iPhone meme

The iPhone’s touch-screen keyboard is certainly slick - but it takes some getting used to.

The biggest adjustment for me has been the need to plow ahead through the inevitable typos and let the iPhone software guess what I’m typing and fix the spelling as I go. It has been pointed out that the iPhone doesn’t really have a spell-checker, per se. It makes guesses about what I’m trying to type, but doesn’t always catch obvious typos. Also, if I ever accidentally “accept” a typo, by clicking the little “x” to ignore a suggestion, that typo itself seems to become a future suggestion. Yikes. Adaptive and smart, but perhaps a bit too much so!

So, I’m doing my best to unlearn spelling, trust suggestions, and not accidentally accept too many typos. I’m also finding that I’m using the iPhone primarily for “inbound” communication like email and RSS, and perhaps a bit less for outbound email and blogging. We’ll see if this changes as I get used to the keyboard.

Related - The omnipresent Pogue has a nice list of iPhone Keyboard Secrets that is woth a look, including this one that has helped me out:

“The suggestion feature can be especially useful when it comes to contractions, which are normally clumsy to type because you have to switch to a secondary, punctuation keyboard to find the apostrophe. So you can deliberately leaving out the apostrophe. Just type “im,” “dont,” “cant” and so on. The iPhone proposes “I’m,” “don’t,” or “can’t,” so that you can just tap the Space bar to fix the word and continue.”

Nice tip!

What sorts of things are you typing on the iPhone? Got other iPhone keyboarding tricks? Let us know in the comments!

I was very happy to see this note over on iPhone Alley saying that iPhone note syncing will arrive later this month with Leopard. I’ll finally be able to put some fast loading bus schedules on my iPhone! They bring up one worry though: “This may or may not require a .Mac account.” Yikes! I hope not!

I was pretty bummed to see today’s report from Greenpeace, confirming suspicions that the iPhone, despite the slick design, is not the greenest consumer electronics product out there.

Greenpeace found that the iPhone “contains toxic brominated compounds (indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC.”

Earlier this year, in a promise to bring us “A Greener Apple” Jobs wrote, “Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008.” 2008 is coming up fairly quickly - does this mean we’ll see a greening of the iPhone some time next year? A complete overhaul?

Apple products always look sleek and clean. What can we do to make them green, too?

Related:

Apple faces potential environmental lawsuit
iPhone doesn’t yet come in green
Greenpeace slams iPhone on environment

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The new Web apps directory at apple.com looks great! It currently lists over 200 web based iPhone friendly applications. I’m just getting started browsing the catalog, but my favorite so far is Tipr, a “specialized tup calculator [that] takes your check total and a specified tip percentage and generates a total that is a palindrome.” Wow!

What’s your favorite new Web app (palindromic, or otherwise)?

My iPhone is becoming the go-to gadget for the spaces between here and there. I love being able to get one or two things done on a walk between meetings, a short and crowded bus ride, or any other time I find myself away from my laptop with a few minutes to spare.

Google Reader’s mobile site is now often my first stop when I’m looking for a quick, out and about productivity fix. I sped through a slew of news feeds this morning during a quick bus ride, and was really impressed by Google Reader’s responsiveness, even over the Edge network. The site had some trouble switching into landscape view, but was otherwise great.

Careful, though. You might miss your stop.

Content Robot has made it easy to optimize WordPress blogs for the iPhone (and now the iPod touch). Their iWPhone WordPress theme and plug-in jump into action whenever an iPhone user visits your site. The iWPhone theme is clear, simple, and fast. Very cool! Ask your favorite WordPress blogger to give it a try. We’re using it here at iPhonememe, and love it. Thanks Content Robot!

- via podcastingnews

Know other ways to iPhoneify a blog? Seen any tools for other platforms? Which sites look great on your iPhone? Let us know in the comments!

I’m really enjoying Leaflets, the suite of Safari applications that run fast and look great on an iPhone. Browsing NYTimes.com is much faster, they have handy integration with del.icio.us and flickr, and there’s a growing catalog of great reviews of Safari based iPhone applications. Very cool!

What’s your favorite Leaflet? Let us know in the comments!