Posts tagged Time

IM+ – Instant Messaging All the Time

If you want to stay connected, via your favorite instant messenger application, then IM+ is what you want. Its pricey because their servers support a stay connected IM push feature. You can actually log off the application on your phone, and the servers will push you an email of the instant message. Since the Blackberry supports push email the communication can be almost seamless. Once you get the IM you can fireup your IM+ application and start typing in real time. I have experienced good things with the application. The push feature works flawlessly, but there is one gripe.

If you have a kings battery, or two batteries for that matter, and want to keep IM+ running at all times there are some problems. I find that the various clients do not stay connected. They eventually disconnect, especially Facebook. Therefore I recommend to only have your IM+ application running in the background for only relatively short periods of time. When you know you don’t need it pop it on IM push mode and your good to go for up to 3 days.

Verizion – Side by Side with at&t Coverage Map

Will Nasty Ad Campaign against AT&T Do Verizon Any Good?

I like this map. It really shows how poor at&t’s coverage is. I had at&t for a long time, and I would get dropped calls on my iPhone. I would call at&t all the time and the rep would say that its not in your contract that at&t guarantees service. So basically I had bad service, would get 10 dropped calls per day, and at&t says the service is fine. They would continuously point to the coverage map saying my area has full service. How do they explain the dropped calls? At&t would say they don’t guarantee service.

This map speaks for the nation. And even the local coverage is the same. I have no problem with a company not supporting particular areas. But at&t would continuously point to the local coverage map of my area, and say I have full coverage. The map is not correct. I talk more about my local map in a previous post.

Oil Prices and Environmental Effects

Time and time again we see oil prices changed proportionally to upcoming environmental events. Current:

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Crude futures rose above $79 a barrel Monday on concerns about the threat Tropical Storm Ida poses to U.S. oil and gas production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. A weakening in the dollar also supported prices.[Source]

That’s a relatively big number considering the amount of oil reserves that are available. Also, another interesting fact is that prices are relatively high because production levels are as lost as post hurricane conditions. This is partially because of the high oil reserves and the demand of oil in the marketplace. The low production level, the upcoming hurricane, and the amount of reserves all contribute to the price of oil. Production can be increased, but where is the product stored? The current situation is that the high supply is actually causing high prices, which is completely counterintuitive to the supply and demand model as it pertains to product price.

iPhone 3.1.2 Jailbroken to use any Carrier – Does it Matter?

iphone OS 3.1.2 has been jailbroken again, allowing users to do whatever they like with the gadgets they’ve bought.[Source]

The iPhone can use any carrier particularly TMobile instead of at&t. I had an iPhone for a long time, but ultimately the GSM bottleneck of the device is a tremendous downfall. On at&t MMS took unnecessarily too long, and I cant tell you how many times my calls were dropped. At one point I was calling tech support just so the call would drop with them on the phone. I called for a month traight, toward the end of my at&t experience, resulting in over 10 dropped called per day. Ultimately I got a rep that credited me $200 because of the amount of dropped calls. I was doing pizza delivery at the time, and literally could not drive through town without getting a dropped call. I used the $200 credit to cancel my acount without having to pay the early contract termination fees. Worked like a charm!

The worst thing is the at&t map says there is full coverage in my neighborhood. That was relative bullshit. I say relative because I also used another at&t phone, that was operating at 1 bar, but the calls did not drop. Apparently the iPhone requires a stronger signal strength as compared to other more simple phones.

I eventually jailbroke my phone, but did not have good experience with TMobile either. I ended up ditching the iPhone, even though I loved and still love it, for Verizon. I went with the Blackberry storm.

I still have my iPhone with a TMobile prepaid sim card. Its a $10 prepaid sim card, and the iPhone has full edge internet access for three months at a time, resulting in a net cost of $3 per month.

I rarely use the iPhone, but I still love it. I also love my Blackberry. There is no winning and you can never have the best of both worlds.

In this post I show an at&t coverage map of my neighborhood that is completely incorrect.

ReactOS – a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows XP compatible operating system

ReactOS has been around for a while. The combination of their website, and the progress of the software in my books deems ReactOS worthy of checking in on from time to time.

http://www.reactos.org