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How A Student Uses The iPhone

Ryan Ray — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:22:13 +0000

Now this might be something entirely new, I wanted to make a big list. It’s something I’ve yet to really try out, but I wanted to give it a shot. I’m a full time student majoring in Marketing, Music Business, and Video/Cinema production! Besides that I love my iPhone, so what’s better than combining those two somehow. I always find it intriguing the way that people use their iPhones to help get things done, so as a student let me give you my perspective. This is how I use my iPhone to make my life just that much easier…

To Do List:

I prefer the app 2Do for my to do list, I love it. Syncs to my iCal over Wifi and has a beautiful interface. If it only brought in my Google calendars that would be AWESOME.

Homework:

Again I use the 2Do app to write down class assignments, I also use the simple built in notes app to write down a daily to do. It syncs right up and I can open them up from Mail and get work done. It feels so good to cross stuff off the list.

Wasting Time In Class:

Now there are a ton of apps I could list for this, hah. I immediately turn right to Digg, Mashable, Twitter, and Facebook to check out what’s going on in the world outside of class. From there I will read Macrumors, and check web stats with the app Ego. Playing games is too obvious on the iPhone, I don’t try to get away with that one.

Emails:

Obviously I use the built in mail app, if Apple keeps making it more like their desktop mail then I’ll keep loving it. I’ve never tried any other apps.

Calendar:

This is also another area where I stick to the built in calendar app. I also have a web bookmark to my Google calendars that I share with some of the groups I’m in. Both of these ways definitely help keep me on top of a student’s busy life.

Texting:

This is one great way to see if your friend is eating lunch at 12, or to get stuff planned out when you can’t make a phone call.

Twitter:

By far a great way for a student to stay social. Doesn’t matter where you are with an iPhone and a great Twitter app. My choice is Tweetie. Tweet some pics of a boring class, read your feed to see how boring your friends’ classes are, etc…

Coffee:

There are two apps that are essential for me. They help me find local coffee shops and if you are a college student coffee is almost as vital to your survival as oxygen is. One is the Starbucks app, cliche I guess but it’s a nice app. The other one I use is called Coffee Break. It is a sweet app for finding local coffee shops if you are in a new area.

Music:

This one is easy! I mostly use the built in iPod, but when tired of what I have I’ll turn on Pandora. This is a great way to find new music. Don’t forget about the Shazam app incase you are in one of those awesome coffee house and don’t want to ask anyone what’s on the stereo. You’d lose some scene points that way.

Mobile Blogging:

A no brainer here, students love to blog. I run all of my sites on Wordpress, so I use the Wordpress iPhone app. Simple as can be and works like a charm. I know there are probably some other mobile blogging apps, I just don’t know about them. Many college students use blogger, or wordpress.com I’m sure those work too on the iPhone.

Fun:

This is where my whole screen of iPhone games comes in. Tons of awesome games, some of my favorites are Paper Toss, Mini Squadron, and Doodle Jump. Also if your iPhone is jailbroken, there is a lot of fun to have with that. I’ll write up a post about that soon!

Photo Editing:

Again I have a whole screen devoted to all of my photo editing apps. I’ve been doing a iPhone 360 project with these apps, and it’s been so great to edit straight on the phone and post immediately! I did a whole series about photo editing apps you can see on the site.

Weather:

I just made a video about my weather apps, this is very important to me as I get ready for my day. Also to plan out our ultimate practices and whatnot. Weather apps are vital to me also when I’m walking to class. Just so I know what to wear and expect! You’ve got to be prepared.

What ways do you use your iPhone? Are you a student, business man, teacher, scientist, etc…? Let me know how you use your iPhone and does it do it’s job well? Thanks so much for reading!

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

How A Student Uses The iPhone

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How To Use The iPhone As a Flashlight

Ryan Ray — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:00:12 +0000

You’ve used your new iPhone for everything over the past two weeks. It’s got GPS, it’s got push email and calendars, it’s got a scientific calculator, it’s got 3G speed, it’s even got a IM application. We’ve all worn out every new feature of the iPhone. But have you thought about the iPhone replacing all the flashlights you have in your house? If you haven’t you should really consider it. I mean the iPhone already replaces a lot of devices for people, what is a silly flashlight to you? Now there are three absolutely free flashlight apps in the app store. For Pete’s sake they even have paid flashlight apps. Let me tell you, if you buy a paid flashlight app then you deserve to loose those 99 cents. So let’s go over three iPhone flashlight applications and pick the winner.

Flashlight #1
The first app is the simplest flashlight app. It has one setting to change which is just the strobe feature. You can change the strobe from off then to a very fast strobe. Not a whole lot to see here, but if you are looking for a simple, free flashlight app this is the one. John Haney also seems like a caring guy, thanking his wife and daughter in the app. How sweet right?

Flashlight App

Flashlight #2

This app goes by the name SOS torch. It of course has a flashlight built in but as an added feature will flash the screen in the SOS pattern. Three short, three long, three short! I find this a neat feature to add to differentiate the app from the boring old plain flashlight. You can also change the color from white to either red or green. Another nice simple app, the added safety feature of the SOS signal is an welcomed addition.

SOS Torch

Flashlight #3

The final flashlight app is called myLite, and is the final free one that is worth your time to download. It has the most features, but that just means the most adjustable light. You have the whole spectrum of colors, plus the options of a normal solid light, a two color strobe, and a three color strobe. These all function at different speeds as well. Like I mentioned in a earlier post this app is good for a rave dance party with it’s color and strobe options. This is my flashlight of choice on my iPhone. It has the most options and for me I like those options.

myLite App

Well there you have it, I crown myLite as the flashlight champion. The other two are worthy of spots on your homescreen, but they just don’t beat myLite. What about you though? What is your favorite flashlight app? What about the paid ones, are they any better than the free ones? Leave a comment and let me know what you think about this mess, then watch my flashlight video below to see them in action.

Apple iPhone News, Reviews, Hacks, and More Copyright 2008 iPhone Nuts. All Rights Reserved.

How To Use The iPhone As a Flashlight

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Own the ‘Phone’ in iPhone 3G

Derek Walter — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:24:49 +0000

You walk out of an Apple or AT&T store with your brand new iPhone 3G. So of course you want to call your buddies and share your good fortune with them. But if you’re an iPhone newbie, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. For all the cool apps the iPhone provides, it’s easy to forget that it’s also a phone. The unusual phone interface might be intimidating if you have never used it or any smart phone before.

But fear not. Soon enough you will be loading up your contact list, checking your voicemail; even doing it all with a Bluetooth device. While it’s different, Apple’s predictability for user-friendly design shines here. You will find five icons with labels.

Contacts

Who you gonna call? No one if you don’t have them in your contacts list. There are several ways to add to your list of friends. Of course you can enter them manually, which is a very easy-to-use system of tapping the plus button and throwing in as many details as you want: mobile number, home number, e-mail, and other contact information. You can even customize the picture so you can see who the face of who is calling – if it’s a face worth seeing, that is. Customizing the ring tone per caller is also an option, so you can get alerts if one of your annoying friends is calling you or if it’s a number you want to answer.

iTunes allows you to sync your contacts with Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Apple Mail, or Gmail. But be careful if going the Google route; Gmail’s penchant for saving every single person you have ever emailed as a contact can create a fairly lengthy list. That annoying professor you had to email papers to in college is probably not exactly someone you want on your iPhone contact list. Depending on how many of your email contacts you also want to call, it may be worth it to manually add the ones you want. It may take a bit more time, but unless you are a power business user it will keep your contact list further simplified.

Favorites

Everyone has those list of people whose phone numbers they want at the ready. The good news here is that you can have that. You can add any of your contacts to this list, giving you an easier opportunity to speed dial. The only down side is unlike phones with a dedicated keyboard, you can’t just pick up your phone, hold down the number five, and dial your girlfriend.

Voicemail

This one of the iPhone’s strongest features. No more wading through a long line of messages from people you didn’t want to really talk to anyway. Instead you get a snappy scroll-down list of who called. This gives you the freedom to tap the message you want, and listen to the ones from your family members or bill collectors much, much later.

Recents

Not everyone will leave you a message. Apple helps helps you out with a recent calls list, that lets you access any missed, made, or received calls. The familiar red button pops above this icon when you have a missed call so you can get to it quickly.

Keypad

Might as well put that big screen to use. Hence the large, easy-to-use keypad. Who needs tactile feedback when you have numbers this good looking? Plus the numbers you tap pop up on a horizontal bar along the top of the screen.

Talk features

When having a conversation the iPhone lets you change some of your call options. The screen is also smart: it turns black when you put the phone up to your face, but turns back on when you move it away. And while talking you can switch to Bluetooth, put it on hold, or switch to a speaker call.

It is likely more features will come as the iPhone software continues to update. But mastering these essential features will put you in a good standing to roll with any future changes.

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Landing the elusive iPhone 3G

Derek Walter — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:58:32 +0000

So you want an iPhone 3G. The problem is, so do thousands of others who have yet to land one. How to get yours? I offer some tips from my recent successful (though long and frustrating) journey.

First, decide how badly you want a particular model. The 8GB black and 16GB white models have been available daily at most Apple stores. But if you want the black 16GB iPhone, then you are going to have some serious competition. This one has been harder to find both at Apple stores and through AT&T. Depending on how diligent you want to be in this quest, you have two ways to go.

Hurry up and wait

If you don’t want to play the game of cat-and-mouse that Apple has created, you can always go down to your local AT&T store and do what is called a direct-fulfillment order. However, you’ll have to be patient. It’s taking anywhere from 10 to 21 business days for new orders to come in. Going this route does have its advantages. There is no waiting in a long line. No guessing on when new shipments will arrive. And since you’re already at an AT&T store, you will get access to all the phone plans and account information – something you can’t get at an Apple store. If there are some complicated circumstances on your account (discounts, 14 Russian cousins you want to add to your family plan from four different networks) this may be the way to go.

Notification is good, too. While there will be this dead zone between the time you order your iPhone and it ships, the emails fire up when it’s ready to head your way. You receive an e-mail when your iPhone ships, get a link to FedEx tracking, and an email and phone call when it arrives at the AT&T store where you ordered it. One tip to save money: don’t pay extra for shipping. My phone arrived via FedEx without any upgrade. I was emailed the day it shipped, and had it in hand the next day.

Apple Safari

Or, you can play cat-and-mouse with the Apple Store. Apple’s web site has a section that is updated at 9 p.m. each night with the next day’s iPhone 3G availability. Well, sort of. The problem is a store may list no stock for the next day, but when you call it or show up in person, there will be a line of customers waiting to buy one of the phones that weren’t supposed to be there. It turns out most stores get a daily shipement in the late morning. So even if a store is not supposed to have any, show up in the morning, around 10 a.m. Find out when the shipment is to arrive (You’ll get the whole, “we don’t know what we’re getting in” speech). Depending on how long it will take you may need to hang around the mall, go to Starbucks and back, or loiter and play on the computers and iPhones in the Apple Store. But be ready. Suddenly employees will start organizing a line and you’ll be out of luck if you’re too busy watching one-legged surfing squirrels on YouTube.

If you do make it to line, be patient. It takes anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes to go through the activation process, and that’s if there’s no hiccups. It can be infuriating when you’re in line and the person in front has no ID or poor credit and holds up the line. And be prepared that you may have to compromise on what model you want. During a recent trip to Walnut Creek, the Apple Store only had 16GB white models.

Ultimately you will be able to land an iPhone 3G. It’s just a matter of how much work you want to put into it. But either route you go rest assured that one day you will walk out of a store tapping away on your shiny new iPhone.

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