I was looking for an iPhone app that would let me use my voice to send text messages when I came across HeyTell. I was actually searching on behalf of a friend, so I was surprised and thrilled to come across an app that is changing how I use my iPhone and how I interact with friends.

HeyTell does one thing, and does it well. It lets you send instant voice messages to other users. Think of it as a kinder, gentler, warmer alternative to text messaging.

There are so many uses for Heytell:

• Use it while you drive. Wait, no! Don’t! Um… We’ve all heard about the dangers of text messaging while driving, yet many of us (most of us?) still do it. HeyTell lets you send a voice message to other HeyTell users with the touch of one button. And if you leave the app open, you can hear the response without so much as a glance at your phone. Try it as a passenger, please.
• Use it as an alternative to voicemail. Sometimes you know ahead of time that your going to get someone’s voicemail when you call. And you know you’re going to have to listen to an annoying, dispassionate voice  give you directions for leaving a voicemail as though it were 1980. HeyTell is super-fast. Hold the button, talk, let it go, and your message is there.
• Use it if you’re blind or visually impaired. Or if you have trouble with the technology or text size for any reason. You can even assure your grandma that this is not a scary app.
• Use it to connect with your friends in other countries. Phone calls are expensive, and you can’t always manage a Skype call. With HeyTell you can leave a free voice message without having to worry about the time zone. You can leave a message for your mom letting her know you’re safe so she hears it before she wakes up and hears about the latest natural disaster or cultural revolution!
• Use it as an alternative to texting to save money. Tired of sms overage fees? Don’t want to spend the money for your kid to have an unlimited plan? HeyTell is free. Really.
• Use it because you’re all thumbs. Fat fingers? HeyTell is a graceful option :)
• Use it for random acts of kindness. Make someone’s day. Leave a HeyTell message for your friend just before she has to go into an important meeting telling her how much she rocks. It’s a nice thing to do.

A few things to know:

• HeyTell looks to your phone contacts for people to voice message.
• You can connect it to Facebook. Almost scary note: when you invite a Facebook friend to use the app, it posts the invitation to their wall. It will look to you as though it’s public, but it’s not. Other users don’t see the post on your wall, nor do they see it on the invitees wall, even if they’re a friend.
• You can opt to show your location to people you’re messaging. A toggle button turns the top half of your screen into a map. Be sure to turn this off if you don’t want to broadcast the location of your home, or of the place you happen to be at that moment.
• When the app is open, you get a relatively unobtrusive “ting” noting an incoming message, and the message plays automatically. If the app is not open, or completely closed, you get the same ringtone as you get for a voicemail (This is on the iPhone. Might be different on Android)

HeyTell is free, and available for iPhone and Android. If you’re not convinced, go watch the ~1-minute demo on their website.

In-app extras for purchase at $1.99 each include Message Wipe, Emoji (extra icons), and Voice Changer. (Fun for kids. Yeah, kids. Ahem.) Group broadcast is also available for $2.99.

Be sure to check out the reviews. Then try it out — let me know if you think this could be a game changer too.

Thanks to Susan Price for the most enjoyable test session!

I get far more annoyed with text message spam than I do with email spam. My iPhone dings every time I receive a text message, and I check it as soon as I can. I really, really resent the intrusion when it’s spam. And of course there’s the cost. I don’t pay per text message, but lots of people do. I do, however, have a monthly limit and don’t want spammers using it up. I searched every nook and cranny on the iPhone to find a way to block the spam, to no avail. Turns out AT&T actually does provide a way for you to block text messages. They just don’t publicize it much. Put your iPhone down right now and go to http://mymessages.wireless.att.com/. You’ll need to register here, even if you already have an AT&T login for your regular account. Once you’re there, you’ll have a few different options for blocking text messages.

You can block all SMS messages and multimedia messages sent to you as email. This is how most spammers get you — they send their junk to MobileNumber@txt.att.net or MobileNumber@mms.att.net. I recommend you block both of them.

AT&T does give you an option to set up an alias address, so if there are people you know who send you SMS messages via email, you can give them the alias and still foil the spammers.

You heard me right. I, renown Gadget Slut and Mac aficionado, am disappointed in the iPhone 3G.

It’s prettier than my old iPhone. More streamlined, even. I know — hard to believe, right?

But the battery life is awful. I put it on my nightstand with a full charge, and it’s half or more gone 7 hours later. I’ve dialed down the brightness, turned off location features, turned off push everything, and avoided playing games. Still, the charge dwindles rapidly.

After a few short days, I find myself hesitating to use it, questioning myself — wondering if whatever I wanted to do is important enough to justify the painful battery drain.

This has never been my experience of my iPhone in the past.

Now, with all the new features turned off (I might as well turn off 3G too, since coverage in Austin is spotty at best) I have a new iPhone that… is a little thinner, and has a white back.

I’m considering migrating back to my old iPhone. At least I could use it all day without worrying about running out of juice.

What’s an ethical businessperson to do?

Following the announcement that the 8 Gig iPhone price would drop by $200, Apple announced in an open letter that they would give a $100 rebate per phone to early adopters. They bowed to pressure by a bunch of whiners (read the comments) who seem to think that, as loyal fans, we should have some kind of magic insulation from the economic realities rapidly-changing technology. I can certain understand someone buying an iPhone very recently and being miffed about the drop, but such is life. Would any of you very early buyers have passed on an iPhone if you knew for sure that if you waited 2 1/2 months, you could get it for $200 less? I doubt it.

The exact same DLP projector I bought a few years ago for $10K now retails for $2,500. I’m not expecting a refund. I bought bleeding edge technology. I paid a premium *knowing* if I were a little patient I’d save a bunch of money.

Why did Apple cave? I own Apple stock. I think this was a stupid, unnecessary move on their part. This online reaction is not comparable to a campaign by a bunch of rabid fans so save a quality TV show from the death grip of network execs. This was a bunch of rabid fans who mistook their voluntary participation in a media frenzy for some kind of entitlement to immunity from reality. And Apple bit. It’s not a good precedent to set.

That said, I bought 2 iPhones on June 29. Do I have an ethical obligation not to take the rebate? It’s not like forgoing the cash would have one iota of effect on the program, the stock, or anything else. I  think it’s stupid, not wrong. Still, there’s all that ranting I do about hypocrites and personal accountability… Randy Cohen, are you listening?

The always-engaging David Pogue kindly published a fantastic shortcut for typing on the iPhone before the publication of his iPhone Missing Manual book.

The short problem: many frequently-used keys, such as the comma and the period, are on an alternate keyboard, requiring several clicks to type in.

The short solution: touch the .123? key but don’t lift your finger. The alternate keyboard will quickly appear. Don’t lift your finger yet — instead, slide to the character you want and release. You’ll get the character, and the keyboard will automatically switch back to the QWERTY keyboard.

Fantastic — thanks David! And thanks Tori for forwarding it to me :)

Mashable is having a contest. They’re asking for pictures of iPhones against interesting backdrops. This is hardly exotic, but hey, if someone wants a picture of my iPhone, who am I to say No?

Nearly 23 hours after I got my paws on an iPhone, I’m finally up and running, but it was far from painless.

The summary

• I was in the first group of 20 into the Apple store in Austin. I entered at 6pm to the applause of the staff (nice touch), bought 2 8Gig iPhones, and was on my way to my car by 6:04. Impressive!
• I came home and immediately tried to synch. Turns out I had to do some upgrading (yes, I should’ve known that). So, first I upgraded my system to 10.4.10 (I was one version behind) and iTunes.
• I went through the activation process, which went smoothly. I was porting my cell number from Verizon to AT&T.
• The last screen said it would be about 6 minutes to finish. I went to change, thinking I’d be leaving momentarily for a cocktail party, where I’d be able to show off my fabulous new toy.
• I came back to a screen that said roughly "it’s going to take a while, we’ll email you when we know how long. The neighbors may well have heard me yell at this point.
• Since I couldn’t activate, I couldn’t do anything – I couldn’t use the iPod, the calendar, or even play with preferences.
• I went to the cocktail party, and rather pathetically showed off the Earth screen and emergency call pad.
• I was home an hour and a half later with an email saying it would be up to 24 hours before my phone was activated.
• I wrote my first bitchy blog post about it.
• I called the number in the email from AT&T to "make other arrangements". The first woman was nice, didn’t know much about the iPhone, and gave me another number to call.
• I called that number. It was disconnected.
• I called the original number again, and a guy told me it’d be 6-24 hours – there was nothing he could do.
• This morning at 8am when I got up, my activation had gone through. I eagerly attempted a synch. No go. I got the error message shown in my last post. iTunes seemed to think the iPhone was disconnected. It wasn’t.
• I restared my Mac. I restored the iPhone to factory settings. I tried a different USB port, and tried the synch with just the cable and again with the dock. Nada.
• I remembered that with my iPod, I’ve had trouble using the auto-synch feature of iTunes, so I tried synching manually. That seemed to work fine, and I thought I was set.
• But no. Everything synched except iCal. I tried manually synching just iCal, to no avail.
• Finally around 10:30 I called the iPhone help number. A recorded message said that due to heavy demand, my wait would be "5 minutes or greater." Understandable.
• 55 minutes later, I got a very nice guy who wasn’t able to help. He said he’d connect me with someone for "more advanced" help.
• 1.5 hours later (!) I spoke with Nathan from Apple. Again, very nice. Finally I was going to get some help.

The iCal glitch

I have 6 calendars I use regularly. We experimented with trying to synch a single calendar at a time. At first it didn’t work, and Nathan speculated that maybe you can’t synch more than one calendar at a time. That would be a pretty glaring error if it was so.

My "home" calendar wouldn’t synch. It would start, and I’d get the error message. If I synched any other single calendar on its own, however, it worked. Doing that, however, made each new calendar completely replace the previous one. Obviously, that wouldn’t do. Then we discovered I was able to synch all calendars at once except for the "home" calendar. Something is apparently corrupted in that calendar.

So I’ve just spent the last hour going back and re-categorizing my calendars back to January. I deleted the Home calendar. It now synchs beautifully and completely.

My opinion, after a rocky start
The good

• It’s lovely – feels good to hold, and I love the mutli-touch screen.
• It’s fast, even on the EDGE network. I’ve played several iTunes videos with no cutting out.
• The browser is fantastic – surprisingly readable.
• I’m getting really good coverage with AT&T – better than with Verizon and miles better than with Sprint.
• The maps support is great – I easily get real-time traffic reports… sweet!
• The interface is elegant and mostly very intuitive. A few things will take a bit of getting used to, but that will happen quickly.
• Same goes for the keyboard. It’ll take me a little while to get proficient, but I have no doubt that I will.
• I love the .com button on the keyboard.

The bad

• It felt hazardous to try to make a call while driving. The flow navigation doesn’t work well with one hand. Once a bunch of people are on my "recents" list, this will be less of an issue, as I won’t have to hunt for them.
• Making calls, even with "recents" takes too many touches. I want a favorites widget.
• 8Gigs will soon seem like not nearly enough. I’m already ready for an 80Gig iPhone :)

Overall, I love it, although my enthusiasm was seriously tempered because of my crappy initial experience. That’ll wear off, though.

See also:
iPhone: still crippled, but getting there
iPhone: I’m officially pissed off

I woke up this morning to a working phone. Yay! First thing I did was synch, of course, which didn’t work. I got this dialog box, even though the iPhone was still connected. I’ve had trouble using iTunes auto-synch with my iPod, so I synched everything manually. This worked fine, except for the calendar, for which I still get this error message.

Any suggestions?

Otherwise, it’s beautiful, but I can’t love it yet. I want it to be 100% working, dammit!

Note: this is a followup post to iPhone: I’m officially pissed off
Update: Latest post is iPhone: iCal glitch and why it took me 22 hours to set up my iPhone

I’ve had the iPhone for nearly 4 hours now, and can’t do anything with it. I went to iTunes to activate it (had to do some updating, no big deal, but took a while) and everything seemed to be going fine. After the final activation OK I got a message saying it may take a while to activate – they’d be in touch.

What? Wasn’t AT&T anticipating this?

I got an email an hour later saying:

Phone service is scheduled to be disconnected on your current phone at or after 8:29 PM EDT on June 30. Please check your email and be prepared to reconnect and activate your iPhone before that time. Please call 877-800-3701 if you’d like to make other arrangements.

I called, got a very nice woman who tried to be very helpful. She got my SSN, my driver’s license number, all the usual personal info. Could she do anything? No. She did give me a new number to call, though. I called it, and was told to enter the number I’m trying to transfer to AT&T. It wasn’t recognized. I tried again. Nada. So I had to call the original number again. Went through the same thing, gave all the info again, only to hear "yep, it’s going to be 6-24 hours before you can activate."

I don’t care about the number. Can I use the iPod? No. The Calendar? Datebook? Anything? No. No. No.

So here I sit. I got wrapped up in the hype, which was totally fun. I paid $200 to get a spot at the front of the line. And now I can’t do a damn thing until sometime tomorrow. Maybe even tomorrow evening.

I am not happy. I’ve been forced to marry AT&T, and I already want out.

See followups:
iPhone: still crippled, but getting there
Update: Latest post is iPhone: iCal glitch and why it took me 22 hours to set up my iPhone

See also
Number 15 in line for the iPhone in Austin
I found my iPhone line-waiter :)

Apparently I can buy two iPhones. If you want one, let me know before 6pm. Looks like I’ll be in the first group in the store :)

I surreptitiously shot some video of the line in Austin before the guards stopped me. I couldn’t get much without causing another fuss about the "no pictures" law. I wonder what exactly they think they’re "protecting" with this "law". They wouldn’t even let the news in this morning. Wouldn’t you think all of Apple’s neighbor stores would be happy to have their storefronts plastered all over TV and the blogosphere?

I was able to convert the raw video from my Flip Video Camcorder to Quicktime just fine. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to embed Quicktime movies into Typepad, so I thought I’d upload the video to YouTube, then grab the embed code from there. No luck uploading to YouTube, though, and I don’t know if it’s me or them, but the whole site seems to be crawling along. This is the first time I’m uploading a video there, though, and I’m not entirely sure what to expect.

See also:
I found my iPhone line-waiter :)
Number 15 in line for the iPhone in Austin