This week’s What’s up Wednesday is all about the iPhone, as  today marks the second major update to Apple’s iPhone in the way of 3.0 OS. After a quick download and install, I had my iPhone (original 8GB) up and running with no issues. This new release has over 100 new features and updates, most of which can be used on any pre-3GS phone. Some major advancements such as the Video Recording & Editing, Compass App, Voice Recognition and Camera Auto-Focus are 3GS only. The new iPhone 3GS launches this Friday.

There are over 100+ features in the 3.0 OS update and during my playtime I found quite a few that I liked. What are your favorites?

Camera & Photos

• Ability to select multiple Images (up to 5) from the PhotoAlbum for sharing (email & MMS) or for deletion or to copy to another album folder.
• The Camera now has adaptive lighting. Sitting here at my desk, when I pointed my phone away from my monitor, the live picture instantly brightened. When I pointed the phone back at the brightly lit monitor, the live picture darkened and clearly showed what was on my screen.

Messaging/Typing

• Text message Landscape mode, my top favorite.
• Copy & paste! Such a simple feature that was severely lacking.
• Text Message forwarding. Text messaging is a quick way to get a message to another person – and now you can forward the details of that next house party to everyone in your contacts.
• Shake to clear/undo typing. No more holding the backspace button to clear those 3 sentences you typed out. Simply shake the iPhone to prompt it to undo.
• Sending a new text message while the previous is still sending gets rid of one major gripe I had while texting, which is a function I use more than talking on the phone.
• MMS & Tethering? I have no way to access these features as MMS only works on a 3G phone and higher, plus At&t has not released MMS & Tethering services for the iPhone in the US yet. However, they both deserve to be on my favorites, as I know they would be if I were able to use them.

Phone/Calling

• Phone numbers listed in the Voicemail & Recent Calls now shows the contact’s location or number type (home, mobile, work, etc).
• Recent Calls now have extra detail. The length of the call, the time the call was made/received, and the date.

Home Screen & Apps

• “Search iPhone” or “Spotlight Search” was another missing feature but now it’s here and incorporated in the Home screen pages – just swipe to your right. The Search will search through your Apps, Emails, iPod collection, and more.
• Whole lot of shakin’ going on… the ability to shake the iPhone to cause the iPod to randomly skip to a new song is awesome. Why? Well when you’re washing your car and your hands are all soapy and wet, do you really want to be touching your iPhone screen to skip a song? Or while jogging or exercising? Didn’t think so! Now a simple shake, now that’ll do.
• YouTube App now connects with your YouTube.com account. I’ve found so many things I’d favorite normally online, but on my iPhone. Now I can actually add them to my account from the iPhone rather than just bookmarking. As an added bonus, the iPhone YouTube app will merge your iPhone favorites with your online account favorites once you’ve signed in for the first time.

Here are some other minor changes I noticed:

Home Screen(s)

• The SMS icon has been updated and SMS has been re-titled: Messages.
• The Phone icon also has a slightly updated look.
• Voice Memo was added, not sure how much use I’ll have with that one.

Settings

• The Fetch settings are now appropriately placed under the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings.
• Form Autofill option added to the Safari settings screen.
• Repeat Alert for Messages can be turned on or off.
• Ability to view iTunes Store account or signout.

App Store & iTunes

• Application screenshots in the App Store no longer need to be tapped to view, you can swipe through the available screens.
• “Updates” is now under the “More” screen along with the “Redeem”  gift card feature.

Even with all of the 3.0 OS features, there are still features I’d like to see Apple implement in the future:

• Ability to associate a contact with a Calendar item. I use my iPhone to keep track of meetings and it would be great to be able to dial the conference call number right from the Calendar item & the alert reminder.
• A setting to change the default the text message orientation to your preference. For example, an “Auto, Portrait or Landscape” option. I refuse to use portrait mode now!
• An extra shortcut option for the camera shooting mode. Currently taking a photo with the phone’s screen facing away from you is a pain, further complicated by the position of the camera shoot button on the Camera screen. You could do the Sleep + Home button combo to take the shot, but if you’re one-handing it, that shortcut is useless.
• Ability to zoom with the Camera. Since the iPhone 3GS is getting a resolution upgrade, the  “Tap to Focus” feature, and Video Recording, the ability to zoom the live image would go along perfectly.
• Safari Flash support. I wish I knew what the hang-up on this is? Adobe’s flash platform is free for download and use on any OS and for any Browser, so what is the deal with it not being on the iPhone? One idea I have is it’s some conspiracy with Apple not wanting people to be able to watch Flash videos from the internet instead of purchasing videos from iTunes. We already can access Youtube, why not anything else?

Need help getting the most out of 3.0 OS, or the 3GS when it releases this Friday? Check out the links below.

Apple.com iPhone How-to

How to Use The Best 40 Features of the iPhone

So what are your favorite new features? What do you dislike? What is Apple missing on the iPhone? Discuss!

Sketchin’

A few random sketches I did last week, the eye is my favorite.

Floral Typography

I’m not really into floral decorations or patterns much but I can appreciate when they are used properly and with a great end result. Smashing Mag has posted a list of some beautiful uses of flourishes in typography/calligraphy. A couple of my favorites from the list are Black Out (which has great design period!), Summer Exhibition, and Play. At the bottom of the article, SM also provides links to tutorials so you can create your own floral typography.

Styling Buttons

Styling form & link buttons is definitely one of my weak points and are usually an afterthought once the design of a website is almost complete. Speckyboy has posted 22 CSS Button Styling Techniques for those of us that fall into the category of detesting form design. Not only that, there are quite a few articles detailing different Sliding Door methods;  a definite know-how that designers should have in their arsenal of design techniques.

No WOW over the WoW Equipment Manager

If you play World of Warcraft then you know about the release of the character equipment manager in last week’s patch update. After all the hype about this new feature since 2007, I have to give Blizzard a resounding FAIL on this one. Why? Well one look at the popular addon Outfitter can answer that question. Outfitter has a multitude of customization features that allows players to easily swap their character’s equipable items based on many different variables (stances, mounted, swimming, battle, fishing, etc). I think Blizzard was trying to completely replace Outfitter (the new equipment manager button is exactly where the Outfitter button is displayed and is even the same size) but I’d rather they actually pay the developer of Outfitter for the rights to his mod and actually integrate it into the game. There are quite a few mods/addons that work better than Blizzard’s in game features and it would great to see the authors of those addons recognized.

Now that I’m re-reading what I just typed, I think my main gripe is Blizzard could have created another more useful feature instead. I still have my fingers crossed for Player housing someday.

Have A Taste

This week, the last item in my Delicious bookmarks is the Card Observer, which is a gallery of some very creative business cards. Business cards can assist with giving a great first impression to the person that receives them, as well as displaying some level of professionalism. Card Observer shows how business cards are no longer a  white stock card with some basic information – business cards now have their own personalities!

That’s it for this week’s What’s Up Wendesday!

Gimme my Beats back!

Sketchin’

Drawing is one of my primary skills and I simply don’t do it enough. I do get to doodle a bit when I’m sketching out website concepts but drawing a bunch of boxes and diagrams just isn’t the same! I found a random stock photo online and sketched away for 15 minutes while watching Rachel Maddow on TV – and it was entirely relaxing after a long day.

Yes, I totally need a scanner but for now iPhone-camera-convenience slash laziness will have to do.

#fixreplies

So there was and still is a huge uproar over Twitter.com’s announcement of doing away with the public display of @replies from followers of… your followers. This Twitter blog post explains their original intent much better. However, happy-endings are possible, as Twitter announced today that they are not going to do away with public replies:

So here’s what we’re planning to do. First, we’re making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account … Second, we’ve started designing a new feature which will give folks far more control over what they see from the accounts they follow.

Blizzcon ‘09

Blizzard announced earlier this week that Blizzcon ‘09 tickets will be going on sale this weekend and that there will be a new queue system in place for ticket buyers. Seems a little bit like waiting to get into a round of  AV, yeah? There is one major difference – being in the ticket queue does not garuantee you a ticket! I’m about 70% sure that I want to attend Blizzcon this year, but I better make up my mind by Saturday so I have a decent chance of getting a ticket.

FreshBooks Update

I use FreshBooks to handle my freelance invoicing and project tracking/timekeeping; it’s a pretty good service with a good community and company behind it. Today, the FreshBooks team released an update to the Create Invoice/Estimate screen and after playing with it for a bit, it does speed up the time it takes to create an invoice from scratch. Since the Create Invoice interface is now different than the rest of FreshBook screens, I wonder if that means a complete overhaul of the UI is under way – if so, that would rock!

Dilithium Crystals FTW

If you haven’t seen Star Trek yet, what are ya waiting for??? ‘Nuff said.

Have a Taste

One feature I plan on doing in each What’s Up Wednesday is to share my most recent Delicious bookmark. This week’s link is ’skine Art, a website that features daily sketches from artists using the trendy Moleskine line of notebooks. I’ve personally been using the same line of black leather bound sketch books for years but I may make the transition to Moleskine once my current sketch book is out of paper. Regardless of the brand of paper – it’s nice to see the different types of artwork and definitely does inspire one to sketch as well.

That’s it for this first edition of What’s Up Wednesday! Perhaps I’ll have the next one done before Wednesday is halfway over

Saturday, May 23rd will mark the inaugural Walk n Rock charity event for several children’s organizations. The walk will start from Raley Field going to the Captial and then back to Raley Field. The walk will end with a benefit concert by Journey, so be prepared to get your 80’s fix. Registration starts at $25 and you can donate more if you wish. Donations can be made to the charity of your choice or to the fundraising team that I’m on which is for the Wind Youth Group. If you live in Sacramento I highly encourage you to sign up and take a walk for the kids!

To accomplish what I’ve done but using a more graphical approach instead, AjaxMasters has a good tutorial on how to do that (it’s also listed in the Smashing Magazine post).

The Smashing Magazine post couldn’t have came at better time, as Twitter is going more and more mainstream. I’ve even had several of my Facebook friends ask me what it was for and how it was different from updating their status on Facebook. I used the explaintion that Twitter is a status updater and that’s it; no other bells and whistles or distractions. How you personally utilize Twitter and extend its simple feature is where it truely shines.

In previous designs I usually stayed with safe colors but I wanted to make sure I unleashed my artsy-fartsy side this time. I felt the sky blue and hot pink complimented the dark gray background really well and was different from colors you find on most websites.

Old Design

My advice to anyone who is stuck in the design process right now – just keep trying until you’re satisfied, otherwise you’ll be changing your design a month later. Really, who else stares at your work as much as you?

Stay tuned for more blogs about designing, drawing, and whatever else I feel like typing about.