Prior to OS3.0, the iPhone allowed a user to run only one application at one time, (excluding the system applications), and this meant that IM on the iPhone was for the most part a very momentary thing – you could IM – or not. If you were wanting to write an email – no IM. Make a call – no IM.

A few companies attempted to work around the limitation of no background apps through use of push email: if you were ‘busy’ doing something (or even nothing), then you would be emailed notification that you should log into IM to read your messages. This was a temporary workaround and was at the most better than nothing, however due to the lack of reliable push email, you probably only stood a 50% chance of receiving notification after 15 minutes. Issues with the iPhone not pushing email when it roamed from Wifi to GSM caused serious problems.

Herald in OS3.0 and Apple’s solution to lack of background processes: Push Notifications. In theory, a good idea. Why have your phone using power if a server can be sat elsewhere instead?

Apple actually appears to have implemented Push Notifications quite successfully. They appear much more reliable than Push Email, and enable you to be interrupted in a fashion similar to receiving an SMS. Great! We have working chat!? Not quite. Sadly, all iPhone IM applications require the user to use them periodically to keep them connected to the messaging service. Current times range from 4 hours to 3 days.

This is similar to owning a fax machine that requires you to visit it each day to press a button to keep it working. Naturally that important fax (or IM message) telling you that you’ve won $1million always arrives on the 4th day.

Blackberry users can at this point of course gloat, since they’ve had permanent IM on their device, both in the forms of RIM messaging as well as apps from Google (gtalk) and MS for years.

Perhaps at some point Apple will appreciate the value of background applications, or providing a reliable IM app. Until then, I suspect it will have to be Google that comes along and saves the day – they have the server infrastructure that could manage permanently online gtalk clients that always push.

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

New Terms:

2.1 For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).

So… NOW if you share you upload your photos you are inherently sharing them with others. So if you leave it will not be deleted and you still have no rights to it.

This is worse than the original terms….

VOTE NO!

When oil was last this price, gas was around 45c/gal cheaper! Guess who is enjoying the downward ride? Recent prices are rising, despite falling oil. Also, the slope of fall is sharper on the oil than the gas. Someone is making some serious money!

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=KBNumber&kbln=KBLanguage

E.g. The August CU for MOSS 2007 Global is KB 956056. This yields the following URL: http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=956056&kbln=en-us.

You will be asked for your email address during the download process. Enter it as a password for the hotfix file will be emailed to you.

- It is restricted to video files that are 720×480 (i.e. not standard TV)
- The MPG export feature doesn’t work, so you’re limited to WMV files being output
- Technical support is useless (the person took about a week to even reply to an email)
- The output quality is not that good (perhaps a restriction of WMV?)

Saying that, it does enable you to create a video file with time counting down. We used it to overlay massive time onto a black background and then re-edited that into our video in Vegas.

As a rating, 3/10 would be all I’d give it. Your mileage may vary!

An example: I just ‘moved files’ from one folder to another. I clicked replace (as there already existed files in the destination folder with the same name), and ‘repeat for further X conflicts’. The first pass left 4 folders and 5 files in the source folder! When I then repeated the move, an empty folder was left in the source folder.

That is just rubbish!

Another example:

I set up an ‘offline folders’ share to my new PC from my old. The folders showed up in the Sync manager and started to sync. As there was 50GB or so to do, I choose to switch off my PC and continue the next day. On switching my PC back on, it refused to continue to Sync. However, worse than that, unless you can restore the network connection, there is NO WAY to remove this partial sync. What if the source PC died? Then I’d be screwed!

On my desktop, I now have an issue where I cannot write to one CD burner while playing a DVD from another. I get some kind of error thrown.

On my XBOX360, which is connected to my desktop media center, there are now extra folders listed in the ‘Video’ section – for a start there are about 12 USB Card Reader ports that never used to be there, and which there appears to be no way of turning off in the Folder setup, and my ‘Recorded Video’ link is now there twice. (I had moved it to my D:, so perhaps it’s moved it back?)

I’m sure we’ll get updates to fix these, but some – the file move one especially – is a little bit fundamental!

The good news is that lots of little ‘buggets’ – things like folder settings – appear to now be resolved. So yes, I’m sure it’s worth the upgrade, but don’t expect it to give you that perfect operating system.

On looking in the Event Log on the Vista PC, I could see these errors being logged:

Proximity detection failed due to unknown error ‘0×80004004′. The best proximity time detected was -1 milliseconds.

No web searches revealed anything, but I worked it out:

Go into Media Player and select Library/Media Sharing. It will tell you that you don’t have sharing enabled. This is either because the firewall is wrong, or the network type is wrong.

To fix the issue, ensure that your current network is a ‘Private’ network, not a public one. Also ensure that the ‘Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service’ is set as an exception in the firewall settings.

Doing this enabled the Media Player Sharing dialog to work well, and the error to vanish and media to play.

PC’s never go fast enough however, especially when doing lots of video editing, so I investigated whether it was possible to overclock it. Turns out the motherboard is a Dell-specific board made by Foxconn. The G33M02. Looking at the Foxconn G33M, it looks like they have software overclocking… but that doesn’t work with the board.

Looking deeper, it has the ICS 9LP505-2HGLF PLL generating the CPU clock. ICS kindly provided the datasheet, which shows that it is not programmable though.

Therefore using software, it is NOT possible to overclock a Dell Vostro 200. Looks like a faster processor is what is required for me. That or to make a ‘BSEL’ modification to fool the processor into running at a higher FSB etc. Think I’ll take the safe option, but the next question is just how fast a CPU will it take?

If only Dell would tell us…

Recently I got married. Yes, even geeks get married – probably more often than you’d think – and there’s a good chance that you know someone who’s about to get married right now. The whole wedding experience has been a really good time in my life, and I’d really recommend it if you’re having doubts. (Of course at this point a lot of people always point out the pitfalls of marriage too from their ‘bad’ experiences, but let’s focus on where I am now… still in that high point. They even have a name for it – The Honeymoon Period.)

But anyway, when we announced we were getting married, we did what every couple does – we selected a couple of wedding registries, choosing local stores as we thought that would make life simpler. Target and Bed Bath and Beyond. At this point I have to say (being from the UK) that I have been completely blown away (gobsmacked) by American generosity when it comes to giving gifts. I think that American’s really are the most generous people I’ve come across, and I don’t mean that as a means of getting kudos with anyone, I’m simply stating a fact. There are showers, showers and more showers and then all the wedding gifts too! People are amazing! Of course wedding registries play a big part in that. They simplify life by enabling you to help your friends and relatives know the types of things you’d like to help start your new life together.

Back to Target and Bed Bath and Beyond… Now both stores are similar – you walk in and friendly staff welcome you and ask if you need help finding something (or maybe this just happens to me because I always look lost?!) You scan little lists and have a website to tell your friends about. I have to say that the Bed Bath and Beyond website goes beyond the call of duty. It has guest list trackers, gift trackers, seating arrangers… the list goes on, but I digress – I’m not here to talk about websites. Functionally both work well and actually the Target.com use of the Amazon.com checkout enabled my UK guests to by gifts for delivery in the US – something they wouldn’t have been able to do with most other registry sites.

So we have some friendly stores. Both are as helpful as they can in enabling you to choose your gifts, but this is where the similarities end.

After the wedding you find that people have been so generous that they’ve got you things that are not on your registry. So you get duplicates, things that are slightly the wrong size. You know the thing. It’s kind of like having the most amazing Christmas present time of your life, and find that you need to make a few corrections!

So you visit the stores to do returns. Bed Bath and Beyond are amazing. They value the fact that you’ve just generated $1000’s in business for them and will return things no questions asked.

In Target, they don’t. They state that they only return items with a receipt. That they can only give you $20 back for an item with Target plastered all over it that cost $100. That even though you had 2 ‘king’-sized pillowcases on the registry list and the person bought ’standard’, that they cannot return them to swap them.

Now I’m a principle man. I just can’t work out why a company won’t return gifts even when there is no doubt the item has been bought from them! I tried asking for the store manager, the area manager. The excuses fly – “Sorry, they’re at lunch” (despite it being 7.50 in the evening). “They’re unavailable”. “It’s policy, sir”.

I tell you this, Target give their employees good training for dealing with persistent customers. Training that would be better focused on teaching customer satisfaction!

Eventually I got frustrated, and decided that I’d rather give the things away for free than return them for pennies. My loud announcements of free nonreturnable Crok-Pots and the likes didn’t really work. Well that’s not quite true. I left the store having returned the items, so I guess persistence past the point of annoyance did eventually pay off, but I have this friendly advise:

If you want people to be able to return undesired wedding gifts (and I’ve heard that baby gifts have the same issue), then I suggest you remember the unfriendly red tape at Target. It’s even painted on the walls to help remind you!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads