My first thought after seeing the damage — OK, my second through, first being #$!@&*! — was to contact my good friend Rob Stanley over at AX Micro to see what my options were. Rob and I met back in the day when he got started in his business selling replacement glass for the original Palm Pilots. His business has exploded since then and I figured if anyone knew what my options were, it’d be him.

Thankfully, he quickly responded and explained that the iPhone 4 has the screen married to the glass, so I could just replace the glass, I had to do the whole screen. That explained why the iPhone 4 replacement screen was $99 and the iPhone 3 is $40. I ordered one along with a few accessories and everything arrived last night.

Before I began the take apart, I decided to check out Rob’s take apart video and I have to admit, I have a bit of a doubt. There are a lot of screws and small pieces! The video provides plenty of detail, so I’m going to soldier on and I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Update

Here’s a handy tip. Be sure to order a screwdriver with your replacement screen! Yeah, none of the tools I have in my office are small enough for the little phillips to even begin this project. LOL! So I just ordered the phillips, standard and pry tools from DirectFix, which should arrive next week.

Then I had another thought. We have a company here called iRestore that specializes in iPhone repair and after a quick call they explained that they could repair it in about an hour. I think the price of having them do the work is worth the time it’d take me to do.

Update 2

Two hours later and my iPhone 4 is as good as new. Only cost $40 to have the guys at iRestore replace the front screen while I went to lunch. Totally worth it and if there’s a next time, I’ll just have them supply the part(s) as well.

Momento allows you to collect your activity from the feeds of online services that you use throughout the day and store the information and media directly on your iPhone. The authors describe the app as “passive diary writing” which I think describes the app best. I may not journal everyday, but I do post photos to Flickr, Tweet and blog. Momento captures that information in a diary format. If I’m feeling particularly pithy, then I can also add a journal entry and capture a thought, or idea which is just added to the “life stream” that is stored privately on my iPhone.

What I like about this process is that my entry is done in context to everything else that I’ve been publishing throughout the day. So when I travel and I’m tweeting about things I see, checking into places on Foursquare, and posting photos to Flickr all the meta data of my day is already captured and I can focus on simply capturing my thoughts. It’s made journaling fun again because most of the hard work is already done.

The icing on the cake though is the execution. The app is gorgeous and rock-solid stable. I’ve been using it for over a year now and never had a sync issue with my feeds or a problem with the app crashing. Working within the app is easy on the eyes and alludes to the days when I would write in a leather bound notebook, or Moleskine.

The only thing that could make Momento better is if I could extend the experience to my desktop and my iPad. The developers have announced plans to do just that, but there’s no ETA on when to expect the sync services, or new software. I’m quite content with the app as it stands and all the extra development is just lagniappe in my book.

If you like the idea of having a digital Moleskine that automatically captures your digital life and provides you with tools to add greater details, then I can whole heartedly recommend Momento. It’s one of my top-10 favorite apps on the iPhone.

This really takes me back to my heydays with my lust for Palm and all things clear. And the fact that all it takes is patience and paint thinner is driving me nuts. I can’t tell you how badly I want to run to Home Depot right now.

AT&T will charge me $499 for the new iPhone 4. If I trade in my current iPhone 3GS, it brings the price down to $310. How can I resist? Please, tell me! HOW!?!?!?

As you can see from the image above, I don’t qualify for the subsidized pricing until March of next year. QQ

• Perking Up: The Coffee Economy Awakes
• iPhone Web Development
• Honoring Apple from 1976 to the Italian introduction of the iPad
• StreetMuseum
• Tina Fey’s greatest comedy moments

I guess I could have called this entry, “Today’s Distractions”.

Hopefully the text message above is an indicator that AT&T is looking to be more proactive in customer service.

AT&T has been ranked lowest in customer satisfaction as far as service is concerned. However, 98% say they’d buy another iPhone on AT&T because they’re so happy with the device.

I’m no huge fan of AT&T, but my service here in Nashville has been good and I’ve been happy with the service since I switched from Sprint for the iPhone back in 2007.

They have sent me several text messages (all free) letting me know about my minutes and text messages remaining, which I think is fantastic. The screenshot above shows a text message of a new cell site that’s been installed near my home.

I haven’t had to deal with customer service, but if the above image is any indication of how they’re being pro-active, I’m all for it.

It has a ton of cool features, such as: support for multiple blogs, posting photos, and moderatation of comments just to name a few.

I’m just getting into it, but I have to say I am very impressed. And this is my first post from the WordPress for iPhone app.

Thanks Charlie for the link!

John Gruber of Daring Fireball posted a link on his web site to Triplog/1040. For those of you not familiar with Gruber, he’s well known for his expertise regarding the Mac OS user interface. His opinion of TripLog was summed up nicely with “Check out the UI on this upcoming iPhone app from Palm OS developer Stevens Creek Software. This is not a joke. (Via Macworld.)”, but he also posted a photo on his Flickr page which generated a lot of heated discussion in the comments. This was the snowball that started rolling downhill.

Having come from the Palm OS world a little over a year ago, I wasn’t that surprised by the UI of TripLog and the other Stevens Creek applications because they reminded me of my Palm OS days. That being said, once I took a second look, it was clear that TripLog/1040 and Handy Randy don’t measure up to the standards of most Mac Software. Mac users are more accustomed to refined interfaces and elegant solutions to complex problems. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of applications out there that are rough around the edges, but for the most part Apple has made it easy for apps to look good. That approach to good design has followed to the iPhone, but if you’re not a Mac user some of the nuances may be a bit foreign to you and you might miss them.

Luckily for Steve Pratt, the designer behind TripLog, 37 Signals picked up the thread and used it as an opportunity for positive feedback in their article “Learning from ‘bad’ UI. I have to applaud 37 Signals for not only seeing the opportunity, but for acting on it and steering the conversation from a bash session to an actual discussion. The article also bore fruit with several redesign ideas from Raphael Campardou, Paul Walker and Paolo Passeri.

Will these have any effect on the TripLog app itself? They already have! Stevens Creek has posted a video showing how to use the application and in it I noticed that the UI is much improved. It’s not perfectly polished, but it’s very much improved. Unfortunately, MacWorld’s TripLog Review focused on the current version and thus Stevens Creek is still having to defend their application, which is a shame.

Stevens Creek makes excellent software and I suppose the take away here is that application design for iPhone has raised the bar from the days of Palm OS. Design options were limited in the Palm space so it was easier to focus on the functionality of the app over the look and feel. With the expanded palette of the iPhone developers are going have to focus more on the side of application development that often gets the least attention — the user interface. It definitely plays a key role in an application’s success and Mac users have a poor tolerance for bad UI.

My only hope is that this experience doesn’t scare away Stevens Creek, or any other Palm OS developers from developing for the iPhone. I think there is a world of opportunities for Palm OS developers to leverage their applications and broaden to a whole new market – both for the mobile and desktop space.

If you’re interested in iPhone UI design, here are a couple of other articles I ran across while this story evolved:

• Edward Tufte’s iPhone Design Review
• User Interface Design – Taking the Good with the Bad

They were most known for PalmPrint which allowed you to print directly from the Palm Pilot to a printer, but I used HandyRandy for nearly 11 years every time we pulled for door prizes at the local PUG meeting. So you can imagine my delight when I read that HandyRandy for iPhone is one of the three applications that they are releasing the day the App store launches.

They haven’t announced pricing yet, but rest assured HandyRandy is going to be the first app I buy on July 11^th. I’m so very happy!