Posts Tagged ‘ News ’

2
10
Feb

Google’s buzzing, does it matter?

Everyone wants to jump on to the social networking bandwagon and be the defacto place that people go to get their updates. In the US the clear winner is facebook in this category, but everything at this point can talk to everything. Enter Google Buzz. Is there room for yet another social networking hub? Does anyone care?

I’m sure some people may pick it up just for the convenience. The big question in my mind is, what did they do differently? The simple truth of the matter is this; if the answer is nothing, then what is the point? Did they reinvent the way everything connects? No. Did they make such a great user interface that people will be flocking to it? No. Did they make it super easy to send updates out through the social networks they talk to? No.

So what have they done? Well, Yahoo! jumped in this space not long ago with their status updates. As far as I can tell it hasn’t been too widely picked up. Well, if Yahoo! did it, I guess Google needs to do it too! That is never a good reason to jump in to a space.

With only a handful of social networking connections available to Buzz right now, I don’t think this service is going to amount to much for a long while. Useful? debatable. Interesting? Definitely. In the long run, you have to ask yourself what is googles angle? I guess in the grand scheme of things only 10% of your ideas ever amount to anything when innovating. You have to throw things out there and see what sticks.

I have read a number of posts on twitter speculating the success of Buzz versus Wave. Wave I think is a clear winner, I think they released it to the general public too soon. Buzz….well…let me be the first to say it….It’s all in the name…..

0
19
Feb

RIP HD DVD

I should have written a post when I thought about it, but I decided that blu-ray would win one week before Warner Bros. made their decision to defect.  I was torn at the time having just bought an HD tv, and I really wanted to buy a player to go with it.  After much contemplation and a little bit of research I decided blu-ray would come out on top, and consequently didn’t buy anything since I had already forked out $300 for the remote, $300 for the new DVR, and $300 for the wall mount kit in addition to the cost of the TV.  I couldn’t see paying $400 for a PS3 to get blu-ray right then when I didn’t even own a blu-ray movie.  And then I would have to start forking out more for the movies.  My xbox 360 did fine for upscaling my current dvd collection so I decided I would just wait a bit and get a PS3.  A week later, the bomb dropped.  I was very excited for my decision, and told my friends and family whom I had already told that blu-ray would come out on top.  Alas, a friend of mine didn’t head my warning and bough HD DVD.  He now owns 2 movies and a player now. Oops, nice investment.

0
12
Oct

The REAL culprit to bricking your iPhone

So it turns out that the code used to unlock your iPhone that was released by the iPhone dev group really did break the update from Apple. That makes me feel a little better about Apples involvement in this mess, but the iPhoneSimFree folks have put in another wrinkle. They released a new unlock app that supports the new 1.1.1 firmware from Apple, and also posted a method for recovering your bricked phone. This proves my point that Apple could have fixed these phones, but instead chose to let them break and claim that they were irreparable with no recourse until the hackers came out with a fix. Way to go iphonesimfree, your solution seems to be the best out there since you are not re-writing firmware according to your Q/A
.

0
7
Oct

Apples iPhone update 1.1.1 blunder

I have been reading all the articles about the new update causing peoples iPhones to become iBricks. I have also been reading every ones comments who read these articles. It seems to me that everyone is missing the very basic problem here. Apple is alleging that by unlocking your iPhone (read flashing firmware as best that I can tell), you have permanently damaged the “software” of your phone. I would love it if someone could explain to me how you can “permanently damage” software. As I understand software, its just that: software. Meaning it can be re-written. In my opinion, Apple has gone too far in their latest update by disabling the phones entirely.

Too many people are getting hung up on the “support” and “warranty” words. This is not a question of Apple support, nor is it a question of an Apple warranty. If they don’t want to support unlocked iPhones (this is ONLY about the unlock hack mind you, many are also hung up on third-party apps) I don’t understand why they can’t just re-write out the firmware to the radio, and re-lock it to the service. Or they could not allow any further official updates to the iPhone via a checksum to existing firmware. Disabling a $600 device entirely due to Apple disagreeing with my choice of usage of the device that I PAID for is asinine and a total abuse of power.

Personally I travel internationally very frequently, and was totally aghast at my $1000 phone bill my first month ($350 was in a 10 minute session online on the phone). I would welcome an official unlock code being issued as it is with any other reasonable phone manufacturer. Being tied to the most expensive carrier in the U.S. while traveling abroad is a price I unfortunately have to pay in order to use this great technology, but its not a welcome price. Many will say you shouldn’t have bought it then, but I knew going in that I would have issues with international roaming, I just wasn’t expecting it to be THAT much.

Some say Apple gave fair warning by issuing a statement a week after the unlock software hit that streets that the update was going to brick your iPhone. But a week after is a week too late, some would already have unlocked their iPhone by that time, and may have been doing it just to see if it worked. Waiting a week and issuing a threat after the fact is not fair warning. This also comes after Apple slides back and forth over whether or not they will allow third-party development to coincide with official development. Hard to tell where you will stand with them in the end.

Myself, I have not installed the update yet for fear that it will brick my iPhone. I am waiting for the class action suite to be filed.

Apple: Do the right thing. Re-flash the firmware of the radio and reset it to be locked. Stop playing games and un-brick these phones, we paid for them and they belong to us. It is not within your right to break them for us because you don’t like what we did with them. If you do not, I fear this will not end pretty.