Author: David

Categories
Tech

Three iPhone problems

This will probably only be of any real value if you have an iPhone on the Three Australia network. On Wednesday last week, my iPhone stopped connecting to the internet via 3G. I kept on getting redirected to the mobile broadband signup page. Calling 3 Support, I was told there was a known outage and it was being treated with the utmost urgency. There was no known ETR, but what can youu do?

I patiently waited through several days with only daily calls to three for a status update. Each time I got the same polite script. If you ever wanted to experience politeness-in-a-can, call up 3 with a problem. Friday night I went out for a couple of drinks and met somebody with a working 3 iPhone. That really got up my nose, since I was still off the air. Though I discovered that Facebook still works. Pretty good evidence that this was not a networking issue, like I had been told.

Finally, I found this thread on Whirlpool. I had to sift through a lot of the regular whining, misinformation, and junk, but managed to understand these two basic facts:

  • There is a network-related outage that 3 has acknowledged. If this affects you, all you can do is wait.
  • Some (not all) iPhone users have had a service removed from their account by mistake. Getting 3 to turn this back on should sort it all out.

So I called support at 2 am (something like 9pm for the callcentre). First agent I spoke to gave me the same nonsense about the network outage. I pushed a little and got nothing, so I escalated to his manager (politely). Instead of a manager, he suggested an “iPhone specialist” (whatever the heck that is). Getting a hold of this guy, I mentioned that I knew people who had account changes made and were able to get back online. He found the missing service on my account, activated it, and I was back online.

Given the hour, I was keen to get some sleep so I didn’t stay to chat with my specialist, but I do have some thoughts on the whole matter:

  • The communication regarding this issue, both internally and externally is horrible. The support staff should have known about the two separate issues. I’m sure that it wouldn’t require a specialist to look at a customer account and recognise something was missing.
  • 3 has nothing on their website regarding network outages, even for their regular voice network. That’s a lost opportunity to reduce inbound call volumes.
  • Are they seriously expecting every iPhone customer to call in, fight with the frontline support staff before getting put through to a specialist, who may or may not be able to help them?

Anyway, if you’re on 3 in Australia and having trouble. Give them a call, talk to a “specialist” and check to make sure everything’s ok with your account. You may still experience network trouble, but it’d be silly if that was what’s keeping you offline.

Categories
Books

Congratulations to Studio Foglio

Girl Genius - Adventure Romance MAD SCIENCE!

Their work on Girl Genius has been awarded with the inaugural Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

I generally don’t follow literary awards of any kind, not even ones for sci-fi and fantasy, which is probably an oversight. Nonetheless, this is great news, as Girl Genius is a fantastic story. I highly recommend reading from the start. There’s an amazing depth to the world and characters, and the intricate story has obviously been plotted out in advance quite craftily.

There’s an amazing level of wit, humour, emotion and intelligence, and it presents a fantastic brand on the broad steampunk culture.

Categories
Tech

Social synchronising

The proliferation of social networking has made keeping everything synchronised very difficult. Whether you’re on Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, run a separate Blog, or any other of the million offerings out there, it’s hard to keep them all up to date.

And for the borderline obsessive-compulsives like me, the iPhone makes it a whole lot messier. Now that I can update things from anywhere at any time, I need to find the best way to make this whole business efficient and simple. I’m still researching which apps will be best, but I would like to make some observations.

Tweetdeck is a great Twitter client. It supports multiple accounts, and can sync your settings across multiple PCs, making it a must if you tweet from work and home. It uses the Adobe Air runtime, which makes it easily cross-platform. It also has built in access to picture tweeting and URL shortening services.

Furthermore, there is an iPhone client which adapts the same interface to the iPhone pretty well, but doesn’t have the Facebook updating feature (yet, I hope).

Another feature I would like to see in Tweetdeck is Flickr uploading. I’ve used these instructions from Obsessable on enabling Flickr2Twitter, but having it all built in to one place would be nice. I’d prefer it to Twitpic.

So, what networks do you use, and how do you manage them all?

Categories
Books Reviews

Review: Ender’s Shadow

Few things in literature are as ambitious as recounting the same events told in a previous book from the point of view of another character. The narratorial and character voices can easily slip into the ones used in the preceding work, the author may find he does not actually have that much more to say on the same subject, or the new book could simply read like a money grab.

I have to admit that I was skeptical about Ender’s Shadow. I have a lot of time for Orson Scott Card, and the original, Ender’s Game, was a fantastic piece of work; and yet to retell the same story from the point of view of one of Ender’s lieutenants sounded like a recipe for disaster, especially since I had already read the “sequels” regarding Ender’s travels.

I was more than pleasantly surprised to find that Bean is a completely separate and engaging character in his own right. Far more than a simply sullen boy with “short man” syndrome, he is Ender’s intellectual superior, but lacks Ender’s empathy and charisma. Hyper-observant and capable (the reasons for which are uncovered in the book), he comes to the attention of the recruiters for Battle School by manipulating the street gangs of Rotterdam. He doesn’t rise through the ranks simply because he recognises the manipulations of the teachers at Battle School for what they are: just a game, and is given alternate privileges as a result.

Most of the time, his story does not directly intersect with Enders. Indeed, Card goes out of his way to ensure that the two do not meet or interact unless it’s absolutely necessary. This helps to enforce the importance of Bean’s interactions with Ender. It was genuinely fascinating to see the same words uttered, but to see them interpreted differently.

If you haven’t read Ender’s Game yet, start there: it’s the better book, being shorter and containing more punch. Ender’s Shadow is great, but I feel that it spends more time filling in details left out in the author’s first treatment of the story.

Categories
Reviews Tech

iPhone 3GS

Last week, I finally joined the 21st century and got an iPhone. My mobile contract was up, and it seemed like a natural progression from the iPod Touch. I’d already considered some alternative smartphones like the XXX and the YYY, but niggling concerns about Mac compatibility and screen resolution singled out the one choice I could make.

Phone

I don’t actually talk on the phone much. It’s just a function of the way I operate socially that I’m a minimum-spend telephony user. As such, I haven’t really noticed anything outstanding about this function of the device. That being said, I do like the “conversation” view of text messages, and the easy integration of the Address Book.

Internet

I’ve read a number of complaints about connectivity and the iPhone. Overall, I can’t say I’ve run into them. Occasionally I’m forced to reboot the thing when it can’t get on to the net via 3G, but I’ve found that’s mostly a problem with the “dialling” in, and that giving it a moment can clear it up. I suspect it’s more a function of my carrier than the iPhone.

Mobile Safari makes web browsing almost as good as a real PC. It renders things well, and is pretty speedy.

Apps

I’ll go into what apps I’m using in a later post, but for now I want to mention an interesting phenomenon: my Twitter use has increased due to actually having a good interface while on the move. My venerable Nokia 6110 just couldn’t make Twitter a good experience, but the large screen and easy keyboard make Twitter much more accessible. Likewise for Facebook.

Finding an app in the App store, however, is a royal pain in the butt. It might be cheap, and it might be useful, but if I can’t find it, there’s no point. Apple really needs to address that.

Earphones

When I got my first iPod (a venerable 1st-gen Shuffle), I swore by the earphones. They didn’t distort, they produced a decent quality sound. Naturally, they eventually broke down, but by then I was using my Nano, and quietly moved on to in-ear buds. I hadn’t realised until trying the earphones that came with the iPhone how much a difference in-ear makes to sound quality. I find that with the classic whites, I am constantly pushing them further into my ear to capture more bass.

It’s a shame, because I want access to the remote control and microphone on the iPhone buds. Instead, I’m going back to my in-ears.

Camera

The built in camera is pretty good. The touch-to-meter function is a godsend in variably lit conditions, and helps deliver relatively clear photos. The only drawback is the lack of flash. Of course, one photo with a flash would probably deplete the battery, so I guess we can’t have everything.

Battery

This is probably the iPhone’s weakest suit. I seem to be unusual amongst mobile phone users in that charging my phone is a habit. I just plug in when I go to bed and don’t have to think about it. Nevertheless, all previous phones that I have owned have not actually needed that discipline. The iPhone on the other hand is at least 50% down at the end of every day. I don’t even consider myself a heavy user, given that I have internet access at work (and am actually working most of the time), so I can see this being a major problem for most people out there.

Conclusion

Overall, the iPhone is a solid consumer-grade smartphone. It integrates well with the Mac’s iCal and Address Book applications, though the lack of task management feature does get on my nerves. Nonetheless, most of my experience with the iPhone has been great. The only real downfall is the lacklustre battery life. I now carry a charge cable with me wherever I go.