I came across this while searching for the documentation on my PowerBook G4 which we are selling. A flood of memories come back for me when I saw this packet. In August 2001, I made the investment in a PowerMac G4 Tower (QuickSilver Edition) and it came with OS X 10.0 preloaded in dual boot mode. I fell in love with OS X. I used it as much as I could with the few apps I had that would run under it.

In October 2001, I went job hunting in the Fairfax County area of Virginia and stayed with family while sending out resumés. While down in the area, we were next to only the second Apple Store in the country. The store in Alexandria was the only one to open after the one in San Francisco. Craig and I drove over to the mall where it was located and checked it out. When we walked in they were handing these out for free. I couldn’t wait to get back to my family’s place to install the upgrade.

I kept this trend going for a while. Craig and I attended the release of Tiger at the Apple SOHO store. My friend got down there early to snag a spot in line. We drove down after work and Craig won a door prize of an Apple iPod Shuffle. Later when Danbury got an Apple Store we lined up for the release of Leopard. That’s as far as we went, now we just wait for our Apple or Amazon order to arrive. They certainly were fun to attend.

Another fun night at the Build Guild Hartford meet up. Through twitter contact @kerusdotorg I found out about the Build Guild meet ups. He and I had shared a mutual interest to have a local CT meet up for those in the web design field without feeling pressured to have an agenda. The Build Guild seemed to be a perfect fit. It’s an evening for those in the field to chat, vent and share stories. So far I’ve been very impressed by the people attending, there’s some very talented people doing great work in the state.

Hopefully this will continue and attract others to come share in the fun.

Then last weekend my iPhone stopped waking up. I have it in a dock each night while I sleep on my night stand. In the morning I turned on the phone, but got the black screen and the silver/white apple logo. I figured ok strange, guess it had a hiccup. I waited and made the doc was indeed getting power. It stayed on that screen for a minute and then went black. I tried a full reset holding down the power and home button, still would not go past the Apple logo.

Into the office I went and opted to restore. Of course last weekend iOS 4.0.1 had been released and iTunes was giving me that as my only option. I’m sure I could have forced it to grab the 3.1.3 ipsw file, but I was very tired and just wanted my phone working again. I clicked ok and waited a good hour while it got reset and it copied everything back over to it.

The Positive

I cringed at the thought my iPhone would again be slow, crashing and not fun to use again. To my pleasant surprise that has not been the case. It’s a tiny bit slow on certain things, but the iOS 4.0.1 update actually improved the speed of other items, and everything I wrote about in my previous post is no longer an issue. I’d like to say that will teach me for being an early adopter but I’ll still do it.

My iPhone 3G now has a second life and my imperative need for an iPhone 4 has been delayed a while longer.

At first it seemed to be working well. Then as the days went on I noticed it got slower and buggier. Craig pointed me to a post that said to reset it 3 times in a row, so I tried that. Slight improvement but only temporarily. I even tried reinstalling iOS 4, and still the issues persisted. This was the first time in owning an iPhone that I wanted to throw it across the room or through a window. Below are the issues I ran into.

Typing
The keys would be severely delayed and act as if they were sticking, making it extremely frustrating to work on the phone.

Maps
This became also completely unusable. The locate feature which worked excellent before, would now take upwards of 2 minutes to find me, and was off several times. The redraw on the maps would hang and sometimes never load.

Mail
Also very slow, when it checked mail in the background it would bring the entire phone to a crawl.

Safari
This was a first ever on my phone. I was loading a website in Safari and the entire phone crashed and reset.

iTunes
Anytime any process was running in the background, especially Mail, iTunes would skip and stutter through songs. It would also hang while trying to move to the next song, it would take a second or two audibly but then the artwork would not change for another 10 seconds and if I pressed the next button again it would completely hang.

All of these were enough for me to say mercy, and downgrade to 3.1.3. I found the .ipsw file from my back up and followed the instructions on Lifehacker.

I have successfully downgraded and restored from a back up I did two weeks ago. My apps all load quickly, no crashing, typing works again and Maps finds me every time and updates very fast. At some point in the future, I’ll upgrade to the iPhone 4.

While I’m not a huge kei$ha fan, I love the mash up of all the old Star Trek episodes.

The MicroCell is $149.00 as a single cost. It uses you’re existing minutes and hooks up to your internet connection which does not have to be an AT&T specific connection. We have Comcast and it’s hooked up via the cable modem. The setup does take about an hour for it to register and set up the MicroCell to be a tower in your home. It’s secured and only available to the numbers you program into it via the website. You can add up to 10 lines to be authorized. Only 4 can be on it at the same time though.

The Pros:

• We now have 5 bars of service everywhere in our home, even in the basement two levels down and in the parking lot
• We were able to fully get rid of a land line and save $80.00 a month

The Cons:

• Recently I’ve had a call get dropped
• We have a slight echo/delay on some calls
• We’ve also recently had static / air noise on calls, the other user doesn’t hear it but we do

I knew there was a reason I waited to get a remote starter. I want this!

It was probably earlier this past year I saw someone post their daily photo with DailyBooth. I didn’t think much of it, but I’ve seen more people posting lately and then today Gary Vaynerchuk’s job posting even mentioned it as a possible requirement. Since my thing is photography, I figured I’d give it a shot. Might also be a good reminder for myself to see the progress of losing weight this year.

Friend me up if you’re on there.

Earlier last week on Twitter I saw someone post a link to Mockingbird. I have enough trouble convincing project managers and sales people that wireframes are worth the time, so anyway to do them faster and easier I’m all for.

I signed up for an account and laid out a sample page. The first thing that really impressed me was the complete lack of any lag. I figured using a browser interface it would have some delay but there was none. The app also uses your normal keyboard shortcuts. Just clicking delete really deletes it from the page. They have a nice library of default items including social media icons.

The other feature that I really liked was the ability to Share. It generates a special link that you can then send to someone and they get a viewable version of the wireframe.

I still need to play with it more and try some actual projects in it. I’d recommend going to their site and trying it out.

Americans have access to:

• 1,000,000,000,000 web pages
• 65,000 iPhone app
• 10,500 radio stations
• 5,500 magazines
• 200+ cable tv networks

Pretty impressive numbers. The folks at XPLANE™ have created another video educating and inspiring the community. This is from their Did You Know series.

We forget sometimes how much things have changed and what kind of future possibly lays before us. The power of the computers in our pockets is incredible in relation to just 20 years ago.

I’m toying with the idea of forwarding my .Mac/.Me email account to my GMail account. The reason being is I’m getting a lot more email into the .Mac account it’s getting kind of hard to keep up with it via Mail. I’ve got a good system of organization but I’m duplicating between my GMail account and the .Mac account. It seems crazy when the content coming in overlaps so much.

The other reason behind the move is, I’m really not impressed with the MobileMe website. It never fails, I delete things over there and it doesn’t move it. Also I find their website very slow, no matter what browser I’m using.

My third reason is I’m not as tethered/addicted to getting my emails instantly. I love the .Me push IMAP, but really I don’t have anything coming in that a search 15 minutes from now won’t catch.

Recently GMail left Beta, offered Offline options (yay!) and now offers a slew of Labs extras, like Undo Send.

I have also since setup GoogleApps for my personal domain, which is doing a wonderful job filtering out an incredible amount of spam, from two email accounts Craig and I have had since 1999.

My only hesitation is that I’ve always ran into issues getting iCal notifications to play nice with my GMail account and really that could be eliminated by going to Google Calendar.

Question to the community:

Have you been in this dilemna? Which way did you decide? Any issues I’m not considering?

lights on from thesystemis on Vimeo.

I’m already using Digg a lot more.

I look forward to this future and all it can offer.

(via SwissMiss)

One of the tips I’ve never used but will be is the Filter feature. Jesse suggests using it to search for “?” to help answer people’s questions, along with searching on “http” to see what links people are suggesting. Watch the video for other great tips.

Part 1:
When we moved to our current residence the cable provider was deplorable so we switched to AT&T for all our communication services (land line, internet and cellular). The first thing we were most impressed with was the reliable service of DSL. It never went down unlike our past two cable services.

Life was good for about 2 years. Then they offered to upgrade our speed about the same time we started doing more podcast and movie downloads via iTunes. Then we started to notice a problem, if Craig was downloading his podcasts and I wanted to use the internet I could barely use it. I’d wait for my pages to load, as if I were on dial-up. We contacted AT&T and they offered to send a new modem/router out since the one we had was now 3 years old and possibly that was the issue.

After we received the new router, it was more problems. We started getting the following two error pages.

and then this one.

Needless to say this was extremely frustrating. A simple close of the browser, wait 10 seconds and reopen it would resume surfing with no issues, albeit slow. I kept checking the speed tests and the router interface kept saying 1.2mb/s.

Part 2:
At the end of December 2008, I called AT&T regarding the problem. After talking to a few representatives, they determined that the cap on our line never got lifted, when they had offered to upgrade our service. But we hadn’t been paying for it because we had been grandfathered in. Ok… the cap was to be lifted on January 3rd. On January 3rd we saw our router now report it was getting a 1.9mb/s feed. Speed tests via several websites including one by AT&T showed we were still only getting 900k to 1.2mb.

Part 3:
We let it go for a few weeks but then it became no longer tolerable and I called again on February 14th. They tried to blame it on wireless cards in our computers. I informed them the issue was still there when directly connected via ethernet.

The conclusion of the third representative was that our line might need to be repaired. They ordered a tech to come out on February 18th, sometime between 8am – 5pm. Nice window.

Our speed on February 17th.

Part 4:
February 18th I took off from work to be home for the tech. Around 1pm the tech arrived, nice guy, he came in, ran some tests of the line, went into the basement trying to determine if the issue was down there. His tests came back saying we were 17,000 feet from the node, and getting the higher speeds currently was impossible. At this point, I figured, fine we’re going to go to Comcast since they just came to the area. The tech was determined though to see if he could get us some improvement.

He went all around the yard trying to look for possible issues. He came back in a few minutes later and said he found a lot of bridge tap in place, caps on the line and said removing the 4,000 feet of bridge tap could help us. He put an order in for a pole worker to come by in the next 48 hours to do the work.

He also told us that there was a remote node only 5,000 feet away. But if it was already filled they couldn’t put us on it. He put a request in for this as well.

Only 30 minutes later another tech called and said he was coming out to the pole work. He let us know the internet might go down and even the phone line for a short period of time. Low and behold it did, and then he came to the door to test the line.

We ended up on a 40 minute call with AT&T technical support from Missouri and Texas. They ran all sorts of rips and rebuilds and several other things I wasn’t sure what it meant. They did finally get the line back up and when the modem came back up we were getting the 3mb/s service.

End of the Story?
Well, that should be the end of the story, but it’s not. For the most part we are getting faster internet, but we still get those error screens from time to time, and Craig’s iMac which solely uses the wireless takes 3 reloads of a webpage to view it.

The iMac issue might be something else. Although I’m not quite sure what. We are still entertaining going to Comcast for broadband. A family member who lives locally is getting 6-8mb/s via their Comcast service.

Has anyone else had any issues with AT&T DSL? Any recommendations on the iMac?

It’s definitely hoping for an honor system of the user, which they make you sign a waiver to allow an audit of your grocery cart at any time. I’m fine with that, stealing groceries is not how I’m going to jail, if that day were to ever come.

Using the system kind of reminded me of walking around Macy’s scanning items for our wedding registry way back when.

There are several pluses to doing it this way. You get a running tally of your cost. You are alerted of specials through the store. You can remove items if it seems too expensive. Your already bagged and ready to go when you get to the counter.

When your all done you go up to a register, scan a bar code above the register and pay. Your done and ready to go. I liked it and could see us using it in conjunction with scheduled Peapod deliveries.

This is awesome from Hulu!

Here’s a sample view of the spinner. I’ve selected Appetizer, Cheese and Slow Cooker. You can also click a button that says, “Spin Categories”. That button is currently replaced by the “View Matches” button.

Results.

Summary and Directions

Nutritional Information

Reviews

Share via eMail

I think All Recipes did a great job putting this app together, it’s simple, fun and doesn’t leave you looking to the website to finish what you started on the phone app.

Real World Application

I could see myself using this while in the kitchen planning meals, but also while on the go, and in need of getting creative with a meal to bring somewhere. Perfect for use in the grocery store, rather than having to sort through emails and papers.

The only feature I see missing is the ability to tie in to account logins on All Recipes and favorite a recipe.

(Via swissmiss.)

For those who don’t really get this whole social networking thing, this is a great little video giving an explanation and putting it in simple terms.

so bad, it made me laugh: stackthememory.com.

Have to agree with Tina, this was so bad it’s funny. Office Space certainly has inspired lots of people.

(Via swissmiss.)

Apparently, America’s president-elect is a Mac user, a Pac Man fan, and likes sticking stickers on one’s laptop. I really dig the pac-man eating the Apple logo. Is that a Speck clear MacBook cover? Commenters: let the Apple/Obama fanboy flamewars fly!

Incidentally, he also uses a Crackberry. And Biden is evidently a fellow Mac user, at least on the road. And as long as we’re on the subject: I met Al Gore briefly last week, and he was packin’ an iPhone. Although, I was so star-struck at the moment, I may have hallucinated that part along with the swarms of solar-powered United Nations black helicopters. DISCUSS.

POTUS uses a Mac (9to5mac.com, via friends list)

Update: Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing Gadgets tackled this burning! hot! politechnical news! earlier today.

(Via Boing Boing.)

For those who know me, you know I’m just smiling from ear to ear.

Funny story around this button. At my work we had a bell at the front desk, about a week after it was placed there it “walked”, and considering how small the company is, it walked out the door. My bet is on the disgruntled FedEx guy.

The bell was replaced with a Yahoo button. So whenever someone comes into the building, they press it and someone comes up front. I laugh each time because it’s the person going “Yaaaaaahooooo ooooooh” that resonates through the building. I wanted one!

I went on eBay and found only one up for bid. I clicked “watch this item”. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to spend money on it. Last Saturday I was sitting on the couch with Craig, I had my iPhone in hand while were watching TV. I got an email notifying me that the auction was about to end. I decided to try out the eBay app for the iPhone. It said 54 seconds remaining, I looked over at Craig and said, “Can I buy a Yahoo button on eBay”. He said, “sure if you want it that bad”. I refreshed the page, it said 24 seconds remaining, I figured at this point no way was I going to get this. I put in my bid, hit submit, and won the auction!

Now to most this not a big deal. For me though, it is. I sell mostly on eBay, when I do buy I go for Buy It Now auctions. Now I’m the happy owner of a button that says “Yaaaaaahoooooo ooooh” and my cats look around like the walls are talking.

I’m also excited since in April I started taking a Photography Field Class, which then lead to an 8 week dark room class where I fell in love with printing photos. Our little group shot primarily in B&W, even though we each used different kinds of film. We’d crank out photos every week and had a blast doing it.

This Saturday I start those sessions back up. This time renting dark room time and space from our instructor and printing my black and white photos from Maine this year. I’m also eager to review the nude photos I shot, from my first model shoot. I have several from that shoot in digital but they’re not able to be released just yet.

I currently shoot with a Canon Rebel G 35mm camera, I’m hoping to acquire both a Diana F+ and a Yashica MAT 124G.

What most excited me was the mention of a mobile version of MarsEdit.

Mobile fans take note — Daniel is working on an iPhone version of MarsEdit, and it will be released as soon as he is satisfied with the quality of the final product.

We had a good time, went in with a clear focus and didn’t lose a whole day strolling around the Javits Center. A note on parking, it’s gone up. It’s usually $40.00 at the lots around it, this time it was $50.00.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

While I like the app, if I were to upgrade again, I will have spent $76.00 on the program. Nothing says I have to upgrade, but there’s something to be said for companies that offer free upgrades for at least a year from your purchase.

All seemed to be well in our dual dock land, until about a week after getting them. For Craig using it with his iMac, it would actually cause kernel panics when he quit, it wouldn’t sync when he put his iPhone in it, and it would repeatedly tell him it was an accessory not designed for his iPhone.

I had been doing ok, but I also had not updated my iPhone to 1.1.1. Since updating to 1.1.1 I now have the same problems.

I searched around on the Apple Discussion boards and found several other people with the problem. The not so good news was, no one seemed to have resolved the issue and further more their attempts to contact Apple did not go well.

One user said the Apple support technician told him it was normal.I stopped writing here about an hour ago to search on MacRumor’s Forums too. Many people with the issue, but we all seem to be holding out for a software update.

Anyone else out there with this issue? Did you find a resolution?

Technorati Tags:Apple, iPhone, Bluetooth, Syncing

These are the apps I have loaded:

FiveDice
Colloquy
MobileChat
SummerBoard
Blackjack
iLigh
iSplit
Lights Off
My eBay
Pirate
Pushr (removing this)
Soduko
Tetris
VNotes

The first time I added apps it was a bit buggy and things were crashing. I uninstalled things, and started over. All seems to be working smooth now. I’m holding out on updating to 1.1.1. until the 3rd party groups have been able to get things working again.

My personal take on Apple crippling all this; if Apple is going to release their own apps (widgets) great, then tell us. If your not, it’s ok to take a “we’re not going to support the apps”, that’s the same stance as Palm has taken, but don’t cripple devices all together.

It will be interesting to see how the next few months pan out.