It’s about time I wrote the official Oast One top ten tips and tricks for the iPhone. Little things you may not know about that could just make your life that tiny bit easier.

So – no chat, straight down to business:

1. Screen Grab
This is an easy one. Simply press both the Home and Sleep button at the same time and you’ll hear a shutter noise whilst the screen flashes white. A picture has now been taken of the screen – you’ll find it in your Camera Roll.

2. Type Tools
In most applications that use the keyboard you can hold down various buttons for extra functions. Once the pop-up appears simply slide your finger to the character you need and lift off to select it. Hold down normal letters to get alternate characters with diacritic marks such as acute accents, umlauts and like. The ‘.com’ key will give you alternates such as ‘.net’ and ‘.org’. Holding the ‘123’ key will allow you to slide to a character and select it before returning the keyboard to normal characters – saving you from having to tap the key again afterwards. You can do the same with the shift key.

3. Tidy up email
You can quickly delete pathetic spam email without having to open it up or use the edit button. Just swipe the email to the left or right in your inbox. A delete button will appear. Tap to delete the message for good.

4. No place like Home
The innocent looking home button can be used for a number of time saving tricks:

• Use the home button in the same way as the sleep button when your iPhone is locked
• When browsing your Apps, press it once to return straight to the home screen
• Double-press the home button to open your Phone Favourites for quick calling
• When your iPhone is locked double-press the home button to access your iPod controls. Excellent for changing music when on the go.
• You have some control over the above by going to Settings > General > Home Button

5. Unlock hidden Emoji
Ever wondered how to unlock the hidden Emoji (Emoticons) on your iPhone (2.2.0+)? Simply follow our instructions here.

6. Use your head (phones)
It’s surprising how many people don’t know that the microphone on the headphones houses a useful button. Simply squeeze it and you’ll feel it click. You can use this button for a number of functions:

• Click the button once to play / pause music
• Click twice to skip to the next song
• Click thrice to rewind the current song / skip to the previous song

Whilst on a call:

• Click to answer an incoming call / end a call
• Click twice so send an incoming call to voicemail
• If a second call comes in when you’re on one: click once to switch to the new call or twice to ignore it.

7. Sleep button
You can use the sleep button to silence a call or send it to voicemail. Press once to silence, twice to route it to voicemail.

8. Text to fit
Whilst browsing text in Safari you can zoom in to columns of text by double-tapping on them. The iPhone will scale column of text to fit the width of the screen. You can do the same with images and menus. Double-tap again to zoom out. You can also zoom in and out of images in Camera Roll by double-tapping.

9. Save images
You can save images to your Camera Roll from Safari by holding down on the image. A pop-up will appear with a save button. Useful for changing your Wallpaper image.

10. Tap areas
There are various areas on the iPhone you can tap and certain times to useful effect. For example – if you tap to the left or right of the white dots along the bottom of your home screen it will switch pages without the need to swipe. In Safari if you tap the bar along the top of the screen the page you are viewing will scroll all the way back to the top (also revealing the address/search bar).

Please note that I am running iPhone software 2.2.1 on my iPhone. Some of the tricks mentioned in this article may not work on previous versions.

Yes really... The title is correct! These IS actually an iPhone Application called ShyBladder! Obviously I am not going to waste my time installing it but the description says:

"Do you have trouble getting things going in the restroom? Perhaps just when other people are around... ...With ShyBladder on your iPhone, you will have a helpful prompt to get into your flow. With three different styles of running water."

What the hell? If I'm having 'trouble' in any restroom the last thing I'm going to do is get my phone out and start playing the sound of urine sloshing down the drain. My fellow urinees will probably think I've been recording the sound of them peeing and have some very pressing questions to ask me on the subject. Questions that start with 'What the f..." and end with my head and/or iPhone stuffed down the poopoo box.

Ridiculous!

Oast One has just put the finishing touches to the A Film About Races website which showcases a new documentary film coming out in 2009. The website features a voting system where users can guess which team featured in the movie will win. A big thank you to Dave at davewhite.net for his help on the voting system behind-the-scenes coding.

The site went live today and we can't wait to see the film!

If you like house-music in all its different incarnations then check this out: Steve's Excellent Podcast (requires iTunes).

Dave of davewhite.net and I have just put the finishing touches to a very* simple voting form on a website I have been developing. Users can vote from six choices and the results get picked up by a SWF file that displays the results as an animated bar graph.

The problem, as ever, was Internet Explorer. After casting your vote you would be redirected to a new page containing the SWF file showing the new vote standings (including your vote). This worked fine in Firefox and Safari but, for reasons best known to some useless Microsoft techy, IE saw fit to just load in the SWF with the old data. I tried all sorts of work arounds including meta-tags that (supposedly) prevent IE from caching the webpage but to no avail.

In the end I created a new SWF file, the same shape and size that loads the original one in using the following code:

The random number *should* prevent IE from just loading in the previous version from cache. Some testing will tell...

Oh - and you can do the same if you are loading in other files, such as txt, too.

* No really - VERY simple.

So why do the Japanese get Emoji and we don't?

That just isn't fair... In an attempt to balance things up a bit I'll tell you how to unlock the Emoji hidden on your iPhone. Follow these four easy steps and you'll be grinning smilies at your mates (with iPhones) in no time:

1. Make sure you have iPhone software 2.2 or higher installed on your iPhone 3G (not sure if this works with the original iPhone)
2. Go to the App Store and search for an App called 'Spell Number' - it's written by a company called Waterworld and is FREE! Install it.
3. Once installed open the App and tap in '9876543.21' - this is an Easter Egg that will unlock the Emoji hidden on all iPhones with software 2.2 and above installed
4. Now to turn them on. Go to: Settings > General > International > Keyboards > Japanese. You will see that an Emoji setting has been added. Switch it on.

***UPDATE*** The 'Spell Number' application was updated on 6 March 2009 and the Emoji Easter Egg was removed! Bummer. However - it you search for 'Emoji' on the App Store you will find other applications that claim to unlock iPhone Emoji. Simply replace steps 2 amd 3 above with the App you choose to use.

NOTE: You only need to follow these steps to use Emoji - you can still see them on an iPhone 3G (v2.2+) without having them turned on. This means you can surprise all your friends by sending them a bunch of random images. (Believe me there is some wierd little pictures in there.)

Next time you type an MSN, send an email, update Facebook, etc using your iPhone you will see a globe button to the right of the Space Bar. That's where your Emoji are! Bear in mind that only people with iPhones (v2.2+) will see your Emoji - everyone else will see a strange Japanese character.

My dad send me a link to Claude Lelouch's 1976 film 'C'etait Un Rendezvous' today. I've never seen it before but I must say - it's pretty captivating. The film was set in Paris as is supposed to be a gyroscopic camera attached to the front of a Ferrari 275 GTB. The driver, a previous Formula 1 star whos identity remains hidden to this day, drives at speeds up to 146mph through the centre of early morning Paris.

There is some dispute as to wheather or not a Ferrari was used - it is said to be a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 with the sound of a Ferrari dubbed over the top. There's also disagreeance over the top speed achieved. Whatever the case, we should all bow down to willing suspension of disbelife as it is a wonderful piece of film and well worth nine minutes of your time.

The feeling of speed is incredible as the car slides and screeches round the Arc de Triomphe, Opera Garnier, and Place de la Concorde with pigeons scattering and red lights being completely ignored. Although the driver his obviously skilled he is effectively trusting to luck that he's not going to get hit by a bus, stopped by the police or collide with on-coming traffic. You can't help feeling like you shouldn't be watching this nine minutes of pure seat-of-the-pants danger. Its wrong on so many levels. What if he'd hit someone? Crashed into a building? Been stopped by the law? The many possible conquences don't bear thinking about but it does give you a wonderful little thrill to be part of it for the duration of the film.

These days it would be seen as mindless stupidity - I daresay you can easily view similar modern-day equivilents online - but the magic of the early morning, the noise of the engine, 1970's Paris and the fact its supposedly a vintage Ferrari all combine to make it somehow seem ok.

The Director was arrested shortly after he screened the film for not revealing who the driver was.

I've just taken delivery of a Vito R1 DAB/FM Radio and I must say... It's highly strokable.

See?

"So", I hear you all shouting in unison, "why the hell did you buy a £160 DAB radio in a world where streaming thousands of radio stations via the internet is FREE?"

Well really I wanted this:

The Tivoli Networks Radio. Again: Nice! This one is not just DAB and FM but also picks up your wireless Network and allows you to stream internet radio with gay abandon whereever you may choose to listen (within range of your wireless router of course). The only bummer is the price tag. We're talking £500.00. Luckily I was able to get a bit of a bargain Vita R1 on ebay. I'm sure the price of this internet-streaming-to-hifi-gear technology will come down in time and until then I am happy to use the lovely looking R1 in our kitchen.

Another picture of the R1 I feel:

Another good reason for DAB is my girlfriend, Nicky. She is still very wary of computers (having not used one at work or even had one in her house until we moved in together a year ago) and would probably refuse to use something that she knew was in any way involved with the internet. She still kind of avoids my computer and I'm sure she believes it is sitting there plotting ways to kill her! I am being a little unfair - she has recently started sending emails (occasionally) and has even commented that my iPhone is "pretty cool" (begrudgingly). ;o) I think the key is to ween her onto technology slowly.

Back to the R1 then. The sound quality is pretty amazing for a unit of such a small size (H.W.D 17cm x 13cm x 13cm). Crisp bass and not boomy, which can be the risk when the bass port faces downwards. The cool looking control dial on the top is, whilst not ground-breaking in terms of what it does, easy to use and feels nice with solid clicks and a smooth turning action on the rubberised dial. There are two inputs - a jack on the front and phono's on the back - and a headphone output on the front.  There is also the option to plug in a external stereo speaker despite the fact that Vito don't actually make one. At least yet. The little illuminated black-text-on-white screen serves its purpose well and all-in-all I can't really find anything bad to say. Yes - its fairly expensive - but you're paying for the sound quality (which I don't resent) and the 'retro-modern' looks (which I love).

So if you're waiting for the price of Network radios to fall and are after a stop-gap, little radio for the kitchen or somewhere without a computer (or internet access) to stream radio from then I highly recomend the Vita R1. Pull one in...

Now this is good: pxtoem.com 

I found the link to it on Dave White's blog and its pretty damn groovy. It is hailed as “px to em conversion made simple”. Type a base font size in pixels, and the tool will produce a complete pixel to em conversion table, making elastic Web design much easier to produce.

I like those apples :o)

I've been hearing about this thing they call 'Twitter' for a while. This week it's also come to light that both Barack Obama and Stephen Fry both use it regularly. I'd better check it out I said to myself as I clicked open a browser window and fired in the URL.

To start with I was a bit confused...

Effectively all it is, for those of you who may not know, is a way of answering the question “what are you doing?” in less than 140 characters. All your Twitter ‘followers’ can see your answers to this question as often as you care to update and they care to check the site out. In turn you can choose to follow as many Twitterers as you wish. All updates then get displayed in Chronological order on your Twitter homepage.

You can access this information in one of a number of ways - RSS feeds, Facebook, your mobile phone, Instant Messengers the list goes one. I have already added the Oast One Twitter RSS feed to this blog and I could even integrate it as a Flash application should I so choose.

So why?

As I said - to start with I was a little confused. Why would you want to be continually updating what you are up to when you have a million and one ways to already do so? MSN away messages, Facebook statuses, Blogs, email, SMS, etc etc etc... But it’s actually quite addictive. There is a real sense of community when you see the updates rolling in.

After signing up this morning I noticed that Chris Moyles (the Radio 1 DJ you either love or hate... or really hate) had signed up too only a few seconds before me; so I added him to the people I am following as a comparison to my own followers. No doubt his followers will spiral exponentially until, in his own words, he gets bored and stops using it whilst mine will probably get to about 10 then die out. Forcing me to 'get bored'.

It certainly does seem that through communications the world is becoming a much smaller place.

Oh - and Barack Obama is following me too...