New iPhone App Boosts to Save the Music CD

Regardless of your position on the economic stimulus plan, the war in Iraq, or the breed of the White House dog, some good decisions are actually made by the Presidents of the United States of America. We’re not talking about Bush or Obama here, no, we’re talking about PUSA, that music band from the ’90’s with such memorable hits as Lump and Peaches. So what’s a two-hit wonder like PUSA have to do with making good decisions a decade after their day in the sun? Hint: it has to do with visionary marketing that takes advantage of the iPhone platform to reinvigorate fan interest, and maybe even reinvent the the music industry. Find out why we think the new iPhone app from the Presidents of the United States of America is so special, and why the RIAA should sit up and take notice.

CD Sales - Outlook is Dismal
It’s no surprise that music sales continue to plummet as the RIAA struggles to leverage burgeoning internet technologies to distribute music to consumers. Let’s face it, the RIAA has no one to blame but themselves. They were late to the internet party, and when they finally did show up they were brandishing lawyers instead of trying make friends. It cost the music industry tens of millions to take down Napster, and seemingly, all for naught. P2P networks continue to flourish and the á la carte commerce model of iTunes has all but destroyed CD sales. Yet, CDs continue to stock the shelves of local music haunts and big retailers alike, which means the music industry really hasn’t changed as much as we had expected, at least not by now. It’s been ten years since the fall of Napster. Where is this new music business model that will turn the industry upside down?
In the last few years we have seen some new internet music business models that have shown some promise. iTunes is, of course, one major success story. The remaining contenders in this space are, as Simon Cowell would say, forgettable. Last year we watched Lala reinvent itself with an awesome music service that could threaten iTunes, but has yet to gain traction in the marketplace. Then of course, there’s the iPhone darling app, Pandora, which has a tremendous user base but really only serves to drive more sales out of iTunes. Instead of creating a new business model, Pandora has built upon the existing success of iTunes.

With the invention of digital music, and subsequently iTunes, two major shifts occurred. One, CD sales slumped because there is little reason for consumers to buy CDs instead of downloading the music and burning their own discs. The music industry has not yet figured out a way to add value to CDs in a way that is attractive to consumers. Then along came iTunes which offered an á la carte music menu to consumers to buy a song-at-a-time. This may seem like a win-win for everyone, except that it came with an unexpected side effect for the artists. Since most consumers will only buy the singles that they hear on the radio, they don’t have an opportunity to discover other songs in the artist’s repertoire, and in the end, the artists suffer.
CD Stimulus Plan from the Presidents?

Now, along comes the iPhone app from an almost forgotten band of the 90’s which could potentially pave the way for adding value to CDs while giving consumers more access to a band’s entire catalog of music. How? The iPhone app from the Presidents of the United States of America offers users unlimited access to all of the band’s music. It’s like paying $1.99 for an entire box set of albums. There are a couple of catches, though. You can’t listen to any song of your choice, instead you have to listen to a random song from the band. Also, the music streams which means you have to be connected to the network in order to listen to the music. That said, this app could be the prototype of a new marketing vehicle for bands while giving the music industry a new way to add value to CDs that sit on the shelves.

Imagine buying a CD from an artist that comes with a code to unlock an iPhone app which gives you unlimited streaming access to the entire collection of music from that artist. It’s great for the artist because the fan gets exposed to music outside of the radio spectrum. It’s great for the fans because they get more value than just the songs included on the CD. It’s also great for the music labels because it will encourage more music sales. Even better still, the iPhone app could easily include loads of additional information about the artist including tour dates and ticket sales, merchandising, messaging and alerts, games, wallpapers, and the list goes on and on.


Presumably, the PUSA app is priced at $2.99 to cover the royalty fees for the music because this app wasn’t created by the band or the label. However, if the RIAA were smart, they would create an app like this for every artist and then include it with CDs as an incentive for consumers. The labels own the music so there’s only the cost of development, which they can easily foot as a marketing expense.

We love the potential that the PUSA iPhone app has for all artists and their fans. This kind of app could eventually save the music CD by adding real value to it, but only if the RIAA sees the light. Until then, a pay-for app like PUSA’s will probably only appeal to the band’s die hard fans willing to pay $2.99 in the App Store.

iPhone and iPod touch helping doctors help you

We knew we should have listened to our mothers and became doctors instead of web developers. At least we’d spend more time using these cool iPhone tools to improve patient care instead of surfing YouTube all day. These three new medical applications indicate that the iPhone and iPod touch are starting to make their way into doctors’ offices and hospitals.

1. Drug Information - Epocrates web-based drug guide

2. Practice Managment - Software from MacPractice

3. Health News - The Chondriac health news reader

Drug Information

Having free drugs at your fingertips may sound like a dream to your friends in Amsterdam, but over here it might get you arrested. With this free drug database from Epocrates (now optimized for iPhone and iPod touch), it’s like having a drug dealer on speed dial. Well, okay, maybe more like a pharmacist.

Epocrates has long been regarded as the gold standard of mobile reference tools for doctors and clinicians, and their applications run natively on a broad range of mobile platforms (Palm, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry). They have recently released an iPhone optimized version of their web-based drug reference tool, Epocrates Online, which features drug content written for the health care professional. We would love to see the entire Epcocrates mobile suite running native on the iPhone, and perhaps we’ll get our wish after Apple releases the SDK next year. Until then, you’ll need a PDA or Smartphone to use the native Epocrates applications. In the meantime, you can access the Epocrates Online drug information with iPhone or iPod touch at m.epocrates.com/iphone.

Practice Managment

For professional grade practice management software on the iPhone, you may find what you need with MacPractice, offering specific solutions for medical doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and optometrists. MacPractice software is very robust with the ease-of-use design that Macintosh is famous for. And MacPractice now has iPhone and iPod touch access built in, allowing you to use several key features from the convenience of your Apple device.

• Log in to view patients with appointments any day
• Search for a patient
• View patient contact information
• Tap to email a patient
• Tap to call a patient
• Review patient Rx history

Health News

There is no shortage of health-related news web sites available, but Chondriac (a new tool from mobile app creators, dataXform) makes it much easier to read that news on your iPhone or iPod touch. The news is organized nicely into categories for men, women, and children. There are also news categories for specific diseases and ailments, along with hooks to topical health care blogs. The app is very responsive and features the intuitive slider UI common in many iPhone web applications.

Point your iPhone or iPod touch to www.chondriac.com to start reading health care news today. You can also access Chondriac using Safari 3 from your desktop computer and the same URL above.

source: http://www.touchtip.com/

With Quicken Online, the iPhone is so money

There is a new breed of personal financial management applications that don’t require you to be an accountant in order use them. Sites like Wasabe and Mint are targeted to younger people that don’t need advanced features and are just looking for an easy-to-use system to view and manage their finances while getting advice along the way. Both of these web apps are great in their own way, but each lack mobile access for iPhone and iPod touch. On January 8th, Intuit comes to the rescue with the release of Qucken Online, a simplified version of their desktop software that features an optimized interface for the iPhone.What makes this so exciting? Imagine using your iPhone as a register for checks and credit card expenses. Tap in your expenses as you make them and this gets reflected in your Quicken Online account instantly. This is extremely handy for shared accounts where multiple users need to see actual financial positions in real-time, instead of what the bank happens to know about at that time. Intuit also plans to integrate Quicken Online with TurboTax next year (for the 2008 tax year), a move that will assure this web app the top position among its competitors.

Quicken Online connects to your bank accounts and credit cards to give you a picture of your cash flow, and it knows how to connect to over 5,000 banks and credit card institutions. Online bill payment services will not be included in the launch but will be added in future updates. The service does detect which of your expenses are bills, then sends reminder alerts by email or SMS before those bills are due.

Access to Quicken Online is priced at $2.99 per month (after a 30-day trial). Sign up for the beta today at http://www.quickenonline.com/.

source: http://www.touchtip.com/

Instantly Hide & Unhide iPhone Applications

If you've been an iPhone owner for any significant amount of time you have likely had friends or family ask to grope your shiny new toy. While most of us don't necessarily mind letting others play with the iPod, YouTube, or Safari, allowing them access to Mail and your Text Messages is another story. Luckily almost any item on the home screen can be hidden with a simple double tap. Read on for the how-to.

The ability to hide and unhide applications was likely created specifically for Steve Jobs to present the iPod touch, but it has made its way into the latest software update. This handy little feature was found by a TUAW reader and recently mentioned on the blog.
So how is it done? The feature, as you might have guessed, isn't enabled by default. To enable it, you need to have a jailbroken iPhone with some means of accessing the filesystem so you can edit com.apple.springboard.plist. Specifically:
Navigate to "/var/root/Library/Preferences/" and open up "com.apple.springboard.plist" in a plain text editor.

In the text editor, look for "SBEnableALS". Below it, add these two lines:
SBEnableAppReveal
Save that and restart your iPhone. When you get back to the home screen, Safari, YouTube, and The iTunes Store will be hidden. To unhide them, double tap their respective spaces.
To enable hiding of other applications, add the following to the Info.plist file contained within the .app folder:
SBIsRevealable
To disable hiding, change the "true" variable to "false". It should end up looking like:
SBIsRevealable

The disadvantages? For one, every time SpringBoard is restarted, the apps become hidden again. This means that you'll have to unhide apps every time you restart or install new applications. They do stay unhidden when you put the iPhone to sleep, though. Also, some apps, such as the iPod, are "special" and won't work with this trick. You may also notice a slight bit of lag when you first tap a revealable app because it's waiting for the second tap, but it shouldn't hurt anything. Bottom line: it's not for everyone, but it's handy for those who'd use it.

Now, the next time someone asks to see your iPhone, you won't need to worry about them changing your settings, calling Aunt Betty, or reading your emails.

Enjoy!

Random iPhone User Tips

I really like the iPhone but hate the shape of the earbuds that are bundled with it. What keeps me from tossing them is they have some cool functionality. The microphone not only works well as a hands-free device when on the phone in the car, but is also a handy control for the iPod function of the iPhone. Click it once and you can pause the music, twice and it jumps to the next song. So I didn’t want to trash the earbuds even though they don’t fit well.

My solution… a $12 investment (at CompUSA) in Griffin EarJams. They convert Apple’s earbuds into more comfortable inner earphones. This combination is not the ultimate in sound quality, but it sure is an improvement over the stock earbuds.

Next, I keep my iPhone protected by passcode. This is a nice feature, but have you noticed that the welcome screen has no personal information on it? Just the time and date. What happens if you misplace your iPhone?

I’m using the Incase Molded Rubber Case to protect the edges of the iPhone. As an added measure of protection, I’ve slipped a business card between the case and the phone that has my contact information on it. That way, if I misplace my device, I have half a chance or recovering it. (Just don’t use your iPhone number for the contact info… doh!)

Finally, I’m keeping the phone charged in the car with the XtremeMac InCharge Auto. It’s a great looking device with an intelligent self-resetting fuse. For $19.95, it’s done a great job of keeping me juiced up on the go.

Monday August 13, 2007 8:19AM
by Derrick Story in Opinion
Source: http://www.oreillynet.com/

Twenty-one favorite iPhone tips

Browse better, e-mail more efficiently, and do more with your iPhone

You can do a lot with the iPhone—make a phone call, surf the Web, watch a movie—just with the touch of a virtual button. But dig a little deeper, and you can do a lot more. After three weeks of putting the iPhone through its paces, here are 21 tips for getting the most out of the iPhone’s advertised features… or finding a couple of features you might not know were part of the phone’s repertoire. Look for more tips in the coming weeks, both at Macworld.com and our new iPhone Central blog.

1. Use your iPhone as a storage device

One of side benefits to the iPod beyond its music-playing capabilities is the fact that you can use it to store files. You can’t do this with an out-of-the-box iPhone. But with the help of a $10 program—and a Mac—you can. The app is iPhoneDrive, a small utility from Ecamm Network that displays the free storage area of an iPhone in the manner of a Finder window in Column view. To add files to the iPhone, either click the Copy to iPhone button or drag a file or folder to the iPhoneDrive Window; dragging from the iPhone or clicking on Copy From iPhone puts iPhone files on your Mac. Note that music and photo files for use on your iPhone are off limits.—CHRISTOPHER BREEN

2. Get a bigger keyboard for Web browsing

Like any other iPhone function requiring data entry, tapping Safari’s address bar summons an on-screen keyboard. However, if you rotate the iPhone horizontally before tapping the address bar, the Safari window will switch to horizontal mode; then, when you then tap the address bar, the onscreen keyboard also appears horizontally. More important, it will also be much larger than the standard vertical keyboard, making data entry a little easier. By the way, Safari is currently the only iPhone application in which this horizontal keyboard appears. (Also worth noting: If you summon the keyboard before rotating your iPhone, then Safari won’t rotate.)—DAN FRAKES

3. Create a home page in Safari

With the regular version of Safari that runs on your Mac (and now your Windows-based PC), setting a particular site as your home page is as simple as going to the General tab in Preferences and typing in a URL. You can’t do that on the iPhone, however. But you can use this work-around: Add your would-be home page to your bookmarks list and then move it to the top of your bookmarks list. Yes it’s an extra tap—first the Bookmarks button and then the bookmark itself—but it will get you to your favorite Web page with a minimum of fuss.—DF

4. Share your URLs

If you want to send the URL of a Web page you’re viewing to a friend, tap the Address Bar, then tap Share. A new e-mail message, containing the URL, will open in Mail; just choose a recipient(s), add any comments you want to include, and tap Send.—DF

5. Scroll through separate boxes on a Web page

If you encounter a scrolling box or list when surfing Safari on your iPhone—say you’re responding to a post at the Macworld.com forums —and try to scroll using your finger, you’ll find that the entire page scrolls, instead of just the box. The trick is to zoom in and scroll such areas with two fingers.—DF

6. Make a call from Safari

If you find a phone number in Safari that you’d like to call—say the phone number at a restaurant you’d like to make reservations at—there’s no need to jump to the phone component. Just tap the number; iPhone will dial it for you. (This is also the case with phone numbers and URL embedded in e-mails and SMS chats; tapping either one will place a call or open a Web page, respectively.)—PHILIP MICHAELS

7. Find out where those links go

When in Safari, holding your fingertip down on a link instead of tapping it produces an information balloon that displays the underlying URL. The same thing happens in Mail when you hold a link, which makes this tip much more useful. Now when those “account update” e-mails appear, you can press and hold on the link to find out if you’re really going to be taken to the site the e-mail claims.—DF

8. Avoid Mail confusion

Don’t name two of your e-mail accounts with the same name, as Mail will get confused and copy the settings from one account to the other. And you can’t fix the situation by simply renaming one account; you’ll need to delete one of the accounts and then recreate it.—DF

9. Mark previously-read messages as unread

There doesn’t appear to be a way to the mark a read message as unread on the iPhone, but it’s in there. While viewing a message, tap Details, which reveals a Mark As Unread option; tap it, and the next time you view your Inbox, the message will display the Unread indicator.—DF

10. Recover ‘lost’ e-mails

Say you try to send an e-mail, but the iPhone can’t get network access. You might think your message has disappeared completely, but don’t worry—it’s still on your phone. A temporary Outgoing folder is created, and the message winds up in there. You can access this temporary folder from the main screen of the sending account; the folder will disappear once network access is available and the message is sent.—DF

11. Create e-mail folders

Well, actually, you can’t create e-mail folders on the iPhone. What you can do, however, with an IMAP e-mail account is create folders on the IMAP server—for example, if you have a .Mac account, using the .Mac Web Mail interface. Those folders will then appear on the iPhone, and their contents will—eventually—be synced between the iPhone and the server.—DF

12. Save e-mail messages as drafts

If you want to save a message you’re working on so you can come back to it later, tap Cancel. Instead of deleting the message immediately, Mail pops up a dialog asking you to Save, Don’t Save, or Cancel. Tap Save and the message is placed in your Drafts folder. If your account doesn’t currently have a Drafts folder, Mail will create one. However, don’t be alarmed if the message doesn’t appear in Drafts immediately; in my testing, it takes a while to show up.—DF

13. Pick where you listen to voicemail

If you’ve got a Bluetooth headset, incoming calls get routed there automatically—not so when you call up Visual Voicemail. However, an Audio button on the Visual Voicemail screen lets you set where you listen to your message: the handset, the built-in speaker, or a Bluetooth headset.—JIM DALRYMPLE

14. Find another way to scroll through Contacts

Everyone knows that you can scroll through the Contacts list on your iPhone two different ways—either flick your finger on the list to scroll up or down, or tap on one of the letters on the alphabet running down the right side of the screen to jump to contacts beginning with that letter. But there is a third way: hold your finger on the alphabetical list and then slide up and down—you’ll be able to scroll through your Contacts in a more controlled manner than by flicking your finger.—JD

15. Use the Favorites and Recents list for more than just phone calls

Favorites and Recents are part of the main Phone screen; the former is iPhone’s version of frequently called numbers while the latter is a list of people who you’ve called and whose calls you missed. But this is not just a phone feature—assuming the numbers in Favorites and Recents belong to a mobile phone, you can send them an SMS message. Just tap the > button next to the contact name or number and then tap the Text Message button at the bottom of the contact listing.—DF

16. Save time in driving directions

One of the primary uses for the iPhone’s Map application is to get driving directions. Both the starting point and destination fields offer the Bookmarks button, so you can quickly use a bookmark, recent location, or contact when searching for directions. The first thing you should do in Maps is find your own address and then bookmark it—this will make finding directions to and from locations as easy as tapping your home bookmark.—DF

17. Recreate some of the iPod’s audio controls

If you listen to an audiobook on an iPod, you probably know that, ever since the fourth-generation iPod’s release, you can alter the playback speed to make it go faster or slower as your preferences dictate. That feature makes its way over to the iPhone as well. Just tap Settings and then the iPod option; tap the Audiobook Speed entry and in the resulting screen, tap to choose among Slower, Normal, or Faster.

In fact, that’s just one iPod feature that also appears on the iPhone. You can also use the Settings screen to turn on Sound Check (the feature that makes volume more consistent from one track to another) and change the EQ with 22 included equalization presets.—CB

18. Change your iPod icons

By default, the icons on the bottom of the iPod screen are Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos, and More. You can change those first four, just as you would the commands that appear on an iPod’s main screen. Simply tap the More icon and, in the More screen, tap the Edit button at the top-left of the screen. A Configure screen will wipe up from the bottom and display icons for Albums, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Genres, Composers, Compilations, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Videos. To substitute one of these icons for one that appears at the bottom of the screen, just tap and hold on an icon and drag it over the icon you want to replace. Tap Done when you’re done.—CB

19. Say goodbye to already-viewed videos

Even owners of the largest-capacity iPhone might feel constrained by the 8GB limit when it comes to storing videos. A full-length motion picture takes up around 1GB of storage, which is a significant chunk of space for just one piece of media. To help ease the storage crunch however, the iPhone offers to delete videos after you’ve finished watching them; just tap a button and Pirates of the Caribbean will disappear off your iPhone, freeing up more space.—CB

20. Syncing notes with the iPhone

One of the major limitations to the iPhone’s Notes app is that you can’t sync it with data from any application on your Mac. There’s a work-around, however—each contact has a notes field. So create a fake contact and paste any info you’d like to keep with you in the notes field for that contact in Address Book. One sync later, and all that info will be at your fingertips.—JONATHAN SEFF

21. Rebooting your iPhone

Pretend for a moment that your iPhone suddenly becomes unresponsive. Pushing the Home button does nothing. Hitting the On/Off button produces the same discouraging result. What do you do? Apple’s first reset tip is to press and hold the Home button for about six seconds to quit any application that might have locked up your iPhone. If that doesn’t work, trying pressing and holding both Home and On/Off; after about 10 seconds the Apple logo will appear. (This reboot trick takes a little big longer than the iPod equivalent—holding down Select and Menu usually restarts your music player after four seconds.)—CB