browngeek

Over the last few weeks, four mysterious “water bubbles” started to appear on my iPhone’s screen. They looked like dead-pixels, but slightly bigger. Since they did not hinder the performance of the touch screen, I largely ignored them.

Then, a few days ago, one side of the iPhone’s headphones stopped emitting sound. Well, this I cannot ignore. Especially given the new law in the state of California - hands-free cellphone usage starting July 1st - I need the headphones fixed. So, armed with my pleasant past experience with Apple’s Genius Bar service, I went to the Palo Alto store on July 4th to get the iPhone and the headphones fixed.

After a 15 minute wait, I was ushered to the Genius bar where Brian was waiting for me. After a curt hello, he asked about the problems. I handed him my iPhone and explained the bubbles. Brian quickly consulted his colleague who pulled out a magnification lens from a drawer and peered closely into the bubbles and proclaimed - “Yeah, I’ve seen these before”. Brian then asked me if I had backed up my phone recently and I replied yes. He then said, a little nonchalantly, he is going to replace my phone with a new one.

Excuse me, but aren’t you going to first question me about what I did to the phone to get those bubbles in there, if I had dropped it in water or snow or toilet, if I have sweaty hands, if I misused it, if I do not clean it every day. Any question that will incriminate me for being at fault for putting the bubble in the phone. No questions? The phone was barely under warranty (less than a week before 1 year) and you *still* did not question me? Well, that is very refreshing. Brian then calmly handed me a new iPhone and a new pair of headphones. He then asked me to restore my backup from iTunes when I activate the phone. I said thanks (And still no questions?) and left. Happy to be an Apple customer.

The happiness did not end there. Back home, I plugged in my new iPhone. iTunes asked for my phone number and if I wanted to restore from a backup. Now, by “restore” I was expecting it to simply sync my contacts and iTunes playlists and calendars and little else. After that, I was fully expecting to redo all my customizations manually. Again, Apple is two steps ahead of me. By “restore”, they mean a complete frigging restore. When the restore was done, I had everything thing back where it was. The icons were back where I had dragged them, bookmarks on the home screen were back, the camera photos, the recent call history, everything. The only thing that were not restored, understandably, were the passwords for the wireless networks and email. Even the most recent searches in the Maps app were back! I was blown away.

Apple really gets it.

The best 20 minutes I have spent in a long time.

Watched “The Story of Stuff”.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Buying “stuff” will never be the same again.

I completely cancelled all television as you know today.

I switched to the television of tomorrow. TV, on demand. 100%.

Way back in September 2006, I tried the My Heritage’s The Celebrity in Me face recognition program. You upload a close-up photo of your face and it runs some algos to figure out who you look like.

I was disappointed to see that I did not know who the top two matches were - Rick something and a Barack Obama-something. And I said - “Bah. This program sucks!”.

Well, fast forward to today, and I do not think it sucks after all! I am glad I look like Obama…at least 60%.

08Feb2008: Analysis: Obama has advantage in head-to-head with McCain

In the CNN poll, Obama leads McCain by 8 points, 52 percent to 44 percent. That’s outside the margin of error, meaning that Obama has the lead.

And in the Time poll, Obama leads McCain by 7 points, 48 percent to 41 percent — a lead also outside of the poll’s margin of error of 3 percentage points.

In both polls, Obama looks stronger than Clinton.

10Feb2008: Bush on Obama - “I certainly don’t know what he believes in.”

The president weighed in on the Democratic race, saying it “seems far from over to me.” And he rejected criticism of former President Clinton’s work on the campaign trail for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

“I can understand why President Clinton wants to campaign hard for his wife. And those accusations that Bill Clinton’s a racist, I think is just wrong. I just don’t agree with it.”

As for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Bush said, “I certainly don’t know what he believes in.

Hmm, let me see. Polls indicate McCain is more likely to lose to Obama than to Clinton. And then Bush defends Clinton and snubs Obama. Ahhh, the puppet show continues.

Wish you all a productive and successful 2008. Enjoy!

Elephants on Acid:

…if they were going to give an elephant LSD they’d better not give it too little…

The Masked Tickler:

… he donned a 30-centimetre by 40-centimetre cardboard mask, while as a further precaution maintaining a “smileless, sober expression” behind it. Then he tickled his son in a predetermined pattern…

Check these and eight other bizarre experiments of all time.

Via - Signal vs Noise.

If there is any industry that is in dire need of a Scalable Architecture, it is the cell phone industry.

Case in point - There was a moderate earthquake in the Bay Area two days ago. Immediately after the vibration subsided, I pulled out my cell phone to check on my dear ones. And what do I get? A “network busy” signal. WTF? My first thought was that maybe one of the phone towers collapsed. Unlikely. Then it occurred that everybody in the Bay Area (that’s about 7 million) were trying to make calls simultaneously. And obviously the system broke down. It was not just my carrier (AT&T), they ALL collapsed.

Yes, these kind of situations don’t happen everyday. But when they do, tough luck! Just imagine if the seismic activity was a tad bigger? And while land lines are more reliable, they are irrelevant because it implies you (and your family) must be home and there is really no need to call. Cell phones are one of the, if not the, most important part of everyday life. What is the point of paying top dollars to your carrier if you cannot depend on them?

Moral of the story: Always have a contingency plan for your family - especially where to meetup in an emergency.

My MacBook Pro started to act funky a few weeks ago. First, it shutdown a couple of times with no warnings. The battery would then drain out from 100% to 5% in an hour.
My first thoughts were that the Lithium-Ion battery was losing its life. Then, a few days later, the trackpad started to get “sticky” and I was unable to click. This pretty much rendered the laptop unusable. Then I noticed that the laptop was not sitting properly on the desk. I flipped it over, and yikes, the battery was swollen out of its sockets. It looked like a giant popcorn. Needless to say, I was concerned about it exploding and promptly removed it - which made the laptop immobile, like a desktop.

The 1-year warranty on the MBP had expired a few months ago and I did not have the AppleCare protection plan. So my first thoughts were “Great, I have to plunk down $140 for a new battery”. Then I realized that I had purchased the computer with my AmEx card that comes with a Buyer’s Assurance Program which extends manufacturer’s warranties by an additional year. A phone call to AmEx and they said “Sure. Just send us the invoice for the repair and we will reimburse it”. Armed with this backup plan of getting the battery (and any other repairs) for free, I went to the Palo Alto Apple Store to get the MBP fixed.

The two guys that say “Welcome to the Apple Store, How can I help you?” were flabbergasted to see the swollen battery and immediately took me to the Genius Bar. The guy behind the counter (named - Will), added me to the list of waiting customers. After a 10-min wait, Will beckoned me. When he took a look at my battery, he had no “OMG!” reaction. Instead, it was a subtle “Oh yeah, I’ve seen this before” reaction. After verifying that the MBP was registered to me, he informed me that Apple has a special “extended” warranty for batteries and will replace it for free!

I was very surprised. Perhaps the swollen batteries are a common problem and Apple wants no sour customers, or perhaps they did have a “special warranty” on batteries. Either way, Apple technically need not replace the battery for free past the 1-year warranty. Try getting your Canon camcorder fixed after the warranty expired. Right - I tried and it didn’t work. I left the store with a new battery and the thought - “Apple *does* care about its customers.”

There are 300 reasons to upgrade to Leopard (Vista 2.0) - including the venerable Time Machine. Most of them are big and well publicized. But here a list of 7 little-known gems that is going to make me super-love Leopard.

1. Automator - UI Recording and Playback
   “Use a new action called Watch Me Do that lets you record a user action…and replay as an action in a workflow.”
2. Finder - Path Bar
   “Just choose Show Path Bar from the View menu and the path is visible at the bottom of the Finder window. You can also drag files to any location in the Path Bar.”
3. iChat - Tabbed Chat
   “Consolidate your chat windows into a single tabbed window.”
4. Imaging - Enhanced Wireless Capture
   “Wirelessly import images from many 802.11-enabled digital cameras and Bluetooth devices.” aka the iPhone.
5. Photo Booth - Video Recording
   “Use Photo Booth to make movie clips.”
6. Spotlight - Dictionary Definitions in Spotlight
   “Quickly find the definition of any word by entering it in the Spotlight search field.”
7. Terminal - Tabbed Windows
   “Keep multiple Terminal sessions going in a single, tabbed window.”