If you happen to find it part of your day to visit this here site on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you may notice that it is a bit different. I installed a theme plugin that will automagically detect you are on an iPhone or Touch and apply a iPhone-based theme. Let me know how/if it works.
Archive for the 'Apple' Category
So, I helped Mike with getting new ringtones for his iPhone 3G without paying the ridiculous $2 per tone. Well, the system I showed him works just fine, but only for the Mac. I found an easier way that as far as I can tell works. Unfortunately, I don’t have an iPhone 3G (yet) to test this, so I’m going to show you guys the video and have you guys tell me whether or not it works.
When I followed this procedure, sure enough, I have a 30 second snippet of a Bad Religion song in my Ringtones list. I did this on iTunes 7.7.1, but like I said, I don’t have an iPhone to put the ringtone on to, so try it out and tell me if it works for you.
Now, I’m going to try to edit a song down with Audacity and see if it works that way too. Hold on a sec.
Yeah, I did it. Turns out though, that Audacity won’t output to AAC, so I exported the clip in MP3. Generally, I export the audio as the same filetype and bitrate as it was imported. Then I used dBpoweramp Music Converter to convert it to AAC and changed the filename to m4r. Maybe the video’s method is a bit easier, but I like to have a lot of control over my ringtones.
Good luck and let me know how it goes.
Finally, Lexy and I are on our own. We have our own place in Lee’s Summit, MO. We have all the essentials set up: TV, internet, and video game consoles. Our internet is via AT&T’s 3Mbps DSL service. We don’t have to have a landline and it’s only $30 a month. I’m kinda digging that.
We have not at all unpacked.
My new job is not that bad. Working and selling for Apple is fairly easy.
I also get to go to Gulf Shores, Alabama for vacation. I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.
I want to thank all of you who helped us move.
Here is the short that won us the One Night Stand 10 hour film competition:
I’m sure many of you are expecting me to gush all over the iPhone 3G. Yes, I love it. I watched the keynote from WWDC. I plan on getting one on July 11. However, I do have a problem.
That problem? AT&T. They don’t have any adjusted plans for the new iPhone. They aren’t selling any as it is. They don’t have any. There is only one iPhone now and it is the iPhone 3G. Get up on it and release those plans. I don’t want to hear rumors anymore. I want facts. I want to see the FamilyTalk iPhone plans. AT&T, get on it.
Second thing I want to mention is that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are finally on Hulu. That is the coolest. Now I get the only two shows I would watch Comedy Central for and don’t have to watch the crappy network. That is good.
A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted that I was planning on keeping up a commitment of one blog post per day. I have already failed at this. The past few days have been a bit hectic and honestly, I forgot to post.
On the good side, I was offered a job at the KCMO Apple Store as a Mac Specialist. I filled out all of the paperwork today and should be recieving an email with details on training start June 6. Very interesting it will be to juggle school and a job at Apple. It may be rough and I may loose a lot of my weekends, but that is part of life right now. Here’s to hoping the job rocks and I am good enough to move up inside of Apple.
So, I just got home from a harrowing day of tutoring math. A lot of people. Ok, so I sit down in my comfy chair and at my trusty PC and start going through Google Reader and my RSS feeds to see what happened since I checked earlier today.
Well. Apparently AT&T is going to subsidize the cost of the new 3G version of the iPhone down to $199. I was at first very happy. I’ve been waiting for the 3G iPhone since its launch several months ago. I kept telling myself, “Just wait. 3G is gonna blow your mind. Stick with that crappy HTC 8125 for a while longer and get a good 3G phone.” In fact, I even got my wife into getting an iPhone. So, our plan is to get the new 3G iPhones when they are released and all will end in happiness.
Then, I thought about the move AT&T is (pseudo) announcing. If you sign a new two-year contract, you can take advantage of the new subsidy. Ok. Sounds good on paper, but think about it. What is one of the big things everyone is worried about with the 3G iPhone? Data transfer. I read somewhere (and for the life of me, I can’t find out or remember where) that the average data usage on the iPhone is 100MB per month compared to 10MB of usage on average for Blackberry users. If you bump the transfer speeds to 3G levels (~1.5Mbps), those numbers are going to exponentially skyrocket.
Undoubtedly, AT&T is worried. They are afraid that their brand-spanking new 3G network will crush and die
a horrible death under the power of the iPhone and its users. I don’t blame them. So, this brings me back again. Why would they subsidize the iPhone, even if the offer is only for new contracts? Because they are planning on cutting back the iPhone plans. I have no proof of this, but it is just a prediction. I present to you that the 3G iPhone will have no unlimited data option or if it does, it will be in the higher end “business” plans. They will limit talk time, data, and probably even text messages, but truthishly, I can’t really see that last one, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Why would AT&T cut the iPhone at the knees? To recoup the loss of cutting around $200 per iPhone. If you get data-happy iPhoners (iPhoneys?) blowing past their monthly “limit,” you can make a fortune. Especially on a phone that automatically calls to several places, using data you didn’t actively tell it to. Naturally, I know that other phones do this too, but I’ve heard the iPhone does it a LOT comparitively, though I could be wrong, not being an iPhone user. This seems like something a big company like AT&T would do, but it also seems like something that will make a lot of people VERY unhappy. If this does happen, if we can’t use the 3G data network to our iPhone heart’s content, what is the point? If we can’t browse and download new apps through the App Store on the 2.0 firmware or do anything we feel like doing on the net, why buy something like the iPhone? If AT&T is going to kick its iPhone customers in the balls as hard as it kicks its regular customers, I’m not sure I want any part of it.
Maybe it won’t happen and I can get a 3G iPhone and go to town on a sea of free, unlimited data access.
Now. We wait.
Things are changing for Lexy and I, so I decided to change the look of this here site. I like it, makes it look a bit more “bloggy” somehow. There is some work to be done with the sidebars, but I can’t figure out what I need to do. Suggestions are welcome.
The two of us have decided that we are getting out of this money blackhole we call a house. Its not that the house is falling apart or anything, it is that we are tired of financially supporting those who promised to pay their share on time, when money is due, but have failed to uphold that end of the bargain. It is sad when those around you decide to treat you not as friends, but as landlords or utility companies. It is fine if you don’t feel like paying a bill for two or three months, but when you fuck with our future, our credit, there is a line to be drawn. That is essentially the crux of the problem. The only people we know in this area, our friends, have not been treating us as friends and that I cannot stand. I’m not a complete hardass. I understand that people come on hard times and they don’t make as much money as they would normally, but Lexy supported this house when she didn’t have a job and nobody thought to say, “Hey, let me help take some of that burden. Let’s share the responsibilities of this house.” I told many this when we first moved in. These situations destroy friendships much faster that natural erosion and that is exactly what happened. My will and want to help other people has plummeted. Lexy and I have helped keep people afloat in this house with no reciprocation that I just don’t see them as friends anymore. Really, I see them as people I can’t wait to get out of my life, and that really saddens me.
Yes, the lease on this house is not up yet, but the landlord has been very accommodating and we have a plan that will keep him in a rent check. The next step is to get a hold of him and present it. I will keep you updated.
So, Lexy and I have decided to bid adieu to this house, and thus our Warrensburg friends, in favor of a place, hopefully, in Odessa, MO. The idea is that Odessa is between where Lexy works and where we go to school. It will also be beneficial to be closer to KC when I go in for the interviews at the Apple Store.
That’s right, I have an interview at the Apple Store in KC. Actually, I have two more interviews. I did the phone interview on Friday and am fairly certain that I did extremely well. Now I have a “group” interview, which I’m not sure what that means, but if I get through that, then I go on to the one-on-one interview. The idea that was set up by the interviewer over the phone is that I will start as a Mac Specialist as part-time and move on to a Creative position when I can start working full-time. I am super excited to have an even remote opportunity to work for Apple in really any capacity.
That’s is pretty much a rehashing of everything that is happening in my life right now.
I just watched an episode of Tekzilla Daily. Apparently, the fine folks at Tekzilla are releasing little one minute daily shows in addition to their weekly show. Today’s I thought was a rather neat trick in Mac’s OS X. Check it out and see if it could do you any good.
EDIT: This trick also works in Firefox and IE (and I’m sure other browsers and maybe other apps) on Windows machines, but it can cause some sites to go weird and doesn’t work quite like OS X’s feature. Almost as cool.
Today marked the release of the new 16Gb Apple iPhone and the 32Gb Apple iPod Touch. Let me tell you something. People don’t really want more storage space on their iPhones. Yeah, maybe it is a concern about that measly 8Gb, but the real concerns transcend storage space. The one and single reason I have not purchased myself an iPhone is very simple: N0 3G access. A company as supposedly consumer-minded as Apple (though I would disagree) should know what it’s consumers want and that is NOT an iPhone that uses EDGE and has 16Gb. They want an iPhone that uses 3G and has 16Gb. There are a few other complaints I’ve heard about the iPhone, to see the one’s I agree with, go and watch this episode of Tekzilla. Patrick Norton does a fairly excellent job of listing the top five things wrong with the iPhone. It’s at the beginning of the episode, so it shouldn’t be too painful if you don’t really like that kind of show.
In fact, I’ll do you a solid. I will embed the episode and you can watch for yourself right here without having to leave my site. If you just can’t stand the combination of Patrick Norton and guest-host Kevin Rose, just watch to timecode 1:05 (I guess technically when using the word ‘timecode’ I should have used 00:01:05;00) when Patrick starts talking about his beef with the iPhone. It’s pretty short, sweet, and to the point.
