Oliver Siodmak’s Rants & Raves

There are two video podcasts I follow religiously. They are both short, funny .. and free. I highly recommend you add them to your list:

When I first upgraded my iPhone (EDGE Edition) to firmware v2.0 I spent an hour or two checking out all the free and for fee apps that were available in the App Store .. right from the iPhone. Soon after the v2.0 firmware was released articles from respected technology journalists appeared warning iPhone users of issues when adding apps directly to the iPhone using the App Store vs. installing them via the App Store within iTunes. Since I respect David Pogue and Walt Mossberg I heeded their warning .. until I got lazy this past weekend.

After finishing work on a proposal late Friday evening I decided to spend a few minutes unwinding by exploring a few new applications on the iPhone App Store. I am currently running firmware v2.0.2 and I have a home WiFi network which my iPhone immediately connects to when I am home. As I scanned the store and identified applications I might want to try out, I selected the “Tell a Friend” button for each app I was interested in and emailed myself a link to the app. The plan was to then click on each link when I got back to my Mac thus launching the apps detailed page in iTunes. From there I could decide if I truly wanted to install the application. After sending myself a dozen or so links I decided cheat and install a free app directly to the phone.

I clicked the install button and within a few seconds, the iPhone showed the new software program’s icon on my home screen with a small installation status bar along the bottom. Normally this process just takes a few seconds and the icon appears with out the status bar across it indicating that the app was successfully installed. This time, the installation bar did not go away. To make matters worse, the iPhone appeared to be frozen. When pressing and holding the “home” button did not reset the iPhone I was forced to press the Power & Home button together until the iPhone rebooted. Which it did. Unfortunately, the iPhone continued to display the Apple logo but did not boot. After a few minutes I booted the iPhone again. Still nothing. Finally, I rebooted the iPhone a third time, plugged in the charging cable and went to sleep thinking that by morning the phone would be functional again.

It wasn’t. The Apple Logo continued to stare me in the face as if to say, “you knew better .. now look what you’ve done!” Fortunately I have AppleCare on all my Apple products so I called the AppleCare specialist who taught me how to reinitialize the iPhone. When I asked the rep why this information was not on the Apple Support web site, he indicated that Apple doesn’t publish this information so people don’t accidentally reinitialize their iPhones.

Since I found this information simple and very helpful I am sharing with my readers in the hopes it will only be used in the event of an emergency. If you iPhone is locked on the Boot screen and you have a current back-up of your device .. you qualify to use this option.

To re-initialize an iPhone that won’t boot, follow these steps:

• Power off the iPhone. Try simply pressing the power button (located at the top of the iPhone). If this does not work, press and hold the Power and Home buttons down until the iPhone shuts down. If the iPhone immediately attempts to reboot, press the Power & Home buttons a second time as soon as the Apple logo appears.
• Insert the iPhone USB cable in a USB port on your Mac or PC
• Press and hold down the Home button on your iPhone while inserting the 30pin connector into the bottom of the iPhone. Keep holding the Home button down until the iPhone displays the screen shown above (iTunes logo and the 30pin connector). Release the Home button.
• When iTunes recognizes the iPhone, select Restore from the IPhone summary page.
• Follow the restore instructions in iTunes

If you have a fairly full iPhone consisting of Apps, Music and Video this process can take a very long time. If the restore is successful you should have a fully functioning iPhone.

Please note that this procedure should only be followed if you iPhone is not functioning and you have a FULL backup of your iPhone on your computer. This procedure will completely erase everything on your iPhone.

If you have any doubts about what you are doing … STOP and call Apple Customer Support.

Hope you find this procedure helpful.

I just knew this was going to happen. I rented Gross Point Blank from the Apple iTunes Store a month ago thinking, “hey this would be great to watch on the way back from LA.” Unfortunately I had to work on the flight and I never got a chance to watch the movie. No problem I thought .. I still have another 29 days. But .. what I failed to consider was how fast 29 days can pass.

So yesterday when I checked my email after I boarded a flight from Boston back to NYC, my iPhone reminded me I only have 2 days left to watch this movie before it will be deleted. My big presentation behind me I kicked back and started watching the movie. Which for anyone who has an iPhone or iTouch knows .. is a really enjoyable experience. Unfortunately, the flight was only 45 minutes so I only got up to the part where John Cussack goes back to his home town only to discover that his parent’s house is gone and replaced with a convenience store. I figured .. I’ll watch the rest of it tomorrow. ERRRRRRRR! Wrong answer. I let 24 hours pass and the movie was gone.

I am sooooo .. not so happy. I understand the need to set a time limit on movie rentals but would it have killed the movie studios to let Apple set the expiration time to 48 hours vs 24? I mean really? Would it have hurt?

BTW .. if anyone can tell me what happens at the end of the movie I’d really appreciate it.

I still have fond memories of decorating a Christmas tree as WPIX TV played “Yule Log”.  Watching the White House fireplace beautifully burning on TV while listening to holiday music made our small NYC apartment feel like a wonderful home out in the country.  When I learned of iYule.tv  produced by Cali Lewis (GeekBriefTV), Geoff Smith, Paul Colligan and Neal Campbell in the NYTimes today I was eager to give it a try.

The team provides a 30 minute video comes complete with snaps and crackles of a real fireplace in multiple file formats for $5 each (both with and without a musical soundtrack).  You can also download all formats for $10.  The file sizes include support for the iPod Nano, iPod Classic, AppleTV and PCs & Macs.  The quality is great and the soundtrack is remenisant of the interlude music often played during Peanuts animated movies. Very soothing.

If you have been dreaming of cosying up in front of a warm fireplace but don’t have access to one, this is the next best thing.

Thanks to the team at ContentRobot.com by blog is now more readable on an Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Their recently updated Wordpress plug-in automatically detects that the user is using Safari on either device and provides the content in a format that is optimized for that screen size. I only just installed it and I can already see that I may need to change the way I embed URLs .. but the app is totally cool.

My next test is to see how well it handles the admin interface and if I can more easily write and post to my blog using Safari, vs using the email to post support Wordpress provides.

If you want to learn more about the iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme, check out their website