iPhone on Verizon: Fact or Fiction?

The truth of the matter is, love it or hate it, the iPhone by Apple is an industry powerhouse. Since before it's inception, people have been murmuring about the possibility of Apple making a phone, and the rumors almost always included Verizon Wireless. Many were befuddled when Apple inked exclusivity with AT&T for the 2007 iPhone release (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

Soon after, word came out that Verizon had been given first dibs on the device, and passed it by for ego business reasons. Whatever reasons prompted Verizon to pass on the device have long since changed, I'm sure.

While it's always been present, the "Verizon should have the iPhone" sentiment starting gaining momentum around the time of the iPhone 3GS. Over the past year, complaints about the AT&T network experience for iPhone users has gotten louder (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery) .

Calls for Verizon to carry the phone have become a roar. At this point, people are getting upset about the lack of an iPhone on Verizon - not caring about any alternatives on the market, the exclusivity deal with AT&T, or the fact that an iPhone experience has been, thus far, a substandard one. All some seem to care about is iPhone's existence on Verizon, and there are just enough of those people to cause the market lemmings other consumers from following suit (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery) .

To the more impartial, it seems that an iPhone on Verizon is an inevitability. It just makes sense to have a variation of the phone on the largest wireless consumer base in the US. Initially, the exclusivity was a win for both AT&T and Apple. Now, with sentiment turning against the relationship, it makes sense for Apple to release the phone to other - if not all - US carriers. At some point, AT&T will reach it's iPhone saturation point, and Apple would be forced onto other carriers. It just makes sense to move forward (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

The real question, though, is when. Many people would like to see it happen in 2010, but the likelihood of that grows smaller each month. At the same time, 2011 might be too late. As frustration with the iPhone cools with time, the push to add another carrier-supplier lessens. As network issues at AT&T are resolved, the reason for change diminishes (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ11S Battery) .

But the single biggest reason for Apple to get the iPhone on Verizon NOW? Android. Numerous studies by organizations that track retail sales, as well as those which track web traffic, seem to confirm what Google has been telling us about Android activations lately: they're growing. Fast (ASUS EEE PC900 battery) .

According to some analysis, Android overtook iPhone in sales in the first quarter of this year. Even with another iPhone, the fourth model, seemingly set to launch on AT&T this summer, at the rate that Google's Android platform is growing, Apple's market share will continue to decline. If Android's rate of growth is any indication, Apple could see themselves a distant second on the market (Dell Latitude X200 Battery) .

The only way for Apple to counteract this trend? Put an iPhone on Verizon. Verizon appears to be the fastest growing Android carrier in the US - much like how AT&T benefited from the iPhone. On an iPhone on Verizon has the ability to retain market share for Apple (Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC Battery) .

The Internet is littered with rumors of an iPhone on Verizon happening this year. Even reputable sources seem to indicate the possibility, and online news organizations are sitting on uncorroborated reports as I type. The one thing I can say for sure is this: Apple and Verizon have said nothing at this point. And I wouldn't expect them to (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

iPhone on Verizon would be the biggest coup d'état the US market has seen in a decade. With something so huge, I can guarantee you that iPhone on Verizon would be the biggest and best kept secret in the business. Or at least, you'd hope so.

Digging through the web, you'll find mention of suppliers making parts and pieces for an iPhone (Dell XPS M1330 Battery) .

You'll hear industry analysts go on and on about why they think it's coming. You'll hear conjecture on advertising, orders and supply chain, as well as the staffing schedules all the way through the end of the year. It's all rumor. A mention here and there doesn't make truth. But at the same time, a rainstorm starts with a few solitary drops of water. It's hard to determine if the web is pointing to inevitability, or the simple fantasy of people looking for proof of a CDMA iPhone (Dell Studio 1737 battery ) .

The only thing we can do at this point is wait, watch, and listen. Don't believe anything for a moment. In this business, today's exclusivity is tomorrow's loophole or exception. What we know this moment will change the next. Will there be an iPhone on Verizon? I'm sure of it. Will it happen this year? Possibly. Will it happen in June? Doubtful (Dell Latitude E6400 battery) .

We'll just have to keep waiting for tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll be on my Android phone enjoying today (Acer Aspire One battery) .

China Renews Google's License While Censorship Tensions Remain

Google won permission Friday to maintain its website in China and keep its toehold in the world's most populous nation after bowing to pressure to eliminate a virtual detour around the country's online censorship requirements (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

Entering search requests at Google.cn from within mainland China now requires an extra click, a change made last week to appease communist regulators. Users who click anywhere on the page are then taken to a site based in Hong Kong, which isn't subject to Beijing's censorship rules (Dell Latitude X200 Battery) .

Since March, Google had been automatically rerouting search requests from the mainland to the Hong Kong service.

The small concession was enough to persuade China's regulators to renew Google's Internet license for at least another year, the company said. There was no immediate statement on the website of China's Internet regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

It's the latest twist in a diplomatic dance that's been unfolding since Google vowed in January to end its four-year practice of omitting search results that the Chinese government considers subversive or pornographic. Google reversed course after blaming Chinese computer hackers for an attack aimed at stealing the company's technology and e-mail information from human rights activists (Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC Battery) .

As soon as Google published a Jan. 12 blog post publicly challenging China's censorship polices, "it became clear that Google.cn could never operate the same way again," Internet analyst Scott Kessler of Standard & Poor's said (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

Even if Web surfers in mainland China click on Google.cn to get to the Hong Kong search engine, China's government can still block results by using technology controls commonly known as its "Great Firewall."

Google and the Chinese government have been trying to uphold their conflicting principles while protecting their economic interests (Dell XPS M1330 Battery) .

Google Inc., based in Mountain, View, Calif., wants to remain in China because the country is expected to be an Internet gold mine for decades. China's government seems to realize losing a technology powerhouse would be a setback in its effort to cultivate more innovation and raise its citizens' standard of living (Dell TT485 Battery) .

The latest compromise threatens to curtail Google's growth in China simply because it requires hundreds of millions of users to take an extra step to get to Google's search engine. The single additional click could diminish traffic and send Web surfers to more convenient options, such as the homegrown Baidu.com (Dell XT832 Battery) .

If that happens, Google will have fewer opportunities to show the ads that bring in virtually all its revenue.

Still, investors were relieved that Google get did not get kicked out of China's rapidly growing Internet market. Google shares edged up on the news, gaining $10.93, or 2.4 percent, to close Friday at $467.49. The stock remains down by about 25 percent so far this year, partly because of fallout from the company's stand against China's stringent censorship rules (Dell Studio 1737 battery ) .

Google already has been losing ground in China. The company's search market share in China now stands at about 30 percent, down from roughly 35 percent at the end of last year, according to the research firm Analysys International. Baidu's share has risen slightly to about 60 percent (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery) .

China is not yet a big moneymaker for Google, accounting for an estimated $250 million to $600 million of Google's projected $28 billion in revenue this year.

But China is expected to become far more lucrative as its economy matures and even more of its population comes online. Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Marianne Wolk believes Google could be pulling in $5 billion to $6 billion annually from China's online advertising market just four years from now if it can manage to keep its market share in the 30 percent range (Dell Latitude E6400 battery) .

The makeover of Google.cn is bound to hurt the company, but "it's a sacrifice well worth making if it means they can stay in China," Kessler said.

Google's ambitions in China extend beyond Web searches. The renewed Internet license, set to expire in 2012, means Google can continue offering music, language translation and shopping-comparison services throughout the Chinese website (IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet battery) .

The company also is trying to get a license for an online mapping service and is hoping to build up its mobile phone business in China, which has been derailed in recent months.

Motorola Inc. had replaced Google services with rival offerings from Baidu, and Google postponed the launch of two phones that were supposed to rely on its Android software (Acer Extensa 500 battery) .

But all of Google's peripheral services could suffer if its main traffic magnet, the search engine, loses its allure in China.

Ad spending will shift to Baidu and other Chinese sites, predicted Vincent Kobler, managing director of EmporioAsia Leo Burnett, an ad buyer for a list of customers that includes Marriott International. He said the firm was recommending clients switch to Baidu (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery) .

"Even last year, before this crisis, Baidu always was in a stronger position," Kobler said. "In terms of media buying, customers in general ... are still more comfortable with Baidu."

For Beijing, the renewal tones down a high-profile dispute at a time when American and European businesses are complaining about unfair treatment by the government and saying China has become less accommodating to foreign businesses (Acer Aspire One battery) .

Renewing Google's license "was a smart move on the part of the Chinese government to kind of defuse the situation," said Paul Denlinger, an Internet consultant for startups. He doubts the friction between Google and China will disappear but thinks it will dissipate for now (Dell Latitude C400 Battery) .

Battery care from beginning to end

It is clear to note that batteries which are maintained by individual users generally last longer than those in the public system to operate the group, where everyone has access, but no one is responsible. In this article we look at aspects of two specific battery applications, namely for purposes of personal and group applications. Article provides suggestions how to extend a battery life and can improve the reliability (Sony Vaio VGN-FZ battery).

In our definition, a single user is someone who is mobile phone, a laptop or a video camera for business purposes or pleasure using one. He or she is probably the recommended guidelines of the battery-care follow all. The user will be closely familiar with the difference between batteries do with. Once the period of performance is slowing, the battery is being serviced or replaced. Cases of critical failures are rare, because the individual owner on the performance of the battery and adjusts his expectations and adapt equally reduced (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery).

The user group, on the other hand, has a low personal interest in the battery pack and will tolerate a little, which is not perfect. It takes just a battery charger and expects that the length of time he maintains his power for. At the end of the day the battery is recharged, ready to hand the application of the next user. Presumably through negligence batteries provide for multiple users is noticeably shorter life span than those used exclusively for purposes that are personal (Sony VGP-BPS9 battery).

How can fleet batteries remain stable for longer? An interesting observation follows from the comparison between the manipulations of the U.S. Army on the one hand and the other army Holland where both fleets use batteries.The U.S. military divides batteries without any maintenance program. If the battery fails, a new pack is distributed without causal questions about the circumstances be made. Only minimal maintenance is spent and the failure rate is high (Sony VGP-BPL11 battery).

The Holland Army decided to drop the fleet system by the soldiers be held responsible for their batteries. This system has been introduced to improve the reliability and reduce operating costs. The batteries will be handed out individually to the soldiers and their property as maintained (Sony VGN-FZ460E battery).

The improvement results are amazing. Holland, the Army has introduced the new scheme, the failure rate fell significantly, while performance was an improvement in battery-listed. Sudden failure in the field application could be excluded almost completely (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery).

It should be noted that the Army Holland only NiCd batteries used. To prolong the life of each package is replaced by a periodic maintenance by a Cadex battery analyzer. Batteries that are not set 80-percent capacity to achieve the target will be reconditioned, those who do not reach the target capacity, will be replaced. The U.S. Army, on the other hand, uses NiMH batteries which have a shorter life span known for. The Army evaluated the newly developed Li? Ion polymer battery type as the future generation (Sony VGN-FZ150E battery).

Constant battery failure, high replacement costs and questionable reliability have led many organizations to, a battery to be checked by analyzing regular batteries and wait. Today, play a critical battery analyzer and indispensable role in the batteries to extend the service life and reliability and to improve performance (Sony Vaio VGN-FZ18M battery).

As expected, new batteries correctly provide its full capacity at all times.However, many users notice that a new battery is not always the performance specifications. Weak batteries can therefore be identified and a battery analyzer to matching its performance to be brought through. the capacity does not improve, the packs in order to guarantee compensation to the supplier returned. deliveries to whole new battery had to be returned to power is lower due. Had these batteries without prior review released, the whole system would come into affect, and frequent failure causes which could unreliability (Toshiba PA3535U-1BRS battery).

In addition to the preparation of new batteries use lead battery analyzer important service function by which, to strengthen weak batteries, and has become sort out unusable units. It should be noted here that a battery analyzer, the nickel-based batteries most effectively regenerated. Lithium-based batteries lose their capacity primarily by the aging and loss of this benefit more can not be undone. Weak batteries are often hidden between the good units. If high stress emergency measure required by a falling early from already weak units (Toshiba PA3534U-1BRS battery).

Operating organizations tend batteries so long to move the maintenance until a critical situation develops. Had such a fire crew in the use of radio communication chronic problems, especially in an insert, which lasted more than two hours. Although the reception functioned normally, the team could not send clear. This situation brought the fire department in embarrassment, as it provided the team was not aware that their messages were not transferred (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery).

On the recommendation to the fire department managed a Cadex analyzer to the battery and all batteries were serviced and reconditioned. Those batteries that do not aim to improve capacity were predetermined to have been replaced (Toshiba PA3285U-1BRS battery).
A short time later, the fire department a ten-hour operation to set up, the increased radio traffic required. To the surprise of no radio failed. The success of this operation was error-free battery performance attributed to the. The next day, sat down personally with the fire chief of the manufacturer of the battery analyzer, in conjunction, and praised the flawless performance of the product and its future use (Toshiba PA3465U-1BRS battery) .

Batteries, which for a long time period are willing to fail, often when they claimed to be in a Notbedarf suddenly. A tour of a Cadex Representative emergency system in a large American city invited to. In the fortified underground bunkers were over a thousand in NiCd battery chargers ready.The green light flashed at all and showed that the batteries fully charged and ready at any time would be. Responsible manager assured with undoubted conviction: "We are prepared for every possible emergency!" (Toshiba PA3450U-1BRS battery)

The Cadex representative asked for one of the operational battery charger, to check the condition. Within seconds, showed the battery analyzer battery failure in one. In an effort that this was only one case, took the head of another battery charger, which also failed, however, and tested the following batteries not fared better. He also denied (Toshiba PA3285U-1BRS battery ).

Such events occur, unfortunately, quite common. Decisions and lack of financial fundamentals make it difficult political to the problems, if detected, remove quickly. A maintenance program where every month battery analyzer battery is cycled a systematic, could prevent such problems. As long as this refrain will remain the responsible head of the emergency response system remain to be hoped that it never comes to a real emergency (IBM ThinkPad R50 battery).

Another group of users who must rely on batteries is crucial, is the military.Defense organizations attach great importance to use the best quality and performance requirements for appliances and equipment to make the highest. This applies, unfortunately, not necessarily on battery packs, where poor maintenance, lack of knowledge and lack of care are common. The battery thus escapes the military thorough inspection and is often used only superficially inspected. These efforts will be little done to and the number of cycles to capture the age. Finally, mixed with new batteries are weak and the system is unreliable. As a result, the soldiers carry, so to speak "stones" instead of batteries ready with him (IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet battery).

Summary

Different from the single-user, the battery like a good friend and treated him carefully to know the need batteries from an unknown group of users remove the supply pool. While an individual user already noticed a slight drop in performance, group users have little knowledge of when the batteries are removed from the charger. The user is the condition of the battery completely delivered. It plays Russian roulette (IBM ThinkPad R60 battery).

In recent years many companies have decided to perform battery maintenance programs. Such facilities include regular drill of the battery reconditioning of those units that are below the set target capacity, and the sorting out has become unusable batteries with one (IBM ThinkPad R51 battery).

Unfortunately, batteries are usually then waited until they no longer hold their power or when the unit is sent for repair. As a result, the battery device unreliable and battery-related failures will happen more frequently. The loss in the battery is just as harmful as any other disorder in the system (ACER Aspire 3020 Battery).

Android GPS Tracking

For quite a while now i wanted to program something for the android platform, and dive into the holy world of google, but i really never had time to do any investigation on that platform , maybe just because lack of any good and reasonable project (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

But i got my chance now at a recent course where the assignment was to develop any Web 2.0 related, or something for mobile devices ideally in combination with Web 2.0 so two colleagues and me submitted a project to live track your way on a mobile Android device on crossingways.com, aside from live tracking we also wanted to support offline track recording with the possibility to upload the tracks later (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

No one complaint about the project idea, so we started developing.

Result

We finally have 4 Screens

The main screen

It is the starting point for all operations, and displays an overview of your location if gps is enabled and if location is available. Live tracking can be enabled and disabled seamlessly here (assuming your user credentials are configured properly, see settings screen (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

Also a nice feature of android is the automatic switching of layouts. Suppose you have a device which supports screen rotation, on other platforms (e.g. Windows Mobile ) it's a real pain to support portait and landscape mode at once. On Android it's just defining two different layouts in predefined locations and the android framework choses the "best" layout for the device the application is running on, even when switching from portrait to landscape while the application is running (Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC Battery) !

The settings screen

As the name already says, enter and check your user credentials and enter the upload interval for live tracking to give the internet connection (umts or whatever) the change to sleep in these intervals to save battery power (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

The track management screen

As you will see in the program flow later, this screen contains all tracks that are recorded on the device. Here you can delete, load (continue) and upload them. More technical details on uploading following later (Dell XPS M1330 Battery) .

Program flow

As you can see starting a new track recording is quite simple, after pushing the "Start Recording" button the "New Track" window pops up where you can enter some information about the new track. After creation the recording starts immediately with the option to pause or to stop the recording (Dell TT485 Battery) .

Because of the slow solid state memory access the received track points are not saved as they are received. After receiving a punch of trackpoints the data is written to disk. Maybe we will add an option to configure the "maximum count of uncommited trackpoints" ;-)

Implementation details (Dell XT832 Battery)

I only have picked some interesting things about the implementation if you want to see the whole source, go to the end of this section.

SOAP for Android

One of the first questions were, how to "talk" with crossingways.com. They offer a (undocumented ;-) ) webservice written in ASP.net. These webservices can be contacted by either HTTP GET (really ugly), HTTP POST (nicer, but not what i wanted) and SOAP (Dell Studio 1737 battery ) .

We decided to use SOAP. So the question was "Is there already a SOAP library for Android?" and we discovered that ksoap2 has already been ported to android! The only problem know was to get the ASP.net webservice to speak with the ksoap2 library because that's not real standard SOAP (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery) .

The result of that work is a nice PerformSOAPCall method.

Asynchronous Web Requests

After some first testing we figured out that the internet connection on an android device can be really slow, so we decided to implement asynchronous web requests, which don't block the user interface, well i know that is always a good idea, but we thought if it's fast enough without reasonable blocking we could leave it because threads are expensive (Dell Latitude E6400 battery) .

This raises some more problems, what if the (sending) queue gets larger and larger (filled with live tracking requests, they occur quite often) and i want to upload my recorded track NOW without waiting for all the live tracking requests to get processed (IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet battery) ?

to solve this issue we implemented a 2-stage request queue, a low priority and a priority. The low priority queue gets only processed if no elements in the priority queue are present and if the low priority timeout is reached (defined on the settings screen). The priority queue gets processed immediately on adding a new request (it would only wait for an other element currently processed (Acer Extensa 500 battery) .

But now we are still missing one important feature --> Ui feedback. It's nice that the requests get processed in the background but the user wants to know if the track upload has finished or if it failed. This Ui feedback is not straight forward, because the methods that show the feedback (message window) or the methods that update the list element status or whatever need to be called in the same thread than the user interface is running and not in the background-connection-thread. But the android framework also has a soution for this problem. It's called AsyncTask (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery)

You just extend that class (in this case we extended CrossingWaysConnection) and override two methods.

The first one: doInBackground

This is the method which is executed in a seperate thread without interfering the main/ui thread.

The second one: onProgressUpdate

Once publishProgress is called in the background thread, this method is called in context of the main/ui thread. But keeb in mind without locking or condition variables the background threads runs further even before this method is finished (Acer Aspire One battery) .

That's a real nice mechanism which makes the program feel faster and it's real flexible. Currently there are only a few requests implemented but it could be extended easily (Dell Latitude C400 Battery) .

Goodbye Vista. Hello XP

Three months ago, shortly before it's release in stores, I installed Windows Vista on my machine. A couple of days ago, I deleted it and installed the previous operating system - Windows XP. Why did I go backwards in operating systems? Let me explain (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

It has been my experience over the years that Microsoft's operating systems usually need a good year to 'season' before they are ready to be used. When Windows XP first came out, I upgraded to it. It didn't last very long on my machine. At the time, I was still using a parrallel port printer. USB printers were still fairly new at the time but parallel printers had been around for a long time (Dell Latitude X200 Battery) .

I installed XP and setup all my devices. Somehow, XP decided it didn't want to work with my parallel printer, but the cheapo USB printer I had, worked perfectly. Now I usued that parallel printer (an old HP Laserjet) 99% of the time when I printed stuff. It wasn't color like the cheapo USB inkjet, but it printed much better than the cheapo, was faster and was quieter. But since XP couldn't work with it, I got upset and went back to Windows 2000 (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

I couldn't believe that Microsoft would be able to get a brand NEW type of printer (USB) working, but they couldn't get a technology that had been around for 10 years beforehand (parrallel printers) working? WTF? This was unacceptable. It worked in Windows 2000. Why didn't it work in XP? It was another year before I went back to XP and tried again. This time it worked perfectly on everything, including my parrallel printer. It looks like Vista is going to turn out to require the same one year 'seasoning' (Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC Battery) .

Now, my usage of PCs has changed drastically since those days of my first experiment with XP. Back then, the PC was my ONLY computer. Without that, I couldn't do anything. So, back then, I used the PC and as a result, Windows every day. I had to have something that worked! These days, that's changed. Now, I use my Mac 99% of the time (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

I only switch over to the PC for the occasional small task that I can't do on the Mac. This means that I actually didn't use Vista all that much. I would use it for a few simple tasks - copying files, browsing the web, organizing the files on my iPod etc. for a few minutes a day. Despite this very small amount of usage, Vista continued to aggravate me and get in my way more so than XP ever did that first time. If it hadn't been for my printer problem back then, I could have kept using XP (Dell XPS M1330 Battery) .

Vista has been nothing but problems for me.

My first impression of Vista was certainly positive, as I wrote about in my blog at the time. It had a pretty UI, and it had some nice 'Mac-ish' features. Over time though, the 'thrill is gone'. I've come to really dislike it (Dell TT485 Battery) .

First, the UI. While, it definitely is a more colorful UI than XP, I'm not entirely sure it's a good design. Vista's Aero UI has this interesting 'frosted glass' transparency of the title bar and the borders of it's windows. This means you can see a somewhat blurry version of whatever is underneath the title bar behind the title bar at all times (Dell XT832 Battery) .

Frankly I find this very distracting. I've seen Vista running on my machine and on other machines in the stores. Every one of them looks different to me. But they are all running the same graphical scheme. It's just that the background image on each was different. This means that there was a different background blurring through the title bar on each Vista machine I looked at (Dell Studio 1737 battery ) .

I don't like this. This means that essentially your title bar will have a different look depending on where on the screen it is located and what it underneath it! This can make it very hard to spot the title bar and which application is the active application. This is going to lead to a great deal of confusion among the less computer-savvy users out there. Hell, it leads to confusion with me and I'm far from a computer novice. I think this was a major UI mistake (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery) .

Vista is highly unstable (or at least it's drivers are). I've lost count of how many times I've had to reinstall my video card and motherboard chipset drivers of the last three months. This thing has given me the 'blue screen of death' more time in 3 months than in the 6 years that I used XP (Dell Latitude E6400 battery) .

It also seems to have an even worse case of the 'XP pause' effect. You know the one - when you bring up Windows Explorer and it just sits there and 'thinks' for a good 10-20 seconds before it shows the contents of your hard drive. This is unacceptable to me. Even on a directory with only a few files, it pauses for a long period of time. It also seems to pause for long periods of times when you click on an app in the task bar to switch applications. I've lost track of how many times I've clicked on iTunes in the taskbar to just have nothing happen (IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet battery) .

It has many problems with iTunes and iPods in general. At times I'd click on iTunes in the task bar to switch from another app back to iTunes and it would just sit there and do nothing. iTunes wouldn't respond for a good 10 seconds. It also had the annoying habit of every time I plugged in my iPod, it would tell me that the drive on the iPod is corrupted and offer to repair it. The drive on the iPod is NOT corrupted (Acer Extensa 500 battery) .

If it were, it wouldn't be playing any music, now would it? Yes, I know these iTunes problems are well documented and Apple and Microsoft have been working hard to fix them, but I just cannot live with them anymore.

The network configuration panel in Control Panel is one of the most confusing things I've ever seen (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery) .

I am a very knowledgeable computer person, but this thing damn near baffles me. It almost seems to be too smart for it's own good. At one point, I went in there and temporarily disabled my network card. The problem was, I had a hell of a time trying to figure out how the hell to turn it back on! I'm afraid to touch anything in that network configuration panel now, for fear it won't work (Acer Aspire One battery) .

Vista has serious software compatibility problems, even with Microsoft's own software! For a while Microsoft's Zune software wouldn't work with it. Visual Studio 2003 doesn't work with it. This incompatability with VS2003 is a major concern. My company still uses VS2003. This means we essentially can't upgrade any developer machines to Vista! The initial version of Visual Studio 2005 doesn't work properly with it. You need to install a service pack for it to work properly (Dell Latitude C400 Battery) .

Microsoft's Active Sync software doesn't work on Vista. You need to install a completely different program on Vista to get the same functionality as the older Active Sync. I use Active Sync to sync with my new Treo 700 cell phone. This cell phone runs Microsoft's PocketPC OS. The problem was, I couldn't get the Active Sync replacement to work at all on Vista. It never seemed to recognize my cell phone properly (Sony VGN-FZ150E battery) .

Plus, I had to install an OS update on the phone itself, but that update did not support Vista. It was this Treo incompatibility that ultimately caused me to give up on Vista.

What's even more funny about the fact that I went from Vista back to XP? It's the fact that I bought a copy of XP to do it! For the last 6 years, I've been running a 'less than legal' copy of XP. It took the 'Vista Experience' to make me want XP enough to buy it - after it was already out of date (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery) !

Maybe in six months to a year from now, Vista will have stablized enough for me to use it. In the meantime, I'm going to stick with the 'old' XP and my Mac.

Making iTunes stop that gapless playback nonsense

Here's a problem that a lot of people are having: iTunes supports gapless playback since version 7.x. Okay, admittedly there are also people who think it's great - to clarify, my personal negative reaction to it is not strictly about gapless playback as such, but rather about Apple's implementation approach (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

Apple seem to assume a number of things:

• everybody needs it
• the process of gathering all the required info is short, painless and unintrusive
• their implementation is perfect and doesn't have any bugs

These assumptions have led them to leave out a simple checkbox in an Options dialog, which would allow to switch the collection of gapless playback information off (Dell Latitude X200 Battery) .

Not only that, since 7.x (we're now on 8.x) they have continuously ignored feedback from users asking them to add this option. I count myself lucky not to have stumbled upon this issue shortly after the introduction of the feature, because it must have been much worse then - many people reported severe problems at that time, which usually ended in iTunes crashes (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

Before I get to the point of describing my own issue, I would just like to state that I find Apple's attitude towards this issue despicable. It seems to constitute a severe error of judgment not to introduce the option above from the start. I don't know the right words to describe what I think about the neglect of customer opinion that is apparent today, seeing how the latest versions still haven't changed in this regard (Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC Battery) .

And at the same time Apple continually makes iTunes a more and more important application - it used to be for dealing with music, now it does podcasts, videos and the iTunes and App stores, in addition to being the only feature complete management frontend for iPods and iPhones. If you're listening, Apple, this is ridiculous (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

Now, the issue I was seeing is not a bug - or maybe it is one, on some level. I have a collection of music on a network share, with a total volume of around 40GB. Around 600 CDs I ripped myself, a few songs recorded from internet radio stations and the rest is podcasts. When I ran iTunes, it started analyzing all the files for gapless playback info (whatever that actually means, I was unable to find out precisely what this analysis step entails (Dell XPS M1330 Battery) .

This process went rather slowly, at maybe one file per two seconds or so. More importantly though, the implementation of this is such that iTunes uses up all available CPU for the duration of the scan. Since I need to use my computer every now and then, I never actually saw whether the process would complete at some point - it might, but then again, I have seen some forum posts that claim the process started over the next time they ran iTunes (Dell TT485 Battery) .

The process certainly started over for me every time I re-ran iTunes, and confusingly the total number of files in the status message always seemed to be the same. Since the information gathered is allegedly stored in the MP3 headers of the files, I don't really understand why iTunes apparently scans the same files all over every time (Dell XT832 Battery) .

At least canceling the process usually worked for me, if only for a while. I saw that on occasion the scanning would resume later on - not hard to notice, since the computer became unusable every time this happened - and of course at the next iTunes start it would start over (Dell Studio 1737 battery ) .

In some forum I found the hint that there's an option on each file which says "this file is part of a gapless album". I found the option and set it to "no" for all files in my collection, as per instructions. Unfortunately this didn't help at all, no idea why. There seems to be an additional confusing connection to the global "crossfading" option, but I tried all possible combinations without success (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery) .

So, on a technical level, these here seem to be the issues:

The process is implemented with what seems to be high priority (in contrast to just "normal" priority). It appears to use both cores in my machine, thereby effectively blocking the rest of my system. Not a good multi-tasking citizen (Dell Latitude E6400 battery) .

Status saving for analyzed files seems to be either broken or brain-dead, otherwise the process would at least get done over time. As it is, the scan seems to be run for the same files over and over.

The information is stored in the files themselves (IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet battery) .

Why do iTunes developers assume they have the right to change my files without asking me? Don't do that! It would not have been a problem to add an option to my iTunes library file instead. (Admittedly, the workaround below would not work then, so at this point, without the option to switch gapless playback off altogether, I'm glad they were insolent enough to store the info to the files (Acer Extensa 500 battery) .

The per-song option to configure gapless seems to be broken. If it's not broken, it's badly implemented - an option that doesn't do what it name says is useless.

Now, for the positive news. There's an easy way I found to "deactivate" the collection of gapless playback information (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery) .

It is to simply make the folders in which your iTunes library resides (yes, the physical files) read-only. If iTunes can't write to the files, it doesn't collect gapless playback info. In my case we're talking MP3 files, and while I wouldn't expect any difference, I don't have a clue about other file types (Acer Aspire One battery) .

Depending on your setup, there are probably several possible ways of doing that, with various benefits and drawbacks. In my case, I simply went to my file server and set the permissions on the entire network share to read-only. Then I created a second share for the same directory, on which I set read-write permissions (Dell Latitude C400 Battery) .

This way I can now access the data on the share just as easily as before, but iTunes can't change the files anymore. When it comes up, I see the status message about gathering gapless playback info flash by quickly, but it doesn't last more than maybe a second or so. Nice (Sony VGN-FZ150E battery) .

If your setup doesn't involve a network share, you would probably succeed most easily by changing the NTFS (or Unix, if you're on a Mac) permissions for the directory, taking away write permissions. I don't use iTunes to download podcasts, but I imagine it would even be possible to leave a certain sub-directory read-write for these (or videos perhaps), while making the rest read-only. In any case I think it's beneficial if the actual music directory is not the same as the "iTunes music folder" Sony VGP-BPS13 battery) .

That's what things are like for me, and it works just fine. Ah well... YMMV.

So, on a technical level, these here seem to be the issues:
The process is implemented with what seems to be high priority (in contrast to just "normal" priority). It appears to use both cores in my machine, thereby effectively blocking the rest of my system. Not a good multi-tasking citizen.Status saving for analyzed files seems to be either broken or brain-dead, otherwise the process would at least get done over time (Sony VGN-FZ460E battery) .

As it is, the scan seems to be run for the same files over and over.The information is stored in the files themselves. Why do iTunes developers assume they have the right to change my files without asking me? Don't do that! It would not have been a problem to add an option to my iTunes library file instead (HP PAVILION DV9700t Battery) .

(Admittedly, the workaround below would not work then, so at this point, without the option to switch gapless playback off altogether, I'm glad they were insolent enough to store the info to the files.)The per-song option to configure gapless seems to be broken. If it's not broken, it's badly implemented - an option that doesn't do what it name says is useless.Now, for the positive news. There's an easy way I found to "deactivate" the collection of gapless playback information (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery) .

It is to simply make the folders in which your iTunes library resides (yes, the physical files) read-only. If iTunes can't write to the files, it doesn't collect gapless playback info. In my case we're talking MP3 files, and while I wouldn't expect any difference, I don't have a clue about other file types (Sony VGP-BPL11 battery) .

Depending on your setup, there are probably several possible ways of doing that, with various benefits and drawbacks. In my case, I simply went to my file server and set the permissions on the entire network share to read-only. Then I created a second share for the same directory, on which I set read-write permissions . This way I can now access the data on the share just as easily as before, but iTunes can't change the files anymore (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ4000 Battery) .

When it comes up, I see the status message about gathering gapless playback info flash by quickly, but it doesn't last more than maybe a second or so. Nice.

If your setup doesn't involve a network share, you would probably succeed most easily by changing the NTFS (or Unix, if you're on a Mac) permissions for the directory, taking away write permissions. I don't use iTunes to download podcasts, but I imagine it would even be possible to leave a certain sub-directory read-write for these (or videos perhaps), while making the rest read-only (Sony VGP-BPL15 battery)

. In any case I think it's beneficial if the actual music directory is not the same as the "iTunes music folder". That's what things are like for me, and it works just fine. Ah well... YMMV.

Apple: Give me a free iPhone 3GS

So there I was, back in December 2008 --- all ecstatic about the iPhone Killer in the form of the Nokia N97. The specs (3.5inch tilting touch screen, full QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, GPS, 5megapixel camera and a 32GB internal memory) sounded awesome then, but recent reviews and user reports on Nokias' discussion forum (over 800 posts on a search with "N97 problem") are making me worried (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

I was hoping to upgrade to Nokia's flagship phone, but reading reviews and user feedback have now convinced me that an Apple iPhone 3GS will be the better choice (Apple, if you read this, you courier me one, it will work very well with my MacBook Air and Airport Express (Dell Latitude X200 Battery) .

Nokia N97 issues reported on the Nokia forum (most of them on the latest v11 firmware):

GPS Issues: Many users complain about the phones (in)capability to lock on to satellites. Some blame it on overclouding, others had their phone replaced and some report that the GPS (in comparison to an iPhone or TomTom) reports the location off by several 100 metres (Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC Battery) .

The integrated GPS does not seem work well or fast (up to 2 minutes to lock onto satellites) and many users result to rely on AGPS (which will chow your bandwidth like there was no tomorrow .

Signal strength: Firmware version v11 seems to have improved the signal strength problem. If you do a side-by-side comparison with a N95 or 5800 you will find that those phones will show 3 bars, while the N97 will barely show one. This occurs on both 3G and normal EDGE/GSM network modes (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

Widget stability: Still many issues, with widgets either not refreshing, crashing or just not responding at all

In car calling: The N97 supports TV Out (via a Nokia Video-Out CA-75U cable) to hook up your phone to your in-car-entertainment system. While the N95 works perfectly, the N97 displays the video, but any attempt to make a call (voice dialing or manual) or receive call shuts down audio - quite disappointing, considering that this worked flawless on N95's (Dell XPS M1330 Battery) .

Speaker quality: Compared to the Nokia 5800, the N97's speakers have poor volume and seem to be plagued by lack of bass and too much trebble. True, the 5800 is the "music-phone" but I would expect similar quality in a USD 700,00 phone. The speakers seems to be optimised for good voice-/speaker-phone functionality, but lack in the multimedia-/entertainment division (Dell TT485 Battery) .

Transition effects: This will get Nokia into some sort of trouble. If you watch the YouTube marketing video you will see some nifty transitions. Pity, that those are currently not available in the N97 production version. The phone itself seems to be already slow when it comes to widgets and adding this functionality will certainly have a performance penalty (Dell XT832 Battery) .

Compass calibration flawed: My word - better head over to this post if your screen rotation resets the compass calibration. Not a good thing if you rely on this functionality and can not trust the device (Hp 520 battery) .

Received text messages not showing the sender: I hope you don't have friends sharing a landline or multiple contacts with the same home-phone number, because the N97 will not show you at least one contact name, and this was "perfectly" justified by Nokia: 'Quote: "If the phone finds the same number against more than one name (IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet battery) .

it doesn't know which to use so, perfectly sensibly, it defaults to showing the number."' - not sure about "perfectly sensibly - I would have assumed a more user intuitive approach would have helped (Acer Extensa 500 battery) .

Flawed music app: If you happen to have in excess of 300-400 albums, it will take about 30 seconds for the library to load or 10 seconds for the artist list to display. One user reported that his N97's music library "lost" all music and it took 15 hours to refresh the music library (granted it consisted of 737 albums (Dell Studio 1737 battery ) .

Exchange support: You can run Mail for Exchange and v2.9 seems to be better than 2.7 on the N95, but to have a proper mail-experience you will need to purchase RoadSync. Puzzles me about Nokia's choice of product placement, it appears that the N75 is the true communicator. Again, I would have thought that better corporate support would be bundled wit the phone (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

Contact management / labels: No support to edit existing labels. Don't get irritated if you sync your phone the first time, only to notice that all personal mobile phone numbers are now placed in the business-mobile label (Ibm ThinkPad X41 Tablet battery) .

Calendaring: So you saw those call transitions and full calendar views in landscape mode. Guess what? Your new N97 will only show you today's event in the home-screen. Even my current (and two year old) N73ME will at least show me events for tomorrow if I am on the last event for today (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery) .

While I typically don't follow the hype and prefer to judge the quality of a phone myself, I do believe that customer feedback on Nokia's support forum are a better representation of a products quality. Although Nokia is quick in fixing issues, Nokia is also known to abandon phones after a certain period of time and to me, the N97 does not seem to have a lifespan of more than 12 months (Sony VGP-BPL11 battery) .