I could not resist, having video on an iPod the size of the new Nano was just too tempting…so I got one. As soon as I connected it to iTunes, it prompted me to install the software update that was made available a couple of days ago, after that it synced music & videos, and off I went.
Much to my surprise, this afternoon it started behaving erratically – whenever I pressed the fast forward or rewind buttons, the iPod would keep skipping in the same direction until either the end or the start of the song was reached respectively. One annoying thing is that the skip steps are much bigger than on the previous Nano, and so it makes the process less accurate. Combined with this bug, it’s unusable. The only way to stop it is to pause, and resume playback, and since the steps are so large, it’s a hit-and-miss proposition.
It actually indicates GPRS attachment status, the capability (or lack thereof) of sending and receiving data, be it over plain old GPRS, or the faster EDGE. I was going to comment on the original Engadget blog post, but after seeing a few pages of comments already, I doubt they would have noticed it. This is where they get it wrong:
You’ll notice the iTunes WiFi Store icon, and an O2-UK network symbol up top. If you look carefully, you’ll see that the E logo for EDGE is missing: we guess that 30% network coverage on O2 don’t quite stretch inside the Apple Store.
A bit further down, they mention this again:
O2 iPhone on the left, unlocked US iPhone on the right (running on T-Mobile’s UK network). Note that the O2 iPhone doesn’t show the EDGE logo, but the unlocked phone on T-Mobile does. You can probably guess at what we’re getting at here: O2’s EDGE coverage sucks.
In this particular side-by-side photo, T-Mobile’s coverage is marginally lower than O2’s, but they should both be capable of sending GPRS traffic. Another reason they get this wrong is that the waves icon ‘overwrites’ the E symbol while the iPhone is connected to a WiFi network, so you could still have GPRS/EDGE attachment in the background, so-to-speak. In my particular case, the iPhone is happily registered on Vodafone Spain, and is attached to GPRS (no EDGE here at all), showing the E while I’m not in range of WiFi.
The iPhone also does something very clever – when you open an application that requires a data connection, it will start a GPRS attach and session, while it asks you if you want to join any of the nearby WiFi networks (if any). In case you say no, the alternative data connection is already established, cutting down on extra waiting time before you start seeing content on your screen. This may seem stupid to Europeans, by default stuck with hugely expensive pay-as-you-go data (50 Euro cents per 250kB!!), but with the original AT&T voice + data plan, it does not really matter.
And Telefonica, who owns them, just as much. If the rumors are true, they will be surrendering around 40% of revenue (not profit, revenue) from each client using an iPhone, in exchange for an exclusive distribution deal in the UK. What is going to be the likely problem for end users here? Traditionally, when you buy a phone in Europe that is tied to a contract, you have to sign the papers before you can even smell the phone, and thus are bound by the terms. In the US, you can just buy the phone at the store, take it home, and get the contract set up with AT&T through iTunes there while sipping a coffee.
Unlocking your $400 iPhone is now possible, and so you’re no longer bound by an AT&T contract. In Europe, however, you may be able to unlock the phone just the same, but you will have to stay with the contract or pay the cancellation fee. Either way, operators stand to have better deal than AT&T.
First day with my shiny new iPhone, unlocked to work on Vodafone’s network – so far so good, pretty much loving it. Until I looked at the Bluetooth specs. Basically, this thing is only useful for mono headsets and carkits, and that’s it.
The iPhone has been certified under Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, as can be seen in the BQB documents, but the PICS detail only handset and audio gateway profiles, with required signaling profiles such as RFCOMM, pretty much the bare minimum for a working Bluetooth hands-free system. What about the ton of other profiles, for example, A2DP, FTP, DUN…? Not included. The iPhone uses a CSR BlueCore4 Audioflash, which has 6MB of onboard FLASH memory, and could be upgraded provided that there is a host controller with access to the SPI port on the BC4. It seems that the iPhone uses Open Interface’sBLUEmagic 3.0 stack [PDF], which would imply an external host controller.
Now I’m starting to get confused – you usually choose a FLASH BlueCore if you intend to run software on it, be it CSR’s own stack, or a customized version of it. If you intend to use a host-based system, where the stack is handled by an external processor, you can buy way cheaper BlueCore ROM chips – and we’re talking between $1 and $3 a piece in savings. This may not seem much, but when multiplied it by Apple’s sales, you have a hefty sum. Below is a graphic that illustrates the differences between a host-based HCI system (left) and a standalone or ROM implementation (right):
The big question still is – why is Apple so Bluetooth-unfriendly? Did they have certification problems and rushed through the bare minimum specs to claim Bluetooth compatibility? This seems strange as the iPhone was certified by CETECOM, which probably is the most experienced lab on Bluetooth certification in the world. Same applies to MacBooks and Mac Pros, they feature a few more profiles like FTP, but not A2DP. Hoping for a firmware update to fix this mess, over and out.
Last Saturday, while reading through my feeds, I noticed this post on TechCrunch by Duncan Riley, where he tells the story of an attempt by scammers to get his Skype credentials (and wonders why they’d want to do such a thing), much in the same way we’re accustomed to receive emails from PayPal, eBay, and almost any bank on earth. These emails claim there is a problem with your account, and you should ‘confirm your details’ in order to stop said account from being suspended. This will of course do nothing other than give your credentials to these criminals for unhealthy purposes.
Today, a friend that I had not chatted with in some time comes online, and sends me this:
My first thought has been “Uhm, why would Mike send me something like this?”. He’s not prone to even send smilies, always very short and to the point. I go to ask him about it, but I then notice he is in do-not-disturb mode, so I cannot even warn him about the now-obvious scam! It seems that phishers and other scum are realizing people fall for email traps less and less, and are attacking other more trustworthy systems. In this case, the attacker is sending a screensaver, most likely loaded with a trojan. Beware of -any- communication, even from friends, that is unusual in timing, behavior or content. Also, beware about being asked for your IM details, and use strong passwords.
Shame they’re a bunch of morons – they told me taking pictures of their restaurant from the street was illegal (!?). If someone came and took a picture of an ad I plastered on my wall…I’d be more happy than anything, it would mean people notice it (even if it was a competitor). Anyway, if you come to Barcelona, check out Fresh&Ready, not for the food, but for the free WiFi.
MS Paint, Visua, Irfan View, Adobe Photo Deluxe and Paint Shop Pro will be mentioned here. This group has been cited because they are often found among the software available to users.
MS Paint is installed with Windows. It can be used for cropping and re-sizing, among others. Irfan View is a free download. Irfan View is full-featured viewer/modifier/converter.
Visua can be obtained from private archives and is mainly an easy-to-operate viewer and format converter, which can be used to crop and re-size.
Adobe Photo Deluxe is often bundled with purchased peripherals like printer, scanner, or camera. It is a full-featured viewer/modifier/converter. More complete image application programs like Adobe PhotoShop LE have occasionally been sent as free software with the purchase of a peripheral. JASCs Paint Shop Pro has many uses, and is suitable for colorizing and some types of retouching. It also is an image format converter, with the standard supported file types. It has a collection of tools that allow a user to make many types of midifications to an image. In the Colors|Adjust tool, there are six menu choices that provide dialog screens for making modifications. Among them are a gamma tool adjustment where the gamma values selected for red, green, and blue may be selected independently or together.
Altering the image content (in addition to the modifying steps shown above) can include:
Smoothing edges, reducing granularity, reducing moir patterns, adding special effects, balancing brightness from one region of the image to another, retouching, rotating the image by multiples of 90 degrees, rotating the image by a selected amount, and flipping an image horzontally or vertically. Printing features may include:
Print preview, an image scaling and positioning feature, rotating the image by 90 degrees, presence or absence of header, footer, pre-set margins, etc. Viewing features may include:
Manual or automatic stepping through a collection of files, viewing a cluster of files as thumbnails, reproducing sound files along with images. Applications to add displayability to images include:
Adding captions and/or legends, adding automatic presentation features to an image collection. Displaying animated images:
Animated GIFs are a stepped sequence of GIF images which simulate motion. Animated GIFs wont work in all viewing software. They are commonly used on web pages, as they will display properly in web browsing viewers.
A brief discussion on images which are produced in scanner formats or in image converter formats.
When working with images in scanner software or in image converter software, it is useful to remember that these are temporary image files with formats which:
Can modify the appearance of the image file that was imported. Can be used to make a print of the modified image. Usually wont be useful in this current format to share but will allow you to see what you have Must be saved or exported to a folder elsewhere on a drive which has a folder assigned to accept it, if you wish to share it or archive it. Dont alter the source image that is, not unless you save or export the file and assign the same file name and place it in the folder from which it came.
Although such scanned temporary files may be retained by some scanner software, they will only serve as your own archived images for later retrieval, and then generally for short retention periods.
