a blog about tech stuff and RustyG
Archive for April, 2011
I always like competition in the market place
21 year ago
by RustyG
in Technology
Well it seems the tests that started back in 2009, were very successful, and Redbox will be bringing game rentals for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii starting in June. The pricing will be $2 a day, and should be the same as the movie business as far as returns go. According to President Mitch Lowe, he stated “Redbox has rented more than 1 million video games in less than two years at these locations, underscoring the popularity of video game play in America,”. Now this will put them in the market along with GameFly, who does mail rental for video games, much like Netflix does for movies. It seems kind of weird, since you can rent from Gamefly for $16 a month (one-at-a-time) for as many games as you can play in a month. But with the initial tests that Redbox did, it seems people either don’t know the Gamefly name very well, or just don’t care. I guess though, it’s just another venue for games to get out.
There was an interview by IndustryGames that co-founder of Gamefly Sean Spector said that they really aren’t worried about the competition and said “Look at Netflix and Redbox for movies.” So he seems to think they can co-exist just fine. We shall see. I’m just waiting for Spot to try and capsize Redbox with their 89 cent combo and $1 across the board for movies.
via [CNET]
Hulu Plus may be coming to Xbox very soon
01 year ago
by RustyG
in Technology
You know it’s funny how in 2009, I was worried about Hulu charging and how in the next year, they announced Hulu Plus. Even later that same year, they had to drop their price, to stay right in line with the Netflix plan. Now, I have cut the cable, and use only OTA free broadcasts and Netflix (Along with my XBOX Live subscription). The original announcment had talked about future availability on other devices such as mobile devices and gaming platforms. One of those selected devices was going to be the XBOX 360. Well it seems, according to a few sources, it seems that day will be Friday April 29th. The funny thing about it is, there hasn’t been any pre-announcements or any heads up. It would be weird for the XBOX Live crew to just update without some sort of notice. Of course, this could come in a quick update, much like the netflix update with the Kinect features added. I just don’t see why, since it isn’t really an add-on to a current feature, it’s a whole NEW feature! We shall see though. I’ll be happy, it will definetly help deter my want to find other sources for recordings of the shows I watch.
via [Engadget]
White Unicorn iPhone is OFFICIAL
0
Even though Sony seems to be having issues with the PSN, and losing members credit cards, Apple seems to be having a BIG day; two major announcments from the big ‘A’. They finally made the official announcement that our iPhones are not tracking us, but that they are tracking local wifi and cell tower spots, to help improve and possibly bring future features via a “crowed-sourced traffic database”. (Sources:Apple Insider, Boy Genius Report, CNET, Engadget, TechCrunch,ArsTechnica & GigaOm)
As I said before, I don’t really care about the issue, but a lot of people do, so if you want, you can read all of the articles that said something about it, and form your own opinion.
The other BIG announcement from Apple was the WHITE iPhone!!!!!!!!!!! It’s been almost a year since the original announcement of the iPhone 4, being both in black and white, but we never saw the white iPhone materialize, but after a few days of rumors and retail store inventory screenshots, it is finally Official from Apple. We have a set date of April 28th (ArsTechnica, CrucnGear, Engadget, Boy Genius Report & CNET)!!So whip out your debit/credit card and head to the store. Now the issue I see for tomorrow is long lines and those who pre-ordered last June (2010). Will this cause a bottleneck limited supply issue? I would say yes, but only those in the tech world are really paying attention to this, and well, maybe those that pre-ordered it. My question is, will they get priority on the supply? I would think so. So I don’t have to be into work until 9AM tomorrow, so if any store is opening early for this launch, I will go. If not, I’ll just order one, or stop by a store here locally. I don’t think my town will have a huge supply of them here, so I may have to go with ordering one. I would keep watching these sites for further information, as AT&T may do an opening or Apple may open early. So go get your white unicorn iPhone!!
The iPhone tracking problem
0Well it seems, even amongst all the rumors, rumors & rumors of the white “unicorn” iPhone 4 coming on the 27th of April (spotted for Vodafone in the UK and Van Roey in Belgium), Apple can’t seem to get away from headlines about this whole tracking ordeal. It seems the whole world is asking questions as to why this is going on. South Korea is asking questions, the Attornery General from Illinois is asking for a meeting & now Senator Al Franken is holding a hearing on May 10th and has called Apple and Google both to this meeting.
Source: O'Reilly Radar
What has made this even worse, is now there is a couple of guys filing a class action lawsuit against Apple; one is from Florida and the other from New York. What’s even better about this is, a user emailed the great and powerful Steve Jobs, told him that he was getting a droid, and he got SERVED. Basically, Steve told the guy that Apple doesn’t track you, Google (via Android) does track you, and all the blogs are lying and spewing false information. WOW. How can you deny the information that is out there? The two guys from the UK plainly showed it works with their online tool and directions. Now even if Apple doesn’t use the information directly, why would you store it on the phone and on the local harddrive of the PC or Mac? UNENCRYPTED.
I found this file on my PC, I haven’t put it on a map yet, but still rather odd that it is there. It seems a security issue, especially since users that know nothing about the inner workings of an iPhone can be easily SSH’d into with the ‘root’ and ‘alpine’ combination. (Why doesn’t Apple give the basic user the chance to change this, without having to jailbreak. ) Once inside, the file isn’t even encrypted and easily downloadable and transferred to a map. So it seems to be a small whole in the security of the iPhone and it is causing a lot of concern among a lot of people.
The funny thing is, WE ALL CONSENTED to it, wether you knew about it or not. So I have no more pity for those crying about this issue. If you don’t take time read what you are agreeing to, then it is your own fault. The same goes for any legal documents, it is always good to read it before you sign anything! I’ll give you a section from the Apple document that you agreed to, upon purchasing and syncing up your iPhone: (pulled from the Apple SLA .pdf)
(b) Location Data. Apple and its partners and licensees may provide certain services through your iPhone that rely upon location information. To provide and improve these services, where available, Apple and its partners and licensees may transmit, collect, maintain, process and use your location data, including the real-time geographic location of your iPhone, and location search queries. The location data and queries collected by Apple are collected in a form that does not personally identify you and may be used by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. By using any location-based services on your iPhone, you agree and consent to Apple’s and its partners’ and licensees’ transmission, collection, maintenance, processing and use of your location data and queries to provide and improve such products and services. You may withdraw this consent at any time by going to the Location Services setting on your iPhone and either turning off the global Location Services setting or turning off the individual location settings of each location-aware application on your iPhone. Not using these location features will not impact the non location-based functionality of your iPhone. When using third party applications or services on the iPhone that use or provide location data, you are subject to and should review such third party’s terms and privacy policy on use of location data by such third party applications or services.
See? You agreed to that when you were syncing up the iPhone for the first time. You may not have realized it, as most people don’t. You just click and click and click, until you get to the end so you can setup your phone. The problem that I have with all of this, it seems that we are to believe (again for regular users) that this can be disabled by turning off the location servies, inside the settings of your phone. There are tests that show that iPhone continues to record location data, even after the switch is turned off. So you are being lied to at this point? “Oh yeah, we track you, we’re sorry. You can turn that off in your settings. Not really.”
As for me, I don’t really care, and it doesn’t bother me, but there are some people out there that still don’t have a cell phone, don’t direct deposit, mail things with a stamp, write letters, have landline phones and still pay for cable or satellite service. It may matter to them, and it may be their first smartphone and they don’t like the idea that they are being tracked, even if it isn’t being uploaded anywhere. If you do care and don’t really know what do about it, I suggest you jailbreak your iPhone and download the app ‘untrackered‘.
Just one more thing, it seems that Microsoft is trying to get a piece of this frenzy pie. Since they are the lowest percentage of smartphone users, it seems they are just reaching for attention at this point. They basically say they do the same thing, but just don’t store it locally for someone to find. Shut up microsoft, no one cares.
T-Mobile brings VoIP chat to Facebook
01 year ago
by RustyG
in Technology
Well it seems that T-Mobile isn’t going quiet into the night before this At&t merger acquisition. T-Mobile is now releasing a VoIP option for Facebook users, giving them the ability to voice chat instead of typing. This will be built into the chat window that already lives on Facebook. What will happen is the new install from letsbobsled.com will now place a new icon next to your Facebook friends that have the app installed as well, letting you know who you can use the app with. The roadmap apparently shows future use of video chat as well, but for right now, it’s just like making a phone call to all of your 700 friends! Being the fact that it is a VoIP service, it is free to use, via the company Vivox. So whip out your desktop microphones and turn up your speakers, cause now all of your friends will be calling, unless of course you don’t install the app.
You may already use one of the many other VoIP apps like Skype, Tango or Viber, but this just makes it so easy, because it is a simple plug-in inside of facebook, instead of being a desktop published app on your local harddrive. Now I have not heard whether this will work on any mobile versions of Facebook, which I highly doubt at this point, but I am sure this is on the roadmap as well. Even if T-Mo gets gobbled up by At&t and becomes At&t sled. So go try it out and let me know what you think below!
via [MobileCrunch]
iOS 4.3.1 Data issues and strange uploads – Phoning Home?
0Ok, so I have a really weird data leak and I need help with it, as it seems I am not getting any help from AT&T or Apple. AT&T can’t tell me where my data is going, and Apple hasn’t heard of this issue as of yet, which I guess is fine, since it is only a 10 day old issue. I’ll see if anyone else has this and can help, or maybe an Apple Rep can help.
Lost yet? I’ll give you the background. I have had an iPhone 4 (GSM) on iOS 4.1 for the longest time because of the jailbreaks not being untethered until recently. I don’t upgrade my phones software unless the jailbreak is untethered and confirmed for Windows (either redsn0w or greenp0ison). I saw this tweet from the iPhone Dev Team saying that iOS 4.3.1 was jailbroken untethered, and jumped in! I skipped iOS 4.2, 4.2.1 & 4.3 because of jailbreaks that were tethered, and were lost once you rebooted the phone. Well let’s just say EVERYTHING was fine and dandy on 4.1.. but then I upgraded to 4.3.1.
For the Find my iPhone that was added in 4.2, and the personal hotspot that was added in 4.3.
So I updated and started having issues. With my themes, the background for the Lock Screen and Home Screen had gone missing in my themes. When I tried to apply a different theme, I kept getting a black background with a square and blue question mark. So it looked like from 4.1 to 4.3.1, Apple has changed the location of the home screen and lock screen wallpaper locations. No problem, I just moved the wallpaper to the locations that the themes were looking for them, instead of trying to find where Apple had moved the new ones, or possibly renamed them, to make them harder to fine. Stupid Apple.
Ok, so I kind of did a work around to make my theme work, but I used to be able to change my background in the settings on the phone, now I will have to use iFile or SSH into the phone from my laptop to change my wallpaper. Stupid Apple.
Then I came across this little gem today… My iPhone is apparently sending CRAP loads of data either late late at night or early in the morning, at the cost of 300+MB a pop! It’s a good thing I have the “Unlimited” 5GB of data. So let’s start a timeline here so you get an idea where I am going with this.
April 4th 2011 – roughly around 10:30PM I backup 4.1, before I update to 4.3.1 as you see below.
Just for reference I started my new career as a Tier 1 Tech Support on Tuesday 4/5/11 the next morning at 8am.
So the first full week goes by of me being at my job, and we finally got desks, workstations and laptops on Friday 4/8/11.
Then yesterday, Wednesday the 13th, for the first time in a long time, I booted up Pandora (over 3G) just after getting to work at 8am. I let it run pretty much all day, except for my 1 hour lunch break and left to go home at 5pm. So we can say roughly 8 hours out of the day, I ran Pandora. Then today (4/14) I did the same, booted up Pandora and for say maybe 7 hours of the day, because I paused it a lot more because of meetings and conversations I was having in the office. So we have a total of 15 hours of Pandora being used in a two day period. That’s it.(They have a 40 hour cutoff for free accounts)
So I went to check my usage on my account since I have a 5GB cap. Wow was I surprised! I went to investigate and found a few little instances where my Phone was spitting out some serious amounts of data, and at times I wasn’t even awake!! The worst part, is that it was doing it over 3G and not my wireless connection. So let’s see those “issues”:
See that? What happened here? I have a lot of data being used across my phone. And I don’t know how either. So I looked into it, and it seems that I have had over 2.5GB used in the past 10 days, which is what the at&t account page lets me see. So let me put this in a table like view, so it’s all grouped together.
364,139KB (355.6MB) 04/05/11 11:47pm (im in bed asleep by 10 or 10:30pm)
322,353KB (314.8MB) 04/06/11 11:12pm (asleep)
138,392KB (135.15MB) 04/10/11 07:46pm (I was up, but watching netflix on my xbox)
359,160KB (350.74MB) 04/10/11 11:13pm (asleep, but later that night)
448,801KB (438.28MB) 04/11/11 10:56pm (asleep, the next day)
675,764KB (659.93MB) 04/13/11 06:49am (i don’t wake up till 7am)
The thing that gets me, is this is all since I update to 4.3.1 on the 4th. Now I think someone will say that it is because I have a jailbroken phone, but you can’t say that, because I have had a jailbroken phone since iPhone 2G. I always jailbreak them. I also noticed that I was having battery issues as well, and my battery was getting worse than before. See below:
So then I thought, let’s go back to the previous months to see what my data use was. AT&T has a data calculator to show you what you have used historically so you can make decisions on changing packages. So let’s see what that looks like.
Wow. Nowhere close. Except for Christmas, because I was out of town and using tethering on my iPhone for my laptop when I couldn’t get a good landline cable or DSL connection. Nothing over .5GB at all. That seems to be my normal usage (skipping December) for the last 6 months, well 5. So you see what I mean? I think I need to go back to 4.1. The only problem is, I will lose Photoshop Express because they quit supporting 4.1 and I can’t have the latest version of the app if I go back. Boo..
I need help. Any others with this problem? Can you help? Leave comments below or check out the two threads I have joined on the Apple forums.
or the one I started (with the exact same question)
Magical Overnight Data Uploads or just plainly data loss
I’ll link back to this page as well.
