Half-Geek

3G iPhone in pipeline

According to reputable sources, the new 3G iPhone is on its way to an AT & T store near you later this year. That is of course, if you live in the USA.

The big question that everyone wants an answer to over here in New Zealand is, who will be the official iPhone supplier for New Zealand? Speculation has been free flowing, with some saying that Orcon will be the first official provider.

I'm not much of a tech head when it comes to IT network stuff (especially the mobile phone stuff), however, I do understand that the Orcon/iPhone speculation has something to do with Orcons ability to service customers with CIDCO phones (such as an iPhone).

Then on the other hand we have Telecom who are in the process of upgrading their mobile network to 3G specifications. Imagine Telecom launching NZ's first official iPhone in conjunction with their new 3G network. Who could dream of a better marketing story? What a coup that would be.

From a marketing perspective, I believe that the Apple iPhone brand would find the most suitable partner in the form of Vodafone. The problem with this partnership is apparently all about music. The thing is that vodafone sell individual music tracks to their users currently. Introducing the iPhone handset with it's baked in itunes store would effectively cannibalize vodafones music revenue stream.

Who do you guys think will get (or want to get) the big nod from Apple and become New Zealands official iPhone supplier?

buy iPhone for new zealand in 3 steps

Want to buy an iPhone that will work for you on Vodafones New Zealand network for less than $600NZD? Read on.....

I took delivery of my iPhone back in October last year and since then I have created a specific iPhone category here on half-geek. My post about where not to buy an iPhone has been quite popular, so I figured than in light of this I should probably take another look into the topic only this time from a more positive angle.

So here is my simple 3 step guide on how you can acquire your very own iPhone for the best price and 'adjust' the phone to allow to function perfectly using a vodafone New Zealand SIM Card.

Step 1 - Get your own US address

I decided to get my own US postal address back in 2004 using the myus program. If you are a prolific online shopper, you will have realized by now that there are many small and desirable items (particularly electronic stuff) that can be purchased online in the USA at a fraction of the cost of the same item here in New Zealand. This rule is particularly relevant given the current USD exchange rate.

Set up a merchandise only myus account for $20USD and they will provide you with your very own US postal address. You can keep the address for future purchases at a cost of $7USD per month.

You will use this address as your ship to location when you purchase the iPhone from the apple store (next step). Myus will accept delivery of the phone on your behalf, email to let you know that they have received it and then re-send the iPhone to via DHL (about a 3 day delivery from the Myus head office in Florida.

The best part about the Myus service is the fact that they will ask you what you want the declared value of the item that is being shipped to you to be on the DHL Airwaybill (AWB). It is important that you declare the cost of the goods at a reasonably low value as anything valued at over $400NZD will often be held up at customs- meaning you will pay extra for GST and handling. I mostly chose to put a value of $150 on my parcels that are valued over $400NZD.

Step 2- Buy your iPhone online

This is the easy bit- go to apple.com (not apple.co.nz) and purchase an iPhone using your credit card. At present there is no hack for the new 16G iPhones so I would suggest that you go for the 8GB model. Remember to use your US postal address that you have just acquired as part of step 1.

Note: Don't worry about all the babble on the apple site re: requiring a 2 year AT &T account to permit activation. Your phone will arrive with an AT & T SIM card installed, however, you aren't going to activate the phone using AT & T.

Step 3- Unlock your iPhone

So your iPhone has shown up and you want to start using it! Before you do anything like trying to turn it on, you should be well advanced in your understanding of how the phone will be unlocked. The best and cheapest way (free) to unlock your iphone is using the information provided on modmyiPhone.

There are a number of important factors that will determine the method that will be required for you to unlock your specific phone. The most important of these is probably the version of Iphone firmware that your new phone is running (1.01, 1.02 or 1.03). ModmyIphone has the latest and best information on how to unlock phones running any of these versions of the firmware.

Basically the older the version of the firmware your phone is running, the more tried and tested and simplified the hack will be. In saying this, each firmware upgrade does include small improvements to the phone, so some may argue that having a later version of the firmware is better value.

In any case, you can always upgrade your unlocked iPhone to the new version of the firmware. This is done by 'virginizing' your iPhone and then going through the complete hack process again.

If you can be assured that your iPhone is running either the 1.02 or 1.01 firmware version you may also want to consider going for the very low hassle approach of buying an iPhone sim free license. One of these bad boys will set you back about 100 bucks and thus blows the $600 NZD budget.

$$ COSTS $$

8GB iPhone $399 USD (aprox $510NZD)

myus postal address $20 USD + $7USD ( aprox $35NZD)

DHL shipping costs using myus - $50NZD

TOTAL - $595 NZD

iPhone reduces new year email load

I'm back at work today.

No more 10am sleep ins. No more beers from 3pm (everyday). No more meaningless but fun choices to make (golf, surfing, water skiing or fishing?). I have to put my watch back on and actually try to remember what day of the week it is. My Summer holiday is officially over.

The first day back at work is usually a killer for me. Once I have said 'happy new year' to everyone my first day each year would normally consist of going through one tremendously huge list of email's, filtering out the important ones and trying to make some sort of sensible priority list. Not this year though, all thanks to my 'gadget for 2007'- the iPhone (with a little help from Gmail's IMAP feature of course).

When I returned to work today, I had 19 emails that I needed to action. That was all. After 2 weeks of holiday- impressive huh. This is all thanks to the fact that I could delete the useless emails using my iphone whilst I was on holiday. Its so easy to do on this new apple phone that even a drunk person would find it simple (I can personally attest to this).

Receiving and filtering email becomes second nature, in much the same way that text messaging is to most of us today. The benefits of this are more obvious than ever to me on this very day, my first at work in 2008.

Apart from the later 'email filtering' benefit, I must take this opportunity to mention an additional benefit that my iPhone granted me this holiday season. The acronym 'JFGI' became extremely popular amongst family and friends during my summer holiday. It stands for 'Just fucking Google it!'.

The growth of google as an information resource to help answer inane questions whilst drunk is phenomenal. The cool thing was that my iPhone became the mobile 'JFGI' machine. In the end I was constantly called upon to 'JFGI' questions that needed to be answered urgently in the heat of drunken debates.

My iPhone has been the most useful accessory over my summer holiday. By a country mile.

european iPhone sales not flash

The iPhone has now been officially launched in both England and Germany and according to reliable phone geek sources, the sales are not flash at all.

The European situation is in complete contrast to the US iPhone launch, where every man and his dog were prepared to pay body part price just to get near the front of the Apple store line on the day that the new gadget launched back in June this year.

Is this a sign that poms and Germans simply do not like the iPhone as much as the yanks? Or is the first indicator that hacked iPhone sales are booming?

odiogo audio feed for iPhone

Back in August I launched a new feature on half-geek called odiogo (thats it just up in the top left corner of each post). Odiogo gives my blog a voice, providing my RSS feed content in audio format.

Simply apply for an odiogo account and once you are accepted they will guide you through the instructions on how to install the odiogo widget.

The latest news from odiogo is the integration of the odiogo feed button with the safari browsers on the iPhone and the iPod touch:

"Good news for iPhone and iPod Touch owners: The popular Odiogo Listen Button is now supported on the Safari browser of both the iPhone and all flavors of iPod Touch. There are no settings to make: The environment recognizes automatically the device and adapts the behavior of the Listen Button. When clicked, the Listen Button will open QuickTime to play the audio version of the article/post."

where not to buy an iPhone in NZ

Editors Note: make sure you also check out my latest post - "buy and iPhone for New Zealand in 3 easy steps.."

I'm still deeply fascinated by my iPhone. This little device and I have forged a strong relationship over the past few weeks. I recommend this phone to anyone who doesn't have one pretty much.

The obvious response to my recommendation is mostly, "Okay but where do I get one?". A fair question.

I think a more relevant iPhone purchasing topic is 'where NOT to get an iPhone in New Zealand'. I am suggesting a rule for would-be iPhone buyers here in NZ.It's pretty simple really- do not spend more than $399USD plus what it costs you to get it into New Zealand. I recommend myus for those of you who want to set up a US postal address. I purchased my US address of these guys some time back and in retrospect it was one of my better ideas.

Don't buy it from here or here. These types of stores are charging you hundreds of dollars for a service that you can complete yourself using modmyiphone. Despite what these stores may suggest, the iPhone 'hack' is not really that hard at all. In fact its more like a 'procedure' than a 'hack'. I have no coding skills what so ever and it took me a couple of hours.

I am starting to get pissed off by these local kiwi retailers who are robbing people blind charging over $1000NZD for a working iPhone. One of the best things about an iPhone is the low cost. You can experience this benefit- just buy one online and do the free hack yourself.

iPhoneSlide is my pick so far

I have owned my iPhone for coming up to a couple of weeks now and I have to say that this device is by far and away the best toy I have ever had. It's is literally the internet right there in my pocket.

I get online to check facebook, check my web analytics on clicky or check my email courtesy of Gmail's new IMAP service (this is a big improvement on using Gmail Pop).

Given that my iPhone was hacked using the modmyiPhone technique, I have a bunch of additional native apps on the phone. Everyone is talking about native apps and Apple agreeing to open up the iPhone to allow official 3rd party native apps to be developed. Apparently web based apps just are'nt the go. I suppose that, to a certain extent, I agree with this line of thought as the edge network connection on the iPhones is not by any means fast.

However, of all the iPhone apps I have tested (both native and web based) my pick of the bunch is iPhoneslide. Interestingly, iPhoneslide is sort of a 'hybrid' app. It's part native and part web based. iPhoneslide facilitates the posting of images that I take on my iPhone camera to any of my social network profiles and, more importantly, my typepad blog.

All I need to do is send and email to iPhoneslide with a subject line (blog post title) and some body text (blog post text) and I will get a reply email. At this point I follow a link from the email and tell iPhoneslide where I would like to post the text and image.

With the help of iPhoneslide I was able to publish a post about the New Zealand Youtube launch whilst I was actually at the launch itself, in real time! I was enjoying the aftermatch drinks without having to worry about getting home to get up a quick post about the latest kiwi web 2.0 news.....