maddagu.com: gibraltar’s iphone & mac blog

gibtel mms

gibtel-mms

seems that i am not the only one (apart from steve) in gibraltar who tries to get f*cking gibtel’s mms to work.
had that in my mailbox today:

Hi,
I came accross your blog as I was googling for gibtel’s MMS settings for the
iPhone, I’ve been able to get the following settings but still can’t get it to
work, maybe they are of some use to you.

APN: mms.gibtele.com
MMSC: http://mms:8081
MMS Proxy: 172.17.0.5:8080

thanks for your email. well, i tried those settings too, wasted a whole weekend. honestly i gave up. gibtel still hasn’t updated their website and i doubt they are going to in the near future. :(

iTunes duplicates

itunes-duplicates

Some of you may be aware that iTunes can show duplicate songs in your library, this is done by clicking  File > Show Duplaites in iTunes.  However this is not helpful when you have a particular song in the artist album and the same song in a compilation album.  To solve this you Hold the Alt or Option key down and choose File > Show Exact Duplicates.

A more detailed explanation can be found on Apples Knowledge Base

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Music Video in iTunes, or rather HIDDEN music videos lol!

music-video-in-itunes-or-rather-hidden-music-videos-lol

The other day i decided to add some music videos to my iPhone, Obviously i had to add these to iTunes first and upon adding them to my library I immediately lost them it gigabytes worth of music! So after some research on Apple’s knowledge base i stumbled upon this little work-round and I thought id share it you, our loyal reader’s!

With the release of iTunes 7, music videos are no longer grouped with Movies in the iTunes source list. They are instead grouped with Music.

However, all of your music videos can be found in a new Music Videos Smart Playlist that automatically updates whenever you add another music video to your Library.

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If you have deleted the Music Videos Smart Playlist, follow these steps to recreate it.

  1. Open iTunes.
  2. Choose File > New Smart Playlist.
  3. Set rule to Video Kind is Music Video and click OK.

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  4. A new Smart Playlist will appear in the source list.
  5. Rename the playlist to “Music Videos.”

iPhone User Guide For iPhone OS 3.0 Software

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I thought id post this link to the user guide as Apple seem to have moved a few things around with OS 3.0

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paper toss

paper-toss

yet another highly addictive game out of the good old app-store: paper toss.
three difficulty levels - easy, medium or hard. just flick the paper ball into the bin, but don’t forget to calculate the wind!

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gibtele.com

gibtelecom

today i used my lunch break to give mms and gibtelcom a second try. this time the cue wasn’t that long.
“hi there, i would like to know gibtel’s mms proxy setting to be able to send mms from my iphone”
the look on that man’s face… something like “sorry sir, i haven’t got a clue what you want from me”
his real answer was: “what kind of phone is that?”
me: “hm… an iphone 3g”
he: “what brand”
oh my god!!!
end of story was to give him the iphone, so that he can give it to one of the techs, as they never had to set up an iphone before. i am the first in the history of gibtel!!! hard to believe. he told me it would be ready in an hour. it better be!
if they manage, i will be posting the settings - for future generations! ha!

update:
they put in some settings but it doesn’t seem to work. it starts with the sending process but maybe 2% before finish it shows up with a little exclamation mark next to the photo.

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yes, gibtelecom, that is really bad. it’s your system, if you guys can’t even figure it out, who can???

what is it doing??

what-is-it-doing

ok, background processes.. but i don’t have any apps that can do that. i had the wifi off and the 3g. when i went to bed last night i had it fully charged.. when i woke up:

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50% in one night with not doing anything?? what have you done apple? how can i downgrade? i lived so long without copy and paste.. who needs that anyway??

update:
just tried the downgrade to 2.2.1. hm, doesn’t seem to work, my itunes froze and my iphone got stuck in restore mode. all i can do now is hoping that apple releases a ‘quick-fix’ to sort out the battery draining problem. clever apple, advertising the new 3gs with 20% better battery life. doubt that 20% more would bring me through the day. :(

re-updated:
after that downgrading failure i decided to do a clean restore (setup as new iphone) and voila! the battery-life has improved drastically. all back to normal, happy days. finally time to enjoy the new firmware and have a closer look :)

Encrypt iPhone Backup

encrypt-iphone-backup

I love that iTunes backs up my data and settings whenever i sync my iPhone but i have often wondered what would happen if someone can get hold of this backup? Scary i know but i have just noticed that the latest version of iTunes now has an [Encrypt iPhone Backup] checkbox within the option panel of the connected iPhone.

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This is a god send in my opion becuase it means i now have a password protected backup of my iPhone, call me paranoid but i do like my digital privacy lol
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Push Notification?

push-notification

iphone_30_icon_push_notification1After reading other iPhone related blogs it suddenly dawned on me that i dont have a Notifications section in the settings menu. Then i realized that i have not yet downloaded any new apps since the 3.0 update, doh!  So if you have yet to experiance Push Notification try downloading the FREE Associated Press app and your new Notifications menu will appear in the Settings Menu.

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Heres Push Notification explained better:

Source - theiphoneblog

Perhaps the highest profile addition to third party apps, if not the App Store proper, is the release of the-anticipated Push Notification service (PNS).

This service is supposed to replace some forms of background multi-tasking support, which Apple allows for their own apps like Mail, Phone, and iPod, but sites battery life, stability, and complexity of management as reasons not to grant third party (App Store) apps the same privilege.

So, under iPhone 2.0, if you exit an Instant Messenger (IM) app, you no longer have anyway of knowing when a new IM comes in unless and until you deliberately relaunch the app. (Sure, there are work around over SMS and Email, but the app itself is dead).

Under iPhone 3.0, if you exit an IM that supports PNS, the developer’s servers will alert Apple’s PNS which then “push” an alert to your iPhone. (Similar to how MobileMe already pushes alerts for email).

If you have IM, Twitter, a news app, etc. Apple’s servers will handle all of them, so theoretically your iPhone only has to listen to PNS instead of each one separately. One instead of many is supposed to save battery life.

PNS currently supports 3 kinds of alerts: badges (like Mail uses to show you unread messages), custom sounds (like a beep or bell or anything already built into the app by the developer), or modal text alerts (like the kind that pop up to tell you about a new SMS).

With the text alerts, if an alert comes in, it will stay up until you dismiss it or act upon it (e.g view an IM). If a second (or third, or more) text alert comes in, however, it replaces the previous one, and that previous alert is gone forever. In other words, if nine alerts come in, you’ll only ever see the ninth one and dealing with it gives you a blank screen, not the eighth — or previous — alert. (Badges, if used and enabled, would still show you 9 messages had come in).

If your iPhone is in sleep mode, alerts will still pop up, but the “swipe to unlock” will dismiss them, but not send you to the alerting app. Less than ideal, but perhaps the best solution given the limited notification handling the iPhone currently employs.

OS 3.0, worth the wait?

os-30-worth-the-wait

iphone-os-3

Well after weeks of waiting for the update i have to ask myself was it really worth it? Okay we can cut/copy/paste but to be totally honest i never felt the need to do this in the past. Most of the new features wont work because the network provider in gibraltar is ran by morons! Case in point MMS, as soon as i updated my iPhone 3G the first thing i tried was sending a picture MMS, needless to say it failed as one would have to enter the network details etc. So after a long ‘on hold call’ to gibtelecom N.O.C the operator informed me that the iPhone is not capable of sending MMS, so after i educated him about OS 3.0 he told me hes never heard of APN or MMS Proxy setting (LMAO) and to call back in the morning…. Good to know a 24 hour Network Operations Center is so well ran with educated and experienced technicians!

On a lighter note i am reliably informed that iPhone can now stream flash movies in Safari! So after some investigation on youporn.com we are now able to watch these movies WUHOOO! lol.

cut, copy and paste -day

cut-copy-and-paste-day

first thing i did this morning checking the updates server… and again… and again, until someone asked what time it was in america. well, that explains.
and i am not the only one… people calling or coming in the store and asking.

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just a little longer ;)

update: according to several online sources and my own calculations, the update should be on around 7ish pm tonight.

girls with iphones

girls-with-iphones

yeah, that’s what we wanna see! definitely goes into my bookmarks. girlswithiphones.com (some of the pictures contain nudity!)

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