I am used to getting random spam instant messages through my Live Messenger account, but today has been a banner day, and I say that with total sarcasm. Today I have received at least five random IMs from a different address (which I immediately block after the message arrives), and each one has been completely trashy.

I’m posting the least offensive here, and the truly offensive ones after the break. Bear in mind that I have my Live account set so that I am not supposed to get any messages from people who aren’t contacts, and yet…they keep coming, and I can’t make them stop.

Once again, I am warning you that the IMs posted are completely offensive, so no freaking out when you see them. Okay? Okay.

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What would you rate a calculator on the age-rating system in the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store? Does a calculator even NEED an age warning? Apparently, according to Apple it does…read on for details, and the absurd way this has been resolved…

PCalc, by TLA Systems, was given a 17+ rating by Apple. Why? Because when you type 5318008 and flip the calculator upside down, it spells (WARNING: NSFW, do not read on if you are easily offended)

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Here’s a quick tale of Snow Leopard incompatibility that was resolved quickly but should not have happened in the first place.

I purchased an upgrade to Roxio’s Toast Titanium Pro at the cost of $100. That’s a pretty expensive upgrade, but the full-featured nature of the application plus the ability to transfer shows recorded on my TiVo and automatically convert them for my iPhone or touch made it worth the price. Problem was, once I upgraded the TiVo transfer would bounce a few times and then crash.

I tried to reinstall the application, but nothing seemed to work. I went back and forth with their customer service, and within a relatively short period of time received this… Continue Reading

While this is not a sports site, nor one that normally writes about this kind of stuff, I had to make an exception. As a father, former college athlete, and fan I have to say that the beginning of the college football season has not given me that warm fuzzy feeling. Last years Oregon vs. Boise State game ended with much animosity, which led to Oregon RB LeGarrette Blount’s pre-game statement saying they must keep their emotions in check…..heh. Well that didn’t turn out very well!

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A new article by Robert Capps at Wired called “The Good Enough Revolution” puts forth an interesting hypothesis: the fundamental definition of Quality has changed from delivering excellence in all areas to delivering something that is ‘good enough’ but very easy to use and accessible.

Here are some examples:
- The Flip Video camera – fairly mediocre camera, but is extremely easy to use and sharing video online is simple.
- MP3 – lower quality sound than CD’s or vinyl, but successful due to ease of access
- Skype – laggy and less reliable, but the free computer to computer calls are good enough for many!
- Web Apps (e.g. Google Docs) – lacking features of full apps, but offer anytime access and are free
- Netbooks – trading a full experience for a smaller one Continue Reading

photo credit: Titanas

Over the past few years, I’ve been watching the disappearance of the independent blog. Like many “industries”, it’s being absorbed into larger organizations where it often becomes depersonalized and sometimes disappears altogether.

Beginning in August of 2007 this started to happen to one of the more popular support sites for Macintosh users – MacFixIt. This site, as well as iPhone Atlas, and VersionTracker, became part of CNET.  And now, Ted Landau – for many people the heart and soul of MacFixIt –  has ended his association with the site altogether.

Since August 2007, the general frequency of posting has declined.  Some people have commented that the quality of posting has declined as well.  I won’t argue that point, but I will say that the site has slowly been losing the ”personal” feel that it used to have.  Now, finally, CNET plans to move the “community” to the CNET forums.  Some people, myself included, wonder if this will ultimately result in the end of this site as an effective resource for Macintosh users.   Ted leaving the site feels like the final nail in the coffin.

These sites (VersionTracker, iPhone Atlas, and MacFixit) and certainly not the only sites to experience this merging process.  In recent times we’ve seen other site like jkontherun also blended into larger organizations.  One argument is that these mergers are necessary to keep the sites financially viable.

Just like the general demise of the mom-and-pop shops in favor of the big “box” stores, this has good and bad aspects.  I tend to think that the current track record (for content quality) seems to lean more toward “bad” than good.

Are you a MacFixIt user or the user of any previously independent site?    What do you think of these mergers?  Do they help keep these sites alive, or do they destroy the quality of the content?

photo credit: gingerbeardman

It seems a lot of different bloggers have made running commentary about the fact that the iTunes App Store has nothing but Fart and Burp Applications on it. That Apple’s boasts about the number of available applications is meaningless, because so many of them are useless apps. Is it really true?

For a while, it seemed that the top 10 applications download lists showed a lot of these types of applications, but then, for less than a buck (or free), that didn’t seem like a big surprise. But how does it really break down? Continue Reading

photo credit: Auntie P

I ran across an article today extolling the virtues of the new Opera Mobile 9.7 running in “turbo” mode and how it beat (mostly) other mobile browsers on the market. On the surface, this is very impressive and Opera are to be commended, but the article, unfortunately, was misleading. While it mentions that OM 9.7 uses server-side rendering to boost speed, it’s mostly only mentions in passing – with the articles focus remaining on how fast OM 9.7 was. Why is this important? Read on to find out what you should know about server-side rendering…

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I’ll ignore the fact that the title of the PCWorld article, “Apple’s iPhone and iPod Monopolies Must Go”, is an obvious attempt to draw readers to it. (Heck, it worked on me didn’t it?)

I’ll ignore the fact that the author does the requisite “I’m not saying I don’t like Apple, I do BUT…..” that is so much a part of these articles.

What I won’t ignore is the fact that he is just dead wrong.

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photo credit: The Consumerist

Yesterday, Sprint announced that they would be entering into a seven year, 4.5 to 5 billion dollar agreement with Ericsson. This sounds like it will basically take all of the network management pressure off of Sprint, allowing them to focus on their customer service and product offerings. Some of the major points, as outlined in their joint press releases,  include:

* Sprint retains full ownership and control of its network assets, and solely owns network strategy and investment decisions.
* Customers will continue to work directly with Sprint employees as their primary contact, as Sprint retains full control of the customer experience, customer technical support and services review.
* Sprint retains technology and vendor selections.
* Ericsson assumes responsibility for the day-to-day services, provisioning and maintenance for the Sprint-owned CDMA, iDEN and wireline networks.
* Ericsson will optimize Sprint’s multi-vendor inventory of assets such as spare parts and transmission equipment, and provide processes and tools for managing the national network platforms and operational support systems.
* The transferred employees ["The transaction calls for about 6,000 Sprint employees to begin performing their network functions as Ericsson employees sometime in the 3^rd quarter. "] will become part of Ericsson Services Inc., a wholly-owned Ericsson subsidiary based in Overland Park, KS, a move that retains jobs in the United States. No force reductions are currently contemplated as a result of this agreement.

That’s the press release version of what’s about to happen. My thoughts rant follows…

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A few weeks back, I wrote about a poor experience I had trying to get help for my broken iPhone 3G (the mute toggle switch broke). The staff was seriously hung up on their process to the point that they wouldn’t even let me show them where the process was broken.

This past weekend, I tried again, but with a different Apple store. This time I went to the Partridge Creek store in the Detroit suburbs. The experience was totally different.

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If you live in the US but travel internationally, you probably already know that using mobile data while out of country can be a pretty expensive proposition.  When my wife and I have traveled overseas, I have generally just used WiFi in our hotels because I didn’t have an air card until recently.

Just how inflated international data costs are for US customers was really driven home for me on a trip to Hungary in March.  Continue Reading

In a blog post dated June 19 and aimed at their Palm Pre developer community Palm appears to give an indication that they’ll be accepting (or at least tolerant) of third party hacks to their new webOS operating system which recently debuted on the Palm Pre. I”m not a developer but from listening to several podcasts (and sleeping in a Holiday Inn Express last night) I’ve deduced that some portions of the webOS code isn’t protected from casual hacking which may create a fertile opening for hackers and developers. But is this a good thing?

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I love my Amazon Kindle. I love reading with it, I love how light it is,  and I love the battery life. I also love the fact that it automatically syncs with the Amazon Kindle application on my iPhone and iPod touch. That means any book will open to the last page read regardless of the device last used.  it is an amazing bit of technology   that makes reading books across multiple platforms beyond simple.

It’s a perfect situation — right? Well, it’s an almost perfect situation. This afternoon I discovered a huge Achilles heel in the whole Amazon Kindle environment.

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Apple has said in the past that from the iPhone 3G onwards, the iPhone product range will be segmented, based not on hardware, but on software. The iPhone 3G S gives an idea of how Apple is working towards this. The iPhone 3G, when upgraded to the new iPhone OS 3.0, lacks the voice-dialing and video recording features of the iPhone 3G S. Apple says that this is because the current iPhone 3G doesn’t have a powerful enough processor to handle these features; when jailbroken, the 3G is able to record video, but at 15 fps instead of the 30 fps of the iPhone 3GS, so we’ll accept Apple’s excuse that it doesn’t want to compromise the iPhone experience. These excuses fall flat with the discovery that the numerical battery life indicator will also be restricted to the iPhone 3G S. Continue Reading