FemtoBytes. Mobility, Clouds, Ideas ...

iPhone jailbreaking is a fake concept; iPhone long-tail of apps biznis model is fake too; iPad might be a really good new type of device :-)

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:48:00 +0000

I'm talking about two subjects in this blog post.

1. Now I know: the real reason you buy an iPhone is because "it is nice, usable and it just works". Now matter what happens it just works - you don't need to configure stuff too much. Really not the case for a cheap netbook from Asus when you have two mobile network modems from the same provider inside.

People is upset because Apple is so closed and strict about rules. So I wanted to taste this unlocking and jailbreaking. Why the first one makes sense for roaming when you stay longer - the last one is just fake.

It's something like 18 months since I have my first iPhone 3G - and I just refuse to stay any longer on JailBreak. Why ? Because there are some applications (and I'm really bored to promote them here) and they f***d my iPhone's stability once installed. It started to be slow, it started to behave strangely, low on memory, etc.

I know that iPhone could have been much better to allow multi-tasking even since 3G - but also the guys who made those jailbreak applications could have been smarter to not break the stability of an existing good toy.

What's the point to create an app just to prove that a good stable hardware can be unstable - what's the business benefit for a real customer having real stuff to do in his life and no time to spent un useless configurations and tweaks ? :-)

I can provide details in private about what apps I tested in jailbreak.

2. The second subject I want to talk here is this iPhone business model of long-tail-apps. At the beginning I was so amazed that I invested some legal money into testing some applications. Please don't laugh about me - I know it's not "standard" to live in Romania and have legal licenses for all the software I use in personal life - I'm sorry about this.

At the moment I'm writing this - I have almost 9 pages of applications in my iPhone 3G. Again please don't laugh - but I want to confess. I would categorize the applications into few categories.

The first category is "applications that you use even they are on the last page - or somewhere in the middle". These are the applications that really makes sense - they provide some real value - they will live forver or be acquired by a more aggressive investor. I will name here the apps that I consider in this category: SoundHound, SMS, camera, Navigon, Clock, Maps, Settings, Skype (or Fring/Nimbuzz), Yahoo Messenger, Digg, Kindle, HomeBudget, AppStore, AccuWeather, Currency, DecibelMetter, Oxford Multilang, iTeleport, Jaadu RDP, Sygic Mobile Europe, Weather, TouchTerm, roDex, iPod, SunLight, Google, LinkedIn, DropBox.

This first category is about applications you explain to other people not having an iPhone. SoundHound (which keeps changing it's name) is the most amazing one - you hear a song you like and it's recognized immediately - it's just an example of "power of one click".

In the second category there are applications which I won't bother to mention here because they don't deserve any mention in the digital life. Some of them were retired, most of them never got updates, etc. This is quite a good indicator that an application is trying to do something: make updates ...

In the 3rd category there are applications which I'm upset to have spent some money on. On one side it's a failure of strictness from Apple sometimes (for the applications which just crash) - on the other side it's good for free speech to have them. I can mention some names because I was very upset to spend some money on them: tv guide, iGo (yes it's a disappoint versus the other 2 GPS apps I have), type of backgrounds, songs, flashlight, converters of all kind, Paris city map by lonely planet, national geographic atlas, web radios which no longer work and are not updated, thermomether, cook receipts, drink receipts, rss news reader (no good client yet), iPhone specific utilities, etc.

In my opinion only the first category will survive in time. The second category makes a good impression for the moment but you immediately forget about them. You only remind them when you think like "but why do I have so many apps which are unused" ?

It was the trend to create new apps - the gold-rush I think did cool-down or will do soon - so only the real iPhone builders will remain in business.

3. So to summarize: the reason that I still love my iPhone and will wait for the iPhone-HD is: it's fu****g tested and has a fantastic usability - it just works. Some apps were designed to fail - but also their business model is designed to fail. But the respect to quality that Apple is maintaining will survive and increase conversion to Apple-fun.

4. I see more and more buddies and friends having iPhones. Now I see this trend even for older people. I explained few days ago to a 74 years old educated woman who never used a computer before about the iPhone and especially about books related apps. She immediately told me when she could have use such a toy (and she started to describe moments when she can do nothing really useful due to external conditions).

5. iPhone is not only the toy you use while waiting for the elevator or in the bathroom - but it's also the toy use use to read some news when your significant-other sleep and you're almost to do the same but still not convinced. It's the toy which is "always available at your finger" with immediate availability (no huge setup time, just works, no configuration mess).

So given all these - I'm starting to think about an iPad which just works for consuming information and media - and drop this f*****g untested Asus netbook I'm using now to type this - because I wasted almost few mornings to configure 2 wireless providers having Huawei modems :-) This wouldn't happen on an Iphone - it just works.

Growl Prowl user push notifications to iPhone

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:35:00 +0000

I miss you 2009 - like this song is saying. But since it's history - let's welcome 2010 and make it a quality TNT one ... not that 2009 was too boring ;-)

After 8 hours of listening premium sky.fm classics and jazz - and a lot of self-questions like "hey what's this song or who's the author - to remember" - I searched for an iPhone solution and got one composed of 3 steps:

1. install the Prowl application on the iPhone to receive "generic user oriented push notifications" that are generated on your Windows or your Mac

2. if you have Mac you're lucky; I installed the Growl for Windows desktop app and started to play with it

3. then installed the iTunes plugin for Growl which sends alerts from the laptop which is singing via the home sounds system elsewhere

Now I can enjoy staying everywhere in the house and never missing the name of a good song ... for my musical knowledge ... because of the notifications and because of the history with them :-)

ps: I'm joking - the big usability of this platform is for serious business - I just provided an end-to-end example which is also usable ... but you can integrate your scripts and use their api for small business monitoring ... for example receiving alerts based on some news, some databases events, web events, infrastructure monitoring, there is even a plugin for receiving an alert when a compilation finished so you can just optimize time and not play ping-pong elsewhere because "hei it's compiling" etc etc long list of ideas and just a few applications that you can inspire from this sample list - if we are to talk strictly about Growl ... but you can think API ;-)

feature: gmail + email sharing tag

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:30:00 +0000

Super gmail feature: "Track Which Sites are Sharing Your Email Address" ... use something like username+tag@gmail.com - and you'll know who's sharing your email via this tag channel ;-)

high hopes: 3.4 magnitude

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:29:00 +0000

They should make the scientists listen this song before allowing them to trigger earthquakes of 3.4 :-))

Anyway it's funny how the very old tradition and the new "pushing of the limits" can be under the same umbrella in such a nice and very quiet country ... you rarely find such a mix :-)

an end for iPhone !?

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:14:00 +0000

Google made lately a lot of good decisions - but also some really bad ones - since they had to retire some products from "labs".

I wonder how this song will sound on the new Google "gPhone" or how they will call it ... but I know I'm looking forward and have long patience to see some even bigger than what it was ... even it's hard to imagine it can be something better than iPhone.

You never know in life what was a good decision or not - until you experience it's effects. But in order to have "iPhone" type of quality - you have to keep standards - no matter how hard and tough they are.

unusual communication end emotional skills interview

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:09:00 +0000

Please make a 30 minutes analysis of this superficial video - with true facts about life ... Basshunter - All I Ever Wanted ... :-)

32dB

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:16:00 +0000

Or "how to differentiate sacred and profane with iPhone".

If you go to the Varatec Monastery you'll find a sacred place. A heaven for those not in a hurry. If you go there and just make the usual ritual (go on the left, put a candel, give some money, leave early ...) ... then you didn't understood anything at all. STAY for 10 minutes and listen. Better book one hour. You don't have to believe something. I don't force myself to. Just listen. Unfortunately there's no iPhone app to measure how sacred the voice orchestra is singing. Don't go during the night without booking -- because you won't find anything decent open around.

BUT.

The Agapia Monastery is measurable :-) ... you can use the iPhone to count how much noice (dB) is around. You'll be amazed to find 32dB and lower ... even with some very very light wind and some birds singing ... :-))

Can iPhone be used to differentiate a sacred place and a profane place ? Yes. Well. No. Maybe. It depends. But you can measure the silence. If you manage to really find it.

Honestly I was always too busy and in a hurry NOT to read and learn about the "human naive world". The technical books are so challenging and always updated and too many ... that I preserve myself for older age :-P

But I remember reading about "Mircea Eliade" - one of the few romanian minds who made a big contribution to the understanding of religion and the various totems, signs, hierophanies, sacred, profane, axis mundi, illo tempore ... it's funny that when time goes - you don't remember all the details but some significant powerful words and concepts.

Well I suppose "Mircea" would be really pissed or glad to learn that at least one metric was invented to differentiate between sacred an profane - and it's usable through the iPhone :-)

PS:

unfortunately there's no iPhone app to measure the useless days, useless hours - those kind of days/hours when apparently one do something in life - but in the end there's no result/fun at all - they just pass and the lifetime counter just decrease; there's no app to measure what is the percent of one's life when he/she really feels to live; how many times one feels the need to do something great; how many times one realize it's too late to do something; how many times one realize being selfish is not working and not it's interest; how many times it's hard to make a balance between passion and 'too much'; how many times one's afraid to do something because it can be stupid; how many times one's afraid to do anything at all; how many times one's pretending to be what's not the case; how many times one is forgetting what MOM said; how many times one forget the origins. How many times one has the courage to take a big challenge and risk for something big. How many times one is too modest to pretend what it is possible.

So many missing iPhone apps ... that I wonder if it's usable at all :-)

Software is Soft Emotion

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:17:00 +0000

I read some "stuff" about abandoned blogs. Of course the first question is also "am I converging to an abandoned blog ?" Or is it about converging to essence of saying ? Isn't this about "two years of learning to speak and a life to keep quiet ?"

Still amazed am I how my blog is completely parallel to my real life and my real issues, friends, happiness, sadness, and everything human. Worse it is - my blog is still completely decoupled with my professional life - I made myself a promise to never mix the many - absurd even this is how :-)

Emotion is what I want to write about today - of course in a very unusual way - otherwise what would my my contribution.

Of course I learned the rule about the first paragraph and the first 3 seconds in a song ... you have to capture the audience in order to have a high 'view' rate. That's not my usual audience ... my completely old friends and my new future friends are the only one that "regularly matters" here :-)

Recently Joel 'on software' made another great blog post on education vs industry. Boring it is because I found no evidence of bullshit in this post. So what to comment about it ?

On a completely parallel basis - one of the many books I'm still digesting from safari e-books is "how to inspire people" - not exact translation. And basically when you make software in order to get best results - somehow you have to go hunt the emotion and the lower-brain around you. You have to inspire people.

It came quite late in my life that _precise_ and _state-of-the-art_ software is still made with human heart. And this last one is not working with algorithm complexity - but with human impulses - whatever that means to each of us.

Randomly I'm still listening "The Reborn Dramatic Love" song more than ten years later - and it sounds completely different than every other previous listening session. It made me take dramatic life decision and it also makes me hope about 'p3/p4 only bugs' :-)

Does that mean I'm a bad "software pro" ?

I think this just mean I'm starting to realize I have pulse - and part of it is software - part of it is emotion ... which it's not only mine but also an aggregate of empathy I really feel around in whatever foreign language :-D :-)

ps: I like the new joke-spam about polish notation sandwich :-)

Bible Update Bug Fixes

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:11:00 +0000

I hope my mother don't read this. I just checked how many iPhone app updates I missed in the meantime - and the number is 19. One of them is 'Bible Update by LifeChurch.tv'.

Wow ... did they fixed the walking on the water "thing" ? No - let's get serious - they fixed something related to posting on Twitter and something more. Looks like even The God is reading twitter ... and filled for a bug :-)

ps: sorry mom ... I did only good things except this post :-P

Californication or Frenchification ?

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:50:00 +0000

Good question: Californication or Frenchification ??

Looks like the Louvre will finally (!?) get a McDonald :-P

Breaking news: Google Launched the real map for Bucharest

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:08:00 +0000

I love you Google, I love you Tele Atlas ... I was waiting since quite some time for this!

I can't wait to test the Live Traffic GPS Data ... hopefully it works! :-)

is Orange a real global brand ?

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:29:00 +0000

While on roaming - my phone card was damaged so I was unable to make or receive any phone call - nor do any GSM data traffic.

I am currently a customer of Orange Romania - so while in Vienna I was happy to see an Orange shop so I went there. The dialog was very simple.

Q: "Hello, my name is Vasile Butnaru and I'm a customer of Orange Romania. My sim card or my roaming are broken - please help me!"

A: "Hello! Unfortunately we have nothing in common with Orange Romania so I cannot help you!"

So - what is the meaning of the "customer service" for the "Orange brand" across several countries given the above dialog ?? Is it one company or an aggregation of several independent ones ? :-)

ps: in the end she did a complete reset of my iPhone settings - which of course was useless. I can tell you the store was in SCS Shopping SUD in Viena - the one from downstairs.

[LATER EDIT]All my respect for Orange Romania (Auchan shop) - they replaced my sim in 3 minutes - including the problem explanation and paperwork. Thanks!

bug report: iPhone 3G with gps navigation damaging sim card

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:24:00 +0000

While on vacation I tested the Navigon Mobile Navigator extensively - meaning several hours continuously.

The verdict: iPhone + Navigon Mobile Navigator is a great combination - they are reliable big time in Europe.

EXCEPT: they completely damaged my phone sim card - so while on roamning I didn't had any phone, data, etc!!! I guess it's again due to excessive heating ...

Apple - do you have this on your bug list with a significant priority ?? :-)

ps: to reproduce this bug again - I will wait for my next vacation :-P

[LATER EDIT] - sometimes it happens to wait few minutes until the GPS signal is available - but after this everything works fine. In some cities between mountains this waiting can be up to 10 minutes. Also the recomputing of a route can take 20 seconds if the route is >=500km. The Navigon 'lane assistant' is very useful when on the highway - it nicely shows you with several km before on which lane you should stay. This feature is not available on Sygic Mobile Europe. Also the navigation is worse in Sygic - but it has more hotels and other POI's overall.

the absurdity of music buyings

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:17:00 +0000

Honestly I have many old subjects that I'm still thinking if it's worth to talk about them. Buying every music cd/dvd/* except your favorites is just an absurd example :-)

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I will confess - when I was 15 - I started to visit an illegal music shop in Timisoara - it was called "Rocka Rola" - and people around my initial gps location can confirm the existence of that shop :-) At that time I didn't had a strong believe that "even nobody pays for music around me - I should do it!" :-) The first time I went to that music shop it was really funny. There was "a real rocker" - a guy with long hair and "looking like a rock star" - at least in my mind :-)

The first band that "I bought" was Iron Maiden with the "Powerslave" album. Then a lot of albums with Megadeath, Metallica, Testament, Slayer, Napalm Death, Obituary, Alice Cooper, etc etc - and all kind of funny rock bands :-)

-----

Honestly I'm not a rich person - but I feel like I am. This made me buy around 100 original music albums (above).

I recently did a look into my collection - and was not able to find too many bands from my late childhood.

What happened - did I changed so much and changed what I listen - or I'm just absurd when buying music ?

I guess the impulse buying is actually working - so I decided to stop this trend. My last buying was an old frustration - "ZZ TOP".

Am I absurd to buy music I didn't like before - while I was child ? Am I absurd to go to concerts about bands I don't really like or care about ? Am I absurd to buy bands that I didn't knew before ?

I don't know - but I will really think about this. Anyway - I didn't knew before about U2 - and I'm happy about them too :-)

Is it possible that the most respectable person that you know is not part of your birthday party ? I guess logically not - but because we are human beings and many times we do more 'feel than think' - it is possible :-)

a lesson of Attitude vs Fakeness: Bucharest vs Madonna

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:00:00 +0000

I love when people have opinions about things they don't know shit about :-) It's incredible stupid to make superficial remarks about things you don't know - just to "pretend cool". And that's what Madonna recently did in Bucharest.

--------

For those around my gps location there is no news about the big concert: August 26 2009 - Madonna in Bucharest.

I'm thinking since quite several days - what's the point to blog about this. Because that concert was so bad - that my group and really enough people around us leaved the concert before it's finish - because we were bored. There was dust, bad remixes, NOT live music all the time, ... a nightmare. Really really bad.

Now to go to my point - that's not the worse. Madonna said during her show that we in East Europe have a problem discriminating gypsies. And I have a few problems with this remark.

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The first one is the real fact: in Romania they actually are not discriminated but they are left too much to do what they want.

When I was kid - there was a street named "Calatorilor" around my birth place. Anybody who lived in that neighborhood know that until 1992->1995 - that street was full of gypsies. Everybody who lived there knows that they did what they want and they never got busted nor hit nor discriminated by anyone.

There were guys doing jail - but there is a rule that every romanian know: "a gypsy will never steal around his house". So we didn't feared of them but also didn't had any love or doing barbeque togheter. We just lived in peace and without too much interaction.

I had gypsy colleagues during my first 4 years of school. Sometimes the young teacher had to clean that guy - sometimes had to "punish" him for not learning anything - but he came to the school 4 years. After this nothing - because that is what his family decided.

Everybody in Romania knows that there were enough teachers who risk their safety and went to the gypsy parents to ask them to let their kids to school. But also everybody here knows that there is some gypsy-rule to put their kids to work as soon as possible.

Now since we're in EU - there is another rule that gypsies don't follow - "early marriage". There were enough big scandals with gypsy families doing weeding but pretending not to do this.

Authorities really try now to help them through several organizations - but I don't think they will succeed - mostly because the gypsies want to live their way. The only solution to force some different rule would be by force - and so far I didn't see any trend in this direction.

What did we failed here ? On one side we let them do whatever they wanted to. On another side we didn't forced them to live our way. So probably we have to apologize for our too much tolerance of not forcing our model of living :-)

Madonna was really fake to talk about things she don't know and really care about - to teach us lessons of "discrimination" of gypsies.

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The second fact is a problem of attitude from the people and media of Bucharest.

I know several guys who were at the concert - none of them had a good opinion about it. I was also really surprised to see that no big comments appeared in the media the next days. No big online media site made a campaign against Madonna. No one spent time to say "dude - that was really bad".

But on the other side - the park were the concert happened has now all the grass damaged. Some estimate mentioned May of 2010 for complete recovery of the grass.

The driving in Bucharest was badly affected in that day. City was blocked for a few hours.

An estimated 70000 people paid for this bad show - but another few hundred thousands payed the price of not being able to live properly.

But what really made me sad was: "she came with a number of black cars without transparent windows and she made no public interview".

To me it sounds like the attitude of the citizens of Bucharest was: "yes - it was a really bad concert - but since she's Madonna - let's leave it like a null game - it was 0-0" :-)

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So: was Madonna very arrogant in my city, on my money - but offered me an unrequested lesson about discrimination ? Yes ... :-)

Sygic Mobile Maps Europe vs Navigon Mobile Navigator Europe

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:13:00 +0000

Or otherwise put Navtec vs Tele Atlas as maps/gis providers.

which iPhone navigation app ?

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:36:00 +0000

I guess the best review that I've seen on the net is this one.

My choice was Navigon ... and previously I had the iGo 2008 on Windows Mobile. I will post my impression about the iPhone MobileNavigator Navigon Europe soon ...

ps: very important fact - Navigon is not using data traffic to discover the current GPS location - so it's usable under roaming.

special romanian secret service - looking to unlock iPhone 3GS

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:57:00 +0000

In a short translation and explanation - Serviciul de Telecomunicatii Speciale is a romanian "secret special telecommunication service" providing secure communications to some selected/special customers like (selection):
- Romanian Parliament
- Romanian Presidential Administration
- Romanian Government
- Romanian defense national safety and public order
- Romanian public or local administration
- Romanian Justice organizations
- etc ...

What is my relationship with them ? None until few days. Apparently I have 4 pageviews from a guy using "the special telecomunication services" - who actually wants to know how to unlock the iPhone 3GS in Romania. How would I know this ? Because this is what the "network location google.com/analytics" is telling me - here's the attached picture which proves this - bellow.

Is there something wrong in this fact ? No - I'm just amused what is the utility of the "special telecommunication payed from public money in Romania". Clearly I should think to emigrate in a more decent country ... :-)

ps: of course I'm exaggerating with my comments and this is a pamphlet - meant to make the original story even funnier ... there's nothing wrong to know how to unlock an iPhone :-)

why modern software prevent mankind to reach the Moon again

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:04:00 +0000

Original story inspiration is "Software of Apollo 11" on my favorite news site.

In general our software is now written in "so high level" and so "heavily assembling/packing" ways - with so "smart garbage collectors and automatic operations" such that nobody has control anymore on what happens really on the processor or memory.

Not only we don't go to the Moon anymore - but our planes or trains are crashing at a significant speed. Of course excuses don't explicitly point you to their bug tracking system - but we all know this is because of the new "so smart so heavy software" generated automatically and running in virtual machines and automatically tested by tools that nobody understand.

Now you cannot even go to a restaurant in the suburb of Bucharest to eat something - because the guys will tell you "we're sorry but we have a problem with software - we can't serve you".

Keywords relevant from the above mentioned article: MIT, 2K of memory, 1-MHz clock speed, NASA, tested, polished, simulated, and refined the code, IBM, 'assembled' to instruction binary, (during mission) most software couldn't be changed, used a low-level assembly language, etc ... :-)

Besides the initial slashdot story - please don't forget to read also the linux.com "How They Built it: The Software of Apollo 11" story and the downloadsquad "How powerful was the Apollo 11 computer?" story.

ps: my article is a pamphlet, I'm deliberately exagerating to make a few points ... but still C/* will never die :-P

Jupiter is not conceited

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:41:00 +0000

The Great Jupiter is not conceited but does it's job more than some superficials think about it. Few days ago it absorbed a big impact (due to it's biggest gravity in solar system).

Few days ago amateur observed and NASA confirmed this.

I did always considered that "too heavily conceited people have too small objectives". Some think they are Jupiter. Others forgot since too many years about the real Jupiter around us or will never understood in their life this blog post.

But there's a good side to this - since from social-psychological pov it's probably good that most of the people on this planet are superficial - they don't get it how fragile life is. So I just found a good side of this "superficial" word ...

ps: my point is - go beyond small vanities and see the fucking big picture ... life is a fragile balance - you think about important things only after somebody dies in your life :-) ... hopefully as later as possible.

[later update on 31-07-2009]: MIT professor talking about the benefit of Jupiter too ;-)

my first brand original vinyline was a Michael

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:22:00 +0000

my first brand original vinyline was a ... Michael Joseph Jackson. acquired some 18 years ago - when I was 14 and it was almost impossible to buy an original in Romania at that time ... honestly I buy all kind of music - preferably of the 'rock' kind - but the fact that I just remembered is that my first brand original was a Michael vinyline one. don't remember what was the rationale since I'm not a fan.

why should a real professional star should die first - then the tv stations play all the night music with him ? ... at least I increased the number of google searches for him. He did it 'his way' ... (his) God bless him! Brilliant guy.

jailbreak and unlock iPhone 3G on OS 3.0 Orange Romania works ok

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:36:00 +0000

Fortunately others were nice and fast to verify the road to freedom. I'm just confirming here that it works perfectly this time - to jailbreak and unlock the iPhone 3G even you had the latest 2.2.1 firmare.

How to safely use Vodafone sim card on an iPhone from Orange Romania ? Read the steps to reproduce this:

1. Jailbreak of the iPhone (Orange Romania) is working nice if you follow Simon's advice. Included here is the upgrade to the latest 3.0 firmware.

2. (after step #1) Unlock of the iPhone from Orange Romania works fine if you follow this Gizmodo's advice starting with the step #7.

The only think that might not be very obvious is that unlock works on a per sim basis - meaning that each time you want to unlock for a sim - you have to 'install' again the ultrasn0w app. This might require some 'wifi'.

ps: Cointreau is really good - especially when you buy it from the "source" ...

always reproductible: how the iPhone 3G is jumping randomly from one Application to another

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:44:00 +0000

When heating is going up ... always reproductible bug report steps:

1. Jailbreak your iPhone :-)
2. Install XGPS
3. Try to "download the map" for an area covering "Île-de-France"; You'll see an estimated download of around 250MB.
4. Just wait - and after some time - when the iPhone is getting hotter and hotter - it will randomly jump from XGPS to whatever application (it's desktop or any other random app).

ps: anyway - a jailbroken iPhone is much better experience than a "legal" one. Just make sure that you don't upgrade to iPhone firmware 2.2.1 - because UnLocking won't work ... at least as of writing this. This is serious warning ... well apparently there are some boot-loader tricks - even downgrading the firmware seems problematic - I will try to evaluate this. But the latest baseband software is tricky. Don't buy unlocking software if you are already on 2.2.1 - they are JUST LYING ... :)

pps: I wonder - is this "heating" issue fixed in iPhone 3GS ? :-)

what the iPhone 3GS is (not) doing

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:05:00 +0000

What they DO NOT improve:
- much much better battery lifetime !!????????????? I currently have 3 chargers - one for car, one for home and one for office. does this mean something to their engineers ?

What they do improve:

- speed
+ "up to" 2x; does this mean the same in practice ? :-)

- size
+ up to 32GB storage; no mention regarding the RAM afaik

- phone
+ Tap (or speak) to call
+ See your voicemail
+ Do more with Contacts
+ Keep Contacts in sync
+ Multitask with a tap (isn't it already in iPhone 3G??)
+ Create a ringtone in iTunes

- iPod
+ Watch in widescreen
+ Buy music and video
+ Get music recommendations

- Safari
+ Save and sync bookmarks
+ Put your favorite sites on your Home screen
+ some others I don't find new

- Email
+ Type smart
+ View attachments (doc, pdf, ppt, xls, jpg) - so what's new !?
+ email push through MobileMe!
+ Search your email
+ Email from the web or Maps

- Video Recording (new category!)
+ Shoot video in widescreen
+ Edit video on the go
+ Share video anywhere

- Photos
+ Tap to focus
+ send via MMS

- Video Control
+ Use your voice to make a call
+ Use your voice to play music
+ Speak your own language (no Romanian !!!???)

- Messages
+ Send MMS

- Maps + Compass
+ See which way you’re facing.

- Cut, copy, and paste - the wheel finally reinvented :-)
+ Cut, copy, and paste words
+ Copy and paste photos and videos
+ Shake to undo

- Search
+ Search across your iPhone
+ Search across applications
+ Search the server

- Voice Memos (nice!)
+ Record memos (or any audio)
+ Edit memos
+ Manage memos
+ Share memos

- Accessibility
+ Built-in Accessibility
+ Zoom
+ VoiceOver
+ White on Black
+ Mono Audio

- Tethering (why I think this will be only via Jail-Break !?)
+ Share the connection
+ Connect wirelessly
+ Connect via USB

- App Store, iTunes, Home Screen
+ Add up to 159 apps to 11 Home screens: woa ... why 159 !!??
+ Add websites to your Home screens

ps: this blog post is referring iPhone features which are copyright apple.com - from their site. With much respect and consideration for their products ...

iphone 3.0 rollout date

vasile@femtobytes.ro (Vasile Butnaru) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:17:00 +0000

iphone 3.0 rollout date is scheduled for June 17 2009.

ps: I hope they know how to make a global rollout ... not one for US, then 1 month after for EU ... etc :)