The other day I launched my Geocaching. I have problems with it left and right. For example, if you leave the app, the coordinates on the “Search” page won’t update. You don’t get a purple arrow in the iPhone header, either. However, if you navigate to a cache then exit out of it back into the main “Search” page, it works again.

I’ve also heard about Pocket Queries, but have never tried it (I’m not a subscribed Geocaching.com member – at least not yet). When you go to your “Saved” page, the “Pocket Queries” section displays with a greyed-out button aptly named “Download Pocket Queries”. Then you have tons of green space beneath it that should be used to encourage the user to become a member to activate the pocket queries functionality. If pocket queries is not a paid membership thing, then someone please let me know and I’ll give you credit for the follow-up post that enlightens the world on the matter.

But this post isn’t about technical GPS bugs or pocket queries, but about an interesting thing that happened to me the other day while opening the Geocaching app right after it crashed.

I’m not sure what caused this, but as soon as I had the chance, I took a snapshot. I couldn’t scroll down because the Geocaching app had crashed again almost immediately (I was lucky to get the snapshot).

Notice some peculiarities? The first thing I saw was the grey pill that sits beneath the coordinates. It shows the text “$PREMIUM”, “$FOUND”, “$INACTIVE”. If only they could show this text all the time (sans the dollar sign). Now I know what that pill means. I’ve seen the green “Found” light up on geocaches when I erase then reload the search results, but didn’t know what the other two-thirds of the pill meant. As a developer, I know the “$” usually denotes a variable or stand-in text. I just wish the designers of the app went far enough to clean up the interface and make the items easier to recognize (like keeping the labels on the pill even when it’s grey) and updating it for the higher resolution (the graphic compass is horrid)!

There are some other interesting items to note. First is the mention of “BDude”, and the second is the Geocache ID “GC5837).

BDude’s profile shows that the last time he logged in was the 26th April, 2008 (Exactly 1 year from when he signed up as a member … to the day) to log finding the Geocache ID GC1BEF3, named “Heron Hangout” by ehoguy, Eva & NVtro. This cache is in Massachusetts.

Geocache GC5837 Details an archived virtual cache near the India gate in New Delhi, India.

I’ll let you speculate at why BDude is tied to a virtual cache in Delhi without any mention of it in his profile. Comments, please.

It shouldn’t take nearly 6 hours to update your iPhone to the 3.0 OS, but it did for me.

It started downloading the update and seemed to receive that just fine, and it claimed to have backed up my iPhone before installing the update, but somewhere in that mix the iPhone became completely deactivated and insisted on being connected to iTunes. You know – that annoying screen on the iPhone where it shows a USB plug.

It wouldn’t give me the restore from backup option, either. It was a core restore to the “original settings”. To me that means complete data loss without even the benefit of the 3.0 OS.

So I did what any other person who’s sipped from the Pierian spring does… I pressed ALT-CTRL-Shift while clicking the Restore button. Voila! A file dialog box asking me which firmware file to use. I pointed it to the update that just downloaded and it seemed to go well … except during this process it neglected to restore all my 3rd party apps and their data.

I was furious, then I tweeted, then I denied it, then I tweeted, then I cried (I didn’t tweet that)… but you get the point. I looked long and hard and the only restore point that iTunes offered was right before this happened even though I did manual backups a couple of weeks ago.

After a bit of research, I came across a tidbit that said the restore only restores data involving Apple’s iPhone apps. You have to restore songs and video clips separately. That got me to thinking … what if 3rd party apps somehow bind their data to the app during a sync in such a way that syncing the apps would also restore their data.

So I began that process … and iTunes decided to do a freaking backup! I’m thinking this would take no time at all – it’s only 300 megs… but it took nearly an hour. Suspiciously the same amount of time it would take when my iPhone was 4 gigs full. So maybe when the firmware installs, and when we do a restore, the data is present but not accessible until the application that calls it is installed on the iPhone.

I don’t know exactly what happened to fix it, but I have nearly all my data back.

Again, the steps – not recommended, but if something goes wrong for you, who knows…

1) Downloaded new Firmware Update
2) Installed new Firmware on iPhone (first generation)
3) iPhone went wonky
4) Restored the last available backup (this surprisingly did *not* revert to the prior iPhone OS)
5) Resync’d the iPhone apps
6) Waited two hours until I got sick of the whole ordeal.
7) Slid the “Slide to Cancel” switch on the iPhone
Like magic, the apps were there with their data.

Hope this helps someone else out there. Better yet – hope you don’t have to go through the same ridiculous install.

Cheers!

For the technophiles who understand the grunting undertones of the UK’s hit television series “The IT Crowd” and who also happen to understand the grunting undertones of the Tim Allenisms when it comes to modern technology (and who happen to be fortunate enough to own an iPhone) we have a special treat for you today!

The IT Crowd Ringtone.
It’s the free remix track offered by Painting By Numbers trimmed down to fit and converted to be read as an iPhone ringtone. Certainly it would have been nice to keep the full 47 second hum-dinger, but Apple forces some limits on this no matter what the file size.

Originally, I wanted to make a ringtone that would loop nicely – and did, but it didn’t start off where I wanted it to. Besides, who lets their phone ring for more than 30 seconds?

So I opted to just trim out the middle – you get the start and the finish. It’s like a bologna sandwich without the bologna!

The IT Crowd (remix for ringtones).m4r

For those who can play regular mp3s as ringtones, we’ve got you covered:
The IT Crowd remix ringtone.mp3