iPhone 4 Death Grip Doesn't Affect Edge Connection

I've been watching the whole "death grip" with the iPhone 4 with interest. Some say it's a defect, while other reports claim that all phones do the same thing, while others claim its a little of both. 

I believe it's an issue with software that Apple will fix as soon as their engineers figure it out. I could be wrong, but here's a test you can do for yourself if you have an iPhone 4. 

If you have the so called "death grip" condition, go ahead and make those bars disappear. Now I want you to do a little something:

Go to Settings > General > Network > Turn off 3G.

You're now on the Edge network. Watch those bars come back. If it was a hardware issue, wouldn't those bars stay gone, no matter what network you were on? My guess would be, yes. this is one strange problem!

All we can do is wait and see what Apple does to address this issue. Either way, rest assured, if it's a software OR a hardware issue OR both, Apple's got your back and will fix it.

 

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AppleCare Training Document on iPhone 4 Signal Issues Revealed

Boy Genius Report claims to have received a copy of Apple's internal training documentation for assisting its AppleCare staff with handling customer complaints regarding iPhone 4 signal issues.

The document instructs AppleCare representatives to work with the customer to diagnose the problem, but that issues appearing when the iPhone 4 is held at the lower left corner or the iPhone 3GS is held at the bottom right side should be addressed by either holding the phone differently or using a case or bumper.

Clearly Apple is taking the position that nothing is wrong with the antenna, although that's not surprising since most companies will never willingly admit their flagship product is potentially suffering from an unfixable flaw. But does anyone else find it interesting, if not troubling, that there is no mention of an impending software fix?
Apple's guidelines also push the "positioning statements" to be used by representatives, claiming that the iPhone 4 has better overall antenna performance than the iPhone 3GS and that almost any mobile phone will experience similar issues. Finally, representatives are instructed not to promise free bumpers to customers experiencing the issue, although a number of users have already reported receiving bumpers from Apple as a means of addressing the signal issues.

posted by Eric Slivka on Tuesday June 29, 2010 05:18 PM

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Reboot Congress: May Candidate Forum and Today's Freedom Fights

Reboot Congress: May Candidate Forum and Today's Freedom Fights

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DOING THE RIGHT THING

DOING THE RIGHT THING

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Reboot Congress: Pictures from Freedom Fights

Reboot Congress: Pictures from Freedom Fights

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Marco Spoerrle - Advertising Alternatives for Your Blog

advertising alternatives Maybe you’ve got a Google Adsense account and have some of their ads smattered around your posts (I use it at the bottom of all RSS subscriptions to this blog). Maybe you’ve started looking for direct advertisers for your blog. Here are some of the ways I’m finding ways to make a little bit of escape velocity money from my blog projects that might be useful to you. (Note: EVERY link in the post is probably an affiliate marketing or advertising-related link. Consider this a blanket disclosure for the post.)

Straightforward advertising is based on your web traffic more than anything else. It’s the whole cost per thousand (CPM) method that’s been in place since we started online marketing over a decade ago. What I’ve found is that, unless you’re a really big traffic site, that’s the hardest way to make money. Here are some alternatives instead:
Create Your Own Products

Probably the easiest way to make money via your blog is to create something worth selling. I’m cofounder of Third Tribe Marketing, and it’s a site where you pay a monthly fee to get tons of content and to get information and help via a very active online forum. That makes me plenty more revenue than a Google Adsense ad.

You might sell ebooks. You might sell software. You might sell consulting services. Whatever it is, your own products will get you much more benefit than any advertisement.
Affiliate Marketing

If you can’t make your own stuff, or don’t have the time, affiliate marketing is a way to marry up other people’s products and services with your audience/community. The MOST IMPORTANT part of doing affiliate marketing, in my mind, is the trust and relationship factor. Never sell or promote something that you can’t endorse or that you don’t feel is going to be useful to your community. Every product I promote via an affiliate link is something I think will be of value, and something I’ve touched and investigated.

The big difference between getting started with affiliate marketing versus CPM-based marketing is that everything is paid on a “cost per action” (CPA) basis. That means that I’m only paid for sales. I use this kind of advertising alternative all the time on my blog. See my sidebar? These are the programs I promote there:

Thesis Premium WordPress ThemeRackspace Cloud

scribe-SEO for bloggersBlue Sky Factory

Three of the four programs are affiliate. I trade space on my blog with Blue Sky Factory for a free account.

Beyond that, I promote other projects I think are great, like Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit:


Empire Building Kit


To me, affiliate marketing has lots of benefits. There are many places to sign up for programs. I’ll give you a few to start with:

    * Commission Junction
    * Share-A-Sale
    * LinkShare

You can find lots of programs and offerings that might be of interest to your audience there. I use this heavily at Man on the Go , but it’s been too soon to share the results. I will when I get them.
DIY Advertising

Over at Man on the Go, the guys at 9Seeds installed the wp125 ad widget. It works really simply, and gives me some stats. This lets me place do-it-yourself ads, where I set the rate and the terms of the advertisement.

For instance, my friend Joel Libava wanted to advertise on Man on the Go. I’m running a special because the blog has just launched, so there’s not enough traffic to ask for top dollar. So, Joel and I agreed, and then I put up his little 125×125 ad, that looks like this:

sick of traveling

This is a fairly man-made ad. At the end of the 30 days, I can tell Joel how many people clicked it, and he can decide if he wants to advertise with me again. Simple.
It’s Always a Balance

There are sites that look like the sides of NASCAR cars from all the advertising they run. I don’t know how effective they are, but I know that I get the feeling that I’d better worry where I place my mouse and what I click, because I might accidentally click something and buy it.

Some people want their sites to have no advertising. I went years and years feeling like that.

What changed my mind: first, I found programs that I really thought were worth it. I think the Thesis WordPress theme is one of the best themes out there for a design skeleton and for improved SEO. I like the Scribe SEO plugin because I don’t know much about search engine optimization, so I let the plugin help me. That’s how I got started.

What else changed my mind: I realized that what I’m providing here is a benefit and a value to others and that I shouldn’t feel ashamed to make the ask from my community, should they be in the market for some of what I find interesting and useful. There’s no shame in offering things of value to your community.

Now, there is a perception hit to being an open-faced salesperson and marketer on your site. People might see this is cheapening the brand. People might say, “Well, he must not be a very successful speaker and marketing company president if he has to hock WordPress themes.” It’s okay if you feel that way. I don’t mind. I use some of my affiliate money for charities. Some days, I just use it to buy my family a nice meal. My “real” money? I try to bank it.

Your mileage may vary, but it’s definitely worth thinking about.

Questions? How have your own experiences been? What else can I tell you?

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Apple’s iPhone-centric developer event is still days away, but a case manufacturer sent Wired.com two protective rubber cases designed for the next-generation iPhone.

The company, Gumdrop Cases, said it based the case design on a combination of specifications provided by inside sources in the plastics industry, as well as features seen in the prototypes leaked to Gizmodo and a Vietnamese blog. The company, which has offices in California, the U.K. and Hong Kong, said it did not receive the specifications from Apple.
“It’s supposed to be announced on Monday is what we’re being told, so we wanted to make sure we had cases available,” a Gumdrop spokeswoman told Wired.com.
The third-party accessories industry has historically been a leaky boat for Apple, according to Leander Kahney, Cult of Mac writer and former news editor of Wired.com. In the past, we’ve seen a number of case manufacturers begin selling protective cases for Apple products ahead of release. However, those leaks usually occur in China, and this is the first time Wired.com has actually received a case for a next-gen Apple product before it was released.
The characteristics of the two cases line up with the prototypes of the next-gen iPhone revealed in video and photos. Its overall form factor is slightly more square than the current iPhone. The case also fits awkwardly around the current iPhone: The holes for the audio/silent switch, volume button, power button and microphone jack don’t line up. The camera hole is slightly too large, giving enough room for a camera flash — a feature that Gizmodo and the Vietnamese blog saw on their prototypes of the next-gen iPhone.
A Gumdrop representative admitted the company deliberately mailed the cases, labeled “iPhone 4G Case” on a press flier, in order to gain attention prior to Apple’s official announcement of the product — you could call it a publicity stunt.
We have to get a next-gen iPhone to see if these will really fit, but the story about overseas insiders in the plastics industry is intriguing.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off Monday, where Steve Jobs is expected to announce Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone during a keynote speech.

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The American dream ran out of steam on Saturday as Bob Bradley's team exited the World Cup with a 2-1 extra-time defeat to Ghana. blog @ marco spoerrle

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The U.S's strengths throughout this tournament have been their work-rate, self-belief and determined spirit but those proved not to be enough against the African team who also knocked them out of the tournament four years ago.
Once again, a U.S. side which twice gave up early goals in the group stage, conceded before they had even got into their stride and yet again they came back after Bradley astutely changed things around at the break.
A Landon Donovan penalty brought the Americans on to equal terms but this time it was their opponents who found the extra something to come back from a setback - Asamoah Gyan's superb strike in extra-time giving Africa just their third ever quarter-finalists.
The Americans, who fought back for draws against England and Slovenia, couldn't make it back one more time.
Their legs looked tired, their play was imprecise and somehow that fighting spirit that pushed them to a last minute win over Algeria just was not quite enough.
The weaknesses of Bradley's side though go beyond conceding early goals and the draining effect of playing three days after the grueling and emotional victory over Algeria.
The U.S. midfield, with two defensive central operators and two attack-minded wide players in Clint Dempsey and Donovan, was over-run at times by the numerically stronger Ghanaian midfield.
That uneven battle was not helped by Ricardo Clark's wayward performance, his yellow card and the subsequent need for Bradley to replace him, with Maurice Edu, in just the 31st minute.
The U.S. coach addressed the problem by bringing in Benny Feilhaber to give him three genuine midfielders in the second half with Clint Dempsey moving into a full attacking role.
The floating Donovan is the main creative spark in the U.S. team and in fact, with him not finding his touch, it highlighted just how much the Americans rely on him for that little bit of something out of the ordinary.
When Donovan doesn't deliver the U.S. are far too predictable going forward -- needing a sharp turn from Clint Dempsey or a burst of pace from Jozy Altidore -- neither of which were frequent features at the Royal Bafokeng stadium.
The full-backs, Jonathan Bornstein or Steve Cherundolo, were solid defensively but didn't offer much of a threat from wide positions -- both found space on several occasions but were unable to deliver dangerous crosses or get to the byline.
Up-front, for all their efforts, the American strikers didn't have the sharpness or the clinical finishing displayed by Ghana scorers Kevin-Prince Boateng and Gyan.
For the U.S. to move from a decent qualifier from the group stages to a team that can really threaten to make the latter stages they need to address those limitations.
A midfield playmaker, a genuine winger and an international class striker would transform them from a solid, workmanlike team into something that their fans could get really excited about.
They have four years to find those players.
(Writing by Simon Evans; Editing by Kate Holton)

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Relationship Marketing: Blogging and Inbound Marketing

One of the most effective inbound marketing strategies available for businesses, online and offline, both in terms of cost of implementation and in overall return on investment (ROI), is blogging. Why has business blogging become so important as an inbound marketing strategy? There are a variety of reasons. Blogging is conversation, it’s personable, and it’s informative. Blogging is attractive for both online and offline (i.e., brick and mortar) businesses because consumers (i.e., customers, clients, and patients) feel they are being told a story rather than sold a product or service; and, no one wants to be “sold!”
Significantly, clients and prospective clients become part of the conversation by reading the blog posts and leaving their thoughts and feelings in the form of comments.

Who doesn’t like being asked their opinion?
And, what business owner wouldn’t pay big money to know what his target audience is thinking, as well as what they react to and why?
A blog is a great way to show the world your expertise, thus establishing authority and demonstrating your competence in the marketplace and to your target market. People like to do business with business people they know, like, and trust. Prospective clients are drawn to businesses and business people who are experts in their field. Demonstrating competence enhances your image and makes the prospective client feel confident about their decision to purchase from you…you, as the expert in your field.
When properly constructed and implemented, an effective business blogging strategy is an incredibly valuable asset. Blogging for business is crucial, whether the business is entirely online or a combination of both, as is the case with most brick and mortar businesses today.
When organized and well written, a blog conveys the ultimate Internet image, an image that announces:

“This business is well run, this is a business I can do business with!”
A well thought out, well constructed blog, combined with an effective overall inbound marketing strategy, conveys a message, an image if you will, that this business owner is knowledgeable and cares enough to seek feedback about products and/or services offered from his or her clients and prospective clients.
A wise business owner values feedback, realizing there is always room for improvement, both in sales and service. Why not ask for feedback from the very people who use the product or service day in and day out? A blog can accomplish this for a business, creating a link both valuable and, ultimately, profitable. The feedback a blog offers is an often over-looked advantage; and yet, it is an incredibly powerful resource.
Significantly, the proper blogging strategy will provide a window into the thinking of your client-base and create a vehicle you may then use to improve your products and/or service.
The feedback from your business blog will also provide ideas and strategies for new products and services. Interestingly, you may even be able to gain a competitive advantage by learning what your clients and prospective clients like and dislike about your competitors, their products and services. Perhaps it’s a product or service you don’t provide but should? Perhaps it’s something to do with price? The blog provides the vehicle, the opportunities are there; and, it is up to the individual business owner to take advantage of them. A well constructed inbound marketing strategy, one that has at its center a well-thought-out and appropriately implemented blogging strategy, will put your business on track to accomplish all of the above and more.
One last word about inbound marketing, blogs, and blogging for business: photographs, audio recordings, and short videos are worth their weight in gold. If you aren’t the greatest writer, and don’t have the money in the budget to hire a good copywriter, also worth their weight in gold, a photograph or short video can help you tell your business’ story. With today’s technology, a photograph, audio, and/or video is easy to create and it’s often the first item to catch the attention of a visitor to your blog.
It’s worth taking some time each day to blog. Think of it as going out to talk to the man on the street. Think of it as time well spent. You will find it to be a great investment in time and effort, the ultimate in ROI.

HTML5 - The Future of the Web, Marco Spoerrle

Steve Jobs was recently quoted as saying "No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5" igniting interest in HTML5 and sparking numerous debates online in blogs and forums.

Jobs' prediction that flash is dead invokes memories of the famous Mark Twain quote "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". While the debate rages on over the future of Flash, HTML5's destiny is assured.

It's not just Apple pointing to HTML5 as an internet revolution, Microsoft, Google, Opera, Mozilla, W3C and even Adobe themselves agree. In fact HTML5 may become historic for that very reason. It is arguably the only time Google, Microsoft and Apple have ever agreed on anything.

How HTML5 evolved was largely due to a disagreement with the W3C over Error Handling and the failure to embrace modern Internet applications. In 1997, W3C announced it would no longer extend HTML4 and saw XML and XHTML as the future. Draconian Error Handling, (Draco was the Greek leader that issued death penalties for minor offences), instructed that browsers were to treat all errors in XML as fatal. With 99% of web pages showing minor errors, and the lack of new features in XML, many webmasters ignored the new standard or continued to serve their websites as HTML, even when adopting XHTML.

In 2004, a group of developers and browser vendors including Apple, Opera and Mozilla gave a presentation to the W3C on evolving HTML4 to include new features for modern web applications. The W3C rejected their proposal of extending HTML and CSS. Those interested in evolving HTML4 rebelled and broke away from the W3C, forming their own working group called WHATWG (Web Hypertext Applications Technology Working Group). At the core of the WHATWG beliefs was backwards compatibility and forgiving error handling. WHATWG's vision was to extend HTML features including form handling while ensuring that it would degrade gracefully in older browsers. While the W3C wanted the world to move to a new standard XML, WHATWG planned to evolve existing HTML to support a modern Internet.

In 2006, Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the W3C, recognized that the rebels at WHATWG had gained momentum and announced that the W3C would work together with WHATWG to evolve HTML. The W3C HTML Working Group was formed, working with HTML in conjunction with XHTML. HTML5 was officially born. In October 2009, W3C shut down XHTML2 making HTML5 the future of the Internet. The pirates had taken over the ship.

HTML5 marks a change in attitude from the W3C and seeks to support the diversity of HTML rather than just enforcement of web standards. It is an incredible achievement that HTML5 is backward compatible, meaning most of HTML5 can be used straight away albeit with some JavaScript hacks on semantics for IE. Ideas from W3C, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Opera and many other experts combine to pull the best bits out of HTML and browsers past into an exciting upgrade of the HTML language that promotes inclusion not exclusion.

In many ways HTML5 simplifies web pages, taking laborious tasks such as form validation away from web authoring and into the browser. The idea of making the browser do the work probably stems back to IE3, where Microsoft provided the first browser to build in CSS support. HTML5 introduces new tags for page structure and semantics of documents.

New markets in Typography are opening up with the implementation of "@font-face", meaning designers at last can transfer the visual appeal of print to the web thanks to advances in CSS and HTML5. Large JavaScript libraries such as MooTools and JQuery can be slimmed down as HTML5 transfers many common tasks directly into the browser. Client side storage, session storage and client side posting are set to change how we communicate on the web. Web applications such as video are embedded by HTML without the need of JavaScript. Sites will begin to move away from Flash to deliver their video and onto HTML5, especially when current codec concerns with Mozilla Firefox are resolved.

New HTML5 API's, such as drag and drop, are reverse engineered from Microsoft, ensuring that they are supported from the start by IE. What developers of HTML5 such as Ian Hickson (Opera) have done is to view the modern web and say, "OK that's what people are trying to do, how can HTML5 support that".

Unlike previous web standards based releases such as XHTML 1.1 and the never finished XHTML 2.0, HTML5 is backward compatible and is here to stay. With the involvement of people that have been critical of the W3C, HTML5 brings a standard based upgrade of HTML that is fully supported throughout the industry. HTML5 will genuinely future proof your site without the danger of your markup depreciating in a couple of years.

HTML5 timetable for completion is in 2022, which has left many webmasters confused as to its relevance now. However, any website can begin using the new specification immediately by simply changing the doc type to "", the lowest number of characters required to trigger standards mode in IE. Currently, only beta versions of browsers IE9, Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera support advanced HTML5 elements. However, typography "@font-face" is fully supported in current browsers. For more information have a look at Ethan Dunham's "FontSquirrel.com" and Jeffrey Veen's "Typekit.com". Other HTML5 features such as "Drag and Drop" and "ContentEditable" are also currently supported. You can follow the implementation of HTML5 in modern browsers at "HTML5Readiness.com" and "Caniuse.com".

Further information:

     http://www.whatwg.org

     http://diveintohtml5.org

     http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

 

About The Author
Jennifer Robinson currently works as an underpaid freelance writer for Online Connect, a supplier of photocopiers and Document Management. Visit their website at www.onlineconnect.co.uk