Archive for September, 2007

Third Tuesday September

John / September 23, 2007 / Uncategorized / Comments Off

The details are now confirmed for the September edition of the the Vancouver Third Tuesday event taking place on Tuesday, September 25th at SoHo in Yaletown [map] at 6pm. Yeah we know it’s actually the fourth Tuesday of the month the schedule is built around speaker availability.

The inaugural speaker for the Vancouver event will be Tod Maffin: “SWARM Communications: When Good Buzz Goes Bad”

I’ll be discussing my model of crisis communications on the Internet — something I call SWARM Communications. Yes, SWARM is an acronym. Want to know what the letters stand for? You’ll have to show up to find out! My bio claims that I am a national broadcaster, an influential blogger, popular keynote speaker, and president of Foursevens.

See you there! [more info and RSVP]

Last chance to vote for SXSW 2008

John / September 20, 2007 / Photography / Comments Off

Tomorrow, Friday, September 21st is the last day for voting on the submissions for panels at the 2008 South by Southwest Interactive Conference.

If you have a moment, it would be great if you could vote for Frank and I. It just takes a few moments to register and vote. See my previous post for the full scoop and panel background.

While you are there voting for us, why don’t you drop a couple of nice 5 star votes for Anne and Sande’s panels. They want to help make videogames more compelling as well as making games based on films that don’t suck! Check out their full details here.

Thanks for your support! We’ll find out in October if we’re in.

Full iPhone Software Unlock released for free

John / September 17, 2007 / Hacking, Mobile / 7 Comments

Well, it didn’t take long for a free version of the software unlock for the iPhone to be released by the iPhone Dev Team. As I mentioned previously, it’s not for the those that are afraid of the command line but expect that to change as more people get their hands on the code in the coming days. I used this tutorial (which also has all the files). If you follow it completely then run Independence (Mac) to activate your non-AT&T sim, you should be good to go!

So this is my confirmed, it fully works on Roger’s post:

with the only tool you need for the job

If you want to enable EDGE to work on Roger’s (aka the highway robbery that is data in Canada), just edit the EDGE settings in the Settings/General/Network/Edge menu to:

APN: internet.com username: [leave blank] password: [leave blank]

To disable EDGE at anytime, simply add an extra character to the APN url so that it’s not valid.

It’s worth mentioning that when you connect to “Roger’s Wireless” on the iPhone, it does a neat little scrolling animation (not unlike when you connect to a long wireless network name on a Mac) but then instead of just saying “Roger’s” in the network name spot on the top left, it truncates the name with “…” so it then says “Roge…”. I could probably change that to the logo of my choosing but figure I’ll be ‘proving’ it’s on Roger’s to friends for a little while at least.

Update to this post: I did a complete iTunes restore to my iPhone and the unlock survived the restore. I used the latest version of the iPhone software (1.02) and was using iTunes 7.3.4 (haven’t upgraded to the latest yet).

Update #2: the latest version of Independence now also makes YouTube work when you activate it! Woohoo!

Update #3: there is now a number of much simpler software unlock methods. iUnlock and AnySim are free apps you can install on the iPhone to do all the heavy lifting directly. There should be soon a version available via the Installer App. For now, follow this detailed tutorial to get your iPhone unlocked.

Expect everything to change after the big Apple announcement in London on September 18th which is widely rumoured to be European iPhone release which will most likely also come with a firmware update.

The iPhone isn’t coming to Canada yet

John / September 11, 2007 / Mobile / Comments Off

Via News1130.com:

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It may be a while yet before Canadians get to use an iPhone. Rogers Communications has the only network in the country capable of supporting current iPhone technology, and says it still has no word from Apple for a release date here.

Rogers Chief Operating Officer Nadir Mohammed thinks Europe will be next to get the gadget, and he’s not saying if they’re even in talks right now with Apple about selling the iPhone in Canada.

Unless of course you unlock one.

UPDATE: now there is a free unlock as well. (link to the tutorial – not for the faint of heart or cmdline)

On the Air with pacificIT Radio

John / September 8, 2007 / Photography, Technology / 2 Comments

Last night I was fortunate enough to be invited to talk with Robert Sanzalone on his live pacificIT Radio show in Japan. He’s currently living in Japan and is a technologist from the Vancouver area with his finger firmly on the pulse of everything in this Web 2.0 world.

There is still something cool to me about being able to have a chat about technology with someone in Japan in real time over the internet. It may be a trivial thing nowadays but I’m old enough to know a time when the thought of doing something like this was science fiction and that still makes me giddy.

We mostly talked about my experiences with the iPhone in Canada and a few other things like the Lab with Leo event from the other night and the SXSW panel submission. When you get two people that are passionate about their technology talking, it’s hard to stop but the show is only an hour long but we could have easily gone on for a few more.

I’m looking forward to more chats with Robert in the future. Thanks for having me, Robert!

Here’s the direct link to my episode with Robert where you can listen right on the page itself or grab the mp3 for later listening.

iPhone Software Unlock Video

John / September 8, 2007 / Hacking, Mobile / 2 Comments

Yesterday, Gizmodo posted a video (no embeded version) of them using the iPhoneSimFree unlock software. It seems pretty convincing that at least the software unlock application exists and it’s pretty straightforward to apply the unlock. Engadget also weighed in on this latest chapter although they seem to point out that this is a demo of the backend system and that it doesn’t actually unlock anything, but rather just goes through the motions.

I didn’t need anymore convincing that it’s real although it’s still unclear how Apple will handle a software based unlock. In the past they have looked the other way when it comes to many forms of hacking of their products. The AppleTV has been hacked and very little was done by Apple to stop it. Given the hacking roots of Apple’s creators, it’s no surprise that Apple doesn’t mind this type of activity as long as it don’t cost them any money. Hacking for the sake of extending a product beyond what was intended or offered originally should be okay….doing it for the purpose of bypassing payment, not so much.

Stay tuned as next week should be an interesting week for iPhone users or potential customers!

The Lab with Leo 100th Episode Celebration

John / September 7, 2007 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment

Just got home from a fun evening out at the Alibi Room in Gastown. It was a fan meetup of sorts to celebrate the 100th episode of the Lab with Leo Laporte which is shot in Vancouver. I’ve been a fan of Leo’s work since the early days of the Screensavers and was actually in the audience at the Tech TV studios in San Francisco on the day after he left the show…so it was great to finally meet Leo in person.

It was fun to get to talk with Leo about a bunch of different things and we even got to geek out with our iPhones and chatted about the apps we’d installed. Too bad he was losing his voice so he left a little early to save it for the show taping in the morning.

There were lots of other cast, crew and guests from the show at the event as well as a lot of fans in attendance. Some even drove down from Kamloops!

I also enjoyed talking iPhones and videogames with Victor Lucas who is the Lab’s executive producer as well as the man responsible for some of the best damn television for gamers out there. He’s an Emmy award winning producer of shows about videogames – how cool is that! I’ve been watching EP and his other shows as long as he’s been making them and always liked his no bullshit approach to game reviews. It’s cool to see someone older than 15 that gets/plays/loves videogames like I do.

Thanks to everyone involved with the Lab (Sean, Matt, Kate, Ryan and lots of others) for a great night out in Gastown!

Update: In my half asleep state while writing this post last night, I forgot to mention Kevin (on the left), Warren, Derek (who took the photo above) and Boris who were also in attendance and contributed to the good conversations over beer and all things geeky.

iPod touch vs iPhone

John / September 5, 2007 / Hacking, Mobile / 6 Comments

Wow…what a bombshell this morning!

The New iDevices

The new ‘iDevices’ are pretty impressive….and the implications are pretty far reaching.

The biggest thing for me was the price cut of the iPhone from $599 to $399 (USD) for the 8gb iPhone. This has to be one of the fastest price cuts in Apple history for a new product that’s only been on the market for just over 2 months. Does that mean it’s overpriced and nobody was buying them except early adopters like me? Or are they realizing cost savings due to the volume of sales and production? As usual, John Gruber has some interesting thoughts on the reasoning behind the price drop.

I ‘accepted’ the price point of $599 for the iPhone when I bought mine back in July and I still do but Apple is certainly going to hear from a huge bunch of whiners. It’ll be interesting to see how Apple responds to the outcry and inevitable class action lawsuits from people wanting their $200 back.

If I recall when Apple released it’s high end photo management program, Aperture, it was sold for $499 and then later reduced to $299 with a refund or credit going to all the original purchasers. Of course, it probably wasn’t sold in the same volume as the iPhone has either so I’m doubtful that will happen without litigation but would gladly take an iTunes/Apple store credit to soothe the early adopter pain.

The iPod touch just seems to be missing something – the homescreen just looks too barren especially when compared to the iPhone. You’d think they’d make the buttons bigger or change the layout somewhat unless they have big plans instore for it (and the iPhone). I can see games being sold very soon on the iTunes store that work on either device (probably coming from companies like EA).

Once the iPod Touch hits the stores, it won’t take long (like minutes) before the hacking scene goes to town on it like they have with the iPhone.

UPDATE: Looks like Apple will give a store $100 credit to the early adopters next week! The bad press was certainly taking it’s toll and this is a fair resolution to quiet the complainers:

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.

Do Not Think For Long!

John / September 5, 2007 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment

This made me laugh….Wordpress comment spam gold, Jerry!

Knifes!

Vote for me and I’ll set you free

John / September 4, 2007 / Photography / 1 Comment

or something like that.

Just a reminder to check out my submission for a SXSW Interactive 2008 panel/presentation….every vote helps make it happen!

Get the full scoop here! Thanks for your support!

While you’re at it, why not give Anne and Sande a vote too! They have two sessions up for voting and which look interesting.