Review: Keynote Remote iPhone App Revisited

About 4 months ago, I gave my quick review of the Keynote Remote app for iPhone. I do a lot of presentations during meetings with clients. Once I enter that meeting room, I want to be able to get everything set up in the shortest amount of time possible. So for those situations, I prefer to stick with the Front Row remote rather than the Keynote Remote app for iPhone, which requires me to pair it up.

Recently though, I had a chance to use it at an internal meeting where I had time before hand to pair the computer with the iPhone app.

Surprised reaction to using iPhone to control presentations
So the meeting started, and I navigated to the next slide with a swipe on my iPhone, and my boss asked, "You can do that?" So, apparently, it seems that using your iPhone or touch to control presentations is a pretty neat and cool thing.

Portrait mode in Kyenote Remote iPhone app rocks!
Since the slide shows up on the iPhone, there's no need to look at the presentation screen. That's great, but even better is to have your notes available to you when the app is in portrait mode.

Tip on using notes on Keynote Remote
Although you can put a bunch of notes and memo for each slide, but I don't recommend that. Besides, the screen real estate on your iPhone isn't very big and navigating through lots of text isn't very practical during a presentation. Instead, I recommend putting down the key message of the slide. Every slide has a purpose and a message to deliver.

So every time when I move to a new slide, I get reminded exactly what I need to convey with the slide by the app. Very very nice.


So, if you do presentations where you have ample time to set up the equipment beforehand, this app is a gem for doing presentations.

Can I really get some work done with my iPhone alone?

So I was going to meet a client at a train station, and I was about 15 minutes early. Listening to the latest MacBreak Weekly Podcast, I decided to see if I could get some work done on my iPhone.

Consolidating notes

Notes is one of my favorite apps on the iPhone. It loads fast, and serves as an easy way to record my thoughts. Usually I end up with a long list of memos, and back at home, I get the notes off the iPhone, and organize them.

Now, armed with copy and paste with the 3.0 update, I tried for the first time to organize my memos on iPhone. And sure enough, it worked. I could copy and paste text and group the memos together in the same area easily. Obviously, I'd be much proficient on a computer, but this is not bad, and actually doable. And there's something about copying and pasting. It's kind of fun.

Organizing and processing my email

My mail accounts on the iPhone use IMAP and my folder structure is simple. So organizing mail can be easily done with iPhone. The only part I wish the iPhone had was the ability to "Organize by thread", a feature I can't live without on the Mail app on the Mac.

Bookmarking files with Delicious

Sometimes emails carry links that I want to bookmark on Delicious. This was the task I had problems with.

So here's how it works on my computer. On my Bookmarks Bar, I have a Delicious Bookmarklet link. So when I see a page I want to bookmark, I just click on this Bookmarklet, and it would bring me Delicious where I can bookmark the page I'm looking at. (More info about bookmarklets on Delicious here.)

On the iPhone, I tried to do the same thing. It works, except the Delicious page where I choose what tags to go with my bookmarks was rather clumsy on the iPhone browser.

This could be easily fixed though if Delicious optimizes their page for the iPhone, or Apple improves their browsers. For now, bookmarking to the iPhone isn't very smooth yet. Hope this gets fixed.

Tasks I was able to do with my iPhone

So within the 15 minutes wait, I realized I can do two work-related things:

1. organize my memos
2. organize my emails

Pretty nice.

Tip: The obscure "Redirect" feature in Apple Mail

The other day, I was playing around with customizing my tool bar in mail and I ran across this "Redirect" icon. And I tried it out. In a nutshell, basically, it allows you to forward a mail in its original form. None of the "Begin forwarded message... blah blah blah" stuff.

Can't yet to think of a really practical case to use it, but I recall vaguely there were times when I wanted to forward a message as is...

Oh well, a nice little trick. Only time will tell if it's useful and really should deserve a spot in the tool bar.

iPhone 3GS brochure in Japan

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A USB drive that looks good on your key chain from LaCie

I'd like to have one of these. LaCie itsaKey USB Flash Drive is a USB drive in the shape of a key.

Comes in 4GB and 8GB models.

Learn more at LaCie's website.

Saying bye bye to my iPod touch 2g

This would be a "boxing" picture as I will be selling this slim iPod touch 2g.

It's so hard to say good bye...

Uploading a video to YouTube from iPhone 3GS

So this weekend, I finally have a video worthy to upload to YouTube - a video of a life-size Gundam in Japan!

Didn't really want to use the cellular network to upload it, so I waited till I got home. Once on my wi-fi network, I selected the video I wanted to upload. Put a title, description, and tags (for some reason, at least one tag is required). And then choose a category. And that's pretty much it (assuming you already have YouTube account info all set up).

The video is first compressed, and then uploaded. My clip which was 2 minutes long took about 4-5 minutes. Overall, it's easy, and pretty amazing! On a side note, the iPhone did start to get hot. I'm guessing compressing and uploading these videos take a lot of work =)

And here's the video for your enjoyment.

Chumby on sales in Japan at Bic Camera

Spotted this at the Japanese electronics store, Bic Camera in Shinjuku. I wouldn't mind having one of these = )

Trying to get my iPhoto life-size Gundam slideshow onto YouTube

I wanted to get an iPhoto '09 slide show onto YouTube, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way. You can export straight to Apple TV, iPhones, and iPods. But no YouTube.

So the only way was to export it as a movie file. And then re-import it in iMovie. And publish to YouTube from there. This has got to be streamlined. At least let me share via MobileMe...

Well, here's the slideshow. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Tip: How to get videos from iPhone 3GS into iMovie

This weekend I had a chance to go to a Gundam event in Japan where they're exhibiting a life-size Gundam. And it was a great opportunity for me to test out taking video with an iPhone 3GS.

After coming home, I wanted to see how easy it was to do some editing with the videos on my Mac. The entire process went rather smooth, but the steps involved might not be intuitive and apparent at first. So in a nutshell, here are the basic steps to edit your iPhone 3GS videos in iMovie '09 on a Mac.

1. Connect your iPhone and open iPhoto '09.
   
   
2. In iPhoto, you will see your iPhone under devices. (Just to be clear, the name of your device will show up under device. I just happen to named my device "iPhone 3GS".)
   
   
   
   
3. Import everything. After it's finished, select if you want to delete or keep the photos on your iPhone.
   
   
4. Open up iMovie '09. And under your event library, you'll see iPhoto Videos. There's you'll be able to find the movies you just imported from your iPhone.
   
   
   
5. Now you can create a new project and drop your iPhone movies in, and add some transitions and music.
   
   
6. After you're all done. Send it off to YouTube all within iMovie. Pretty slick!

Here's my edited video. Enjoy =)

iPod touch vs iPhone - 9 differences

I started off as an iPod touch user, and when the iPhone was finally released in Japan, I made the switch. And after having some time playing with an iPhone 3GS, I present you an updated post comparing the iPod touch 2g with the iPhone 3GS.

I hope this blog post will provide some helpful insight if you're deciding between the iPhone and iPod touch. Let's get started!

1. Internet everywhere or not?

When I switched from an iPod touch to an iPhone, the biggest difference was having Internet access everywhere. I can't ever go back to the touch unless I can get wifi everywhere. Having Internet access everywhere means having the freedom to look up maps and search for prices on Amazon when I'm outside at a store. Convenient.

Of course, if you don't use public transit and have access to wifi everywhere, or at least, in areas where you're at the most, this wouldn't be a critical factor and difference.

2. Phone and Contacts

Having all your contacts on your iPod is kind of cool, and useful. It would be awesome if we were still in the age of Palm Pilots. Being able to look up a contact, and immediately call them, that's even cooler - only possible with the iPhone.

It's definitely possible to try to use the Skype app to make the touch into a phone since Skype is integrated with your contacts on the iPhone. The only problem is the iPod touch doesn't have a built-in mic, which means you're stuck with using add-ons or the mic headsets. I'd imagine it would be find if you're trying to make a call, but imagine getting a call. If you're using mic headsets, you have to scramble to get the headset on to take the call. And, unfortunately, doesn't seem like the new touches support BlueTooth headsets. I'm guessing that is Apple's way of differentiating the touch and the iPhone - the touch just is not meant for a phone.

If BlueTooth headsets work as mics, then the touch could really be usable as a phone with Skype.

If you manage your contacts, this may be a critical feature to lean toward the iPhone. I used to manage my contacts, and I had to sync them to my Nokia cellphone. And it wasn't a pleasant experience. The groups didn't sync, and it just wasn't a seamless experience. With the iPhone it's seamless. Groups are retained. And if you pair the iPhone with MobileMe service, contacts are always updated. If someone calls me, I can add them into the contacts. And when I go home, it's there in my computer. Beautiful.

3. Having 1 device or 2 devices (iPod touch + phone)

Having to carry one less device has been wonderful. Now if they can only get the iPhone to work as a TV remote, wallet, a key, and a train pass, then there's only one thing I need to bring. Anyways, not to stray from the topic, the iPhone means you carry one less device.

4. GPS and compass

If you live in a city where you're on foot and rely and public transportation a lot, navigation within the city becomes critical. Personally, I've been using this in Tokyo, and boy has this made my life easier when going to new areas in the city. And with the new compass built in, you'll be able to instantly find your direction, and get on your way right away.

5. A word about icons for your music and videos

This was actually one thing that I found some time getting to use to when I switched from a touch to the iPhone. If an icon on the touch / iPhone is an app, on the touch you have two apps - one for video and one for music. I really liked this.

However, on the iPhone, you get the iPod app. So if I wanted to watch a video, I have to go to the iPod app, and then select the video tab. One extra step.

Music and Videos icons for iPod touch

iPod icon instead for the iPhone

7. Camera

In Japan, where phones have 8 mega-pixel camera, the iPhone camera stinks pretty bad. The 3GS has an improved camera, and thankfully, a macro mode so that you can actually take snapshots of memos and magazine articles.

Even tough the camera isn't all that good, I still love it. It's a major reason that I would pick the touch over the iPhone. The ability to take casual pictures and videos on-the-go without having to carry another device, that's great. And now the iPhone 3GS has a better camera, it's great for business use as well. Imagine you have a meeting and there are notes and diagrams on the white board, just bust our your phone. If your colleagues need it, email them right away from the phone. Just like that, boom!

Hopefully rumors are true that the touch will soon come with a camera. For now, it doesn't have one, and if taking photos isn't your thing, it's one less reason for the iPhone.

8. The position of the earphone jack

I don't read this very often on other reviews, but I did notice this when I made the switch from the touch to the iPhone. On the iPod touch, the earphone jack is on the bottom. For the iPhone, it's on the top.

What does this mean? The touch is optimized for pant pockets, and iPhone is optimized for shirt pockets. Look at the photos below and try to imagine.

With the iPhone, when you hold the phone upright, you can't slide that into your pant pockets without changing the orientation of the phone. However, if you drop it into your shirt pocket, it will work very well. It the opposite for the touch.

iPhone in the shirt pocket

iPod touch in pant pocket. With the jack on the bottom, it's a natural movement for your hand to put the touch in the pant pocket.

Though it's a minor thing, but if you never wear shirts with pockets, every time you want to put your iPhone in your pant pockets when listening to music with wired headset or earphones, one extra movement will be needed. Might be something to think about.

9. Size and Thinness

The iPod touch is slim and also has a smaller footprint. Personally, I think the touch is slicker in form factor. When you hold it a touch in your hands, the iPhone feels bulky.

iPod touch 2g (left) vs. iPhone 3GS (right) in thinness

and the size. touch on the left, and iPhone on the right.

So, the iPhone or the touch?

For me, it's definitely the iPhone. If all you need is playing music, video, and games, the iPod touch is perfect. And you get a bunch of additional features. Unfortunately, most of them will be relying on an Internet connection - i.e., email, browser, YouTube, Weather. But if you value those additional features and want to truly take advantage of them, the iPhone is a good candidate. And if you want it to do more phone stuff, PDA stuff, and business stuff, then you might also want to consider the iPhone.

If you answer mostly yes to the following questions, the iPhone might just be a good choice.

1. Do you need to have Internet access everywhere assuming you don't have access to wifi hotspots most of the time?
2. Do you manage contacts on your phone and computer?
3. Is having less devices to carry with you a big deal for you?
4. Do you live in a big city where maps and navigation? (especially on foot)
5. Do you take (or plan to take) a lot of videos and photos on-the-go?

Good luck, and thanks for reading!

Japan only: Herb flavored Pepsi

One of the perks of living in Japan is being able to have exotic and strange foods. Last month, Pepsi launched a Shiso flavor of Pepsi. Shiso is an herb used to accompany sushi and sashimi, and other dishes.

I bought a bottle, and I don't think I'll buy another one. It tastes "interesting" and indeed taste like herb. In fact, I couldn't really taste the cola part of the drink. Though, I think it also has a bit of cherry Coke.

If you're in Japan this month, check it out.

5 reasons to get MobileMe

If you have more than one Mac and an iPhone (like me), here are 5 reasons why MobileMe would be great for you.

1. Seamless syncing of your calendars, bookmarks, and contacts.

• Real life example #1 : Someone calls you on your iPhone. You create a new contact for him. When you go home and turn on you iMac, your Address Book is updated with the contact.
• Real life example #2: You bookmarked something on your computer, and you're at work or somewhere else with your MacBook. Guess what, your bookmarks are synced, so its available for you. And on your iPhone as well!

2. Remote access your Mac with Back To My Mac.

Some will be plagued with router problems, and have a hard time to get it to work. But when it works, it's sweet.

• Real life example #1: Since I don't have my home mail account setup in the Mail program at work, if I needed to check mail, I can just remote to my home Mac, and check my mail.
  
  
• Real life example #2: Since my todo app doesn't sync on multiple computers, for now, I just remote into my Mac at home from the office, and access my todo app.
  
  
• Real life example #3: For the paranoid, sometimes you just want to make sure your house is fine. Remote in, open up Photo Booth, and you can see if there are any strange activity.

3. Sharing files with iDisk

iDisk hasn't being stable enough for me to use it as actual file storage. It is, however, an easy way to share large files. You can create a special link for people to download a file. You can even password protect it.

4. MobileMe Mail - mail synced everywhere

MobileMe mail is IMAP, meaning all the messages and folders are kept intact on the mail server, just like GMail. This means, you can setup the account on multiple Macs or computers, and you will always have access to same folder structure. And best of all, you'll never have to organize your mail twice again. (well, sometimes you do, when the mail didn't get synced...)

5. Find your iPhone and Remote Wipe

Though these are two features you wish you never have to use. But in case, you lose it, the fact that you can remotely wipe your iPhone serves as a great insurance if your iPhone carries a lot of sensitive information.

There are plenty of other features like having your website, photo gallery, and etc., but I don't think they are the features that really make MobileMe stand out.

That's all folks, and thanks for reading!

GTD tip: Using todos to find files

In a previous post, I mentioned how you can use your calendar as a reference / index to find files. The key point here is making sure to include the date in your file name. The idea is that files and notes would be tied to events and meetings on your calendar. Therefore, it would make sense to search your calendar to that event, retrieve the date, and use the date to key up your files.

I realized that another good place to to help you find files is your todo app. If you are descriptive about your tasks and todos, you can use that to search for tasks, which in turn can lead you to the files you're looking for.

For example, in Things for Mac, I can search for a completed task, and it will show me the completion date. Once I know the completion date, I can then pull up materials within that date range. Of course, the important point is making sure you name your files with dates.

So to recap...

1. make sure you file names have dates
2. when you can't find the file and Spotlight has failed you, go to you todo app, and search for the task
3. hopefully, you find the task, and have the date of completion
4. now knowing the date, search again by the range of the date.

GTD tip: Spotlight your Google Docs in the clouds with Precipitate

GTD and searching comes hand in hand.

The GTD involves filing information and tasks away for later retrieval. And retrieval = search, right?

Extending Spotlight to the clouds

I love Spotlight; having the ability to search across all my files and mails on my computer is one I can't live without. There are still limitations such as not being able to search through images, videos, or sounds without tagging them properly. The other limitation is not being able to search the cloud, which is essential today because we have more and more info in the clouds. For example, I have a set of bookmarks on Delicious.com and stuff on Google Docs. Hopefully one day, we'll be able to do that with easy configuration and out of the box.

Using Precipitate to Spotlight Google Docs

Until then, you can use Precipitate to search your Google Docs and Google Bookmarks right from your Spotlight search window. Very neat if you are a heavy Google Docs user.

Thanks for reading, and hope your found this tip useful!

Source: CNET

How to set default email addresses for a group in Address / Book and mail

The problem:

I have members in a group in my contacts all with two email accounts - MMS email and regular email. Every time I send a mail to the group, the default email is the MMS email when I want it to be their regular work email.

The solution:

Apparently it wasn't very intuitive. I thought I could select the email to set it as default via the text menu, and that's not how it's done.

After some Googling, here's the answer. Go to Edit, Edit Distribution List..., and from there you can configure the default emails for the groups.

GTD tip: how to take advantage of searching emails with MobileMe on iPhone

One of the most exciting new features for iPhone users is the ability to search your MobileMe email account.

Limitations - the fine print

From my testing and what I can tell, here's what exactly can be done:

• if you do a search and you can't find something, you will be given the option to search on the mail servers for MobileMe
• however, the search is only confined to that folder.
• Spotlight search seems to be able to search across all folders, but doesn't look like it's capable of doing searches on MobileMe server.

What does this mean? Fewer folders = better!

If you organize your email in a lot of subfolders, this search feature isn't that useful. The trick is to just have a few folders - for example, if you don't categorize at all, you might have an inbox and an archive. Or you might just put everything in your inbox, then everything is searchable.

Personally, I have 3 folders in addition to my inbox.

• Archives
• Waiting for
• Useful

Since I keep all my mail on MobileMe, I'm loving this feature! Can't wait for the iDisk app now.

Quick Review: MacBook Air

I had the chance of using a MacBook Air (the latest and fastest model - 2.13 ghz and 128 GB SSD) for the past two weeks, and generally, I love it! I've been running Windows 7 as well as mainly office applications, and the speed was good - didn't feel slow and sluggish at all. Here is my quick review:

It's super light!

Spending most of my time in Tokyo for the past few years, I commute and bring my MacBook (the white one) to meetings. And especially in the summer where it's humid and hot, it's even more difficult to bare. And after carrying an Air, for the past two years when I had my MacBook, I wished I had one of these. If you live in a city where you travel by foot, buses, and trains, I think the Air will delight you.

The full size keyboard is great!

The Air is thin, but its sports nearly the same size as a MacBook, which means you get a full size keyboard. It stills take up quite the same amount of space on your desk as a MacBook would. It also means that the computing experience is not compromised; it feels just like working on my MacBook.

The Air cannot be compared to netbooks for I think their purposes are different. Netbooks have a compromise - small size and less computing power. The Air does not have these compromises. I'd like to think of it as a MacBook that's very light for traveling. The important thing is - the Air is mobile, but not PORTABLE. Netbooks are portable, and if it's a portable machine you want, you should look into netbooks. But if you want to edit your PowerPoint slides or type a long blog entry, and be able to carry it in your backpack without a burden on your shoulders, the Air might be for you.

Other things I like:

• screen is bright compared to my white MacBook
• big trackpad is good
• able to use 4 finger gestures to show desktop and expose is very convenient (In fact, when I'm working on my MacBook I find myself using those gestures. Of course, it doesn't work, and I have to resort to my hot corners work around for showing the desktop and expose)

The bad news: only one USB port

Having only one USB port hurts.

My exact experience:

1. Used wired mouse to do some stuff
2. Had to use the ethernet adapter to connect to Internet (didn't have wi-fi at that time). Meant I had to disconnect my mouse.
3. Oh yeah, the other time, to sync my iPhone, I have to unplug my mouse again...

I can easily imagine other scenarios. For example, needing to use a USB thumb drive and a mouse at the same time. The only solution is to get a USB port. In a sense, this machine is ahead of its time. The wireless working environments have yet to truly catch up. (At least, the place where I worked).

Final words

I don't think the Air can suffice as a primary machine, which makes the price of it is not very justifiable. However, if you live in a city like Tokyo and your job demands you to travel a lot, the Air could be your best friend, and the price may just be justifiable.

Two Google tips to help you research and find info

I've worked on quite a couple of research projects at my previous consulting jobs. I thought I share two Google tips that I find to be helpful during my researches.

1. Use quotations for your key words. For example, if you are searching for iPhone 3G, instead of typing iPhone 3G, try adding quotations to it like: "iPhone 3G". This way, it will pick up that exact phrase in your searches. This works extremely handy when you need to narrow down search results. In addition, you can also pair quoted phrases together to narrow results even more like: "iPhone 3G" "tethering on AT&T".
   
   
2. Search for something thru a specific site. Sometimes instead of searching through the big ocean of Internet, it might be easy to pinpoint a site (i.e. specific news site), and search through only that site. To do that, simply put this in your search query - site:domainname.com. For example, to search for Coke at TechCrunch.com, you would enter: Coke site:TechCrunch.com . And voila, you'll get results of Coke that's on TechCrunch.

Hope that helps, and thanks for reading!