Net Portal - A Nifty Network File Explorer

I was thinking just the other day that one of the missing features of the iPhone was a proper file explorer as you find on all other computer operating systems. Even on my old PPC (Windows Mobile) there was a file explorer.

I then discovered Net Portal. This provides access to a local directory (not a real file browser but considering the Jobsian restrictions we are subject to not bad) and to network shares. It does provide access via a VPN but this has to be configured and requires some network skills to configure this. I have not tested the app using a VPN. There are two versions of this app., Net Portal Lite which is free and is restricted to viewing PDF and image files and Net Portal which is unrestricted. The full version is AU$3.99.

Using Windows and Samba shares is pretty easy and is a straight forward configuration. You need to have shared directories from your Windows machine or using Samba from your Unix/Linux/Mac host. You can then add a new machine to the Machines page by using the host name or IP address. Once you have set up the host details you then select the host and the list of shares appears. You can then navigate to the file you want to open and if it a supported file type it just opens in the appropriate format. I was playing some music from my Samba share and it worked flawlessly.

Net Portal is one of those utilities that ads basic functions that you would have thought would be included in the basic OS. Indeed, I am a little surprised that this type of utility is allowed considering the stranglehold over the iOS that Apple exerts. I half expect that Apple either remove the app or get the dev to remove some of the features. However, this is a nice little utility that does one thing and does it very well indeed.

VOIP or Another Way To Make Phone Calls

This term VOIP has been bandied around for a while now and for those who are not tech savvy it can be pretty confusing. Even those of us who are technically inclined can be bamboozled from time to time. In this post I will attempt to cut through the tech and try to explain what it is and how it can save you a lot of money.

What has this to do with the iPhone? Up until recently Apple has placed severe restrictions on the use of VOIP applications on the iPhone but they have now dropped them and it now makes it far more attractive to use VOIP and thus potentially save you a bunch of money.

VOIP who?

VOIP is an acronym meaning Voice Over IP, or Voice Over the Internet. Many people have heard of Skype and the associated product Skype Out. This has been around for many years and has become quite popular and although it does use a voice over the Internet type system it is not exactly the same. With VOIP you can use a regular phone you buy from K Mart, plug it in to a dedicated box (ATA) and use it much like a normal home phone. Skype uses its own system of sending the voice information but VOIP uses a standard system called SIP that is supported by most network equipment manufacturers.

Many companies now use VOIP on their phones and if you work for a large company chances are you use one at work. Corporations and organisations such as Telstra, IBM, HP, and the CSIRO now either completely use VOIP or are starting to introduce VOIP for their telephone service.

How Does It Work?

Lets look at your average company. Put It In Here Inc (PIIHI) has offices in Adelaide Melbourne New York and London. They use your regular PABX (local office exchange) in each location. The PABX has a yearly maintenance contract and has quite a high cost to the company. Every time the company makes an interoffice call it incurs the regular STD, ISDN charges and outside calls incur normal phone charges.

PIIHI also has computer networks in each office and Cisco provide the network equipment and maintain their network. PIIHI decide to go with a VOIP service. They have to upgrade all of their network equipment to cater for the VOIP service (but it was due for an upgrade anyway). They also have to buy new phones at a cost of about $800 each but this is a fraction of their total Comms budget. But now everyone in the office has a smart desk phone with headset and a computer based phone management system to manage favourites, voice mail and re directions. All of the employees can now redirect their desk phone to any other phone in the company or even to their laptop so that they have full access to their phone service on a headset on their computer. If the employee wants to change desks they simply plug their phone and computer into the network point at the new desk. In fact regular telecommuters can simply plonk themselves down at any desk and have computer and phone available. That is not the best part. Because all offices are on the Internet inter-office calls are now free and outside calls cost a fraction of what they used to cost. All calls to Adelaide, Melbourne, London and New York (where most of PIIHI's customers are) are now free from all PIIH offices. Thus the total Comms bill for PIIHI is now close to zero.

The VOIP service that you an I would use for our personal use does not have all of the fancy features that the PIIH inc service has but it is much more like your home phone but cheaper and more versatile.

OK, I'm Confused. Get to the point...

Fair enough. This has nothing to do with your humble iPhone, or does it. Bear with me.

So VOIP calls are made via the Internet and cost next to nothing, especially if the person at the other end is on the same system as you. How do I set it up?

There are a number of providers who can provide your average punter such as you or me with their own VOIP service, two of which are Pennytel and MyNetFone. There are a number of ways of using this service but I will stick to the three that we are likely to use.

Firstly you can use what is termed and ATA device. Both Pennytel and MyNetFone can supply and ATA device preconfigured. At its simplest the ATA device has a power socket, a network socket and a phone socket. All you need to do is plug it into your home network, plug in an ordinary phone and it just works. You can start making calls immediately. The ATA device costs from about $20 to $100. Pretty simple. Once it is plugged in your new phone works exactly as if it was your regular home phone.

You can also use VOIP it on the computer using some software and a headset. It is similar to Skype here. Again you just make your phone call as if you were using your home phone.

Finally you can get iPhone apps that work exactly as if you were using your iPhone to make a phone call, except you are not using your phone's sim to make a cellular call, you are using your data connection (3G or WiFi) to send the VOIP information.

How Much is The Going to Cost Then?

If you want to only use it at home using your ATA device then it will cost you the ATA device, phone if you do not have a spare and the cost of the calls. Different providers have differing charging structures but they are typically around 10c per call untimed inside Australia and 10c per minute to major international centres.

If you use it on your computer there is no extra charge. The computer software is typically free (but there may be a one off license fee for some parts of the software).

There and a number of iPhone apps varying from free to over $10 and Pennytel does have a free dedicated app but it only works if you are using WiFi. Pennytel are planning an update that will allow it to be used over the cellular network but that is not yet released.

My two favourite providers Pennytel and MyNetFone have differing price structures but the most basic plan is free and costs inside Australia to fixed lines are 8c and 10c untimed. If you want people to be able to ring you on your VOIP service then you need a DID (Direct In Dial) number. This usually costs about $5 per month but this depends on the plans and specials that they may offer from time to time. This is not necessary for Pennytel to Pennytel, or MyNetFone to MyNetFone calls. As a for instance, one of my friends save roughly $2o odd on his wife's first call to the UK. Instead of paying over $20 the call cost about $2.50 using VOIP.

Go to the links above for more details on the plans but most people can start with the untimed plan and see how they go. After all the basic plans do not have any monthly fees.

My ISP Does VOIP. And what about Naked.

Most ISPs now provide a VOIP service but you should compare the price of your ISP with other VOIP providers. They usually incur a monthly fee, they are more expensive and do not have flexible plans. Also having multiple providers which do not incur a monthly fee is handy. It enables you to use the provider that provides the cheapest rate for each type of number. It is also handy to have a backup provider in case one of them is having technical difficulties which does happen from time to time.

A number of ISPs are offering a naked broadband service, some with included VOIP. This means that you can cancel your home phone and just use the VOIP service as your primary phone with your mobile as a backup. This can save money but do your sums first. What can appear to be a good deal may not turn out quite as good once you add it all up. But going naked is certainly an option, particularly if you can use voip on the iPhone using one service and you have an ATA device with a DID number from another service on your home network. In a last resort people can still contact you via your mobile phone.

What about the iPhone Apps?

You have done your sums, chosen a provider(s) and you are ready to get it onto the iPhone. What options do I have and how do I do it?

One thing I need to highlight is that you can only use one voip service from one location at a time. This is important to understand. For instance, if you have your ATA device at home and you connect to your VOIP service from your iPhone then the ATA device drops its VOIP connection. In fact I believe (but am not sure) that you cannot connect to the same VOIP provider with two differing user IDs over the same broadband connection. In other words, if two people in the same house have two different VOIP accounts with Pennytel they cannot both use it through the same ADSL connection. However you can use the cellular network if this happens.

The following are some of the many VOIP apps that are available and their strengths and weaknesses. These are not recomendations just a very brief overview and you really need to do further research before spending money on any of the paid apps, especially the more expensive ones.

Pennytel

This can only be used with the Pennytel service. It works fine and all that is required is that you put in your UID and password. You will find this in the confirmation email they sent you. Connect to WiFi, open the app, type in the number or choose from your contacts and dial to your hearts content. Pennytel are working on an update for VOIP over 3G.

Pros: Free. Easy to configure. Dedicated to Pennytel. Can receive calls. Very secure.

Cons: Does not work without WiFi, does not have push, does not support other providers.

Fring

This is more of a social networking app with IM integration including VOIP. The VOIP part is fairly basic but it is pretty easy to configure. However it requires a Fring account to use and some may see this as a security issue.

Pros: Free, easy to configure, works over WiFi.

Cons: Only supports one account. Not configurable for improved quality. Requires a Fring account which posses a possible security risk.

iSipSimple

This is the free version of iSip which is probably the most feature rich VOIP app. See iSip below.

Pros: Cheap $1.19. Configurable for a wide range of options. Preconfigurd for many popular VOIP providers for easy setup.

Cons: See the full version for additional features.

iSip

This is the full version of iSipSimple and is one of the more expensive clients but has everything one could possible want. It supports multiple accounts, inbound calls, push notifications of inbound calls, contacts integration, recents, favourites, and can be used over the cellular network.

The push service does not work for some providers and although many people claim that push works fine I am one of the many who have not been able to get push working. I have the latest version and I can receive and answer calls using push but we cannot hear each other when the phone answers. I have also found the inbound calls are somewhat unreliable.

Pros: Works over 3G. Supports Push. Simple configuration for many VOIP providers. Multiple acounts.

Cons: Push does not always work. I have found it somewhat buggy. Expensive $7.99.

V Phone

This is almost as versatile and has many of the features as iSip but without push. I have the 4.0 Beta OS installed and cannot get V Phone woking so I cannot comment on its features but for the price it seems quite good unless you want push notifications.

Pros: Works over 3G. Two accounts. Contacts integration. Simple setup with many pre-configured providers.

Cons: Does not support push.

Nimbuzz

This is a generic social networking app that also allows voip calls. By default it uses the Nimbuzz voip service but you can configure it to ues your own voip account.

Its features are somewhat limited and has no call history or favourites but for a free simple client that includes integration with other social networking sites is perfectly fine.

Pros Simple, can include other social networking services in the same client, free.

Cons, no push, no favourites or recents.

Acrobits

This is a fully functional client that supports multiple connections, push, favourites, avatars and an in app purchase of G.729 codec. The G.729 codec is licensed so requires an additional purchase for most clients that support it.

It is said to be extremely easy to set up but I cannot confirm this since I have not used it. However from the list of features I cannot see anything missing. However at AU$9.99 it is at the more expensive end of voip clients.

Pros: Push, multiple accounts, favourites and recents, many features, in app purchase of G.729

Cons: The Expsnsive that I have reviewed.


Conclusion

I hope this gives you a better understanding of VOIP ans provides you with the confidence to get your voip account and start saving money on phone calls. For a small number of people VOIP will not really save much money but for most of us we can save a large proportion of our monthly bill with voip.

Go to one of the voip providers, sign up for a free and PAYG account, get one of the free clients from above, set it up and try it out.

The 10 most annoying things about the App Store

After trawling through apps in the "New Free" and "Price Drop" categories in the app store I have come to loath the habits of some people who submit apps to the app store. It is hard enough to find what you want but to have it littered with dross is sometimes too much to bear. This is my list of the ten most hated habits of app developers.

1. Description in the title. This is where the entire title is the description of the app. Let me see if I can provide a hypothetical example, "An app to do something or other over either Wi Fi or 3G but better than any other example - or not *** but especially my competition *** and just to make sure tells you stuff as well" Put it in the description guys.
2. Descriptions that start off with a page of customer reviews. In a word Who Cares! Get over yourself. I want to know what the thing does not what some buddy of yours was paid to say. If I want to read the reviews I will read them myself. For goodness sake - how hard is it to read the reviews myself. I am not an idiot.
3. Also, while we are on the subject of descriptions, who cares about what you think of your app. A description is for descriptions, not your inflated opinion of your programming ability. Two paragraphs of how wonderful your app is without actually telling me what it does is a sure fire way of getting me to skip over it and onto the next app. Life is too short to waste my time reading your self adulation.
4. On the other hand descriptions that tell me nothing about the app. Typically these contain one or two sentences that have no bearing on what the thing actually does. How hard is it to tell us what your app actually does.
5. Now this next one is really really annoying. Paid apps that change price every one or two days just so that they will make it into the price drop lists. There are a few apps whose price changes like clockwork every day and they are constantly cluttering the price drop list to generate sales. These apps are useless pieces of rubbish and I would not give them the time of day except for the fact that they are irritatingly noisy.
6. Apps that do not tell me what distinguishes the "Lite" version (free) from the paid (pro or full) version. A very nice app appeared a few days ago in both a paid and free version and I spent quite some time reading both the paid and free descriptions only to find that the descriptions were identical. I then got the free version to try and discovered that the free version lacked some features which were listed in the descriptions of both versions. This is not an isolated example. Detirmining the difference between the free and paid versions is often pure guesswork. Compared to the time put into developing and listing the app it takes hardly any time to get the description right. Please, please clearly indicate what you will be getting extra in the paid app up front so that I know what I am getting and why I would want the paid version.
   
7. Automated app generators. This is a fairly new service. You go to the web site, you put in the URL of what you want to be converted to an app, you pay your money and you get the iPhone app. This is nothing more than HTML-App converter. Many of the submitted apps are not even customised further, just submitted as is with bugs and dodgy descriptions. They are really non-apps. Nothing more than you would get by going to their web site. The app store is being bombarded with these dodgy non-apps, up to hundreds per day. This practice has now been banned by Apple but there may still be some apps generated by this method.
   
8. Useless screen shots. A single screen shot of a title page is hardly a good selling point for an app. The good news is that I have never really seen a single useless screen shot app that I consider worth buying. It tells me that the developer has so little confidence in their app that they do not want you to see what it actually does.
9. Keywords missing or wrong. Apple provides keyword searches for app for good reason. If you don't put in the keywords how on earth are people going to find them. I have searched for apps in vain due to the developer not putting in keywords so that they can be found amongst the million plus app in the app store.
10. Multiple apps in lieu of configuration. Multiple languages, different regions, how many times do you want to submit the same app with just a slight difference? Please get some idea of how to develop an application. If it is one app make it one app. Identical sports apps for each team, the same navigation app for different cities. Do not clutter the store with this rubbish. You have in app purchase, use them. It is not that hard. And for free apps there is absolutely no excuse.

For all that is to love about the app store it lends itself to a level of abuse not seen previously. Of all of the apps in the App Store maybe 90% could be removed immediately without anybody shedding a tear. And of the remainder maybe 10% are worth considering. Apple may think that quantity is a wonderful thing but much has been sacrificed for quality.

Why the iPhone is a virus platform waiting to happen

The constant mantra of Mac users that they don't get viruses is nauseating to say the least. Everybody knows that the reason they do not get viruses is not for some technical reason that they are invulnerable but simply because it is not worth the virus makers time. There are far more PCs and why target 10% of the market when you have 90% at your service. In fact in the heyday of the virus developers the share was more like 5% to 95%.

The situation is now reversed with the release of the iPhone. They have a lion's share of the market and not only are these devices popular but they are on all day every day and have 24 hour network access regardless. It is a wonderful resource just waiting to be tapped.

The release of a couple of exploits for jail broken phones was just a toe in the water. "But", I hear you say, "Isn't the iPhone supposed to be fully protected against this type of thing?" "This is what was promised us as being the benefit of having all code personally encrypted by Apple." You would have though so but such is not the case. Do you remember my rant against DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Protected Computing? Well, here is the deal. Whatever schemes people dream of to protect data and systems there are about a million people dedicated to circumventing it. Let me give you an inventory.

Games for the PC, C 64, Atari etc in the 1980s - they were all cracked.

DVD copy protection, cracked.

BluRay copy protection - cracked.

GPRS (digital mobile phone) encryption - cracked.

iPhone app encryption - cracked.

Now some guy has managed to create code that will run on any phone and make the phone think that that code came from Apple. Combine this with the recent issue of people inadvertently selecting an in-app add and the fact that every phone comes from the factory with a standard root password the iPhone is the hackers oyster. It is only a matter of time before exploits are as common for the iPhone as they are for the MS Windows PC.

The con that protected computing is there to protect the consumer is merely a ruse to control the user.

App Shopper

You have all no doubt seen the links I post to the App Shopper site. I just thought I would give you a brief run down on the site and its facilities.

It is a free add supported service which uses links the the US iTunes app store to catalogue data regarding all of the applications in the store. The applications are only those from the US store and the prices are all in US dollars. A number of apps that are only available in the US store will not be accessable to us. There are occasions when the app that is in the US store differs, sometimes considerably from the app avaliable in the Australian app store.

A user can track their apps using the store by registering on the site and tagging the apps that they own by selecting the "Owm It" check box for apps that the user owns. The user can also tag apps an on their "Wish List" by selecting the wish list check box.

Apps can be searched by category and name. The search facility is not brilliant and if the app has a common name then it can take a bit of work to search through all of the pages of hits. However, if the user knows the app store number (it will be near the end of the link to the app in the iTunes app store) then you can search App Shopper for this number.

My favourite App Shopper feature by far though is the RSS reader links. If you use an RSS reader then you can use this to track various categories on App Shopper. For instance you can track changes to peice and versionon your wish list and prices and versions on your owned apps. There are a number of other RSS feeds available as well.

App Shopper is the best facility that the iTunes app store does not have.

Sudoku Grab - Review

I blame Brian. There I was, happily spending smoko chatting and sipping my coffee and he was jotting numbers down into these boxes in the morning paper. I became quite curious as to what he was doing. Sudoku he said. What is that I said? You know how it goes. In short I was addicted.

I tried a number of sudoku games on the iPhone and some where better than others. It is not an easy game to get right on such a device and a lot depends on how the number input is implemented. It also depends on the puzzle sourcing. Many have inbuilt pre-defined puzzles while others auto generate puzzles. The difficulty varies as well. Very easy on one version may be medium on another.

Sudoku Grab has excellent numeric input, is easy to see to those with dimming eyes and has all of the hint and auto solving options that one would want. All of this is well implemented but what makes Sudoku Grab different from other sudoku games is the sourcing of the puzzles. With Sudoku Grb you take a picture of the puzzle, and the game uses optical character recognition to generate a sudoku from the picture. So you can buy puzzle books from book shops or newsagents or do as I do and source them from your local paper.

My cafe has three papers every morning which contain four unique puzzles so I get four puzzles of varying difficulty every day.

To input a puzzle you start up the app and select Grab a Puzzle which will take a picture or allow you to select from your Camera Roll. Once you have you image select Use and it then marks out the puzzle area. You have an opportunity to alter the selected area but it usually selects the area correctly. Once complete select done and it does its OCR business and places numbers where it thinks they should be. You may then correct these numbers. If the puzzle is unsolvable the numbers are all red and you can select individual numbers and change them using the digits at the bottom of the screen. Once the puzzle is correct the done button appears and you can then solve the puzzle, sent it to a friend via email or any of a number of other options. Once you friend recieves the puzzle in their email (on their iPhone of course) they select the embedded link and the puzzle opens up in Sodoku Grab and automatically saves to their puzzles and attaches the tags it was sent with. They can then go on to solve the puzzle there and then or save it for later. There is a small bug in the tag name in that spaces appear as 20% but this is only cosmetic.

The actual mechanism used to enter hints or numbers is quite good. Select a cell and either select the hint or enter button at the bottom (hints can be various colours) and select the number. Hints appear as small numbers spaced around the small squares, 1 at the top right through to 9 in the bottom left. Once you enter your guess the number will appear red and vibrate the phone if the number is incorrect. If the number is correct then it will be blue. Hints can be turned off of course.

Overall the program is easy to use and the mechanism for entering puzzles via the camera is easy to use. The accuracy on the iPhone 3GS is better than on the 3G due to the better camera and the better the light the better the accuracy as well although I have taken puzzles under poor incandescent light on the 3GS and had few problems although it is more finicky under these conditions.

Once the recipient of the emailed puzzle receives the puzzle on their iPhone they can click the link in the email and the puzzle opens up in Sodoku Grab and automatically saves to their puzzles and attaches the tags it was sent with. Of course the recipient must have Sudoku Grab installed. They can then go on to solve the puzzle there and then or save it for later. Puzzles sent from the old version of Sudoku Grab do not have the tags attached. There is a small bug in the tag name in that spaces appear as %20 but this is only cosmetic.

If I am stuck for a Sudoku fix and I have run our of captured puzzles then I open another free Sudoku app with a puzzle generator, start a puzzle, do a screen capture and load it in Sudoku Grab. I know, I am a sad individual. What can I say!

This is definitely a five star app. The nice feature of capturing puzzles, ease of input, nice hint system and easy numeric input this has to be one of the best Sudoku puzzle games in the app store. He also has a free lite version, Sudoku Grab Lite that you can try with limited features. He also has what looks to be a nice retro shoot-em-up called Aliens Invade which fans of the genre may want to check out as well. If his UI skills with Sudoku Grab are any indication it may well be woth a look.

My Rating, five stars.

Mail, Callendar, Contacts - A Solution

One of the more powerful things modern mobile devices provide is tight integration between regular communication activities. The technical solutions are there but the actual implementation has often been rather ameturish in the past. The old fashioned method of plugging the phone into your computer to update callendar and contacts and using MMS as a type of expensive pseudo email is no longer appropriate and there are some rather nice solutions. The one I describe I happen to think is the best free option and when set up works rather well. There are other options but the better solutions all cost the user and will maybe more feature rich but who wants to pay for features the user never uses?

First get yourself a Gmail account. Go to Gmail and sign up if you do not already have one. Apart from the nice iPhone integration this provides there are three other benefits.

It frees you from your ISP's email - which I have found nothing but painfull. I have had four ISPs over my online life and every time I changed I got new email addresses and it has been a nightmare ever time. At one stage I was tracking three primary email addresses with three ISPs each of which were used for different things. I got a Gmail invitation as soon as they went to beta and have never looked back.

Second there are many sites that use your email as authentication and you cannot change this email. MSN for instance (Microsoft Passport) uses your email as the login. Having a permenant single email address makes this much easier.

Finally it gives you integrated access to a plethora of other Google services - all of which are available vie the one login.

• Callendar - share callendar with your friends and family and see peoples availability. Add events and invite others to attend with Gmail - also converts to Exchange and outlook for those tied to those corporate solutions. The event integrates to Google maps and shows the location if a valid address is entered into the location field. See who is coming from the invited guest list.
• Contacts. Integrated with mail and callendar, as well as other services.
  
• Documents - online real time collaboration with Document, SS and more. Compatible with all popular document types including all MS documents in the new XML "x" type office formats.
• Photos.
• RSS reader. One of the best in my opinion. Great integration with the iPhone (with one minor exception which I will not go into here).
• Websites. You can customise your web site.
• Domain integration - you can use your own domain to provide most of the Google services. For instance mail.jmbh.org uses Gmail. This part is not as well worked out as the native Google stuff.

This is most of the more interesting but there are many more including Bloggs such as this one.

What has this to do with the iPhoen I hear you say? Everything really. One of the really nice features of the iPhone is the way it supports related services such as mail contacts and callendar. The support of Google means that you can get seemless access to these services easily on the iPhone. The solution below is just one - but I think it is the best solution but it does rely on a third party free service to give the user some added features. This service is calle Nuevasync.

Nuevasync is free and provides push support for Google contacts and callendar. It also gives you access to multiple callendars so you can see your friends and familiy's callendars from your iPhone.

This is how to set it all up. Omit the steps that you have already completed.

1. Sign up with Gmail to get youself a google account. This will be the way you access all of the google services and this will now be your primary email account from now on.
2. From the list along the top go to all of the google services that you wish to activate and wizards will set them up for you. As a minimum activate callendar.
   
3. You can import your contacts if you wish to migrate them from another system. The import options in Gmail are quite flexible but it may take some massaging. I have to say Gmail contacts is nto the most elegant system devised by man but it is functional and all of the information is there.
4. Once Gmail is set up you can then go to Nuevasync and get yourself an account there and set that up. It has setup guides for the iPhone.
5. While you are doing that set up a Gmail account for your new email on the iPhone. Again that is pretty straight forward and a wizard takes you through the necessary steps. Start by opening Settings and selecting Mail, Contacts, Callendar and then Add Account...

All done. Now whenever you change a contact or callendar entry on either your web Gmail or your iPhone it will immediately appear the other end. Mail this stage is fetch so it will update on the next fetch cycle.Gmail push is on its way.