Jay Meydad's Life Mashup

Roy’s interpretation to Steve Jobs’s iPad announcement and what would his older brother, the iPhone, say/sing.

I have been getting many questions & comments about my two posts on how to listen to Israeli radio stations on the iPhone and iPod Touch using the FStream app (here). That’s the “price” I had to pay for being ranked first on google for queries like “israeli radio on iphone”. Hopefully this post will provide answers to many of the questions.

Recently a new free application was released to the App Store called “Visual Radio” (download link). It was developed in Israel by Unicell and it offers the capability to listen to over 10 stations using a clean and elegant user interface.

Unlike the FSTream solution which requires configuring the radio stations’ streams urls into the app and changing the urls whenever those change, Visual Radio comes pre-configured with many radio stations which leads to an easy “install and play” experience. A few stations are still missing and I hope the Unicell team there will add them soon. Other nice features include:

1. Radio Dial that lets you preview what song is being played in a station before actually switching to it – big time saver

2. Displaying artist and song names

3. Song’s lyrics (when available)

4. Programming for every station

Kudos for the Unicell team for a great app. One small tip to the developers – change the app name to say something like “Visual Israeli Radio” so people who search iTunes will be able to easily find it.

Posted via email from jaymeydad’s posterous

Update (1/26/2010):
There is a new iPhone app that eliminates the need to configure FStream. Read about it here.

Original post starts here:
According to Google Analytics this old post of mine is one of the most popular on this blog. It is time to refresh the list, add new Israeli radio stations streams and fix the broken ones.

The updated list below uses a stream url structure from fm1.co.il. Simply launch FStream on your iPhone / iPod Touch and configure it to use the following streams. Enjoy.

Galaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glz.asx

GalGalaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glgltz.asx

88fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/88fm.asx

Kol Hamusica (classical music) -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-hamusica.asx

Reshet Aleph -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-aleph.asx

Reshet Bet -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-bet.asx

Reshet Gimel -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-gimel.asx

Regional stations

Kol Hacampus (one of my favorites, run by students, plays plenty of alternative music) – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/campus.asx
Radius 100fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/100fm.asx

Radio Tel Aviv 102fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/102fm.asx

Radio Lelo Hafsaka 103fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/103fm.asx

Radio Lev Hamedina -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/91fm.asx

Radio Emza Haderech -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/90fm.asx

Radio Kol Rega -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/96fm.asx

Radio Jerusalem -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/101fm.asx

Radio Haifa  -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/radio-haifa.asx

Kol Ramat Hasharon – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-ramat-hasharon.asx

Have you noticed the small print that appears on the Verizon-Droid iDon’t ads? “DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license.”

On that someone once said “there is only one thing better than a good name, a trademarked good name”.

btw, Less than 5 years ago George Lucas partnered with Cingular. Now he is going to profit from Verizon.

But as a long time user of TweetDeck’s desktop client, when I read that an iPhone version was just released, I thought to give it a try.

Well, I must say that TweetDeck for iPhone still has a long way to go before it becomes my preferred twitter client on the iPhone. Here are a few reasons why based on a 5 minutes usages:

• The app is not stable at all. In 5 minutes it crashed 5 times on me. In one of the cases, after a crash I had to try 3 times before the apps actually worked
• Strange error message indicating that I am not connected to the internet appeared while I was on Wifi kept appearing (see gallery below)
• The app does not seem to have a local cache of draft messages. If the app crash while you type a tweet, after restart you will have to start all over again!
• If you type in a tweet and then attach to it a photo, your tweet message will disappear and gets replaced by the link to the photo. Ugh!
• Search is not easily accessible. A few steps are required before you can do that which makes search a feature for power users only. First you need to add a new column called “Twitter Search” and set its initial search tern. Then whenever you want to actually edit the search term you have to: (a) navigate to the search column (b) click on the column settings wheel (c) change the search term. However, on TwitterFon search is a main function that is always visible at the bottom bar which makes it very easy to modify a search term
• Too many times and extra click is required:
  • TweetDeck opens by default in the column preview mode and it forces you to hit another time a column in order to make it use all screen area. IMHO, this should not be the default logic as for most user the Friends column is what they want to read most of the times when the app loads. Better usage of the 80%-20% rule would help here
  • When viewing a streem of tweets, you can not just click on a link that was tweeted to open it. You first need to open a specific tweet in a large preview mode and only then the link becomes live
• Last personal preference is the UI color. I prefer a light and bright app

On the positive site, TweetDeck has some features that I wish could be added to TwitterFon like:

• Growl integration – those little notification icons that float at the upper left corner whenever there is a new update
• QuickFollow button which lets you quickly type in a user name and follow

It is interesting to see how the battle to be the most popular twitter client is accelerating. But for now, I stick with TwitterFon Pro as my preferred Twitter client for the iPhone.

For a detailed comparison check out this great post.

[View with PicLens]

During the past month there have been a few important developments related to the availability of free Hebrew fonts and localized interface for iPhone and iPod Touch. First, HebDev, a group that developed a popular free open source solution suspended their project, leaving users with only one alternative – pay about $60 to a competitor. Second, Apple released iPhone 3.0 to developers and based on early previews, it looks like Hebrew support will finally be part of it. However, this version will become available to the public only in the summer, so this does not help those who have recently bought an iPhone or iPod Touch or those who have upgraded to firmware 2.2.1.

But today a new solution called OpenHebrew was released to the public. OpenHebrew is a package of basic Hebrew support (fonts and keyboard but not a localized interface) and it supports iPhone and iPod Touch running firmware 2.2 & 2.2.1. The creators used the Hebrew translation made by project iVrit (fully localized interface) and made it possible to install the iVrit package from the same source.

Installing OpenHebrew requires that you have a jailbroken device. If you have not done it, download QuickPwn and use it to jailbreak (5 min task even for non-techies). Then do the following:

Step 1 – Launch Cydia

Step 2 – add this new source: http://tom.zickel.org/openhebrew

Step 3 – Pick one of the two options:

• To install a fully localized Hebrew interface – search for the package iVrit and install it
• To install Hebrew fonts & keyboard only – search for the pacakge OpenHebrew and install it

Personally I prefer the second option which keeps the iPhone interface in English but properly handles right to left display of everything within applications that is written in Hebrew, like email subject lines and content, iPod song titles and artist names, text messages, contacts, etc.

Kudos to the iVrit team and to Tom Zickel at OpenHebrew (and in english) who worked hard on this and made Hebrew free to all iPhone & iPod Touch users once again. You can follow OpenHebrew on twitter as well.

Now, show some digg love.

Update (1/26/2010):
There is a new iPhone app that eliminates the need to configure FStream. Read about it here.

Original post starts here:

This tip is mainly for Israelis and other Hebrew speakers who live abroad or just travel and want to listen to Israeli radio stations on their iPhone while on the go. Getting this done is pretty simple:

1. Install the free FStream application on your iPhone via the AppStore

2. Open FStream and set up your favorite stations. You can do it on the iPhone or you could use a web interface which makes the input process quicker (see instructions under the More -> Web Management tab inside FStream)

3. Last thing, make sure to turn on the “Cellular Network” option otherwise the application will only work when you are iPhone is connected to a wifi hotspot.

I have collected urls for some of the popular Israeli stations streams:

• 88fm – mms://s67wm.castup.net/990310006-52.wmv
• Galgaltz – mms://stream.msn.co.il/gglz
• Galatz – mms://stream.msn.co.il/glz-stream
• Reshet Gimel – mms://s4awm.castup.net/990310004-52.wmv
• Reshet Bet – mms://s4awm.castup.net/990310001-52.wmv
• Radio Tel Aviv 102fm – http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?clipmediaid=30795

Update (3/1/2009, thanks to Tal Barnea):

• Galgaltz – http://glz.msn.co.il/media/gglz.asx
• Galatz – http://glz.msn.co.il/media/glz.asx

I have found many other urls on different websites but those were broken. The streams above were tested and as of today (1/30/2009) (3/1/2009) are working.

If you know of other stations’ streams, feel free to add in the comments section.

Update (11/28/2009): I posted an updated list & more stations here.

I still come accross iPhone users that don’t consider jailbreaking their iPhone because “they can find all the apps they need in the AppStore” or “jailbreaking could break my iPhone”.

The truth is that Jailbreaking has become a very simple process thanks to application like QuickPwn (available for Mac & Windows). Once you do it, your iPhone becomes a much more powerful and customizable device than what AppStore applications offer.

Here are 10 good reasons, meaning applications that can only be found on Cydia (the “AppStore”/installer for jailbroken devices):

• QuickGold – the quickest way to call or email someone and launch applications. Much like Quicksilver for Mac OS.
• BossPrefs – the quickest way to change settings such as Wifi, Bluetooth, Brightness and others.
• Copy & Paste – Clippy or the hClipboard (more powerful than Clippy but not suitable for users with more than one keyboard)
• Snapture – full featured advanced camera
• Cycorder – video recorder with real-time compression
• MxTube – download YouTube videos
• Backgrounder – keep applications running in the background while using others (very useful for IM or a Twitter app like TwitterFon)
• iCallBR – delete individual entries from the recent calls history
• OpenSSH – access the file system so you could get videos off the device after downloading them using MxTube or recording using Cycorder
• HebDev – full Hebrew support for the iPhone and iPod Touch, free of charge.

These were only ten and I am sure there are many others that are listed under the different sections within Cydia. Feel free to leave recommendations for apps in the comments section.

Interesting. Google is running a campaign on iPhones via AdMob to promote the google voice search app.

I saw it on QuickGold which is an app (great one – the Quicksilver version for iPhone) that can be installed only on a jailbroken iPhone.

This makes me wonder, does Google, a long time Apple partner, advertise on semi-illigal applications? Or is that a RON type of buy?

Big buzz today around the revamped Flickr mobile site (see TC, RWW, Mashable), their “universal access point for all device types.”, but a simple test that I did on my iPhone shows that the folks at Sunnyvale have missed one important and frustrating issue that mobile users experience daily when accessing Flickr urls.

This is not the first time I write about the fact that a direct link to an image does not load in its mobile version. The solution is so simple, that I am amazed no one at Flickr caught this while building the new version. All they have to do is detect the UserAgent and in the case it is of a mobile browser, change “www.flickr.com” to “m.flickr.com”. A simple manual test proves it is working.

So from now and until it gets fixed by the Flickr folks, you can use this manual hack and edit the url in safari’s address bar whenever you get a link (via email or twitter) to a Flickr image.

flickr-on-iphone-manual-hack