TUAW suggests using iPhone to beat boarding pass lines

Some things sound really cool -- until you actually have to step up
and do them in real time. TUAW reader Gerald Buckley's story about
traveling with his iPhone strikes me as belonging to this class.

When he approached the American Airlines counter to use his iPhone as
a boarding pass, the coolness quotient for his entire trip got bumped
up several notches. It seems that he navigated over to AA.com using
Mobile Safari, signed in and displayed a PDF of his boarding pass on-
screen. The American Airlines counter agent in San Antonio "humored"
him and scanned the barcode as displayed on his iPhone. The scan
worked, and Buckley proceeded with his travels (much to the envy and
amazement of his fellow passengers, no doubt).

4phun wrote:

> The American Airlines counter agent in San Antonio "humored"
> him and scanned the barcode as displayed on his iPhone. The scan
> worked


Which is unexpected given the iTrash's low screen resolution and
reflectivity contrast.

I'll bet he cringed a bit when they then ripped off and kept their half.

;[)

"4phun" <vic.healey@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4268cd03-000a-4330-ab83-7a7b48819995@34g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> Some things sound really cool -- until you actually have to step up
> and do them in real time. TUAW reader Gerald Buckley's story about
> traveling with his iPhone strikes me as belonging to this class.
>
> When he approached the American Airlines counter to use his iPhone as
> a boarding pass, the coolness quotient for his entire trip got bumped
> up several notches. It seems that he navigated over to AA.com using
> Mobile Safari, signed in and displayed a PDF of his boarding pass on-
> screen. The American Airlines counter agent in San Antonio "humored"
> him and scanned the barcode as displayed on his iPhone. The scan
> worked, and Buckley proceeded with his travels (much to the envy and
> amazement of his fellow passengers, no doubt).

The closest personal story I have to that goes back four or five years when
I was using separate devices-a Dell Axim Pocket PC with my Nokia 8290
IR-enabled cellphone. We were in Florida on vacation and took my kids to
"Dinosaur World" in Plant City (a really cool place- an old alligator farm a
German immigrant engineer bought and converted to a kiddie attraction with
several dozen lifesized fiberglass dinosaurs arranged along a walking path
with "period" vegetation- mostly conifers and ferns. His brothers have
started similar parks in Kentucky and Texas.)

I'd forgotten our discount coupons back at the hotel an hour away in
Kissimmee, so I went online in the parking lot with the Axim through the
Nokia phone to their website (www.dinoworld.net) and grabbed an online
discount coupon. I showed the Axim at the front desk, and the gentleman at
the desk, a self-professed gadget freak gave us the discount, after joking
he would have to staple the Axim to his copy of the receipt for record
keeping.

These days I just keep a little $20 AA-battery powered Sipix A6 thermal
printer
(http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...A6-BLU&cat=PRN)
in the car to print off coupons (or whatever) from my WinMo phone as I need
them. Though Geeks.com now sells the paper as well, way back when I bought
mine the Sipix's stupid proprietary paper rolls were very expensive and hard
to find, so I "rolled my own" (literally!) I sawed a $3 98' roll of thermal
fax paper down to 4-1/8" wide with my mitre box and hand-rolled a few rolls.
Using the Sipix's included screen printing software, I can grab whatever bit
of picture or text I want to print on the PPC screen, hit a button and print
it out on the Sipix. With coupons, I generally print a "full screen" copy,
then zoom in and fill the screen with the UPC barcode and print a
barcode-only page to aid the poor clerk stuck with scanning it in, since
both the WinMo phone's and printer's limited resolution have problems with
the bar codes unless they're full screen. That stupid little printer has
paid for itself MANY times over. (And, to get back on topic: sorry iPhone
fans- it supports Windows, Windows Mobile and Palm OS only...)

"Todd Allcock" <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote in news:hNMPj.29181
$gB5.21924@fe105.usenetserver.com:

> after joking
> he would have to staple the Axim to his copy of the receipt for record
> keeping.
>

Nope....just put the Axim on his copy machine and copy the screen....(c;

On Apr 23, 4:15 pm, "Todd Allcock" <eleccon...@AmericaOnLine.com>
wrote:
> "4phun" <vic.hea...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:4268cd03-000a-4330-ab83-7a7b48819995@34g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Some things sound really cool -- until you actually have to step up

> the bar codes unless they're full screen. That stupid little printer has
> paid for itself MANY times over. (And, to get back on topic: sorry iPhone
> fans- it supports Windows, Windows Mobile and Palm OS only...)

Actually when I demonstrate the Google Maps feature built into the
iPhone
I use it to locate where we are and then ask the person if they like
Pizza. I ask them to enter it as a search term using the built in
keyboard. Everyone can easily type that in and hit search. Whent the
ten or so pins drop on the map I hit list and ask them which is their
favorite pizza vendor listed. Then I ask them to touch the item to see
where it is on the map among all those pins.

Then I demonstrate that they can tap on the pin and open the
associated web site and see any discounts or coupons that are
available. They can either us the map to get directions to the pizza
place or they can tap on the phone number an instantly call the place
to place an order.

All this takes only a minute or two and very fast to demonstrate even
with their newbie typing and naviagting based on my verbal
instructions as to what to do next. Everyone that has seen this is
very impressed and some want an iPhone just for that feature alone.

BTW you can change the contrast and brighteness over a large range on
the settings menu as well as AUTO using the built in light sensor.

At 23 Apr 2008 14:45:44 -0700 4phun wrote:

> Actually when I demonstrate the Google Maps feature built into the
> iPhone
> I use it to locate where we are and then ask the person if they like
> Pizza. I ask them to enter it as a search term using the built in
> keyboard. Everyone can easily type that in and hit search. Whent the
> ten or so pins drop on the map I hit list and ask them which is their
> favorite pizza vendor listed. Then I ask them to touch the item to see
> where it is on the map among all those pins.
>
> Then I demonstrate that they can tap on the pin and open the
> associated web site and see any discounts or coupons that are
> available. They can either us the map to get directions to the pizza
> place or they can tap on the phone number an instantly call the place
> to place an order.
>
> All this takes only a minute or two and very fast to demonstrate even
> with their newbie typing and naviagting based on my verbal
> instructions as to what to do next. Everyone that has seen this is
> very impressed and some want an iPhone just for that feature alone.


Why not just show them how to do it on their own phone? Google Maps works
on virtually every phone made in the last few years (except you have the
use the keys on non-touchscreen phones.) The My Location feature even
debuted on other mobile platforms before it came to the iPhone.

> BTW you can change the contrast and brighteness over a large range on
> the settings menu as well as AUTO using the built in light sensor.

Neat. How'd you print the coupons, BTW? ;-)

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:45:44 -0700 (PDT), 4phun <vic.healey@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Apr 23, 4:15 pm, "Todd Allcock" <eleccon...@AmericaOnLine.com>
>wrote:
>> "4phun" <vic.hea...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>
>> news:4268cd03-000a-4330-ab83-7a7b48819995@34g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> > Some things sound really cool -- until you actually have to step up
>
>> the bar codes unless they're full screen. That stupid little printer has
>> paid for itself MANY times over. (And, to get back on topic: sorry iPhone
>> fans- it supports Windows, Windows Mobile and Palm OS only...)
>
>Actually when I demonstrate the Google Maps feature built into the
>iPhone
>I use it to locate where we are and then ask the person if they like
>Pizza. I ask them to enter it as a search term using the built in
>keyboard. Everyone can easily type that in and hit search. Whent the
>ten or so pins drop on the map I hit list and ask them which is their
>favorite pizza vendor listed. Then I ask them to touch the item to see
>where it is on the map among all those pins.
>
>Then I demonstrate that they can tap on the pin and open the
>associated web site and see any discounts or coupons that are
>available. They can either us the map to get directions to the pizza
>place or they can tap on the phone number an instantly call the place
>to place an order.
>
>All this takes only a minute or two and very fast to demonstrate even
>with their newbie typing and naviagting based on my verbal
>instructions as to what to do next. Everyone that has seen this is
>very impressed and some want an iPhone just for that feature alone.
>
>BTW you can change the contrast and brighteness over a large range on
>the settings menu as well as AUTO using the built in light sensor.

With the IR of the Palm Pilot one could print things out on a LaserJet
IV, ah those were the days.

Ron <ronclifford@peoplepc.com> wrote in
news:0eiv045ij5v7314gdqrc63por2cj7q9hmn@4ax.com:

> With the IR of the Palm Pilot one could print things out on a LaserJet
> IV, ah those were the days.
>
>

I still have the hacker software on one of my old Palms where you could
read what was sent over IR links. It worked fantastic for several models
of IR-locked cars as it had a facility to rip the code when they locked the
cars and you could go up to them and say "allow me", clicking the screen on
the Palm Pilot and opening their doors for them.....(c;

They're all RF now.....

"Ron" <ronclifford@peoplepc.com> wrote in message
news:0eiv045ij5v7314gdqrc63por2cj7q9hmn@4ax.com...

> With the IR of the Palm Pilot one could print things out on a LaserJet
> IV, ah those were the days.

But that in itself is telling- why do we put up with new things that have
less features than our old things? I'm not picking on the iPhone
specifically here, but it's certainly part of it- why doesn't the lion's
share of modern day devices have the capability of doing something so
simple- beaming (via IR or BT) a file to another device, be it a printer, or
a PC, when any old PDA could?

I still have my first digital camera- now relegated to status as a kid's
toy- an old "bottom of the line" Casio digital camera, circa 2001 or so,
(with a whopping 0.3 megapixels!) that had an IR port, allowing wireless
picture transfer to PCs, PDAs, etc. I used to e-mail digital pictures from
it by beaming them to my PDA and e-mailing them by tethering through my
IR-equipped cellphone, long before cellphones or PDAs had cameras. You'd
think by now most of not all digicams would support wireless transfer, but
precious few today support BT or WiFi (I don't expect IR in this day and
age!) This was a standard feature on ALL Casio digicams at that time nearly
a decade ago!

For all the neat things the iPhone can do, there are a similar bunch of
perfectly useful and obvious things it CAN'T, and worse, most of these are
self-inflicted- the hardware is all there, but the software isn't (A2DP, BT
sync/transfer, phone-as-modem, etc.) And the iPhone certainly isn't alone
in this! (Yes, Zune, we're talking about you too and your crippled to the
point of being worthless WiFi!)