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WordPress have introduced an Open Source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users can now write and manage their blog on the go.

Download from the iTunes AppStore.

The interesting bit is the solution to prevent data loss when receiving a call. Wordpress for iPhone will recover your post after ending the call. You can take pictures on the phone and blog them instantly, iPod touch users are limited to pictures from the photo library.
See pictures of the app in action in the gallery.

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With the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software for the first iPhone generation and the iPod touch Apple also introduced Microsoft Exchange support.

For a client like Outlook, but also e.g. for my Nokia E61, Zimbra Server will look like and behave lika an Exchange. That means you can simply point Mobile.me (me.com) or your iPhone/iPod at your Zimbra mail server and done. You get mail, calendar and contacts push over the air. Note: Make sure you diable your IMAP account for the same server should you have one, otherwise you might confuse yourself…

Even with Office running quite well on Leopard through VMware Fusion most of you switchers will still not want to depend on the messaging solution from Microsoft on your Cupertino OS. But how would the required migration work for all the emails from the past? There is no export feature in Outlook that would create anything meaningful to Apple Mail. Obviously for pure IMAP (or Zimbra connector) users as I am, it is no issue, as you just point your new client towards the right ports of your server and off you go. But I’m also an offline user as a POP3 user would be when it comes to mail archives. My thousands of received but also sent messages are nicely archived in separate local folders in Outlook format for each of the past years.

The answer to the Outlook to Mail migration question is: Thunderbird.

Simply install Thunderbird on your Windows environment next to Outlook and agree to all import from Outlook suggestions you will get during setup. Thunderbird will store online as well as offline content in the local application data folder in your home directory.

C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\[PROFILE]\Mail\..

The .msf and the corresponding files that do not have an ending are what you need to move over to your Mac. Mail.app has an “Import Mailboxes…” feature that you can use to include them into your local mail.app setup.

During my own migration I realized that not all files (each representing one folder from Outlook) were offered for import. This seems to be file size related. The solution here is to split them into items below 1 GB in Thunderbird before moving them over to the Mac. Note, if you split e.g. a 1.2GB file into two 600MB files you have to compact them before moving, otherwise the file size doesn’t change.

This way I successfully migrated 18′972 emails from Microsoft Outlook on Windows to Apple Mail on OS X Leopard. All available at the tip of my finger through spotlight of course.

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS™, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they form the Symbian Foundation. Members will be able to use the components of this platform for free from the beginning and selected features will be open sourced over time.

This is an alternative development to Google’s Open Handset Alliance Android program, that recently was said to be delayed and then not to be delayed. WSJ also considers this an iPhone thread.

Nokia recently also acquired Plazes, a Berlin based location based social network platform operator.

Mail Badger is a plug-in for Apple’s Mail.app that enhances the application’s dock icon by allowing users to set up multiple “badges” that display message counts from different mailboxes or counts of messages that satisfy a wide range of conditions. (more…)

Apple said today it will reveal its software plans for its iPhone device on March 6, including tools for outside developers and features aimed at businesses.

Reading John’s post on open source, Mac OS and Freedom 0, I reflected a little my first 3 months of using a Mac for some of my work (I was not as fortunate as John, so I have to use the one at home).

I agree that most of the people you meet at camps and conferences (at least the one John and the like get to go to) have at some point or the other worked with most of the available environments and figured that a combination of OSes including OS X on a Macbook Pro is the most productive combination in a very sleek form factor with an acceptable level of evilness.

The thing that does make me think with OS X is actually not the mentioned closed SW and iTunes DRM issues you might consider that no freedom or even evil, but I don’t. I want to make sure I can buy what I want to buy (if you do not have an American credit card you have to steal your favorite soap as you can not buy it in other iTunes stores but the US one) and that I can use what I’ve payed for (where is the point to paying for Music if I then have to break the law - remove DRM - or steal it again to be able to play it in my car?) As long as the offer matches the requirement at a reasonable price point, I’m well willing to accept certain limitations, especially if the are market or even economy driven and not just made up by a monopolist for his own interest.

For me it would be the 100 missing features issue you can only partly solve through the great repository of open source or not always open source but mostly free solutions. The obviously more tricky ones leave room for just one too many 39$ smart but closed tool purchases (UI configurable firewall, use a scanner, place an .htaccess file on an FTP server,…) if do not want to solve them on a command line and do not want to switch OSes all the time for the smallest feature.

But looking at it from another angle and comparing to the Windows world, I can quickly conclude, that the combination of engaging experience and open standards foundation of the Mac platform allows for smart people to make a living by doing what they like (coding and solving problems). The fact that the tools are not available as open source is only due to the fact that the open source business models will not work for software for 20$ to 40$ that will never ever need support. So I will continue happily to load my credit card bill with small $ items for add-ons to my work environment. If Apple will manage to integrate the right ones over time into their platform without putting the developers out of business, then even better.

Go to http://macheadsthemovie.com/ for more details…

I remember not too long ago arguing that the iPhone was nothing to be too excited about. It is a mobile phone that plays music and does email and web. The new UI would be nice and work as usually better than most non Apple tools, but the battery life, the missing UMTS ability and other yet to be discovered first mover disadvantages would compensate for that. A 29th generation Nokia mobile phone would not easily be replaced just because the new kid on the block (blog?) has a direct access option for the iTunes music store. In addition in Switzerland there is still no such thing as an iPhone, so there is no provider to offer a relevant mobile subscription that would allow for a proper use of one of the many options to “make your own”.

This thought, said and believed, my good old iPod classic died on me and left me without the option of portable music. Probably out of curiosity for the multi touch interface and still thrilled by the looks of the iPhone I went for an iPod Touch over the holidays…

Out-of-the-box the 16GB iPod Touch is a nice little evolution of the successful iPod series with a nice touch of iPhone feeling. It works as seemlessly as you expect and it does a pretty good job in being an iPod as well as a little internet browser machine. The Safari implementation is really stunning. I’ve owned an Apple Message Pad (MP120), numerous browser enabled Nokia and SonyEricsson phones, a few Compaq iPaqs and two Windows Mobile phones and yet have never seen such a useful implementation of an internet client on a rather constrained platform. Not only browsing the web but also filling in forms, navigating tabs, creating and using bookmarks: Works. And works well.

But then I started missing the “enable disk use” option to copy files onto the iPod, I thought about freeing my Gmail from the browser and wondered a little about the Google Maps abilities inside the mobile Safari browser. So a little Googeling here and there and a few “tricks” later, the BSD subsystem of the iPod Touch was freed and turned the little friend into an mega mobile, ultra usable communications companion (MMUUCC). After ‘jailbreaking” and applications enabling the iPod I have Google Maps and Mobile Mail like on the iPhone, I have an SSH client and server (!) including a Unix shell in my pocket and a whole lot more I still need to discover. You get a package manager that you can browse through and pick the applications and updates you want to install. And with tools like “customize” you can tweak the behavior of your friend in a way appropriate for your needs (re-aranging icons etc.)

In an environment with lots of free to use WLAN hotspots, this completely replaces my need for most of the off-duty laptop usecases. In fact, most of this post was multi touched…

The same will of course also work with the iPhone, in fact some of the relevant applications are available on the iPhone out-of-the-box. However, the simplicity of the Touch (no GSM/EDGE, no Bluetooth, no camera) remains one of the big plusses, besides the even thinner form factor and for me most importaint: battery life. I’m assuming that without the additional chips the battery of the Touch will last longer than the iPhone’s. If you have details on this, I’d be happy to read about it in a comment.

After a couple of windowsfull years it was finally time to go Mac again. My employers typically give me decent PC hardware and most of my day 2 day job can be done on those quite ok. Also, my personal requirements were easily covered as I did some email, web and pictures, maybe small videos here and there… But here we go: I remember borrowing PowerBooks, spending two full Saturdays at the local Apple retailer, having seen more from the New York Apple store in Soho than from New York itself and having been frustrated about the quality of result you get whenever you want/need to do something nice, smart and easy that in the end will blow the recipient away when none of the above mentioned work arounds are an option. It is that simple.

And as I started to have more an more pictures and videos of our daughter I do not want to clutter my work laptop we needed a ‘home’ computer anyway. So I took the opportunity and went for a 20 inch iMac. It’s what I need and it’s what a lot of people need.

Not sure for how long I will be ok for this during working hours, but my doubts started when I caught myself thinking about a desktop background for my laptop saying “My other PC is a Mac”…

How did it go? Well it went like it goes with Macs. Unpack, plugin, go.
I did have some issue with the migration of my data (surprise, surprise) but they are already almost solved. Here are a few links I used:

• Apple’s 101
• Macuser.de forums
• MacUpdate
• Hack Attack: A guide for switching to a Mac
• Dan Rodney’s Keyboard short cuts