I've had a Blackberry for quite some time now, and came to take for granted the basic ability to be always available via Google Talk, Latitude, email, etc - not to mention have fine-grained control of when I get notified about each one. Running multiple apps (gtalk, maps, ssh, browsers, etc) - was never a problem, and there is even an Alt-Tab equivalent for toggling between running apps. Blackberry even has an integrated push-IM system for Blackberry to Blackberry communication.
All that changed with the IPhone (if it was not paid for, I would never have gotten one, but now I'm trying to make the most of it while saving the money I used to spend on the Blackberry). The IPhone (3G, 2.2.1) proved to be unable to do any of the above well. No mail alerting rules, no running multiple applications !!?? Basically this is an always-on device that cannot provide most always-on services. So this is my quest to make the device useful.
Yes naturally I realize that there are downsides to both devices, and I gladly give credit to the IPhone UI, but personally I'd rather deal with a command-line UI if I had to choose between functionality and having a fancy but incapable toy.
Continue reading "Turning the Iphone 3G into an almost useful always-on IM device"
Creating A Basic Date Dimension Table in MySQL
