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:

There is nothing more cool that seeing a project you have been working on for over a year finally launch onto the internet for all the world to see. Today Time, Inc. officially launched Maghound, a new magazine membership program.

Unlike traditional subscription services, Maghound allows you to select what magazines you receive each month. You can select from over 227 magazines from all the major publishers with more magazines being made available for selection each month.

I have been beta testing the service since June and it is very refreshing to have the flexibility to change the print magazines I receive from month to month. What’s better is that you can cancel at anytime. Try doing that with a subscription. I highly recommend you check out the service.

No one can accuse Steve Jobs of not having a sense of humor. As he kicked-off the Apple Let’s Rock event in San Francisco, the screen read, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” in reference to Bloomberg Financial Newswire accidentally posting his obituary to the internet. You can read the posting on Gawker’s web site.

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 am an avid Twitter user and follower. Over the past few months I have found micro-blogging to be a great way to stay connected with friends, colleagues, clients and distant acquaintances.

My biggest challenge with Twitter is learning how to stay focused at the task at hand. If you are on a Mac and you have Twitterific and Growl It is all too easy to become continuously distracted by the continuous feed from all the individuals and services you are following.

One post that really hit me where I live was posted on Sept 4th, 2008 by Emily Chang …

Too close to home .. really!

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