As it turns out, the web almost crashed yesterday due to MJ’s death. I know you wanted to take the Internet with you, MJ, but believe me that it’s not worth it… at least not yet. Anyway; Twitter, Google and other websites collapsed and just wouldn’t cut it for the information hungry public. That’s sad, considering how important the internet is for information retrieval (actually, wasn’t it called the “Information superhighway” a few years ago? So much for “super” or even “highway”… I’m prone to calling it a “microroad” after this…). So I was listening to CNET’s Buzz Out Loud today and Tom Merrit was talking about how this called for an Emergency Broadcast System for the internet. Yeah, well, I really do agree. News and all sorts of information is available on demand on the internet, so it should be a no brainer to consider it the first source of news for most people, not just the tech savvy. So fix it! Do something about it! Not for HUGE pop star deaths though. That’d be stupid.

Speaking of Twitter (not really, just pathetically trying to link one story to the other), Microsoft announced Windows 7s pricing. $199.99 for Home Premium, $299.99 for Professional and $319.99 for Ultimate. Congratulations, Microsoft! You keep overpricing your products, but on a much more smaller scale! That means in the near (or far) future we might see your OSs costing what they’re actually worth (probably a few cents, 10 bucks TOPS).

And Sony might finally be on to something this year! The guys over at Ars Technica report a rumor that Sony might actually be cutting the price of the PS3 by… an undisclosed ammount at… an undisclosed date. But it’s something! If I had to predict, I would say about a hundred bucks on october. But then again it might be 10 cents on January 2010. Oh, and they also say that they’ll be launching the PS3 slim in fall this year. Who cares about that thing, anyway? And who told Sony that was a good idea? I remember this neat story when I walked into a tech service here in Santiago to get my PS2 checked up because the lens was failing. The guy on the counter had like 2 old, bulky PS2s and right next to them there was a PILE of PS2 slims waiting to get checked. Funny part? A friend of mine told me the exact same story when we were commenting the possibility of the PS3 Slim. AND SHE LIVES IN MEXICO. So it’s not like it was a widespread problem with the PS2 slim at all. I know the PS3 is bulky and big, but it’s at least pretty and it WORKS. I’m not sure I’ll be able to say the same thing about the PS3 Slim once it comes out… but oh well, if you’re risky (or stupid) enough to get one when it’s released, please contact me once you do and let me know if it stops working at all after a few days. Thanks!

So for today I have this really cool story about how bing is closing in on google in the web search business and how the future of mankind may change when Microsoft brings out a major robotic apocalypse and…

BUT WHO CARES!
The world could be burning up in this very moment and I wouldn’t care. Why? Because it’s iPhone OS 3.0 day, baby!

Okay, so the download was a pain: first of all, it wasn’t released on midnight and a whole bunch of people (myself included) were clicking the little “Check for Update” button in iTunes every five minutes expecting the god damned OS to come out. Well, it did. At 10 AM PST. That means it was 1 PM in Chile/EST. I know Apple never gave any specific time as to when the OS would be made available, but it was pretty much a safe bet that a whole bunch of people would stay up until midnight. Well, the OS never came and some of us went to bed with little time left to sleep (I for one slept only 3 hours. Not that you care or anything.)

Anyway, on a side note, some douchebag linked Apple’s Singapore website in Twitter, and every single twitterer went NUTS over that. Why? Because it listed the iPhone update being available on the EIGHTEENTH. Well, at least that’s what gave us a clue as to when the OS would be released.

Now onto what really matters! iPhone OS 3.0! Yay! Some hardcore cut, copy and paste action! Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “This is what iPhone OS 1.0 should’ve been, it’s not an upgrade, it’s just letting the phone do what it’s supposed to” and blah, blah, blah. And you know what? Yeah, it’s true, this is what iPhone OS 1.0 should’ve been, but Apple delivered so greatly that it doesn’t really matter.

The cut, copy and paste interface is nice and intuitive and pretty precise to be honest, and the new precision search for the iPod app (if you leave your finger on the screen, the dot will move slower allowing for better precision in searching that precise instant in a song or video you were looking for) is pretty hot. MMS (which I get to try because Claro delivered, unlike a certain Ma Bell… and I get unlimited MMS to boot) is pretty… well, straightforward. Once you access the new “messages” app (ex-SMS app), you get a snapshot icon right next to the text input bubble, and once you tap it you get to either take a photo or attach one from your photo album. I would add some screenshots, but I can’t take any right now so I’ll probably do that later.

Another wide expected feature was the spotlight search: phone-wide searching. Swipe your finger to the left or press the Home button on the first page of the Home screen and you’re taken to the spotlight interface. It’s pretty good and works pretty seamlessly, and searches in mail, contacts, iPod, notes… well, pretty much everywhere.

The voice memo app is pretty straight forward and the quality is pretty good. It also integrates directly with the Messages App, letting you MMS your voice note, and with the Mail app too.

Another thing that caught my attention was that photos taken with the camera look better. It’s quite amusing how much software upgrades can do so much. Not only the camera, but the whole device seems a lot faster and more responsive.

There’re also a whole bunch of minor fixes (some of them might be extremely important, but they’re still minor) that make the whole OS work pretty much GREAT, like sending up to five photos from the photo album via e-mail, better Safari browser (I know this isn’t exactly MINOR, but I’m running out of time here, so please bear with me…) that now can autocomplete and doesn’t crash every two minutes, stereo bluetooth support, landscape keyboard in mail and notes. Pretty much everything the iPhone OS needed changing.

So there you have it, my take on the iPhone OS 3.0. Does it make the iPhone the best phone in the market? Hardly. Does it make it better? Not really a better PHONE but a better device. The iPhone still has the same problems that it has always had with 3G reception and network coverage, but if you can get past that, it does work great. The thing is, it just lets the iPhone do what every single other smartphone in the planet can do.

Now, I won’t be back until next week since I’m going out of town for a few days, but I know you’ll live without me. All three of you that follow my blog. Just don’t miss me that much.

Until then!

I’ll set up a dedicated iPhone OS 3.0 post later.

For now, happy iHolidays! (Well, it did feel like christms at some point)

And I’m one of them. You may remember how I considered myself a sheep just for sticking with Claro for the iPhone 3Gs? Okay, here’s the demonstration of how sheepish I can be.

Let me put Chile for example: every single phone can be sold SIM locked (we only get GSM carriers, by the way), but must be unlocked on demand. That is BY LAW. What AT&T is doing, basically, is hooking up their customers just because of the device, not their service or rates or whatever. So it’s basically an iPhone monopoly: they can charge pretty much anything they like because they don’t have competition in that area. And we all know the iPhone is a pretty particular market in that accord, so they’re vouching for the market with the DEVICE, not their service. That’s definitely NOT free competition in my book… AT&T is a SERVICE provider; not a cell phone manufacturer.

Okay, that wasn’t technically supposed to be a rant against AT&T, but oh well, couldn’t help it. Moving on to more iPhone! The full price of the little piece of technology was leaked. By full price I mean the unsubsidized price. It’s around $700 for the 16GB model and $800 for the 32GB model, all Canadian. Why Canadian dollars? Because it turns out, as the guys over Electronista reported, the people that bring the iPhone over to Canada are even BIGGER douchebags than our resident American Telephone & Telegraph company… even if their stupid acronym doesn’t even mean that anymore. Okay, so here’s the deal: you either get a three-year contract with Rogers (that’s the company) or will have to buy it without a contract. The catch is, if you want to upgrade, you have to have at least two years of cell phone service with Rogers. If not, you have to pay the full contract-free price. Now, AT&T announced they would be charging around $400 for the 16GB model and $500 for the 32GB if you wanted to upgrade. Suddenly they don’t sound like the huge douchebags they did a few paragraphs ago… still douchbags, just not that baggy.

And the Pre gets hacked! That’s right, a bunch of guys found a way to tether the Pre’s 3G connection to computers via Bluetooth. Now, Palm OBVIOUSLY asked people to stop duscussing the issue, worried that Sprint will probably complain and do something about it. But if you ask me, guys, keep going! Charging for Tethering is just retarded. Those of us that have smartphones (or even internet-able regular phones) are ALREADY paying for data plans. Why should we pay MORE!? Now that I think about it, I have no idea if Claro is going to create a “Tethering plan” for the 3Gs… if they do, I’m gonna be oh so ANGRY!

Enough cell phones! Let’s talk about… Adobe. The worst programmers in history that found a way to actually do some decent coding with CS4 have decided to start competing with Google in the online document management field, for real. The beta is off of Acrobat.com and I’m happy to report that… well, it works. It is kinda slow and choppy, but the service is pretty good. And you get to convert up to 5 documents to PDF for free! I know, it’s kinda crappy since there are tons of other ways to convert to PDF for free, but if you HAVE to do it with Acrobat, it’s a pretty nice initiative. Also, I’m happy to report that Buzzword is working and… apparently still in Beta. Tables and Presentation aren’t even on the application yet, as they’re not even Beta yet. And the ConnectNow feature is… well, I have to admit pretty robust. It lets you connect with up to two more people for free, if you sign up for the basic plan you can connect with up to four more people, and if you sign up for the best (and most expensive) plan, with up to 20 people. And downloads of shared documents are limited to 100 in th basic plan. Now nevermind the prices, but charging for basically converting up to 10 files to PDF a month for $14.99 a month (or unlimited if you’re willing to pay $39 a month or $390 per year. Yeah, the basic yearly subscription fee is $149) and ConnectNow… don’t you think it’s a little bit WAY too overpriced? I mean, there are some pretty good free PDF converters out there for Windows and MacOS X has it integrated by default. The app may look nice, but it’s kinda slow and choppy, so that adds even more to the insult. And you get like 5 typesets in Buzzword! AND limited downloads?! It may look WAY better than Google Docs, but I’m staying there, thankyouverymuch. I may use the PDF conversion feature if I’m in a hurry and not in my house and… well, you get the idea. It’ll take some pretty damn specific conditions for me to use it.

And it’s Sony again, this time for the PSP. Rumor has it that a PSP App Store is going to be unveiled at Cologne Gamescom. PSP not-game-App Store. PSP Go anyone? If the rumor is true, then we might have finally gotten a clue as to WHO is Sony marketting this gadget to. And let me tell you, it’ll fail. Competing against the iPod Touch is no small feat, considering the PSP Go’s launch price is going to be the same as the iPod Touch, sans the touch screen. And with some awkwardly placed gaming controls. The design looks pretty slick and nice, but it still has no touch screen. Now, since Sony has made no mention whatsoever of what current PSP consumers like myself will do with our UMD games (all two of them) if we want to upgrade to the PSP Go, it’s pretty much a safe bet that the thing is definitely going to be competing against the iPod Touch, not against the DS (a battle already lost by the regular PSP. No point in alienating your small-ish (in relative terms) consumer base… wait, it’s a little too late for that now, isn’t it…?). My prediction…? The PSP Go will be a MAJOR failure, as much as a cool gadget it looks.

Now this is… well, sort of weird. You know how ultra-orthodox Jews can be even more strict than, say, Mormons? Well, it turns out there’s a KOSHER SEARCH ENGINE. Okay, it’s not technically KOSHER, but it works pretty much the same way. It basically filters out anything not admissible for ultra-orthodox Jews (like porn and the like) and just… well, doesn’t work on Sabbath. The name of the website? Koogle. Get it? Kosher+Google? I think it’s also a Jewish desert or side dish or something, but I like the Kosher meets Google theory better.

More search… engine… things. Remember Google Blog search? Well, it turns out that Google is coming up with Google MICROBlog search. A nifty little service that ought to make someone happy. Not me, but SOMEONE is bound to be glad they did this. The option will filter results by relevance and whatnot, blah blah blah. Common Google stuff. When will it be ready…? Well, it’s Google. It’ll probably take forever until the service is completed, but then again I could be incredibly wrong, according to this. But I still doubt I’ll be wrong and it most likely won’t be released until AT LEAST the end of the summer.

And now porn! And more Miscrosoft! Two words I never expected to be saying together in the same paragraph, but oh well… *shivers*

Turns out that our working ants at Bing came up with a new way of filtering out explicit content from search results: give them their own return domain. But make sure it’s invisible to the end user… okay? The idea behind this is that all explicit content filters through explicit.bing.com and, say, a worried parent could filter out explicit.bing.com in their router. Or a creepy government could filter out Google AND explicit.bing.com (I’m looking at you, China. I say this is a better idea than that creepy SPYware-thingy). Okay, I have to admit, it’s a pretty damn good idea. I’ll shut up now.

And last, but not least, it’s NVIDIA! Engadget reports they unveiled five new mobile GPU units, with memory going from 512MB to 1GB, all GDDR3 of course. They’re sort of marketing them like the iPhone 3G… remember that? “Double the performance, half the power consumption”. The cards are SLI AND will be native compatible with DirectX 10.1. This is to fill in “holes” they perceive in their next gen GPU lineup… so… if I get this straight, we’ll be having EIGHT different mobile GPUs? That’s A LOT. I guess the more the merrier, huh?

Moving on. As expected, Twitter was mentioned pretty much everywhere BUT CNN today. I’m still amazed at the power of Twitter DIY journalism and the lack of interest from mainstream U.S. media in such an important topic, but then again, I may be twisting the facts. Now, of course probably half of the stuff that showed up in Twitter was rumors and whatnot, but it’s still pretty damn amazing. Oh, and I should note that a few minutes after I finished posting last night, CNN’s top story in the U.S. edition of their website was… yeah, still the DTV switchover. But a good hour or so after that they changed it to Iran! Kudos, CNN! You did your job! Oh, and I’m in love with the “Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran” blog post in ReadWriteWeb. Defend CNN as much as you want people, but they still managed to cover the event in their international edition while the U.S. edition was getting, well, not meaningless, but WAY less important news about whatever. So lack of coverage because they could not film it? Not likely…

And GPS! Well, this is also old news but I didn’t comment on this earlier for some god forsaken reason. TomTom for the iPhone! Now, you will have to have their proprietary car dock to use it, which will probably be a bit expensive (not as much as a new TomTom GPS definitely) and you will have to install the TomTom app which will be available in the AppStore at… an undisclosed date, for an undisclosed price.

My bet? The whole package is going to be around $50-$60, but it might gets as high as $100. The app is probably going to be somewhat cheap (For a turn by turn GPS app that actually talks to you. I still don’t expect it to be over $20) and the money is most likely going to go to the car dock. But it’s still a pretty cool dock: charges your phone, boosts the iPhone’s GPS capabilities, boosts the speakers and works as a hands free device too. Oh yeah, I’ll be getting it as soon as I can. Only if TomTom decides that Chile is deserving of their software unlike a certain Google Earth app…

Twitter, let me congratulate you and your twitterers and the awesome piece of history you have just let me witness. To elaborate a little bit more, CNN decided not to cover the riots in Tehran, and apparently a whole lot of American media passed on the story too. Instead, CNN at least decided to cover how the FCC got 300,000 calls about DTV switchover problems. Had this happened in other circumstances, I would’ve definitely picked on that and make fun of it, but granted that this is way more important, I’ll let that pass (you just saved yourself from humiliation on my part, 2.8 million unprepared households!).

The thing is, the second and third most trending topics in Twitter were #CNNFail and #IranElection. Once I went to find out what it was all about, it blew my mind. Twitterers in Iran and all over the world were REPORTING ON THE ISSUE, constantly shaming CNN for their lack of coverage on the matter.

This is like DIY journalism! Why on earth would American media pass on such an important matter is completely beyond me, but I’m reading the story got AT BEST thirty seconds on any given news program, who decided to instead focus on the DTV switchover, some granny that had a meth lab in her house and I have no idea who going to a sex shop.

Now, what intrigues me the most is the difference between both the U.S. version of CNN’s website and their international edition. Are they trying to downplay the whole deal? I mean, this SURELY has got to be more important that DTV switchover, never mind those 2.8 million people that were completely beyond helping in the first place (I mean, after delaying the switchover almost six months there STILL WERE PEOPLE that didn’t get it? Come on).

For the time being, all I have to do is say, congratulations Twitter, for constantly amazing me and giving this otherwise uneventful weekend a complete twist, making it definitely one of the most interesting ones I’ve had in a while!

For the time being, a screenshot of CNN’s website front page at the time I wrote this. The picture on the left is from CNN’s U.S. website, and the one on the right is the international version. Pretty damn amazing, huh?