As luck would have it, the guys at Java Code Geeks wrote about using Oracle/Sun Microsystem’s Virtual Box, which I have extolled in the past. So, I’m going to follow their tutorial, download the live CD, and have a go. If it’s really all that great, maybe I’ll even try my hand at developing an app for that platform, perhaps as a warmup to writing an iPhone/iPad app, who knows?

Instead of simply waiting patiently (or impatiently, as the case may be), I’ve been avidly reading every review I could find, and trying out iPad-optimized web pages, including the iPad site from National Public Radio. NPR says it is best to view their iPad site in Google’s Chrome browser, since it isn’t optimized for other browsers. Hmmm. I wonder why Chrome, and not Apple’s Safari? Maybe Chrome is more like the iPad version of Safari than Safari itself is?

As a member of the Apple Developers Program, I’ve also downloaded the beta version of the iPhone SDK (Software Developers Kit) that includes an iPad simulator, but must confess I haven’t yet found time to fire it up. It would be different if I actually had a real application I wanted to develop, but so far I’m still trying to learn the development how-to. Thanks to some comments on a technical article about iPad app development, I may have an easier time of that now that I’ve found Corona Simulator, an alternate SDK that seems to be much more straightforward to use than Apple’s Xcode alone.

So, even without a chance of getting our own iPad, we’re considering driving up to Austin tomorrow to see if maybe we can touch one anyway. Maybe that will get me excited enough to finish the Corona tutorials and start working on my own apps, who knows?

Now the wait. Naturally, I “need” the version with 3G, otherwise what’s the point of a mobile device? That won’t be available for around 90 days. But in the meantime, I am downloading the SDK with iPad emulator from the Apple Developer site, and who knows? Maybe I’ll even get around to developing something for it someday? In my copious spare time, of course.

A mentioned here earlier, my new iPhone 3GS was activated with only minor problems. Now we have another data point to add to the history. My husband’s new iPhone arrived yesterday, days earlier than promised by AT&T, thank you very much! So, I set about putting to work the lessons learned when establishing service to mine.

Everything went very smoothly, and since I did not follow the on-screen instructions to wait (infinitely) for activation to happen magically, but simply switched out the SIM cards from his old phone to the new one, Phil was up and running in less than 30 minutes, including the time required to download and install the 3.0 OS on his old iPhone, then back up his data and restore it to the new phone. That sounds wonderful, and it is, but we have encountered one snag.

When he decided to call me from his new phone, to make sure everything was working as designed, my phone rang, but we could not hear one another. Very odd. We tried texting, and that worked, and Phil tried calling AT&T’s directory service, which also worked. The voice recognition at the other end apparently heard his request clearly, and he could hear the prompts. I did the same with my phone, with similar success. (It was late at night by this time, so we didn’t try calling a friend to try it out.) I tried calling his phone again, and this time he could hear me, but I still could not hear him. We repeated this experiment several times with the same results. So I am not sure what is going on, but will be calling AT&T or Apple this morning if the phone still isn’t working properly. And yes, we checked to make sure neither of us had tapped the Mute button.

In the meantime, I should mention that in order to use my old iPhone as an iPod Touch (without signing up for yet another phone plan), I had to jailbreak it. This was a new experience for me, but after some heart-in-mouth moments waiting for the EPROMs to be flashed, everything come out just fine. I will not be doing this with our new 3GS phones, but since otherwise the old devices would be useless, and we did fulfill the phone company’s 2-year contract, I see no reason not to do it on them. That will give me a platform for on-machine testing of the applications I’m planning (yes, I’m getting on that bandwagon along with tens of thousands of others), and a machine to use for demos once the apps are published and we start flogging them at shows and conferences. So stay tuned for some deep development geekery as I get into programming mode.

Update
On a hunch, I suggested Phil turn his phone off and on again, then try calling me. That did the trick! We could both hear each other just fine. Activation complete.

The ones I found (all prices are in US$) are:

• Color Expert $9.99 by Code Line Communications
• Palettes $9.99 (also has free Lite version) by Rick Maddy
• cliqcliq Colors $2.99 by cliqcliq
• colorSutra $1.99 by Alex Rybkin
• Color Set $2.99 by Corellis

Color Wheel $0.99 by Trevor Gray

Here’s a few screenshots from the two apps I bought. First, colorSutra:

I generated the “Peachy keen” color using the color wheel, by dragging my finger across the display then adjusting a couple of slidebars to manipulate the tint (amount of black or white added to the pure color) and saturation. I clicked the “Display” icon on the bottom of the screen, which showed it along with coordinating colors. Finally, after saving the color, and giving it a name, I was able to see the hexadecimal value, which is useful for web site design since that is how colors are defined in HTML.

Another way to find colors with colorSutra that I really liked is illustrated here. By selecting the “Camera” button, you are presented the choice of taking a new snapshot with the iPhone’s camera, or selecting a picture already in your Camera Roll. Once an image is imported, you can tap or drag your finger around on the image to choose an individual color, as I’ve done here. Then you save it and display the definition, as above. It is a useful little app for finding exactly the right shade you want.

Then, from Palettes:

Palettes is quite a bit more sophisticated, as one would hope for an app that costs five times as much as colorSutra. This app also has a tool for extracting colors from a camera snapshot, although it does that automatically rather than letting you scrub around the image yourself. What is particularly good about Palettes is the large range of colors you can store in each palette, or collection of related colors — up to 25 — and the way you can extract additional palettes from any color in the set. There is even a function for creating blends from any two colors in the set, with choices of 1, 2 or 3 blended colors along a spectrum from one original to the other. On another menu, you can drag one of the colors from your palette into a “well” at the bottom of the screen, and the app generates another palette of colors, from five to fifteen, based on your choice of controls, selected by tapping little wheel icons. If you want to create not just a color, but a whole color scheme, Palettes is an app you will really appreciate.

So, why do I care? Well, as a website developer, I sometimes struggle to find just the right shade or combination of colors for a page design, and as a jewelry designer I also look for new combinations to generate ideas for new items. Actually, there are dozens and dozens of reasons to use apps like these, but having them on the iPhone makes them particularly useful for crafters and decorators, since having a color scheme with you when you go shopping can be very handy. But there is another reason to use them on the iPhone, and that is the touch screen. Both of these apps I’ve reviewed here use touch gestures to perform actions quickly and easily. This makes them intuitive and fun to use, as well as producing quick results. I will be using both these apps for some time, I’m sure.