I stumbled upon a gem of an iPhone app – MoneyStrands – today. It is an Online financial application,  with a notable exception that it works with majority of banks in India (ICICI Bank in my case) The previous one which I tried -  Mint (Web and iPhone apps) does not have support for Indian financial institutions. The other one which supports – Buxfer (with an iPhone Web App)  – unfortunately does not have a native iPhone app.

I could successfully aggregate my Savings, Credit and Loan accounts with MoneyStrands. You can even unify accounts from different financial institutions. They support over 8000 of them.

MoneyStrands ICICI Dashboard

The Interactive Charts are great to use too.

MoneyStrands Interactive Charts

MoneyStrands even supports allocating/tracking a Budget and Alerts for Balance.

MoneyStrands various Tabs

MoneyStrands iPhone application (iTunes Link) is free, just like their web offering.

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Einar Rosenberg , just dropped a bombshell  in my Inbox with this:-

Had to share this news. A highly reliable source has informed me that Apple has built some prototypes of the next gen iPhone with an RFID reader built in and they have seen it in action. So its not full NFC but its a start for real service discovery and I’m told that the reaction was very positive that we can expect this in the next gen iPhone. If Apple does it, expect every phone manufacturer and their sister to begin pumping out NFC enabled phones, at least for service discovery and sync. This just reinforces what we knew based on the two separate patents Apple submitted that had the iPhone enabled to read RFID tags. I’m told that the touch project video and the BT SIG’s specs were all driving forces to push this forward as well as other factors. Guess I’ll be touching my iPhone to my Mac to link them together to sync iTunes by next year.

This is really an amazing news. RFID Tags are getting ever popular these days to label, classify and track good of all sizes and values. Some of these tags can also store dynamic data. With these capabilities such tags can be used for various use cases like e-Couponing, Smart Posters, Smart Ticketing, and most importantly Mobile Payments.

If this becomes true, it would be a great journey for iPhone from the wonderful world of multi-touch to the touchless transactions!

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An iPhone Developer Program (IDP) membership (costs $99 for Individuals) is required to officially deploy your application on the iPhone – even during the development and testing. Though I have applied for the IDP membership long ago, mine is yet to be approved. Perhaps India is not a listed country for IDP.

Not having an IDP membership will not affect your iPhone development and further testing on a real iPhone. But you would still require a Jailbroken iPhone. You will have to tweak your XCode (Version 3.1.2) and individual project settings – along with the iPhone (Firmware 2.2) – to get the Applications deployed on the phone. Here are the steps. These information were collated by the results of endless queries posted on different forums and by reading various material available on the Web. All the credits are due to their respective owners :)

Common Instructions to Install :-

• Jailbreaking the iPhone requires you to follow the clear instructions given by iClarified. This includes a Video demonstration also. There is no need to Unlock your iPhone. Just Jailbreak should suffice.

• Install the iPhoneTunnel and CyberDuck applications on the Mac

• Install OpenSSH, BossPrefs and Link-Identity-Editor applications using the Cydia application on the iPhone. After installation Reboot the iPhone

• Add source in Cydia (if you have not yet done so), please remember there is a slash (/) at the end of the url Code: http://www.iphone.org.hk/apt/ . Install MobileInstallation Patch version 2.2 in Section “Tweaks”

• Connect the iPhone using the USB Cable to the Mac

• Close the iTunes.

Setting up XCode to Compile and Build the iPhone Application

• Create a Signing Identify on your Mac by following this simple guide from Apple. I suggest you name the Certificate as “iPhone Developer”

• TextEdit the /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Info.plist file to look the respective portions like:-

   1: <key>NATIVE_ARCH</key>

   2: <string>armv6</string>

   3: <key>PLIST_FILE_OUTPUT_FORMAT</key>

   4: <string>binary</string>

   5: <key>PROVISIONING_PROFILE_ALLOWED</key>

   6: <string>NO</string>

   7: <key>PROVISIONING_PROFILE_REQUIRED</key>

   8: <string>NO</string>

   9: <key>SDKROOT</key>

  10: <string>iphoneos2.2</string>

• Change your own Project Settings by taking [Menu] Project->Edit Project Settings. In the Properties List, find the Code-Signing-Identity and Select the Certificate Name(iPhone Developer) you created earlier.

• Add the following snippet on to your projects info.plist using TextEdit

   1: <key>SignerIdentity</key>

   2: <string>Apple iPhone OS Application Signing</string>

Transferring the Application Binary to the iPhone over USB

• You may duplicate the following steps using an Ad-Hoc WiFi connection too, of which I am not so fond off!. I prefer the USB.

• Start the iPhoneTunnel Application on the Mac. You should see a respective icon on the Superior Bar at the top of the screen. Click on that Icon and select [Turn Tunnel ON]

• Again click on the same icon on top and select [Tools->SFTP]. The Cyberduck should start automatically. Enter the username as ‘root’ and password as ‘alpine’ in the cyberduck login window.

• Copy the TestApp.app (Your Own App) to the /Application folder of the iPhone using Cyberduck

• Click on the iPhoneTunnel icon and select [Tools->SSH(root)]. Enter the root/alpine credentials at the command prompt.

• At this command prompt enter the following two commands:-

ldid -S /Applications/TestApp.app/TestApp

chmod +x /Applications/TestApp.app/TestApp

• Open the BossPrefs application on the iPhone and choose the “ReSpring” option. This will restart the SpringBoard application to show your application on the Home Screen.

• Enjoy Your App!

If you have a proper Code signing Signature from Apple , you can follow these great instructions to deploy on to AppStore.

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Apple conspicuously did not provide any Task Management application for the iPhone, even with the latest firmware updates. For some, the default ‘Notes’ application itself provided a simpler way to manage tasks. There was expectations of iPhone featuring a default Task Management application with the MobileMe launch. But that did not happen either. Fortunately, with the AppStore featuring plenty of native Task Management applications, the void has been filled perfectly. One specific Task Management Application which I bought was ToDo by AppiGo. Interestingly You can setup ToDo to Sync perfectly with the Microsoft Outlook too.

First download and install the ToDo app on your iPhone through AppStore. Setup synchronization with the ToodleDo Service. Download the ToodlDo Sync Application and run it along with Microsoft Outlook. Automatically all your tasks will be synced across the iPhone, Cloud and Outlook.

Getting Task Reminders on iPhone!

Presently, Apple iPhone SDK does not provide for running background notification services. Hence by default ToDo will not be able to give Tasks reminders. But there is a simple way out!. You can automatically sync the dated Outlook tasks as a Outlook Calendar Entry using TaskToCal ($19.95). Thereon You get timely reminders of your ToDo’s!

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Here is a list of applications which I’ve bought for the iMac running OS X. These are essential applications for me -used everyday- being milked for every penny spent. Given the amount of commercial and shareware applications available for OS X platform, it is very difficult to make a studied choice. I trial’d quite a large number of software before actually bought these applications. This adds to my previous list of favorite Leopard applications.

VMWare Fusion

I almost always have to connect to my Office VPN and work with Microsoft Outlook. Switching back and forth with the Fusion’s Unity feature is extremely productive. VMWare happily runs an instance of Ubuntu also for me. It is yet to crash or freeze on me. Fusion definitely falls under the essentials category for me.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac

The group photo merge tool is what created the initial interest on Photoshop elements 6. This program is so feature rich that I have made it a habit to learn a new trick every day!. PSE6 for Mac is Photoshop on essential steroids. My only gripe is the lack of the photo management tool as available on its Windows counterpart. But for now I have settled with iPhoto for Photo Management and use PSE6 as the external editor to edit the photos. The ‘Guided mode’ for carrying out main tasks are great for beginners like me.

Apple iWork ’08

As usual, Keynote was the selling point. I am a complete convert from powerpoint to Keynote. The wow factor you can generate in the audience with a Keynote presentation is unparalleled. I also bought the KeyNotePro Themes for that extra oomph ;) Pages needed some time to get used to and it works effortlessly with new Microsoft Office documents formats too. Ability to generate QuickTime Videos and PDFs are great for portability between PC and Mac. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac ran way too slow for me and crashed many times.

1Password

SplashData has been my digital vault for many years on the PC. I found a greater replacement in 1Password. It syncs passwords and fills the forms automatically on the iPhone too. 1Password consistently syncs your confidential digital data with many different browsers on the Mac. I found it to be completely dependable and essential.
Leap

I am not a fan of the Mac Finder. It is too dumbed down. Leap fills in that void. It is not exactly a file system explorer. It works on top of the spotlight to bring you the digital contents as quickly and efficiently as possible. The tagging system is pretty much strong too. I do most of file/doc handling with Leap.
Little Snitch

The silent firewall which tracks software ‘calling home’ or making ‘unwanted’ outgoing internet connections. The default firewall of OS X is good to avoid anyone taking control of your Mac from outside. But Little Snitch supplements it to have complete peace of mind. Essential.

WireTap Pro

Records everything – Internet Radio, WebCast Audio, Skype talks – everything. It offers greater control over the recording process too.

Speed Download

DownThemAll firefox extension does the download quite well. But Speed Download does it even better.

MegaPhone

Helps me extract the Call/SMS history from the iPhone and manage the Music and Notes on it directly. Very useful for me to make the monthly telephone bills consolidations.

Pixelmator

A Great digital image manipulation program. But after the PSE6 for Mac arrived, I’m using Pixelmator lesser.

Ecto
The new Ecto 3.0b44 beta is comparable in stability and features to Windows Live Writer. Liked Ecto better than MarsEdit becasue of the RichText/WYSIWYG editing environment and nicer image handling.

Here is the pricelist of the above mentioned softwares:-

Vmware fusion – 59.99
1Password – 34.95
iWork ’08 – $79.00
KeynotePro Themes – $34.95
Little Snitch – - $ 24.95
Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac – $89.90
ecto – $17.95
Leap – - $34.95
Pixelmator – - $59.00
Speed Download – / – $25
MegaPhone – - $19.95
WireTap Studio – - $30

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If you are JEE programmer and would love to try GlassFish, here is a deal from Sun. A Free iPhone to the lucky winner who enters the contest by entering the GlassFish registration id.  The contest will run for another three months. So give it a try. Even otherwise Glassfish is worth another thousand bucks!.

Thanks to Arun Gupta @ Sun for the tip.

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If you are like me, you don’t like filing of emails too much. I just love the Google’s way of ‘Archiving’ the mails and keeping my Inbox Zero and clean. But without a proper Outlook Search tool, this method would be highly impractical. I have been using Microsoft Desktop Search all these while but it took my laptop’s XP to a crawling speed. My outlook data weighs multiple GB’s. So I was in the market for a better Outlook Search tool. Here is what I found:-

1) I checked out a new Outlook Search Tool – Lookeen - a fresh software which is being frequently updated.   I had a chance to speak up with the developers (from Germany) over FaceBook!. Lookeen on my Outlook seems to do the Job just fine.

2) Google Desktop Search – is just a waste of time. The search results were pointless. More or less it always gave me some generic results. I must admit that before the Windows Desktop Search days, I was a GDS fan.

3) Copernic Desktop Search – Could not handle the size of my Outlook Data I guess. It just vanished in to thin air most of the time. I cannot trust something which crashes this often. CDS was much better in the earlier versions.

4) LookOut – Yeah.. The world has come to a full circle once again. Circa 2004 thingie. LookOut was lightning fast and my favorite. Microsoft took over this tiny tool to make the MSN Desktop Search. Since then, most of us forgot about LookOut. But in these days of bloated Desktop/Outlook search tools, to see something like LookOut – which just does its job – is a rarity. Fortunately MajorGeeks still have a copy of LookOut 1.3 for download. I installed, indexed and was ready to go in just half an hour. Fresh Air!

LookOut works well with my Outlook 2003 install and there are ways to make it even work with Outlook 2007.

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It has only been a few days since I’ve started using OS X Leopard as the primary operating system. The OS itself took only a few hours to get used to and be comfortable with. Most of the things looks more streamlined with Mac. But not everything is so rosy though – definitely there is a lack of quality Free applications out there. Yet a few of the good ones I managed to find are enlisted further.

Information Applications

1Password – Password vault
Keeps my software licence information, web logins and other wallet data securely. I bought this application because it has an excellent way to sync the desktop data with the iPhone using Smart Bookmarks.

NeoOffice  – Office Suite
NeoOffice did not run well  on my Mac. I would definitely go for iWorks ’08 or Microsoft Office 2008. The KeyNote application of iWorks is just too good. iWorks is priced at Rs.3800 and is available at the Reliance iStore in Bangalore. Office 2008 for Mac is yet to arrive in India.

SideNote
I found it better than the default ‘stickies’ app. Really useful to take study notes.

TaskPaper
This is a GTD application for Mac. I have been using Lifebalance earlier with my PC and Palm before moving on to MyLifeOrganized and Windows Mobile. Unfortunately MyLifeOrganized won’t be available for Mac. Now the task was to setup a simpler GTD system working with my office laptop, home Mac and iPhone. I evaluated quite a few available GTD apps like iGTD and OmniFocus. Though they are all well executed programs, I could not find a way to easily integrate them with my iPhone. I use the default Notes.app on the iPhone for a lot of note taking and ToDo lists. But having the iPhone Notes data to sync with a Mac application was the issue. Fortunately a good friend from scotland found a way to do that – Sync TaskPaper GTD App with iPhone Notes. I am yet to purchase TaskPaper as the cost is way too high for me. Fortunately the TaskPaper data can be opened in any text editor. I found another application – Things – which is nicely designed and I hope to see iCal Sync / native iPhone client for Things in the future.

Plaxo
My Addressbook and Notes are always synced across home, PC and iPhone using Plaxo. Plaxo integrates very well with the Mac AddressBook.app.

Developer Applications

NetBeans
This is the default Java/Ruby IDE for me.

Eclipse
This is my Android development Setup

Utilities

VMWare Fusion
This is an awesome piece of software – the Guest XP OS installation on Mac was really automated. Just slide in your XP Install CD, provide the registration information and you’re done!. The ‘Unity’ feature which makes Windows application run on the Mac Desktop natively is just way too cool. I think I may be buying this software, wait, for what?!…except for Windows Live Writer, there is nothing that the Mac cannot do.

QuickSilver + RTM plugin
I love to do simpler project management with RememberTheMillk. QuickSilver is an all-purpose tool with a lot of plugins – such as this one for RTM – helping you quickly perform tasks. QuickSilver is a real time saver and you become quite used to the quick Control-Space shortcut for many of the tasks to do on the Mac.

AppDelete
It is a good free application uninstaller for Mac

Jing
I use it to make screen casts. I can’t believe this is free!

Skitch

This is how I take Screen shots. I particularly like the timer in Skitch.

Multimedia Tools

Audacity
I use this to create custom ringtones for my iPhone.

HandBrake
This is a great video converter with iPhone presets.

Wallpaper Clocks

Beautiful! and  takes almost no system resources.

VLC
Plays anything!!

Web Applications

Yahoo! Messenger
Crashes often. But only way to web conferencing with my parents who are on Yahoo! Messenger.

Flock
A great browser alternative. But too bad, not all my favorite firefox extensions won’t work with Flock.

Picasa Web Albums uploader
Waiting for the Google Mac team to release Picasa for Mac this year later. iPhoto for picture management is already working well for me.

Twhirl
This a nicely done Adobe AIR application to post your tweets. Has very good customization options.

ScribeFire
This firefox extension is filling up for Windows Live Writer. I tried Ecto and MarsEdit – but they do not cut it for me.
I like opening the ScribeFire editing window in a new Tab in the browser (Right click on the ScribeFire Icon on the status bar and select).

I am sure, there are other good ones out there. What do you use on your Mac?!

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Well.. I knew it was time to make a move. I replaced my home XP and Ubuntu system with an iMac couple of days ago. Here it is!

Mac’s a different beast and sure its going to take me a while to get adjusted to. A few quirks like the ‘control’ button on the keypad, the Expose circus, QuickSilver commands etc.. are going to take a bit more time. More over, with this iMac, I think I will be doing more of Productive stuff, than trying to tweak and treat the computer endlessly :). The Wide screen display is very impressive and the noiseless performance within such a slim casing is truly great engineering. Hope to share more in the coming days..

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Looks like things are going good on porting the Java VM on to iPhone. The fact is that iPhone is very well poised to run Java applications better than any other phone. Jay Freeman has been successful in porting the JamVM on to iPhone. JamVM is JSE 1.5 compatible. The core java classes has been ported already and Graphics and Media frameworks are being actively investigated. The current port is not optimised for the iPhone CPU. So expect it to run tad bit slow.

The iPhone offers a built in relational database in the form of SQLite. This is used to store information by the iPhone’s Notes application. Efforts are under way to offer a JDBC driver for this database too. The JamVM itself is pretty small – around 150k and uses the GNU Classpath libraries(9 MB). Compiling java source on iPhone is also possible now with Jikes ( upto jdk 1.4) or by using the Eclipse java compiler.

Please checkout the Java on iPhone development page for more details.

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