Categories
Mobile Personal

My iPhone Won’t Turn On

So my battery got low yesterday afternoon. I was away from home and didn’t get to charge it until after dinner. It wouldn’t turn on, so I plugged it in. It still wouldn’t turn on, even after 10 minutes. I tried doing a reset unplugged, plugged into my MacBook Pro, and plugged into the wall adapter… all to no avail. I left it plugged into my Mac all night and it’s still dead. I googled “iphone won’t charge”, “iphone won’t turn on”, but it looks like no one else is having this problem.

I decided to call Apple iPhone support (1-800-MY-IPHONE) this morning, and talked with a nice woman named Christina. She had me try a couple resets again, and was surprised that didn’t work. I’m back at school in Santa Cruz without my car now, and it would take a bus and a train to get to the nearest Apple store, so I opted for repair by mail. She offered a temporary service phone for a $29 fee which I agreed to because it “may take up to 10 days” to get my phone shipped back. Oh, and the ’service phone’ is an 8GB iPhone… =D

Anyway, although I’m not too excited to not have a phone for a day or two, this repair service so far sounds pretty convenient.

Update: Apparently they couldn’t fix my phone (?!) so I got a brand new one. Maybe they couldn’t tell that I had installed AppTapp and a bunch of other apps and messed around a bit (I didnt ever unlock it though). Anyway, they send me a brand new phone, and it was all very easy. What other phone makes you want to plug it in to your computer all the time so you have a complete backup? Seriously… All I had to do was swap out the SIM and it was like I had my phone back again! Thanks Apple!

Categories
Mobile Productivity

Productivity On My Phone

I use a Treo 700w. It runs Windows Mobile 5. It’s not as powerful as I would like (I can only run 3-4 things at once), but I can still do a whole lot with it.

More and more sites are getting Mobile interfaces. For example, I can use Gmail, Facebook, Google Reader, Flickr and soon YouTube from Pocket Internet Explorer on my phone (many more sites too). And the phone can do mobile web browsing well.

Here are some of my other Mobile Web Favorites:
google.com/ig/mobile (iGoogle, my startpage. Access to gmail, google reader, search),
di.fm/mobile (Electronic internet radio stations),
m.facebook.com (Can message all your friends, see their pics… etc.)
m.twitter.com (For twittering…)

I also use a few applications on my phone:
Google Maps! (Amazing. Even works with that Bluetooth GPS thing I bought recently.)
Skype (Sound comes out the wrong speaker, but works great for speakerphone)
USB Modem (lets me connect to the internet with my mac laptop)
KeyLight (saves a lot of battery power by toggling off keyboard backlight LEDs)
Shozu (GeoTag your pics! neat new app that interfaces with many personal media sites YouTube, Flickr etc to upload your pics/videos etc. and can attach GPS location to your pics)

There are a lot of fun things to play with on my phone, but it can really feel productive when you’re responding to emails and reading your news subscriptions. I’m excited about the future of mobile phones, especially with that cool new iPhone from Apple. In the meantime, I know there’s lots more to do with my phone… what have I missed?

Update: I have an iPhone now. =D

Categories
Fitness Mobile

Run: Boulder Scramble on Live Oak Beaches

That's pretty much where I was running.

So my friend Dana Stocking invited all his Facebook friends to a Nike+ Competition: Who can run the most miles in 30 days. I’ve done these competitions before, but only with my girlfriend. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep because I was setting up my new GPS toy so I could map out my runs… and I went out once it got light outside. I get bored just running for distance, so I try leap from boulder to boulder the whole way.

Route: Live Oak Beaches (on the boulders)
Distance: 5.07 mi
Time: 01:10:10
kCal: 659
Temp: 54° F

Slick huh? I’m trying this amazing application: TrailRunner. It combines the data from your Nike+ Sport Kit and your GPS data logger.

Categories
Personal Productivity Web

The Worst Thing About the Social Web

For me, the worst thing (at least in regard to productivity) about the Social Web, Web 2.0, is not just having way too many articles to read, but also that I am compelled to read all the comments too.

Especially on posts that I’m interested in… for example, I was just reading a piece on Rich HTML signatures in Gmail over at Amit Agarwal’s Digital Inspiration (He does PodTech.net India). The comments are right there at the bottom of the post and it’s very interesting to see all the different ways people respond to his article:

di_comments.jpg

Intriguing isn’t it? …And I just want to keep reading all of them, but I can’t… we can’t. I mean, for awhile, when I was just getting familiar with Web 2.0, I spent a lot of time reading comments on Digg (et al.). But now I use Google Reader keep up with everything (even Facebook now), which spares me from the temptation by not showing comments (of course, if I really want to say something, I can go to the original post on the blog’s website).

Do you suffer from this temptation to read comments too? How do you handle it?

Categories
Mobile

Wikipedia on my phone

I’ve been reading various articles from Wikipedia on my Palm Treo 700w late=
ly, and it’s worth trying out. I haven’t tried it yet on any other phones, =
I’m curious about that.

On Pocket Internet Explorer (included browser), press Menu->View->One Colum=
n to make the page look good and easy to read.

I’ve been reading about the books I’m reading for a class, as well as about=
a car I was interested in lately. (I’ll add links later, I’m posting from =
my phone)=

Categories
Found Mac

The Best SpellChecker I’ve Ever Seen (and it’s free!)

If you use a spell checker, even occasionally, check this out. Uses Google (Web API) to correct mistakes, and works amazingly well. (It’s Mac only so far)
Watch the short video demonstration!

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