cinnamon thoughts.

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My updated GeoMapLookup — a website to geolocate a host, domain or IP address with Google Maps integration — now sports a newly created iPhone and iPod touch version which was chosen as Apple.com’s Staff Pick and featured web app for February 26th 2008.

GeoMapLookup is a web app to display information about the geographical location of your current IP address or any hostname or IP you enter. It provides a link to show the location using the native Maps application on your iPhone or iPod touch.

You can also visit GeoMapLookup on your Mac or PC to get a version with an integrated Google Map or from your iPhone or iPod touch to get the mobile version.

To use GeoMapLookup point your mobile Safari (or standard desktop browser) to: http://geomaplookup.cinnamonthoughts.org/
GeoMapLookup on apple.com

mobileLife is an iPhone/iPod touch version of Conway’s cellular automaton “Game of Life“, a zero-player game needing no input from human players with its evolution determined by the initial state.

To use mobileLife point your mobile Safari to: http://mobilelife.cinnamonthoughts.org/
mobileLife on apple.com

iCountr is an iPhone/iPod touch web app to count everything from the cups of coffee you had to the number of people attending a meeting. It provides a convenient way of counting everything you like using a familiar interface. It supports multiple counters with custom names, counter value manipulation and of course one-tap counting.

To use iCountr point your mobile Safari to: http://icountr.cinnamonthoughts.org/
iCountr on apple.com

iPhone misses copy, cut and paste capabilities. It features the great magnifying glass though, which is the first step to a–in m opinion–great copy and past implementation. The following describes my idea of interacting with text input on the iPhone:

Mark text

1. Use the magnifying glass to position the cursor on one end of the text to be selected
2. Hold the finger down and tap with a second one (multi touch is great!) to start the selection mode
3. Lift the finger of off the display
4. Press and hold again to enter the magnifying glass mode and select the end of your text selection
5. Lift finger off of the display to complete selecting the text

Move text

1. Touch and holde the selected text and move it to a different position in your current document/input field
2. Lift finger to insert the text there

Copy text

1. Touch the selected text, hold and tap with a second finger
2. Lift fingers, text is copied
3. (Text stays selected until tapped elsewhere to easily delete it; practically a cut operation)

Paste text

1. Copy text
2. Move to a different document and position the cursor
3. Lift the finger
4. A translucent icon stays where the magnifying glass was (like a speech bubble pointing to the cursor position) and shows a preview of the text in the clipboard
5. Touching the icon inserts the text; touching elsewhere or starting to type dismisses the icon

Apple, I hope my implementation idea shows how badly I want copy/cut/paste on the iPhone.

Apple’s iPhone started a new era of mobile internet usage:

Google on Wednesday said it had seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset […]

Financial Times link

My first iPhone web app Attendance Countdown is now listed on apple.com:

Direct Attendance Countdown link http://attend.cinnamonthoughts.org/

Today’s iPhone software version 1.1.3 supports a feature called WebClip which lets you add a bookmark icon for a website or iPhone specific web app directly to your home screen. While doing this the iPhone asks the server for an image called apple-touch-icon.png:

84.131.nnn.nnn - - [15/Jan/2008:23:51:59 +0100] "GET /apple-touch-icon.png HTTP/1.1" 404 226 "-" "CFNetwork/152.4"

The image has to be 57 by 57 pixels and Safari will automatically add a glassy overlay so the new icon will look like a native iPhone icon.

Read more at Apple’s iPhone Dev Center.

The creator of the iChat add-on Chax released a tool to switch your Leopard spaces by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen called Warp. Great for moving windows to a different space.

Apple’s latest Mac OS X incarnation comes bundled with a handy feature called Spaces which is essentially a virtual desktop manager. While being common knowledge that F8 activates spaces for switching and dragging windows between them, the following is little known:

• While in the overview mode (F8) you can just press the number of the space you want to switch to on the keyboard.
• You can drag a window to one space’s edge to switch it to the next.

Also be sure to check Mac OS’s help for spaces tips and tricks. If you are using the Application Assignment feature and want to be more flexible check out these scripts to perform the System Preferences actions with a keystroke (if you are using Quicksilver).