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%.

I love Apple products.

But today I hate one product - the iPhone Developer program.

I applied for a beta developer certificate and I receive this email -

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Apparently, it was not just me but pretty much everybody got rejected.

So, you can download the iPhone SDK and start writing apps now. You can even test the app in the Aspen simulator. But if you want to install the app on your iPhone, you are out of luck. You have to wait…until Apple decides to let you in.

WTF? Is Apple only allowing high-profile companies (EA and AOL) to build the first wave the iPhone apps? Or did they under-estimate the number of developers that are itching to write an app for the next big thing?

Whatever the reason, Apple screwed up with this. I hope they fix this shit ASAP and make me love them again.

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.

A few months ago, I was toying with the idea of getting a PS3. Not for its great gaming prowess - my short gaming life was over a while ago (I played the Halo Series, and nothing else) - but for its Blu-Ray player. The PS3 is the best Blu-Ray player on the market for its price (sub $400). Which brings us to the question of who won the HD format wars - Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?

I certainly think that Blu-Ray has a huge lead already, with six of the eight big studios endorsing it. The other two however are HD-DVD exclusive. There are rumors that Apple will announce at the Macworld that the Macs are joining the Blu-Ray camp and that Micro$oft will announce an HD-DVD integrated XBox soon. And there are many other such news that show that, though Blu-Ray has an advantage, the HD format war is far from over.

In fact, it may *never* be over.

And that brings us to the question, should we, the consumers, really care who wins? The more I think about it the more I believe that both these formats are DOA. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are largely only formats to store large files (pun intended). Nothing revolutionary.

The point here is that from VHS to DVD, it was a giant step forward (analog to digital, bigger storage, easy navigation, no need to rewind tapes). From DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD its only a small step (bigger storage). Again, I’m only talking about the media storage and delivery aspects. The high-definition format is definitely here to stay (If you don’t have a HD TV, you suck). But not the above two forms of storage and delivery. The winner of the HD format wars is going to be…ta-da..On-Demand Delivery.

Why? Because from DVD to On-Demand delivery it is a giant step forward (instant delivery, browse and search, no scratched disks, instant gratification). The cable providers already have a huge selection of HD movies and shows available on-demand that are downloaded instantly to your DVR. Some of them (Dish Network, TiVo) allow you to connect to the internet and pick from an even larger collection. And, of course, there is Apple TV that hooks to the iTunes collection (where soon you should be able to rent HD movies). Speaking of renting, Netflix is already offering on-demand movies and soon BlockBuster and others will follow suit. This means no more rental queues, no more lost mail, no more driving to pick movies. Instant gratification, and environment-friendly too!

So, while Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will still be fighting and continue to have their own markets, its the On-Demand delivery that is going to become mainstream.

As for my plans of buying the PS3 - only if the Halo Series moves to Blu-Ray format. Ha!

…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.

It turns out that there are about 75 wineries spread across the mountains, and the drive to most of them is under an hour! It also turns out that 50+ of the wineries participate in a “Passport Program” that allows free-tasting on four designated Saturdays a year - for a one-time $30 purchase. Very cool deal. So a large group of us went up the mountains yesterday as it was Passport Saturday.

Here are the wineries we visited-

• Cinnabar:The tasting-room is in downtown Saratoga. They were pouring a nice mix of whites and reds and a port that was made from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.
• Savannah-Chanelle: This very French-sounding winery is tucked away up a hidden alley. Their whites were unimpressive. But both their Pinot Noirs more than made up for it (especially the Gonsalus label).
• Pichetti : A very crowded tasting room invited us as we walked in between horse barns. Our busy hostess poured us some nice blends known as The Pavones. The hit, however, was the white port - “Mission Angelica”. Known as the Liquid Love, it was so sweet that the recommended way to serve it is with ice and a lemon-rind!
• Fellom Ranch : This is a family-owned ranch atop some of the tallest points of the mountains. In general, I like ranch-style wineries - and since they also served some bread, cheese, hot sausages and superb views, Fellom Ranch became an instant hit. And I made it a point to tell the owners that it was my favorite winery of the day. In return for my compliments, they poured me a special tasting of their vintage Zinfandels - from 1996 and 1990! Brilliant!
• Ridge : This was the last stop of the day. Ridge was pouring some nice blends of Cabernet and Zinfandel. The hostess pointed us that some of their grapes are from 120-years old vines! That made the wines taste even better.

It was a fun trip with a fabulous group of people and some surprisingly unique wines. The best part was that it was a *half-day* trip, with plenty of the evening still open. I highly recommend the Wineries of Santa Cruz Mountains.