Category: Technology

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Jet Blue – IAD to MCO

I am going to write as this flight progresses from IAD to MCO.

[14:30]
I was originally at a window seat with my brother and mother being the other two in my row. However, since we had a group of 16, there was an odd cousin who was sitting by herself. She asked to switch seats and after a little merry go round, my dad ended up in my row, my cousin across that row with a couple of other relatives and me in an empty row by myself.

[17:00]
There isn’t anything to complain right now as each seat has it’s own tv and with an empty row, it means I have multiple screens to watch. Right now I have ESPNews and GOLTV on which has been showing ridiculous goals since the flight took off.

[17:10]
The flight has been quite turbulent so far, definitely the most turbulence I’ve ever felt on a flight in my very light career in the air.

[17:29]
I was thinking about taking a nap by the crew came around asking what kind of drinks we want and I’m not going to nap and pass up my free drink.

Also on a side note, I just saw ESPN’s My Wish piece with Jimmy Rollins and a kid named Shaq. Such a great series that ESPN does once a year… great stuff.

[17:32]
Drinks are still not here and the yawns are getting more frequent. I’m not sure I’ll make it staying awake much longer.

[17:45]
The most ridiculous Ben Stiller movie is on. I just can’t remember the name right now but it’s the one with the museum and everything in it comes to life including dinosaurs and explorers such as Louis and Clark.

[18:02]
Even with all the turbulence, the arrival time is still 5 minutes ahead. It has been a pretty quick flight even though I have stayed awake the entire time… and for those that know me, that doesn’t happen very often.

[18:12]
The decent is well under way now. The sun is shining brightly through my window as I type this and the cars are very visible down on the street below. A much more populated area than I expected Orlando to look from up here but it could be that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

A cousin just asked aloud if you can see Dwight Howard from here and I’m sure if he was standing up on the ground, he would be visible.

Current weather looks very sunny, temperature was announced to be in the high 80s but the clouds here look to be very ominous. Please weather, do behave for my duration here until Wednesday.

[18:25]
Approaching the MCO Airport and here’s the land on the runway. A little bumpier than the other ones I have been on but I’m sure the weather had much to do with that.

I’m also pretty sure that I just saw a lightning strike a bit far away but the weather here again is still looking to be pretty good.

A very smooth flight overall and awesome JetBlue staff really showing why they are rated #1 in customer service.

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iPhone OS 3.0 Review

Although I was less than pleased with the iPhone 3G S, the OS 3.0 has been a bundle of joy so far. The long awaited copy/paste as well as deleting/forwarding individual texts and e-mail multiple pictures at once.

I’ll just go through the top 5 that I thought they were most important and you can view the gallery of photos at the end of the post of some of the other features.

1. Copy and Paste

It is about time that OS update 3.0 finally gives you the ability to copy, cut and paste text. If you double tap on a white space, then Select and Select All appear but if you do it on given word, it is highlighted with the options of copy and cut are displayed. This copy paste works across every app on the phone I tried from Twitterific to Safari to Messages to Mail. It definitely makes things a lot easier when copying a link into Twitterific and then having it use its compress URL feature while using Twitter.

2. Deleting / Forwarding Individual Text Messages

This is probably one of the hit or miss things depending on how much you use the forwarding text message feature. I often get a lot of news or sports update that I want to send over to a friend out of state or even just update my brother, but that was a very tedious task before where you just had to type everything over again.

The way to use it is by going into the messages window, selecting Edit on the top right part of the window. This brings you to an edit screen where you can select a single or multiple messages that you either want to delete or forward on.

3. Undo Feature

If you accidentally delete some text, one that you accidentally cut instead of copying or you pasted something that you didn’t want to, you can just simply shake your iPhone and a pop up appears asking if you want to undo your action. Clever move by Apple, very useful.

4. Landscape Texting / E-mail

Another one of the features that is not for everyone but landscape texting is definitely a good option. If you’re trying to read a long e-mail, it definitely is very useful but for texting or writing an e-mail, there just isn’t enough room for me to use it consistently. The landscape keyboard takes up a lot of real estate of the screen but it’s useful for a long text message… but not necessarily for a long e-mail.

5. Spotlight / E-mail Search

The ability to search across the entire phone is very useful. It searches contacts, calendars as well as the body of e-mail messages amongst others. I don’t see myself using the search feature very often but I can see it being quite useful for others. In the past few days though, I have used it to find an old email and even once for an old calendar event. I guess it is a little efficient if you have a lot of pages of apps and you would rather search for it instead of scrolling to the last page to find it.

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Apple and the Environment

In my continuing assessment of Apple products and customer care and sometimes a lack of common sense, I think I have finally figured out why Apple products usually cost a million times more with them than anywhere else. Take a look at the tracking page from FedEx at the bottom of the post.

I believe this order was for a replacement headset that was covered under the AppleCare Protection Plan. No wonder this headset costs $29.00 if you buy it regularly since it is getting a 2-day shipping from Shenzhen, China to Hoboken, NJ.

A 0.2 lbs package being shipped half way around the world for something cost a maximum $2 to make. Also, I’m not sure what FedEx charges Apple but I’m guessing it is much less than the $30 quote that I got for a package of the same size shipping from and to the same location as the one above. (Converting the 216.14 Yuan is about $30 USD.) It’s probably safe to say that if Apple is charging $29 for a single headset, not being charged very much from FedEx and in the bulk amounts that they make these accessories, the profit they must be making

Disregard the monetary costs for a second and look at the carbon footprint being applied for a $2 headset. Apple means to tell us that there wasn’t a single headset in the entire United States that they could have shipped instead? Do all their orders for replacement accessories get shipped from China regardless of their destination?

But let us not forget Apple and the Environment, where they explicitly state that “Apple recognizes its responsibility as a global citizen and continually strives to reduce the environmental impact of the work we do and the products we create.” I suppose that responsibility stops once they “create” these products and does not carry over when they are actually shipping them out to customers.

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Error 500 Internal Service Errors

For quite a longest time, I had suffered from what seemed to be random “error 500” messages that would appear when I was updating a plugin on my blog or even when I wanted to upload some stuff on to it. I thought maybe it was something with WordPress following an update, then I thought it was my hosting provider (1and1 – which has been a really awesome host) but today I think I might have finally found a solution.

Many thanks to Sascha at Design For Unity where I found the solution but it was rather simple. Hopefully it continues to work. If you are having the same problem, just follow the steps below:

1. Open the .htaccess file in your root folder. If no such file exists, just create a blank notepad file and save it as “.htaccess”. Make sure there is no .txt appended to the end of the file name, just “.htaccess”.

2. Add these lines in the file:

Options All -Indexes

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

3. Save and hopefully everything should be working now.

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I Won’t Be Getting The iPhone 3G S

I just upgraded to the new OS with it’s new search feature, forward/deleting individual text messages, landscape format in the mail and SMS apps is also a big boost. I will probably post later this week or early next week on my initial impressions but so far, it is good.

As for the new iPhone 3G S (who came up with that name anyways?!), there are many reasons as to why I will not be buying it. You can start listing off the reasons varying from it’s price to lack of new features to even the exclusive carrier that has it.

The price which is $199 16GB and $299 32GB ($399 and $499 for ineligible upgraders) seems relatively reasonably priced with where they were last year and even compare it to other smartphones that are out on the market, I won’t complain too much about the $200 price tag for a new customer. As for the previous customers, you (and me included), signed up for a 2-year contract and for no reason does AT&T (as much as I hate them) have to give you any sort of discount for something you already agreed you would pay for. It would a nice PR performance on their part but expecting this from a company, that will charge you every single penny for the upcoming tethering and continues to delay the MMS capability that even the very simplest of phones have, is too much to ask for.

For me, I just don’t see the need to dish out another $300+ for a phone that is quite similar to the one I already own. I will just wait until next summer as my contract is reaching 20-21 months, right in time for next year’s WWDC.

As for the new features, I am just not very impressed. The compass and maybe the Nike+ capability in the new phone is something I really liked but I can’t say that is enough warrant for ditching the one I have. I will patiently wait for MMS to come out later this summer, possibly go back to JB and use a 5-icon dock and video camera. If you are big video editing enthusiast, I guess you could like the video camera and its capabilities but that are similar to things already available in the 3G (through Jailbreak). I don’t see the need to buy a new phone, re-up your contract for another two years just for that.

AT&T which seems to hold exclusive rights to the iPhone until the end of time seems to be doing all that it can to continuously irritate its current customers. ‘Sympathy’ isn’t a word I will use when describing the plight of the iPhone user considering there are more important things a person can accomplish with another phone and saving their money, but surely a company who is in the business needs to do a better job handling its PR problems — something they seem to have with every major product launch or announcement. Come on guys, you’re bound to get things right soon enough.