How much would you pay for an iPhone dictionary?

After about six months of use I am at last sorting out the good, bad and ugly applications. Some apps are just brilliant and in daily use such as Oz Weather and Google Maps. Others are nice to use and yet others have been deleted never to return.

One app though seems to me to be extraordinary value for money and that is Dictionary.com.

Dictionary.com is an online dictionary that is up to the standard of a quality home dictionary without the nuisance of taking out several large volumes from the shelf. They have now added a fantastic application to the iPhone and all for the princely sum of nothing. Yes, that is correct, this app is free.

I have been comparing it with the dictionary I would prefer, the AU$40 Oxford dictionary and although the Oxford is somewhat better there is no way I can justify $40 when the Dictionary.com is free. In many cases the entries in Dictionary.com and the Oxford are all but identical.

Not only do you get the dictionary but you also get the pronunciation, the Thesaurus and a word of the day. The WOD does require online access but the dictionary and Thesaurus are both offline. The text entry also does a spell check and suggests similar words just in case, like me, your spelling is less than perfect. It also keeps a history of recent words. If you have a word in one of the three screens, Dictionary, Thesaurus WOD, selecting another screen will perform a look up in that screen.

As far as I am concerned this is going to be my standard "pocket" dictionary unless I can get the Oxford for a substantial discount.

See Whats On iPhone for another view.

iPhone - DYI Charger

It has been a source of much frustration to me (and obviously many others) that many of the iPod accessories will not work with the iPhone. Not sure for all of the reasons for this but one of the more irritating is that a large proportion of iPod chargers will not charge the iPhone. The worst thing is that there is no indication whether that particular accessory will charge the iPhone (unless marked of course) until you purchase said accessory and plug it in. I recently bought several iPod car adaptors on sale for $20 each only to find that one charged the iPhone and the other did not.

In researching this I came across some interesting information on iPhone charging adaptors and more specifically using USB for supplying power to connected devices.

USB has four pins designated +, -, D+ and D-. + is 5 Volts regulated, - is 0V or ground, D+ and D- are the data pins, send and return if you will. The actual current that can be drawn from a USB port varies on wheter the port is on a powered device, a hub or a dedicated charger, and also what revision USB the port is. What this means for the iPod and iPhone is that the iPhone requires more current and therefore the charger for the iPhone is slightly different due to the higher current required.

This article and its links provide some good information on how to adapt your regular USB adaptor to make the iPhone know that it can use it for charging. In short all you need is to add two resistors to one of the D lines between the + and - lines to tell it to turn on charging. In other words apply about 2.5V to one of the data lines. Some of the circuits use four resistors and others 2 but the outcome seems similar.

Of course there are other resons why your avereage USB car adapter will not charge your iPhone but you really need some skills in electronics to sort it out if it does not work first up.

I will be trying this out when I get home to see if I can get my wife's phone charging in her car.

Landmark - 40 Years on

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of a device we all consider a central part of our computing experience, the mouse.

This BBC article is an excellent tribute to this small creature.

It is amazing how such a seemingly casual idea was the herald of a revolution in the way we use computers.

Update
This article also shows some light on this guy who was so forward thinking.

The video link near the beginning is over an hour but is very interesting in what it indicates.

You have to think that at this time computers were rooms full of equipment and that input was typically cards, paper tape and if you were very lucky a teleprinter, and the output was paper tape, paper and on occasion a screen. The idea of the average user interacting via a console was rare and the interactive interface which is second nature to us these days was thought of as a nonsense at the time.

Hp Giveaway at Jake Lunding's Digital Lifestyle

It has been a while since I posted but this is a great contest. This month HP toghether with 50 sites are giveawaying US$6,000 of computer equipment.

One of the sites is Jake Lunding's Digital Lifestyle. Head on over to Jake Ludington’s HP Magic Giveaway to enter and check out the other sites involved.

Replacement Weather Station

At last my replacement weather station has arrives and is in the process of being installed.

It is a Lacrosse 3600 wireless and seems to be working fine except that it is purportedly susceptible to stray RF which there is plenty in the computer room where the base station is located. It has to be reasonably close to the server so that I can connect it to the server's RS-232C port to collect the data. I need to provide a longish cable so that I can move it elsewhere.

The data is here and the graphs are here. They do not look particularly pretty yet and I will be working on the layout. I am also going to upload the data to the Weather Underground, but the data is not loading. I am waiting until the quality issues are addressed and the scripting is finished.

I also need to make a Stevenson Shield to house the temperature and humidity sensor. A rudimentary shield is provided but it is not immune to radiation and it tends to read several degrees high in direct sunlight. In short a Stevenson Shield prevents direct sunlight from distorting the readings by providing a shelter for the sensors. It is no more than a ventilated box but needs to be designed so as to allow the sensors to read the characteristics of the surrounding air without bias from the radiant heat from the sun or the influence of surrounding structures. I have been looking at shield designs and most people tend to use layered rings from largish white or painted flower pot bases. From what I can see these may be more or less successful bur are never as good as the louvered wooden boxes as seen in the official weather stations. I have searched unsuccessfully for blueprints for one of these so it looks like once again I will be designing and building one from scratch. I will try to remember to take progress photos for reference and to assist anyone else who wants to make their own.

I will post some pictures for the voyeurs amongst us later.

Bill and Steve and that other guy...

Is it just me or does that old guy seem to like the sound of his own voice? I don't know about you but I watch this stuff for the interviewee not the interviewer. Maybe he watches too much late night TV.

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/05/gates_and_jobs_.html

Firefox + PPC = Success!

If like me you are an avid user of Mozilla apps and own a PPC then the following URLs may be useful

This is the free POP mail client but the sync software is not free -

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/05/sync_windows_mo.html

And this looks to be a nice little utility as well

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/06/finchsynch_conn.html

thanks to JK for the info.