This really annoys me and is making me rethink my phone choice! Here is a letter sent to a developer from Apple axing his iPhone application. What utter BS!

SOURCE

"Hello Developer,

We've reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store.

It may be very appropriate to share with friends and family, and we recommend you review the Ad Hoc method on the Distribution tab of the iPhone Developer Portal for details on distributing this application among a small group of people of your choosing.

Regards,

Victor Wang
Worldwide Developer Relations
Apple, Inc."


W.T.F? Why not let the users decide what they are willing to buy or use? This app was in the store so it passed the harsh guidlines to make it into the store, which is a feat of it's own. The thing that annoys me most about this is the fact that the number one selling iPhone application is Koi Pond. So some fake fish swimming around isn't of limited utility? It does absolutely nothing and is totally useless! At least Pull My Finger attempted to be funny, which gives it more usefulness than a show off our graphics waste of space!

Tags: iphone

I'm scared McCain will win... WAIT! I got an idea so we can just get past all this
bullshit!

How about all you really rich bastards just kill everyone that isn't rich.
Then battle each other until only one rich man remains with his cheap blond
youger wife who can then divorce him, cause she really never loved him, and
she can rule the whole wide world all by herself! You will still be
the second richest and second most powerful person on the planet.
Just think, god will be very happy no one is making babies anymore, because
he has grown tired of sending people to hell for having abortions.

I have pondered why Twitter and the likes have become so popular. To understand why this is so I had to think back to the early nineties when web-page embedded chat rooms were really popular. If you remember these early chat clients you will remember going into chat rooms, usually focused around an interest or topic, and watching people's conversations. You will remember picking people that were interesting based on their conversations and just jumping in. I remember being able to focus on several interesting people and having multiple conversations with them amongst many people conversing. Those were the days!

Then came the chat clients, like ICQ and AOL instant messaging. Slowly that old school chatting went away and was replaced with “search for people based on criteria“ or add only people you actually know. Searching for people because they live in the same state or because they too like cats just doesn't work as well as jumping into a conversation where you get a feel for the person's personality. Honestly, searching for people based on criteria and asking for a chat request is no different to me than picking a number from the phone book, because they live in your state, and calling the person and trying to start a dialog – you will likely get a click. Add the pervs, idiots, and spammers popping up chat requests and the whole concept of meeting people via chat clients dies.

So how does Twitter fit in you ask. Simple, humans are social creatures and we want to meet people, we want to chat with new people, people that interest us! Twitter brings back the ability to meet people in the same way the old chat rooms did. The computer loses us the ability to see and smell, which are factors in why we choose one person over another, but conversation also helps us make decisions about who we interact with. Twitter is nothing more to me than an old web based chat client with the rooms feature removed and a character limit tacked onto the chat console, but even in it's simplicity it gives us the ability to simply chat with total strangers without all the fear or annoyance of interruption.

Another point this brings to light is the fact that when companies try to capitalize on the social aspects of the internet they fail. Twitter is here because big companies locked us into this world of friends only and clique based chatting, which is fine, but the world is much bigger and way more interesting - who wants to always be in a safety zone? Life is about risks and anytime you meet someone new you are taking a risk, but Twitter actually lessens the risk because it gives you some sense of who you're talking with as well as being public making it even less risky. It's kind of like a virtual party where you have micro conversations in a public setting where you almost always meet a new friend by the end of the night...

This brings me to my last thought and what would be really cool. Imagine anywhere you carry your GPS device you are not just marked at a place, but actually move around in a 3-D chat world! This is what I believe is next, IMVU meets SpotMe.

I have an original iPhone 2G 8gb. Been jailbreaking it since the day I got it and I have never had any real problems with the phone. So when Apple's 2.0 update came out I updated and waited for the jailbreak. I did this for 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 updates as well. Since moving to the Apple 2+ firmware versions my battery life has gone to shit and the phone burns hot as hell when doing everyday tasks. I asked about this on the iPhone dev team's blog, but people are too busy answering stupid questions from people that should not be hacking their phones.

So I have been waiting to see if the internet starts getting questions relating to my problem and lo and behold they are now starting to appear. First, the iPhone with firmware does not run background processes. This was a decision made by Apple and is the reason you cannot listen to the legit Last.FM feeds while doing other things on your phone so this latest advice telling people to hold down the Home button for five seconds to totally close the application is bullshit.

Second, people that have jailbroke their phone are being told to install Services and to shut down SSH. SSH is not installed by default when you jailbreak your phone/touch 2.0... so if you haven't installed it you are likely not to have it. I do not have SSH installed, nor do I have any application requiring a running background process or service and I have this problem. As a matter of fact, I only have Winterboard and a theme and theme elements installed, all from Cydia, and I had this problem before installing any third party apps.

I also see some people stating they have this problem and state they have never jailbroke their phone. I cannot verify this as I am not willing to restore at this point so i will take the word of these people that it may not be the jailbreak causing this issue; although, my wife's phone has been burning hot ever since we jailbroke it on firmware 2.0.2. This makes the problem very random because I have had the problem since 2.0.0 and she has not.

A typical day using mainly network aware apps on Edge used maybe 1/4 to 1/2 the battery in an eight hour period on firmware 1.1.4, jailbroke of course. Even live streaming audio and video via Orb didn't heat the phone to excess and eat the battery life this fast. Now I am lucky to get eight hours of typical usage with 20% battery remaining. So wtf is it? Is it the firmware from Apple or is it the latest jailbreak? I am leaning towards Apple and their network related services...

So my typical day, WiFi off using Edge, I run:

NetNewsWire - Read my RSS feeds (10 to 20 minutes, three times a day.)
PocketExpress - Read the news (5 tp 10 minutes, twice a day.)
Check Twitter using Twinkle (occasionally throughout the day. 5 minutes tops each.)
Check Updates Cydia (5 minutes or less)
Check updates AppStore (5 minutes or less)
Read email - Push is off (occasionally throughout the day.)
Send a acticle or two to my wife. (occasionally throughout the day.)
Read breaks, lunch using Stanza (This seems to have no impact on battery or heating up)
Check Weather with WeatherBug (Sometimes)
Listen to podcasts and music. (A few hours total)
Watch a couple video casts. (Couple times a week)
Install crap from the AppStore (Sometimes, really kills the battery)

Of course the occasional phone call. Sometimes the phone locks up after talking for awhile and won't hang up. Requires a hard reboot.

So anyone else having this problem, jailbroke or not, send me your thoughts, experiences, and insights.

Tags: battery life, firmware 2.0, iphone, jailbreak, touch