Automation Adventures

OK, I don’t care if you can duplicate any of this technology with Qik or anything else that exists right now: you gotta give it to Apple that they can just put their finger on the right sentiments:

Like a pregnant woman showing the ultrasound to her husband in the Army, or the two people using sign language. Isn’t that the coolest thing??

Next on the list is undoubtedly a front-facing camera for the iPad. Imagine the slightly larger screen displaying the same picture.

Tags: apple, facetime, iphone, iphone4, video, wwdc

Zedomax blog has a preview of an Android tablet running Android at the Adobe exhibit at Web 2.0. Although the preview shows off a lot of the functions (including the ability to run Flash and Air applications on the tablet), there are two distinct disadvantages for an Android/Flash tablet:

Related articles by Zemanta

• Flash seen running on a Google Tablet prototype (crunchgear.com)
• Android Tablet Prototype Running Flash Spotted in the Wild (mashable.com)
• Adobe Flash shows up on mysterious Android tablet (infoworld.com)
• Google Tablet Prototype Turns Up at Trade Show (cbsnews.com)
• Found footage: Android tablet prototype running (and crashing) Flash (tuaw.com)
• Adobe Demoes Prototype Android Tablet Running Flash and AIR (techie-buzz.com)
• Adobe Shows Off A Multi-Touch Tablet Prototype Running Flash And Air “Flawlessly” (androidpolice.com)

Tags: Adobe, air, android, apple, flash, google, ipad, Photography, tablet

Last Saturday my iPod froze up. After applying the reset (Hold on, Hold off, press and hold Menu and Select at the same time), the screen displayed the Sad iPod Icon. Fearing my podcast and audio book listening days were not over but put on indefinite hiatus, I drove home and entered the URL the iPod displayed: http://www.apple.com/support/ipod.

The results there were less than encouraging: try and reconnect your iPod to the computer (sorry, problem didn’t occur while connecting to the computer), or send it in for repairs. Well, we’re talking an almost 4 year old iPod here, so any repairs would probably cost more than the iPod is worth (heck the shipping cost is probably more than it’s worth…!). So I decided to use Google to see if anyone had an alternative solution.

This leads me to a Digg article, that pointed to an article “How To Fix an Ipod with the Sad iPod Icon” on Spilling Coffee. The basic solution boils down to:

1. Put something on your desk (a stack of paper works great) to prevent your desk from getting damaged (don’t worry about the iPod)
2. Grab the iPod firmly, with the connector pointing down
3. Slam it on the stack of papers on your desk

The idea is that the hard disk connector can come lose enough not to make connection anymore, but still be attached enough that a good bang will snap it back into place.

So with a heavy heart and closed eyes I banged my iPod on the desk and performed another reset. Lo and behold, the menu appeared! And faster than it had done on previous resets!! Thanks Tom Coffee!

Warning: banging your iPod on your desk may cause damage to desk, iPod, or anything else in the vicinity. It worked for me, but it may not work for you. Banging your iPod is a serious form of Apple fan-dom…

Tags: bang, connector, disk, DIY, ipod, sad

We have a little rotating web page setup in our break room, and have been using a dial indicator to show our performance in bookings and shipments. However, due to the nature of the set-up (a page, showing a flash file, that is configured by an XML file), it turned out to be necessary in Internet Explorer to use the option “Every time I visit the webpage” on the “Check for newer versions of stored pages:” setting in the Temporary Internet Files and History Settings.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 7 still can’t handle CSS properly, so some of the tables looked horrible. Switching to Firefox fixed that problem. But now the old data was showing. And where is that “Newer versions of stored pages” setting in Firefox???

It’s hiding in the config. In the address bar, type

about:config

Then find the setting browser.cache.check_doc_frequency, and change it to 1. This will duplicate the Internet Explorer behavior (as far as loading cached page goes, mind you!).

The options for this setting are as follows:

Tags: cache, firefox, IE, XML

Yesterday Apple had its September presentation, which, as the title “Let’s Rock” may have given away, was focused on iTunes and the various iPod models. Here are the announcements in a nutshell:

• HD TV shows added to the iTunes store. $2.99 per episode ($1.99 for standard definition), and you can view them on Apple TV and your computer (and hopefully you iPod).
• NBC returns to the iTunes store.
• iTunes 8 is announced:
  • New browsing options
  • Genius mode: automatic playlist based on songs that “go great together”. It sounds like Pandora in iTunes.
• iPod classic: the current line up of an 80GB and a 160GB model will be changed to one 120GB model, priced at $250 (what, not $249?).
• iPod Nano 4G:
  • has the form factor of the Nano 2G
  • the video of the 3G
  • Built-in accelerometer
  • new User Interface
  • landscape mode for coverflow
  • thinnest Nano yet
  • $149 for 8GB, $199 for 16GB
• iPod Touch:
  • Thinner
  • has integrated volume control
  • built-in speaker(!)
  • Genius playlist creation
  • Nike+ built-in (you still need the Nike+ transmitter)
  • $229 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB, and $399 for 32GB
• AppStore: 100 million downloads in the first 60 days. Upcoming offerings: Spore Origins, Real Soccer 2009, Need for Speed: Undercover.
• Two new headphones:
  • A regular set with in-band control (volume, next, prev, play, pause) and microphone for $29
  • An in-ear set with two drivers per bud (woofer and tweeter) for $79
• iPod Touch 2.1 software: Free upgrade for 2.0 users, $9.95 for 1.x users
• iPhone 2.1 software:
  • Free upgrade
  • improved battery life
  • fewer call drops
  • fewer crashes
  • increased speed for iTunes backups

It sounds that Apple is slowly retiring the iPod classic, and adding more emphasis on the AppStore. More news can be read at Gizmodo and other sites around the net.

Tags: apple, appstore, iphone, ipod, itouch, itunes, nano