And what happens when you put dust on it?

…it becomes *broken.

Name the one device in this pic still working after more than ten years of service. I'll give you one little hint: It's the blue one in the frontrow. Aw, never been good at this hinting-business.

Some time ago, I noticed that the power/USB grip at the bottom of my iPhone 2G was filled with dust layers, which made it barely fit into the USB connector and stand in an awkwardly odd angle on all the charging stations scattered across my home and office.

So I took a small and very-not-sharp paper clip and slowly, and very carefully, took out the big bad bowl o’ dust. Shouldn’t have done that. Because, as of that moment, some time ago, the phone wouldn’t connect to the USB port of any computer, be it ubuntu/Windows powered or Mac. It simply told me that the USB port was “overpowered” because the iPhone demanded “too much energy” and would subsequently shut down. So I force-drained the device of all its energy by switching on Bluetooth, Wifi, the works and opening up as many useless tabs on Opera mini as possible while listening continuosly to my voicemail – basically, all of the multitasking the iPhone could offer. Funny that this was to be my last web-browsing session on this little fella, since the above mentioned error persisted, and trying to tap into the USB-less home jack just gave away a small lightning. That was basically it. Nothing worked anymore anyhoo. No turning off – turning on, no cold reset, not even the little known third method, also known as “hard reset” or “hard kill”, which would set up the recovery mode. All that is left is to send it in and pay 210€ for a repair-as-new-treat. Now, I tend to compare options like these with a possibly available update-your-life, apparently unlike people who buy used stuff on ebay that costs slightly less, the same or even more than the same stuff bought unused from amazon (at least in Germany). I’ve been eyeing those fancy, world-conquering androids for quite some time now, and though I really liked my 2G for the time being, and do have a lot of respect for what Apple accomplished with its Jesusphone, the androids simply seem to let me be doing what I want with the smartphone of my choosing. And I don’t even mean any crazy technological techstuff here. I just want to be able to delete podcasts I’ve already listened to from the device while on the device, upgrade the storage space by simply switching the microSD card inside of it, and oh yeah, get rid of iTunes, and please forever pretty please. Not to mention the slightly nervous thought that if I had been able to open up the phone, I might have not ruined it at all. And if there’s ad revenue I could possibly generate, even without knowing it, the cash upstream should go to Google, and not Apple. So, I am currently on the lookout for pretty much the same thing a good friend of mine was looking for some time ago.

If you have an iPhone, be very, very careful with the USB connection at its bottom. Since I myself acted precisely like that, better yet, don’t ever even touch it. Maybe this could save others from suffering the most dreadful thing that could happen to an iPhone user besides getting robbed.

And in the meantime, and also in order to explain the peculiar first picture of this entry, what do I do? Cram out every single phone ever used in the household, and put the SIM into a truly ancient piece of hardware.

I have to hand it to Nokia. They may be losing the smartphone race, and didn’t understand android, but I think this phone will still be working when my grandchildren find it long since forgotten in an attic of theirs. It even once flew all the way down from a trainstation to the streets below, more than five or six meters, with me drunkingly putting together its severed pieces, and survived without a single scratch.

On the move, it is party like it’s 1999 2001 again, because at those times, when you wanted to listen to music while commuting, you had to pack a special separate device for that.

_

Picture of iPhone 2G’s bottom side by Gearlive

What-if episode, but without science fiction

You remember when Apple overtook MS in terms of market value, a few weeks ago? While I was dumb struck reading something like that at the time, it kept me wondering what could be the possible outcomes if a development like this continues. So here’s our little list, futureproof and all -

1. Nothing really happens. Too often one fails to set the variables right, and the utmost part of speculation remains just that. But it might just give you an opportunity to be funny.
2. The IT world as a whole continues to shift, and up to a third of all things digital could be done on smartphones and all sort of handsets, where we would be seeing Android (160 000 new activations A DAY? Still can’t believe it) and Apple as market leaders.
3. Microsoft discontinues Windows. That would make Mac OS n the dominant “you’ll have to pay for that, my son”-OS out there. Every other manufacturer would need to adapt by either making Mac OS its native system like this

or, go ahead and try to delevop its own operating system, which is quite hard and costly. So why not take a long established standard, that costs nothing, while you may even claim money for it? Case in point, a little CD from South Africa? That would also mean the end of dual booting…like this.

_

On the shoulders of giants

Cupcake by Adam Powell on the Android Developer’s Blog.

Mac OS on a tiny VAIO by daharder via boingboing.

Fused logo by dedoimedo.com.

Apfel-Nintendo-iPed-APad-Vii-Wü

Manche Sachen sind einfach zu gut, um sie unkommentiert zu lassen. Egal also, wie oft man das schon virtuell hat untergeschoben bekommen, wir müssen jedesmal wieder grinsen. Auf also, zu unserem nächsten kleinen Ausflug ins Land der findigen und kreativen Unternehmer – im Reich der Mitte.

Ja klar, Shenzen und Co. liegen sowieso in China, und vielleicht wollen manche das Ding haben, und unter beiderseitigem Einverständnis die Apple-Steuer weglassen? Die Jungs vom japanischen Fernsehen, woher die Bilder stammen, waren jedenfalls aus dem Staunen nicht mehr herauszubringen. Kotaku sagt, es kostet nur ein Fünftel, ist Intel- und Android-gepowered.

Engadget seinerseits berichtete von einem fröhlichen Wii-Klon, der Vii. Auch die Marketingkampagne ist genau wie die von Nintendo. Aber man sollte doch auf die kleinen feinen Unterschiede achten.

Na, das deckt sich ja mit den eigenen, bescheidenen Betrachtungen eurer Autoren hier – Foto:

- die Nintendo Wü. Nochmal besser -

- ist aber nur kompatibel mit der Wü. Daher konnte ich das Ding nicht mitnehmen, hab nur eine Wii.

Wer seinen Hardware-Bestand aufstocken will, aber die nächsten Tage nicht über China reist, kann zB. Chinagrabber bemühen -

Die Seite sieht sogar so aus wie ein chinesischer Schatten-Hardware-Shack.

Because I can download apps to it.

Wo wir gerade auch bei Videos waren – ein contributor ohne account sagt das folgende -

und irgendwo her kenne ich diese Art der Unterhaltung. Vielleicht, aber auch nur vielleicht, weil die phantommemory headquarters in einem Viertel liegen, für das eine Tageszeitung wie folgt Werbung macht:

Decisions decisions to make

For many and many of the guys out there, and more and more gals, choosing your primary playing and working setup as in laptop is all but deciding about the holiest of the holiest. You can ponder and think about it endlessly. You can deploy some of the tactics described in your favorite nonsense blog. But you will have to choose ultimately. So, here’s our musings respectively, as of july 2010.

We really appreciate the technical environment of these days – 15 years ago you had to constantly upgrade your PC, spend money to no end, and even if you did, two weeks afterwards your little machine was out of date. You could then go on and read about the shiny new software out there, but you couldn’t run it at home. This way, one was left in a constant state of playing outdated games of wanting, and not having. Il y a a couple of years now, and we coulnd’t help but noticing that times have changed dramatically, and as is often the case in the tech world, in a good way. If one were to buy a new laptop, of course it would be around twenty times as fast as his 5 years old machine, and it would run the newest 3D FPS shoot’em up, but it would not do anything really different. You can upgrade if you want to, if you need something specifically, but you’re not forced to. This is paradise. You really get to choose here. Thank you so much world.

Furthering this, prices have dropped further, while the laptop industry sported pitifully razorthin margins even before. Apple’s flagship 15″ Powerbook was around 3000€ around the millenium, while it is around 1500€ these days. So have at it. Sony, on the other end, for some reason has always been charging insanely stupid fantasy prices on their computer products, which also have been constantly toned down in the past years. So, the current basic all around doitall, Sony’s VAIO E-series, is about 700€ and that is it. Beautiful thing, and it makes your pondering much easier, because if you were wrong and end up unhappy with your new hardware, you didn’t kill 3000€ there, but just like… a really big night out? You know what I mean.

So, moving on along all lightly, because of the light pricetag, Sony’s VAIOS always had their staple of annoying and uncalled for disadvantages. They still persist to these days. First off, they come with an incredible amount of bloatware. Useless shite. Dozens of trial versions to put on the sticker out there on the packaging. A VAIO starting center, where you can be all… vaioy? Not even they themselves know. But it adds to a slightly broken overall feeling. Also, you may hear about really strange things going on with the Sony support, which may get mad evil on your ass occasionally. Like telling you to simply go and buy a new piece of hardware. And third point here, the finishing, the look and feel, while being beautiful to look at, feels cheap, as you can push the chassis in with your finger, and me myself I leave marks on the parts beside the touchpad because of the heavy usage. When I take a look at a friend’s Macbook standing half a meter away, this gets painfully real.

But if you manage to overcome these obstacles, you get a i3-330M @2,13 GHz (you know, the kind of Intel that we’re a slave to), 3MB cache, 4 Gigs of RAM, and a 500 GB harddrive. The one caveat is running your favorite OS, ubuntu. As always, there is no guarantee here, as the VAIOs still come with some version of outdated Windows – one of the many reasons, by the way, why people jolting around randomly made up percentages of computers running windows are very, very wrong (my old VAIO had a Win preinstalled, of course without the CDs, and I’ve never even used it once. Still counts as a Windows-PC in use). And considering the screen’s 16:9 build, and native 1366×768 resolution by its ATI Mobility RADEON 5650 grafics card, one might run into serious problems. Strangely enough, all a thorough google search brought up was somebody reporting problems with his audio setting. We will have to see.

So, after all, the VAIOs wouldn’t be one’s first choice, and we’ve constantly told people asking which laptop to buy to go for an Apple or maybe Lenovo Thinkpad. But if you’re eating scripts of code for breakfast and enjoy talking about USB 2.0 for hours without noticing that you’re not furthering any great worldwide causes, philosophically speaking, you’ve got to admit that choosing your window to the world here, it is an emotional decision, and not one made by rationals. And Sony, evil as they may be, and as big a let down their Ginza flagship store really is, just nails it with us with their confusingly gargantuan array of models to choose from.

Du weißt schon, du darfst es nicht in die Hand nehmen und so…

…daher hier ein kleines workaround -

_

Auf den Schultern von Giganten -

Linux und ichs twitter

…und hier geht’s weiter (oder zurück, je nachdem, welche Weltanschauung du vertrittst)

http://apfeltouch.net/content/iphone-4-sammlung-von-mgl-serienfehlern-5821/

Not cool enough

Now, first off we do not belittle Microsoft, we have been using Win for a long and prospering time and are fond of our 360s. But some time last year, when trying to download MS Photosynth on one non-win-machine, a screen pops up, just like this one right here -

…

now, we’re pretty sure here that we had been using ubuntu, while they seem to address Mac OS n, but still.

Some beautiful skins out there

Skinning your favourite little gadget is a tricky beast. If you are able to find your skin of choice, and if they do deliver it to your doorstep, you will most probably need some kind rocket surgery degree in order to apply it correctly and so forth. So by the time you make your way to the little site of gela-skins, you probably are willing to just let it go. However, the guys ‘n’ gals at gela, while charging you handsome prices and not really making you any offers/deals (what would I need three skins for? One is the magic number), they truly deliver. When you put your hands on one of their bad boys, the work is almost already done – just peel the skin off, center it around a bit, and it’s done. Gelaskins are made of a special material that doesn’t bubble and doesn’t wear of – perfick.

So, let’s take a look at, let’s say, an iPhone:

or, your newly skinned DS:

…and staying with portable devices, a Macbook:

…now, for our Wii -

or your 360 -

.

The company is from Canada, though their website seems to be down.