Lately, I’ve got lots of thoughts about design swirling in my head, but while I collect them, here’s another homage to the iPhone crowd that likes to read here.
Visual Dial is an iPhone app that “lets you create custom Home Screen speed dial icons right from your iPhone photo album with a few, simple steps”. Look; there’s a video to prove it.
The catch is the app isn’t released yet. Apparently, it’s being reviewed by Apple.
Based on the video, this looks cool and functional, saving a tap or two. Standard speed dial on the iPhone requires a few taps, since it’s housed within the Phone app. I use speed dial all the time, and this seems like a well-designed way to save some effort.
I also like the ability to use any photo, not just the photo assigned to a contact, as the home screen icon.
Once you’ve created a photo icon on your iPhone, you can dial directly without an internet connection. According to Straight2Market, the creators of the app, they only store the icon on their servers, not any contact information.
Again, using the video, you can see they use the add to home screen feature of Safari to create the persistent icon. I wonder how they create the shortcut to speed dial; if that’s an available feature already, let me know. It does seem like one that Apple would have advertised in the past.
Straight2Market has a small, private beta going while they wait for Apple’s approval. If you can’t wait, maybe you can get into the 50 person beta; instructions on how to request admittance are here. You’ll need to provide them with your unique device identifier though. No pricing details seem to be available for the app once it’s released.
Anyway, I’m on the fence about it. It looks snazzy, and I’m sure I’d use it. But, somehow I doubt it’ll be free, and I’m a little weirded-out about the storage of any data on their servers.
What do you think?
god blesss your blog 🙂