Degutis Insights

Classic!

I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I’ve had pratically no problems with the 3G iPhone and only minor issues with a couple of apps since Day 1. Then I installed the iTunes 7.7.1 update when it came out. That’s when the troubles started. Luckily, the iPhone itself hasn’t been affected but the iPhone with iTunes experience has degraded.

It started with a constant and reproducible crash of the MDCrashReportTool. The following sequence causes the crash: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great features of Twitter is that you can access and post it in various ways: from the website, from a dedicated client on Mac or PC, from a cell phone via SMS or mobile app, etc.  Maybe someday we’ll see digital cameras with built-in Twitter access.  With all of these different access methods, which is the best?  Below is my limited evaluation of a few of the apps I’ve used.

But first, I want to mention a feature that no app appears to provide, but I’d really like to see.  When a tweet (i.e. a Twitter update or message) is directed to another person using the @reply (where reply is the user’s twitter account name) at the beginning of the message, that message is only displayed to the person it was directed and not display to others, even if you follow the sender. For example, if you follow me (frumpa) and I send a message to @ev none of the applications below will show you that message.  The only way you’ll be able to see those messages is if you go the that person’s Twitter page via a browser (e.g. twitter.com/ev).  This only occurs if the message starts with @reply.  If the @reply is somewhere else in the message everyone sees it. Maybe I’m the minority here but if I’m following someone I want to see all of their messages.  Why?  Sometimes a message directed to someone else may also be of interest to me, or others.

Okay, now that I got that out of the way… Read the rest of this entry »

With Twitter continuing to be so unreliable, I think third party applications such as Twhirl, TweetDeck,  Twitterrific and possibly FriendFeed(?), just to name a few, need to add the option to keep a local copy of messages and your Following and Followers list. TweetDeck is already ahead of the game as it keep messages in a local database. But, with Twitter’s latest screw up, in which they inadvertently removed people from following others, the ability to have a backup, export or offline copy of your Following list is very important.

Who is up for the challenge?

-Al Degutis

Here’s me at work, the day after watching Dr. Horrible. Read the rest of this entry »

I started using Twinkle, an iPhone app, on Thursday night (July 17th) and wrote this post about it. Here are my impressions and what I’ve learned about it after using it for few days.

Twinkle has it’s own network which it uses for its Nearby service. The Nearby service, also a section in the app, manages messages sent through the service. When you send a message from Twinkle, which they call “pings”, it goes to the Twinkle network (i.e. Tapulous servers) where they are stored and then forwarded to Twitter. This requires you to configure Twinkle with a Tapulous user account and, optionally, a Twitter account. You could easily just use the Tapulous account, but not just a Twitter account at this time. This has caused some confusion for people as to where messages are going and why messages are not showing up on Twitter. Although in some cases people didn’t add their Twitter account or don’t have one. In fact, it can cause more confusion if a person has a Twitter account but creates a Tapulous account with a different user name. Confusion in the sense that you can’t follow the user via the Twitter website, or traditional Twitter client since you don’t know their Twitter account name. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was getting my haircut I overheard the discussion in the chair next to me. The person was lamenting about a night out with some friends. She and three of her friends went out for drinks and appetizers. The bill ended up being $200 because the Long Island Ice Tea they were drinking were $10 a piece.

This got me to thinking about a few other expensive things in small quantities.

The obvious example is a small, expensive bottle of perfume such as Chanel No. 5. But there are a few less obvious items that are sold in small quantities at prices higher than we’d imagine.

I had seen a few stories about how expensive printer ink is when you measure it by the gallon, including this one by David Pogue of the NY Times and this one by the Nashua Telegraph, which put it somewhere between $3,000 and $4,300 per gallon.

Then there’s the recent story about how expensive text messaging is (using AT&T’s rates for the iPhone) when you convert those tiny little messages (160 characters) to megabytes: $1,300 per megabyte. If we had to pay for email by the megabyte, we’d be paying tens of thousands of dollars a month.

It has become obvious to me that THE money is in selling things in small quantities. So, starting tomorrow I will have for sale a window cleaning solutions that is so special, rare and effective that it will available at the introductory cost of $49.95 per, ummm, I’m not exactly sure of the actual quantity per container until I get back from the store, but we’re talking only ounces here. Get those credit cards ready.

- Al Degutis

The other day Robert Scoble had a Qik video in which he interviewed on of the developers of Twinkle (web link, iTune link) a Twitter client for the iPhone. Yes, yet another Twitter client and yes for the iPhone. Twinkle caught my eye because it’s location-aware.

Unlike Twitterrific and Twittelator which can add a link to your tweet to show your location, Twinkle can show you a feed of tweets by people within a certain radius of you. When it launches it requests the use of the GPS to find your current location.

The default distance to search for “local” tweets is 50 miles but that can be changed. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last couple of days I’ve seen stories online about the “Stone Nudes.“  The story in the link states:

It is a breathtaking - and death-defying feat - which redefines the term extreme sport.

Battling both gravity and the elements, the climber claws her way up a granite boulder by just her fingertips.

For most, the lack of ropes and safety equipment would be a perilous step too far.

But this woman has gone even further and abandoned her clothes to take part in the new sport of naked rock climbing

Looking at the pictures, my gut instinct is that these women (or it is just one woman?) are not doing this for sport but as a modeling job.  These are the thoughts that come to mind to justify my gut feeling:

• The pictures are all black and white.
• The women appear to be posing more than climbing.  It is possible that Mr. Fidelman is the pro photographer that sits quietly and waits for the right picture.  More realistically he shoots hundreds of digital photos just to get the perfect shot (or pose).
• There is no sense of real height in any of these photos.  The women could be a mere few feet off the ground.
• They don’t seem muscular enough to climb without gear.
• Why aren’t there any pictures of men climbing in the nude?

I searched for Dean Feldman via Google and l found he’s selling a book called “Stone Nudes.”  Maybe he got the idea for the book after capturing these women doing what they love, rock climbing, or maybe it was the other way around.

I think the news outlets are taking advantage of the nudity and the sensationalism of the danger, while Mr. Fidelman reaps the rewards.  By no means I am accusing Mr. Feldman of any wrongdoing.  I’m just saying “I don’t buy it.”

What do you think? Post your comments below.

- Al Degutis