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Latest posts from all the ZDNet blogs
Latest posts from all the ZDNet blogs
- AT&T stores "almost out of iPhones" - 2007-06-30 15:56:20-04
The word on the street is that AT&T stores are almost out of iPhones. If you're looking to get your hands on an iPhone this weekend you'd better be fast or you should swing by an Apple store instead on AT&T stores. I'm interested in hearing from anyone picking up an iPhone today. Did you get one from an Apple store or an AT&T store? Has anyone been to a store and told that all the iPhones are gone?
- So why haven't I upgraded my BlackBerry 7520? - 2007-06-30 16:02:47-04
When I first checked my email this morning, I got this message from a reader of this blog: I usually check up on your blog maybe once or twice every week and the question I always asked my self is why do you still have a BlackBerry 7520 and on top of that a NEXTEL BlackBerry? You seriously have one of the oldest and slowest (speed/network) devices out!! I'm sure Sprint is begging you to upgrade haha.. Well, I am going to upgrade soon, probably to a faster and far-more features-laden Sprint BlackBerry Curve. I might make the move shortly after these devices hit the market in mid-July. But hey, reader, the reason I haven't upgraded sooner is implied...
- The big AT&T iPhone activation screwup: here's why - 2007-06-30 16:38:44-04
As Apple continues to having its iPhone supply chain down pat, reports have been stacking up all day that this activation procedure is taking 18 hours or more. Several of my readers are complaining. Most recent, from reader bfloren: After 19 hours I still get this on my screen: "Your activation requires additional time to complete." -- What total garbage!!!!!!!!! Of course, my phone that WAS WORKING no longer works while I have to wait for AT&T + Apple to get their $@$@#$@# act together. I am REALLY REALLY disappointed here... Very very poor delivery AT&T -- the best part is the AT&T reps I have talked to on the phone blame Apple's iTunes software and the Apple rep I...
- Poll: what's causing these huge iPhone activation delays? - 2007-06-30 16:47:25-04
Right now, some folks are reporting AT&T Mobility iPhone activation delays in the teens of hours. Probably we'll pass 20 before the catchup begins. But why is this happening? Some of you tech types may feel you have an answer. Some of you consumer types may as well. So... [poll=89]
- U.S. healthcare industry: Google wants to protect you from Michael Moore's Sicko - 2007-06-30 18:09:46-04
Taking a break from reading the wall-to-wall iPhone coverage on TechMeme, I ran across a post from Lauren Turner, who works for Google as an account planner selling ads to the healthcare industry. In the post on what is called the Google Health Advertising blog, but only contains two posts, she assures potential advertisers that Google can help protect them from the negative impact of Michael Moore's just released film "Sicko," which does to the U.S healthcare system what Fahrenheit 9/11 did to the Bush administration. At first, I thought the post was a hoax, especially given the blog has only two posts and is not well put together. Why would Google want to take sides with the U.S. healthcare...
- An iPhone Review: Spectacular - 2007-06-30 18:50:25-04
Despite my reservations about AT&T, which were well founded and widely documented, I did go to the AT&T store at 38th Street in Tacoma, Washington, yesterday to buy an iPhone. Several "spectacular" features of this launch deserve mention. The hardware iPhone: Spectacular.and OS integration is spectacular. Matthew Miller covers many of the basic impressions I have, as well. I'll just add: Hardware performance. Except for some delays when loading a Web page and you click the Home button, the UI is fast. There is no slow transition from one screen to the next. iPod functionality doesn't interfere with system performance and running applications while playing music or video doesn't create any stutter in audio or video playback. Durability. The system...
- Just In: AT&T says they are nearly out of iPhones - 2007-06-30 19:06:03-04
A few minutes ago, the Reuters news agency carried some quotes to that effect from AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel. "Virtually all of our stores sold out of the iPhone last night," said AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel. While Siegel declined to say how many units were sold, a source cited by Apple 2.0 blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt of highly regarded publication Business 2.0 tells him he believes that of the 1,800 or so AT&T stores in the U.S. smaller AT&T stores had 60 to 70 phones and the larger ones 100 or more. Siegel added that AT&T is still taking orders for iPhones and giving customers the option of picking the handset up in a store later or having it shipped to...
- iPhone Challenge: Saying "no" to AT&T - 2007-06-30 19:13:23-04
Here's my challenge. I'll pay $100 for a VoIP client I can use over WiFi on my iPhone. Matthew Miller has explained that the iPhone will work without the AT&T SIM card, and I've set up my Sprint EV-DO card in a MacBook Pro to share its connection with my iPhone, so I don't need AT&T to complete any network tasks. So, why the challenge? Because Apple has isolated the telephony features of the iPhone to help AT&T preserve its core business: Voice services. Anyone who doubts this can look at the revenue split in the iPhone plans between data and voice services. AT&T is literally giving away its data connections to sell voice minutes. My business partner, Ramin Firoozye,...
- New info for Sunday morning: iPhone availability in about two-thirds of Apple retail stores - 2007-07-01 00:26:43-04
According to information updated at 9 p.m. PDT Saturday evening an informal canvass of Apple retail stores indicates that about two-thirds of them will have at least some iPhones on hand Sunday. Let's check iPhone availablity in Apple retail stores in the four most popular U.S. states. California will take four screens and then some. Might as well get busy: Now to Texas: New York, the third-most populous U.S. state: And Florida the fourth-most populated state:
- Google monetizing negative press around healthcare? - 2007-07-01 01:09:59-04
Today, Dan Farber wrote an excellent article about his take regarding Google's attempt to capitalize on the opportunity to limit or dampen the negative press caused by "Sicko", Michael Moore's newest documentary. It's interesting to me that Google wants to align itself on the "evil" side of this issue, be it real or perceived -- considering their "do no evil" mantra. I am sure the American healthcare system has worked for many people and saved many lives, but even the few examples Moore gives where the system failed is too many in my books. I can't fairly comment on the overall fairness or effectiveness of the American healthcare system, but I know first hand that what this film describes, as...
- Web tool predicts survival for cancer patients - 2007-07-01 11:35:43-04
Researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute have developed a Web-based software program that can help some cancer patients to predict their survivability. 'This modeling Web tool can help us make personalized predictions of conditional survival for an individual patient,' said one of the researchers. For obvious reasons including privacy and security, this software tool is only available to physicians. Right now, the tool can only be used for patients affected with head or neck cancers. But the researchers want to build similar software tools for other cancers. These modeling tools have been developed under the supervision of Samuel Wang who published a previous study on the same subject, "Analysis For Survival On Head and Neck Cancers."...
- Seeking political advantage in open source - 2007-07-01 11:54:33-04
John Edwards may be winning nothing more than Iowa and the netroots primary, but he is notable in being the first Presidential candidate to mention open source in his political campaign. (Picture from Hedgefunddomain.) His campaign told the Open Voting Consortium last week he supports requiring open source code in voting machines. He is also on record supporting copyright laws which really encourage innovation, not just proprietary monopoly, and Slashdot reports he even uses Twitter. Ever since the Web was spun issues involving technology have been the property of the party in power. Voters are not that into us, so political decisions affecting us are made by elites. These decisions can drastically impact the competitive playing field, bringing Microsoft low...
- Misusing open source in a good cause - 2007-07-01 12:27:03-04
The great scientist and futurist Freeman Dyson has an important essay today in the New York Times. (Picture from Wikipedia.) He writes about green technology, science built on biology, overtaking gray technology, science built on chemistry and physics. He writes about creating new forms of life to solve intractable problems, about children learning how to do this through games. But he also misuses the term open source. Twice. First, he writes: We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species other than our own will no longer exist, and the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then later, he adds: In the era of Open Source biology,...
- Google sites suffering outage, timing out - 2007-07-01 13:00:25-04
I am doing my Sunday morning surfing and Google is inaccessible. I am on my Covad T-1 and other sites are showing speedily but Google Search and Google Reader are timing out. In this situation, how does Google communicate with the hundreds of millions of users or whatever segment is affected to let them know what is going on? At least we have alternatives. Time to fire up Yahoo and Ask. This kind of outage brings up the challenges, even for all the smart people at Google, in managing their service and reputation. Update: Google is back up again, after at least 10 minutes of going dark on me. As I have said many times before, the services that billions...
- I am such a weak person - I bought an iPhone - 2007-07-01 13:15:33-04
I know... I know... I said I wasn't going to do this. I had all the completely valid reasons to stay of the RDF and avoid being swept up in the iPhone madness. But yesterday morning I succumbed to the iPhone's siren song and drove over to the ABQ Uptown Apple Store where iPhones were in plentiful supply. Three minutes later (yes, I timed it) I walked out with an 8GB iPhone. I got home, plugged the iPhone into my already updated MacBook (the latest system update to 10.4.10 and iTunes 7.3 are required to activate and sync the iPhone) and, with trembling fingers (based on some of the activation horror stories I'd been following on Twitter, Jaiku, and via...
- iPhone Diary Day 3: porting problems persist - 2007-07-01 13:51:04-04
I'm glad that I purchased two iPhones because one is still in porting purgatory and has been rendered an iBrick. I'd describe my iPhone experience as 50% bliss and 50% hell. My wife's iPhone was a new AT&T activation that took all of three minutes to complete. I elected to port my mobile number from Verizon to AT&T and it has been a total nightmare. After initially telling me that porting my number would take up to 6 hours to complete, AT&T emailed me to say it would take about 24 hours. After 24 hours came and went, I called AT&T waited on hold for over an hour. After giving them my Activation ID (from the email) and being...
- iPhone firmware available for download - 2007-07-01 15:23:44-04
Let the hacking begin - iPhone restore package on the web. I found the link to the 91MB download via Hackint0sh.org . The .dmg image is password protected but I don't expect this to deter hackers wanting to find out what the restore file contains. I expect that unauthorized restore files will hit the net soon which will allow the iPhone to do some interesting things (such as run third-party apps). Some of the stuff I've seen in the past few days is starting to make me want an iPhone ... custom firmware would be very appealing! ;-)
- iPhone activation problems plague iPhone launch - 2007-07-01 15:39:47-04
The iPhone keyboard issues seem to be a moot point compared to the activation hassles that early iPhone adopters are facing. A poll over at Engadget suggests that over 38% of the 9,000 respondents to the poll are suffering from activation problems and have an iBrick to show for their cash. This is crazy. Apple have super-hyped product launch of the year and AT&T are messing things up for them big style. Didn't anyone at Apple or AT&T put some plans in place to deal with problems? Is it really a good idea to leave people hanging until Monday? Why bother launching the iPhone on a Friday evening if AT&T was just going to drop the ball? It would appear that Apple's partnership...
- Hello international readers, there may be a way to unlock the iPhone - 2007-07-01 16:27:00-04
I was just reading my buddy Kent's blog and read the story he posted of how someone "accidentally" unlocked the Apple iPhone. The procedure requires two iPhones, but seems fairly straightforward. However, after making this public I have to wonder if AT&T will somehow find a way to prevent this being possible so if you have a buddy in the United States who wants to try this you may want to hurry up. This also seemed pretty easy for the person to do so I have to wonder if it will really be that hard to unlock the iPhone for international usage.
- Gillmor's Internet plate tectonics - 2007-07-01 22:58:45-04
Steve Gillmor riffs on my post about Yahoo's lack of a social networking hub, where I state: "Yahoo is about making connections, but right now its more of loose federation of Web applications and services–many spokes without a strong hub to hold together a social Web. Yahoo 360 has been a failure as a social network. There is no 'YFace.' " In this guest post, Steve offers some historical perspective and his version of the Internet tectonic plate shifting that is reshaping the landscape. I follow up with my response to his analysis of my analysis. Dan Farber's analysis of Yahoo as a loosely coupled bag of services struck a chord when it reminded me of the Y2K scenario. Back...
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