Finally the Apple iPhone is announced…so all we have to do is wait for it to be released in June. I’m not going to talk about
price point- everyone knows that phone purchases may be subsidized by Cingular, and fortunately my Cingular
contract runs out in May -just in time to update my Phone (a Nokia 6030) – to an Apple phone. It looks stunning, and it does
ask the question of where doth Apple head with these things. Apple is unique in acquiring technologies and really absorbing
the details in order to present the technology to the public in an Apple-y way. the iPhone a phone reinvented with
some very cool technology attributed to it (Elegant design and Elegant user interface is what Apple is all about- eh?) might
help the Apple bottom line in promoting more “halo” effects and associations for Apple devices.
For instance, Apple TV- now I’m not entirely convinced this is what the consumer needs or wants. It stands out as a new device capable of streaming video and funneling the digital home’s media to a TV. And i think one would want the new Airport Extreme box as well along with this. But clearly this stands to have Apple really bring on the Movies and tv shows- it would have to find a place along with cable and fios tv or HDnet content and digital satillite. I was hoping the Apple TV was a router as well but it’s not.

Still, I’m ready to buy these things now- but we have to wait a month for these to show up- (and six months for the Phone) which i think is the first time Apple has announced a complete line of Vaporware….this to me – is disconcerting- My feelings
right now for Apple are mixed- excited that they have new products- but dissappointed that they aren’t available as they
are announced- traditionally a huge advantage for Apple’s surprise tactics of super secrecy and revelation at MacWorld.

So the iPhone announcement- last weeks’ loose secret with lots of speculation attached to it- is this weeks’ gotta wait for it
device- I’m not sure of the point Steve Jobs is trying to make by not having these items available today in the Apple stores.
I HATE waiting for technology that is announced but not quite available. Apple is so secret in advertising upcoming products and features of these things- this continued wait for actual in hand product is frustrating to me and my customer base who, right now,
need these “rumored” products and will go elsewhere (to other vendors)-because these products are weeks away.
it all sounds good, Apple- but put out the hardware!!

Local folks who are interested in Podcasting should entertain the idea of spending a couple days this weekend at PodCamp…an “unconference” about all aspects of Podcasting. I might present something though I just learned of this and I’m trying to figure out what I can do considering I have a range of podcasting skills from technical to production to content. In any case, I might just attend to meet other podcasters and see if I can help build the social network of Boston based podcasters.
Here’s a link:

Yipes! your laptop is a ticking time bomb waiting to burst in flames – cooking processors and data into a fine
stew of smelly electronic parts. Get out the marshmallows!
In the last couple weeks Dell and Apple have ordered enormous recalls of laptop batteries and the news media again fails to
zero in on the real culprit- Sony. I wonder if Sony is recalling their laptop batteries too….this is somewhere around 6 MILLION
batteries recalled- and I wonder if there will be damages for Sony. I’m trying to get a handle on what the issue really is:
faulty wiring outside the batteries (drawing power the wrong way?) or some internal engineering mistake on Sony’s part.
It remains to be seen if other manufacturers will do similar recalls (I think many OEM Sony batteries are Sony products).
Dell seems to have taken much prodding to do this- reports started popping up in June about the “burst into Flame” effect and it wasn’t
until the Dell bar-b-que videos on Youtube that provoked a large scale recall. Apple- who sometimes needs a class action
lawsuit to get a recall program under way – does the right thing by offering a replacement program right away. People have been
complaining about the heat these laptops produce for years- so I wonder if there’s a tolerance issue going on- we all know how hot
some of these laptops get.
Quantas Airlines is even telling folks to remove their batteries and use power while in flight.
Tee- fricking- hee.
yet can we trust these folks to thoroughly test products before they bring them to market? Maybe time to produce new ways to power laptops (and everything else in the world). A crank shaft on a laptop may not be just for the $100.00 Third World model.

I’m a firm believer that Apple Corp is quite disingenious toward Apple in deciding to continue
their pursuit of “infractions’ of the 1991 Trademark agreement with Apple.
I’m hoping Ringo and Paul (and Yoko and the estate of George Harrison)get off of their piano stools and
finally put an end to this silly and furtive attempt to appeal the recent decision.Guys, Talk to your
legal team: they are behaving as if Allen Klein is still lurking around!
As if.

By the way, this video here kind of wraps it all up:
[Video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDNcoOjqIXA)

Meanwhile, We wait for the things like a comprehensive DVD of Let It Be (out of print for way too long)
and the remastering of many albums to show up on iTunes, complete with Digital Booklets.
Why not donate the proceeds to great charities of the Beatles:
[Material World](http://www.georgeharrison.com/mwf/)
[Paul’s Page](http://www.mplcommunications.com/mccartney/charity.htm)
[Amnesty Intl](http://www.amnestyusa.org/imagine/)

And so on….

As a side note, I’ll bet that Steve Jobs ALWAYS has the Beatles on his iPod. And a Beatles oriented iPod (like the U2 iPod)
would be be a huge success.
And Apple [Continues the Pursuit](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=afX5riljCxjs&refer=us)!
-owl

Dick Cheney shooting his 78 year old lawyer friend Harry Whittington in a quail shoot is a pretty awful accident. What’s worse is how this whole thing is presented to us: delayed announcement, no meaningful comment by Cheney, the “jokey” way this is treated by the Bush administration-via Scott McClellan, even the Democtratic Underground is stupidly gloating about it. And the subsequent heart attack of Mr. Whittington makes this whole affair fodder for the worst behavior of Cheney’s supporters and detractors.
Ugh, how irresponsible is this kind of reporting. The problem here lies not with the incident-a tragic mistake- nor with the members of the probem. Mr. Cheney is a very Private person-to some of us liberals he is way too private though it’s obvious that is the method of the Bush Administration. When a very private public figure gets involved in a situation that has such serious media implications- he HAS to come out of that private shell immediately and take responsibility.
Considering the reluctance to address this issue will damage the reputation of the Bush Adminsitration further. They are being held up to the light and we are clearly seeing that they are an administration of lies, deception, subversion and irresponsibility.
I think accidents like these are -well- accidents. But to be a person of such high ranking authority as Mr. Cheney is and not immediately show respect toward the welfare of his friend publicly and unspun by the administration speaks loudly about how the administration addresses the needs and concerns of the American people. There is no excuse here for the way this is being handled.
Mr. Cheney should stand up or step down.
-owl

Well I got my new refurbed disk. Nothing special…music is copying to it right now.
I’ve been backed up (heh) with other work though and the severe lack of space here has
prevented me from doing as much as I want to without tripping over a guitar or two.
Thinking about my update to the intensions site and wondering how I can get stuff going
there soon without too much trouble. I use a cool tool called Pageot which helps the QT
labor go quickly. I’m trying to automate this and add it to my podcast site for folks who don’t have rss feeds which work as well as Apple’s Safari and iTunes work together.
Still, RSS stuff is quite mysterious to me. Atom feeds,XML,PHP etc. these things are
all related but seemingly there’s a bit of Babylon going on in how these things should work.
I find I am thinking up all the right questions and google yields much of the same questions I have about trying to get these things to work right. So at least I’m on the right track. I’m going to try to keep writing about this stuff as learn about it. Maybe it will help someone else working on their sites.
That’s all fer now…

Specifically-the UPS man. With my replacement -uh, refurbished, Seagate Drive- of Comparable size and speed. I had to
invoke the shipment 5 days after the box was received. Apparently, Receiving folks in McAllen Texas (where you have to send the drive) don’t talk to Seagate Customer Service which I am assuming is in Asia . I called Seagate CS and reported that my box was received on 12th of January (6 days? via usps with confirmation) and it took 24 hours for them to actually acknowledge this – so I think it’s on its way.

Here’s the rub-As soon as I had problems with the drive, I called Seagte and set up the RMA. I had the drive checked out at a (cheap) recovery service who informed me there was nothing they could do to fix this drive. So I had them ship the drive to me, and I subsequently forwarded it to Seagate with their RMA return label as was sent to me via Email.This whole ordeal takes too long to get a WARRANTY replacement on a BRAND NEW (mfg June 2005) drive. Seagate needs a cheaper data reccovery service for these kind or problems. Oh- they have one alright but it’s at least [500$](http://www.seagate.com/support/service/drs/pricing.html) to get data any data off of it. Personally,I feel they should at least offer to cover the recovery in these cases of HARDWARE failure (this wasn’t data corruption, or spindle malfunction, the problem was the mag disk inside-my recovery guy said I could sent the drive to DriveSavers and there’s a 60% chance they could get data off of it) -I mean, they do have the facility to offer this for their own branded drives. Of course, since they just sucked up [Maxtor ](http://www.seagatemaxtor.com)
so we’ll have to see if Maxtor just got better or Seagate just got worse. On a side note, I can’t bring myself to purchase
Maxtor or Western Digital Hard Drives since I’ve seen SO MANY failures right out of the box. This is much different than
the problems with Drive folks like Lacie or ADS who simply have crappy firewire busses.(-that’s another story!)

So now I’m skeptical of Seagate and I’m looking forward to the prices of an SSHDD to drop from a vendor like [Memtech](http://www.memtech.com) so we can all have drives with no moving parts.

Any IT person worth their bits will always respond to “Do I need a backup?” with hearty “Yes, indeedy do”.
If you are doing anything even remotely worth saving indefinitely, back it up. Do it twice, if you can.
I often backup my customers stuff on to a disk for “just in case” scenarios – even when they tell me they have backups.
Or If I’m stuffing a new hard disk into their workstation, I’ll dupe the old files onto the new one.
It is very likely a person who tells you they have everything backed up is hiding the truth, so I suggest to watch them do one,
if the opportunity arises. I’ve seen people back up alises but not the folders, or back up way too much stuff than is
neccessary. Also, one way to tell if your disk is failing is to do a massive write job to some other harddrive.

I have most of my backups on hardrives and cds, much of it is duplicated across these things so rebuilding the files back is a big
painful ordeal. But better to have dupes than to have NADA.

As far as my dead Seagate is concerned, my drive guy say it is unrecoverable unless I send it to DriveSavers and shell out an amount between
500 and 1200 dollars. I was trying to recover some customer files, most of my stuff was backed up save for a temporary image of a laptop
which wasn’t a tragic thing. The crash wasn’t really a head crash, but a disk malfunction physically obliterating the drive directory (so you could
see the bus the drive was on-but no drive) I do a lot of Disk Recovery and have been often successful with software and
dieing drive syndrome but this is the first time a new working drive has died so completely. I will bug Seagate about this stupid issue
when I send it back for replacement. A horrible horrible experience. Folks- Back it up.

Seagate Technology
Howdy Campers,
I’m a bit aghast at the behavior of my new highly touted 160 gig Seagate drive which failed yesterday.
This wouldn’t be so bad, except that I’m in the midst of
switching around drives and backing up stuff so I can upgrade the CPU on my g4. So I had a good bulk of Audio files, image backups, and various other stuff (ARCHIVES!) which is held hostage
until I can scrape up the do-re-mi to recover it.
Seagate has acquired Maxtor- So is this a good thing or bad thing?
I stopped buying Maxtor
a couple years ago and this is the first Seagate
failure I’ve experienced. What’s worse is that this drive is two months old.
I have that deep sinking
feeling that you can trust no one in the Hard-drive
business.

So I’m offering a solution to this problem which
bugs everyone in the business.
My solution is for these Hard drive companies
to tack a 5$ insurance plan to their drives to
cover replacement AND recovery costs.

Think of how this would effect the HDD business-
Users would have some protection of their data
over the warranty.
You could transfer the data to
the replacement drive.
Drive companies could tout
this policy as a best practices failsafe and give
customers what they want: integrity.

The computer hardware business is rediculous in the way it deals with hardware integrity.
Ram out of spec, bad firewire, out of box failure happens WAY TOO MUCH.
MS, Apple, Dell, Lacie- lately failures of these things are main part of my businesss- and that just
ain’t right.
Computers are all about data- so HDD companies need to stand behind Data Integrity -Not manufacturer error.
-By the way, I check my hard drives regularly,
I even have S.M.A.R.T. checkers on my OS which
is supposed to report upcoming failure. So Why
didn’t I get a warning?
-As I’m writing this I’m getting more pissed off,
so I’ll stop. But this really really sucks.
-owl