To be fair, this issue may be specific to Canadian shipping addresses.

Around mid-May i ordered a Dodocase for my iPad. I knew it would be a long lead time for it to ship, but what they didn’t tell me was the ship time going outside the US is ridiculous. Approaching a month since it shipped and it still hasn’t arrived!

It takes just over a month to walk from San Francisco to my home in Milton ontario. So – something is very wrong with either:

a) Dodocase’s shipping process
b) The US postal service OR
c) Canadian customs

Why isn’t Dodocase offering other shipping methods (i.e Fedex / UPS etc…). I’m sure people will gladly pay extra to have a tracking number that works.

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Update: After playing around with all my apps a bit more, i can now say the issue with the buggy apps is much much worse than i originally thought. I would now strongly advise against installing this update. If you have updated to 4.0 and want to downgrade, here’s how.

After yesterday’s announcement i logged into my Apple developer account and installed the iphone 4.0 beta firmware. It’s been almost 24 hours, and i can say it’s definitely a mixed bag so far. While there are some awesome features like unified inbox & folders, there are some things you should know if you want to be an early adopter:

Cautions
- Photos app is buggy. I.E opening “Places” crashes the app for me consistently.
- Visual Voicemail doesn’t work anymore (i’m with Rogers in Canada, your mileage may vary)
- I’m seeing new bugs (probably due to the presence of the new APIs) in my existing/previously perfect apps. I.E Tweetie 2 crashes whenever i try to do a Twitter search. It’s pretty rare though. Most if not all apps work perfectly fine after installing.
- If you are going to setup Folders know that if you change anything regarding the apps selected to sync to your iphone within iTunes it will remove all your folders since iTunes knows nothing about Folders.
- Apps seem to stay open until you close them using the new multitasking footer. Double tapping the home button exposes the open apps and tapping/holding allows you to close an app. Discovered this when i started to run into memory issues.
- 4.0 updates the baseband, so you can’t revert back to 3.x (this is 4 life people)

I’ve probably missed a few, but these were the major ones. If you can live with all of this, i’d say go for it and install. If not, wait till the summer.

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Loved this quote i read on Analog Industries:

“No Flash? Who gives a flying fuck? Flash is an improvement over Java only inasmuch as you don’t have to learn a computer language in order to have a gaping wound of a security hole on your system or kill your CPU. HTML5 gives that tragedy the death it so richly deserves anyhow. All the big video sites have HTML5 proof-of-concept players up now; by this time next year, Flash will be a bad memory.”

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Update 04.19.10: I totally bought one last night.

The $499 price point is solid. It’s pretty & definitely well designed. But i’m not buying version 1.0 of the iPad (at least). Here’s why:

1. Nobody seems to be talking about this but i’m worried about how resilient the screen is. If i drop an iphone, it weighs a few hundred grams. The iPad weighs 1.5lbs. What does it take to shatter the screen?

2. No front facing camera.

3. No multi-tasking.

4. What’s the use case? When would i use the iPad vs my iPhone/Macbook Pro?

5. Don’t buy 1st gen.

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All of these smartphones claim to be iPhone killers. Bigger screens, expandable storage, camera flash, ability to run multiple apps at once etc…

The bottom line right now is the appstore, and the developers (“…developers, developers…”):

Graphic courtesy Gigaom.

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The box, hat added for scale

Here we go...

Woot.

Packing about the same as my 2006 iMac

Includes a teeny tiny wireless keyboard, magic mouse, OSX disc & apple style manuals

The screen is gorgeous and enormous. (the cellophane is wrapping i haven't removed yet)

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3. How to Jailbreak and Unlock Your iPhone 3G, 3GS Using BlackSn0w [ mac instructions ]

These are instructions on how to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone 3G and 3GS using BlackRa1n and BlackSn0w for Mac.

These instructions will work with the latest 3.1.2 firmware, the 05.11.07 baseband, and iPhones which require hactivation.

For those with a new iPhone 3GS (updated Bootrom), BlackRa1n only supports a tethered jailbreak. This means that once jailbroken you should not let your battery die. If it does die you will need to reconnect it to the computer and use BlackRa1n to boot it.

Before continuing make sure you are on the 05.11.07 baseband by following this tutorial. If you are not please update your firmware to 3.1.2 using iTunes before continuing.

Step One
Open your web browser of choice and navigate to http://www.blackra1n.com. Click the Apple logo at the bottom of the screen (or Windows if you are on a pc).

Step Two
When prompted save the download to your desktop:

Step Three
Then double click the downloaded blackra1n zip file to extract the application, then double click the application icon to launch the program.

Step Four
Make sure your iPhone or iPod is connected to the computer then click the large make it ra1n button:

Step Five
Once your device reboots it will be jailbroken and you will notice a blackra1n icon on the Springboard. Make sure you have an internet connection and press to launch the application.
You iPhone will now be placed in recovery mode.

You will see a picture of GeoHot that replaces the regular recovery mode screen on your device

blackra1n will run and then your device will reboot.

A popup message will appear informing you that BlackRa1n is free software and if you appreciate it you can donate to GeoHot at geohot@gmail.com.

Step Six
Once your device reboots it will be jailbroken and you will notice a blackra1n icon on the Springboard. Make sure you have an internet connection and press to launch the application.

Step Six Once your device reboots it will be jailbroken and you will notice a blackra1n icon on the Springboard. Make sure you have an internet connection and press to launch the application.

Choose the installer application of your choice then press to select sn0w if you would like to unlock your device. Press the Install button at the top right of the screen to begin.

If you chose to unlock device using blacksn0w you will be presented with a Post Install log for sn0w. CommCenter will be restarted and there is no need to reboot. If your carrier doesn’t support 3G then disable it. Press the Close button to continue.

Step Seven
Once complete BlackRa1n will respring your iPhone and you will find the installer package of your choice on the Springboard.

Step Eight
Once you have confirmed your installer package is working correctly you may use the Uninstall blackra1n button inside the BlackRa1n app to remove it from your springboard.

***THANKS: A big thanks to Geohot for making this jailbreak and unlock possible. Also thanks to those who contributed to making it a success. You can donate to Geohot using the button below. Please note these donations go to Geohot and not to iClarified.

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• WordPress self hosted blog (free)
• An iPhone (definitely not free)
• Tweetie 2 installed on your iphone ($2.99)
• Twitter2press WordPress plugin (free)

The first thing i recommend is get your copy of WordPress upgraded to the latest version. If you’re running an old version like i was, follow these instructions carefully and be sure to make a backup of your data first. I had some issues with the Twitter2press plugin before i upgraded.

Account Settings -> Image Service -> Custom...

1. On the Tweetie accounts page, click on “settings”, then “Image Service” and “Custom…”. Just put in the URL to the root of your blog (i.e “http://www.davidschultz.org”). That’s all the setup you need to do on the iPhone.

2. Download and install Twitter2press into your WordPress blog. After you activate the plugin, you’ll need to configure it a bit. It will ask you for the username/pw of the Twitter account that is going to be posting images and you’ll also need to specify a page on your blog that will act as the “image gallery”. I just created a page called “Gallery”. Also, make sure the wp-content/uploads folder is writable.

That’s all there is to it, now instead of giving free traffic to Twitpic, you can direct people to your blog to view your Tweeted images and enjoy a traffic boost on your own site.

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1) Like my strategy for Tap Defense, it turns out an Arrow Tower strategy in the beginning works wonders. Build them as soon as you have the gold because the more towers standing the more gems you can get with each kill. DO NOT BUILD ANY OTHER TOWER TYPE YET.

2) The mistake i was making was trying to distribute my gem +dmg upgrades across too many towers. I found it best to put 100% of my gem upgrades into the arrow tower in the picture below. Eventually you are just one shotting everything that attempts to pass by.

3) Once you have covered the map in arrow towers and have the gold, replace 3 of them with Obelisk towers, each using different auras (Damage, Range & Speed) and overlapping your “uber” arrow tower pictured above.

4) Continue to spend gems on this arrow tower. You may find a couple heavy armor turtles get by near the end.

5) Once you are comfortable with how things are going feel free to add a few tornado towers before the area where the rivers converge to maximize impact of your uber tower.

6) Use the “Critical Hit” upgrade on your arrow towers as they level up.

Here is what my map looked like when i finished the game:

You can also check out my strategy for beating Tower Defense for iPhone here.

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