Why you should not allow online companies to have control over your contents, data, devices

I bought a video on Amazon a while back, today when me and my friends wanted to watch this video, this is what I got on Amazon Video:

Video currently unavailable for playback and download. Due to our licensing agreements this video is currently not available for online viewing or downloading. If you have downloaded this video to a PC or TiVo DVR you can continue to watch it from that location.

Amazon sux!
Entertainment Industry sux!
15 dollar down the drain.

Lesson: Don't let online companies have control over your data files, contents, and devices.

These days all companies (offline and online) are trying to

1. grab as much of your personal information as possible... Facebook, Google...
   
2. control as much of your music n video files, contents, devices as possible... majority of Entertainment Industry and Publishing Industry, Google, Apple
   
3. separate as much of your money from you as possible... Apple, Sony...
   

Here are some ways companies control your data files, contents, and devices.

Data files (including books, music, video):

• Amazon Kindle controls all the kindle books you bought. They can remove any of the books you bought anytime. This is applicable to to other DRM based digital books too.
  
• Amazon Video and Apple iTunes control all the video you bought.
• Apple iTunes controls your music too.

[While I was writing above, the root of all these problems is DRM]

Contents:

• Online Email Services - Google, Yahoo, Hotmail
• Social networking sites - facebook, myspace
• Blogging sites - blogspot, wordpress
• Website hosting - Google
• Other services like - Calendar, photo
  

Devices:

• iPhone and iPods
  

There are lot of people who don't use any of these things and they are just fine. But in today's life, many of these services can actually help if you use they judiciously. Everybody has different needs and lifestyle. So decide for yourself how much control you want to give to these online companies.

Windows 7 GodMode is awesome!

Here is the wiki on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Master_Control_Panel_shortcut

In short:

Create a new folder and name it
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

That's it!!!

Adding lyrics in iPhone using Mp3TagEditor

These links helped me:

• http://iphone.macworld.com/2008/01/how_to_sing_along_with_iphone.php
• Import lyrics from websites

For metals, use darklyrics web script to import lyrics from album at once, for others you have to do one song at a time (Hint: Use keyboard shortcuts to do it fast).

Once lyrcis have been added, remove those songs from iTunes, add them again to iTunes and sync iPhone. (I just removed the artists folder completely and added them again to save myself headache of doing this for individual songs)

iPhone's most ignored flaw

One of the biggest flaw of iPhone is that it can easily slip from your hand and fall on the ground. It has happened to me a few times. Apple has made it all shiny and rounded and slippery. Is it supposed to be kept in a exhibition hall or museum? The other phones in the market are much more better in this aspect. Apple should do some research and look in the kitchen and fridge and see how the utensils, bottles, cans etc are made so that those items don't slip from your hand.

Like iPhone's unstable OS, this is another flaw which gets ignored because of its features.

Windows 7 bug: no way to edit environment varibale graphically

When you try to change environment variable by clicking on "Computer\RightClick\Properties\Advanced System Settings", it will ask for "admin" password. Once you enter admin password, go to "System Properties\Advanced\Environment Variables". Here, you get a choice to change environment variable of "Admin" account or the "System".

So, only way to change your environment variable is to directly edit registry. This is a bug, since I was able to do this in Windows XP. On other note, why changing your own environment variable is a "System property"? It should be a user account property.

iPhone's unstability reminds me of Windows 95

I am running iPhone OS 3.0 on iPhone 3G. It is slow and unstable. It crashes sometimes, hangs sometimes and drops calls sometimes. Out of all the cell phones I have owned and I know of, iPhone is the most unstable. But I like it simply because it meets my requirements best with its user experience and apps.

This reminds of Windows 95 which used to crash often (I think mostly because of buggy drivers and applications), but people used it because it had so many cool things that people didn't mind those tiny nuances of crashes. As a side note, I used Windows 95 mainly for watching videos and playing games, for everything else I used Solaris or Red Hat Linux; I switched my main platform from Red Hat Linux to Windows after the release of Windows XP and me realizing that Windows has finally got kernel protection and is not easy to crash.

iPhone problems which I encounter daily or frequently:
- drops call while talking (never happened with any other cell phones I owned - all on AT&T network)
- sometimes it will just refuse to charge from my laptop, but can do sync. I tried more than ten times today, but it wouldn't charge.
- hangs sometimes - I think some of the apps I have may be buggy
- sometimes very slow and unresponsive
- sometimes screen goes blank and wouldn't come up no matter whatever you try.

iPhone simulator for Windows

Before I install any new software/app, I like to test it or get a feel of it in a virtual environment. On Windows it is easy. But so far, I have not been able to find a way to run iPhone apps in a virtual environment.

I think iTunes should have been able to test drive iPhone apps, but it doesn't.

The steps to create iPhone simulator are straight-forward:

1. Have an emulator for ARM processor (the processor in iPhone)
2. Get a modified version of iPhone OS (either from the apple website, or iPhone and then modify it like http://www.osx86project.org/ )
3. And design a nice UI to itegrate the iPhone hardware emulator and the OS; also import apps from iTunes, run jail-broken iPhone apps.

Looks like this has not been done.


Here are the closest I could find:

1. iBBDemo - Blackbaud iPhone Browser Simulator - simulates iPhone's safari web browser.
2. http://www.genuitec.com/mobile/ - Simulates iPhone's safari web browser.
3. Desktop iPhone from Ribbit - This is a webapp written using Adobe Air. You need to install Adobe Air to run it. It can simulate some pre-defined apps, you may need to create account with Ribbit. To me this looks like a pretty useless software. Here is a video of someone trying this.