iPhone 4 – This changes everything. Again.

This changes everything. Again.

Spotify Mobile and Spotify Premium

Spotify Mobile has been out for roughly two weeks now, it’s still in the top ten of the most downloaded free apps in the Swedish app store – currently at number four to be precise. The app has been rated as many times as 1806 at the time of this writing. Quite remarkable.

Spotify Mobile really hit the media (and social sphere) when the story was published. I don’t think there’s a single medium where the story haven’t been posted/dugg/liked/whatever. It spread like a bushfire in a summer breeze throughout Twitter and Digg – they really got everyone excited. Including me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to build up some “but”-action here; I love Spotify, and I love the app. I have to say though, that what’s really interesting in all of this is to monitor search patterns on both mobile and premium. Premium being Spotify’s (paid) member service which offers no ads, higher sound quality, unlimited travel access, and exclusive access to pre-releases. So why is this interesting? For one, Premium is of course required in order for you to use Spotify Mobile. The second reason is a killer; search volume index for Spotify Premium is actually greater than the volume for Spotify Mobile:

Not only was it greater during the actual release (when the bushfire spread); it spiked higher, it lasted longer, and it has maintained on a higher level. Of course, as the disclaimer indicates “several approximations are used when computing these results”. Still a good indication of what’s happening.

Is Spotify finally making (decent) money?

(Spotify Mobile picture from Press/Images on Spotify.com)

Some updates to the blog

It’s been a while since Wordpress 2.8 aka. “Baker” was released. Even though I think “Coltrane” was a more fundamental change to the usability and backend of Wordpress, Baker proved to be the perfect excuse to complete some other improvements that have been on my to-do list for ages.

To start things up I’ve implemented disqus for handling comments. It’s an excellent framework that allows users to login using e.g. their Twitter or Facebook identities. As you might recall, I did some ‘ugly hacks’ to enable a Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect earlier. Disqus also has a neat feature called social media reactions which monitors conversions around your posts, so no need to use the backtype plugin or similar to bring the conversation back. I’d also like to reserve some extra kudos to the DISQUS-team, especially Giannii – they’re absolutely fantastic at getting back to you if you have a problem and seem to monitor conversations regarding disqus in every space.

I’ve also finally got around to writing somewhat decent about me and follow me pages as well as mashed up my social presence to a lifestream page by using the excellent wp-lifestream plugin. Following a tip from Andreas Karman (Swedish post), I cleaned up the archives a bit using smart archives reloaded.

And as a bonus to all iPhone users, you now have an iPhone optimized site if you visit this blog in Safari on your iPhone, compliments to wptouch. Rumours also has it that the feed wasn’t working earlier, that’s now solved.

Puh. Maybe it’s finally time to create some content? It’s just that Wordpress is to fun to mess around with.

I’m the best Flight Control Captain in Dublin!

Many thanks to the Greek for his continued support despite my Flight Control addiction.

Skype for iPhone – finally here!

Finally released and available in the app store! Unfortunately it keeps crashing whenever I try to make a call, and according to the comments in the official blog post, I’m quite sad to say I don’t seem to be the only one having this problem. Here’s the official press release.

Chat seem to work fine though. Make sure to provide Skype with your feedback!

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Found a quite good review over at PC World, make sure to read up!

Read what other people say about Skype for iPhone (Twingly).

iPhone Safari doesn’t remember my passwords!

I’ve been annoyed for weeks that my iPhone doesn’t remember my passwords in Safari. I’m not really a frequent flyer of browsing on the iPhone, but I’d like to consider myself a fairly heavy-user of certain applications, e.g. Google Reader. What’s annoyed me is the fact that my iPhone refused to save my password when signing in with my Google account – more specifically, when signing into Reader as I tend to use it quite a lot (not during those ‘great’ meetings, I promise!).

As my iPhone is a 2G (I know) I spent an hour or so yesterday Googling away to find a solution. I finally found it through Rovivor.com, in an old blog post from 04/2008, which makes it even more pathetic to still be on a 2G!

Here’s the ‘tutorial’, I’ve modified it a bit for 2.0* as the previous one was for 1.X, using installer etc. MobileFinder is now available through Cydia.

Here is a 8 step easy to follow solution for your iPhone Safari to save your passwords (remember your login info) as it should be:

1. First, go to Cydia on your iPhone, search for “MobileFinder” and install it.

2. When these are OK, start Mobile Finder, click on the “~” button from upper left.

3. You will see “Library” folder there, click twice and open it.

4. There you will see “Cookies” folder, click once, and when it is selected, click “Modify” button from the center of the bottom menu.

5. You will see a screen LIKE THIS (not exactly this one, this is just another screen shot from Mobile Finder):

Here you should click on all “Read, Write, Exec” buttons until all 9 be blue.

6. Click “Done” and return back the previous screen. Now click on Cookies again to see inside of the folder.

7. In Cookies folder, modify all the files (normally there should be only one named “Cookies.plist”) like step 6, however only making all “Read, Write” blue. It means that there will be 6 blues, not “Exec” buttons.

8. Click “Done” and after restarting Safari, it is now remembering your passwords.

From Rovivor.com. I realize that 99.9% of the population might have solved this already, or that it’s probably working by default on 3G, but whatever – sharing the love anyway!