Glympse Provides Live Tracking for Road Trips

I first used Glympse on an eleven hour road trip - hauling my 2 and 4 year-old girls from Philadelphia to Charlotte - without their mother.   It was readily apparent how mature the app is.  And how perfectly suited it is for temporarily sharing location information with a concerned mother.

The real-time updating is the killer feature - once people see the arrow moving across their screen they’re hooked. And of course, Glympse runs in the background while you’re using other apps - not that you would or should while driving.

Inviting others to view your location - sending a Glympse - is quick and simple.  The app has direct access to your iPhone Contacts and can send the invite via email or sms.  You can drop a group of people into a single Glympse invite and optionally extend its duration as the expiration approaches.

One of my favorite features:  The history page displays a list of contacts with active invitations - along with the last time they checked on your whereabouts.  In seconds!   I got into a “You didn’t know that I know that you know where I am?” with one watcher.   Additionally, many people checked in on my status every few minutes for the better part of eleven hours.  Some said they were mesmerized at the live updating, watching the arrow that represented the girls and myself zoom across their web browser map - as we hurtled down the Interstate.

When you send a Glympse to an iPhone user they can keep tabs on you in Safari, or get additional features by having the Glympse app installed.  The web page has a button offering to display your location in the Glympse app, which will open automatically.

Computer users track you using a Flash web page that live-updates your position.

Glympse provides many useful features.  You can share via Twitter or Facebook.  You can also save a group of people to a favorites list to use again.  A Glympse invite expires after a maximum of four hours but you can extend it any time before it ends.  Of course you can also expire a Glympse invite early.

The Glympse page suggests using the service to let someone know you’re running late or as a social tool.  I can see the running late part - if meeting up with someone as geeky as you.  I’m not inclined to use it for social networking purposes, but that’s probably because I’m old.

If you’ve got parents or grandparents who worry while you’re on the road this might keep their phone call count at reasonable levels.  At one point we stopped at a rest area  in Virginia - barely separated from the Interstate.  We were there a long time (remember - 2 and 4 year old girls)  and Mrs. Murphy thought maybe we’d run off the road - so she called.  Other than that she spent the day hypnotized by the little green arrow.

I would have loved to use Glympse last month in Ireland.  But I’m not paying international data rates !  Future post: Why Isn’t International Roaming Affordable?

Without a doubt I’ll use Glympse to keep people updated on my next road trip.  It’s free on the App Store, so give it a try.  There’s also Glympse for Windows Mobile and Android.

VLC for iOS Update Plays EyeTV Recordings

With one little step - instead of re-encoding - you can drop your EyeTV recordings onto your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

When the first VLC Media Player (itunes link) app for iPad came out I tried dropping an EyeTV recording into it - including the container file. No dice - the file wasn’t recognized. I tried an EyeTV container with the new release of VLC for iPad too - but it still wasn’t recognized. But right-clicking on the container and showing its contents allowed me to copy the mpg file residing within onto the iPad. VLC for iPad recognized the mpg and played it. The initial release didn’t work for the EyeTV mpg either.

The .eyetv file is much larger than what you’d get if you encoded it for your i-device. But for a video I plan to watch once and delete I’m happy to skip the encoding.

The VLC app doesn’t use the standard playback components provided in iOS APIs - like the player you’d see in an app such as Dropbox. For example, my Bluetooth keyboard playback controls don’t work in VLC for iPad.

Playback isn’t as tight as m4v files I’ve played back using Dropbox and other apps, but it’s not terrible either. Definitely not as clear as playing back an .eyetv file on my Mac - but again - that’s ok, there’s some value in getting a video onto my iOS device without encoding it - sometimes it’s worth the tradeoff.

That said, I just loaded a short scene from an action movie, recorded in standard definition, to my iPhone 4.  Playback was a bit pixelated.

VLC for iOS does keep track of where you left off watching a video. And it’s free.  The VLC Media Player is nice to have for times when encoding isn’t otherwise necessary.

iOS4 Emails Portrait Photos as Landscape

Or does it? Actually, iOS4 sends the photos with orientation information, but that doesn’t help if your recipients see the photo sideways because of their chosen email software. Skip down if you’re looking for workarounds.
UPDATE: This is the workaround I use now.

If you’ve moved on to iOS4 you may have noticed a change in how emailed photos appear to recipients. Apparenly Apple changed the way they handle rotation and are now using an orientation tag instead of actually redrawing the photo with the pixels arranged in portrait format. Don’t worry, we’ve got a workaround.

So - your phone is sending the photo with information about how to present the photo in the correct orientation, but the recipient’s software might not acknowledge the tag. When I open the email using Apple Mail the photo is oriented correctly. Preview and many other photo apps will display the orientation correctly as well - if I download the photo.

Here’s an example you can try: Take a portrait photo with your iOS4 iPhone. Using the native Photo or Camera app email it to a Gmail address. When you open the email in Safari, IE or Firefox you’ll see a thumbnail that’s oriented correctly. But when you view the photo it’ll be in landscape mode.

If you download the photo and open it with an app like Preview you can take a look at the tags by hitting Command + I. You’ll see an orientation entry that might say something like “Rotated 90° CCW.” (Pictured above)

Solutions:
So - here’s the workaround: Use an app like Best Camera. When I send photos using Best Camera they show up correctly in web-based Gmail. I don’t believe Best Camera has been updated for iOS4 and that could explain the difference. Best Camera is currently $2.99.

You could also use the free Gorillacam app. But the results are a little different. If you take the portrait photo with Gorillacam it’ll show up in Gmail oriented correctly. If you use Gorillacam to send a photo you took with the native Camera app it will display in landscape mode in Gmail. Gorillacam is free.

It doesn’t really matter if Apple jumped the gun by using the tag or if certain apps or web sites are behind in recognizing the tag. The bottom line: People probably aren’t seeing your emailed iPhone photos correctly. Now you’ve got a workaround.

Note: I also emailed a photo to Flickr. It was displayed properly and the tag information was clearly visible in the metadata. However, a friend in the UK reported different results when emailing portrait photos to Flickr: They showed up as landscape. Photos like this need to be displayed correctly.

Best Camera on my iPhone 3GS with iOS4 has been exiting every time I email a photo from it, but the photo is still getting sent.

AT&T Takes Care of Charlotte, Again

CHARLOTTE, NC - For the third time in the last year Charlotte, NC is getting in early on AT&T rollouts. This time Charlotte will be the second trial city for a Wifi Hotzone, provided free by the wireless giant. In past months North Carolina was the only state included in the initial rollout of AT&T’s Microcell product. And Charlotte was one of six cities promised an early deployment of HSPA 7.2 at the end of 2009. The first Wifi Hotzone was deployed to New York City.

Aside from the weak 3G signal in this area it’s hard to justify the site selection. The heart of Charlotte is a couple blocks up, running between College Street and Church Street. That’s where the banks are and the majority of the office space. Entertainment, shopping, residential - it’s just not present in the deployment area. Which leaves the two AT&T buildings that anchor the site as somehow being intrinsic to the selection.

Photos taken by Murphy Mac in December of 2009 show two AT&T buildings that anchor the exact area AT&T plans to serve with their new initiative. One photo was taken in front of a sizeable AT&T office building located only four blocks from another AT&T building with numerous antenna arrays on the roof. But only EDGE connectivity is available at the location.

The area to be covered includes the new NASCAR Hall of Fame at one end, next to the large AT&T office building. The zone continues along Brevard Street ending near East Trade Steet, close to the other AT&T building previously mentioned.

The Hotzone coverage will also include parts of the LYNX light rail system, although it’s not clear if that’s only in the immediate area described or a larger portion of the line.

AT&T likely chose this area for its weak 3G signal. While the convention center and the NASCAR Hall of Fame are located in the zone there isn’t a great deal of pedestrian activity. The service is not targeted at indoor use and other parts of the city typically have much higher concentrations of outdoor gatherings.

The next Hotzone could be coming to Chicago according to various reports.

iOS4 Camera Roll Caution

It might be a good idea to pull all the photos and video from your iPhone and back them up before upgrading to iOS4. It seems some people have experienced strange issues. If you search the forums at macrumors.com or discussions.apple.com for “iOS4 Camera Roll” you’ll see some threads.

In my case the dates of all the videos in the camera roll were changed to the date I installed iOS4. It doesn’t look like photos were affected.

I don’t see a way to fix this, it seems the proper date information has been wiped. My iPhone backup prior to iOS4 has already been overwritten. In my case I have about 4 months of videos that I’ll have to adjust manually if I want the right information.