iOS 5.0.1 is now available for download. You can do this directly from your iPhone or iPad. Go to General and then Software Update and click on download and install. Once it downloads the installation process will start. This update is supposed to fix the battery issue that is effecting some iPhone users. It will add multitasking gesture to the original iPad. I had this capability before the iOS 5 update and hadn’t realized how much I used it until it was gone. Once you have the update installed you have to enable Multitasking Gestures under the General tab in Settings. If you have a jail broken iPhone or iPad do not attempt an over the air update, it will not work. You will get an error message and the download will not finish. There does appear to be a tethered version of RedsnOw available for iOS 5.0.1 beta, but one has been released for the final release. I recommend waiting for at least a week before updating if you have a jail broken iPhone or iPad. The two reason you may need to update is if you are having battery problems and it does fix the Smart Cover security issue on the iPad 2 It is going to be interesting to see if this update fixes the battery issues. If you have had this problem, I would love to know if the update fixed the problem, left it the same or made it worse. If you have a jail broken iPhone or iPad, when do you expect to do an update and who do you use?
Archive for November, 2011
iOS 5.0.1 Update Available
Posted by KL Tech Muse at 1:40 PM on November 10, 2011Preparing for the Kindle Fire: Amazon App Store Updates to 2.0
Posted by Alan Buckingham at 11:10 AM on November 10, 2011Next Tuesday, November 15th, Amazon will release the much-anticipated Kindle Fire. The 7″ Android tablet has been rumored to be receiving a huge number of pre-orders – 250,000 in the first 5 days if the news reports are correct. Now, with the release only 5 days away, Amazon has bumped their App Store to version 2.0.
The new look of the App Store is designed to make it more tablet-compatible. In fact, the user interface looks very Kindle Fire-like with the new UI being a mix of greys and black, instead of the previous mostly white background. Amazon has also introduced better control with the addition of Parental Controls, plus they have enabled in-app purchases.
You can get instructions for adding or updating the Amazon App Store on your mobile device by visiting this Amazon page. Check out the screenshots of the new App Store posted below.
Mixel Lets You Create Art, Collaborate with Friends on iPad
Posted by Jeffrey Powers at 9:58 AM on November 10, 2011
Mixel
In this day and age, we can make art by iPad with a simple stroke of the finger. There are painting apps like Art Rage, which we saw at CES. Now we can do art share remixing – with an application called Mixel.
What is art share remixing? Well, you create a piece of art, then share it with your friends. They will then either enjoy your piece, remix your art or even add items to make it better. Your friend can then share that part so you can view, add or remix.
The program is created by Khoi Vinh and Scott Ostler. Vinh was a digital design director for the New York Times and Ostler works with an image hosting site called dump.fm. The duo is calling it the world’s first social art app for the iPad.
“Most art apps translate the analog art experience into digital form and stop there,” Vinh said. “They overlook the transformative power of a user’s social graph, which can turn an ‘expert’ activity like art-making into something casual, accessible and even addictive. Mixel is a true social experience, which is why it’s so much more fun and engaging.”
The application is available for download from the Apple app store.
Introducing Mixel for iPad from Mixel App on Vimeo.
Thailand Flooding and the Price of Hard Drives
Posted by KL Tech Muse at 7:26 AM on November 10, 2011If you are thinking about getting a hard drive you may want to wait. Thailand has been hit by terrible flooding during the yearly monsoon season. Up to 500 have died and whole areas have been devastated including areas where the majority of the world’s hard drives are manufactured. Companies including Western Digital and Toshiba have been hit hard. As reported by the NY Times Bang Pa-In, Thailand which produces one-quarter of the worlds sliders a vital hard drive component is almost completely under water. Piper Jaffray believe that the supply of hard drives may run dry by the end of November. Prices may rise anywhere from 10 to 60 percent. There maybe a shortage of up to 60-80 million hard drives in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the shortage may only get worse. Full recovery of the market isn’t expected until late 2012.
Just in time for the next monsoon season. Climate change may only increase the flooding next year unless Thailand figures a way to control it. Unfortunately the very rice fields that helped to control the flooding in the past have been replaced by the factories that manufacture the hard drives. Companies may think of moving some of the processes outside of Thailand but that will take years and a lot of money. Companies may decide that the cost of moving is greater than the cost of dealing with flooding and choose to stay.
The hard drive shortage is already being felt by small businesses who sells or purchases hard drives. They are having trouble getting the hard drives they need and their prices are going up. The longer the problem continues the more the problem will spread to anything with a hard drive in it. Which includes desktops, laptops, gaming systems, and more. Not all hard drive companies were hit equally Seagate whose plants are in the highlands of Thailand was not effected by the monsoon directly, however it says it will have difficulty getting some parts. SSD drives are not effected either. Gus Richard an analyst at Piper Jaffray believes that there was an over reaction to the economic impact of the Japanese disaster and an under reaction to the Thailand disaster. This is at the time when large data centers are being built, data centers which require more and more hard drives. So the shortage and higher prices will most likely continue until late 2012.
Reading Together, Reading for Pleasure
Posted by Andrew at 6:46 AM on November 10, 2011
More time is spent reading with children but parents are finding modern life tiring and stressful, according to research commissioned by Booktime. The average time spent by parents reading with their child (4 & 5 year olds) is now one hour 26 mins per week, an increase of 10% over 2009. 60% of parents read with children for pleasure on a daily basis.
Tiredness was cited as the main reason for shared reading not being fun, but it was the tiredness of the parents (18%) rather than the child (6%) that was the problem. Getting home from work in time was also a problem, with 30% of dads getting stuck at work.
Regardless, 71% of parents and carers said that reading with their child was always or usually the highlight of the day. 80% of the parents said that reading was associated with fun with 86% of children laughing out loud.
The book is still the main reading device (86%) but other devices such as smartphones, tablets and e-readers are becoming more prevalent. By the time a child is six, nearly a quarter of parents use technology in addition to paper-based books.
In a time of economic doom-and-gloom, this relatively minor story made my day. It costs so little to read to children especially when books are available from libraries or the Booktime programme, yet the benefits to both parents and children are immense. As a father of a 4 year old daughter, I love reading with her, especially at bedtime. It’s just us, with no distractions and we read the story together. If she grows up with a love of reading and learning, I will have done my job as a parent.
Booktime is a national (UK) free books programme for pre-school children that aims to promote the pleasure of reading by encouraging families to have fun reading together. This year, nearly 1.4 million books will be given away in partnership with Pearson.
Tags: books, children, ebook, ereader, literature, smartphone, Tablets
Posted in book, ebook, Gadgets, Information, tablet
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Robot Underpants #24 11.09.11
Posted by Langley at 12:58 AM on November 10, 2011The Bieberati Show. Langley and Spin joined by Headley to talk about the failure of the Emergency Alert System, Facebook and dead people.
* Nationwide Emergency Alert System
* Hangout Etiquette
* Dead Celebrities
Podcast (robota): Play in new window | Download | Embed
Posted in underpants
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Trading Tough for the UK Big Boxes
Posted by Andrew at 9:14 AM on November 9, 2011
From recent news in the UK, the tough economic conditions appear to be hitting the technology and electrical particularly hard with Best Buy and Comet in the front line.
After losing nearly £50 million in the last six months, Best Buy is going to close all 11 stores in the UK after just 18 months in operation. Best Buy Europe was a joint venture between Best Buy, Inc and Carphone Warehouse, with Best Buy purchasing half of Carphone Warehouse’s retail division for over $1 billion. Over 200 stores were originally planned but now 1,000 jobs are at risk.
Roger Taylor, CEO of Carphone Warehouse said, “The eleven Best Buy UK ‘Big Box’ stores have performed exceptionally at the level of customer satisfaction, but they do not have the national reach to achieve scale and brand economies. Due to the lack of visibility of an acceptable rate of return on historical and future potential investment we have decided against rolling out more ‘Big Box’ stores and we will be closing our existing stores, subject to consultation with our employees. Our immediate focus is our people and we are confident that the large majority will be offered alternative positions elsewhere in our UK business.”
Today, Comet has been sold for just £2 to a holding company “Hailey” after revenue in Comet fell 22% over the summer. A further £50 million will be invested by Comet’s parent company in the holding company. 17 stores are already earmarked for closure with a further nine to be reduced in size.
In guarded comments, Bob Darke, Comet managing director said, “We are encouraged by today’s announcement and – with shareholder approval – absolutely committed to a smooth handover. For our customers and our people, it is business as usual and we are 100 per cent focused on delivering a successful Christmas trading period and great business performance into 2012 and beyond.”
DSG Retail with its Dixons, Currys and PC World brands is the main player in the UK market but even it saw a fall of 7% earlier in the year. The next set of results isn’t due for a few months and it will be interesting to see what they show.
Overall, it’s not looking good for the big boxes in the UK.
HP Still Thinking On WebOS
Posted by Andrew at 1:42 AM on November 9, 2011
HP has still hasn’t decided what to do with WebOS but appears to be taking the decision seriously. At an all-employee meeting last night with the WebOS team in Sunnyvale, new CEO Meg Whitman, reportedly said, “It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,” and “If HP decides to do this,we’re going to do it in a very significant way over a multi-year period.”
Setting this against reports coming out of Reuters that HP had engaged with Bank of America Merrill Lynch to sell WebOS for just hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than the $1.2 billion HP paid for Palm, it seems clear that Meg Whitman is seriously evaluating all the options for the future of the mobile operating system. She’s reportedly also said, ”The question now before us is what do we do with webOS software and do we come back to market with webOS devices? It obviously will not be the same device but it will be version 2.0.”
What does seem to be clear is that any future thoughts focus on tablets rather than mobile phones. At the all-hands meeting, Whitman reportedly said that, ”Things get more complicated if you add in phones.” While the TouchPad may continue, it sounds like Pre and Veer are dead as product lines whatever happens, but you never know.
On one hand, it’s easy to criticise HP for continuing to dither, but to me it appears that Meg Whitman is doing a proper evaluation of the options available, rather than taking the somewhat whimsical approach take by her predecessor Leo Apotheker. If WebOS is retained by HP in addition to the PSG group, it will be one of the biggest corporate turnarounds in history!
BlogWorld and New Media Expo – Where did New Media Go!
Posted by geeknews at 8:43 PM on November 8, 2011My team has had a few days to reflect on BlogWorld and New Media Expo Los Angeles which wrapped up Sunday.. While attendance may been at all time highs, it was not because the new media folks where at the show. In years past we would be swamped from the beginning of the show, to show close. This year we had a 2.5 hours rush then very lite traffic.
Surveying badges, Central California was in the house sadly though very few out of state badges. The new media folks that where at the show where largely either speakers or folks from the local area. It’s pretty frustrating as we know there are 1000′s of new media creators out their yet they are not coming to the show. This is not the first year we have seen a decline last year traffic was down, but traffic this year was simply horrible.
I am not sure what the answer is, or where we go from here, but my team has to go where the media creators are in the future! The team at BlogWorld has worked hard and the bloggers have turned out in mass but the podcasting community has abandoned this show.
Google + Opens to Business, Brands and Organizations.
Posted by KL Tech Muse at 3:56 PM on November 8, 2011
Since Google Plus opened up to the public back in the summer, businesses and organizations have been crying for the right to participate. Finally yesterday afternoon November 7th, Google opened the floodgate and businesses and organizations were allowed to create pages for Google plus. As soon as the door was open up a crack the tide poured in. Yesterday it was hard to keep up with both those who had crested pages and those who were upset because they couldn’t. After an organization created a page, the first question was often now that we have one, what do we do with it. It is sort of like the dog that keeps chasing the car and when he finally catches it he has no clue what to do with it. However with the way Google is integrating Google Plus into everything brands feel they have to be there.
Pages are easy to create, which made some people question why it took so long to make them available. Just because they were easy to create doesn’t mean opening up Google plus up to organizations hasn’t been without problems. Like a lot of Google releases it was thrown open to the public unfinished and before the end of the day the complaints started to come in. The first is that pages can only be managed by a single individual. Not very practical when most companies today have teams to deal with social media. As has been pointed out even if you create a single Gmail account that all members of a team can use to log in, this limits the ability to post to that team. It has been reported that this is something that Google is working on and this should be fixed soon. Second is the problem of fake accounts, since there is no way to verify an account, fake accounts are being created pretending to be someone they are not. As an individual if you see a brand account that seems questionable, report it, so Google can take care of it. As a person who follows these accounts it is important to me that I am following who I think I am. Third if you have a personal account and administrate a company account also, it is easy to post to the wrong one by mistake. I am not sure what Google can do about this, this requires the individual to be vigilant and to watch what they are doing. Finally there has to be a way to have the URL read plus.google.com/brand name/post instead of plus.google.com/some long number/post.
As an end-user choosing what brands to follow is key. Brands (or pages) can’t add you to their circle until you’ve added or mentioned them first, so make your choices judiciously. Once you choose to follow a brand then you have to decide whether you want to add them to circles you’ve already created and mix brands and individuals or do you make separate circles for brands. My choice is to separate brands from individuals. As time goes on I believe that Google will correct most of the problems that have been brought up. On some of them it does makes you scratch your head wondering why they didn’t see and correct the problem before the release. However if you are a long time Google user you know this is typical of Google. If you maintain a brand, business or organization do you plan to create a Google Plus page, why or why not. If you are an individual on Google plus are you happy that brands are now on Google plus or do you wish they had stayed away.
