Miscellaneous Ramblings....

Well, Christmas seems to be coming a bit early this year, at least for me. Thanks to the combination of my old Sony DVP-S9000ES DVD Player starting to freeze at layer switches and the extremely tempting price cut of the Sony BDP-S1 DVD player (due to the upcoming Sony BDP-2000ES player scheduled to be released at the end of October), I ended up taking the Blu-Ray plunge. Needless to say, the chance to dangle my feel in the Blu-Ray pool for a low price, was just too hard to pass up. (To boot, there was a five free Blu-Ray DVDs offer from Sony if you purchased a qualifying Blu-Ray player by Sept. 30th). One of the first things that I did was the firmware upgrade (from 1.06 to 2.50) I haven't had much time to play throughly with it (outside of upgrading the firmware to the latest level (2.50) ), so a more thorough review will be coming shortly once I get a chance to really play with some Blu-Ray discs and compare a Blu-Ray DVD with a SD DVD that I already own. (Note: I did switch my Netflix account over to Blu-Ray though, which there is no cost for).

iTunes 7.4.3 has been released for Windows only. This update appears to update issues for the iPodTouch for some Windows International versions.

Apple has finally released firmware update 1.1.1 for the iPhone. Of course, folks around the web have been in a tizzy trying to find out if it actually does brick your unlocked iPhone, as Apple has threatened that it would do. Gizmodo and Wireless blog sites (among others) have been running tests to see how badly the new firmware update will break any unlocked or modified iPhone. As for me, since I have Installer.App (otherwise known as Tapp.App) installed and they haven't released a new version that will work with the new Apple firmware, I'll be waiting to do this update. Here is a list of the new features: iTunes WiFi music store support Louder speakerphone and receiver volume Home button double-click shortcut to phone favorites or music controls Space bar double-tap shortcut to insert a period. Mail attachments viewable in portrait or landscape Stocks and cities in Stocks and Weather can be re-ordered Apple Bluetooth Headset battery status in the Status bar Support for TV out Preference to turn off EDGE/GPRS when roaming internationally New passcode lock time intervals Adjustable alert volume Here is a list of the "undocumented" features (compliments of iPhoneAtlas): There is now the ability to change your voicemail password directly from the iPhone. Tap “Settings,” then “Phone,” then “Change Voicemail Password.” You can now change the sound that is played when a new text message is received. Tap “Settings,” then “Sounds,” then “New Text Message.” There is now a “Debug console” for Safari, which shows HTML errors when rendering Web pages. Tap “Settings,” then “Safari,” then “Developer” There are new options for Video playback. You can start playing videos where they left off or from the beginning, and you can use closed captioning. Tap “Settings,” then “iPod.” Update (09/28/07): ArsTechnica also has a detailed article on what works and what doesn't with the new iPhone 1.1.1 firmware update (among other things, allegedly non-iTunes store ringtones are busted).

I got to have my first serious iPhone issue last week. Suddenly, I could not get any sound from my earpiece. The speakerphone and Bluetooth headset worked just fine, but no sound from the earpiece (as luck would have it, I discovered this when trying to talk to the service station that was repairing my car ). I tried power-cycling the iPhone with no luck and was thinking the worst: hardware issue --> several days of using a rental iPhone while sending my phone in to be repaired. I decided to try the Apple Genius Bar to see if they had any ideas (at least before having to send the iPhone in). The good news is that I found out that there can be three methods to try and get the sound on the earpiece back: Try putting putting an set of headphones (just in case the iPhone still thinks an earpiece is still connected) Hard reset (accomplished by simultaneously hold both the "Home" button and the "On/Off" switch for 20 - 30 seconds. Restoring the iPhone to factory defaults. (Note: this will wipe out any WiFi passwords as well any pictures that you have locally stored on iPhone) The good news is that if the above three didn't work (actually option #3 worked), the store would have changed out my SIM card into a new phone. As a side perk, the person who was helping me had modified his iPhone with the Installer.App (he also mentioned that pretty much all of the workers who owned iPhone have installed this app). Needless to say, as soon as I got home, I had it loaded and was happily loading themes as well as applications (most notably, my long wanted OpenSSH server, native IM client and terminal app). It is very easy to set up Installer.App and once installed on your iPhone, you just select which additional applications that you want. The app even alerts you if you violate application dependencies (here is a nice tutorial on it and an interesting interview with the creator of the software). This story is interesting against the backdrop of stories of unlocked/hacked iPhones being refused service and being blacklisted at Apple Genius Bars. Of course, it will be interesting to see what happens when Apple comes out with their promised new firmware update.

Yet more rumors of a new iPhone in Q1_2008 that will have both GPS and 3G support. Also, AT&T is set to upgrade their network to 3G as well.

I have had my iPhone for almost a month now. Below is the summarization of the good points and bad points of my first true smart phone. The good points: User Interface Google Maps (of course would be even more impressive      with an embedded GPS) Web browsing experience (even with Safari crashes)      much better than any other mobile device. The bad points (rough edges ): No 3G Support Missing GPS No cut-n-paste Unstable Safari browser (still crashes entirely too much for      my liking) (temporarily corrected by power-cycling the unit) No easy way to sync notes or pictures taken with the iPhone      (although you can attach the pictures in an email). Without question, I think Apple has made a step in the correct direction with this new phone, despite the obvious shortcomings. Coming soon: some of my favorite iPhone links...

Since September 30th (release date for the iPodTouch) is rapidly drawing closer, here is a good article detailing some of the differences between the iPhone and the upcoming iPodTouch. (Here is another article that one of my co-workers sent me as well).

If you regularly use the Google Maps or Safari browser apps on the iPhone, you will have undoubtedly been frustrated by the constant crashes. There are several theories behind what is causing this, one of them being a possible memory leak in the apps. This seems to be highly probably, since a (soft) reboot of the iPhone seems to correct the problem (at least temporarily). Here's hoping that Apple corrects the problem in an upcoming software update soon.

Firefox 2.0.0.7 has been released. This release fixes the following Quicktime security issue. Here are the release notes for the interested.

I have been using Quicksilver for the past couple of months (thanks to a co-worker) and have been happy ever since. A very nice launcher application which is highly customizable and very easy to learn. For the uninitiated, here are some handy Quicksilver sites: Quicksilver Forums Quicksilver Docs Screencast: Quicksilver for beginners 43Folders: Quicksilver Articles AppleBlog: Quicksilver Tutorial Roundup Note: For those in the Windows world, there is Launchy, which is a close equivalent.

iTunes 7.4.2 has been released. It looks like in addition to fixing the issue with creating ringtones out of iTunesPlus music, it looks like you'll have to do some more extension flipping in order to get your own ringtones to continue to work (supposedly, iToner is still supposed to work). The battle continues.... (and for those who doubt just how greedy the RIAA can be, just read this article. I particularly like the fact that the RIAA doesn't have to pay the artists royalties, but still wants to be able to collect the royalties)

This weekend while hiking in the St. Croix State Park, I ended up with more excitement then I bargained for. It seems that a black bear decided he would also go hiking on the same trail that I was - color me scared! Fortunately (for me), the bear ran off away from me. The state park staff thought it was cool that I saw a bear, which was not quite the thought that I had (I would have preferred to see leaf-eating deer).
Fortunately, my hiking trip the next day in Afton State Park was a lot less eventful - only human wildlife encountered.

I have been using the nice Mac OSX Finder replacement: Pathfinder for several months now. It has many nice features, which includes a nice tabbed feature, superior layout, and it also easily allows you do operations on groups of files via the handy "drop stack" window. Today I inadvertently found another nice perk of Pathfinder. Somehow the "Invisible" attribute had been checked on my portable USB drive, which caused it to stop showing up on the desktop and in the OSX Finder, even though the drive was mounted as verified from the command line. Since there were no error messages in the system log, nor any issues when the drive was looked at in the Disk Utility, nor any permissions problems on the root level of the drive, I was temporarily stumped. Fortunately, the USB drive did show up in Pathfinder, enabling me to easily take a look at the attributes of the drive and correct the offending attribute. Note: Here is a handy reference for being able to view and modify attributes from the command line (in case you don't have Pathfinder installed) (and here is the online man page for SetFile, since the link in above reference page is incorrect).

For all you Adobe Lightroom users, Adobe Lightroom 1.2 has been released. In addition to adding camera compatibility, it has also has other improvements, including better XMP auto-write performance, as well as noise reduction for Bayer-patterned sensors.

For those users who still have to use Windows, there is the iRapp application, which will let you run applications residing on your Mac on your Windows desktop.