Yes, after three years of having a rubbish phone (well rubbish after three years), I splashed out and bought an iPhone on O2’s £45 tariff which gives me 500 minutes and 500 texts a month, with unlimited Internet access. I’ve had it two weeks now, and am pretty used to it. There’s some things I really, really like about it, and some things that annoy me a bit…

Things I really like

• getting my e-mails anywhere – it’s just weird. And pictures and HTML e-mails work fine on it too
• being able to access the proper Internet – not just rubbish text based sites
• the iPod on it is amazing – the screen is great for video, and being able to flick through albums with your fingers is great too
• having an iTunes store in your hand is dangerous!

What isn’t great

• not being able to send texts to more than one person at a time is a bit annoying
• the memory isn’t massive at 8GB, particularly if you’ve got a lot of video
• unless you’re on wi-fi the Internet isn’t amazingly fast, but it’s certainly fine for sites like BBC News and Facebook

Overall, I’m really pleased with the purchase. Yes, it’s expensive, but I see it as kind of a treat to myself. I think it’s going to take a bit longer to get used to though – it’s just not like any ‘phone I’ve had before. The lack of a physical keyboard is the biggest thing I think I have to get used to, but I’m already pretty fast at typing on it.

O2’s tariffs for the iPhone feature unlimited wi-fi access through hotspots run by The Cloud. The only problem being that when I bought my phone they only had one hotspot in the whole of Northern Ireland. They did recently say however that they are in the process of adding hotspots in Northern Ireland, so hopefully Internet access will become a bit faster when I’m out and about…..

Until we see some BBC and Channel 4 programmes on there, I don’t think this will really go mainstream, although some big shows like Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy are on there now. The question is will that ever happen? Broadcasters here are already working on their own commercial venture for programming which is more than seven days past its transmission date.

Magnetosphere is a cool visualiser for iTunes – one of those little display things that reacts to your music when you turn it on from the View menu.

It’s free, and available here for Macs and Windows.

Via One Digital Life.

The American iTunes store is great – you can get TV shows (often before they air here), a bigger selection of music and music videos, and movies too. Unfortunately you can’t buy stuff in the US store unless you have a credit card registered to a US address. Or can you?

Well yes you can… here’s what you need to do.

1. Visit the US iTunes store, log out of your UK account (if you’re already signed in)

2. Create a new account and make up an address in the US. Don’t add any credit card details (there should be an option to allow you to add those later)

3. Get hold of an iTunes music card for the US store, enter the code, and you’re off!

The only problem is getting hold of a music card for the US store. I’m lucky ‘cos I have relatives in the US, but if you don’t you could try looking online to see if anyone is selling some. Or, I’m off to Dallas again in January, so if you know me, you could always ask me to get you some!

One of the great (free) things to come out of Apple’s big announcement last week, was an upgrade of iTunes to version 7. Part of this means that you can now buy additional games such as Tetris to put on your iPod! I used to be addicted to Tetris, so couldn’t resist buying it, and had my first play today.

It’s a pretty good version I think – and a neat touch is that you can carry on listening to your music whilst you play. The only slight niggle is that a game on the UK iTunes store is £3.99, but on the US store they’re only $4.99, which works out about £2.65. Never mind!

You can get Tetris from the iTunes store here.

A lot of people in the UK are already downloading TV shows over the Internet – usually using BitTorrent, which can be a bit complicated if you’re a novice. Peekvid is yet another, very simple way to watch well-known TV shows online – it simply links to TV shows which have already been uploaded on YouTube. The quality of course isn’t great, but it’s very easy to find what you’re looking for.

Such sites and services are major headaches for broadcasters – they get no return from their programmes being watched online, without the viewer having to pay a licence fee, or pay for programmes indirectly through advertising. And it can mean anyone can watch it, meaning that valuable overseas sales can be lost. But, at the moment, here in the UK, it’s impossible to watch or view a TV show online legally, unless it happens to be featured on the BBC Two site.

The BBC are working on a system which will make it very easy to catch up on TV shows by downloading them to your computer, but where’s everyone else? How come US TV shows or ITV and Channel 4 shows aren’t available on iTunes here yet?

The US iTunes has over 200 different programmes available already from a host of broadcasters. And Apple tomorrow are exptected to launch a movie download service (probably again only in the US). Rights can be a very difficult issue for broadcasters to sort out, but surely they’ve done it by now?

I’m not a fan of paying to watch TV shows, but if it was a programme I had missed, and I really like it, I probably would pay £1.39 or whatever to watch it. I’m sure there’s other people out there who are extremely frustrated that it’s not easy to do this in the UK yet, which is probably why services such as Peekvid will prove popular.

After the demise of the Mycokemusic site, Coke has decided to pair up with iTunes and is apparently getting ready to give away free tracks in the UK and some other European countries. Great! In fact according to Fox News, they’re going to give away a total of 70 million tracks in the UK alone.

The only bad thing is that Coke in Northern Ireland is supplied by Coca Cola Ireland, and Ireland doesn’t seem to get a mention in any reports on the promotion. There is a way round it though! If you’re in NI you should be able to get promotional bottles in Boots, as they seem to get their supplies from Coke UK.

There’s a site up already too.

Found via iPodObserver.

In what I think is a pretty interesting link, Apple and Nike today announced that they’re lanching a new ‘sports kit‘ for the iPod nano. Basically, it means putting a little sensor in your Nike+ shoe which then talks to a receiver attached to your iPod nano. The sensor then transmits data about your run (and audible feedback too) which is then displayed on your iPod nano. Cleverly, this information is then synced via iTunes when you connect your nano to your computer, and then data on your run is available on a special website.

It may not have massive appeal, but I think this is a clever use of an iPod which you can bet no other MP3 player manufacturer has thought about. I don’t run for exercise (I usually only run when it’s raining, to avoid getting wet), but being able to keep track of your performance so easily sounds like a great idea.

I was thinking it would be great if they could do something similar for swimmers, but then probably not – I like my swimming without any music or anything, so I can completely relax while I’m doing it.

The Nike+iPod sports kit is expected to be in stores by the end of July, whilst a new iTunes update (version 6.0.5) will also be available soon.

So once I’d got Airtunes all sorted out (see previous post), I started fiddling around with iTunes, and decided to look for a new and more interesting visualizer. Visualizers are the changing patterns that you can switch on to play on the screen whilst music is playing (Windows Media Player has them too).

Anyway, I found a great one – Eyephedrine is for Macs only unfortunately, and it costs – $8, but it’s really good value for money. It basically contains over 75 different patterns which fill your screen, and they’re all pretty neat – and much better than the visualizer that comes with iTunes too! That’s just one of the visualisations above.
Mac users can download it here.

So, now I’m back in Belfast, i’ve been sorting out my flat, and one of the things I did was to get wireless Internet access working in my flat for my Mac AND my old PC (which I keep for the program we use to script at work).

The next thing I did was to set up Airtunes – this lets you play music from any computer to your stereo without wires, and it was VERY easy to set up. It’s brilliant! All you need is iTunes on your computer, a digital or analogue audio cable, and Airport Express which you can buy from the Apple Store. All I had to do then was link the Airport Express unit to the stereo with a cable, open the setup assistant, and I was ready to go – music from my laptop playing over my stereo.
It’s really handy for me seeing as I’ve sold most of my CDs after ripping them to iTunes.