Cory Doctorow gives a short review of a speculative/historical/science fiction novel that sounds enthralling. I can’t believe I somehow missed this. It’s now part of my Kindle collection. I only wish it had been available in the iBooks store.
I really loved Pownce because it handled media so well. Now, Twitter is shoe-horning the features in, and it’s just plain sloppy. I would love it if Pownce were revived. It was the perfect place between Twitter and Facebook, and it only failed because it was available too early in the game.
Apple has released a letter to the public today addressing the iPhone 4 antenna issue.
To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.
At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?
We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.
I cannot say that I’ve ever really seen the display of bars drop on my iPhone 3G no matter which way I held it, but I’ve never done any proper testing of the issue either. Is there an easy way to test this on any other phones since the antenna are not exposed as they are on the iPhone 4?
Apple goes on to state that this problem is actually a software issue.
Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.
To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see. Has Apple been falsely reporting cellular reception for so long in order to compensate for lack of signal in many areas of AT&T coverage? Or did their brilliant engineers really get the formula that wrong? As for making bars 1,2, and 3 taller will make them more visible, the subtle visual cue may subconsciously suggest a stronger signal as well. Isn’t human psychology fascinating? ( Snarknote: I have no real evidence to indicate that people would think the signal is stronger if the bars are taller.)
We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.
We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.
The good news is that there will be a software update that will fix the incorrect display of the signal bars. The bad news is that you will now see that you have weaker reception in some areas. You will also still experience a higher than normal drop in reception if you touch the black strip on the left side of the iPhone 4.
I don’t know if this letter was prompted by the class action suits filed against Apple and AT&T based on the antenna problem, but it certainly seems like an attempt to appease an angry group of consumers. I give Apple credit for at least attempting to mitigate the problem. Let’s hope the software update does more than just adjust the appearance of those signal bars.
It’s writing like this that keeps the McSweeney’s app installed on my iPhone. This is a hilarious article. It’s even tempting me to switch my web site to Comic Sans for a week or so in honor of this brilliant writing.
In the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” last week, AP Photographer Charlie Riedel captured photographs of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana’s East Grand Terre Island. The ecological destruction is going to get far worse. BP’s handling of this disaster is nothing short of criminal.
You can do your part to send BP a clear message. Never purchase from BP brands again.
The brands are:
Read the whole article. It is absolutely true. I can attest that once you relieve yourself of all consumer debt, you can live a very happy and wealthy life. Don’t let wants become needs.
Dave Pell must have been watching my online actions over the past few days when he fashioned his most recent post.
And we can assume that the Facebook definitions will ultimately impact if not completely replace the existing definitions of these words – unless Webster’s suddenly gets another 400 million users of its dictionary.
Maybe these new definitions aren’t so bad. For eight years after high school, I consistently referred to a former classmate as my girlfriend even though we hadn’t once seen each other since graduation. And today she’s my wife. A real wife, not just the internet kind.
So sure, let’s be friends. But maybe we should also come up with a new word that means what the old word friend used to mean. In the meantime, it’s back to fake limp.
I’ve recently begun to do a review of everything in my life and attempt to minimize wherever possible, for simplicity, sanity, and serenity. This new minimalism extends to my online life as well.
I began with a review of my RSS subscriptions and severely wiped them out. With only a handful of my most read sites remaining, it is a pleasure to read the articles when I have a free moment instead of dredging through thousands of irrelevant or useless posts just to get the counter back to zero.
Next came a cleanup of my iPhone. With reckless abandon, I whittled the applications down to a mere 34 — that’s two screens worth minus two. Those last two slots are to remain floating slots for testing new apps and determining the length of their usefulness on the iPhone.
Not only is the phone much snappier, but I also find myself “needing” it less as there are only applications for performing essential productive functions left on it. The one exception is Deep Green, a chess game application. I keep this on there so I can practice and improve my game when I get the urge to play a game.
For Facebook, I have removed all but family, friends (real ones that I have met in person), and a select few business contacts. Luckily, I did not have many “friends” whom I had not met, so this was an easy clean.
I am considering another round of purges to remove notorious Farmville spammers, but I may not need to bother as I rarely check Facebook now that the application has been removed from my iPhone. The mobile Safari version of the site works very well and ensures that I only check the site when I actually think about it, and not just when I see the big, blue ‘F’ icon on my screen.
For Twitter, I have done largely the same with the exception of my circle of friends and a select few people who post entertaining information. I thought that my Twitter use would not dwindle even with this purge, but surprisingly, it has. With less to sift through, almost all of the updates I see are relevant and can be scanned and read in a minimum amount of time, leaving me more time to do other things.
The odd part of it is that I feel less compelled to update my Twitter status as well. I look back at some of my past updates and now see that many were probably quite unnecessary. Twitter as a whole may be unnecessary, but it still comes in handy for those times when I do want to update friends, or even for those mass text messages so handy for organizing a meeting place for happy hour.
Back to Dave’s article, his experience is much like my own. While it is nice to use Facebook as a tool to re-connect with old friends and acquaintances, I’m just not into the whole gaming and advertising side of the platform (Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc.). I understand why they exist and why Facebook builds these platforms and APIs, but I don’t want to see updates about your farm or click on links to sites that link right back to articles I’ve already read.
I lived a perfectly social life before Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social networking tools, and when I (inevitably) stop using them, I will still have a social life that does not involve virtual crops and livery, and what I am doing right now (or what’s happening, as the new Twitter prompt appears to be) will be something that I’ll tell you over dinner and a drink with other friends. Or perhaps even right here on my own little corner of the web. After all, that’s what blogs are for, right?
By IAN W. PARKER
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