I may be in the minority, but I don’t want a Verizon iPhone.

You see, I cheered when Apple chose AT&T for the iPhone. I had been a Verizon customer and was happy to leave. Why? Let’s not forget some of these things:

• Verizon is the company that has removed Bluetooth features from phones. They disabled syncing and file transfer so they could limit photo transfers to over the air where they could charge for each one.
• Verizon also blocked GPS features so 3rd party software or Web apps couldn’t compete with their VZ Navigator and monthly fee. Although they were forced to enable GPS features through a class action lawsuit, the important aGPS data still remains locked for all but VZ Navigator.
• Verizon has blocked transferring ringtones to your phone unless you purchased them through Verizon.
• Verizon is the company famous for lousy customer service and quietly renewing your contract every time you make any little change to your service.
• Verizon’s CEO is known for making boneheaded and customer-unfriendly statements.
• Verizon advertised unlimited data plans with no disclaimer then canceled customer’s accounts without warning for using too much. They were eventually forced to add an asterisk and fine print to their advertising.
• Verizon has a habit of selling personal customer data.
• Verizon has charged customers usage minutes for browsing Verizon’s own Get it Now store.

Now I don’t know how many of these practices still stand today, but they were all in place when I got my iPhone. I always felt like I was fighting my service provider to do the things that seemed natural to do.

Apple changed the game with the iPhone by requiring these kinds of features to just work as part of the package. Photos, ringtones, Web surfing, GPS, music, movies, etc. all work and sync as you would expect. AT&T was willing to play by the new rules and that has spurred the innovation we have today.

Sure, AT&T has experienced growing pains with the influx of iPhone customers. Any network would.

Cell coverage really depends on where you happen to be. It sometimes flip flops between which carrier has the best signal in particular locations, but most of the time I notice all carriers having some of the same trouble spots.

We do have a few areas around here where Verizon coverage is marginally better. But my AT&T coverage is good too and has improved immensely over the last couple years even though I’m not in a major city. We have 3G all over the area and I know AT&T has added towers, replaced antennas, and tuned signal directions. I’ve also seen them change to lower frequencies in some areas to better penetrate through trees and buildings.

The bottom line is that my iPhone has changed the way I do things for the better and the Apple / AT&T partnership has contributed to that experience. My shiny new iPhone 4 is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. It requires renewing my contract for a couple more years and I’m happy to do so.

I’ve learned a few things since then, plus the Gravatar service has a new option that removes the need for a workaround I had to come up with. So it’s time for an update to my now obsolete posts.

Reference Implementation One: Gravatar to an AppleScript Variable

The most common use case of Gravatar in AppleScript is probably to grab someone’s Gravatar image based on an e-mail address then pass it into some other application. Many Mac applications pass image data internally as a TIFF. So here’s an example of looking up a Gravatar and storing the raw picture data in a variable.

Here’s the script: (Open in Script Editor)

-- Download a Gravatar image for the given e-mail address and store in a variable as a TIFF image. Display error if a matching gravatar doesn't exist.
-- Released under GPL.
-- by Doug Smith, http://smithsrus.com
 
-- The e-mail address to look up.
set email to "someone@somewhere.com"
 
-- Calculate an MD5 for the e-mail address.
set md5_email to do shell script "md5 -q -s `echo " & email & " | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'`"
 
-- Construct the Gravatar URL.
set grav_url to quoted form of ("http://gravatar.com/avatar/" & md5_email & "?d=404" as text)
 
-- Get the Gravatar image with a timeout of 10 seconds.
try
	set pict_data to do shell script "curl -fsS " & grav_url & " -m 10" as TIFF picture without altering line endings
	tell me to display dialog "Yes, we have a matching Gravatar." buttons {"Okay"} default button 1
on error
	tell me to display dialog "Sorry, there was no matching Gravatar." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1
end try

As you can see, we end up calling some shell commands because Applescript doesn’t have all of the needed functionality. That’s no big deal because it only uses capabilities built into OS X and should work on any Mac.

Reference Implementation Two: Gravatar to a File

There may be some cases where it’s more useful to download the Gravatar image to a file for later use instead of loading it into a variable. With just a few modifications we can simply save the jpeg file as served up by Gravatar.

Here’s the script: (Open in Script Editor)

-- Download a Gravatar image for the given e-mail address and store in a temporary file. Display error if a matching gravatar doesn't exist.
-- Released under GPL.
-- by Doug Smith, http://smithsrus.com
 
-- The e-mail address to look up.
set email to "someone@somewhere.com"
 
-- Calculate an MD5 for the e-mail address.
set md5_email to do shell script "md5 -q -s `echo " & email & " | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'`"
 
-- Construct the Gravatar URL.
set grav_url to quoted form of ("http://gravatar.com/avatar/" & md5_email & "?d=404" as text)
 
-- Make a file name in which to temporarily save the Gravatar.
set grav_file to (path to temporary items) & "gravatar" & md5_email & ".jpg" as text
set grav_POSIX_file to quoted form of POSIX path of grav_file
 
-- Download the Gravatar image to the temporary file with a timeout of 10 seconds.
try
	do shell script "curl -fsS " & grav_url & " -m 10 -o " & grav_POSIX_file
	tell me to display dialog "Yes, we have a matching Gravatar downloaded to " & grav_POSIX_file & "." buttons {"Delete the File"} default button 1
	tell application "System Events"
		delete file grav_file
	end tell
on error
	tell me to display dialog "Sorry, there was no matching Gravatar." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1
end try

Filling Address Book with Gravatars

My goal for starting this whole project was to be able to populate my Mac Address Book with Gravatar pictures. Those then get automatically synced to my iPhone, which is really nice when receiving calls. A hat tip to Moritz Haarmann for his Gravatar Address Book plugin, which is what started me thinking about this in the first place. His plugin only works on one record at a time so I wanted to expand the concept to mass update selected records or the whole Address Book.

Rather than list the full script here, you can just download the application. You can open it in Script Editor if you want to see how it works. Be sure to back up your Address Book file, just in case. And if you experience errors or odd behavior, try quitting and relaunching Address Book, which often fixes little problems with it.

Be sure to let me know how you like it and if it works well for you. It would be interesting to know what percentage of addresses everyone is finding have Gravatars available now. Enjoy!

But let me tell you about my favorite new feature: Safari can now get your GPS location via javascript! This is usually referred to as geolocation. You can easily grab the current location or get periodic updates.

Okay, so I’m excited over what may seem like an obscure geeky feature, but I think it’s a big deal.

Why GPS in Safari is a Big Deal

1. Location aware Web pages: Have you ever gone to a company’s Web site to find their nearest location? You usually have to type in your zip code. But what if you’re traveling and don’t know your zip code? Safari knowing your location solves that problem.

2. Location aware Web applications: It’s fairly easy to create Web content looks and behaves like an iPhone application. Now those can take advantage of location information.

   For example, I’ve been working with a company on an iPhone Web application that interacts with their internal customer database. Field reps can now easily find customers within a certain radius of the rep’s current location who meet various other criteria.

Web Geolocation Privacy and Standards

Don’t worry, all of this is built with good privacy controls. You are asked permission before your location data is revealed to a site. For convenience, it stops asking about a particular site after you have approved it a few times.

These location features are based on the upcoming Geolocation API Specification. Because it’s not just a proprietary Safari thing it should get widespread adoption. In fact, it’s already built into the latest Firefox 3.5 beta.

Web Geolocation Sample Code

The specifications do a good job of explaining the parts so no need to go over all of that. However, it’s worth pointing out how to check and see if geolocation features are available or not and take appropriate action. For example, you may only want to show GPS options if it can actually be used. This simple snippet will do the job.

if (navigator.geolocation) {  
	/* Code if geolocation is available. */  
} else {  
	/* Code if geolocation is not available */
}

Let’s put it all together in a simple Web page that displays all of the geolocation variables for your current location. The code is below or you can try my geolocation test page from your iPhone.

(Yes, you’ll probably want to use modern DOM techniques for a real project. The purpose of this is just to show a simple working example.)

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
	<head>
		<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" />
		<title>Geolocation Test</title>
 
		<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
			function getLocation() {
				// Get location no more than 10 minutes old. 600000 ms = 10 minutes.
				navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(showLocation, showError, {enableHighAccuracy:true,maximumAge:600000});
			}
 
			function showError(error) {
				alert(error.code + ' ' + error.message);
			}
 
			function showLocation(position) {
				geoinfo.innerHTML='<p>Latitude: ' + position.coords.latitude + '</p>' 
				+ '<p>Longitude: ' + position.coords.longitude + '</p>' 
				+ '<p>Accuracy: ' + position.coords.accuracy + '</p>' 
				+ '<p>Altitude: ' + position.coords.altitude + '</p>' 
				+ '<p>Altitude accuracy: ' + position.coords.altitudeAccuracy + '</p>' 
				+ '<p>Speed: ' + position.coords.speed + '</p>' 
				+ '<p>Heading: ' + position.coords.heading + '</p>';
			}
		</script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">	
			if (navigator.geolocation) {  
				document.write('<p><input type="button" onclick="getLocation()" value="Show Geolocation Information" /></p>');
			} else {  
				document.write('<p>Sorry, your device or browser software does not appear to support geolocation services.</p>');  
			}  
		</script>
 
		<div id="geoinfo"></div>
	</body>
</html>

I can’t wait to see some of the great things others will create by combining Web sites with location. And it will only get better as more devices become location aware. Be sure to let me know of good location-aware sites and web apps you run across.

Now go create something cool!