[Insert Clever Title Here]

How to make that nobody gets your data – and have fun doing it.

Patrick — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:46:44 +0000

So, the story goes that we had all of these Hard Drives with old school data that we needed to erase. Do we have 6-year old hardware? Nah. Did we want to 7-pass encode each one? Nah. Instead, we took a different approach. To all of those who’ve seen Office Space, this will probably be worth your while.

Oh yeah, I’m the one with a pickaxe.

Windows 7 Upgrade at Half Price – but only until July 11th

Patrick — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:58:17 +0000

Microsoft is has opened the door for pre-orders of the Windows 7 ‘Home Premium’ and ‘Professional’ upgrade DVD’s. Even better news is that they are half the price of the estimated sticker value: the Home Premium Upgrade weighs in at $49 and Professional at $99. But don’t take my word for it, check out Microsoft’s site for yourself.

I’m assuming that these are only upgrade package pricing – that is, if you were to buy the Home Premium upgrade right out of the store, it would cost you $100 (Professional – $200). Personally, that’s a hefty price for an upgrade in comparison to Apple’s Snow Leopard (only $30), and yet if I had $100, I would be pre-ordering my copy as we speak. But hey – if that’s the case, it seems that the pricing scheme is right on par with Vista’s.

Good move, Microsoft.

Dunkin’ Run for iPhone = Happy Office

Patrick — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:05:29 +0000

Have you ever heard of DunkinRun.com? I haven’t until I found the Dunkin’ Run app (iTunes link) this morning. It’s a neat, easy to use application that allows you to digitize your home or office’s Dunkin’ Donuts order – so much so, that you don’t have to go around asking everyone what they want – it’s entirely email based.

You have to register for an account at DunkinDonuts.com to use the service, but after that, the process is simple:

NOTE: Reference the images below, as WordPress doesn’t yet allow multiple galleries!

Create a Run. If you’re the runner this time around, make sure you have ‘Runs’ selected at the bottom and then tap ‘Start a Run’ up at the top. Put in the time you will stop taking orders (the default is 15 minutes ahead of the time you started), list the recipients, and then be sure to put in a note to make your plans clear.
Wait until the time you’ve set. In the mean time, the e-mail addresses you included will be sent an invitation to order what they’d like – or not (if they decline, it will be clearly marked on the order page). They will sift through a detailed, digital menu and confirm their choice.
Go get ‘em. Well, you are the runner! You will get a reminder email when your alloted time has arrived. If you want, you can use a locate feature to get the skinny on the closest Dunkin’ near you. When you get back, be sure to tap the ‘I’m Back’ button – it will send an email notification to everyone who accepted your request the first time – you can even send them another note. Don’t worry, Dunkin’ was nice enough to remind everyone to pay you back!

We tried this in my office, and it was hugely successful (I for-see many other Dunkin’ Runs in the future). Now if only places Starbucks or Panera Bread could pick up on the idea, the office-worker’s world would be complete.

My suggestion? Make the runner be able to choose which store he’s going to before sending everyone an invite. That way, everyone can see the prices at that particular store and plan to spend accordingly.

Thanks for reading – enjoy the app (and your coffee).

My Dead iPhone 3G S

Patrick — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:33:57 +0000

The Internet is saturated with both the successes and failures of the iPhone 3G S launch along with the reports of disappointed customers who can’t activate their iPhones (and the retaliatory AT&T bashing as a result). If I read the news right, people could potentially be without a phone for up to 48 hours. Ouch.

My new iPhone 3G S does not function either, but not because of activation problems. My iPhone is stuck in ‘Recovery Mode’ – a mode in which iTunes will be able to see and send a firmware package to the iPhone to make it work again.

How did that happen? Well it’s a odd story.

On Friday afternoon, my Dad picked up the iPhone while I was en route to his house. Because I wasn’t there to activate the phone, the AT&T employee let him take the phone with him and have it activated over the phone when I get there. When I arrived, I switched my SIM card from my old iPhone into the 3G S (don’t worry, I had previously owned a 3G phone before my iPhone, so I had a 3G SIM), and the activation took mere minutes. The iPhone (and all of it’s advertised features) worked flawlessly, but there were little snags here and there:

Battery life was horrible. In 20 minutes, my battery was reduced to around 75% (at least the icon said so). After an hour two of playing with the iPhone, the battery was down to 50%.
Email and Voice-mail password rejection. My Voice-mail password was not accepted, even after I rest it through AT&T’s website. I had to delete and re-add two of my four email accounts (MobileMe and Exchange). Even with the correct settings, the iPhone couldn’t save the passwords; instead, it would ask for the password for both accounts every 30 or so seconds, and then follow up with asking for the Voice-mail password again.
YouTube support on 3G S was flaky. By flaky I mean that I could shoot a video, edit, and publish to YouTube straight from my phone, but if I tried to watch it on my iPhone after it was published, I was given a compatibility error. Although I think this problem has been rectified (and was mainly due to my ignorance on how YouTube works), I still thought it kind of odd.

Anyway, regardless of the quirks, I was still happy. I went to bed Saturday night with the battery at 50%, wondering if would drain due to the odd power leak I’d been experiencing. It did. It did so much, that it took 20 minutes for the phone to acquire enough power from the USB adapter to start.

When it started, I was greeted with a screen that said “There is no SIM card detected”, followed by another prompt that listed both my IMEI and ICCID numbers as “unknown”. A quick Google search, and it appears that it’s a relatively common problem with the iPhone 3G that can be fixed by simply restoring the iPhone. Awesome. I put the iPhone into ‘Recovery Mode’ (as mentioned earlier), and ran a restore.

I realize now that it was a mistake.

Even now, the phone sits in Recovery Mode. When a restore is run, iTunes gives an error code of “1013″ which is the error code associated with trying to downgrade your firmware (ie: downgrade from 3.0 beta 3 to 2.2.1). For the 3G S, it’s pretty much the kiss of death, for there is no lesser firmware that can be installed onto it in hopes clearing out faulty 3.0 code.

I’ve taken my iPhone to AT&T (who, of course, pointed me to Apple) and contacted Apple Care (which my experience with this issue is worthy of another post instead of including it here), to come to the conclusion that the iPhone simple needs replacing. Great.

I’ve given the details of my 3G S problem the my friend Steve, the host of The Tech Buzz, and I’ve been Googling the issue every now and then to see if someone else has written anything else about it; so far, it seems to be a pretty unique problem.

As of now, I have a Genius Bar appointment. If anyone has experienced this and overcome it, I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to send me an email – until then, I’ll still be using my trusty iPhone v1.

UPDATE:

I went to my Genius Bar appointment and my phone was replaced in under two minutes. The Genius checked for water damage and then replaced the phone. As far as I can tell, it’s fully working (and the battery life is long, too!) and can be used normally. But again, the phone is sort of acting quirky – check it out:

When I tried to reinstall these apps, the iPhone froze up and I had to do a restart. Great. Just great.