Apple Folks, help!

OK, iPhone support website is HORRIBLE!!

First of all, the choice of only 5 "descriptions" of the problem is really poor - none allow for an actual problem with the device, only for accessories. I guess I'll be calling them later. Here's the issue I'm having - can anyone help? This is on an original iPhone 8GB that I've had almost a year, so it's still under warranty... :)

Yesterday, I started getting this error message when synching my iPhone: "this iPhone cannot be synched. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable." I decided to restore from a backup but I continued to get the error. After working with this some more last night, I have found that I ONLY get that error when I try to sync my Photos. This sounds to me like there is some type of corruption on the flash drive. Also, when I try to sync my Google Contacts, the sync never completes or times out - it's been doing "Syncing contacts with 'Chris' iPhone'" for 30 minutes now. Whereas prior to yesterday my syncs would only take a couple of minutes at the most. I am running firmware version 2.1 and have been since the day it was released and I have only installed a handful of apps (which all sync fine). I've never had any problems with this great device, but now it appears that the drive is corrupt! Online searches don't help me out too much, either.

Please Update Your Feeds

Looking at my feedburner stats, I see that a majority of my subscribers are still only subscribed to my blogspot RSS feed.

If you've been subscribing to my feedburner feed all along (http://feeds.feedburner.com/cwhisonant), then there's nothing you'll need to do. All of my posts at BleedYellow.com and those at cwhisonant.blogspot.com will appear in that feed.

I will likely post my "Yellow"-related stuff just at BleedYellow.com. I will post personal stuff at this blog. So please stay subscribed to that feed.

If you insist on just subscribing to my BleedYellow.com blog, that feed is:
http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/roller-ui/rendering/feed/lotusnut/entries/atom/

Also, if you want to subscribe to all blogs here at BleedYellow.com, that feed is:
http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/roller-ui/rendering/feed/bloghome/entries/atom/

My New Default Mail Client Is Outlook...

But that may be about the only thing I don't like about my iPhone!! I guess I could sync the contacts with my Yahoo account, but I never use that account except to chat with like 2 people.

Anyway, I've had the iPhone for about a couple of weeks now (early xmas gift from the parents...). :) My daughter really likes it too - we were watching some Veggie Tales clips on YouTube earlier! And she likes my new music phone too! She says "it plays music and it's a phone, and everything else". This device really is all it's cracked up to be. Of course there are some "oddities" to get used to, but it's extremely intuitive and simple to just pick up and use. Here is a quick list of some of my pros and cons...

Pros:
- The screen is superb. Not only is the output great, but the touch screen is slick (think about how your car feels when you wax it) and is supposedly scratch-resistant. The sales lady told me to try scratching the demo unit with my keys (I didn't, though...)
- An all-in-one device. Sure there are others that could do most of what this does. But I don't know of any with as much storage. It would be nice to be able to add more, but an 8GB MicroSD chip for will set you back ~$90 (on eBay) for other devices.
- SMS - Love the chat interface with SMS!
- Apps - they're all browser-based. I like the Google and Facebook apps. My other app is iBibleSpace
- 8GB - The storage really isn't that bad. I can load up all of my favorite albums, podcasts, etc and still have room left over.
- Speakers - While they're not hi-fi, they work really well in a quiet room (good for spinning some tunes while working in the garage, etc...)

Cons:
- Battery life - it's a full-featured PDA, phone, iPod Video with Wi-Fi. What do you expect. I can charge it every other day if I pushed it (depending on usage).
- Sync-only - Unlike the other iPod models, the iPhone is sync-only. I generally like to just drag files from iTunes onto my iPod (from multiple machines). I have resorted to dragging files to an "iPhone" playlist and just synching that playlist with my iPhone. Not quite as flexible, but it works.
- Bluetooth - It works well, but it's a little kludgey sometimes. For instance if my headset is on and I answer a call from the iPhone I have to manually tell the iPhone to use the headset.

Just Installed IE7 And Here Are The Results

This was what I got after the (apparently) clean reboot when I just installed IE7:


OK, so I'm puzzled as to whether the serious error was that I held out and ran IE6 for so long or whether the error was my upgrading to IE7!?! I guess time will tell...

Classic I.T. Dilbert Today

Seems like we've all been there and done that...

Exchange Server Has Viruses - Claims Microsoft

exchangeviruses, originally uploaded by topherssgtp.

One of the things "we" like to point out is that Lotus is more secure when it comes to viruses. Well, according to Microsoft's Exchange site, they have "Viruses" built-in to their Exchange product. Check out the scrolling banner... :)

For Those Of You Who Embed YouTube Videos...

Hat tip to the desiringGod blog for this one.

Because of a new YouTube feature, when you embed a video, your users can watch related videos on your site. This is, of course, risky for anyone who wants to be in control of the content of their site. (Wouldn't that be everyone?)

If you want to, you can disable it by adding &rel=0 to the end of the video's URL when you embed it.

That can be kind of scary if something "related" isn't exactly what you wanted to have other people see when at your site. Just the other night while at a Barnes & Noble looking at a magazine I saw where a seemingly orthodox preacher in New England somewhere (I think) was actually fired because of some links from his personal web site. It turns out that he had some links to some occult sites so that people could get information about certain groups. But from just a couple of clicks people at his site could order shirts, etc... from these groups. It appears that the church he was at saw this as something they didn't want visitors to their pastor's site to be able to do so easily.

The moral is, along with the YouTube issue above, that you should probably be aware of what you're linking to and what people may perceive about you.

Now Playing: "Repentance" by Dream Theater

eBibleicious

I've added the eBibleicious script to my blog. This means that any scripture references will automatically be hyperlinked. I have chosen to use the ESV Translation that will display in a window when you hover the mouse. Check out these:

John 1:1
John 21:25
Acts 8:20-24

Gmail Down?

My wife was complaining that her gmail is down too, so I tried their SSL version:

https://mail.google.com/mail/

This takes a little longer to load and you'll have to accept a certificate, but it lets us in...

Picture of the Day

I took this pic with my Pearl of a dvd-ram we opened from IBM. Notice how it is stapled... Nice QA job!

Microsoft Exchange Hosting

When my mom started her mortgage company back in 1999, I was tasked as her IT guy. So I found a pretty good company to host her mail. If you're in South Carolina and you need a mortgage, let me know... It's Xeran. For the past 8 years, they've been really good. One of the reasons I chose them was because they operated in SC. Now, they operate from MA. When they merged with a company a few years ago there were some hiccups, but it's been pretty smooth since then.

However, I just got an email today that they will let you convert some (or all) of your mailboxes to Exchange Hosting. I decided to look into it, and there are 3 tiers of hosting above and beyond the current rate:

250MB mailboxes:
$12.95 billed every month, per mailbox

500MB mailboxes:
$19.95 billed every month, per mailbox

1000MB mailboxes:
$34.95 billed per month, per mailbox

I'm somewhat surprised that they offer a 250MB quota mailbox - much less a 1GB one! If you're a small company that wants push email to phones, good mobile access, calendar sharing, etc... then this is probably a pretty good deal at $13 per mailbox per month. There's no upfront server cost, no administrator cost.

So the big question is where's the Domino hosting? :)

TAG, You're It!

Since I've posted my 5 things, I can tag anyone else...

OK, you guys asked for it, so Ray and Phil, what do we not know about you??

Now Playing: "Closer" by Charlie Hall

Switched to Blogger Beta

I wanted to take advantage of some of the new features such as post labels (categories) and the collapsible archive. So I switched to a new template - "Stretch Denim". I like the look - let me know what you think. It's just really clean.

Also, I have categorized most of my posts. There are still a lot in "Uncategorized", but I will wade through them sometime! And get ready for my series starting in two days...

A Brief History of Storage

By the way, I took this picture with the Blackjack. Not too bad...



As you can see, the size of storage media has reduced significantly. We have an IBM 8" floppy that was apparently used here as a "System back up 10/11/88". I honestly didn't know how much this stored. But I just found a document regarding the diskette from 1979. It appears to hold 1,212,416 bytes. We also have the next gen 3.5" floppy (1.44 MB). Then I found a huge 250MB Iomega zip disk. This was a big step for floppies, though since it was proprietary it wasn't adopted too much. And for comparison's sake I put my SanDisk cruzer micro 512MB USB stick in the picture. It's the famous NOMAD! ;) Finally, there is a 512MB MicroSD card that I just picked up for my Blackjack. It will hold, what, close to 500 of the 8" floppies?

Flash Drive for Nomad

OK everyone, time to go pick up this flash drive for your Nomad installations. I think it will have enough space for even the largest mail file replica!

Kanguru 32GB Flash Max Drive - Only $1499!! - and no, I didn't miss a decimal place. $1,499.99 to be exact!

Confess Your AOL IM "Prank Gone Awry"

OK, time for you to confess your AOL Instant Messenger (or other IM program) "prank gone awry" (i.e. Foley). Here's mine.

My freshman year of college was great to have AOL free for almost a whole year. Though it was dial-up, we had a few guys who would just get the free trials and have them extended several months. My roomie and I had an account on his blazing Acer laptop. It was an Intel 95MHz I think. Super fast! Anyway, I digress...

Some of us decided to "play the player" (my roomie). We knew that his singing group was going on a trip the next weekend. So, we used a new screenname and posed as a girl that was in a chatroom with him. It just so happened that he was singing in the same town she lived in! This was probably Monday or Tuesday. He was pretty pumped up to meet this girl. We even found a tasteful picture of an attractive girl and sent him. Man, I don't know how I kept my composure. About Thursday that week, we finally broke the news to him that he was being played - poor guy. It was sooo hilarious!!!

Now Playing: "Water Under The Bridge" by Jars of Clay

Package Tracking With Bloglines

This is so cool - you can track UPS, FedEx, USPS, and DHL shipments via Bloglines. I just saw an update that they added DHL tracking - I didn't even know you could already track the others.

Now Playing: "Chewbacca" by Liquid Tension Experiment

Technorati: Bloglines

PC/104

Is anyone out there familiar with coding embedded applications for the PC/104? Or do you know someone who is?

http://www.pc104.org/

I have a friend working on a way cool medical app that needs to xmit data received via IR to a PC/104 and then have the PC/104 call a web service to transmit the data. He's now trying to find someone to work on the PC/104 web service application.

Now Playing: "I Wish You Were Here" by Balance of Power

Curt Stone Has A New Blog

Our old pal Curt Stone has a new blog at "Curt's Island".

Now Playing: "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" by Dream Theater

CoComment Enabled

CoComment is now enabled with the HaloScan comment system I use. The only caveat is that it doesn't automatically track the name of the post - you get a number.

Now Playing: "Hey You" by Dream Theater