iPhone ideas

I had the idea to use the iPhone as a remote scanner for the Delicious Library app.

The only app that I have found to do the work (stream a video from iPhone to my Mac) is PocketCam (http://www.senstic.com/iphone/pocketcam/pocketcam.aspx – €3.99 at the moment).

It installs a quicktime component that make the iPhone work as a webcam (that Delicious Library sees without problems). You have to change settings in the app to have a better resolution and you can try to stream a monochrome video (not seen great difference in result anyway). You have also to adjust the orientation of the stream (mine did get flipped horizontally…)

I have made several test and it works quite well with some caveat…

I have a 3G model so the camera and mainly it focus abilities are not so good (you have to use an external lens to try to get sharper images of a small barcode). I would like to have reports from owners of a 3GS model to see if they have better results

Another problem is that I live in Italy and the automatic search of Delicious Library does not handle well books from the italian market.

To have a feedback from the computer when the scan goes well you have to turn on the option in Delicious Library that use the text to speech syntesis to speak loud the title of the book being recognized (pump up the volume if the physical library you have is distant from you Mac).

I’ll try to add an external lens attached to the silicon case I use on my iPhone and see if the results will be better.

I would like to know also if there are other apps for the iPhone to do the same job (free is better).

I also tried to put together a small app that use the pic2shop (http://www.pic2shop.com/) app as a client to recognize only the barcode and send it to a php script that triggered an applescript to have the barcode searched in Delicious Library but the results were not good. I’ll made some more tests in the future.

I think that it could be possible to implement gestures in the home screens of the iPhone (I lack the handy shortcuts of Nokia phones, up, down, left, right for creating a new message, see last calls… etc…).

You could use two finger swipes (up, down, left, right) to do this kind of things (maybe a panel to configure these actions could also be useful…). Perhaps also a three finger swipe could make it.

[updated]

You could link the swipes to several common action or to launch 3rd party apps or custom urls (to use special url schemas)

These are my thoughts about the upcoming Apple tablet….

Fingerworks patents will be used… I think that the UI will get gestures control… but Apple need to standardize them… there are too many degrees of freedom in gestures… as in all apps on a Mac the Command key + S is the equivalent for the Save command… they need to have standard (and simple to learn) gestures for common commands.

I don’t think that the hardware will be so important… the problem with a tablet form factor is interaction (main gestures should be used with only one hand, you need the other to hold the tablet, using it as a notebook would be not so handy) and the hope of everyone is that Apple has solved the problem…

I think that the tablet will have some sort of iPhone OS inside (4.0?)… because with a new version of the iPhone SDK Apple could provide an easy way to make existing iPhone apps work on the tablet… and the AppStore ecosystem is a big plus for a new product.

The guidelines to build iPhone UI controls are tight because of the small space available (3.5″ is not so much). The guidelines to build apps for a device that is probably in the 10″ range cannot be the same… I think some concepts like navigation bar and other UI elements will require a redesign… or perhaps they will be changed in something else.

The rumors said Steve Jobs was happy with the development of the tablet… I think he was happy also with the development of the Cube… I only hope that what Apple will put out meet the expectations.

Less serious thoughts:

The incarnation of this patent could be used to handle gestures without touching the tablet or to have a front facing camera for video chat (ok this is a bit too much…)

Beside the shortcuts to do common actions (found on Nokia phones for example) I lack profiles…

I lack a low battery use profile (with low Luminosity, no wifi, no 3g), a 3G profile (I always have it off to spare battery).

Profiles could be reached by a swipe down or up gesture and should be configurable. Perhaps a + button (add to profile) could be added in each of the preference panel, so you could have in the profile only the things you need (example: 3G on/off, wifi on/off, Luminosity)…

I think that the iphone keyboard lacks the del key… the one that delete the characters at the right of the cursor.
Having only the Backspace key is frustrating…

Could it be made so that holding the shift key while hitting the backspace have the behaviour of the del key?
It seems so simple to me….

I was thinking about multitouch and its present use that is made of it in the iPhone…

My opinion is that multitouch as it is used now is like playing a piano with only one finger… There are many possibilities of gesture and only a few of them are used (pinch for example)… I think that the thing will evolve when a device with a much bigger screen be available (Mac Tablet ?). On an iPhone screen is impractical to use more than two finger… you cover too much content and you don’t see what you are doing…

Another issue will be to standardize gestures… or how to let users be acquainted with them…
Having a bigger screen could permit to use fingers from both hands even if from an ergonomic perspective you have to solve the problem of holding the device in your hands… (Double side multitouch input with trasparent overlay on screen of your fingers position?)

Hope we will soon see something really new from Apple…

I find that it’s not so handy to go through your application on the iphone if you have like me six or more pages of apps…

Perhaps if It could be implemented a two finger scroll…

You start from the left side with two finger on the screen of the iphone, swiping to the right change the pages… not only one in one movement, but all your pages in one swipe, so that you go to the last when you get to the right side of the screen…

Using a gesture like this could make reorganizing icons much faster…

Tap and hold on the app you want to move… wait for it to sway… put another finger on the screen and begin the scrolling movement like described before… to the right or to the left… when you get to the right page you want to drop your app take away your second finger and position the app as you do as usual…

I think that it’s not a so new idea but I think that Apple should implement an Add to Home function for Contacts… So You can add your favorite phone numbers to your Home screen and call in one tap…

You should also be able to choose an icon or the photo associated with the contact for the icon on the Home screen.

I know that there are workaround for this using the tel: protocol and even several free applications that only do this… call one contact of your address book but I think that a system function could be better.

I think that it could be useful to have a simple app that does only one thing…

It dial the number of your most used contact… your girlfriend or your mom… one tap and it dial…

It must have a method perhaps in the settings panel to set wich of your contact is your favorite…

Something like speed dial…

Don’t know if it already exists…

[UPDATE] It already exists… it’s called QuickDial (iTunes Store Link)

I think that application that use a drill down interface could be made more efficient implementing a two-finger scroll that do back-forward action… If you are in the deail of a contact you shoud be able to go back to the list with a two finger scroll up… easier than trying to find the button in the upper left corner that usually do the job… and if you dont take off the screen your fingers you could also go back to the detail…

It could be useful more with applications that show deep hiearchies (more than the canonical 3 level hierarchy)

Perhaps some kind of gesture could be implemented to change the position of an item in a hierarchy… think about something like spring loaded folders in Mac OSX Finder…

You tap on an item to select… add a second finger to start the move operation… drag left to go up on or more level… drag up or down to scroll in the upper level … drag right to enter another branch of the hierarchy and release your fingers to drop the item where you need it to go…

Feasible? don’t know… if someone wants to try to implement it…