Rogers officially has released the iPhone 4 date which is this Friday like we all assumed it would be. Now how do I fenagel myself on is the question!
A note on pricing reveals that there is a good chance that it is the same as the US but I assume with a 3 year contract like the US. This is from the iPhoneinCanada blog.
Short of taking next Friday off I don’t think that I am going to be able to get my hands on one before I leave on vacation. Friday is iPhone 4 launch in Canada and Saturday morning sometime before the air wakes up I plan to be on the highway towards the Maine coast. Being from Montreal Wells Beach is only 5 hours away (if you haul ass) and I have been going since the wee age of 3.
NOW… The reason my doubt arises is due to the lack of information from Apple or Rogers at this point. In an article written by iphoneincanada.ca I learned that Rogers has release an internal memo to its employees that indeed the iPhone is coming and to “be prepared” but no official outside word as of yet. At this point in the game in the US AT&T had released official information, had a quick way to check eligibility, had confirmed a price and setup a pre-order process. None of these have happened here in Canada. Not that I really am concerned personally with the other Canadian carriers but it hasn’t happened with any of them.
I work for a company that deals with Rogers and so I get a employee plan through them. I contacted my corporate rep this week (ok, this is the 3rd time in the past month I have emailed her – I feel guilty) and she told me that from what she heard they are only getting 50 iPhones for their ~30 store operation. That’s freekin’ nuts! This is where my assumption of a long wait comes in. I know that Apple has had some throughput problems but a release date with no phones is pretty ridiculous and leaves a sting.
Doesn’t mean I won’t get one, just have to wait extra long. Wish me luck :)
Geek on!
Okay everyone knows (who cares) about the iPhone attenuation problems when you bring the 2 antennas on the left side but what is Apple gonna do about it?
Let’s see if this is what the press conference is about today. It can be followed here:
Let’s hope that Apple doesn’t dig themselves a larger PR proverbial whole today. To be honest I am not that scared of the technical problem, I am more scared of a company that denies there is one. With bated breath!
Geek on!
Update – forgot to mention what time!
07:00AM – Hawaii
10:00AM – Pacific
11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
01:00PM – Eastern
06:00PM – London
07:00PM – Paris
09:00PM – Moscow
02:00AM – Tokyo (July 17th)
Turns out some of the posts that I read online yesterday were right. I had no idea it would work but it did!
Whoa Marcus – backup the story a little there! This is what happened to my Blackberry Bold 9000
Yesterday I had just arrived at work and was looking through a few things when I got a call on my cell from one of my colleagues. I pick up the phone and try to answer without luck. The small ‘hourglass’ which is actually a spinning dial on the Bold was going like crazy – and so I couldn’t do a thing! I missed the call and decided to sit the phone on my desk and let it figure itself out. After 10 minutes passed by I got fed up and tried a myriad of reboot attempts to be finally done with a battery pull. Gave it a standard 15 seconds and then put the battery back in.
Now at this point normally the phone’s red LED comes on, it loads up for 5 minutes and everything is cool. This time – NO RED LIGHT :(
No matter what I did I could not get the phone to start up. I tried to take the battery back out and replace it, tried a buddy’s battery, tried plugging it in to the USB on my computer, tried plugging it into the wall, tried resting it on the cradle and all with or without the battery. Nothing! I am thinking dead phone now. This sucks – my Bold couldn’t get me another few weeks until I can get my hands on a new phone (still kinda hoping for an iPhone 4).
Looked at a bunch of articles online and there really wasn’t much out there if even the red LED didn’t come on. It pointed to a dead phone for most people. A couple did mention that they took the battery out of their unit, left it unplugged and didn’t touch it over night and when the plugged it in the next morning it worked.
In the end I had nothing to lose so I gave it a try and sure enough, the BOLD IS BACK!
Remember this if you have a Blackberry. I can only assume that even when you pull the battery there is some residual power left in some of the components and until that is gone it could remain frozen.
Good luck with your problem if you are having one!
In the past 4-5 years there has been an increase in online consumption like never before. Mostly what we see are people consuming old media products through new media services. There are the old media’s website like the 4 big US networks where TV shows can be seen as well as services like Hulu.
The most difficult thing to stream has always been live content. There are services for it that work quite well like uSream and others but for a major event things have been difficult to keep up.
You can really appreciate in the case how far we have come with these services when you look at world cup coverage. In Canada our coverage is given by the CBC. Amazingly enough they have broadcast all the games on the internet as well. The quality is quite simply amazing. If you have a good enough internet connection you will get an HD stream!
Perhaps this is a tip off to the CBC but to be honest it just makes me happy that we live in a time that you can see a game even if you are not in front of a TV.
I also caught someone watching the game on their cell phone but I think that was a Rogers service. When that can come for free as well then we have really turned a leaf!
Geek on!
There a few things that are really easy about running a website. I am involved with a few and have my own, most of them on WordPress which is arguably one of the easiest ways to blog out there.
One of the most common things I am looking for are color code when I am making visual changes to my website. I don’t like to keep things the same forever and so I change themes on occasion. Rarely do the themes look 100% the way I want out of the box and so small changes such as background color are the first things I look at.
Some themes you are lucky enough to have a choice of background color but with most you will have to make a change in the CSS (style sheets). This can be done from the Appearance/Editor option in your WordPress admin panel.
But this little web tool that I am about to share with you isn’t for people who blogging on WordPress, it’s for ANY web admin.
The tool? Just go to http://www.colorpicker.com/!
There you can use the slider and pin point tool to choose your color and shade. The wonderful result is an RGB (red, green, blue) value, a HSB (hue, saturation, brightness value and of course the web color code at the top #000000.
Happy web design :)
My buddy told me today that we can sign up for beta versions of some of the internal Blackberry apps! Go here… now – https://www.blackberry.com/beta.
This site lets you install the newest beta versions of Blackberry software. Right now I am participating in the Blackberry Messenger beta program. It’s nice to have all the new features now in software but keep in mind that betas have problems at times. If you see a problem, do the right thing and report it so that it can be fixed before release. We all have a better product in the end with that strategy.
So what specifically does RIM offer in the Beta program?
(Organizations) BES v5.0.1 for Novell GroupWise(Consumer) Twitter for BlackBerry(Consumer) BlackBerry Feedback Tool(Consumer) AOL Instant Messaging Service for BlackBerry smartphones 2.5 Maintenance Release(Consumer) Google Talk for BlackBerry smartphones 2.5 Maintenance Release(Consumer) ICQ for BlackBerry smartphones 2.5 Maintenance Release(Consumer) Windows Live Messenger for BlackBerry smartphones 2.5 Maintenance Release(Consumer) Yahoo! Messenger for BlackBerry smartphones 2.5 Maintenance Release
Keep in mind one thing. RIM doesn’t make it easy for you to get the program. Downloading takes a lot of hoop jumping with some verifications of address and identity which you have to do with each program you sign up for. Once you sign up they will generate a key code for you.
This will come by email and it is a manual process so don’t get too excited like I did and download the app right away. Right now I have a wonderful new BB messenger that I can’t use until I get that email … BOO!
In a blog post this morning Google has announced that they are releasing Google Navigation for 11 new countries – Canada being one of them. Well now isn’t that a bit of a game changer. I have a GPS but to have it all in one device; that’s an amazing thing. I have been really excited about the new iPhone, the multitasking, the new camera and all the apps possibilities but now these kinds of things (conveniently being announced now) make me think.
My issue living in Canada is up to date availability. I am pretty much locked in with Rogers. We have to sign contracts to get good deals which sucks. I am used it to it, but it sucks. The iPhone will be available for Rogers but I really wish an Android model newer than version 1.6 would come along. I think Telus has a 2.0 model but it doesn’t help me much.
Given that Google has released this new Maps Navigation feature in Canada if Rogers were to get an Android Froyo version phone I would be VERY tempted to go in that direction. Questions would have to be answered regarding the UI however – you never really know what you’ll find until you have the exact model phone. Most of the vendors that use Android now modify the UI for their own unit.
In the end I just want Rogers to give me that option of having to choose. Right now there is no choice. Even a Blackberry – there are some cool models coming so GET ONE! The only issue is that Maps Navigation is only available on Android units.
Geek on!
For many years fun has been poked Microsoft for the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). The thing seems to pop up at the worst times for them, even seen during presentations of Windows XP by Bill Gates before it’s release. Big gaffs but the BSOD does offer good troubleshooting data.
There is a lot of information on the page that probably means a lot of different things but one is very valuable.
The code right after the “*** STOP:” is what is easily searchable. That this example, stick just the “0×00000050″ into Google 
and click on the first item in the results. It is listed as a “STOP: 0×00000050 Page_Fault_In_Non-Paged_Area Error After Installing Service Pack 1 (SP1)”. The real benefit to this link however is that is is Microsoft’s page and they tell you how to fix the error (if you can).
Scroll down to the resolution section and there you will find the step by step instructions on how to fix the error. There 
are usually some hoops to jump through to get your system up and running – keep in mind that the BSOD is a major error. There are times that a resolution might not be a quick software fix unfortunately. It is quite common for BSOD errors to happen on computers that have defective RAM or even motherboard problems. I have replaced many sticks of RAM in the past.
There are instances that the BSOD will just blink and auto-reboot your computer. This is ok if the next time the system starts it is able to function without error but normally if the error happens once, it happens again and again. In that case Microsoft has a How-To for stopping the auto-reboot. The only thing about that article is they tell you to install Windows in a different folder and then edit your original registry. That’s is a major undertaking and can get confusing, so I first recommend booting into safe mode to try and make the registry changes. To do that you can follow this How-To.
Hopefully you had another computer handy to read this article, if not I can only imagine the pain you’ve gone through to get this far.
Geek on!
I completely stole that title from engadget – not because I wanted to re-write their article but because it’s a good title and got me thinking.
Big companies do and say a lot of things and for the most part we either ignore them or we over analyze then. But the over analyzing problem is a problem of the geek. Take the title for example – do you think that if the companies that have a vested interest in the product that would replace print didn’t make bold comments such as this, would it happen? I say no.
Here’s why. It’s a company culture thing. If the goal is to make your e-book reader a success then you need to take market share way from print companies to gain readers. Unless we have another baby boom, the readership market in my opinion won’t grow – people will just shift their medium for consuming that content.
So why do we write an article like this? Well it’s nice to talk about how we think that the predictions will go. Personally I think that this could go either way. Sony makes the statement but they often are the ones making products that are expensive and proprietary. I see them as innovators but not perfectionists. In the end they will help push the market in that direction but it will be other companies that drive the market past their goal.
I remember the Sony Walkman, then the Discman. We all loved the units and everyone had one at one point or another. They were using industry standards in those units and that’s why they were so popular (even if one standard was bought and marketed to standard by them). And that’s what I mean, they owned the standard but it wasn’t perfect. DVDs still aren’t perfect. You know what’s closer to perfection, no disc. Digital formats that reside on the unit.
Anyhow 63 out of 100 people would argue with me about the details regarding the perfection of the CD. That was Sony’s last really cool consumer level strong hold in my books. They drive the industry to standardize the way in which the alternative to print will be delivered but they don’t usually hold a product that makes the market adopt the standard.
Fun stuff.
Geek on!
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ISmashPhone
