You read that right: my wife’s free phone cost me $300. And it was all my fault.

You see, her old flip phone just wasn’t cutting it. She needed a phone that could do email, text, IM, internet, and apps. Well, maybe she didn’t need a smart phone, but dammit, I wanted her to have one. So, I did the research and noticed that I could get her the Palm Pixi Plus on AT&T for free. That would be the perfect phone for her.

So, we made a trip to the local AT&T store to test it out.

First, let me say this about Palm’s WebOS — I honestly think it’s the best smartphone OS out there, it just lacks app development from 3rd parties.

OK, back to the AT&T store. My wife gets a hands-on demo with the Palm Pixi Plus. We immediately noticed two problems. 1) The screen size was too small. Surfing the internet just didn’t feel right on that screen.  2) The keyboard was too small. My wife wanted a physical keyboard, but the tiny buttons were almost unusable. So, the Palm Pixi Plus was eliminated from contention.

Then we considered the Motorola Backflip and Palm Pre Plus. Both were smartphones. Both had physical keyboards. The Backflip cost $50 and the Pre cost $100.

Then I hit the slippery slope….

The iPhone 3GS was only $50 more than the Backflip and it was the same price as the Palm Pre, and I already have a ton of good apps for my iPhone. So, I made the decision to get the iPhone 3GS, but….

If I’m going to spend $100 on a 3GS, why not just spend $100 more and get the iPhone 4? And that’s just what I did. I ordered her the iPhone 4 (16 GB), but…

While the sales rep was entering the order into the system, I thought about it some more. If I’m going to buy her a nice phone, I’ll want to put lots of media on it (kid movies), so she’ll need more space. For $100 more, I can get her the 32 GB model. So, I had the sales rep edit the order to get my wife the iPhone 4 32 GB.

And that’s how you go in a for a free phone and end up spending $300.

I previously wrote that I liked having iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G. That was  over 3 weeks ago. I was wrong. After having it on my phone for a week or so, I noticed that the iPhone got slower…and slower…and slower. Typing became unbearable. Opening and closing apps became a chore. It got so bad that I stopped using some of my favorite apps. Something had to be done.

Then I ran across an article from Lifehacker.com with step by step instructions for downgrading to iOS 3.1.3. I decided to give it a try. Worked like a charm.

Then I figured, why not jailbreak my iPhone? I could finally have multitasking, background images, and system tweaks that I want. I read some instructions on how to jailbreak my iPhone 3G. It took me a while to figure out how to get the Spirit Jailbreak to work with my iTunes (had to downgrade iTunes to 9.1.1 using Time Machine, jailbreak, and then restore iTunes back to current version using Time Machine).

Anyway, I’ve been rocking a jailbroken iPhone 3G for about a week now. I’m running Backgrounder and Proswitcher so I can have Palm Pre style multitasking – very handy for listening to Pandora or MLB while doing other things on the iPhone. I set my iPhone theme to “iOS4″ so it looks like I’m running iOS4 (even have the updated Calculator icon). I’m doing all this and my speed is still better than when I was on iOS4 without multitasking and background images.

I’ve messed around with Cydia, but I haven’t really found many free (and legal) applications that I want or need. There are some cool paid apps in the store, but I’m not buying anything for my old iPhone 3G.

I’ll probably use this set up for a few more weeks…until I get an new iPhone once the iPhone 4 problems get resolved.

Two of my friends finally convinced me to try out the Scrabble knock-off Words With Friends (Free). I’m hooked, and I’ve only played a few games. Last weekend the game was provided me plenty of entertainment while we were visiting my in-laws.

What I really like about this game is that it gives me one more way to compete against my friends. Living several states away from my friends and dealing with small kids (both me and my friends) makes it hard for us to compete.

Words With Friends (Free) makes it easy to compete. Very little time is required to play. The game even notifies me when it’s my turn. That means I can play a word and then do something else until it’s my turn again (could be a few minutes, could be a few days).

Plus, the game was free (and the ads aren’t too annoying or intrusive). This game will be on my iPhone for a long time.

Image source: Newtoy Inc. (maker of the Words With Friends)

So, I updated my iPhone 3G to iOS4 a few days ago. Here’s my two cents:

Folders – I like using Folders. When I first fired up my phone after the updated, I reorganized most of my apps into folders…and I do mean most. I went overboard. After a day or so, I got smart about how I use Folders. I realized I don’t like my most used apps in folders. Now my home screen has my best apps and just 3 folders (Photography, Reference, and Sports). The second page has all my leftover apps grouped in folders. My third screen is kid games – not in folders – for my kids to play. This set up is much better than my old six screen set up.

Unified Inbox – In theory this is a nice feature, but I don’t use it that frequently. I have 5 email accounts on my iPhone. Each account serves a different purpose. I would love it if I could create two different unified inboxes. If that isn’t possible, I’d at least like to be able to exclude a few of the accounts from the unified inbox.

Speed – I’ve noticed that some of my apps are much quicker to respond and open. On the other hand, typing feels more sluggish, but not enough to make a big difference to me.

Because my phone is old, I don’t get some of the new features like wallpapers and multi-tasking. My phone is two years old; I really shouldn’t expect it to have all the features the new models have.

After updating to iOS4, I finally got the calendar colors correct on my iPhone. The key is knowing the order of the colors that the iPhone assigns the calendars. iOS4 assigns colors in the following: Blue, Red, Green, Orange, Purple (or Brown), Brown (or Purple). I noticed that the last two colors (Purple and Brown) switched on the second time through – - first time through Purple was assigned before Brown but the second time through it was just the opposite.

Here’s how to “assign” the correct colors to your calendars if you sync Google Calendar (via MS Exchange) to your iPhone:

1 – Create a bunch of dummy calendars in Google Calendar. You’ll need to these to “assign” to colors you want to “skip.”

2 – Figure out what color you want to your main Google calendar to be. I wanted mine to be blue or green.

3 – Select the appropriate number of dummy calendars to sync so that you’ll likely get the correct color for your main calendar. I chose 1 dummy calendar to bring my calendar total to 3 (main Google calendar, dummy calendar, Birthday calendar). Note: the birthday calendar is part of iOS4 and can’t be disabled. Doing this method, my main calendar came in as Green.

Use www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect or m.google.com/sync (on your iPhone) to select the calendars.

4 – Select and sync one dummy calendar at a time to figure out where you are in the pattern of colors. I synced one more dummy calendar and it came in Orange.

5 – Once you get the pattern down, start bringing in your real calendars in the order you want. After Orange came up in step 4 for me, I selected my wife’s calendar because I wanted it be purple. That worked great.

It may take few attempts to get it right, but it can be done.

I’m pissed. The new iOS4 doesn’t allow me to select calendar colors. The previous OS didn’t either, but I could work around it by creating dummy calendars and syncing calendars until I got the colors right (and then delete the dummy calendars). However, the new OS doesn’t even allow me to do the old work around. I’m stuck with the colors the iPhone assigns to each calendar. UPDATE: The old work around now works. Google was having problems syncing exchange accounts today. The new calendar color order is: Blue, Red, Green, Orange, Purple, Brown. Although, I did notice one time through Purple and Brown were flipped. I’ll leave a post tomorrow with more details on how I fixed the calendar colors.

Why is this a problem? Because my wife and I use Google Calendar for everything. We primarily use BusyCal on our MacBook Pro to manage 7 different calendars. All of those calendars are synced to my Google Calendar, my wife’s Google Calendar, and my iPhone…and we are planning to get my wife an iPhone in the next few weeks. Because we want to use the same Google calendars in 5 different places (BusyCal, two online Google accounts, and two iPhones), calendar colors are a big deal to us.

I’ve tried countless times to get it right. I deleted and added my Google account several times as an Exchange account. Those attempt didn’t work. I also noticed that Apple added over the air sync for Google Calendars if the Gmail account is set up as an IMAP account. I tried that, but it only syncs the MAIN calendar — not the sub calendars.

A freaking smartphone should be able to at least let me choose the calendar colors. Android phones get it right. Palm Pre gets it right. Why can’t Apple get it right?

Here’s the official Manly Dad position on Twitter: I love it.  I even have two accounts: @ManlyDad and my personal one.  I mainly use it to follow sports (baseball) writers and bloggers.  In fact, my favorite user to follow is Old Hoss Radbourn.

I actually find Twitter to be useful and informative.  Here’s how and why I use it:

• Follow baseball writers
• Follow certain video game users
• Follow my city (very helpful to know the latest local news)
• Search for fast breaking news (like the riots in Iran after those sham elections)
• Tweet my Manly Dad posts
• Tweet when I just want to say something quick instead of a long post on ManlyDad.com
• Use Twitterrific on my iPhone when I “watching” the boys during bath time

But, not everyone needs a Twitter account.  Today I walked down to my work’s cafeteria.  Right there at the cash register was a sign inviting us to follow the cafeteria on Twitter.  Why is that necessary?  The cafeteria already posts its menu online.  The breakrooms have printed copy of the menu.  The cafeteria even sends out regular emails about any specials or promotions.  In my opinion, the cafeteria doesn’t need Twitter.

Am I missing any cool uses for Twitter?  If so, please tell me why and how you use Twitter?

I mentioned yesterday that I played the board game Ticket to Ride last week.  I believe playing board games, especially strategy games, is very manly…a little nerdy, but still manly.  Well, my buddy “manned” it up even more by breaking out his iPhone to keep score.

In Ticket to Ride you get points whenever you complete a route.  The board has a scoring system on the border.  It’s pretty easy to use, but using an iPhone is much more manly.  Using his Score Pro app, my buddy kept the running total for us. As you can see above, he won the game (and as I good friend, I monitored the score inputs like a hawk…my buddy has been known to cheat).  Hats of to my buddy for showing me another way to use my iPhone.

Image Source: my buddy.  He took a screen capture of the game for me for this post (he changed the player names to be anonymous).