Shattered iPhone 4 screen

I accidently dropped my iphone 4 on the sidewalk, actually, my son did. The upper right corner shattered (I’ve dropped my iphone 3G so many time, nothing happened, both are with cases). After searching on the internet, someone had cracked screen, either from dropping or something else got their iPhone replaced with no charge! So I decided to try my luck at the applet store with geeks. After they examined the screen, I guess they were trying to see if the cracks is like a spider web originated from a corner, or just random cracks, in latter case, they may replace the phone for free (but you have to try), they informed me that I’d need to pay $200 for a replacement. then I snapped: “Screw you, screw all of you, I’m spending another $200 on this phone!”, well, that was all in my head. I packed my phone and left.

The take home lesson was: warranty was void, now, even if I can live with a crack screen phone, no free repair or replacement if other parts of the phone stops working. In hinder sight,  what I should have done was, first try to find a 3rd party service provider to replace my screen (“Genius” at apple store said this would void the warranty, but they can’t tell, trust me, they are not real Geniuses), WITHOUT reporting my phone to Apple, so they don’t know, and just abuse all the button on my phone, and hope for one of button stops working and ask for replacement.

Further reading: With Antennagate over, is Glassgate next for the iPhone 4?

What do you use Twitter for?

I still don’t quite get Twitter, and how do people use it. I do have a twitter account, I tweet once in a while, and am following a handful of interesting people. I happened to follow guys who tweets quite a bit,  and usually find myself drowned in the sea of tweets.

For businesses and celebrities, the “followed by number” can only be a popularity statement, but there is no way for a business or a celebrity to reach to their customers or fans via twitter, who’s gonna go through all those tweets? We now live in a texting world, maybe there are people who need to tweet every 2 seconds. Not for me though, I don’t need a real time web, or a social media solution, I need a “near real time” solution, I tweet to keep a mini journal of what I’ve been doing, and where I’ve dined, etc., I don’t really need to do this “real time”, twitter won’t allow you to edit your tweet, I guess that beats the purpose. I like Yelp’s check-in feature, I can use it to keep track of my boring life.

Twitter is a record keeper for me, if they keep it closed from google searches, only real use of it would be a real time web repository, which may have some commercial value, but not too much. I just envision an app that keeps track of where I've been for a period of time, or a trip to a theme park, collects my location data at an interval in the background, and integrate with map data to figure out if I’m in a bar or a coffee shop, and most importantly, keep the data private! Maybe I’ll write it, I’m here to just claim the idea first.

Update: Twitter is NOT a Social Network, Says Twitter Exec

P2P video streaming is the future!

I watched most of world cup 2010 games online, either from ESPN3 on my PC or mobileTV on my iPhone. I’d expect more and more live sport events, or just live events, being telecasted by streaming. The performance of those world cup games varies, as well as some of PGA tour live streaming. CNN once tested with P2P technology via a 3rd party provider, it was semi successful, but met with some in browser installation and privacy concerns. With online streaming, especially live streaming going main stream, P2P is definitely the technology to go, I’d load up with P2P stocks! We shall see in a couple of years.

Technorati Tags: p2p,online streaming,streaming

Netflix on your iPhone

I was just about to cancel my Netflix account, this new Netflix iphone app came out today. I have been a Netflix subscriber for a while now, on and off. Recently, I’ve using my Samsung Bluray DVD player to stream videos from Netflix via a wired (wireless connection is slow and not watchable) network connection. The quality has been up and down, but there just isn’t much new contents out there, and you have to wait for another 2 weeks before you can get the new releases is a big turnoff for me. Now we have the nice iphone app, so I can watch “Office” anywhere I want, I think I’ll hang on to Netflix a little longer now.

Tiger’s back?!

Only days after his announced divorce, Tiger Wood is back on the golf course, and sharing the lead at Barclays on the first day. He doesn’t need a putter change to get better, though the putter was the only club not made by Nike, so maybe he should return a favor to Nike for sticking out for him. Anyway, maybe it’s too early to tell, but at least Tiger can officially go out and party with no string attached, which would be a good relief for him, and put himself in the old comfort zone. Many sports radio show hosts have been hinting something like this, the national syndicated ones are more subtle, local ones are straight out saying he needs all the women. We shall see, I hope Tiger Woods will be more comfort on the course and with his game.

What’s in Tiger’s Head

I think everybody watches sports regularly would hear something like “What’s wrong with Tiger’s game?”, though I think a lot of people know. Tiger Woods came back from a knee surgery after laying off for almost a year, but became a contender right away, winning tournaments, there wasn’t anything wrong with his game. Ever since November of last year, Tiger’s game has gone south, all of sudden, he couldn’t drive well, has changed the ball he plays, now, at British Open, changed his putter, why? I don’t think there is anything wrong with Tiger’s game, his swing, his putting, he’s just missing all the wild parties he used to have, which would release the tension and stress, and put himself into a comfort zone. Golf is a mental game, once he can party again, he’ll be in his groove! Go Tiger!

Free case from Steve, and he loves you!

I have been saying this all along: “iphone is everything but a phone”, after I got it, I have been wondering why other companies were still making smart phones. Hands down, no contest.

Now, with this iphone4 hoopla, Steve is telling you that “He loves you!” and giving out free cases, what else do you want from him, or Apple? i think this may have been blown out of proportion as well, I guess people are more interested in what he say today than anything else. Still will get the iphone4, if Apple or BestBuy call.

The unofficial review of 2010 world cup Jabulani match ball

The unofficial review of 2010 world cup Jabulani match ball
I have to admit that I’m a little obsessed with the Jabulani match ball. I’ve read article about it, heard people talking about it, saw how it’s been played in the world cup matches, and played with it, I think I have enough information to make a good review. First of all, the ball is made of plastic-like material, not leather, and is heavier than I originally thought, and handles and feels well. Two things in my opinion make the ball unusual: first, there is no traction on the ball, since there is ONLY 8 fake panels molding on the ball plastic surface making it “perfectly round”, but diminish its ability to grab on the ground, those little edges on the surface are intended to increase the traction, but don’t make much of the difference; secondly, the multiple layers make the ball traps the energy inside, and releases it slowly, unevenly, translating into unpredictable ball flight.

We’ve seen one strike by Messi in the Argentina vs Germany in slow motion went high, but clearly the ball jumped at the last moment, the same happened to Klose in the same match, a perfect ground pass jumped at the last moment resulting in the high ball instead of an easy goal. Not to mention the mishandled goals by the goalies in early stages. All the these, IMHO, were due to the fact that the energy trapped in the ball released slowly making the ball “flies on its own”. There have been so many crosses, and straight passes went long and out of reach, making the players looked really bad. They are the best players in the world! It’s the ball! The ball is heavy and with no grab on the ground, soft passes would end up short, harder passes would just either go far or skid off the grass. Giving the players credit, they adjusted, and made fantastic plays, such as swirl the ball to shoot, instead of strike it hard with all mighty (usually ends up high), but with a price: they’ve been changing the way they used to play, which is not something soccer fans want to see.

Why Adidas made and FIFA decided to use Jabulani ball? They should’ve known better, don’t they? More goals, soccer matches need more goals, world cup needs more goals. The ball characteristics doesn’t work toward any team’s advantage, but, with the unpredictable ball flight, could mean more goals, at least this is what FIFA was hoping for. I’m all for more goals, but not to achieve this by changing the way the soccer is played.

Brazilian played a sloppy match

Brazilians played a sloppy match today, the early goal didn't help them but, I think, ended up hurting them, 'cause they were getting too relaxed, making sloppy passes. The attacks were very unorganized, not efficient at all. Dani Alves can only play on the wing, he's NOT a central midfield ball controller, he held on to the ball too much making Dutches defense easier.
Dutches were aggressive, well prepared, and didn't let early goal affect their original game plan. They possess the ball well (51% vs 49%) against the Brazilians! Ref was too soft, probably was prepped by FIFA, not willing to issue yellow cards in the beginning, the match did get physical, even though it didn't get out of hands, but the soft tone encouraged the Dutches, ended up not in Brazilian's favor.
In general it was a good match, but a classic for sure.

iPhone updated

Thought I wrote up an update on my iPhone experience after having it for about 3 weeks. I’m actually quite happy with it and liking it a lot! Like I mentioned before, the screen size was the biggest factor for me to switch from Fuze to iPhone. Now adding to that, setting up Chinese input on iPhone was a breeze, Settings –> General –> Keyboard –> International Keyboards –> turn Chinese (simplied or traditional) on, and voila. This even comes with handwriting input tool, which is super cool I think.

With other phones afraid of Apple by not offering multi-touch screen and regular 3.5mm earphone jack on their phones made iPhone more appealing. Sometimes, I even forget the fact that there still quite a lot of basic stuff I cannot do with my iPhone, such as zoom in camera, video recording, to name a few, and how Apple acts like an application Nazi annoys me, just don’t get me started.

I haven’t jailbroken my iPhone yet, read about stories on both goods and bads, just not convinced yet to go through the hassle. Maybe I have to one day just to see what’s all the fuss about.

BTW, the big gotcha: you will get charged for each IM you send out using Meebo or Nimbuzz or any IM app as a text message by AT&T when using 3G network. Man, wish I had known. What does “unlimited data” mean then?

How to consolidate your emails into Gmail using Thunderbird... For Free

If you're like me, having several active email accounts with Yahoo mail, Hotmail, Gmail, and maybe, AOL, etc., and have been wondering if there is a way to consolidate them to one place. I'll use Gmail here to be the centralized account to hold all your emails, I thinks is a clear choice here.

What you need are:

Thunderbird 2 (source), download and install it, if you don't have it already;

Webmail Thunderbird extensions downloaded and installed on Thunderbird, webmail extension is requred, other email provider specific extensions are to be installed as needed. The setup is pretty straightforward, one trick for Yahoo mail is that, after messing with different yahoo mail sites and configurations, to go to yahoo email interface and use "All New Mail" option, and use "Beta Production Site" for email retrieval.

A Gmail account of course;

1. First set up Gmail using IMAP on Thunderbird (instructions here);


2.  With needed webmail components installed, configure all the webmail components for your email account from different providers ThunderBird -> Tools -> Add-Ons. Also, set up email accounts respectively in Thunderbird -> Tools -> Account Settings -> Add Account, then follow the instruction from Thunderbird. I have hotmail, and serveral yahoo accounts, aol and other work as well. 


3. (Optional:) Add email accounts in Gmail so you can send email using a specific email account in Gmail: at Gamil user interface -> Settings -> Accounts -> Add another email address you own and follow the instructions;


4. The default location to collection should be the "Local Folder", if not, go to Tools -> Account Settings, under "Server Settings" for each email account, there is a "Advanced" button, click on it and select "Global Inbox (Local Folders Account)"; 


5. Set up the Message Filter (Tools -> Message Filter) for the "Local Folders" to "Move all mails from Local Folder to your Gmail Inbox folder";

and that's it! This is really nice for those yahoo email account owners, 'cause without paying for Yahoo Premium, POP3 is not enabled. There are web service pull email headers but not the full message body without going to Yahoo email site.

If you know a better way of doing this, please let me know in the comments.

imeem vs. last.fm vs pandora

So I listen to music online most of the time, I want to be able to listen to the my collections at work, at home, in my car, or just anywhere. I'm cheap enough not wanting to buy any mp3 from itunes or amazon, (would cost me a fortune if I did), and lazy enough not wanting to sync music onto my ipod and carry it around all the time. I've been using imeem exclusively for a while now, maybe I'm a little biased, but IMHO I think it has the most comprehensive collection of songs, any kind of songs, you name it. It lets you upload your own mp3s, compile your own playlist by dragging songs from any imeem member.

As for Pandora, seems to be used a lot by new users of online music, it lets you create a station of songs or artists you like, and find "similar" style songs for you. They achieve this auto suggestion using "Music Genome Project", but I really don't know how can they find "similar" songs based upon my preferences, they probably just do this using their tag system, which, by the way, doesn't meet my criteria most of the time. What really sucks about it is that when you're trying to look for a song, it may find it (may well not), but it may not be playing it right away but playing some "similar" songs first. When I want to listen a tune, I want it right away! By the way, it doesn't have "man in motion" by John Parr, I was watching "St. Elmo's Fire" on Hulu the other day, and wanted to listen to that song again, it's on Imeem and Last.fm, but not Pandora. Pandora prompted a message trying to explain "why we don't play the song now", didn't bother to read it. I can see that the "create a station" idea appealing when you just want to listen to some similar songs randomly, or exploring new songs, it doesn't let you skip more than 5 songs. You cannot create your own playlist either.

Imeem doesn't have an iPhone application yet (does have one for Android), so I also looked at last.fm as well,  knew about it for a while, but haven't tried until now. It's a good mix between Imeem and Pandora, you can create a station like the way in Pandora, song collection is good, I found some of my all time favorite, Cui Jian's, songs, along with other Chinese rockers'. You get to listen to the song you searched for, one at a time. And you can created a playlist, but here is the catch: "Subscribers can listen to playlists once they contain at least 45 playable tracks by 15 different artists.", so you have to pay and you have to have time, but at least you are able to if you want to. I don't think I'll have time to do that. Auto suggestion for song is nice, but I still miss the flexibity. By the way, you can only upload songs which you hold copyrights too, yeah right, I guess 99% of users is not on that list, so if they don't have it, you're out of luck then.

If imeem is missing something, it'd be auto suggestion (create radio station) option, it's not on iphone yet, and cannot be accessed without flash support (iphone users, sorry). I'm running it on skyfire on my HTC Fuze just fine. It's not application, so you need to open the browser and find the bookmark. So bottom line, if you can, use imeem, otherwise, use last.fm, maybe even pay for the subscription ($3/month).

so which one is it? I don't know, you can't get everything, that's life, live with it!