Random thought exchange

After a long debate with myself, I figured it was time to take the plunge and move my email to “the cloud”. So far I’ve been running it for a few days now, and I like it. I tried it a year or so ago, but I ended up reverting back.

My thoughts (in no particular order)

1. I tried to copy the emails from my computer over to GMail, but it was setting all the dates to the day that I I have all my previous email stored on my computer, so I can reference it whenever I want.
2. GMail supports my own personal domains – so I can send and receive without people noticing.
   1. I find it offensive when Internet professionals and businesses use @hotmail.com or @gmail.com email addresses when they have their own domain.
3. I can still send and receive how I want from my iPhone.
4. I have IMAP configured, so I can still do anything I want with my folders, or as GMail likes to call them… “labels”.
5. I can access my email any time from anywhere, Internet connection permitting.
6. The spam filters are MUCH better than what Microsoft has done in Entourage. So far it hasn’t filtered any legitimate email to my spam box, which is always nice.
   1. I have many server rules setup to wipe out a ton of spam before anything has a chance to make it to my inbox.
7. Google Docs! It’s awesome, and now I can save attachments to that.
8. Viewing online of documents. No more needing to open the document in the application. I can view it in a webpage and save time. Yes dad, that means that all of those “amazing photograph” emails with 20MB powerpoints won’t be AS annoying – but please try to refrain from sending them anyways!  
9. I will not tell anyone my GMail address. I do not want to get email to it. If you want to know why, read point 2.1.

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I’ve been working on the blog a bit in the background – some functional and technical things that I wanted to change, and have slowly been resolving.

One of the items on my list has been to figure out a way to get my automated Twitter “life stream” hidden from the blog homepage. I figure, if someone wants to see my Twitter posts, they’ll either look at my Twitter page, or look at the Twitter category in my blog. I think it’s more important to showcase and highlight my actual posts instead. Plus, on my homepage I have the most recent tweets displayed.

I was going to script something to do it, but instead I came across the plugin “Simply Exclude” by CodeHooligans.

I’m quite impressed. After installing the plugin, within 1-minute I had the Twitter category removed from my homepage. No coding or scripting needed!

The only glitch is that if you tag a post in multiple categories, and one of those categories is excluded, it too will come off the homepage. Maybe this is something that will be fixed in the next version.

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Apple launched their iPhone 4 in Canada on July 30, despite the apparent “antenna-gate” issue. I’ve been very excited and couldn’t wait to get my hands on one to try it out and use. I currently have an iPhone 3G 16GB, and I love it, now that I’ve been able to speed it up with the iOS 4.0.1 update – hint, disable some of the areas that spotlight searches in.

The problems

1. I was at work on launch day, so I was unable to be one of the people drawn in so much by the marketing that I was camping out at the Apple stores;
2. The local Rogers stores only received 3-5 units of the 32GB version;
3. Apple was (and still is) selling unlocked iPhone 4′s, as well as performing hardware upgrades for those folks who are on Rogers, Fido, Bell, and Telus;
4. Apple had technical issues with connecting to the Rogers/Fido systems to perform hardware upgrades (HUP). This delay lead to the Apple store taking up to 2 hours to activate a phone – this was only an issue if you were HUPing, unlocked iPhones were processed in minutes;
5. Rogers is not letting their customers HUP online or over the phone. They’re directing all customers to go in to a Rogers location or Apple store, despite their competition allowing the aforementioned methods; and
6. Apple seems to be hoarding the iPhones for their sale. Smart move from a financial standpoint, as they seemingly don’t have to give a cut to the carriers for their part in the sale. It also allows them to up-sell AppleCare warranty, and possibly get additional sales on peripherals, computers, etc, etc.

Is antenna-gate a real issue in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)?

From the few chosen ones whom I’ve spoken with that have obtained the holy grail of cell phones, is NO. They’re able to get the “bars” to go from 4 or 5 down to 2 by strangling the phone with a “death grip” without a case or “bumper” on the phone, so I’m not worried. Once I get my hands on my very own, I’ll be able to test and know for sure. I’ll provide an update at that time.

Rumor has it, that majority of the problems in the USA are due to the poor quality of the AT&T network.

Why do I want one, and why 32GB?

1. I’m getting awfully close to filling my 16GB. The only reason it’s not full, is that I haven’t loaded all my music, and yes, there’s some that I’d like to listen to that I don’t have on there;
2. With 720p HD video, I’d like to not be worried about not being able to record what I want when I want – HD video requires a lot more space than regular video – not that my 3G can do video natively, a 3rd party app is needed;
3. 5MP camera – ok, I have a high-end DSLR for real photos, but if I’m out somewhere and want to take a picture, it’s nice to know I have a bunch of space for it;
4. Apps! There are some apps that run as fast as molasses, even on OS 3.x.  The new processor is going to make them run amazingly; and
5. Retina display! Wow, once you see it in person…  that’s all I can say.

Rumors

There’s a rumor circulating the Internet that Apple is going to release a CDMA version (no, that won’t work on the Rogers network, as they’re GSM) that’s going to have a metal rear face to the phone, and the antenna is going to be linked in to that, instead of part of the ring around the edge of the iPhone 4.  For the sake of calling it something, I’m going to dub it iPhone 4.1.  According to the rumor, it’s due to be released in Q1 2011, that’s just 5-months away. But as I mentioned earlier, in the GTA the antenna “issue” seems to be null.

Perhaps this is why there’s a delay in the white iPhone 4. Maybe Apple is holding off for version 4.1.

In the press conference Steve Jobs hosted at the Apple HQ on July 16, Steve mentions that they will re-evaluate the antenna issue towards the end of September.  That might fall right in line with an announcement about an updated revision to the hardware.

Conclusion – for now

I’ve already renegotiated my plan with Rogers for the next 3-years. I’m getting an amazing deal and awesome features. I don’t mind locking in for 3-years, as it will save me about $500 on the phone just based on retail vs. HUP pricing. As long as Rogers keeps their existing coverage and quality of service (QOS) I’m more than happy.

Now all I need is to get my hands on a iPhone 4 32GB. Anyone have any leads?

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Back story: About 2-years ago I switched providers (from Bell to Rogers), so that I can get the iPhone 3G. I love it, but there are some downfalls to it. First would be the lack of video recording without any add-on apps. The second would be the basic capability that most phones have – voice recognition. My old Samsung A900 even had that.

So when iOS4 was released a few weeks back I did the upgrade right away. I enjoy testing out the latest hardware and software, so I figured what they heck… why not?

Within 2 hours I had it loaded, and all my music and apps synchronized back on to it.

I immediately set up folders for my apps.  For the past year I’ve had my “screens” setup so that all my apps were arranged logically. I had a screen for navigation/car items, a screen for utilities, a screen for social media, two screens for games, and a screen for web links. So setting up the folders was great for me, because now I don’t have to flick through all the screens to get to the last one. I have all my folders on one screen.

I then realized that my camera now has a zoom function.  Great!

That’s pretty much where the good ends.

Within 10-minutes of using the phone, I had at least 5 apps crash and quit on me. And yes, that even includes the Maps app and App store apps that Apple ships with the os and phone.

So I shut down the phone, boot it back up, and the same problems persist. So I load up iTunes, and make sure I have the latest version of the apps. Sure enough there are a few that have updates, and those say iOS4 tested. Wonderful.  I load those on, and they work well, but the App Store app still crashes intermittantly.

The following days and weeks – up until now – have had many app updates. I would imagine that nearly all the apps loaded on my phone are now updated. There are a few that aren’t, like iFuel Lite, but I would imagine the developers are working on that – at least I’m hoping they are.

So what’s my real gripe?

I’m annoyed at how slow and laggy the phone seems now. It’s just chugging along.

This past weekend, I was at the Toronto Eaton Centre, and I figured why not go in to the Apple Store and chat with a “genius”.

I make an appointment on their computer system, and wait about an hour.

They hook my phone up to their computer, and within a minute or two he tells me that the problem is with some of the apps. He says there are 8 apps that have “bad data” on the phone. I ask him if he can write them down for me so I can uninstall the apps and reload them. He tells me that what I need to do is restore the phone software, and set it up as a new phone. Then go in to the app store on the phone, and download all the apps again through the phone – not through iTunes.

He said that just wiping the app doesn’t remove the data files and preference files. For all I know, the problem lies in the apps that I don’t even have on the phone any more.

I thought that once you deleted an app from the phone, all the prefs would get wiped out with it. I’ve had experience where I decided to delete an app, and then a few days later load it back on, and I needed to setup all the preferences and settings again.

Anyways, I’m wondering if anyone knows what app Apple uses to diagnose iPhones? All I could find is the “secret” iPhone Configuration Utility on the Apple site. I have yet to run it, but I doubt that’s what they used.

I’m wondering if I should even bother restoring, since the rumor is that the iPhone 4 will be hitting the Canadian market on July 23, 2010, and I just so happen to have that day booked off work… so I think I might attempt to get one on launch day.

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Is this perhaps the worst leak out there? There’s a video on YouTube with what appears to be an Apple Tablet, despite the name on the top of it as TimeInc.

Perhaps this is one of the video demos from today’s Apple release?

You be the judge!

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I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks, and I’m just getting around to it.

I did something interesting with my website. I took a look at my stats, and created a neat-looking word cloud, based on the keywords that people enter in search engines to get to my website.

It’s quite interesting to see.

dmpP website word cloud for 2009

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Boxing day starts today?

As in the past, BestBuy Canada and FutureShop are starting their Boxing Day sales tonight at 8 p.m. EST.

Last year there was a serious flaw. Their websites, and I’m presuming their servers, were overloaded, slow, and crashed. It was an epic failure then, and I bet there are a lot of people who are hesitant to take part this year for fear that their abilities to just browse the site, let alone place items in their cart and place their orders.

Hopefully the BB and FS IT folks have learned from this, and are ramping up for tonight.

There’s a message on the BB and FS “view cart” pages that says all carts will be cleared to allow fair access for all customers. Take a look at the screen captures:

BestBuy view cart screen shot from 2009-12-24 at 2.45.49 PM

FutureShop view cart screen shot 2009-12-24 at 2.46.08 PM

What’s interesting is that there’s a partial failure. When you click on the image with the text explaining the cleared carts on the BestBuy site, it takes you to their homepage. When you click on the one on the FutureShop site, it takes you to http://localhost/ Clearly someone’s brain is already on vacation. Why does the image need to click through to anything anyways? What’s even stranger, is that the FS site is pulling it in with jQuery and iFrames. Why?

Code view from FutureShop website - screen shot 2009-12-24 at 2.56.09 PM

Also, according to the FS twitter account, the site is going to be closed at 3 to 6 p.m. EST and it will be open from 6 to 8 p.m. EST to browse before the sale starts. I wonder why they’re doing this? I don’t think it’s going to build up the anticipation. The flyers were leaked about 4 days ago. There isn’t anything that I’m hoping to score from FS. There are a couple of things I’m looking to get from BestBuy though.

Here’s my shopping list for this season:

• 2x 1.5TB drives – brand A
• 2x 1.5TB drives – brand B
• 2x NAS RAID array’s
• 2x 8GB SDHC class 6 cards
• 1x inexpensive laser printer – this isn’t for me

That’s it. Nothing all that special. HDD’s are on sale at NewEgg and TigerDirect, so I’m likely going to get them from there. Having said that, their prices are “Boxing week”, so I have plenty of time to get them.

I’ll let you all know how “well” I did once all the purchases are done.

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I’ve finally found a multiple IE installer.

It lets you run versions 1.0, 1.5, 2.01, 3.0, 4.01, 5.01, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0

Kudos to the developer.

More details can be found at: Final Builds Site – IE Collection

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