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iPhone 3.0 Firmware is out today
June 17th; Today’s the day, and if i have timed this post correctly, the 3.0 firmware for the iPhone should be available via iTunes. Talk is it will be rolled at at Midnight in the US, which means it should be live here early this afternoon.
This new firmware has loads of new features and is really a must install, unless you did something silly and hacked your iPhone, in which case your mileage may vary!
Some of the reasons why you’d want this update immediately include;
- You can foward SMS messages now (please, not to me!)
- You can send MMS messages (you could always have just emailed them previously, but okay)
- Cut / Copy / Paste – much screamed for, but I have only ever needed it twice in the year I’ve had my iPhone.
- Support for stereo Bluetooth accessories – This is a good improvement.
- Landscape View – meaning you can get the nice wide keyboard on everything, not just some things, and I believe you can now rotate your email to landscape mode as well.
- Assisted GPS – I’m still waiting to see if I can eBay my Garmin GPS, but apparently we’ll soon be able to get full turn by turn assistance right on the iPhone itself.
- Full Search – searching now searches every corner of your iPhone; contacts, emails, calendar, notes, everything!
- Tethering – provided your phone company allows it, you can use your iPhone as a broadband modem for your laptop.
There’s plenty more, and the upgrade is free, so I highly reccomend everyone take 15 minutes out of their day and install it, I know I will be 
Update: As of 2:50PM Aussie Eastern time, still no release of the firmware. No word yet on exactly what time it will be released.
Update: Turns out they aren’t releasing it until the middle of the day US time, which, if I’ve done my calculating right, means we get it at Midnight. Guess I’ll be staying up late
Twitter delays maintenance to help Iranian protesters
The twitter service not only came into it’s own over the past few days, but also proved to be fantastic world citizens by postponing scheduled maintenance that would have seen the server offline for almost an hour.
Since the recent elections in Iran, twitter users inside Iran have been posting updates on the violence and brutality that has ensued after protests sprang up contesting the result.
Earlier this morning australian time, twitter announced routine scheduled maintenance was due soon, and within minutes, wave after wave of message was posted to the service begging the engineers to postpone the updates so that communications with people in Iran could continue to use the service.
It’s a testament to the management of Twitter that they did indeed announce that this maintenance would be postponed until the situation subsides in Iran.
For up to the minute info about the situation in Iran, check out the twitter feed for #iranelection
Update: talk is that the Iranian government is actively blocking the twitter tag #iranelection, so the folks using twitter are switching to #iran9
Now you can Bing! for stuff online
Microsoft have launched their newest search engine, named Bing, and for once the software giant is actually making some headway in the search market.
Bing has managed to leapfrog Yahoo into second place after only a week or two; Time will tell if this is just curiosity, or if people are really switching their day to day searching to Bing.
I am certainly liking it, and have switched to it for my general searching; In particular I like;
- It’s pretty; much nicer looking that Google
- Video searching is awesome
- Image searching has more options
- The explorer pane makes searching easier
There is also some under the hood technology to make searching for shopping and health queries return more reliable and higher quality information, although I have yet to use those features.
Go check it out at www.bing.com and let us know what you think in the comments.
Twitter users prepare for the apocolypse
Just quick post to alert anyone who uses Twitter, and who might care if it stopped working, that they have run into a problem similar to the Y2K bug of nearly a decade ago;
Like any database, every tweet has a number that uniquely identifies it in the stream, and that number is about to reach the limit for a signed integer, which the word is that most twitter software would be using to store the number;
So if twitter is down around june 12-13, thats probably why, and if you use twitter software (such as twitterific on the iPhone), you may need to get an updated version.
UPDATE: Around 11:30AM local time, this in from the twitterific folks;
Twitterrific 2.0.1 for the iPhone is indeed experiencing problems with the Twitpocalypse. Investigating now, we apologize for the problems.
Internet Explorer 8 is released
Internet Explorer 8 is out and being actively pushed out to users via Windows Update. We are reccomending that all users upgrade to this latest version of IE, espeically those who for whatever reason still have IE6 installed on their PC.
IE8 is a much improved product, so if you are still an IE user (and haven’t switched to Firefox), then this is a must upgrade; Many new features have been incorporated into the browser, but more importantly, it is much safer and more secure than previous versions.
Users inerested in online security might want to read Microsofts safe and secure page that details some of the dangers online and what the new IE8 does to help stop it.
[Download Now!] – Link to Microsofts Download Page.
Mobile Carriers – Time to wake up!
With the announcement that the next revision of the iPhone firmware will allow tethering (hooking your phone up to your laptop to give your laptop internet access), it’s time Australian phone companies woke up to the fact that data on the iPhone has the same value as data on a wireless internet plan.
According to Optus’ wireless internet plans, 1 Gig of data is worth about $3 (unless that gig is over your prepaid amount of data in which case, for some reason, it’s worth $150, but that’s another argument)
To be fair, Optus gives it’s iPhone users a reasonable amount of data for free, so I’m happy with that, but now I want to buy some extra data to use this new fangled tethering technology; Oh dear;
Not only does 1 Gig of data cost $20 in this case, but thats ALL I can buy, and if I use more than that, it will cost me $350 to $500 per Gig depending on my deal with Optus.
More grumbling over the fold;
Facebook suffers photo outage
In another blow to “cloud computing”, the popular site facebook as temporarily lost about 15% of the users photos it stores for them. While this doesn’t mean the photo’s are gone, as once Facebook fixes their snafu they will reappear, it does go to show how we cannot yet fully rely on web services for critical services.
It’s a good thing nobody thinks Facebook is a critical service; Or do they?
New LED lights available soon
I just read that Philips are preparing to release a new LED based light bulb that is a direct replacement for the current type of standard household light fittings.
Available in three different types, MASTER LED offers perfect light quality – in warm and cool white. With no heat, UV or IR in the beam, this light is also ideal for illuminating sensitive objects like food or works of art.
They are going to be expensive at first, perhaps as much as $120 locally, but one hopes the price will quickly lower. Considering their extremely low power draw and long life, and the fact there is no mercury in them, they should replace CFL’s in peoples homes quickly.
Perhaps the Federal Government might take a look at offering a subsidy on them for a year or two to help get them off the ground more quickly?
Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs
In an apparent privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, we’re hearing that Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them.
read more | digg story
eBay make more blunders
I honestly wonder how much longer eBay can survive; Overnight, eBay emailed thousands of customers, telling them they were giving them a 10% discount voucher. The problem was, they are NOT giving anyone a discount on anything, and the email body doesn’t mention the discount.
6 hours later, they sent out another email with a correction, stating that the problem was a “technical error”. That’s obviously rubbish, and the fact that the word “sorry” or “apologise” doesn’t appear anywhere in the email further indicates eBay’s complete lack of customer service focus.
eBay are either going to go broke or they are going to have to get some management who understand how to look after their customers better!
