dfbills.com blog

Flipping through the iPhone manual, I happened upon this nugget of info.

“For optimal mobile device performance and to be sure that human exposure to RF energy does
not exceed the FCC guidelines, always follow these instructions and precautions: When on a
call using the built-in audio receiver in iPhone, hold iPhone with the 30-pin connector
pointed down toward your shoulder to increase separation from the antenna.”

Translation: Keep you hand off of the plastic antenna cover.

I wondered if anyone had measured changes in signal strength when “holding the iPhone properly” and sure enough Nate True posts “iPhone tip - want better EDGE speeds? Take your hand off the antenna”  He claims that he sees a 50% speed increase.  It seems a bit faster to me, but who knows.

AOL has declared Netscape dead.  Has this not happened before?  “AOL Cuts Remaining Mozilla Hackers” (2003)

Most people have considered it dead for quite some time.  How many people have even heard of Netscape 9.0?  Asking around, none of the developers I know have. 

This might be the end of the AOL Netscape era, but certainly not the end of Mozilla.  Anyone ever heard of Firefox?  How about Seamonkey or Camino?

If you can read this, my 6-week nightmare with Media Temple hosting is over.  Since switching, I had one problem after another…  from their entire service being down for almost 24 hours to extreme slowdowns.. can you say 30 sec php load times?  (9.4 secs for my homepage at the time of writing)

They pride themselves on friendly, knowledgeable tech support.  They were friendly, but certainly not knowledgeable.  I found them more interested in recapping the phone conversation that actually helping out.  I was given incorrect information, the classic run-around, told there was nothing I could do but wait – and frankly my patience ran out.  They gave me three free months of hosting, but honestly I don’t want it.

If you are thinking of hosting your website with Media Temple- don’t.

The list of shame:

- Less than 10 hours notice before 24 hours of downtime
- Performance 10x slower than my previous shared host
- Processing time overages with no warning (I guess should have been monitoring myself.  Although this is tough to do when there are no debug tools and the readout is more than an our behind realtime.)
- Lost email (But hey, my spam count was way down.)
- Snide & not helpful phone tech support (they’re geeks just like you, only less helpful)
- Who asks for text account passwords over the phone?
- All marketing and no muscle

I’ve been wondering why the little “E” on my iPhone sometimes was filled in, appearing as a solid block.  Apple illuminated me today.

The new Statz app from Google mac playground starts off with a real bang:

“You are a social networking maniac.  You’ve got your crew on IRC, peeps on Skype and buddies on Adium.”

As for the functionality, meh.  It only supports Skype and iChat. 

Here are my 10 early predictions for MacWorld 2008.

1. Re-clarification of iTunes video strategy

A new deal with NBC-Universal (I wish)
Stronger AppleTV implementation
AppleTV gets capacity upgrade and direct iTunes store access
Movie rentals

2. Best Christmas numbers ever

The trend continues even as some actual challengers appear for iTunes.  Awesome Leopard sales, Mac hardware, iPods and iPhones.

3. No iTablet

This just makes no sense to me.  There’s a reason we don’t see more tablets in the wild- they aren’t the correct form factor.  And the mini-cds?  C’mon.

4. A new multi-touch product

The technology is incredible and has hit mainstream this year with Micosoft Surface and iPhone.  Apple will be looking to exploit their R&D costs and innovation with a new product.  Perhaps a new display series?

5. Updated portables

The MacBook Pro external design hasn’t changed in the 6 years since the introduction of the PowerBook G4.  During that time we’ve seen the introduction of several iterations of the iBook and the introduction of the MacBook.  For a bit of perspective, just think- in January 2001, the iBook still looked like a toilet seat.

6. Updated iPhone storage

Why should the Touch get all the 16GB fun?

7. New iPhone software

Time to show off some new gee-wiz features.  A virtual GPS, iChat and games would top my wish list.

8. Preview of new iPhone product

Probably some new form factors and price points.  Maybe even without the “touch” factor- think keys.

9. Preview of 3rd-party iPhone apps

Apple will parade a few developers on stage to show the incredible apps they developed in mere moments with the amazing SDK.

10. New ads

And to round out #10.. there always seems to be an ad or two in keynote presos.  This will be no different.

One more thing

A special performance by John Mayor. 

At long last, Sam Steele’s MobileScrobbler iPhone app has been released via Installer.app.  This is the first AudioScrobbler / Last.FM social music client.  As you listen to music on your iPhone or iPod Touch, MobileScrobbler sends the title, artist, and album to the Last.fm website. Last.fm uses this information to suggest new music, new friends, concerts, and events based on the music you listen to.

* Automatically submits songs as you listen to them
* Works over EDGE or Wifi
* Queues songs when you’re in an area with no signal
* Runs as a native application, not inside Safari
* Source code available under GNU General Public License version 2

Apple has improved the compatibility of Leopard’s Mail.app messages in one key way- you can now truly attach files instead of embedding.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been annoyed with the process of trying to get an attachment to precisely go at the very end of a message.

This is important because Microsoft Outlook often does not display inline attachments in a meaningful manner.  Most users won’t even see them and if they do, it’s probably because the Microsoft Exchange server broke the inline attachment and signature out of your email and made them both attachments.  Ugh.
 
Poster Allen Hancock on MacOSXHints calls it “Send ‘real’ attachments in Mail messages.”

The option is located on the “Edit” menu under the “Attachments” option.

I know I’ve seen mobiletorrent mentioned before, but a BitTorrent Client for iPhone is just crazy.

From the Google Code page:

Warning

The use of BitTorrent is heavily network intensive and may breach the terms of your cellphone contract if used over EDGE, not to mention possibly incurring phenomenal cost if not on an unlimited data plan. Thus, this application (when complete) will not permit Torrents to download if the iPhone is not connected to the internet over Wifi.

Finally, the WebKit team has added support for Enhanced Rich Text Editing in version 3.  One less reason to fireup ‘ole clunky Mac Firefox. 

Check it out- just click the text and editing controls appear.