Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

On Sunday, I caved in and purchaed an iPhone. I have been lusting after this beast since its announcement in January, and especially after seeing it in person after its release in June. Thanks to some kind friends of mine and their Apple gift card birthday present, the iPhone is now in my pocket.

After three days with it, I am very happy. Activation was simple. I plugged it into my MacBook Pro, iTunes came up automatically, and brought me to the activation screen. Since I’m already an AT&T customer, I put in my phone number, and the last 4 of my SSN and it asked me to choose from the $20, $30, or $40 a month data plan. Since I’m not a big txt-er (or however you say it), I did the $20 a month plan.

Once I activated my phone through iTunes, it took about an hour and a half to actually activate. After hearing the error sound come from my old phone, and saw that it was reporting a bad SIM card, I rebooted my iPhone and I received a text message saying it was good to go.

So far, I am very happy with the EDGE data network. It’s not blazingly fast or anything, but it doesn’t drag either. I really like being able to get my email on the go, but realize that this now means that my work email will follow me everywhere.

My only frustrations are pretty much what everyone else is complaining about. First is the lack of being able to use my own ringtones. I don’t really mind paying $.99 for a ringtone, but it bugs me that you can only make ringtones out of certain songs (and none of the ones that I want).

In addition, it sucks that Bluetooth is so disabled. That was always one of the best things about AT&T/Cingular is that they didn’t disable Bluetooth syncing and file transfer. Having no Bluetooth communication between my computer and my phone is crap.

Besides those fairly minor gripes though, I love my iPhone! I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great mobile Internet device. And with the iPhone SDK announced today, things are only going to get better for iPhone owners.

Over the weekend, I decided it was time to try out Apple’s new Public Beta version of Safari 3. My two points of motivation were checking out the new tabbed browsing additions which have been sadly lacking in Safari, and beyond that I was hoping that the new version of Safari might be more compatible with my Verizon FiOS wireless router. I am happy to report that I am quite satisfied with both.

Draggable/arrangeable tabs are one of the main new features of Safari 3. This is a great feature, and one that I have been hoping for for a long time. Mind you, I know that draggable tabs already exist in Firefox, I just for some reason can’t make the switch. I am happy to report that Apple’s version of draggable tabs works great, and makes browsing a much more pleasurable experience.

Along with draggable tabs comes bookmarkable tab groups. Under the “Bookmarks” menu exists a selection called “Add Bookmark for these X tabs…” which will bookmark each tab for you. It’s a great way to bookmark your morning reading, or to bookmark a certain workflow like editing your blog or some other web-based operation that you do on a regular basis.

A new feature that I didn’t realize was in Safari 3 is the spell checker. Again, this is an increasingly necessary browser feature. I can tell you it has already saved me much pain and suffering by helping me avoid re-editing blog entries.

So far I’m very happy with Safari 3. I can’t wait to see the official release version, and can only imagine that it will be yet another excellent Apple product. Oh, and by the way… it works much better than Safari 2 with my Verizon wireless router too.

If you were an early iPhone adopter, you’re probably pretty pissed about Apple dropping the price of the iPhone a whopping $200 yesterday. I can empathize, but I would also like to mention that you probably understood the risks of being an early adopter of any new technology.

Since Uncle Steve has received so much hate mail over the price drop (not from me, I’m fucking excited!), he has decided to extend a $100 Apple Store credit to all iPhone early adopters. I don’t think Apple has ever done anything like this, and I really don’t think they had to. But it’s a nice display of good will and support toward their extremely loyal user base, and I salute their efforts.

Read al about it in Uncle Steve’s open letter to iPhone customers.

So after my previous post, Uncle Steve finished up his special event by announcing an iPhone-style iPod, the iPod Touch, which incorporates everything that the iPhone does besides the phone. Pretty much it’s exactly what I was hoping for before the iPhone was officially announced in January.

More importantly though, Apple has drastically dropped the price of the iPhone, and now they offer only the iPhone 8GB (no 4GB anymore) for $399. What an awesome deal (and what a bummer for those poor early adopters who paid the eBay markup). So awesome, what a great year for Apple, and more importantly for Apple customers.

Steve Jobs is currently holding an Apple Special Event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. So far he has introduced both a new iPod nano and a new shuffle. Apparently he has just announced the iPod Classic, and is hinting at a brand new full size iPod. Check out the live blog at Gizmodo for the full scoop!

If you read my earlier post about becoming a new FiOS customer, you have obviously been waiting with baited breath waiting for the update on how DSLReports.com. Your patience has paid off, and here are the results:

As you can see, FiOS isn’t blazingly faster than Charter’s cable modem service in the download department. However, the upload speed is significantly faster than Charter’s. Fortunately, that’s exactly what I was hoping for. So I’m happy.

I’ll try and keep you posted as my FiOS experience continues.

Well actually I’m not yet, but the Verizon guy is outside my house installing the hardware and getting things going. In celebration (and out of curiosity), I just ran a speed test to see how fast my allegedly high speed connection from Charter is. Here are the results:

As soon as the FiOS gets installed, I’ll run another test and post the results. I’m sure you’re all holding your breath!

It’s been quite a while since I have blogged about anything even remotely technically oriented. Today however, I feel it is essential that I put out a public service announcement for you loyal readers about USB flash drives.

You know the ones I’m talking about. They fit on your keychain. They’re $5 for a 32MB stick at Target. You can carry around whatever documents you need to on them. They’re a pretty darn great invention.

BUT…

From my experience, USB flash drives are flaky as hell when it comes to data integrity. It is of course impossible for me to say that the data loss incidents that I have witnessed are not user induced, but I feel pretty confident saying that USB flash drives are not a good place to store your data for the long term.

The moral is this: Store your documents on your hard drive, back them up to CDs or DVDs, and transport them with your flash drive. But do not under any circumstances trust your vital documents to just one storage medium.

Well well, Senator Hagel (R-NE) is batting a thousand today. He actually outted the White House in a major way, and told GQ in an interview that the original Iraq Resolution sent to Congress in 2002 included not only authorization to go into Iraq, but gave the President the right to go after everyone in the “whole region.”

In case you’re not quite sure why this is so huge, it just proves that President Bush and his neocon freaks had and still have every intention of keeping the Middle East in the mess it is in right now for their own personal and ideological benefit. This means that we have not only been lied to by those in power, but our tax money has been used for the benefit of a small group of elite, and our brothers, sisters, friends, family, and neighbors have been killed in the name of a selfish war that has nothing to do with the interests of the American People.

To read more about this, check it out here: ThinkProgress.com.

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So check them out, and get yourself trained…for free.