Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

Bright House Networks has launched the easy gadget app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, available to the company’s residential and business customers free of charge. The easy gadget app helps Bright House phone customers stay connected while away from their home and office. The app allows them to be instantly notified of important calls on their Bright House phone then touch to call back or send a text message.

Through the app, customers can also view and listen to voice mail messages after the message was left on their Bright House voice mail service instead of waiting until they return to their home or office; remotely forward their Bright House phone to their iPhone or any other remote phone; manage their contacts in an online address book; backup their iPhone contacts to the easy gadget online address book; and use a free online directory search function to look up phone numbers.

Residential customers must subscribe to both Bright House Networks Home Phone and Road Runner services while Bright House Business Solutions customers must subscribe to both Bright House Networks phone and High-Speed Internet services to utilize the app. 

The easy gadget app from Bright House Networks is supported on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. The easy gadget iPhone app is fully compatible with the easy gadget app for Windows PC and Apple computers that Bright House Networks launched in 2009.

On this beautiful Friday, the Coles Marketing staff decided to kick off Memorial Day weekend a little early.  Check out the photos (shot on the iPhone) below.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun holiday weekend, as we honor those who served in our military.

You know, Tim is right. I was as shocked as he was to find out that two die-hard non-iPhoners in our office became Switchers, as he calls them. And, like I knew would happen, they instantly fell in love with this awesome piece of technology.

Like Tim, I, too, have an iPhone. Unlike Tim, I’m not an iPhone addict — maybe just a problem user — and wasn’t ninth in line back in 2007 with all the other geeks … I mean, “early adopters.” In fact, like a normal person, I bought mine online last August after the price came down to a reasonable number and all of the bugs that didn’t seem to bother the early adopters had been well worked out. I waited two days and had the phone hand-delivered to me by our friendly UPS guy, Terry, who delivers two giant cases of Pampers diapers (248 total) to me every two weeks for my one-year-old twins. They have this bad habit of ruining EVERY SINGLE diaper we put on them. You see, this is why we can’t have nice things! I digress.

Anyway, the iPhone purchase came out of necessity, really. My wife and I had just moved into our new house, and because we lived within the one pixel on the Sprint service map of Carmel labeled as “fair signal” (translation: poor signal), and because our house is made of stone on the first level, we couldn’t get a decent signal — ever. Without a land line and with infant twins, that was obviously unacceptable. So I asked Sprint nicely if they would let us out of our contract a year early and not charge us a $200-per-line early termination fee, and they said yes.

Freedom.

So I bought an iPhone (my phone has always been for personal use) and my wife got a BlackBerry (she uses her phone mainly for work). Well, long story just a little bit shorter, I started needing my phone for work about a month after my purchase. Total nightmare! First, because we weren’t on an Exchange server at work, e-mail was instantly an issue.

Apparently, Apple must have bullied Microsoft back in high school, because Microsoft seems to have one goal: to make life hell for Apple and to get revenge for that swirlie administered in the third-floor boys bathroom on prom night.  Outlook and the iPhone just don’t get along. In fact, they hate each other.

Because my contacts and calendar wouldn’t sync over the air, I had to plug my phone into my computer to complete that task through iTunes. Because my Outlook e-mail wouldn’t sync, I had to come up with a workaround: setting up a rule in Outlook to automatically forward all e-mail to my Yahoo! personal account. That works great until you are out of the office and get an e-mail where you need to “reply all” to about 20 people. In order to reply all from a forwarded e-mail, you have to hit forward and then reinsert everyone’s address into the “To:” field (assuming you have their contact entered into your phone!) and then hope your not-so-professional-sounding personal e-mail address makes it through their spam filter.

Ugh.

Fast forward to last week when we migrated to a Google Exchange server. Problem solved! iPhone can now be work phone! Syncing will be so easy! Well, that is true, but it took about five hours and several curse words to figure that out.  But we’re finally up and running with our i(work)Phones and have all of our nifty calendar appointments, e-mails and contacts syncing over the air. See that? There went one right now.  Ooh, there’s another. Ain’t technology great?

The moral of the story: Technology is awesome … after you set it up.

I’m Tim, and I’m an iPhone addict.

I remember when I first purchased my iPhone. I immediately knew I was holding one of the greatest inventions of all time in my hand. It was, and still is, the coolest and greatest thing I have ever owned. There is no need to explain what the iPhone does because, by now, most everyone on the planet knows.

The people that don’t own iPhones come in two categories: 1) those that know the iPhone is the best choice, but go ahead and buy something else anyway – go figure, and 2) those that also know the iPhone is the best choice, but use any excuse to NOT buy one. “Still in a contract,” “don’t like the carrier,” “doesn’t have an antenna,” “too expensive,” “no cool, plastic keyboard,“ “I like the clunky phone I have now,” “no cool stylus.” I’ve heard them all.

Here’s the deal, do whatever it takes to get an iPhone. The rewards outnumber any short-term sacrifice. The user experience is what sets the iPhone in a class by itself.

Now I’m smiling. Why? Because two of my co-workers just purchased iPhones. Yep, the same people that thought iPhones were merely toys, walked in the door with new iPhones. (They actually left earlier that same day to get new Verizon phones). Go figure. They saw the light. Now they are officially “switchers.” To be fair, the office did just move to an Exchange server for e-mail, which makes iPhone e-mail much easier in the business arena. So, now those same co-workers are excited about their new phones and now understand what I have been saying for years.

I have been an iPhone user since day one (9^th person in line). Yeah, I’m an addict. I have no problem admitting that because I know the iPhone has made my life easier. Now I get to enjoy seeing former disbelievers say “Man, this is the coolest thing!” Interestingly, half of the staff at Coles Marketing now owns an iPhone. Pretty cool.

Adobe released a new Photoshop app for iPhone users today. Photoshop.com for iPhone allows users to edit photos from both their phone and their online library on Photoshop.com. Adobe’s Photoshop.com online service has a 2GB limit for free, which can be expanded with an annual paid storage plan.

But what is really cool is the Photoshop.com iPhone app. The app is free and offers basic tools such as crop, image rotation color controls, and simple one-touch filter effects that can be applied in real-time. With just a flick of a finger an effect can be applied. Don’t like the effect? No problem, just touch the undo button. The app works from gestures, simple finger swipes change the effects. This is the best mobile phone photo editing app I have seen. And it’s free. And you don’t have to be a Photoshop whiz to use it. Ok, you can’t create an alpha channel, or remove a zit, or whiten teeth (insert a smile here), but for simple, on-the-go effects, it can’t be beat.