Thanks to having had to test and evaluate as well as specify a few iPhone apps, I have a developer account with apple. Today it really paid off as I now have the opportunity to test the beta of the iPhone OS 3.0 recently released by Apple.
Now usually I am very careful about installing beta software on my phone as it is my life-line to the world and breaking it would come close to a catastrophe. But such is my trust in the people in Cupertino that I decided to throw caution to the wind. So far I have not regretted that decision. (I’ll keep you posted if I do)
First off I tried the landscape keyboard in Mail. I have to say that I am a fan, as it makes typing a lot easier. There were a few glitches though that will probably keep me typing in portrait. One of those glitches is that the line wrapping seems to be broken and you cannot scroll all the way to the right. That makes writing mails a pain in landscape mode. It is however something I would expect to see ironed out by the time the software is released to the public at large.
The next thing is cut&paste. It works beautifully and has made my iPhone life so much better, even in the first day. The drawback though is that I have to unlearn my previous behaviour. Before now I would scroll through text, such as web-pages, by holding down my finger while reading and slowly moving it as I read thereby scrolling the text. As it happens that is exactly the gesture that triggers the cut&paste popup. So now I keep getting the menu more often than I would have liked. But as I said, the way I was scrolling is admittedly a bit peculiar. On the bright side cut&paste also works with apps that were written with the 2.0 API such as BlogPress which I am using to write this.
And last but not least I had a surprise a few minutes ago. Usually when I leave home fully charged in the morning, I hit the 20% juice warning sometime in the afternoon. That is why I have depended heavily on a mophie juice pack to keep my phone alive. Yet just a few minutes ago, at almost 6pm, I noticed my battery indicator show a 3/4 charge. Now either Apple managed to break the indicator and my phone will die just before I publish this post 
or they have really gotten a major improvement in battery usage out of their new software.
Well so much for this first review. I will keep you all posted on my experiences as I fiddle with iPhone OS 3.0 some more.
phidelta Uncategorized
The Discovery
A while back I was involved in a twitter conversation with a few friends about a petition to secularise Austria. The very minute I wrote a tweet containing the word “god”, my phone went crazy telling me about new followers just about every minute. At first I thought: “Cool, there seems to be a lot of interest in the topic!”. And then I learned a new hashtag: #tcot or Top Conservatives On Twitter.
“Whoa” I thought. “What the heck is happening here?” within 48 hours of writing “god” in a tweet I was being followed by scores of TCOT people. Now if I were also a member of the ultra-religious ultra-right ultra-conservative scene, I would probably have been excited to finally have made the connection to “my crowd” on twitter. But here’s the thing: I’m neither religious, nor conservative. In fact I am a staunch atheist! Not one of those that just neglects to go to church type atheists, but one that is actually vocal on atheism.
I’m one of those atheists that is a member of Think-Atheist, the social network for atheists. I’m one of those Atheists that is a member of AG-Athe, the Austrian Association for Secularism. If I never hear the words “god bless you” again, it would be a day too soon for me!
So being followed by the TCOT crowd, was like being under constant observation by the “enemy camp”. But then I am attempting to never tweet stuff that I would not tell my mom, my wife, and my boss anyhow. So it’s not that big of a deal. But it did get me thinking.
It seems like there are people out there doing twitter-searches on specific words they care about. Then these people band together to magnify their collective voices. So I decided to start a little experiment. I tweeted about how sad I was to have missed a Vodka-Party. And guess what, within minutes I had couple of new “Vodka Followers” with twitter-names like “vodkatwits” and “baconvodka”. (Now that’s my kind of people )
“Yes It Works!!!” I thought and went off to my think-tank to contemplate the implications of my new discovery. Now I realise that all of you experienced twits (or is that tweets? I can never keep it straight) already knew all of this, but it was new to me. So like a little boy that has discovered dad’s porn collection I started scheming on what my next step would be.
Read more…
phidelta Religions #taot, #tcot, atheist, god
More and more people find it worth their time to examine web services and new web sites. More and more people find it worth their time to read these writings and take them into account in their decisions. More and more people forget the basic standards of giving and taking credit where it is due and disclosing affiliations where they exist.
Especially the last item has peeved me recently. Bloggers and other journalists are becoming more and more prolific and less and less honest about why they are writing a story and how they came by it.
Yet it is clear as day that especially this information has to be taken into account when valuing the story.
It is especially peeving when people employed by a startup find it perfectly acceptable to blog, comment, twitter and advise others on the greatness of their employer without even hinting at the fact that the sole reason they are even writing is the fact that their topic is giving them a paycheck. I find this quite dishonest and inappropriate. I am also willing to bet that a large portion of their readership would agree with me on this.
That means it can backfire and any company needs to realize the potential damage in this. At the same time this is easy to avoid and can actually be turned into a positive attribute. Simply disclose your affiliation within every post. Tell the world the fact that you are not just blogging on you own behalf and out of the goodness of your heart.
I for one would take such a disclosure positively. I would esteem such a company as honest and responsive. While I would not take the article as unbiased, I would not disregard it out of hand either. In fact I would much rather do business with a site that understands basic ethics in modern communications than one that hides in the shadows and believes it can escape detection so easily achieved with any search engine.
So this is my plea to all bloggers, posters, commentors and twitterers: be honest in your statements and disclose your affiliations.
phidelta Technology blogging, disclosure, honesty, pr
The president of the Czech Republic, a staunch nationalist, has quite obviously lost his perspective on history when he compared the EU to the Soviet Union. During A speach he held in front oft the EU legislature to mark the transfer of the rotating EU presidency he compared the EU efforts of better political cooperation to Soviet centralism. The fact that he has endured himself in a state behind the iron curtain hightens the loss of perspective. He was able to make his speach with impunity shows quite explicitly how wrong his comparison really is.
To have a senior statesman pander so unashamedly to the anti EU factions in his countries political landscape is proof that European politics are by no means superior to politics in the US. As much as Europeans want to claim the high ground, the Czech president has made that as impossible for the forseeable future as Bush has made it for the US.
It will take a historic event like the election of the first black president to regain that. Yet while in the US that event has passed, Europe is far away from the ability to regain its credibility.
It saddens the heart to see a great project like the EU damaged by a small minded man such as president Klaus.
phidelta Politics
Welcome everyone!
Finally I managed to get my central hub for stuff of all kinds up. This is it. The place to enjoy all my diverse ramblings and other insanities.
I hope at least some of you will enjoy it. If not, then I’ll enjoy writing all for my lonesome self and be content with that.
See you about,
ϕΔ
phidelta Uncategorized