Sprint touch Pro2 Out – Works with SERO (Confirmed)

After waiting for months, I finally placed my order today for a Sprint Touch Pro2 using Sprint Tele-Sales on Friday and got the phone by Next-Day UPS delivery. The good news is that it DOES work with SERO; I had to extend my contract by 2 years. But paying $30/month for a high speed data plan + 500 min + unlimited SMS + 7PM nights, I don’t mind extending it for 10 years..

The phone is beautiful and the screen is amazing. A tad bit thicker, but that is because of the keyboard. And the keyboards both the hardware and on-screen are a pleasure to type on. They have made the soft keyboard almost like the iPhone keyboard.

So, all of you who couldn’t get the PRE on a SERO, here is your chance to get a better device than PRE while retaining your SERO plan. GLTA

iPhone OS 3.0 working with iPhone 2G on TMobile with Internet

UPDATE Jun 22, 2009 : My Beta 5 expired the day Apple released the iPhone 3.0 OS. The worst part was, the phone was now stuck at the “connect to iTunes screen”. If I attempt to restore the phone back to 2.2.1 OS, it kept failing with an error. Even putting the phone in DFU mode didn’t help. Finally came across this post http://www.iphoneheat.com/2009/06/how-to-jailbreak-iphone-30-unlock-iphone-2g-on-os-30-with-redsn0w-windows/ which tells you to use redsn0w and it worked like a charm for me. Even my cheapass $9.99 tmobile data plan started working. I just had to replace epc.tmobile.com proxy with internet2.voicestream.com !!!

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Original Post Jun 7, 2009:

Installed iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 5 on my wife’s iPhone last week. I must say I am really liking the new OS. It definitely seems faster, and the little things they have introduced everywhere, search, landscape keyboard, voice memo…I am liking every single thing.

Great job Apple. Hope the rumors for the iPhone 4G are not just rumors. I will just switch to ATT if iPhone 4g comes out…That was for you Sprint for not letting me activate Palm Pre on my SERO plan.

Here are some screenshots of the OS 3.0 Beta 5 running on my wife’s iPhone 2G.

Want PRE ? Sprint says …screw you SERO users !

After hearing all this buzz about SPRINT SERO users not being allowed to use Palm Pre, I decided to call SPRINT too (as many others have done). The person in the retention dept. gave me”the attitude”. I was shocked! She says you can buy other phones but not Palm Pre. I told her why would you disallow Pre when I can use HTC Touch diamond /Pro which are equally data intensive? She didnt have a good answer for that.

I told her if I am not getting Pre I am leaning towards ATT for their iPhone. At this, I could almost feel her making fun of me and then she says, why would you pay triple $$$ /month on ATT for a data plan when you are not willing to pay double $$$ on SPRINT. (Bascially upgrading from my SERO = $30 would cost be $69.99 /month just to get the PRE).

Seriously, there are two things involved here. First, there is no phone in this world which has been created or will be created to make anyone want to pay more than double their monthly bill (and get $50 less minutes). Unless, you are a Moron !! The other thing is I can just switch to TMobile and pay less for their data plan and use an iPhone there. And if you have a corporate discount from your company, use that to further lower your costs.

As a matter of principles, I refuse to buy PRE. I signed up for a plan which SPRINT offered legally. It wasnt a hack. And now, they better have the balls to respect and honor that plan. Not try to give all the SERO users the finger!

At this point, I am really hoping that someone out there will come out with a SERO/ Palm pre hack to allow it to be activated.

iTMobile. Monitor your TMobile minutes on your iPhone FREE!!

The app is available free on the AppStore : Link will open in iTunes

Do you have an iPhone? Are you on TMobile? Do you wish there was an app which would keep you posted on the minutes you are using or SMS messages your have used.

Better…if it can alert you when you are past a “threshold” which you can set yourself.

If you answered yes, to all of the above then iTMobile is the app for you. Soon to be released in the AppStore. And it will be FREE ! I am making it an advertisement supported application and making it free for consumers. If you like it, then just click an Ad now and then to support development and in order for me to provide you with better versions and updates in the future.

Yes, I know you can do #225# and #646# to get usage data. But how many times are you willing to do that in a day? Also, have you noticed, that Tmobile (or any other provider for that matter), doesn’t tell you how many minutes you have left (Almost feels like they are hiding that info from you, so that you go over!).

Here are some screenshots to give you a brief teaser of iTMobile in its current avatar :

Time to Nap! A productivity simulator for Windows Mobile phones

UPDATE : 5/14/09 – I have temporarily taken down Time to Nap! on request from the creators of INapAtWork for possible copyright violation.

Feeling sleepy at work? Let ‘Time to Nap’ do some work for you. Well, not really!!! It will make typing, clicking, coughing, sneezing, paper crumbling, munching sounds to make your co-workers think that you are working. While you take a quick trip to sleep city. Give it a try. It will become your best companion at work before you know it.

Available on Pocketgear : (LINK REMOVED)

Control ctl00_ContentMain_ xxxxx of type ‘GridView’ must be placed inside a form tag with runat=server

Recently I wrote some simple code to Export the contents of a GridView to Excel. You know, the basic stuff like changing the type to application/ms-excel content and removing Images from the GridView (so that they don’t appear as missing images in the Excel sheet) and converting Hyperlinks to Labels.The Problem : But when I ran my code, I got the dreaded error : Control ctl00_ContentMain_ xxxxx of type ‘GridView’ must be placed inside a form tag with runat=server

The Solution :  Just place this code in your codebehind. And that will fix ya! :

public override void VerifyRenderingInServerForm(Control control) {}

The Explanation :

Asp.net calls VerifyRenderingInServerForm to ensure that every single server control is being rendered inside a <form runat=”server”> tag. Which makes sense for a web page.  But it doesn’t make sense for an Excel sheet. Since, we just want to send the Gridview contents to the client and not the Form tag.

All we are doing here is overriding this Method and falsely reporting to Asp.Net that our Control is actually being rendered inside a <Form Runat=’server’> tag.

Hope it helps…

How not to get your IPhone App rejected by ITunes App Store

Wrote my first iPhone app and it is selling in the ITunes app store now. These are a few things (from my personal experience) that you should avoid if you don’t want to get your iPhone app rejected by itunes app store :

1. Do not use a screenshot which shows your app running in an IPhone. App Store does not like images of their IPhone in the screenshots. They will reject it immediately. Just take a shot of your application ’s screen only. 
2. Apple asks you to submit a Main Logo (512 * 512 px PNG) which shows up as the big preview in ITunes and a small logo (47 * 47 px) which should be included as part of your App Bundle. They are extremely particular about the sizes and your main logo should match the mini logo. I made the mistake of submitting two different pictures (with the same theme) but promptly got rejected.
3. Make an application which at least in Apple’s eyes will serve some purpose to the public. I know that they rejected this app called “Pull my Finger” (and it farts) and it never made it to the App Store, because Apple said it serves no purpose. Although, with weird apps like Flashlight etc, I don’t know why some apps make it to the app store and some don’t. And not to forget my own Application, “DUDLER” (your iphone drunk dialing assistant) had no problems making it to the app store.
4. DO NOT use any undocumented APIs. This is a recipe for rejection right away. Although, to add to this…I have to mention that I had to fight with the app store for 20 days because they thought I am using some undocumented API and I was not. My app had a spinning wheel like (Urban Spoon) and my guess is they thought that the Spin control does not natively support that kind of Slot machine like blurring and spinning motion so I must have used an undocumented API. If you do get caught in this…your only option is to keep bugging them with emails and resubmitting your binaries until you hear from them.
5. Do not write an app which provides competition to any built in IPhone apps. eg. Providing a much better Photos application will probably cause Apple to think that it is giving competition to their own photos app
6. Do not write an app which provides functionality which is “unofficial”. You must have heard of how the app which would allow you to tether you IPhone to your computer to share internet got rejected by App Store.
7. Also, make sure your app complies with the UI guidelines. For eg. if it takes too long to load or shows an hourglass for too long, it will get rejected. Why? Because Apple doesnt want its users to perceive that the IPhone is slow just because your app is slow.
8. And PLEASE FOR GOD SAKE! Don’t do this (unless your are looking for media coverage) : http://www.pcworld.com/article/163717/baby_shaker_app_approved_then_removed.html
9. 06/12/2009 – Got one of my Apps rejected today. Reason, it needs an internet connection, but does not notify the user if there is no internet connection present. It errors out with some cryptic error code. Had to add some code (found in iPhone Developer’s cookbook) to tell me if the device has internet connection and notify the user accordingly.

Hope it helps. I wrote this blog entry in a few minutes. I will keep refining it by adding links to real life examples and such.

How to make iPhone work with TMobile with Internet

For y’all out there who are not willing to move to ATT or pay for their expensive internet plan, I am outlining the steps for what I did to get an iPhone working with TMobile. Plus, you can have internet for $9.99 per month

• Buy an iPhone 2G. There is no point buying a 3G because the frequency on which ATT 3G operates is different from TMobile and other GSM providers so, you wont be able to utilize 3G even if you are paying for it.
• Jailbreak it. This step is so simple I could not believe it.  Instead of repeating things that have been covered elsewhere I am pasting a link to a real simple article which walks you through the process : http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1880. The only exception being… you can get QuickPWN from their official website now, instead of going to weird Rapidshare links. http://www.quickpwn.com/downloads
• NOTE : There is no way to brick your phone as some scared people may lead you to beleive…even if you brick your phone you can always restore it to factory settings using iTunes. Also, this one is obvious..make sure your phone is at least 50% charged before you Jailbreak it. (Don’t try to sue me because your phone died on u while you were jailbreaking it on a low battery just because I said “you cannot brick your iphone”)
• Log in to my.t-mobile.com (DO NOT CALL Customer Service…either they are too friggin dumb or too smart not to tell you, that you can get Internet for $9.99). On the top right corner (where it says “not your phone”) change your phone model to “Nokia 5310″
• Now, in my.t-mobile.com click on plans–>Change services–>Add the “100 MB Web for phones” to your plan.
• In your iPhone go to Settings–>Network Settings–>APN and set it to  EPC.TMOBILE.COM no username/password required.
• Try browsing the internet. It should work…you will see a blue E icon at the top, which means EDGE network.

I am still in the process of updating this article with exact steps so keep checking on it.

Also See : iPhone App to check your TMobile minutes

iPhone phone app and favorites keeps crashing

Ok. I got this iPhone for my wife as a gift and was in the process of “freeing” it. So installed this application called “Kate” using Installer (not Cydia). And after a while, I realized that the phone part of the iPhone was not working at all.

Whatever I did, click favorites, history..doesn’t matter the phone app would crash and close on me. I could see the dial tab though, but if I clicked on any number ..same thing…crash! I thought the only way out is to restore it to factory settings, but then came across a few references on the web saying that “Kate” is the culprit.

So, I just went to Installer–>Categories–>Installed Packages—>Found Kate and deleted it. Wallah! Everything back to normal.

iPhone App incorrectly rejected by Appstore for use of Undocumented API

Wait since App Submitted: 29 Days                Wait since contract Sign-up: 43 days

ALSO SEE: How NOT to get your iPhone add rejected

UPDATE- Mar 18, 2009: Finally, my app got Approved !!!! Got an email from Apple saying my app is ready for sale. Although, it took approx 4-5 hours for the same status to be reflected in iTunes Connect.

UPDATE- Mar 13, 2009: After sending Appstore, 1 email everyday, they finally responded saying that they encountered a problem while testing my app, and that I should resubmit the binary. So, I have resubmitted the binary now…..

UPDATE- Mar 11, 2009: I plan to send an email to Appstore every day till I hear from them about a resolution. Today, I read an article about how an application called “Peep” was rejected for the wrong reasons too. (See article)

And this is the best part. GOOGLE openly admitted (See Article) that they have used an Undocumented API but they were allowed in the AppStore. And to think of it…my app does not even use an undocumented API.

UPDATE – Mar 10, 2009 : App rejected again for the following reason :
“3.3.1 Applications may only use Published APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any unpublished or private APIs. “

There is no published API which allows airplane mode to be disabled from within an application.

Now, this is not even funny. All my app does is allows you to click on someone and call them. I am totally confused why they thought my app disables airplane mode. The worst part about all this is, that you cannot call Apple customer service to resolve this and they read your emails in 7-10 days. So frustrating !!!!

UPDATE –  Feb 27, 2009: My application was rejected yesterday after 1 week of waiting.

Reason 1:, Apple thinks that I used their copyright picture for my app’s logo image. All I had done was take a screenshot of my application’s main screen and put it as the logo.

Reason 2: Apple says that my main logo (512 * 512 pic) does not match the app icon (47 *47 pic). This can be confusing to the users. Man! These guys are picky…well since I have no say here…all I can do is bend my head down and say “yes sir” “yes sir”. Thats what I am doing. So, I updated my pics and re-submitted my app. Now, its anyone’s guess how long will I have to wait before someone looks (or rejects) at it again.

Ok guys, I know there are a lot of people frustrated with iTunesConnect. And I am just writing this blog entry to join y’all.

I am a Microsoft Windows developer. I spent 3 weeks learning XCode and Objective C to write an application for the iPhone. It tested fine, everything looked great…but now App Store says it is reviewing my application. And it is stuck there for last 6 days.

It is so frustrating after paying $100 registration fee especially for a 1 person shop like me. I don’t have the muscle of a Venture Capitalist funding my operation. So, every dollar stings. But the least I expect is for Apple to put my application out there.

On the flip side, selling a Windows Mobile app is such a breeze. You submit the application and in a few hours it shows up in all stores out there. Plus, I simply sell it on my blog using Paypal. NO APPLE sucking 30% of my revenues after I paid them $100. How greedy and ridiculous can you be ? Seriously ?