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Devicescape’s new application, a version of Easy Wi-Fi especially for AT&T, has been in the app store now for a few days. The screen shot here from my iPhone shows that it has no reviews (and if you scroll down to the bottom, the place where the link to any reviews is found also says that there are no reviews.

So what? It’s only been a few days after all. But wait, if you click on that button to open the reviews page, you get this:

So there are actually five reviews. Why doesn’t the app store app indicate that?

And want another mystery? See that average ranking there – 3.5 stars, well I don’t know how they calculate it because all five of those reviews have 5 star ratings. Last time I checked, 5 * 5 / 5 is 5, not 3.5.

Seems the app store has a number of basic arithmetic problems! And this is not going to help developers much. The ratings and review system is bad enough as it is, but this makes it worse still. An average of 3.5 when all the ratings shown in the reviews are 5 star is pretty damaging. Have you checked whether your aggregate rating is correct?

There are lots of apps out there now for iPhone and iPod users to choose from, and plenty of reviews within the App Store as well as on the web, so I’m not about to review any apps here. Instead, I thought I tell you about my three most used applications, and why I use them so much. So, without further ado, let’s jump in to the list:

iNewz
iNewz is a news reader application that aggregates content from a number of news sources, mostly US ones in the current version. I use it because I spend an hour a day sitting on a bus commuting (half an hour each way), and I guess I’m a secret news junkie. The news is organised into categories, with articles for each category from several sources listed in reverse chronological order. My top categories? Headlines first, always, then World News and Technology news. That normally fills a commute!

Easy Wi-Fi
I have to include Easy Wi-Fi since I spent so much time working on both the initial jailbreak version, and then this App Store version. But aside from that, I do truly find it incredibly useful and I use it almost every morning at Starbucks – handy having that free Wi-Fi account from AT&T simply for using a registered pre-paid Starbucks card. The iPhone normally latches on to the Wi-Fi as I walk in, and one tap gets me online. Not quite as convenient as the background mode the jailbroken version had, but still a lot faster than typing my user name and password into the AT&T web form every morning (and I only have a few minutes in Starbucks most mornings to buy coffee, sync email and load up the Daily Irrelevant).

Truphone
Last, but not least, Truphone – the voice over IP application that has been around for other mobile phones for a while (and one I use on my Nokia N95 via its built in SIP stack). Needs Wi-Fi to work, but that’s fine by me as I’m usually somewhere where there is Wi-Fi when I need to make international calls. Combined with Easy Wi-Fi to get me online in public hotspots, this means I can keep in touch with folks around the world for very little money. I called my mother over in England while sitting outside a Starbucks in San Jose last weekend – free Wi-Fi from AT&T, Easy Wi-Fi to get me online and Truphone to make a very cheap international call.

I installed a new app on my N95 the other day from the Nokia Beta Labs: Location Tagger. This is one of the things that should have been built into the camera application from day one on a GPS enabled phone, but I’m glad to see they’re catching up.

The photo on the right is my first test of this new feature. The photo was automatically geo-tagged (so, if you visit the photo’s page in Flickr, you can see it placed on a map). Flickr seems to be confused about the city (it thinks Alameda is Oakland!), but it shows up in the correct place on the map.

Why was I at Starbucks? Well, I stopped by to see whether AT&T had disabled the free Wi-Fi for iPhone users. The special free login page has indeed gone, replaced by the older iPhone login page, though it did still let me on using the iPhone credentials I had stored in my Devicescape account

Finally, I finally signed up for Twitter, and added the Twitter feed to the left column on the blog. Since it is connected to my IM client (Adium, for those wondering), I can send it short messages about what I’m up to, and they’ll end up here on the blog as well as on my Twitter page.

Well, to be more accurate, free for AT&T iPhone users. If you have your service through AT&T still, then you should get this login page when you connect to the attwifi SSID at Starbucks, or anywhere else. Enter your 10 digit AT&T mobile number and you’re online.

Devicescape users can add the special ‘AT&T Wi-Fi (iPhone)’ credential type to their account, and they will get online automatically.

There have been rumours around that the same will be enabled for anybody with an AT&T mobile data plan at some point; I expect the iPhone is being used as the test platform here since they already had mobile pages for the iPhone (my N95 still sees the full page).

Update, May 4, ’08: Seems that the web page has been taken down now (guess too many folks were abusing it by changing their browser agent string and getting online with non-iPhone devices).

As seems to be the case in many airports these days, there is Wi-Fi coverage all over the lounge area in Terminal 3 at London’s Heathrow, but you’d better make sure you have a full charge on your batteries if you plan to use it as even at the dedicated BT and T-Mobile hotspot ‘zones’ the power sockets have no juice.

And forget finding sockets anywhere in the main waiting areas – there’s none to be found (they’re all hidden under special covers in the floor). I have to wonder what the point of providing the Wi-Fi is if they don’t also provide the power for the laptops.

Still, it did work well for a quick connection from my N95 earlier – I connected to the BT Openzone, fired up Truphone and made some free international calls to let people know I’d arrived safely!

I’ve spent the day walking around downtown San Francisco testing the new Slacker Portable Player with Devicescape enabled firmware on it so I can sync my radio stations at public hotspots as well as at home.

Notice the top line of that that screen shot where it says “Signing in” – that’s Devicescape at work, getting me online here at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Market Street. And once it is done, it logs me out too.

For those that haven’t heard of Slacker before (where have you been?), they have a flash player for your browser that lets you choose one of their radio stations to listen to, or customise one of your own. The portable allows you to sync a few stations onto a device you can put in your pocket and then take with you. Internet radio for when you’re not connected. Next time you’re near Wi-Fi, just connect and it will re-sync getting you new tunes to listen to.

How is this free? Well, they limit the number of times you can skip forward per hour, and might also throw in some commercials (though I’ve yet to hear one). If you want the freedom to skip as often as you like, or the guarantee of no commercials, they have a monthly subscription premium plan too.

Arrived at Sugar Bowl this morning to discover that my iPhone has no service here. Oddly though, my N95, which is also on AT&T, does have coverage, and in fact pretty much full signal strength.

Luckily, here in Judah Lodge there is free Wi-Fi (SSID: EXWIRE or exwire depending on where you are). That too is a little strange as the same network is available in the main lodge, but there it is a paid hotspot network instead (which I have now added to Devicescape’s collection as well).

Also, if you’re going to provide Wi-Fi, especially paid Wi-Fi with a 2 hour minimum and day pass option, you really need to make sure that there are plenty of power outlets available as well.

Not actually as bad as I had expected given the forecasts on my iPhone before I left for Toronto. Instead of snowing as forecast, today was in fact beautifully bright and sunny. It was cold though. Very, very cold. The highest temperature I saw reported on the car’s external thermometer was -5°C. There was snow on the ground, but the roads were clear for the most part.

Right now I am sitting at Toronto airport, hooked onto the airport’s Bell hotspot Wi-Fi thanks to Boingo. I also have my Nokia N95 hooked onto the Wi-Fi through my Boingo Mobile account, allowing me to make Truphone calls to folks back in California for free. And, of course, Devicescape manages the login here from the N95 (and also earlier on my iPhone when I checked my email).

I have a couple of Devicescape updates for everybody tonight (and I’ll also post some more photos soon, but you can check most of those out in my Flickr stream anyway.

Nokia Videos
The video to the right is a video shot by our friends at Nokia that shows Devicescape logging in automatically at a T-Mobile hotspot. Here’s another one shot at San Jose airport.

Both of these videos used the T-Mobile network, but Devicescape also works on most of the other hotspot networks you’ll find around the world.

SF New “Mobile” Tech
The other thing I wanted to mention was that I presented at SF New “Mobile” Tech last night here in San Francisco. If you were there, thanks for coming (especially all the folks who already had Devicescape running on their devices).

Devicescape for your Apple iPhone
First thing, Devicescape announced today that the iPhone version of its hotspot login software will be available very soon. Check out the Devicescape blog post for information about getting on the list for downloads if you’re interested in trying that out.

iPhoneOpener
Since there are now much simpler ways to get the iPhone ready for third party software, I suggest that people don’t use my iPhoneOpener software anymore for this purpose. Instead, I recommend iNdependence for Mac users looking to get ssh/sftp setup, and the Nullriver Installer.app for those on Windows or Mac OS looking to just add cool third party apps to their iPhones.