Audio Volume on iPod/iPhone Movies set too Low?!

The audio levels on my iPhone movies are too low. My music is loud enough and can be increased beyond my comfort levels. Movie soundtracks are, however, too soft even when the volume control is maxed out. Why the disparity in sound levels? Not sure. I’m time-shifting movies from DVDs using Handbrake, perhaps this app is to blame?

Here’s how to work around it …

In your iTunes Movies library, before you synch up your iPod or iPhone …

Select all movies
File>Get Info
Select the Options tab
Slide the Volume Adjustment up from None to 100%
Click “Ok”

If asked, acknowledge that you’re changing multiple files through this action!

Of course you can and probably should change the settings on individuals movie files as you add them to iTunes.

Synch up! Your movies should be loud enough, although still not equal to the maximum volume you can crank your music up to!

How do you save a draft email in the iPhone’s Mail application?

So here’s something that Apple’s GUI gurus didn’t get right: How to save draft email in the iPhone’s Mail application.

Stop writing. Hit “Cancel” (1), yes, I know, that doesn’t feel right or comforting. But then up pops the option to “Save” (2) your email. You’ll then find it in your “Drafts” (3) folder.

The cure for iPhone envy? Your iTunes on any device. In seconds.

Jon Lech Johansen, famous for having reverse engineered the CSS DVD-copy protection scheme, makes headlines again with DoubleTwist, an application which which removes DRM from iTunes so you can play your music on any device — not just those approved by Apple: “With doubleTwist, it’s a breeze to put your media on your devices and share it with your friends. Grab it for free, or learn more on the website. It’s time to play!” Download doubleTwist here.

Turn your iPhone into a Web Server with ServersMan’s CyberDuck …

Turn your iPhone into a web server using ServersMan’s CyberDuck application. Uses 3G or WiFi.

Caption: CyberDuck here seen serving over a WiFi connection.

Why would you want to set your iPhone up as a web server? Good question. I’ll try to address that in my conclusion. It would seem more useful to be able to edit and administer a web server remotely with your iPhone: The server remains up when you use your iPhone for other tasks. When the iPhone is the web server you’ll need another computer to edit the files on it and you lose the iPhone’s primary functions as a smart phone. But I’ll show you how to do it anyway.

How (not) to Make a Nuclear Weapon with iTunes …

A colleague at work today told me her son had noticed that Apple’s iTunes Terms of Service prohibits the use of iTunes to make a nuclear bomb …

”APPLE INC. SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR iTUNES”

Share your Urbanspoon experiences with me …

I loaded up my iPhone with the free Urbanspoon application some months back and since then I’ve discovered several good restaurants where I live, work and play. It uses the phone’s GPS to be location aware. The key is to find like minded foodie friends so I’m inviting you to follow me on Urbanspoon by linking here. An account is free if you haven’t signed up yet — and there is no kickback or financial incentive for me to promote Urbanspoon to you.

Firemint’s Flight Control for iPhone

UPDATE October 20th, 2009: The tips and cheats evolved here are working. My high score landing at the Beach airport is 176 and I’m now a Captain. Please share your own winning techniques in the comments.

UPDATE June 3rd, 2009: Fight Control update 1.2 is out today, on iTunes! There are new fields, including an aircraft carrier, to land on and new craft to land, some on water! Plus you can submit your high scores.

An iPhone game has kept me company these past few days as I nurse an allergy that turned into a cold. It’s Firemint’s Flight Control. A retro illustrated flight controller game, easy to play but logarythmically difficult as time passes and more aircraft come in to land. It’s 99c. No question. Buy it!

Will Skype for the iPhone be released tomorrow?

UPDATE Tuesday 31st March: Yes! You can find it here.

There’s a lot of net chatter suggesting that a Skype app for the iPhone will be in the App Store on Tuesday. For free (yay!). Works only when you’re logged onto WiFi (doh!). Still, I’ll be in line to download and test it tomorrow …

Faux iPod Bollywood ad takes my fancy …

I’m in a video-centric frame of mind this week. After appreciating Slumdog Millionaire recently I couldn’t help but smile at this faux iPod ad on YouTube …

Third time lucky? Will v3 finally bring select, cut, copy and paste to the iPhone?

UPDATE: Tuesday 17th March. To answer the question before I pose it for new readers of this blog, the answer now is “yes” (see more appended).

Will version three of the iPhone software, to be announced this Tuesday, finally bring select, cut, copy and paste to the iPhone? I would hope so. Tethering would be nice and so would video, push, background applications and stereo Bluetooth — but no requirement has been as long suffering nor as blatantly missing as select, cut, copy and paste.

I’ve previously blogged about this omission: iRegret buying the iPhone: No select-cut-copy-and-paste! and iPhone could learn a lesson from Newton.

Do it Apple, and do it now, it’s long overdue!

Just released: Amazon’s Kindle for the iPhone

Amazon’s Kindle, a software application for the iPhone, is available from the iTunes store here, for free. It works independently from the Kindle itself but if you had one and wanted to switch between the Kindle and the iPhone to read the same book, the system will sync up your bookmarks so you can seamlessly switch between the devices. Books you’ve bought for the Kindle will download to the iPhone and vice versa.

Browse for books in your browser, not the Kindle application, and send sample first chapters to your iPhone for free. After reading the sample chapter on your iPhone you’ll be offerd a “Buy now” link — which essentially is a 1 click immediate purchase of the book from the Kindle application, no confirmation offered nor required.

How to download .mp4’s from YouTube

Since YouTube has updated their weside to accommodate the wider HD format I’m finding that my usual tools for copying video down — to transfer to my iPhone for later viewing — is broken. I found the following javascript code snippet at several site (so I’m not sure whom to properly credit with it). Create a bookmark and instead of entering a URL, enter this code instead …

javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href='http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=18&video_id='+swfArgs['video_id']+'&t='+swfArgs['t']}

You might also try installing this code by drag-dropping this link onto your bookmark bar to create a bookmark!

Infidelity on the iPhone?

Hoax or tragedy? This is just too salacious to pass up …

In Apple’s discussion forums, under a post titled “Pictures automatically attach to e-mail?“, recently registered Susan042764, with only two posts under her belt, asks …

“Please help! I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!”

I’m not sure what this is …

Is this about showing off a nerdish use of a recycled Pentium heat sink — as a business card holder — or an opportunity to post an iPhone photo taken with CamerBag’s Helga effect? CameraBag’s Helga vignette is an obvious reference to what used to be an unfortunate side effect of the cheap Chinese Holga toy camera with a plastic lens. The effect’s name Helga is probably an attempt at side stepping Holga’s trademark. Read about CameraBag or find it at the App Store here.

Why no Flash on the iPhone?

The reasons might be many, but I’ve come to believe that there are just a few key overlapping issues which separate Adobe and Apple on the issue of Flash …

User Interface (UI): Adobe is developing its own cross-platform graphical user interface (GUI) for their applications which is different from Apple’s standard. Its a laudable and sensible thing for Adobe to be doing for end-users, but something which dilutes the value of Apple’s unique and easy to use interface. If the application UI between Wintel, Linux and Apple boxes are essentially the same there is less incentive to pay a premium for Apple hardware. Apple can’t like that much. There’s not much they can do about that on the Mac but they sure can spoil it spreading to the iPhone.

Bypassing the App Store: Since entire web applications and games can run in a Flash player inside a browser there will likely be fewer applications sold via the App Store — and less revenue for Apple. Worse though, since Flash would run those same apps on other phones and computers, this would dilute the uniqueness of the iPhone. Let’s face it, given the choice most developers would prefer to develop cross platform than for a single platform only.

Adding those two things together I can better see why Apple is pushing back on Flash — but of course I wish that they wouldn’t!