Anthony Martin’s Weblog

Benjamin loves iPhone/iPod touch.  No, I don't think Apple had autistics in mind when they designed them.  But that's just it.  Apple designed it so intuitively, practically anyone can fiddle with it and figure it out without instruction.

One morning, after my shower, I found him in his room, playing with his mom's iPod touch.  He swiped it out of our room, turned it on, unlocked it, navigated through the home screen, found his favorite applications, and launched it (currently either Banner and Peanut Butter Jelly Time).  He probably did this multiple times on this morning because he likes the transition between the home screen and the app when it's launched.  But we still have to supervise him.  It might actually make sense to set up a pass key to discourage him from swiping it.  Then again, that might backfire.

Here he is using my iPhone:



So far, there are only two things I have to really watch him on.  First, he still likes to put things in his mouth, especially objects he really likes.  This hasn't happened yet, that I'm aware of.  Second, he tends to accidentally get the home screen into "uninstall/move" mode.  The main reason this happens is because sometimes he doesn't realize his other fingers are touching the icons.  Touching the icons on the home screen for more than a couple seconds causes it to switch into this mode.  When this happens, all the icons shake and non-Apple apps can be removed by tapping the X.  He hasn't managed to uninstall anything yet.

There is a feature in the Settings that allows Restrictions on various features.  It'd be nice if "uninstall" was one of the listed restrictions, but it's not as of OS version 2.2.1.

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One neat application for iPhone is Google Voice Search.  So today, I tried the new Earthquake results in Google.  I'm sure they'll fix it soon, but witness a rare Google FAIL!

   

Click here to download:

Google_Fail_Google_Voice_Searc.zip (106 KB)

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The end of the rainbow is the local gun shop.

Sent from my iPhone

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Sent from my iPhone

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This is geotag003.  The Quicktime VR didn't stitch too good.  But other than that ... enjoy!

Click here to download:

geotag003.mov (1676 KB)

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Sent from my iPhone

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There is already a lot out there about ICE.  Snopes has an article.  Even Benjamin's school talks about it.  If you're not aware of what it is, in a nut shell, ICE stands for "In Case of Emergency."  It is supposed to manifest as an address book entry in your mobile phone.  I think there are many ways to do it, but this is how I do it on my iPhone:

1. Create a new address book entry with the Company Name of: ICE
2. Add spouse's phone number followed by a hash (#).
3. Add home phone number followed by a hash (#).
4. Add work phone number followed by a hash (#).
5. Add own mobile number followed by a hash (#).
6. Add mother's mobile number followed by a hash (#).

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There's a Marie Callender's restaurant near a bus stop on the way to work that usually has a sign advertizing their latest pie offer. Depending on the pie and time of year, I've seen prices between $5.99 and $11.99. Here's today's offer:

Sent from my iPhone

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After church, we went to one of our favorite places for lunch.

Sent from my iPhone

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