Sadly we found out a few weeks back that Alameda’s own cable TV company was no more, and that Comcast had acquired the service and all its customers. Until we were transitioned (more on that later) we would continue to get our cable and internet services unchanged. Right, so that’s why my DVR service was suddenly disabled on December 7, 2008. And that’s where this saga starts.
Update (December 14, 2008): Version 2.5 is now available in the iTunes store.
The new version of iNewz is now with Apple for review… New features include an offline reading mode which was requested by a few people, complete with a simple bookmark option to tag an article if the summary information from the feed makes it sound as though you’d like to read more.
The offline mode will be used automatically if the application detects that there’s no network available, but it can also be switched on manually so that all articles will display in offline mode. You can then use the Open Page button to get to the full article on the web.
To make offline mode work, there’s also a bulk sync option that will update all the sources you’re subscribed to – can take a while if you have a lot of sources!
Devicescape’s new application, a version of Easy Wi-Fi especially for AT&T, has been in the app store now for a few days. The screen shot here from my iPhone shows that it has no reviews (and if you scroll down to the bottom, the place where the link to any reviews is found also says that there are no reviews.
So what? It’s only been a few days after all. But wait, if you click on that button to open the reviews page, you get this:
So there are actually five reviews. Why doesn’t the app store app indicate that?
And want another mystery? See that average ranking there – 3.5 stars, well I don’t know how they calculate it because all five of those reviews have 5 star ratings. Last time I checked, 5 * 5 / 5 is 5, not 3.5.
Seems the app store has a number of basic arithmetic problems! And this is not going to help developers much. The ratings and review system is bad enough as it is, but this makes it worse still. An average of 3.5 when all the ratings shown in the reviews are 5 star is pretty damaging. Have you checked whether your aggregate rating is correct?
I’ve seen a lot of discussion recently about application development for the iPhone and iPod touch platforms, and in particular whether the current trend for very low cost apps is sustainable long term.
The first article I read was Andy Finnell’s How to Price Your iPhone App out of Existence. My own experiences with the app store were pretty consistent with his observations, but it got me thinking a bit more about this issue.
VentureBeat also noted that the $0.99 price is going to make it next to impossible to live off of an application, and they’re suggesting that the price is tending back up towards $9.99. Driven in that direction not by consumers (obviously), but by the developers coming to the realisation that they can’t afford to write high quality applications at the lower price points.
More photos of the sunset over the city tonight, only tonight I had the 20D with me, so the photos are sharper! Also got this reflection of one of Bay Ship’s sheds reflecting in the almost totally still water it is built over.
The ship yard was still busy, with crews working on the luxury motor yacht Pangaea (which has been in the yard pretty much the whole year – and seems to be undergoing a major refit) as well as some other vessels they have up on shore or in the floating dry dock.
Stepping off the ferry this evening in Alameda, this was the view down the estuary back towards San Francisco! Unfortunately, I didn’t have the 20D with me, just the trusty Nokia N95, and while the shot is still beautiful, I have to admit it did not do the scene justice. Tomorrow, and perhaps for the rest of this week, I will carry the 20D with me too!
I actually have a few from last week when I took it, but still need to upload those. Watch for more sunset photos in the Flickr stream this week…
Finally, I got around to uploading a few of the photos from Venice. I have many more that I need to try to find some time to sort through and upload, but these will give you a taste of the island of San Marco.
You can see them all in the new Venice 2008 set I’ve created (and as I upload more they’ll also be added to this set).
The photo to the right is of the Grand Canal, taken from beside the Rialto bridge.
There are lots of apps out there now for iPhone and iPod users to choose from, and plenty of reviews within the App Store as well as on the web, so I’m not about to review any apps here. Instead, I thought I tell you about my three most used applications, and why I use them so much. So, without further ado, let’s jump in to the list:
iNewz
iNewz is a news reader application that aggregates content from a number of news sources, mostly US ones in the current version. I use it because I spend an hour a day sitting on a bus commuting (half an hour each way), and I guess I’m a secret news junkie. The news is organised into categories, with articles for each category from several sources listed in reverse chronological order. My top categories? Headlines first, always, then World News and Technology news. That normally fills a commute!
Easy Wi-Fi
I have to include Easy Wi-Fi since I spent so much time working on both the initial jailbreak version, and then this App Store version. But aside from that, I do truly find it incredibly useful and I use it almost every morning at Starbucks – handy having that free Wi-Fi account from AT&T simply for using a registered pre-paid Starbucks card. The iPhone normally latches on to the Wi-Fi as I walk in, and one tap gets me online. Not quite as convenient as the background mode the jailbroken version had, but still a lot faster than typing my user name and password into the AT&T web form every morning (and I only have a few minutes in Starbucks most mornings to buy coffee, sync email and load up the Daily Irrelevant).
Truphone
Last, but not least, Truphone – the voice over IP application that has been around for other mobile phones for a while (and one I use on my Nokia N95 via its built in SIP stack). Needs Wi-Fi to work, but that’s fine by me as I’m usually somewhere where there is Wi-Fi when I need to make international calls. Combined with Easy Wi-Fi to get me online in public hotspots, this means I can keep in touch with folks around the world for very little money. I called my mother over in England while sitting outside a Starbucks in San Jose last weekend – free Wi-Fi from AT&T, Easy Wi-Fi to get me online and Truphone to make a very cheap international call.
Parts of Akamai were down for about an hour tonight knocking several sites off the net essentially for some of us.
Here in Alameda, I was unable to get to Yahoo, Flickr, E*Trade or Apple because they all point at the local Akamai leaf node (a248.e.akamai.net) which was not responding at all. I’m sure many other sites that depend on the Akamai service to improve their performance and reliability were also affected. Looks like Akamai is not very fault tolerant.
Even Akamai’s own home page was inaccessible (as shown in the screen shot).
This little boat has been here for a few weeks now just like this, half full of water. I guess nobody has needed to use it, which makes me wonder why it was even left where it is.
Maybe one day somebody will take the time to bail it out 🙂
[Reposted after the original was lost in a strange database problem at my hosting provider.]