Category Archives: Geek Out!

O Rly? Guess I better delete that Facebook group then…

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Jack Myers – JackMyersMediaBusinessReport.com – U.S. Will Never Become a Mobile-Centric Culture, Argues Third Screen Media Founder Tom Burgess
In an exclusive interview with JackMyers Media Business Report, Burgess argues that although Apple’s iPhone has dramatically changed the American mobile market, it is unlikely the U.S. will ever become a truly mobile-centric culture.

Darn, I guess the group I created on Facebook the other night will never get off the ground: I called it “My iPhone Has Been Permanently Grafted To My Body.”

Review: Tube Status

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Next up, a free application shows the status of the London tube lines in a slightly different way… clean, simple, but there’s not a lot to it:

Pretty straightforward – when you click the blue i for more information, you get:

And that’s it – no maps, no routefinder, but more updates are promised in future versions – iTunes still shows version 1.0

iPhone on the go: Britain

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Can I use my iPhone in England? – Apple – Wireless Forums from AT&T

Yes it will work there.

Make sure you call ATT and have international provisioning add the international roaming feature if you don’t already have it. Its free but you have to ask them to have it added, it comes turned off by default.

Warning – data is EXTREMELY expensive over in Europe — you can ask ATT to turn off your data while you are overseas and turn it back on when you return (They will balk at the request, ask for a supervisor).

Make sure you set your e-mail to manual check, not automatic, and make sure any alerts you get (i.e. weather texts, sports scores, etc) are turned off before you go.

Also – add the International Discount plan for the month you go – it’s 5.95 and gives you a substantial discount for making calls. You can also cancel it when you return.

You will still be able to use WiFi anywhere you can find it — if people want to see it, show it off where you have wifi, otherwise you are going to run up a huge bill.

Rule of thumb for data — a one MB web site download (about ANY regular website, like the Yahoo home page) will cost you about 20.00 on data in England — about 2 cents per KB.

If you leave your data connected – checking your e-mail manually twice per day and replying to 2 or 3, checking the weather once per day, checking a map each day, and checking a website each day (very very minimal data use) will run you about 90 – 100 dollars per week in addition to your phone and text charges.

Text messages are charged at 50 cents per message incoming or outgoing and are not included in your iPlan allotment while in Europe.

This is very helpful… but now to find out if it’s possible to get a better deal somehow. There may be a way… but we may have to settle for enabling a cheap throwaway phone with an O2 simcard.

Alternatively....
If you’re not already with O2 or aren’t eligible for the above options, you can use the iPhone on a Pay & Go basis. You just need to get a Pay & Go iPhone SIM card from any O2 store. The iPhone SIM card is set to the Favourite Place tariff, so gives you unlimited calls to any UK landline or O2 mobile from your chosen postcode when you top-up £30 or more a month. If you don’t like the sound of this tariff, you’ll be able to switch to one of our other Pay & Go tariffs.

With the above service, there’s a “web bolt-on” that’s about 15.00USD a month.

Also, there’s this.

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iPhone 2.0: I can has lightsaber?

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Apple released a software update and new apps for the iPhone today. Utility is fine but all I really wanted was the iLightsaber. The sounds work off the accelerometer, which means that tomorrow, thousands of Mac Jedi will be sparring and dueling. You can even pick your color.

Jedi name generator not included.

Just because I can

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I changed themes again, this time rather painlessly, so that I could add a Google Reader share widget to the left column. I’ll be customizing the various header images over the long weekend and perhaps softening the color scheme and changing font.

This theme is called Cutline and seems to work okay right out of the box. I have to add in my custom style stuff, but the photos page looks okay as – is.

I’ll be uploading a lot of pictures to Flickr from the East Coast trip and some backlog too.

But first we have to catch a matinée with Steve. Indy!!!1!

Posted via iPhone.

Gov Now Wants More Air Flyer Data, Redux | Threat Level from Wired.com

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A couple of years ago, blog posts like this:

Gov Now Wants More Air Flyer Data, Redux | Threat Level from Wired.com

and this:

Practical Nomad: January 2004 archive on passenger name records and US/Canadian security surveillance

went by my eye, more or less under the radar. So noted, but not really impacting my daily working life. But today I somehow got my reservation computer (SABRE) to cough up the following in response to a normal request for “direct connect” availability for a specific light out on United (UA) that somebody was trying to change. This was while there was a snap FAA grounding of all American (AA) MD-80 aircraft (I thought it was just Dallas, but apparently it was systemwide). So I was checking availability on a competitor flight to try to get someone home. And this is what came up on my screen. My own entry is in the upper right – a perfectly correct entry, but some system glitch sent this back:

1¤I1«
UA            **** INFO ONLY ****
NSA TEST TOOL BIT SETTINGS FOR GTID F1170E
-------------------------------------------
DISPLAY INCOMING POLL KEYWORD FILE  BIT1‡ ? ON
DISPLAY OUTGOING POLL KEYWORD FILE  BIT2‡ ? ON
DISPLAY INCOMING LSA KEYWORD FILE   BIT3‡ ? OFF
DISPLAY OUTGOING LSA KEYWORD FILE   BIT4‡ ? ON
DISPLAY INCOMING FS KEYWORD FILE    BIT5‡ ? ON
DISPLAY OUTGOING FS KEYWORD FILE    BIT6‡ ? OFF

“What the ???” was my first thought. But then I saw “NSA” and “GTID” and keyword queries and I started to wonder.

I made the 

1¤I1«

entry a couple of times, because I really did want to get direct connect availability off of that first line of itinerary, but this kept coming back. And then it started returning what I expected to see, but I had already copied and pasted it into an email to myself. Should have taken a screenshot, too, but I was kind of busy trying to help the lady who is still stuck in Dallas.

my husband David.

But this is very, very weird.