Damn. Dropped my iPhone.

From a design standpoint, I really dig how the iPhone 4 looks, with its front and back glass surfaces, wraparound metal band, etc.

From a practical standpoint, it sucks. I can’t count the number of times I’ve placed the phone on a flat surface only to have it slide off. The thing is like an air hockey puck. Fortunately it’s usually only fallen a few inches, so no harm done.

But it’s also slipped out of my hand a couple times when I’m pulling it out of my pocket. One time I had my earphones plugged into it, which basically slowed it down enough so that when it hit the ground it only chipped one corner of the back glass.

On Sunday I wasn’t so lucky:

Yep. There’s a crack running from one corner of the back glass all the way up to the camera.

I have the Apple iPhone 4 bumper, and I do use it, but normal 2.5mm jacks and the older 30 pin connectors don’t fit, so I’m constantly forced to take it off if I’m not using the supplied earbuds or 30 pin connector. In this case, I took it off on Saturday to play podcasts in the car through the auxiliary input and dropped it Sunday at the Brentwood Country Mart.

Fortunately for me, I was able to schedule a Monday morning appointment at the Genius Bar, where the nice Apple Store Repair guy replaced the back glass for free (normally $29). I also bought a new case from Amazon, which shouldn’t have the same issues as the Apple bumper.

Posted on April 18th, 2011 § 1 comment

Leaving MySpace

The rumors are true. After nearly five years of making and breaking stuff at MySpace, I’ve decided to move on. Tomorrow will be my last day.

The decision to leave had more to do with the new gig than the old; it’s a small start-up where I’ll be leading the product side of things, facing new responsibilities and challenges, and hopefully learning something along the way.

As for MySpace and all my former and soon-to-be-former colleagues, I hope they all succeed fantastically. Partially for their sake, but mostly for my own. It’s tough doing tech in LA; the more any one of us succeeds, the better the chances we all succeed. Or at least get a few million in funding to go chase some crazy idea.

Posted on July 8th, 2010 § 20 comments

Having fun with iPhone testers

I discovered something fun to do by complete accident. My wife sent me a text message from one of the iPhones at the Apple store while we were playing with them. Today I got two more messages from that same device. I promptly replied:

Don’t buy an iPhone 4, get an Android instead! AT&T sucks!

Now I wish I’d gotten all the iPhone numbers.

Posted on July 5th, 2010 § 4 comments

Revitalize your desktop

Now that I’ve got the new machine up and running, I’m trying to figure out what I should do with the old one. Windows was running like a dog on the old box, which is why I wanted to upgrade in the first place. Just for kicks, I decided to install Ubuntu, a free operating system based on Linux. I’m really impressed.

Ubuntu was easy to install, had no problems recognizing any of my hardware, and feels like it runs 3x faster than Windows 7 on that same machine. Even browsing web pages seems faster than on my new Windows 7 machine. Plus it comes with a bunch of software pre-installed for viewing/editing/saving documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, videos, and songs. All for free!

The interface is kind of like a cross between Mac OS and Windows, so it might not be something that some will want to use if they’re used to the paradigms of a particular OS. But if you’ve got old hardware and want to wring more performance out of it at no cost and no risk, I’d definitely recommend giving Ubuntu a shot.

If you use the Windows installer, you can install Ubuntu alongside Windows and choose which one to load when you turn on your computer. This way you can try out everything that you’re used to doing and compare (i.e., how does Ubuntu handle re-tweeting stupid things, watching videos, reading email, and occasionally doing work?). With the dual boot, you can then load Windows whenever you need to play on Full Tilt Poker or play a PC game.

As a side benefit, there’s almost zero chance that you’ll get infected by a virus or spyware. The people who make viruses and spyware target operating systems and browsers based on market share, and Linux has only about a fifth of the market that Mac OS does, and Mac OS is completely dwarfed by Windows (20:1). Using Ubuntu does not, however, protect you from accepting a check from a Nigerian ex-President / foreign exchange student who wants to rent your room / overeager Craigslist buyer who wants your car and getting ripped off in the process. That you’ll have to figure out on your own.

Posted on July 4th, 2010 § 8 comments

Installing Windows 7 from a bootable USB drive

There are a lot of Google search results with guides on how to create bootable USB drives from which you can install Windows. Unfortunately, a lot of them are outdated or missing key pieces of information. Fortunately, I found two pages that were pretty helpful:

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool – Who needs a guide when you can have software do it for you? Microsoft’s online software store has a tool that makes it easy to make a bootable USB drive or DVD from the ISO.

at Kevin’s Blog – Kevin has put together a fairly complete guide to how to make a bootable USB drive. It’s useful even when you use the Microsoft tool because you might end up having to manually run bootsect (e.g., you’re making a x64 installer on a machine running the x86 version, so you can’t actually run bootsect from the x64 ISO).

As I type this, my computer is busily rebooting away during the installation process. I think it’s almost done.

Posted on June 24th, 2010 § 1 comment

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