Preface: If this were coming directly from me, it would be a very biased AND completely unauthoritative recommendation as I do not own an iPhone and have no plans to purchase one.

That said, I was quite surprised to see the “A-list” tech blog Gizmodo ripping the iPhone three months after its release. And numerous other popular sites jumping on board…see Yahoo!, The Guardian & Wired to name a few.

While I do find the recommendation against buying an iPhone a little surprising since all of the Mac users that I know are true fiends for all things Mac, I think that Apple, and even AT&T for that matter, didn’t take one major fact into consideration…you’re not only selling this device to “Mac Heads”. A good majority of the people that will drop that kind of money for a phone are techies who want a device to do exactly what they want it to do and will “hack” it into submission if necessary.

Which brings us to the issue at hand. Apparently Apple issued a firmware “upgrade” which disallows hacking the iPhone and has in turn rendered the iPhone useless for those who have hacked it. Unless of course they revert back to the previous version, which then won’t allow any “official” iPhone upgrades.

While I understand the monetary side of why they did it, I can’t see how this will be good for business, especially after the uproar from the recent $200 price drop. But hey, I guess that it isn’t my business, right?

Anyone who uses Skype is probably experiencing connectivity issues and has been for the past few days. At first I had thought this was an issue with my internal network, but that is not the case (thanks to Wired for reporting this).

This is bad news for anyone using Skype for business purposes (as I am) and makes me question my decision of using Skype for VoIP. While my call volume is fairly low since I use e-mail for most of my communication, I know that at least two clients have tried to get in touch over the past two days, and that is bad for business.

I do have a Gizmo number as well, but I wouldn’t say that is a silver bullet either as it has its own issues too. (Go figure, right?)

While my land line does cost a lot more and doesn’t offer “go anywhere” capabilities (useful when you take your “office” mobile), it is stable for the most part. But I’m not ready to switch back just yet. At least not until this is a consistent issue. I’ll ride this one out for a bit and see how everything unfolds. Skype is aware of the issue and they are working on it. Hopefully this will be resolved by Monday and we’ll be back to normal. Until then, e-mail me.

* For anyone wondering what the phrasing is all about, that’s a jab at a comment made by eBay (who owns Skype) a little over a year ago. [1] [2]

Has anyone ever experienced this before…

Through my Comcast Digital Cable receiver I am now seeing a large black rectangle from the middle to the bottom of the screen on what would be considered your analog channels (2-99 and some low 100’s). The “Music Choice” channels as well as the “On Demand” programming do not have this issue. Also, on my TV which is hooked up to the analog cable jack I do not have this issue. So my guess is that it has to be something to do with the digital receiver. I have a request into Comcast to see what they say, but any pointers would be greatly appreciated in the meantime, as we kind of have a big football game here in town tonight (complete with the Indianapolis Police Department picketing).

UPDATE [1:41pm]

I sort of figured it out…I turned closed captioning completely off on my television and the black rectangle went away. Though that doesn’t really pinpoint the behavior that I was seeing. Oh, well, it’s back to normal now and I can watch the fool’s ball this evening.