The Obama campaign released an iPhone app. Its design kinda reminds me of Windows XP with the default “Bliss” wallpaper. See what I mean after the jump.

From the “Oh, What a Surprise!” department, Apple’s iPhone is now available in a 16GB model. When the iPhone was released last year, it was offered in 4GB and 8GB models, at $499 and $599 respectively. Within two months, the iPhone price dropped by $200 for both versions, with the 4GB model getting phased out. The new 16GB iPhone retails for $499.

The iPod touch was also released at the time of the iPhone price drop and was immediately offered in 8GB and 16GB configurations for $299 and $399 respectively. Both the iPhone and the iPod touch use the same kind of solid state memory; it was only a matter of time before the iPhone’s capacity was upped. (Duh!)

But wait, there’s more. I just noticed that a 32GB iPod touch was also released today.

• Apple
• Third Party Applications on the iPhone: Steve Jobs wants third party apps on the iPhone (and iPod touch) after all, and promises a software development kit (SDK) by February. [more at Apple Hot News]
• Jobs confirms iTunes Plus price drop across the board: Not a full day after our initial report that Apple planned to drop the price of all its iTunes Plus tracks (as well as add a number of indie labels to the mix), many users started seeing the changes slowly trickle down from iTunes’ servers. [more at ars technica]
• It’s official: Leopard to go on sale October 26: After much speculation, Apple has confirmed that the next version of its Mac OS X operating system, “Leopard,” will hit stores on Friday, October 26, at 6 p.m. [more at CNET]
• Fenty to Order Switch to Meters for District Taxis: D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said today he will sign a mayoral order mandating that taxis switch from a zone system to time-and-distance meters. [more at Washington Post]
• Immigration Crackdown Unanimously Approved: The Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously early Wednesday morning to deny 14 county services to illegal immigrants, following a 12-hour public hearing that drew 400 speakers and 1,200 demonstrators. Supervisors did not vote until after 2:30 a.m. [more at WJLA]
• Oh, he’s walking the plank in his undies again..: An Australian man, clad only in underwear, fell nine stories while trying to build a makeshift plank bridge into a neighbor’s flat, but lived to tell the tale. [more at Reuters]

And if you got this far down, what exactly does it mean to toss a sheep? The question just came up at the office… seriously!

Last week I mentioned that pxPipe took its service offline. (see PxPipe Goes Down the Tubes) I dropped a note to alwaysBETA. Sean from aB promptly responsed (This is a gesture I always appreciate, by the way.):

All of the aBers with iPhones are now uploading directly from their phones to [Facebook] via email with no problems.

I can’t speak for the others, but I have my phone configured with my gMail address and it still works…

If you’re having issues, you should email Facebook support and ask them what’s up. At any rate, their upload method now works for us and is better than pxPipe was since it tags photos specially as “mobile uploads” with a little icon and puts them into your profile and albums without the need for approval. It just wasn’t worth it for us to maintain our service anymore since we don’t need to use it anymore.

Fair enough, and I should have contacted Facebook to begin with. A snippet from “Sam from Facebook’s” response:

Please try sending the email message with the mobile photo to your
special email address: y——–fbookpix.com. [ed. note: address altered for security]

If you still are not receiving a confirmation code, please let me know.

Now, I had tried that earlier, but to no avail. Because I’m insane, I tried it again.

Wouldn’t you know? It worked! I guess Sam (or someone just as important) made a tweak and I could email photos from my iPhone to my Facebook account. The results are a little inconsistent, though. Sometimes a photo shows up in my account right away, others it takes a day or so. No matter — the system works and I ain’t rockin’ the boat no further.

Sean and Sam were responsive and helpful to my needs. Who says customer service is dead?

One of my favorite web-based iPhone apps is pxPipe, a utility that allows you to upload photos to a facebook account via email. (Why facebook doesn’t already allow one to upload a photo by email is beyond me.)

Wait, that opening sentence should be completely past tense; the pxPipe service was discontinued. I guess it happened recently based on an intomobile entry from last week touting the then month-old service.

I dropped a note to alwaysBETA, the creators of pxPipe:

I ventured over to pxPipe.com and found that you’ve discontinued the service stating, “Facebook now allows photo uploads from arbitrary email addresses.”

I think you may be mistaken here. I attempted to send a photo from my iPhone to my Facebook account to mobile@facebook.com and photos@facebook.com; both times I received this automated response: “Sorry, we cannot support uploads sent via email. You sent from GMail. If you are sending from a phone, it must be configured to send directly.”

Those email addresses only work with MMS messages. As you probably know, iPhones have SMS capabilities, but not MMS.

PxPipe was a great tool and there’s still a need for it; I hope you guys reconsider your decision.

Cheers,
-Fredo

We’ll see what happens.

Among the announcements at today’s “The Beat Goes On” event at Apple (Yes Virginia, there really is a revamped iPod line.), the iPhone is getting a price drop.

Surprise!

And Dan Cederholm called it out on twitter about an hour ago.

The 8GB iPhone drops to $399, a $200 difference from it’s release date price. No word on 4GB pricing, though given it’s $499 price point there’s no doubt that it too will see a price break.

Sigh. This happened to me last year too; not long after I bought a 60GB iPod, Apple upgraded it upped the capacity and dropped the price.

Update: I should clarify something here. The fact that the iPhone’s price dropped doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I expected it would… eventually. A $200 price break in just over two months since release is a bit of a burn, though. Such is the price for early adoption, I guess.

As for last year’s iPod incident, the 60GB model had been out a while, but I didn’t pay attention to speculation that a bigger model would soon be out.

In nearly two months of iPhone ownership, I’ve decided that the iPhone needs to support three things: song lyrics, iPod games and the Camera Connector.

Ron posted this survey (which he found elsewhere) and for lack of anything better to do, I thought I’d take a crack at it. I find it interesting that all my answers are rather short, save for the answer to question 2. One could argue that I wrote the most on a subject I’m passionate about, but I think that would be overthinking it.

In a move that is probably several years too late, Karl Rove is stepping down “for the sake of his family” at the end of the month. (I sense he’ll also be spending more time with his iPhone.)

Here’s a video of how copying and pasting might work on an iPhone, if Apple ever decided to implement it. (via kottke)

Older Posts »