iPhone and Google Maps: Go to here -- just drop the freakin' pin

For the past year or so I've been really annoyed that I couldn't pick out a spot on an iPhone Map.app map and get directions to it. It's such an obvious need, so why did Apple omit it?

Sometimes I wanted to tap real hard to see if I could get a pin to stick.

Today, when I was switching from Map to List view, the "Drop Pin" button caught my eye. I'd ignored it for a while. What the heck did it do, anyway?

Riiiggght. It drops a pin on the map. It seems to leave it there, after the first time I did this the button changed to "Replace Pin". I didn't see a way to "Undrop Pin" -- maybe once you put it on any map it's bound to a map forever.

You can move the Pin around, bookmark it, get directions to it, etc.

Just what I'd wanted, though I do think the UI is less than intuitive.

Once I'd figured this out I went looking for documentation. My copy of Pogue's Missing Manual for iPhone (3G version) didn't mention this feature, but Google tells me it was introduced with firmware 1.1.3.

Apple has some documentation. As a fringe benefit, I now understand the two modes of the nameless icon and I see that Apple advises us to turn off location services when it's not in use ...

Apple - iPhone - Learn how to use all the features of iPhone.

Your current (approximate) location is indicated by a blue marker....

As you move around, iPhone updates your location, adjusting the map so that the location indicator remains in the center of the screen. If you tap [the nameless target thingie to the left of the Search button] again or drag the map, iPhone continues to update your location but stops centering it, so the location information may move off the screen....

... To conserve battery life, turn Location Services off when you’re not using it. In Settings, choose General > Location Services.

... Tap the blue marker, then tap [the blue arrow] iPhone displays the address of your current location, if available. You can use this information to:

• Get directions
• Add the location to contacts
• Send the address via email or MMS (iPhone 3G or later)
• Bookmark the location

Use the dropped pin:

Tap [upturned page icon, lower right], then tap Drop Pin.

A pin drops down on the map, which you can then drag to any location you choose.

Replace the pin:

Tap [the upturned page icon], then tap Replace Pin. iPhone drops the pin in the area you’re currently viewing.

You can get directions to the Pin. Am I the only geek who missed this? Did Pogue miss it too?

Yikes.

So how can you do this on Google Maps?

Yeah, I didn't know how to do that one either, but seeing it on my iPhone convinced me it has to exist though.

The trick is the right click. I'm not used to right clicking on web apps doing anything interesting, but Google Maps does have a context menu. You can get directions to whatever you right clicked on. That's a truly lame UI, but it's good to know how to do this.

This is an example, by the way, of the curse of being an elder geek. There's almost nobody to show me interesting stuff; my few geek peers assume I know it all or, like most people lucky enough to have a job, they're crazy busy.

I think we need to explore new ways to create documentation. I'd love to read an iPhone document titled "Fifty things longterm users tend to miss ...".

My iPhone home (main) screen - latest rev

I attended a physician meeting tonight where I was told that 80-90% of physicians in one large vendor's base (large, wealthy, integrated care delivery systems) carry an iPhone or iTouch.

That seems high, but I did get to share app screens with several other attendees. Alas, I didn't find any new apps. We all had fairly similar apps, or at we spanned similar app domains.

It's a good reminder though to share my main screen, it's a bit unusual for me to go beyond it (when I do I use the search function, I don't navigate the other screens) ...

The screen does have turnover. Today I finally gave up on Night Stand -- an app I once liked. I still like the idea but the product had become unstable. I also switched VoiceRecord (old app, never updated) for iTalk Lite for the same reason.

Off the main screen other apps in active use these days include:

• 1Password: encrypted store
• i41CX+: beautiful HP 45 emulation
• Light (of course)
• PhoneFlicks
• Flixster
• Pandora
• MPR Radio
• NYTimes
• about 16 kids games and 7 educational apps
• Google Earth
• Kindle
• WikiHow
• ePocrates
• Easy Wi-Fi
• Wi-Fi Finder
• iSystemInfo
• Twitterific
• Sky Voyager
• Public Radio
• myWireless (AT&T)
• Flight Update

Update 10/5/2009: In iTunes you can switch your Application view to "list" view, get a convenient list of all apps, and see when apps were last updated.

TUAW has a post on team member home screens and Firstand20 has the home screens for geek celebrity iPhoners. I'm most like "Brett" of TUAW, looks like I need to research "MindMeister" and "Cities". Seems like there ought to be a social graph application based on home screen overlap.

See also: my standard iPhone configuration.

Bento 3 gets encryption - mildly interesting

Bento annoys me. I'm on FileMaker 8 because I'm waiting for FileMaker Inc to do something useful for me -- like the ability to use FM power on OS X data stores. Instead FM has delivered yet another version of Bento, providing brain dead access to OS X data stores.

This release has one potentially interesting feature:

Bento 3 - All Features | FileMaker

... Use the new field type called “Encrypted” to store sensitive data, like web site logins and banking details.

Unlock encrypted fields to display contents by entering the database password.

Assign a database password to your entire Bento database. You will be prompted for the password upon launching Bento. Once the correct password is entered, Bento will open your database giving you full access to all your libraries.

Assign a sharing password to allow others access to your shared libraries. This password is different from the database password and only allows access to specific libraries that you have chosen to share over a local area network

If Bento for iPhone ALSO gets encryption then I may have to, very grudgingly and painfully, consider sending FileMaker money they don't deserve.

Grump.

Beejive - IM for iPhone as an SMS replacement

Now that iPhone OS 3 has notifications, I'd like to try to use Beejive as an SMS alternative.

Problem is, the default behavior of Beejive is to disconnect from the Beejive server a minutes to hours after use. When that happens, there are no more iPhone notifications.

If you want Beejive to behave more like SMS it looks like you need to set a very long Session Timeout. As long as you use Beejive once within that time it keeps your session running. I chose 7 days for Emily and I (but really we want "forever").

At least that's how I think it works, because as of today Beejive's online directions are for OS 3 and an earlier Beejive release.

This is not a good sign. Did the entire company (3 people?) implode?

I've written asking them for an explanation of the obsolete documentation.

Update 10/5/09: No response to my email. I discovered this am I was logged out -- but I shouldn't have been.

Update 12/4/09: More instances of being logged out, or Google thinking I'm offline when I'm supposed to be connected. The iPhone notification/IM infrastructure seems too fragile and demanding for this type of use.

iPhone Google Sync - Mail and Google Apps

I've been a pretty happy Google ActiveSync (Exchange services) customer since they saved my iPhone last February. The only downside has been that you can only have one Exchange account per phone, so if my employer ever enables Exchange support for iPhones I'll have some touch choices.

Today I've got some updates based on configuring Emily's new 3GS yesterday. One update is that you can now configure this for Google Apps accounts like our family domain, another is the difference between IMAP email and ActiveSync email.

Since Emily's primary email is through our family domain (free) Google App suite I had to learn the Google Apps configuration. It's a bit obscure, but not too bad.

First, your Google Apps domain admin has to go to Mobile Services setup and enable synchronization.

Then you have to follow Google's Exchange services setup directions on your phone. It's a bit weird, since it's easy to miss the step where you get the option to enter the Google server address.

So far, not so bad. But, of course, you're a power user. You have to push it, don't you? You want to be able to sync all your subscribed calendars to your iPhone, not just your primary calendar.

This is where it gets weird. I'll tell you what I did ...

1. In iPhone Safari enter the URL http://m.google.com from the phone.
2. Look for the link that does setup for Google Apps. It's easy to miss, I think its towards the bottom of the screen you see.
3. Do the Google Apps setup. NOW when you enter http://m.google.com you see a new Google Apps section. Look for "Sync" and click it.
4. Now you get to see all your Google calendar subscriptions and you can add all of them.

Clearly this is a beta type configuration, I assume Google will fix it up some day (though sometimes they don't fix things!).

So far this is much like what I did for my personal Gmail setup, just with a few odd quirks. Mail, however, is new. You can enable an ActiveSync connection to Gmail instead of the older IMAP connection I use.

For Emily I enabled ActiveSync mail. If you're doing Contacts and Calendar it's an easy way to add email. From what I'd read I assumed it would behave very much like IMAP, but that's wrong. If you have Mail sound on in Settings then every time email hits your inbox your phone "pings" -- even if it's asleep. So your email behaves more like instant messaging (or BB email). The mail icon always shows the current unread message count, and it updates within a second or two of email transmission. [see update]

We turned off the "ping" sound -- though it would be "nice" to be able to configure that for certain senders.

One last comment that's probably most relevant to BlackBerry users. Until we retired Emily's Pearl she used 'Missing Sync for BlackBerry' to sync to Address Book, and Google Sync/BlackBerry to sync to Contacts. This meant she had one address book.

Now things aren't so neat. Her Google Contacts sync to her iPhone Exchange account, her Address Book syncs to her iPhone 'on my mac' account. So her old pool of one set of contact has just become two! I have the same problem; I need to explore some solution for the both of us. (Maybe I’ll return to Spanning Sync).

Update: When browsing Emily’s iPhone Contact Groups I found this novel entry at the end of the Groups list: “Google apps Global Address…”. It lets me search all contacts – I wonder if it’s the precursor for some kind of Google Apps Domain directory (an obvious need). As of today there are NO Google hits on this string with “iPhone”, so it must be quite new.

Update: I reverted Emily to IMAP. The Exchange mail setup was saving drafts her emails to the trash folder every few seconds. This feature needs more work.

Incidentally, Google's IMAP directions, esp the recommended IMAP client settings are badly written. In particular they do a poor job of explaining why one shouldn't use Apple's default Gmail setup. I've done it both ways, and I prefer the way Apple's setup works.

iTunes Library divided between iTunesMusic and iTunes Music

Somehow, in the long and twisted history of my iTunes Library, which has moved from Mac to PC and back again, I ended up with my Library divided between a folder labeled ‘iTunesMusic’ and another labeled ‘iTunes Music’, both within “iTunes Library”.

It’s doubtless been this way for some time, but I only noticed it today. It seems to work fine. Even so I used the iTunes 9 File:Library tool to both consolidate and rationalize to the newish library hierarchy.

It seems to be copying everything over, when it’s done I’ll copy ‘iTunesMusic’ to an external drive and save it – just in case something was missed.

It would be nice if this was somehow related to iTunes not updating last played data on some of my podcasts …

Update 10/8/09: The iTunes Consolidate feature worked well. I deleted my iTunesMusic folder and didn't have any problems (I had backed up of course). This didn't solve the problem with the iPhone "not updating last played" bug -- this is a frustrating and longstanding bug that Apple has to fix.

iTunes 9 missing the rearrange iPhone app option?

Everything seemed pretty fine with Emily's brand new 3GS -- until I tried rearranging her app screens in iTunes 9.

The sync list was there, but not the rearrange screen.

What the ?!

I restarted the phone, speculated it was somehow related to disabling app store access, restarted iTunes, quit and connected a few times ...

Nothing. I was stuck.

Thanks Google ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - iTunes9 / iPhone Rearrange Apps Home ...

... Never occurred to me that it would be 3.01. I have a 3.1 phone so I was confounded when the screen for rearranging apps was missing...

Yep. The phone still had 3.01. I upgraded to 3.1 two weeks ago, I just assumed it was a 3.1 phone. Since her phone syncs on her user account there was no 3.1 update on the system.

It's a bit of a pain, by the way, to now have two downloaded copies of 3.1 on the same machine. There's now one in her user account and one in mine.