iPhone 2.1 - wait until September?

I'd gotten the distinct impression that the iPhone 2.0 launch was a bridge too far.

Reminescent of 10.5, which was supposed to ship in 2006 and became shipworthy in a month or so ago.

So I find this very plausible:

iPhone 2.0: The glory wore off in wash - (37signals)

...A couple of weeks before the iPhone 2.0 release, my friends at Apple were telling me that it wasn’t ready. Apparently they were right. They also said that the next iPhone OS release, scheduled for September, would be a vast improvement...

September is not all that far away, so people who aren't in a great rush may be wise to wait for 2.1. I generally get bit by every possible bug, so my experience ought to be a good guide. That should be out in a week or so.

AT&T iPhone availability: 1-2 days

I pre-ordered a white iPhone 16GB from my local AT&T store on 7/22, it arrived at store on 7/24 (fedex overnight).

So the availability crunch may be over.

Check the above link for some key tips on the process. The promised email notifications never got to me. I only found out the phone was in because I was checking the status page, and because I'd figured out that I needed to enter the store's zip code, not mine.

As usual the AT&T staff have done well. For an evil company AT&T has quite good front-line staff -- at least some of the vast amount of money I send AT&T must be going to the employees.

Used iSight: $250. Anything equivalent today?

The original Apple iSight external firewire webcam cost $150.

Three year old used models sell for $250 and up.

Sigh.

I miss firewire.

The best current alternative is the Logitech's Mac specific QuickCam Vision Pro ($30 more than the identical Windows webcam).

See also.

Of course there are always rumors of something better ...

Mac Windows video-conferencing options

After a decade of false starts, maybe oil prices are going to push low end video-conferencing out of the "gutter". (The technology historically been used primarily for porn on the PC side [1], a bit more for family messaging in OS X.)

At the moment we have good working solutions for OS X, though we did better with the discontinued iSight webcam than with the currently available lower quality embedded Mac webams. On the XP side things are much dicier, we really need either USB 3 or to do video compression on the camera (Firewire worked wonderfully; sometimes I really dislike USB).

So how can the good OS X solutions interoperate with quirky PC solutions? This blog post from 2007 and its comments is helpful:

Trying to Video Chat between Mac and Windows? | Times New Rohan

...Finally we both downloaded Skype, and it just worked. We installed the application, created accounts, initiated video chats, and were chatting within minutes. (It is a well behaved Mac application to boot)...

So Skype is one option. The comments also mention iChat interoperability with the newest version of AOL's Instant Messenger and a beta Mac client for Windows Live Meeting.

I'll do some personal experiments and report back. My preferred solution would use iChat on OS X.

Update: I was able to install AIM on my XP box and connect my AIM/AOL username with iChat/MobileMe. The AIM client provides a fairly small video image. During AIM installation you have to be very careful to disable all other AOL-junk installs, and you may wish to delete all the plug-ins. You will be stuck with annoying embedded advertising that cannot be hidden.

I couldn't find much on OS X Live Messenger. There's now a corporate OS X Messenger client, but it requires an Office Communicator 2007 corporate server.

Skype is probably the only other option. I'll take a look at that next.

Update: Skype's high quality video solution is Windows only. Skype annoys me even more than AOL, which is saying quite a bit.

Update: A slightly dated tutorial on AIM and iChat videoconferencing. Some parts are up to date, others are obsolete. If I go forward with this project I'll have to write a post on setting up the AIM client for this use.

[1] Neat link by the way. A 1998 NYT article on how porn was going to drive videoconferencing. Well, it did -- almost to extinction. Turns out porn has a way of ickyfying an entire technology. Good lesson here -- also thank you NYT for letting Google trawl your archives!

Mount your HFS formatted iPod on a Windows machine

In case you want your Mac-formatted iPod to move files back and forth from your work machine:

Featured Windows Download: HFSExplorer Reads Mac-Formatted Hard Drives

Windows only: Free, open source application HFSExplorer reads and extracts files from drives formatted with the HFS+ file system native to Macs. Common uses for HFSExplorer include reading files from your Mac file system from Windows running in Boot Camp or—something I've used it for—grabbing music in Windows from a Mac-formatted iPod....

AT&T iPhone availability: 1-2 weeks

Our local AT&T outlet ran out of iPhones in the first hour or two of the first day. I'd wanted to buy there because of the strategic contractual complexity of our corporate-discount family plan, but I didn't like their initial pre-order policy. I thought Apple might be a better bet ...

Gordon's Tech: iPhone availability widget

... I suspect Apple stores are getting more shipments. AT&T is not offering a similar availability widget, they suggest payment up front and they'll hold a phone when it arrives. Fortune reports they have no phones anywhere, and no word on when they'll receive any.

I'd pay to reserve at an AT&T except I know AT&T is so Satanic that Hell itself could not abide them. (Apple, on the other hand, is merely a close confidante of Beelzebub. AT&T store staff, in my experience, are quite good btw.)...

I passed by my local AT&T shop this noon, and decided to check in. The staff really are excellent, it's not their fault they work for Satan.

Ever staff person was handing out an iPhone to a customer. Turns out they get about 50 a day for people who've pre-ordered; it works out to an average wait of 1-2 weeks (they say 7-21 business days). AT&T no longer charges credit cards on order, they charge only when the phone ships.

AT&T notifies of shipment by email, and receipt by email and phone, or you can obsessively check shipping status at an order status link (Note: when you enter the zip code here, it's the zip code of the AT&T store, not your home/billing zip code). Customers have 7 days to make the pickup, so it's not something to do prior to a trip to Maui. Don't lose the receipt, you need it to get the phone.

I placed my order today.

Update 7/23/2008: I ordered on 7/22. The order status link now says the phone was shipped on 7/22 and delivered to the store on 7/23. I emailed the staff person who sold me the phone, and she confirms the phone is waiting. So basically a two day turn around, clearly the floodgates have opened. I never received the email notifications and I didn't find them in my spam filters. So either the email was entered incorrectly or something went wrong. Email isn't nearly as reliable as it once was.

Google profile grows, but no direct OpenID yet

I first realized I was 113... last December:

Gordon's Notes: My Google profile -- another brick in the wall

.... I mentioned a few weeks ago that blogger knows me as 113810027503326386174. My friends call me 113. I wonder if Google will ever recycle that identifier, or if I can confidently carve it on the old tombstone.

Today Google maps has added a new profile link using the same identifier:

http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=113810027503326386174

The maps profile link shows some maps I've created, and a link to 'report this profile'. (That seems an ominous invitation to the ill-intentioned)...

Now I have a full Google Profile. Here's the URL:

http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/113810027503326386174

So I tried a Google search on 113810027503326386174 and I found a Sharing Stuff page I didn't know about

http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=113810027503326386174

The "social stuff" all hangs off of www.google.com/s2, which first gets a mention in a 2006 post.

The Google Profile includes an OpenID bound to my Google identity, I added that last December. Google provides an OpenID through Blogger, but not yet through the Google Profile itself.

I'm accumulating these identity defining attributes on my "address" page.

Reputation management moves forward, but all this social networking stuff is bound to my real world identity. Most of my writing is now under a light pseudonym. So it doesn't quite fit.

More on the evolving profile here ...