Hijinks Inc.

Category: iPhone

  • Hulu Plus Announced – Invite Only

    Hulu PlusYes, you have to be invited (for now), but holy crap, the long rumored subscription based Hulu Plus is real.

    $9.99 a month gets you access to full seasons of TV shows on all sorts of devices, support currently includes the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, some Samsung TVs / Blu-ray players, and various game consoles and set top boxes will be supported later this year. Did I mention it’s all in HD? And If Hulu can just get some current movies added in there Netflix might have some competition. And remember kids, competition is good.

    Also, the only device I care about being supported is the iPad, I’ve been using Hulu on my TV for years.

    Now what are you waiting for!  Hit up this link to apply for access and let us know if you get in!

  • iPhone 4 Mini-Review

    Note: I didn’t buy an iPhone 4, but I did get a chance to sit down and play with one for a few hours last night…

    First off, I have to agree with everyone else out there and say that this screen is fantastic, that is unless you get one with a defective screen with that nice yellow discoloration in the lower lefthand corner. HD video is mind-blowingly awesome for such a small screen, colors are crazy vivid and photos look absolutely amazing because of this. Sadly though, screen smudging and fingerprints still run rampant and viewing in bright light is as glare filled as ever.

    Similar to how the iPhone 3G made the original iPhone feel like a cheap toy; iPhone 4 makes the 3GS not only cry like a girl, but feel like outdated lump of plastic. A very outdated lump of plastic. In more technical terms, what I’m saying is the build quality is very impressive and it feels quite solid. Not to mention the hardware specs of the iPhone 4 outshine even the iPad (at least in the RAM department). And you notice those hardware differences, the A4 processor in conjunction with 512MB of RAM allows current applications to load insanely fast, which helps make users feel like they actually are multitasking, and as a developer I’m pretty excited to see what can be done with this extra power in future applications.

    Video recording has also improved nicely since the 3GS, largely thanks to the bigger and better sensors. Image stabilization is quite handy and works surprisingly well, which makes using FaceTime quite a bit less nauseating than it might be otherwise. I only made a short 3 minute FactTime call, but I could see it catching on, albeit slowly as it seems slightly handicapped by the fact that FaceTime is WiFi only. Also, I have confirmed that FaceTime works over a MiFi connection without problem, so what the heck AT&T?!

    As for iOS 4, my opinions haven’t changed much, the big ‘wow’ feature of multitasking isn’t really all it’s chalked up to be. Think of it more as fast application switching and while it’s a step in the right direction, you can’t really label it true multitasking when it requires developers to recode their applications to include support for background audio / local notification APIs. I still prefer the way Backgrounder (Jailbreak required) addresses the issue, though I have not had a chance to test Backgrounder with iOS 4 yet.

    Even though I think it’s a great phone, I don’t think I’ll be upgrading from my current iPhone anytime soon, partially because  I’m considering switching to the Android platform or at least adding one to my arsenal of phones. Now I didn’t get a chance to see if my iPad’s Micro SIM worked as a data only option in the iPhone 4, but I will try and arrange an opportunity to do so in the near future. And of course, I’ll keep you guys updated when I do

  • Mobile Credit Card Processing with Swipe

    As I’m still waiting to hear back from Square about getting into their beta, and still waiting for Mophie to announce pricing for marketplace (which might not ship, as it’s disappeared from their website since posting this originally), I’ve decided to give Swipe from AppNinja’s a try.

    Keep in mind that I’ve only been using it for a couple days now, so I’ll probably have more to add at a later date.

    [ The Good ]
    Super clean interface that makes manually entering a transactions a breeze, it also makes good use of your existing contact lists to quickly populate additional receipt fields.

    Surprising good signature capture, made even better by using a Pogo Sketch from TenOneDesign. Which is nice to see, as a lot of the other apps for the iPhone don’t support signature capturing.

    It also features Authorize.net support, which doesn’t limit you to only being able to process credit cards on your iPhone, and has a reasonable transaction rates (unlike Square, which I believe sports close to 5%).

    [ The Bad ]
    Really, the only drawback at this point is the customizable receipts feature needs to offer more robust options, there’s no way to change the layout of it, you can only control what’s displayed in the header and footer.  However, to their credit the app features a web controlled back end for customizable receipts, which means no waiting for Apple to approve changes if they update the receipt options.

  • Latest Update to Facebook for iPhone Breaks Push?

    I just installed the latest version of Facebook’s iPhone app and ever since then have been seemingly getting push notifications for someone else’s account.

    Anyone else seeing this?

  • Wolfram Alpha iPhone App

    All the cool kids are trying out Wolfram Alpha these days, but while they try and figure out the meaning of life, I’m working on an iPhone app based off of the Wolfram Alpha API.

    There’s a good chance somebody will be beat me to the punch, and I’m still not 100% sure I’ll release the app, but I’m toying around with it right now.

    Watch this space for more info.