Hi All,

Sharing with you an article below… always good to get a little reminder!

Everyone take care and God bless…

As some of you may know, we had a pretty scary incident recently. Attached are pictures of what remains of our 2007 Suburban. We are all okay but I wanted to warn everyone not to make the same mistake I did.

This fire resulted from leaving an Iphone charger/docking station plugged into the car outlet. It overheated and started a fire, while parked in the garage. PLEASE unplug anything you have in your car outlet once you turn off your car!

We were VERY fortunate that we accidentally found the fire, at 11.00 pm, before going to bed and before it spread to the house. None of our garage heat detectors or house fire alarms went off.

Feel free to pass this along to anyone you want. Better safe than sorry.

Here are the attached pictures below:

Have you received this email? Personally, I don’t really think that kind of damage was caused by a faulty charger. From the fire damage it looks like a battery combusting. Or did the faulty charger cause the battery to explode? Do recent cases of exploding iPhone batteries even have something to do with this? To the electronics engineers out there, feel free to share your knowledge and comment below.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” Palm CEO Ed Colligan, commenting on then-rumored Apple iPhone, 16 Nov 2006

“Apple is slated to come out with a new phone… And it will largely fail.” Michael Kanellos, CNET, 7 December 2006

“The only question remaining is if, when the iPod phone fails, it will take the iPod with it.” Bill Ray, The Register, 26 December 2006

“Apple will likely have a tough time convincing application vendors to build specialized clients for the iPhone until the volumes are there, and the volumes could be limited by the lack of third-party applications – a Catch 22.” Jack Gold, J. Gold Associates, 10 January 2007

“The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks.” Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, 15 January 2007

“Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized, with a plan? It is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 17 January 2007

I am not sure how it will stand against Sprint’s Wimax (when it successfully launches) and its phones, which I am looking forward much more than over-hyped Apple iPhone.” Bhaskar Chitraju, Indews Broadcast, 18 January 2007

“iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” David Haskin, Computerworld, 26 February 2007

“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” John C. Dvorak, 28 March 2007

Let’s take a break, and a trip down memory lane, back to January 9, 2007:

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 30 April 2007

“How do they deal with us?” Ed Zander, Motorola CEO/Chairman 10 May 2007

“Apple begins selling its revolutionary iPhone this summer and it will mark the end of the string of hits for the company.” Todd Sullivan, Seeking Alpha, 15 May 2007

“What does the iPhone offer that other cell phones do not already offer, or will offer soon? The answer is not very much… Apple’s stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 seems ambitious.” Laura Goldman, LSG Capital, 21 May 2007

“We Predict the iPhone will bomb. Which means that when the iPhone comes, Digg will likely be full of horror stories from the poor saps who camped out at their local AT&T store, only to find their purchase was buggier than a camp cabin.” Seth Porges, The Futurist, 7 June 2007

“The forthcoming (June 29) release of the Apple iPhone is going to be a bigger marketing flop than Ishtar and Waterworld combined. Because its designers forgot Platt’s First, Last, and Only Law of User Experience Design (“Know Thy User, for He Is Not Thee”), that product is going to crash in flames. Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype’s still hot. You heard it here first.” David S. Platt, Suckbusters!, 21 June 2007

“God himself could not design a device that could live up to all the hype that the iPhone has gotten.” Harvard computer science professor David Platt, 25 June 2007

I guess it pays to make professional-sounding predictions. Those prophesies embellished with colorful metaphors made me cringe even more. Again, to be fair, this is all about hindsight, and the smugness it confers. Also, I can’t imagine Steve Ballmer cheering Apple on anyway—nor Palm actively trying to make the Pre work with Apple’s iTunes.

See Also: The iPod Dealt With a Lot of Hate During It’s Debut

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Flipswap will give anyone as much as $350 for their iPhone plus a guaranteed $25 bonus with Droid proof of purchase. By taking advantage of this third party promotion, your readers will not only be the first of their friends with the latest gadget – but they’ll still have enough left over to buy out their current smart phone contract or pick up a Droid Multimedia Station.

The specifics are simple: Trade in your iPhone by November 30th and use promo code “getdroid” at checkout to receive a $25 bonus credit. Include a copy of your DROID purchase receipt with your traded phone as proof of purchase to receive the bonus. You can visit www.flipswap.com/DROID to check it out.

Whoever came up with this idea is taking quite a risk, and most likely hoping the Motorola DROID is making a splash as enjoys distribution in the US courtesy Verizon Wireless.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

In a certain sense, that claim is valid. How many RSS readers are available on the App Store? Ranging from free to several dollars in price, these kind of apps allow users to subscribe to liberal websites like The Huffington Post, or its right-wing counterparts. iSinglePayer’s creator pushes the Drudge Report app as an example of this alleged inconsistency.

To be honest I haven’t read what Apple publicizes as criteria for getting an app approved for the App Store. What’s clear for me though is the company’s consistent stance that they exercise control over the App Store to protect the users’ experience, to keep them from using apps that may severely affect the iPhone’s operation from a user-friendliness standpoint.

So what does that have to do with refusing an app on the grounds that it’s “politically charged”? Perhaps the availability of iSinglePayer on the app store may offend some of health care reform’s opponents, but how is that related to user-friendliness? There are also Bible apps officially available for the iPhone and iPod touch; using the same logic behind iSinglePayer’s disapproval, shouldn’t these be disallowed, on the grounds that they’re “politically charged” for atheists?

Again, the App Store is Apple’s creation, and they’re free to do what they want with it. But this whole issue (or “issue”, depending on how you look at it) is another situation that has left observers scratching their heads—and future iPhone developers wary of investing time and money into the App Store ecosystem. What do you think?

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Courtesy Julien Madérou

Seriously though, Madérou is a genius! He even made provisions for the iPhone cable! The instructions are available for printing on A4 or US letter (8.5″ x 11″) sheets, and are a simple matter of cutting out the template and following the video below.

I’m assuming a iPhone dock made out of Japanese paper will crumple in an instant once it bears the full weight, and at least one commenter on Julien’s blog post says the “paper weight may need to be increased.” If I do try this out (I’ll need to get an iPhone first), I’ll probably try cutting out some illustration board and scoring the folds for better pliability.

If you’ve already have your own paper iPhone dock, feel free to share just how much paper strength is called for.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

In a statement to the AFP, Apple says ” To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits… The iPhones with broken glass that we have analysed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone.”

In non-marketese layman-friendly terms, Apple is characterizing these incidents as isolated, most likely caused by user carelessness. What’s interesting are reports that at least one customer complaining of an iPhone exploding or cracking “without explanation… has so far refused to hand over the phone to Apple’s management for testing”.

Obviously, Apple’s using this to support their case, as it’s a case of the customer’s word versus the company’s. Still, if your iPhone exploded in your face, and you’ve heard that Apple is trying to keep things quiet, what would you do? Would you willingly hand over your destroyed gadget, even if it’s perhaps the only evidence that you had nothing to do—intentionally or accidentally—with its failure?

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Post from: The Gadget Blog

As stated in your article, Kevin Duerr is not “the leader of the team behind the high-profile Google Voice iPhone app.” His company, Riverturn, developed a Google Voice-related app for the iPhone called, VoiceCentral. The VoiceCentral app was accepted, then removed from the App Store. Can you please make this correction? Thanks.

The original post with corrections is below. Apologies to Kevin Duerr.

Apple-bashing seems to be en vogue nowadays. Both Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis and Kevin Duerr, leader of the team behind an iPhone app that was approved then removed from the App Store (VoiceCentral), have weighed in on Apple’s mobile app ecosystem. They somehow mix sense and snark into a cohesive whole.

Here’s Calacanis:

The Point: Add an “experimental mode” to the iPhone OS, and let us do whatever we want with our phones!

Next you’ve got Duerr, summarized into a five-point suggestion manifesto by Maclife.com:

1. Non-binding pre-approval
2. Complete overhaul of the approval process and team
3. Better communication
4. Appeals process
5. Fix the refunds Issue

The Point: Be more transparent and helpful to those who are investing time and money into your mobile platform, Apple!

Take note Apple! Both men love you, your Steve Jobs, and all your accomplishments. Calacanis has openly admitted spending tens of thousands dollars on Apple equipment, while Duerr was passionate enough to involve himself in iPhone OS app development.

Apple’s FCC Response Infuriates Google Voice App Developer

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Station Stops App

Since when did schedules for a mass transit service enjoy copyright protection? In any case, MTA spokesperson Kevin Ortiz has an unrelated explanation: ” ‘The bigger concern is that he is not licensed by us, so we can’t verify the information he is providing is correct. If people have problems with his information, they won’t be calling him. They’ll be calling us.’ ”

Fair enough, but the licensing agreement wants Schoenfield to sign would free them from any commitment to provide updated schedules! From Schoenfield:

Schedules change. Only MTA knows when. In order to keep my app up to date, I need every schedule change sent to me before its effective date, so my user’s app will be accurate and they don’t miss their train.

Under the contract, MTA will not notify me or automatically send me new data when the schedule changes. I need to somehow psychically predict when this is about to happen, and then send a request for a new CD-ROM – even then, MTA is under no obligation to send me one.

So what happened to the concern for providing reliable information? Even worse, the licensing proposal calls for retroactive fees and $5,000 on top of that.

And what about concerns over copyright? One reader at StationStops, Schoenfield’s blog, claims that the MTA’s scheduling information is available online—free for anyone with enough knowledge to download automatically. When a company fights against common sense, money’s probably involved—or at least the impression that money can be made.

Providing MTA customers with schedule information is not a cash cow for MTA to ‘milk’. Its a responsibility of theirs that they are incompetent in handling. The price pressure on iPhone apps is driving them down to a point where some apps – especially those which do not have a global market, like StationStops – are not making a profit. *I* have yet to make a profit on StationStops, and I have the paperwork to prove it.

Amen, Schoenfield. Amen.
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Post from: The Gadget Blog

At first glance, Apple is protecting its bottom line—which any publicly-listed company has a legal an obligation to do, given it’s responsibility to shareholders to increase share value and dividends. What I personally find disturbing about reports requiring silence in exchange for refunds is that the company wants to be held unaccountable for obvious design faults with its products. Something that literally explodes in your face and causes injury is a flaw that needs definite addressing.

I’m pretty sure Apple’s working on the problem as I write this, but the reality is that while patches (usually) do a good job of fixing software bugs, there’s really nothing much you do about hardware bugs, especially since iPhone users are locked into two-year contracts using the same device.

What Apple can do though is tell owners what steps to take with their iPhones and iPods—which the company already does to a certain degree, on its website. But that’s not enough. What’s needed is a clear announcement revealing that iPods and iPhones have actually exploded and caused injury to a minor percentage of owners. They should detail what steps they’ve taken to investigate the problem, making clear their findings to help people avoid the same fate.

Granted, this approach is honestly bad for business, as it sullies Apple’s reputation for great industrial design, and may even lead to government-mandated recalls. You can also bet it will lead to class action suits.

But the company should also consider the long-term benefits of being honest with their customers. I’m pretty sure the Steve Jobs fan club would immediately paint any explicit admission of exploding iPhones and iPods as a sign that the company has its customers’ best interests in mind—and they would be right. This is definitely better than trying to buy the silence of people, only seeing them complain to the media of Apple’s attempt to keep its slate clean.

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Post from: The Gadget Blog

Sean coded the port for free, and is apparently working on a version for the Palm Pre. Just to be clear, GV Mobile is just one part of the iPhone Google Voice suite; speculation that a Cydia version of GV Dialer is upcoming.

Has dissatisfaction over Apple’s walled garden approach reached a critical mass? Are the floodgates opening? Google Voice is easily the most high-profile app blocked from the iPhone ecosystem—at least for now. So it’s possible that it’s official exclusion may also increase awareness of the benefits (or “benefits”, depending on your point of view) of using a jailbroken iPhone.

Yet I’m not holding my breath, as Google Voice’s user base is limited by the service’s invitation-only status. The app’s blocking definitely elicited a lot of coverage online, but just how many people were affected by it?

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