probably a worthy upgrade if you own an iPhone 3GS, but it is something to think about.  On the other hand, if you own an iPhone 3G or earlier model, stop reading this website and go buy an iPhone 4 now!

UPDATE: Tom Freeland
shared some thoughts in a comment to this post that I thought were
worth elevating to the post itself to provide another perspective on why
you might want to upgrade:

I upgraded a week ago and have a slightly different list:

1) Speed and some other not-quite tangible improvements in how it works.
In addition to working faster, I have the sense it works better, both
in using apps (I’m having less apps just bomb out in mid-use) and have
noticed other small improvements that add up to a lot.  [Jeff adds:  I suspect that this is because the iPhone 4 has twice as much memory as prior models.]

2) The camera is huge in what it offers. The two banner pictures on my
blog now were taken with it. I can’t overstate how much better is.

3) The device is much better designed in ways that suggest to me it will
be far more durable. Look at the buttons, just for starters.

4) I’m thinking it does get better reception, although I have had at
least a half-dozen dropped calls that are a really startling
experience — boom! Call gone! — like nothing I ever had before, so this
may be a wash. I’ve ordered a free case.

5) I did a road trip last week using the map, and have the sense there
are some tweaks and improvements to how it works.

Finally, if you installed the 4.0 software on a 3G phone, you may
encounter some bumps in the road that cause you to upgrade (that
happened to me. Apple tech support did not say kind things about the
advice I got from AT&T about how to deal with the problems, which
included ending my ability to get both voice mail and text messages).

All said, this is quite an improvement of a device I already liked a
lot.

Many banks and other financial institutions have helpful iPhone apps that allow you to see your account balance and recent transactions, locate ATMs and transfer funds between accounts.  These are all very useful functions, and the Chase app that has been out for a long time now handles these functions well.  But a new feature added to the app last month lets you use the app to deposit a check without having to go to the bank.  Just scan the check using your iPhone’s camera and the check is deposited.  That’s it.  It’s a really neat function and makes this a must-have app for anyone who uses Chase as their bank.

Let’s start by talking about the basic features.  When you launch the app you can quickly find close ATMs.  The app figures out where you are and lists all of the close ATMs giving you the address, the distance from your current locations, and all of the relevant information for the ATM such as features, hours of operation, etc.  This is very useful when you need to get money and you don’t know where to go.

Once you log in, you can also see your account balance and recent transactions for all of your accounts, transfer funds between accounts, schedule payments, etc.  These are mostly standard features for a bank’s iPhone app, but it is nice to see all of them here.  (By the way, all of the black boxes in the following pictures are my redactions of account numbers and other confidential information — not something that you see when you use the app.)

  
 

What I love about the latest version of this app is the third button at the bottom of the app:  Deposits.  You can actually deposit a check using your iPhone app without even having to go to the bank.  To test this feature, I used a reimbursement check from my law firm that had been sitting in my wallet for a while because I hadn’t had a chance to go to the bank.  The first time you use the feature, you will need to enroll your account in the Chase Quick Deposit program.  It’s free, but you need to read and agree to a legal agreement first.

Once you are ready to proceed, the app asks you to select the account for the deposit (I chose my checking account) and enter the amount of the check.  Then the app brings up a screen with the camera activated and a blue box.  Put your iPhone about a foot above your check, make the check line up within the blue box, hold the iPhone steady, and then tap the button to take a picture.  You can zoom in to make sure that the numbers are not too blurry.  You can retake the picture if you were shaking your hand too much or if the lighting doesn’t look right, or you can tap the Use button when you are ready to proceed.

  
 

After you take a picture of the front of the check, you need to also take a picture of the back of the check (with your signature endorsing the check).  Then click the Next button.  The app will then send the image to Chase and Chase’s server will read the check and make sure that the amount that it sees on the check is the same amount that you entered.  If not, the app will ask you to take another picture of the check.  If the numbers match, then you will see a confirmation screen telling you that your funds have been deposited.

  
 

If you have an e-mail address associated with  your Chase account, you will also immediately receive an e-mail confirming the deposit.  That’s it, and as you can see from the timestamps on the above pictures, the entire process just takes a few minutes.  (Indeed, it took me longer than it normally would because I was kicking the tires on the app, for example seeing what would happen if I submitted a really blurry picture — the app wouldn’t let me go forward until I took a better picture.)

The app tells you to hold on to the paper check until you get your next statement in the mail, just to make sure that everything worked well.  After that, you can just tear up the check.  You can currently only deposit up to $1,000 a day and up to $3,000 a month using the app.

Many Chase ATMs have the ability to let you deposit checks using a similar technique; the ATM scans the check.  I’ve noticed that sometimes the ATM will not accept a handwritten check when it has trouble reading the numbers.  I haven’t tried this yet with the app, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it also has trouble with handwriting.  But for a printed check, I suspect that the app, like any ATM machine, will work just fine.

I should mention that there is one more cool new feature in the Chase app, although I haven’t tested it yet myself.  The app now includes a Person-to-Person QuickPay feature which allows you to pay another person directly from your Chase account, without the need to write a check.  All you need to know is their e-mail address.  It looks like this is Chase’s attempt to compete with PayPal.

Chase isn’t the first bank to let you make a deposit your your iPhone.  In August of 2009, a bank called USAA added the feature, but that is a small bank and I believe that you need to have served in the military (or have someone in your family in the military) to use that bank.  Even so, USAA tells the Chicago Sun Times that it has already deposited more than 1.5 million checks using its iPhone and Android apps, almost a billion dollars in deposits.

Chase, on the other hand, is one of the largest banks in the country.  (I believe it is #2, behind Bank of America and ahead of Citibank.)  For the large number of Chase customers with iPhones, being able to deposit a check while sitting at a desk or at home without having to drive to a bank branch or ATM and wait in line will be incredibly useful.  The Chase app has been on my iPhone for a long time now, but I think it’s time to move it up to one of my front pages.

Click here for the Chase app (free): 

There have been a few times over the last few weeks that I’ve looked at an entry in the calendar on my iPhone and something hasn’t looked quite right.  It wasn’t until today that I actually realized the problem, and it looks to me to be a bug in iOS 4:  certain events in my calendar were supposed to show up on one day but instead showed up the day before in the List View. 

For example, I had an “all day” entry on my calendar for today telling me that it was a friend’s birthday and I had an 8am entry in my calendar for a meeting tomorrow morning.  However, when using the List view in the Calendar app, the birthday was showing up on Monday August 2, not Tuesday August 3, and the 8am August 3 entry was showing up at the bottom of the list for entries for August 2.  In the “Day” and “Month” views the entries showed up correctly, and if I tapped on a particular items all of the information was correct.  It was just in the List view that things were askew.

A quick Google search pointed me to this page on Apple’s website in the Support Discussions section.  Apparently, I wasn’t alone.  Other people who synced their calendar either with Microsoft Exchange (which I do), with Google Calendar or with MobileMe were reporting the same problem.  The recommended solution posted by several people was to go to Settings –> Mail, Contacts, Calendars –> [the name of my Exchange account] and then, on this screen, turn Calenders to OFF:

The iPhone warns you that this will delete all Calendar data from the iPhone, which is fine because all of my data was on my corporate Exchange server.  I then turned the Calendars ON again, and my calendar entries started to download again from my server.  It took a few minutes for all of the entries to be restored, but now all is well and birthdays and meetings and other events are showing up in the right place in my List view.

My hope is that this is the end of the problem for me, but I’ve seen others post that this is just a temporary solution and that the problem can return.  The very last post on that thread, from “b-gee” on August 1, says:  “Apple has responded to my bug report at bugreport.apple.com, saying that this is a known issue.”  Hopefully this is true and Apple is working on a fix right now.

For the time being, though, if you are looking at Calendar entries using the List view and something doesn’t seem quite right, switch to the Day or Month view to see if entries are showing up different in those views.  And if that is your problem, consider doing what I did and flush your Calendar data and then download it again it from your server.