Net Neutrality steps into a twilight zone
Now why would I say that? Google and Verizon announced yesterday (August 9, 2010) their joint statement on “an Open Internet.” [Verizon] [Google]
I can read the statement two ways. [Read more…]
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Unusable 3G iPhones?
Is the iPhone 3G so slow it’s unusable?
They’re taking a bit of an extreme position, but in an article Is Apple Making iPhone 3G Totally Unusable To Force Upgrade? TechPulse360 hypothesizes that Apple is forcing an (equipment) upgrade on its customers by making iOS 4 run so slowly on the original 3G iPhones that they’re basically unusable. If course Apple execs aren’t that stupid. But they certainly did not test enough before releasing the system upgrade.
I reported to Apple about ten days ago[1] that my 3G iPhone was balky and not reacting quickly enough to taps, and I wrote on Friday last week that a “genius” at the Apple Store had blown me off when I told him I wanted to talk with him about why my 3G phone was so slow. He told me to reset the phone to factory conditions and suggested that everything would be fine after that. He didn’t even tell me to come back later to check in—he just said go reset my phone. In other words, go fix the product myself. He really did not want to talk about it.
Apple wouldn’t acknowledge there was any problem
I really did feel like very few people were seeing or acknowledging this problem. And that perhaps I was one of very few people experiencing this slowness. Except that the AppleCare guy did say he was hearing this a lot…hmmm.
So finally I did reset my phone. And it didn’t make it any faster. It was still balky and stuttering when I tried to touch or drag on the screen. It was so frustratingly difficult to interact with that I just wanted to trash the iPhone and get a DroidX. I was/am that mad!
Reset didn’t help— but removing apps did!
However, today when I removed a bunch of apps from my upgraded 3G iPhone, it did help quite a bit. I removed everything that has/had “push” notifications (New York Times, AP Mobile, LinkedIn, Facebook and a bunch of others—13 in total) or might be running in a background mode. I don’t know that any or all of them were the culprits, but I got rid of a long list of apps. And today, on a long urban hike, I ran EveryTrail (one of my favorite apps!) and a whole bunch of other apps with only a bit of slowness from time to time. Mostly I encountered the slowness when I was trying to slide the green button to open the phone after it had been sleeping for a while…like when I was trying to answer a call, which still can be a challenge with the slow 3G and the upgraded OS.
Give us a downgrade path!
TechPulse360 is calling for Apple to offer a downgrade path back to iOS 3 — and I certainly agree with them. I’d like to be able to at least answer calls, and currently the phone is slow enough that this is difficult to do before the call jumps to voicemail.
[1] I called AppleCare, and a great tech took me through a discussion of why it might be slow, including suggesting that I drop some of the more demanding apps, like FaceBook and LinkedIn. And he suggested I visit the Genius Bar at an Apple Store for more help.
Volunteers are donors and investors
{File under Pitfalls of Startup Organizations…}
Every unpaid volunteer; every pro-bono professional; everyone working on some project without pay; all of them are investing in their particular futures. This is particularly true for nonprofit startups.
And I mean to use specifically that word—investing—this means they are giving of their talent and time with some hope or expectation that things will work out in a particular (and good) way in the future. They have some vision of what they are working toward. A truth that so few nonprofit CEOs understand is that volunteers are actually donors and they deserve the same respectful treatment as donors. [Read more…]
Differentiating “geeks” from… whatever
Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you are described as a geek it’s not exactly a compliment? (I always mean it as a compliment, comeon!) That’s because people don’t fully understand the words nerd, dork, dweeb and geek. Here’s the explanation as a cool Venn diagram.
Thanks to Xeni at BoingBoing for pointing it out. And click the diagram to see how the terms relate.
Also see Traveling Geeks. Not Traveling Dweebs, Traveling Nerds or Traveling Dorks.
And here’s an interesting bestiary of geekdom, listing many different types of geeks. I know a few who fall into some, but not all, of the categories.
Electronic Picture Frames are getting lots better
I’ve been playing with electronic picture frames for almost two years. I started with a Ceiva frame two years ago, because it was capable of placing a phone call (modem) to pick up photos, and this frame was for a relative who doesn’t have access to any Internet services at all. It seemed like it would be perfect. It functioned well, held about a hundred photos (I bounced against its capacity, but it wasn’t annoying at all), and the only problem for me was the yearly fee for the dial-up service. But it meant that I could upload photos and within 24 hours they’d appear in the frame on the other side of the US. (If you’re like me, you write a paper letter once a year, to that rare relative who hasn’t yet gotten an email address—so sending photos electronically is a breeze compared to printing out those photos and writing a letter.) Continue reading to see what has happened in the last two years… [Read more…]