I just reserved our iPhone 3G S for pickup at an Apple Store next Friday. Reserving and buying are two different things, but I’m thinking we’ll end up gettting it. We still have the original 2G version, so our upgrade pricing wasn’t bad. I’ll be happy with the hopefully improved camera and expected bump in overall speed.

I tried the beat. Simple, straight-forward setup. Not much needed to do afterward. The problem is I have a lot of data already on Mozy, so no compelling reason to switch.

I dealt with two different Windows viruses this week.  The solutions were radically different.

• With one, I spent 6+ hours backing up data, reformatting and reinstalling Windows XP Media Edition on a Dell machine.  Most of the time spent was with lousy Dell support.
• The second one was simpler: I ordered an iMac for a friend

Both problems solved.

This girl averages 484 text messages a day!

The Palm pré looks very interesting. Too bad it’s going to be on Sprint. I was with Sprint once. I had a problem with their billing / customer service, which made me move to Verizon (then later to AT&T). More info on the Palm pré here and here.

Wow. Now we can’t complain on Yelp?

If I update my “current” iTunes tracks, it’ll cost me about $15. I’m waiting until they update their whole catalog to DRM free. I’ll then decide whether I should upgrade them or not.

I’m saddened by the demise of Pownce - in its current form.  They were acquired by Six Apart earlier this week which means…I don’t know exactly what it means.  I wasn’t  a heavy user of Pownce, but I did use it to communicate with friends. I was able to privately share small files, photos, links, and messages with various friends.  I’m not sure if Pownce will be integrated with one of Six Apart’s services such as Vox or Typepad, but it won’t be the same.

And this brings up a problem that I fear on the Internet - the loss of content you created / posted on the Internet.

Luckily Pownce provided a way to export your data and time to complete the export.  But other services that have gone the way of the dodo, such as Digital Railroad, didn’t give their users this opportunity.  Imagine losing all the photos you posted online? What if you didn’t have a backup?

I have over 9000 photos posted on flickr, another 24GB of photos posted on Smugmug.  My blog has 473 entries,  and there are only about 100 entries on my tumblr account.  Most of this data - minus the tumblr posts - I have on hand a local backup.  But some data cannot be copied, such as my Facebook and MySpace account.  Plus any comments made on the photos above cannot be backed up - or at least I’m not aware of a way to do it at this point.

My greatest fear is that flickr or Smugmug goes under without notice.  It was a fear I had with Vox which is why I moved my blog back to my personal site.  (If Vox provided a means to export my blog posts it would make me feel more comfortable using it as my primary blog.)  I’m sure this reality is far from possible at this point, but with this economy you never know.  I have always hear that flickr is a losing proposition for Yahoo!  This unconfirmed fact makes me more confident that Smugmug is a stronger choice to share my photo data online.  But I enjoy flickr’s community so much.

And this is the other aspect that is lost with the demise of Pownce - the community. A solid community is difficult to build - let alone maintain. While Pownce may have not had a choice but to sell itself to Six Apart, it is a shame it wasn’t able to keep the community it had built together.

I wrote in a previous post about having to track my bandwidth usage since Comcast was implementing bandwidth limits. Well, my results for September are in. According to my Tomato router I used 195.11 GB total bandwidth. 57.51 GB was used for downloading content and 137.60 GB was for uploading.

What does this mean?

Well, my upload number is high because of the online backup service I use, Mozy. The data I am backing up - music, photos, and documents - is about 200 GB total. I had hoped I could have uploaded it all before October, but I ran into the end of the month before completing that goal. I hope this doesn’t screw up my October numbers.

From the looks of things I am well within the 250 GB limit imposed by Comcast. I hope my numbers are correct. I would hate to lose my Internet service.

Comcast made a lovely announcement last week that they were imposing bandwidth caps for their users. The limit is 250 GB a month. I have no idea how much bandwidth I use. Funny thing is Comcast is not giving users a way to determine how much bandwidth they actually use!

Comcast suggests using one of the “many online tools…to measure [your] consumption.” The problem I had was trying to find a tool that could measure all the devices in our household that access the Internet. You would think Internet access is limited to computers, but in this day and age there are many devices that access the Internet for information. We have two laptops, one desktop, two iPhones, an XBox 360 and a Nintendo Wii. I think that covers everything. So what tool would work for all these devices?

Luckily my searches stumbled upon a firmware alternative called Tomato. It did require me to purchase a Linksys WR54GL router, but I lucked out as it was on sale at Fry’s. The setup instructions were straightforward. I was up-and-running in less then twenty minutes. I am now set to track how much bandwidth I use.

I’ll let you know how it goes at the end of this month.

My iPhone Contacts Disappeared!: While I was out and about today, my iPhone contacts disappeared. I noticed this when I received a text message from someone on my contact list, which showed their phone number instead of their name. I’m guessing my over-the-air sync with Mobile Me was the cause since I have seen this sync problem before but only with my iMac and dot Mac. But when I got online, my Mobile Me account and my iMac contacts were fine. At this point I don’t know what happened. It sucks to lose your contacts for no apparent reason when you’re out on errands. I wonder if this has happened to anyone else?

Beginning in July, California went ‘handsfree’. Now, I don’t talk on my cellphone often while driving but Farrah does. And so I did some research on a solution that would work for her.

The iPhone comes with a nice standard headset for listening to music and taking phone calls. It can be used in the car as long as you only use one earbud while driving. I do this often, but it can be uncomfortable, and I think Farrah finds this so as well. Farrah also finds Bluetooth headsets uncomfortable.

I heard Leo Laporte speak of the BlueAnt’s Supertooth Light Bluetooth Handsfree Speakerphone as a good solution, and so I ordered it from Amazon and let Farrah give it a try.

The unit charged quickly, with Farrah being able to try it the next day. The main unit attaches by magnets to a metal clip you can fit into your car’s visor. Having the clip allows you to easily move the unit from car to car, or simply detach it from the clip to hide the unit in your glovebox. To activate the unit, you extend the mic boom.

The sound quality is very good. I was able to hear Farrah very clearly while she was driving, and she was able to hear me without my yelling. The unit also comes with a built-in ringer so you won’t have to hear your cellphone ringing unless you have the BlueAnt turned off. The BlueAnt holds a very good charge. We’ve only had to charge it twice since having it, but people who talk often may have a different experience. The only negative experience we’ve had with the unit is when pairing it with two different phones. The unit appears to forget the first phone it was paired with, but works fine with the second. If you are the only one using the BlueAnt, then this will not be a problem. Overall, Farrah finds the BlueAnt solid and reliable, as do I.

There is a newer unit available, the BlueAnt Supertooth 3. I think this unit has a voice-activated calling feature, but I have no personal experience with it. You may want to read the reviews on that unit, but it does cost about $30 more.