Jobs Vows Still Another iPhone Fix for September

August 20, 2008 – 1:59 pm
Let's hope Steve Jobs isn't making promises he can't keep. Earlier I wrote that, in one of the short, brief emails that sometimes respond to questions made directly to Jobs, the 3G connection problems many have been seeing were acknowledged, and a fix was promised.
We are working on some bugs which affect around 2% of the iPhones shipped, and hope to have a software update soon.

Steve
Now, according to further reports, a similar promise was made with regards to the crashing bug which has hit the 2.0 software; many non-default apps crash almost immediately and return to the home screen.

According to AppleInsider, the email response was short and to the point:
This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September.
Aha. If in fact this is another terse message from Steve Jobs (or his stand-in, as it were), it appears indeed that we will be seeing an update in September.

While I'm sure the crashing bug is important to some, the 3G bug is more important to many. Particularly, I have to point out, since we are paying $10 more for our data plans than original iPhone owners with EDGE.

While USA Today reported that Apple admitted (finally) that the 2.0.2 update was supposed to partially fix the 3G issues, it didn't work for many (including me), and a broader fix is planned for September.

Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock said on Tuesday:
"The software update improves communication with 3G networks."
Well, it did absolutely nothing for me, and some report worse 3G coverage after the update.

Meanwhile, Michael Gartenberg, Vice President for mobile strategy at Jupitermedia, implied the connection issue may be overblown.
"We've seen these isolated reports about people having connectivity issues with 3G and Edge, and frankly I have those issues on a variety of phones. Cellphone coverage is tricky."
He has a point. Except for the fact that I work with mobile phones, and I can stick several 3G phones in a row on my desk and the only one with 1/2 bar at my office will be the iPhone. Everything else will have 4 - 5 bars. Sorry to disappoint, but it's a real issue.
By trompyx | Posted in Interesting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Microsoft’s Pause Button for Email

August 20, 2008 – 11:50 am
I wrote earlier about Microsoft's Office Labs project called "Search Commands" which helps users find Office commands that the Ribbon wants to hide from them. Here's another one, which purports to be a "pause button" for email, but actually offers a lot more than that.

It's called Email Prioritizer, and as Microsoft says:
Our latest prototype, Email Prioritizer, includes these features:
  • A "Do Not Disturb" button that stops incoming mail delivery so you can work without interruptions.
  • Email priorities are assigned to incoming mail so you can focus on the most important mail first. With a “0-3 stars” ranking system, you can focus on email messages that are most important to you. These priorities are based on algorithms from Microsoft Research.
Now, the "Do Not Disturb" button: that would go over like a lead balloon in most offices (except those with things like email-free Fridays). However, the prioritization of emails, now that I find interesting.

You obviously have to "train" the software to know what kind of priority to assign to each incoming email, but once done, it's pretty useful.

Of course, the problem with this: you need to be using Office 2007. Heavy sigh: it figures. Still, this could turn out to be a rather interesting add-in, if you're OK with trying pre-release software.

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Yahoo!’s Buzz Opens to All

August 20, 2008 – 10:10 am
Earlier this year, Yahoo! opened its Buzz social news service, and its been very successful, surpassing Digg in terms of unique U.S. visitors. One noteworthy difference between Buzz and other sites is that only approved publishers were able to submit stories. However, on Monday Yahoo! opened Buzz up to all publishers.

The promotion aspect of Buzz, whereby hot stories get promoted to the Yahoo! front page, is a big draw for publishers. So you can expect that a lot of publishers would will be submitting their content to the site. As Yahoo! said in their press release announcing the change:
We started with about 100 publishing partners, which quickly grew to more than 400. Sites like Salon.com and GigaOm immediately saw an impact as their traffic soared when content climbed up the list and got selected for Yahoo.com. Now that benefit can come to any site online, making it possible to give as much visibility to extraordinary content from an obscure site as major news stories from big publishers.

What does this mean for you? Anything you find on the Web is now buzzable. Any of the Web’s best current event stories, gossip, photos, videos and more can be submitted and shared on Yahoo! Buzz. You’ve already seen the “Buzz Up” buttons on many of your favorite sites, including New York Times, Us Weekly and BoingBoing. Now, as any site is able to add our button, you’ll have even more places to buzz to your heart’s content. And if you don’t see that button on a Web story you just have to share, you can submit a story right on Yahoo! Buzz. Like always, the more unique and compelling the story, the better chance your story of choice will buzz up to the Yahoo! homepage. Nice!
However, Buzz isn't just about voting for, or rather, buzzing up a story. There's an editorial team in charge, so don't get all excited and start to think you can "game" the system. Chances are small to none that it would work.

By trompyx | Posted in Interesting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Surprising (?) Feature Request for Windows 7: “Make Windows Faster”

August 20, 2008 – 9:52 am
And no, they didn't mean make it faster with faster hardware. I wrote earlier about Microsoft's new Windows 7 blog, and in their second blog post, Microsoft (specifically, Microsoft Senior VP Steven Sinofsky) wrote about the myriad of comments and suggestions for Windows 7 they've received since the blog went live. And what caught their eye?
I would say by and large the reception has been very warm and we definitely appreciate that. The most frequent request was to discuss Windows performance and/or just “make Windows faster”. There’s a lot to this topic so we expect to talk about this quite a bit over the next months.
Ah yes, performance, one of the big issues with so-called "Vista-Capable" PCs, which were anything but. Well, they were capable of running it, just not well, and as revealed by past Microsoft emails, they knew it.

Indeed, some of the slowdown of Vista vs. XP is all the friendliness and feature-richness of the OS (i.e., bloat). It doesn't look like Windows 7 will be slimmed down by any means, looking at
"some of the main feature teams" ---
  • Applets and Gadgets
  • Assistance and Support Technologies
  • Core User Experience
  • Customer Engineering and Telemetry
  • Deployment and Component Platform
  • Desktop Graphics
  • Devices and Media
  • Devices and Storage
  • Documents and Printing
  • Engineering System and Tools
  • File System
  • Find and Organize
  • Fundamentals
  • Internet Explorer (including IE 8 down-level)
  • International
  • Kernel & VM
  • Media Center
  • Networking - Core
  • Networking - Enterprise
  • Networking - Wireless
  • Security
  • User Interface Platform
  • Windows App Platform
Whew. How big a hard drive will I need for Windows 7?

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Russia rejects UN call to pull out of Georgia - Telegraph.co.uk

August 20, 2008 – 9:13 am

ABC News
Russia rejects UN call to pull out of Georgia
Telegraph.co.uk - 54 minutes ago
Russia has rejected a draft UN resolution demanding it immediately pull out of Georgia, as President Demitry Medvedev again delayed the withdrawal.
Video: NATO's one-sided view 'puzzles' Moscow RussiaToday
Russian Action in Georgia Shows Limits of West, NATO (Update2) Bloomberg
Reuters - Seattle Times - Philadelphia Inquirer
all 1,920 news articles
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