Drop.io Twitter Integration

Drop.io, a nicely implemented file transfer service, just added support for Twitter. Now Drop.io users can set up a drop to update tweet when it changes. Pretty cool. The cool guys at Drop.io are calling it Tweet.io. You add just about anything to a drop, even a voice mail, so the use cases are pretty endless.

iPhone 3G Availability

If you happen to be pining away for a 3G iPhone (I'm not) you can visit this link to check iPhone availability. Apple updates the page throughout the day so I think it's fairly accurate.

Disappointed iPhone Owners Abound

I stumbled into a post on the Signal vs. Noise blog by David today looking for a solution to my iPhone woes. iPhone 2.0: The glory wore off in wash describes David's frustration with the iPhone 3G/2.0. It's a good post and David's experience with the latest iPhone firmware mirrors my own. Boo..... Boo.....

There were 69 comments associated with the post and the bulk of them were from unhappy iPhone owners echoing David's complaints - I expected more Apple zealots to jump up and defend the mighty iPhone but they were largely absent.

I'm really disappointed with the upgrade and I sure hope Apple produces an update to resolve the problems quickly. I can tell you one thing - business users are going to hate the under powered and poor performing iPhone 3G/2.0. If it isn't a good phone 1st - what's the point?

Orvis: Round up for Charity

 

I love fly fishing and my passion for it grows every year. Someday, when I'm an old man and near retirement, I'll actually have some time for it ; ) Meanwhile, I can buy fly fishing stuff in preparation for the future and those few days I actually do get to go out. Yesterday, a friend pointed me towards a great bargain on Orvis.com. Needless to say I just couldn't pass up the bargain so I struck on the Add to Basket link and headed for the checkout.

During the checkout process I noticed a slick little Round up for Charity feature. It gave me the option to round my order total up to the nearest $1.00, $5.00, all the way up to $100.00. The screen shot above is from my cart. Notice that it even tells me where the money will be going - in this case my contribution will go to the Tiger Guard Campaign. I didn't donate much, I was pressed for time, but the fact that Orvis spent the time to implement this feature really made me feel good about making the purchase with them and I'm pretty sure I'll shop with them more often because of it. Kudos Orvis! Well done, and thank you.

How much money do you think this program is pulling in for charity? I'd like to see the option to Round up for Charity in more shopping carts. 

ScribeFire / Testing / Testing

This is a test post from the ScribeFire FireFox blogging add-on. I took ScribeFire for a spin a year ago and found that it didn't quite meet my needs but they've improved it a lot since then so I'm taking it around the block again.

ScribeFire, an extension of FireFox, enables users to easily drag and drop formatted text from the Web into their blog(s), post entries, take notes, and optimize their ad inventory, directly through the Firefox browser.

Google DOCS / Google DOCS "Share this document" feature busted in Firefox 3.0

I was trying to share a Google DOC with two co-workers this morning and ran into this problem again in FireFox 3.0. Notice the strangely absent text box for your invites below Invite people? I had to load docs.google.com up in IE to share the DOC. Annoying - not the 1st time I've seen this problem. Pretty sure I experienced it in in FireFox 2.x for a while as well. Come on people.

 

 

 

My Wife's Brain

Well, this isn't the kind of picture of a loved one you get to see everyday. My wife is about to have surgery for an ear condition and a CAT Scan was part of the pre-opp. Wow. Weird. You can even see her hair in this. A picture like this should be in every family photo album.

iPhone 2.0 / emailing a geotagged picture to Flickr

Emailing a geotagged picture to Flickr doesn't work.

I've been trying to send geotagged pictures to my Flickr account via email. Guess what. iPhone 2.0 strips the EXIF data (that's where the geo tag is) out of the picture before it emails it. Dumb. Why? Security? iPhone users are way past the security issue. Flickr users are talking about it here. I hope Apple fixes this soon.

Update: lockergnome pointed me towards AirMe (available on Apple's AppStore) for geotagged uploads to Flickr.

iPhone 2.0 update - Tardy Developer

One of the guys on my team was late coming in this morning. Why? The iPhone 2.0 update didn't restore his recurring alarms. Damn, you Jobs. Were you late today because of your iPhone 2.0? Maybe I'm just a sucker ; )
--------------------------------------------

UPDATE:

Turns out the iPhone 2.0 upgrade did not copy over my recurring alarm
clock. Damn you, Jobs.

On Jul 14, 2008, at 10:00 AM, Alex Boone wrote:

> Hey guys-
>
> I feel really stupid but I overslept my alarm this morning (by a
> long shot). I'll be in the office ASAP.

iPhone 2.0 update = FRUSTRATION

Friday, July 11th, I loved Apple and hated Apple. I hated Apple because the iPhone 2.0 update bricked my iPhone for a good part of the morning. Restarting iTunes over and over again, hoping for a connection to the Apple update server, isn't my idea of a good time. I loved Apple for the App Store and adding Microsoft Exchange support to the iPhone.

By the end of the day, I was impressed, and felt good about the update. I was still an Apple fan.

After having spent the weekend with the update I'm frustrated. Battery life is a problem for me now and it wasn't before and for some reason the phone likes to shut down completely when I leave it alone for too long. Most likely, some of these problems can be attributed to one, or more,  of the 3rd party applications I downloaded from the App Store. But shouldn't Apple do a better job of protecting the core of the phone from poorly written App Store applications? After all, they do a pretty job of protecting the core of the U.I. from poorly written applications.

iPhone 2.0 might have more bling but iPhone 1.0 was a better phone. iPhone 2.0 will get better with time but I won't be too surprised if some people want their iPhone 1.0 back. Did Apple add too much bling to iPhone 2.0? Apple, remember this, in the end - it's a phone. Still an Apple fan.

1st Apple AppStore Purchase

I just purchased my 1st iPhone app through the Apple App Store. What did I buy? Joe Kueser's Fuel Gauge (iTunes link) for .99 cents. Fuel Gauge is currently #9 on the App Store Top 25 list. I'm going to use it to see just how much gas my 84 Toyota Land Cruiser is sucking down.

The purchase process was amazingly easy. I think the App Store and more importantly the iPhone apps are going to fuel some major growth in Apple's share of this market. Contrasting this experience with my experience installing apps on Microsoft-based SmartPhones - no comparisson.

IMO, developers are going to flock to this platform because it does so much to provide the commerce infrastructure and it doesn't take a whole lot (because Apple provides so much in terms of U.I. guidance and coding tools) to write something that's pretty handy for the iPhone.

WOW - I'm really impressed with the 2.0 upgrade so far. I'm also really like the addition of Microsoft Exchange Support - it's interfacing with our Zimbra server perfectly.

iPhone 2.0 update = Error

Accessing iTunes Store........
Accessing iTunes Store........
Accessing iTunes Store........
Accessing iTunes Store........

Error

Early this morning, I anxiously slipped my battle hardened 1st GEN iPhone into the warm embrace of its' docking craddle this morning to receive the update we've both been anticipating for so long. Nearly shaking, I clicked the button to check for an update in iTunes hoping that the coveted update would be available to my anxiously waiting iPhone. It is! Hooray! I clicked the appropriate buttons to start the update process and sat back to check email and sip my steaming coffee. It's going to be a good day. The stock market might be coming apart on bad news from the mortgage companies and increasing oil prices but the iPhone 2.0 update is here so it's all good.

Error We could not complete you iTunes Store request. An unknown error occurred (-4)
There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.

Crap, maybe the world really is coming unglued. Now I'm stuck without a phone and I feel like my trusted iPhone doesn't know who I am anymore. Will it wake up and remember me? Come back friend. My coffee is cold now and it's NOT all good here.

I'm not the only one - there are others.

UPDATE 07/11 9:47AM P TIME: Getting some traction with the iTunes store. Restoring and activating now - looks like my phone an I are going to be OK.

UPDATE 07/11 10:11AM P TIME: Still having problems with iTunes and connecting to the iTunes Store but my phone managed to Activate and Restore.

Your blog stinks when ...

You know your blog is really starting to stink when your Google Adsense ads are all public service announcements sponsored by Google. It's really starting to feel like the blog is being replaced by the popular social media tools and more recently social media aggregators like friendfeed. Steve Makofsky over at furrygoat 2.0 is feeling it too - Whither the Blog?

I Love Dogs - Young and Old

I just love dogs - old dogs and young dogs - handsome dogs and even ugly dogs just like this one. I pulled this off a post on IH8MUD Landcruiser Forum in a total state of disbelief - this just has to be a movie prop of some kind. What would you do if you saw this K9 running for you down the sidewalk?

I told you that if you to come over to try to steal my 45 my dog would probably go for the ride with you. You just have to watch out for the creppy neighbor dog. - Leaping Deer

followed by ...

Looks like my ex. - jsaltlick

Update: My friend Jake Weatherly just informed me that this dog is in fact the real deal. Apparently, it won some kind of "ugly dog" competition at some point. A Google image search turns up all kind of ugly dogs. I had no idea.

3G iPhone?

Pogue, Mossberg, and Baig 3G iPhone reviews appear. Shiver me timbers. What's the verdict? Good summary of their reactions over on CNET's Crave blog. Personally, I think I'm going to see if the software upgrade for my 1st generation iPhone can meet my needs before I consider the upgrade. Also, I'm kind of interested in finding out how long my 1st generation iPhone can take the abuse before it fails.

What are you going to do?

Walle-e

I had the opportunity to see Pixar's new animated movie WALL-E over the July 4th weekend. The movie was an absolute pleasure to watch for me and my kids. Hancock was good but WALL-E was better.

WALL-E has it all - a great story, amazing animation, great sound, robot love, and creativity packed into every second. WALL-E is also a delivery platform for an important message. The movie makes it very clear that if we don't do something to change our "Buy Everything Large" way of living that we're going to destroy our planet. The movie makers aren't subtle about delivering this message. Earth is a trash pit no longer capable of supporting life, humans are so large they can't walk anymore, we've lost the ability to read and communicate, and robots have to do just about everything for us. The message is presented in a fun way, targeted more at the adults in the theater, so my kids didn't quite get it but it gave us something to talk about later. It's a scary message and I think the timing for it is perfect. I applaud the makers of WALL-E for using their success to get this message out. I just hope people listen.

SIDE NOTE: I wonder if the makers of the movie signed-off on the cheap WALL-E watches the theaters were giving out to the kids opening weekend? I'm guessing that more than 1/2 of them are already in the trash headed for a landfill.