I’ve found another great use for my phone, recording band practice. Back in the day I had a great Aiwa cassette player that had a dedicated microphone jack that made great recordings. Now that cassettes are gone, I haven’t been able to record band practice.

That all changed when Apple released OS3 and the new Voice Memo app. Now I can record band practice on my phone. While this is a great solution for me, I still have two problems.

1.I play my iPhone in a few songs ( BEBOT & All you base )

2.My band rocks a little too hard for the phone’s microphone.

Item 1 I can live with. Item 2 I’m in the process of remedying. I want to make a foam shell of some sort to control the noise level. Right the recordings clip pretty hard, but not bad enough that I can’t hear what’s being played.

The Voice Memo app makes surprisingly good recordings. If you have any suggestions on sound dampening, please let me know.

I really enjoy having the weather widget on my phone. I’ve never kept up with the weather until now. Of course right now I just check to see how freaking cold it is outside?!?!

I like having a phone smart and feature rich enough that I can leave my laptop on it’s bag most nights. Being able to stay on top of emails, calls, as well as other social Internet services is priceless.

The phone doesn’t meet 100% of my daily Internet needs, but it’s enough that I don’t feel completely tethered to a real machine. I don’t mind being obsessed with a machine that fits in my pocket. Especially when my last four “smartphones” were pretty dumb in comparison.

Now if ATT could just make their 3G network both fast and reliable.

Turned on safari’s debug console to find errors and I found a cool feature. Safari’s debug console reports tips as well as errors.

Never had that in a phone.

I am currently on speakerphone and writing this at the same time. Never owned a phone that could do this.

iPhone FTW

Today’s productivity helper is to let the phone check email. I use Gmail for all accounts, so I have to stop what I’m doing to check email. This doesn’t sound like a big deal but it’s the tangeant factor that gets me. New email or not, chances are I’m going to stop thinking about work, and that’s a roadblock.

Now I just use the iPhone’s push capability to check Gmail each hour. I realize there are plenty of desktop email solutions, but that would take resources from my machine. This setup makes use of my data plan, as well as let me know exactly when email waiting for me.

Plus I really dig hearing the phone beep and vibrate every so often. In fact I love getting that notification at any time, not just during business hours. Just one more thing I can stop thinking about.

I just wonder how long until the iBurnout sets in.

The iPhone is the first mobile phone I’ve had that comes loaded with awesome ringtones. Usually phones come with crappy midi files, or weird song loops.

Here is part of the ringtone list. I don’t have a favorite, but I am enjoying digital.

Today I learned the iphone can vibrate
and ring at the same time. This is a feature I’ve been missing on my last four phones. That was the price I payed for not sticking with Nokia.

I officially love my new “phone”. Here is the screen that holds this cherished feature of mine.