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

Nobody safe no more.

Just recently found out about the upcoming little gadget that will be included in the Prestige edition of Black Ops. How exactly would you try to top nicht vision goggles?

The answer is – with a little motorized drone buggy that has a live audio/video feed to your remote control.

This is of course so that the Black Ops dude here doesn’t have to get up.

Although we’re still waiting for the flying version that uses your iDevice as a remote and has an API for others to build apps on top of that.

_

On the shoulders of giants

Prestige Black Ops packaging on codblackopsblog

while kotaku got a nice shot of the current goggles for ya.

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:

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/

Why choosing an Android-phone sucks. Sometimes.

I´d like to buy a new smartphone, got an iPhone 3G that technically is now 3 years old. What i hate most is the app-censorship of the big company behind the phone and especially the feeling to become one of the apple-fanboys buying their products just because of their logo, despite there beeing better hardware alternatives out there.

So – i was looking around the last days for a competitor to the upcoming iphone 4, or at least to the 3gs. The device should have i nice look and touch, be well-crafted, have a big highres screen and yepp, that´s it. Of course the only the real alternative to apple´s iOs should be Android these days.

HTC seems to produce cheap-looking and feeling plastic toys with a life-span shorter than my dick. The Nexus One is nice but getting to old and google will not produce a successor.

I found the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. Nice phone, nice price, maybe a good start to move one step further away from the Apple-Hype to Linux and Android.

 

But then – hey, what do I read? The phone still comes with Android 1.6 and SE is planning to update to 2.1 in Q4 2010. Even no word about Android 2.2. Users are talking about serious keyboard lags, some minor problems here and some major there. But SE won´t come up with an update….. so it´s a great phone limited severely by outdated software.

So what would be more frustrating, going on with joining the apple-boys with frequent firmware-updates keeping your device healthy or having a nice piece of hardware that frustrates you because the os on it sucks (lacks frequent bugs-releases)???

I still don´t know, i like the X10 a lot, i´m curious to try Android, but as of today 06/16/2010 there´s still no update to 2.1 on the X10

Users even started an online-petition to Sony to bring Android 2.2 one the Experia X10

http://xperia-x1.com/petition-started-to-get-2-2-for-xperia-x10/

EDIT:

So today after exactly 4 minutes of making up my mind i bought the HTC Desire .

It´s a great smartphone, sexy, well built,veery fast and so far i love it. I´ll keep you informed. Ah, and maybe my dick isn´t that short .

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.