My friend, Phil Burns, recently wrote a very rare blog post citing a discussion this morning at the monthly Utah CTO breakfast, hosted by another friend of mine, Phil Windley (former CTO of Utah).  Burns stated his concerns with the “anti-Microsoft people” (which I am not, nor am I anti-Apple or anti-Linux) and the fact that they were complaining about how hard it was to automatically sync all your contacts, calendar, and mail on their phones from services such as Gmail and other 3rd-party services.  Burns’ (I’ll call him by his last name here so as not to confuse him with Phil Windley) point was that he already gets this service on his Windows-based phone and laptop through Exchange.  Valid point.  However, I think those at the breakfast were uneducated on the matter that Gmail now supports Exchange sync and push services to the iPhone.  Push sync of all contacts and calendar events are completely possible using Google services on the iPhone.  I don’t blame those complaining though, since the documents explaining how to do it are extremely hard to find via Google’s own search.  I thought I’d explain how to set that up here:

What you’ll need

First of all, the only things you’ll need are a Gmail account, a Google Calendar account, and an iPhone.  That’s it.  You’ll also need to have the 2.2.1 or above iPhone firmware since that is when they started supporting Exchange (at least I believe that’s the reason).  For push e-mail, a Mobile Me account will be needed, but Google is set to enable that in the future as well.

Calendar and Contacts Set up

1. To set up push sync of your Google contacts and calendar events to your phone, simply go to your iPhone settings, select “Mail, Contacts and Calendars”, and then select “Add Account”.  Here’s the trick though - instead of selecting “Gmail”, you’ll need to select “Exchange”.
2. On the following screen you’ll be asked for several fields - enter your gmail e-mail address in the “e-mail” field.  Leave “domain” blank.  Your “username” is your gmail e-mail address - the full address with @gmail.com or @googlemail.com, prefixed by your username.  Then enter your Google account password in the “password” field.
   
3. On the following screen you’ll be asked to verify the certificate - choose “Accept”.
   
4. Then, on the next screen you’ll see the same screen again, but there will be a “Server” field.  Enter “m.google.com” for the domain and select “Next.
   
5. On the following screen you’ll have the option to turn on mail, contacts, and/or calendars.  Turn contacts and calendars on, leave mail off.  As you select each option you’ll have the opportunity to delete your current iPhone contacts and just start fresh with your Google contacts and calendars or leave them there and add your Google contacts/calendar on top of it all.  Hit “Done” when you’re ready.
   
6. You’re done!  Now when you go to your Calendar app you can update the calendar, it auto-updates Google calendars, and you get updates immediately as they come from Google calendar itself.  Your Gmail contacts work the same way.  Now you can sync all your contacts’ phone numbers, addresses, and other data from your computer to your iPhone, and have those immediately update Google with the new data, giving you a complete Google address book (and no need for Plaxo!).  Add to that Google Voice, which just started handing out invites to new users today, you’ve got a pretty powerful, real-time contact and calendaring system right on your phone!

What about e-mail?

E-mail currently does not work via push yet for Gmail and the iPhone.  However, I’ve found the IMAP-based setup that the Gmail options in the phone give are quite fast and pretty close to real-time.  Be sure to set that up, and turn off the contacts and calendar for Gmail on that particular setting when you do, since you’re already retrieving those through the Exchange connector.

One other option you could always do is to get a Mobile Me account just for the e-mail and iPhone location services (Apple will notify you where your iPhone is at all times, let you send a message to the phone, or even completely erase it if you tell them to).  Then you could forward all your Gmail mail to Mobile Me through your Gmail forward settings, and retrieve it that way.  With the proper set up and filters, your mail will continue to archive in Gmail while letting you get mail real-time via push through Mobile Me.  I think for mail IMAP is generally sufficient though.

So there you have it - push contacts and calendaring for your iPhone, through Gmail.  It’s completely possible, and 100% supported by Google and Microsoft (I’m told they purchased Exchange licenses just for this).  Soon I’ll have to share how I’m doing the same thing natively on my Mac.

For those that know(eth) me, I am an avid iPhone user.  I wasn’t always a fan, and in fact publicly wrote a post on why I wasn’t going to get an iPhone.  It lured me in though, and I’ve even moved from an unlocked, contract-free T-Mobile plan to the horrid service AT&T provides in order to get full 3G speeds.  I even renewed that plan just last week as I got a new iPhone 3G S.  However, today, as they were charging Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) $11,000 for his cell phone bill (I had no idea about that whole “movement” until later after I got home), they crossed the line for me as well.  Here’s the story:

3 days ago, after successfully selling my phone on Ebay and purchasing a new one under the standard upgrade plan for the same price, we decided to do the same for my wife’s iPhone 3G.  The idea was supposed to be we sell it on Ebay, get the money, and use the money from the sale to purchase a new one at the same price as we sold the old one for - that’s just how much they’re selling for (I didn’t make the rules)!  We purchased the phone in September of 2008, still in the limits AT&T set to qualify for iPhone standard upgrade pricing (the lower pricing option).  At the same time, I’m paying over $200 to AT&T each month with a family plan between myself and her, and an additional USB data plan on top of it all.  It would seem plenty of my money is going towards AT&T, and I thought we would qualify - after all my own phone qualified just fine.

So I went to the http://apple.com/iphone/buy site to authorize my wife’s phone and verify it did qualify for the standard upgrade pricing, and to my surprise, it said she didn’t, and she wouldn’t until May 6, 2010!  I was blown away, considering AT&T might want to keep her around and right around the time she can finally leave is the time she has to wait to get her new iPhone.  This is especially considering the amount of money I am paying AT&T each month to get her plan.

So I called AT&T to find out what was going on.  The lady on the phone was really nice (I even sent out a Tweet about how great AT&T service actually was), and while she tried to explain why my wife wouldn’t qualify, she quickly realized my wife actually did qualify.  She put me on hold several times, I’m assuming asking others what was going on, and finally she got permission to call the store and let them know I qualified for the new phone.  I had her call the Gateway Apple Store in Salt Lake City, Utah (my state of residence), and she put me on hold to call them.  When she came back, she said they had let her know all would be fine if I came in, and to just leave detailed notes on my behalf to explain the situation.  She left very detailed notes, and said I would be just fine getting my wife’s new phone under the new plan.  I took this as AT&T’s approval to get the phone under the lower, standard upgrade price plan.

So excited, we put my wife’s 3G phone up for bid on Ebay on a 3-day auction.  The phone easily sold in 3 days for $300 (which is low compared to other phones selling right now), and we were finally ready to get her new phone.  I quickly transferred money around and headed off to the Apple store, excited to get my wife what I’ve been experiencing over the past week.

After a 30 minute drive to the Apple Store, and even feeling a little sick, I was ready and excited to get my phone.  I get into the store, it is packed as usual, and I look around, and not surprisingly I noticed there was a line for the iPhone.  I stood in line for about 20 minutes (a breeze compared to the opening day when I got mine), and finally get to talk to an Apple rep to get my new phone.  I tell him my story, and to my surprise, he responds with “We can’t do anything - we’re stuck with what AT&T tells us on the apple.com/iphone/buy site.”  I explained what the AT&T rep had told me and he said his hands were tied.  He suggested I go to the AT&T store, just about a block away in the same Mall.

So, still feeling sick, and rather disappointed, I headed over to the AT&T store.  I got there, and waited for about another 30 minutes while AT&T reps helped other customers, some that came in after me.  Finally one of them noticed me waiting, and asked if he could help.  I told him my story and he looked up my account.  I still have no clue if he even cared to look at the notes for my account, but he was definitely persistent that there was nothing he could do for me.  He even went to the extent of stating that the AT&T customer service reps on the phone are “often wrong” and they “get that all the time”.  I neglected to mention to him that this particular rep even contacted the Apple Store about it, and seemed to infer that she “does that all the time” as well - I should have.  This guy in the AT&T store even said he had complained to his boss about the same issues with some friends of his and couldn’t do anything about it.

Needless to say I went home very disappointed, wasting a few hours of my day for something I was told over the phone was completely possible.  Not to mention the fact that I had now sold my wife’s old iPhone, contract still in hand, and nothing to replace it with.  I’m furious!

So what’s going on?  Who do I believe?  It would seem that some at AT&T feel they have the authority to say what is and isn’t authorized.  However, when you get to the people that can actually sell the phones, that flexibility is all of the sudden gone, and the customer service has disappeared.  Often I would think it should be the other way around but this is AT&T after all - just search for their issues on Twitter.  (not to mention I just noticed they charged me a Poison Control surcharge - FOR MY USB DATA PLAN)  It would appear that AT&T has become so big that the customer has been caught in a tug-o-war with their own employees, a very sad situation.

As for what to do?  Well, I’m going to have to risk my years-long reputation on Ebay and take back the auction someone was anxiously hoping they had won, not because I changed my mind, but because AT&T won’t let me.  I will forever blame AT&T if my reputation is adversely affected from this.  At the same time when my wife can finally upgrade her phone, you better believe we’re switching to a new service - AT&T has shut the door on themselves on this one.

AT&T has the opportunity to make this right, and they should for not just those with a voice - they need to fix their customer service process.  Get people on Twitter and Facebook and FriendFeed and start learning the issues people are having.  Search the blogosphere.  Then, fix those problems internally.  Give everyone the customer interfaces flexibility to bend the rules occasionally.  Make the customer right again - the customer should be AT&T’s most valuable asset.  I don’t feel like that right now.  Heck, I feel like a piece of dirty laundry they just hung out to dry.

#ATTFAIL

3 days ago I got up at 3:30am, packed up my truck with things like sleeping bags, camping chairs, and goodies to snack on and drink, and headed off to the Gateway Apple Store in Salt Lake City, Utah to get my new iPhone 3G S.  About 3 hours of waiting in 50-60 degree weather later (too cold for me!) I had my new 32 GB iPhone 3G S.  Just a day before I sold my previous iPhone on Ebay for $307, and that will go to the proud new owner, Unlocked and Jailbroken with the new 3.0 firmware tomorrow morning.  I documented the entire process on Qik, which you can watch here.  Fox 13 (KSTU) News here in Salt Lake City also picked up my stream and shared it with viewers - you can watch their coverage of it here.

Shortly afterwards, my friend, Kirk Yuhnke, an Anchor and Reporter for Fox 13 News texted me and asked if I could show it off in a segment today.  I obliged and this morning got to take my first venture into live broadcast TV, showing off my new iPhone 3G.  Kirk let me come back-”stage” with him and we hung out in his office waiting for our turn, and I showed off the iPhone in preparation for our segment.  Then it was our turn, and it went by too fast!  I admit if it weren’t for the video playback it would all be a blur!  I shot the following behind-the-scenes videos (shot entirely on the iPhone) of my trip to Fox13 Studios, on my new YouTube channel:

The entire trip led to this live segment, from the Fox13Now.com website - consider this my review of the iPhone 3G S:

After our segment, Kirk showed off his demo Blackberry unit, something we a) couldn’t even get working, and b) when we did figure it out, seemed cheap compared to his Palm Pre and my iPhone.  He also showed me that the new Jawbones are shipping with new earpieces, which make it secure much, much better in your ear without any need for the wrap-around ear-band that keeps breaking off for me on their units.  We then decided to test his phone against mine.  The battle for smartphone dominance was decided (well, sort of) in this video:

The iPhone Dev Team has done it again.  Just last week I reported that you could now Jailbreak any iPhone to the new 3.0 iPhone firmware, meaning things like easy tethering, live streaming through Qik.com, and more.  Tonight, the iPhone Dev Team has taken that one step further by completely unlocking any iPhone before the iPhone 3G S to work on any GSM cell phone network.

Set up is easy.  Start by Jailbreaking your iPhone using redsn0w or the Pwnage Tool.  Then, in Cydia or Icy, add the repository, repo666.ultrasn0w.com.  Then search for “ultrasn0w”.  Install it, reboot, and your phone will now work with any GSM network!  It is reported that due to T-Mobile USA’s network compatibility, 3G speeds will not work on the phone, so it’s encouraged that users disable 3G before installing Ultrasn0w that might be on that network.

As of today, any iPhone previous to the 3G S no longer requires a contract on any service, and has full access to copy and paste, search, voice memos, and more, in addition to all the great tools a Jailbreak can provide.  The unlock and Jailbreak does not yet work on the 3G S, and it is rumored that it may take awhile due to the new chipset on the new device.  If you run into issues with your unlock, report them on the iPhone Dev Team blog, or here and I’ll be sure and report anything major.

Jealous that all your 3G S friends have video AND cut and paste on their iPhones?  Envy no more.  Just earlier today as those of us were out braving the Apple Store lines to get our new iPhones, the iPhone Dev Team released a new version of their iPhone Jailbreaking tool, Pwnage Tool that works with all iPhone versions except the 3G S.  The tool works with the 3.0 software, and will enable your 3G and younger phones (even first generations) to run tools such as Qik, and give free tethering just by installing it.

Previously, limits to the iPhone Baseband prevented any versions of the iPhone above 1.2.1 from being Jailbroken.  This prevented many important bugs from being updated, and most importantly, as of Wednesday kept users from accessing the copy and paste, voice memos, search functionality, and more that the 3.0 software update provided.  Now, all traditional 3G and younger phones can have full access to that functionality.

The iPhone Dev Team is still working on finalizing updates to their replacement for “yellowsn0w”, which allowed the iPhone 1.2.1 software and younger to also be unlocked for all GSM carriers to use.  The replacement is called “ultrasn0w”, and is supposed to unlock all released iPhone versions, including those after 1.2.1 which yellowsn0w would not work with.  Put in laymans terms, when ultrasn0w is released, you will be able to use any iPhone, on any version of the iPhone software, on any supporting GSM carrier.  The iPhone Dev team is supposed to be just around the corner from releasing the unlock tool which enables ultrasn0w for use on other Cell Phone networks.  They have suggested you wait to Jailbreak your iPhone if you intend to unlock it as well under the 3.0 update.

The 3G S may still be far off from an unlock or Jailbreak.  It is my understanding that Apple has introduced a chipset that makes this “impossible”, or very difficult at a minimum.  So if you want streaming video and much more customization without the speed, along with the ability to switch contracts to any provider at any time, you may want to hold onto that old iPhone for a little longer.

Beginning of February I announced my 8 late predictions that I thought would happen in 2009. One of those, which I actually mentioned originally last year, was that Facebook would launch a developer platform for the iPhone. Such a prediction was hinted at last year by Facebook, was supposed to launch end of last year, and it would appear that this morning it came true. As of this morning, Facebook announced they are releasing Facebook Connect for the iPhone, and announced several of the first apps using it.

The platform integrates with the iPhone XCode platform and provides libraries that make integration of Facebook into any iPhone app easy. (Here’s where I get geeky, so beware) Per the documentation, the basics are that developers simply include the libraries in this manner:

#import “FBConnect/FBConnect.h”

Following that, the basic component of the app is the session object. To create a session object, you just need to provide code similar to this:

session = [FBSession sessionForApplication:myApiKey secret:myApiSecret delegate:self];

Following that, you’ll want a basic login button you can provide to users that authenticates the user and connects with the session object. To display the login button, use code like this:

FBLoginButton* button = [[[FBLoginButton alloc] init] autorelease];
[self.view addSubview:button];

Once the user is logged in, the session object should have the session key from Facebook, and you can make normal Facebook API calls from there. From there, you can get the session key and the session secret and send them back to your servers for processing, or make simple calls back to Facebook directly from the iPhone app using the provided libraries. Facebook provides this sample code as an example on how to do it from the iPhone:

- (void)getUserName {
NSString* fql = @”select name from user where uid == 1234″;
NSDictionary* params = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:fql forKey:@"query"];
[[FBRequest requestWithDelegate:self] call:@”facebook.fql.query” params:params];
}

- (void)request:(FBRequest*)request didLoad:(id)result {
NSArray* users = result;
NSDictionary* user = [users objectAtIndex:0];
NSString* name = [user objectForKey:@"name"];
NSLog(@”Query returned %@”, name);
}

It would appear that 2009 is right on track, and I can’t wait to see what more Facebook has in store for us with the recent launch of their new design, new focuses, and more. This alone may be enough to get me even further into iPhone app development as the iPhone finally has the potential to become much more “Social”.

Zdnet is reporting that apparently, i.TV’s competition, What’s On, has been removed from the Apple iTunes App store. Searching for the iPhone App returns a listing, but clicking on the listing returns an error saying the App couldn’t be found. There is no word from What’s On, and it’s unclear the reason for the dead links.

This news of What’s On, having recently pushed their 1.5 version to the iTunes App store, comes on the Heels of the number one Free App in the iTunes App store, i.TV. Both applications provide TV Listings and customizable TV lists for users, i.TV with much more content. i.TV also provides a movie listings and Theater search service which What’s On does not provide.

i.TV is a client of mine, so I have to admit I have a bias, but I’m very curious to know what’s “going” on here. I have no inside knowledge on this one unfortunately. I can only wonder if Apple discovered something that was in disagreement with their Terms of Use policies.

I’m trying to post a few more inspiring posts with the state of the economy and the sad state of the elections currently. I really believe much of the state of the stock market is being caused by negative reactions in the media. Hopefully I can help stop that. I started with my last post and a little perspective. I’d now like to share a little good news.

Today, at the company I work for, i.TV, we’ve announced that we’re now the number one Application in the iTunes App store! It took us only 3 days to get there. With 443 reviews in the short time we launched and almost all of them raving we’re really excited about it! We’re madly at work on our next features now.

As you can read on our blog, we’ve got some very exciting announcements coming soon, so stay tuned there to hear more. You can also read some of our favorite reviews on our blog. In the meantime, check out our Facebook, and Twitter profiles - be sure to follow and add yourself as a fan! Lastly, if you have any fan photos of your favorite shows or parts of the app, go ahead and share those in the “fan photos” section of our Facebook Page.

Here’s a little video of our launch and celebration music - you can buy the song on . We think it’s pretty inspirational. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel here.

With my new work at i.TV (go visit the iTunes Store Home Page if you want to try us out - lower right-hand corner), I have started phasing out my consulting (which used to be my full-time job) and am putting my focus towards building (with a top-notch team and great CEO, of course!) one of the top Entertainment App companies out there. In the process, I am still getting 5-10 people a week contacting me asking if I know anyone that does iPhone or Facebook Development. Quite frankly, finding someone to refer to is not an easy task! That is what I used to do, so it wasn’t something I was looking for (and I know there just aren’t many out there, as well, even with the high demand).

So, if you or someone you know does either iPhone or Facebook development, or work for a company that does, I want to make a deal with you or your company. I’ll send you these referrals for a commission on the deal you make with them. This is a win-win for all - I now have someone to send referrals to. You get the referrals and regular business, and the Clients now have someone they can get help from. Having written books on Facebook, and working for a company that does iPhone App development, along with this blog growing considerably and guest blogging on some of the top blogs on the internet, I get these requests regularly - I’d really like someone to send them to.

If you’re a developer, perhaps you’re starting to see the demand of Facebook and iPhone development. This is an excellent area to have knowledge in, in particular in a down economy. If you’d like to learn I do recommend you look at my book, FBML Essentials, and at the end of this month I’ll be doing a free webinar for O’Reilly in which I’ll cover beginning Facebook development. Stay tuned to this blog and I’ll reveal more details soon.

Know a Facebook or iPhone development company or developer? Shoot me an e-mail (or comment below): jesse at staynalive dot com or call me at (801) 853-8339. Also, if your business is in need of such work, give me a ring and I’ll point you in the right direction!

This morning I installed the WPTouch plugin by Dale Mugford & Duane Storey onto this blog, enabling all mobile viewers to have a nice, very fast loading version of this blog on your iPhone. Loading http://staynalive.com in Safari on the iPhone gives you a nice, iPhone-formatted version of the blog that you can easily click through articles, read them in a very plain and simple format, share with friends, and more.

In addition, I also created a nicely formatted icon with my “Social” Geek logo which you can add to your Home Screen. Just click on the “+” sign in Safari, select “Add to Home Screen”, and it will add it to your home page. If you want the full version of the site, scroll down to the bottom and there will be a link to get the original formatting back.

This should be the beginning of a long line of changes for this site. As you can see, I’ve gone naked and listed my Reader count on the right of the blog, showing we’re quickly approaching 500 readers and growing. Because of that I want to do some things that will make this much more professional looking, while at the same time maintains the personal and open nature you have always gotten from me. Stay tuned, and you can follow redesign progress at http://new.staynalive.com.

If anyone has any connections to help get me the “StayinAlive.com” with the “i” before the “n”, it would make a really nice Christmas present!