Cloud Computing, Life

Based on early reports, I was a little worried that I would have a problem updating my iPhone to 1.1.1. You see, I have a little confession to make. I did what you might call a "mini-unlock". When I got my iPhone, I used this program: http://www.dvdtoiphone.net/unlock-iphone.html to "unlock" it. It does not do a "SIM unlock" but instead allows you to get access to the iPhone UI even though the handset has not been activated. I used it to play around with the iPhone for a few days before I finally activated it. Luckily I was spared the "new reality" imposed by Apple. I was able to do the 1.1.1 update and so far so good. I will be interesting to see the ripple effects of the crack-down, especially in Europe where locked phones are not the norm. Most of my friends report that their 3rd party native apps have been wiped. These types of decisions by Apple, which I understand from a pure profit motive, will undoubtedly cause some of the Apple luster t...

I solved my iPhone-Facebook photo upload problem. In my Facebook account I added a flickr application. Then from my iPhone I can directly email my photos from the iPhone to the flickr account. The images then show up in Facebook.

Here is the sequence I mentioned before when trying to browse to Yahoo Japan from my Blackberry 8800. The error is "excessive number of re-directs". If anyone else can duplicate the problem on other BB devices, I would like to know.

You would think the big portal/content companies would be able to put some effort into testing out access of their services over some of the most popular devices, but it doesn't appear that way. You don't have to look to hard in order to find a problem. For instance, I have a Blackberry 8800. When I do these steps I get an error: 1) Navigate to the Yahoo mobile home page (http://mobile.yahoo.com) 2) Hit "Yahoo! International" 3) Hit "Y! Japan" I get a 400 error saying an excessive number of redirects have occurred. You would think someone from Yahoo or RIM would be able to catch these types of problems. All they need is a link crawler running over a mobile emulator. This problem has existed for over a month, I tried it a while back, but thought it was a short term thing that would have been corrected by now. I'll take a picture of the error over the week-end and post it. If anyone else has a BB device, give it a try and let me know if you get the same e...

All I want to do is take a picture on my iPhone and email it to the Facebook email uploader. Sounds simple right? Wrong. Apparently the email upload service for Facebook only works using MMS and not as an email attachment. I tried it and in my email account I get a message saying something like: "You have uploaded from an unrecognized or unsupported address. If you are sending from a phone, your carrier may not be recognized by Facebook. Please try again in 24 hours." So I sent an email to Facebook tech support and got this replay: "Unfortunately, we currently only accept mobile photo uploads as MMS. We will consider other methods in the future. Sorry for the inconvenience." I just wanted to upload a picture of my face into Facebook so it appears like the pictures of my friends faces, but I guess I have to face the facts that it appears on face value that it can't be done.

I'm staying at a hotel for a few days and after a late night jog I needed a bottle of water. The vending machine on my floor has one listed for $1.75. I open my wallet, pull out one dollar stick it in. I pull out the second dollar put it in. The machine spits it back out. A small corner of the dollar is missing so the machine doesn't accept it. I look in my wallet, no more dollars. I hit the coin return which gives me 4 quarters. I go back to my room find 3 more quarters. Now I have seven quarters and one dollar bill with a missing corner. Back to the machine I go. I put in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 quarters, everything good so far. I put in the seventh. It falls through the coin return. I try again, same result. Thinking this quarter has a physical defect that the coin mechanism in the vending machine is picking up, I return to my room again looking for another quarter. Back to the machine: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6....7 " plink ", it falls through the coin return. Aaarrrggg ! I hit t...

I thought about calling the title something like "Lazy" but I'll be nice. One of the things that bugs me is when a company like Yahoo that should have gobs of money and resources can't seem to fix a small but annoying problem in a service they offer. I use Yahoo Mail and just about once a day when I try to log into mail, the page seems to grind on a URL that starts off as http://us.f431.mail.yahoo.com/ - it is always the same f431 that has the problem. I immediately think of the Seinfeld episode "It's not you, it's me", but a quick search reveals that a lot of other people have the same problem, and many have tried to report it. There is an IT concept called "monitoring" where you use automated technology to ping all your web portal entry points in order to see that they return a valid web page. Yahoo must have some type of technology like this, and why they don't fix this problem that has been exposed by so many is hard to understand....

When the latest Google Reader came out I was unhappy because the new default layout is different than before. Instead of your subscription list being in a frame on the left, it now "floats" above the article text that now takes up the full width of your browser window. In this new view I also could not find the "Add subscription" button. Of course, as always there is a solution: If you don't know this about Google Reader, hit SHIFT-? to get a pop up window of commands. If you don't like the new look-and-feel hit "u".