Filed under: technology

AT&T Carrier Update for iPhone

[caption id="attachment_117" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Alert box for updated carrier settings"]
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[/caption] I plugged my iPhone into the computer today, and was presented with the this alert box. It was different from the standard software update alert box, so I was curious as to what exactly was being upated. Turns out it's nothing too exciting. The whole 3G microcell thing is cool, but there's no way I'm paying extra to extend AT&T's service. Sprint had a killer signal in my apartment, so I was pretty pissed to learn that AT&T did not. I drop calls on a regular basis while I'm in my apartment--not good, considering I work from home. If something doesn't improve soon, I won't have a choice but to swallow my pride and go crawling back to Sprint and my Blackberry... Anyone else have any experience dealing with AT&T on coverage issues?

Official Google Blog: See where your friends are with Google Latitude

Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It's also an iGoogle gadget on your computer. Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you. So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather.
I've been toying with GPS apps on my iPhone that show my location on a website. It can be fun if I'm going to visit someone out of town for them to be able to see how close I am, etc. I definitely see the privacy concerns with this type of thing, but it seems that Google has addressed them--how effectively remains to be seen. It's not out for iPhone yet, but when it does, I'll give it a try. Sprint had an option that allowed parents to pay a monthly fee to be able to locate their kid's phone (and the kid, if he/she had the phone with him/her,) but I never had a chance to try that out. Personally I think that's a great idea. Not necessarily to spy on your kids (and I'm sure kids hate this feature,) but to find them if they're ever abducted. How great would it be to be able to call police and tell them exactly where your kid has been taken? When it comes out for iPhone, I'll try it out and report back. via The Official Google Blog

Heh

Yeah, ok. Once again, playing with blog systems. Since nobody really reads this anyway, what the hell? I'm going to try to grab all my old blog posts (from way, way back,) but no guarantees. Also, when in Joomla, if I marked something with a "Read More", the rest of the content won't show up... I'm working on transfering that over as well... Bear with me.

Comcast's Bandwidth Cap

I got an email from Comcast a little after 10pm last night. I've read a lot of stories about Comcast's bandwidth cap, but this is the first email I remember getting from Comcast stating exactly what that cap is. It's always been a bit of a mystery.

In the email, they confirm that 250GB is the bandwidth cap. I honestly can't see myself ever going over that amount, but it's interesting that they finally came out of the closet with it.

From the email:

"In the updated AUP, we clarify that monthly data (or bandwidth) usage of more than 250 Gigabytes (GB) is the specific threshold that defines excessive use of our service. We have an excessive use policy because a fraction of one percent of our customers use such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth every month that they may degrade the online experience of other customers."

 So now we know. I'm curious as to what the public opinion will be on this.

Entourage, Exchange, and a Proxy

Entourage, Exchange Server, Proxy   Our network uses a proxy server... I have my mac set up to use that proxy, with all the appropriate IP addresses and servers in the exception list. Recently, we migrated to different exchange servers, and I updated the server details in Exchange appropriately. I immediately started having problems with Entourage--sometimes it wouldn’t send an email (would give me an error and put the message in my drafts folder--resending the message would work.) Sometimes it wouldn’t receive new emails unless I quit Entourage and started it back up again. Our IT department doesn’t officially support Mac, so their answer to me was to use Citrix to check my email. That works, of course, but it’s a pain dealing with attachments, and I really like Entourage 2008.   I’m not sure why it took me so long to think of this, but it finally dawned on me to add the three servers (Exchange server, public folders server, and LDAP server) to the proxy exception list in my Mac’s network settings. So far, it seems to have fixed the problem.   It seems like that should’ve been obvious to me, but it wasn’t, so I’m posting this just in case it wasn’t immediately obvious to someone else dealing with the same Exchange/Entourage headaches.