notes from behind the coffee counter

This is a post for iPhone App and Mac application developers.
Recently I was looking at the Epson’s P-6000 photo viewer. Nice device but it’s more than I want to spend. Then it occured to me, hey my iPhone has a great screen. Why hasn’t any one made an app that will do what the Epson (and other brands too) do. All I really need to do is view my images on something better than the screen on the back of my Nikon. It would also have the added bonus of being able to wirelessly upload images to wherever I need. Even my Mac at home. Obviously the storage on the iPhone (or even the iPod Touch for that matter) doesn’t compare to the Epson products. But I always have my phone with me.
So what I’d Iike to see:
1. The ability to upload images off the camera and store them in the camera roll already on the iPhone. This should be done through wifi, if the camera is equiped, or tethering. In fact the wifi should just be an option, it should be a tethered process first.
2. The ability to pick and choose images and upload them to where ever I need. (Like the Eye-Fi App but now I can upload images from another camera.) Also I still want to have the option of syncing the images when I sync the phone with my Mac, like normal. At that time is when I’d decide to erase the disk or not.
3. Obviously this is going to need a piece of hardware to make it work. So what I see is a device that had a SD card reader on one end and the male end of the flat USB port (sorry if I don’t know the right term for that.) Basically it’ll look like a regular SD reader but with a different USB plug. Presently I’m using SD cards but it doesn’t have to limited to just these cards.
4. Would like to also have a cable with the mini USB plug on one end for the camera and the iPhone Jack on the other. An adapter to go from a regular USB plug to the iPhone port would just as good. In fact that might just be the easiest way as we all have USB cables lying around anyway.
Lastly it would be cool if the iPhone can Geo tag the images as I unpload in the field. This option should able to be turned off if I’m uploading somewhere else.
Oh yeah, I’m real generous so I’m not looking for any patents, copyrights or the residuals. Just build it and I’ll buy it.

While visiting my kid brother and my Dad here in Newnan, Georgia I’ve noticed that my AT&T service is spotty at it’s best. My iPhone has essentially become an iPod Touch as the only service I get is wi-fi. This is the first time since I’ve gotten my iPhone that I’m experiencing this kind shitty service. I’ve been with AT&T since they took over Cingular (or was it the other way around?) Before I had an iPhone I never noticed how bad it was. Now that I have a device that I essentially use as a laptop AT&T’s spotty service is a glaring problem for an iPhone user. In fact it sucks. My dad just moved here a few weeks ago and switched from AT&T to Verizon because of this. (Basically in the subdivision my dad and brother live in there is NO Service. Ouside and around Newnan it’s spotty and in some areas it’s non existant. The menu actually reads no service.) it occurred to me that if I lived here I probably would have never bought my iPhone, let alone use AT&T. My brother uses a Blackberry Storm but he really wanted an iPhone.
Now I can’t speak for AT&T on why this area is off the grid but hey it’s a large area with a lot of money (my brother is an airline pilot, a captain.) but it seems to me they need to get thier shit together. Someone told me that sometimes Verizon (or what ever carrier for that matter) puts up it’s towers on areas first and by the time AT&T gets around they can’t because the residents don’t want another tower in the area. There’s also a version of this that says Verizon has “paid” to be the only carrier in certian areas but I don’t believe this. Too risky for a company to do something stupid like that. They be burned in minute if anyone found that out.
So why am I writing about this? I mean this nothing new, just someone else bitching about AT&T. Well I personally have had real good luck with AT&T since I bought my iPhone. My bad luck had been with the phones. My first one was a motorola that had the worse software ever. Hated using it. The next one was a Nokia flip phone that the LCD eventually broke and became useless even though it still worked. When Apple came out with the iPhone I was real excited. Finally a phone that was intuitive and “just works.” As a long time Mac user I knew I wanted one and didn’t care about the carrier. I never had problems with AT&T. Maybe where I live the town is so small that AT&T’s network doesn’t get overloaded. Who knows. Now that I’ve experienced bad service I really understand the gripes everyone has had. But personally I don’t know of a solution for this. I don’t see Apple offering a Verizon version of the phone. T-Mobile is the only other network the iPhone would work on. But that would be worse than this situation. They could never handle that amount of traffic. The only real solution would be for Apple to actually invest in AT&T by upgrade the network themselves. But that might cause legal issues. It just sounds too fishy and the FCC and the DOJ might have problems with it.
Can’t wait to get home where this isn’t an issue.