Adding to this I’ve never gotten teary because of a TV Show before, that in itself speaks for the show’s reputation.

It’s been six years since it all began; I’ve spent hours upon hours watching this TV Show, reading analysis of it, listening to podcasts and much more. Damon and Carlton are incredibly talented and I couldn’t have imagined a better ending. Going to miss it heaps and LOST will have true essence in our society.

See you in another life brother.

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These points back up the fact that the iPhone prototype was purposefully leaked by Apple:

MobileMe and GPS Functionality

This is pretty obvious, the iPhone prototype was working and in use at the time it was ‘found’. MobileMe has a ‘Find My iPhone’ feature in which the iPhone can be tracked by GPS and a message can be displayed on the screen. The person who found this prototype reports that they called several Apple numbers to return the phone but no one took him seriously.

If Apple really did want the iPhone back immediately then they could have easily within a few hours located the iPhone or sent a message to it saying they wanted it back. But instead they decided to remotely brick it. If they could do that (this is one of MobileMe’s functionalities) why couldn’t they have done the other options which would have most likely resulted in it being returned?

Also, Apple has the highest level of secrecy and surely they would have the advanced system in place to get the GPS co-ordinates of a lost iPhone prototype?

Apple’s Secrecy Involving its Products

Apple is well known for their intense secrecy around product’s before release. One person even committed suicide due to them losing a previous iPhone prototype. I’m sure Apple will go to any lengthy including interrogation to prevent its trade secrets from being released. Normally devices are chained and bolted to desks in a room with no windows. Why did a common Apple employee have possession of such a secret device?

Maybe Apple’s executive team might have such a device but it confuses me as to why Apple would let one of their software engineers take this device into the wild when they are generally chained to desks deep inside Apple’s HQ.

The Person who Lost It

The 27 year old Gray Powell was at a German beer garden in Redwood City, California on the night he lost the iPhone prototype. Firstly, he was drinking. Who would drink knowing they might make some stupid choices when in the possession of a secret Apple device? While drinking the possibility of your iPhone disappearing is huge. No one would ever like to lose a device like this.

Secondly, why on earth would this guy not even bother to check he still had the device on him before he left that bar? If you were in possession of this kind of device, one would be keeping an eye on it every second of the day and make sure to check they still had it when leaving somewhere.

So Why Would Apple Leak an iPhone Prototype?

Apple is hugely secretive about their products however they do gain benefits in this device purposefully being leaked.

Hype is the key here, Gizmodo have received millions of page views and the features are being reported by all the major tech blogs and the huge news networks such as CNN, WSJ and NY Times. Twitter with 100 million users is buzzing right now with this news. Millions of people are talking about this device and the features it has, Apple likes that.

People have said that they will be buying the device and some have gone as far as saying that they are beginning to draw up apps that involve the new features that this iPhone has. Apple is going to gain huge benefits from this leak which is why I think they were the ones who leaked it on purpose.

Think different or agree? Do you think Apple really is gritting its teeth right now or enjoying the spotlight? Let your thoughts out in the comments!

Related posts:

1. 3G iPhone: What would you like to see?
2. iPhone 4 Launch Disaster: Conspiracy Theory
3. iPhone OS: The Best Strategic Move Ever

Apple have said that:

“We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10.”

This ‘magical and revoloutionary’ products popularity has been huge, with even Apple shocked by the number of units sold in the US. As Steve Jobs said, Apple just can’t produce iPads fast enough to meet with demand and therefore this news comes as no surprise.

However the New Zealand iPad page stays the same and it is evident that New Zealand will only see the iPad a while after the international late May release. TUAW have confirmed this in saying that

“The iPad’s UK page used to say “Coming late April.” Today that was changed to “Coming late May.” The good news is that Apple has set a pre-order date of May 10th in the UK, Canada, France, Australia and Germany.”

This is again dissapointing news for New Zealand and will most likely lead to hungry early adopters to order from US or Australia.

I have emailed Apple PR to see if there are any more details about the NZ launch and will update this if anything comes through.

UPDATE:

Apple have confirmed that this press release was only for those affected countries already getting the iPad and have no details on NZ launch.

Hi Anthony,

We have no details available for the launch of iPad in New Zealand at this time.

The alert sent overnight only affected the countries stated in our previous announcements, being Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

Kind regards, Fiona.

Also as a note this comes from an Australian representative rather than a US one.

Are you going to be getting an iPad and will you wait or source from another country? Let everyone know and comment!

Related posts:

1. iPhone 4 Launch Disaster: Conspiracy Theory
2. iPhone OS: The Best Strategic Move Ever
3. 4th Gen iPhone – Purposefully Leaked by Apple

What has since been the issue is 2degrees behavior on its Twitter account concerning the XT Outage. This started off with a fairly simple tweet from Geekzone founder @freitasm about using 2degrees data during the XT Outage. After this tweet a vastly uncalled for and cheeky mock about the outage was sent to Mauricio from 2degrees.

After this tweet I sent a reply to their Twitter account as shown below:

This resulted in another conversation between their Twitter account and myself which basically resulted in them not responding and deleting their original mock tweet about the XT outage. No apology to Telecom either.

Now I hope I’m not the only one but I think this was a totally uncalled for mock against XT; for a company with an already bad image on Twitter due to their recent ‘spam attack’ they should really be working on improving their online image rather than lowering it. It’s an unwritten rule amongst telcos not to attack another telco while it’s down.

Maybe this post is a bit over the top? However a Vodafone employee in Hungary was fired for something similar, once again 2degrees I am unimpressed, I suggest you smartly sharpen your Twitter image before you lose even more potential and current customers.

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1. 5 Awesome Twitter Web Apps
2. Olympic FAIL: Blue Screen of Death Strikes Birds Nest during the Opening Ceremony Torch Lighting – wondered what the technician thought when he looked up?

So I can’t really vouche for my absence from my blog but just to let you know I am here and good things are to come.

So I’ve realised in terms of dedication, blogging isn’t my thing, I like to write but often I lose interest in things very easilly. However one thing I always update is Twitter. Increasingly we are seeing blogs dying and Twitter taking over due to it’s ease of use and simplicity.

So no, my blog is not going to shut down or move. However I have decided that more ‘me’  blog posts will come on my tumblelog while tech posts will stay here. So you will be seeing quite a few more posts on ant.geek.nz and a few less here. I’ll aim to keep this blog updated with an informative post fortnightly or monthly, depending on how I go!

Make sure to subscribe to my tumblelog, you can do that here.

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This is why I think WordPress is the best blogging platform:

It’s Free!

This is the best thing! People love free stuff and so do I! Other platforms such as Movable Type Pro cost quite a bit of money and people don’t generally want to invest in a blog without any traffic and are unsure if it will succeed or not. WordPress is built by the community and for the community. With plugins and themes anyone can to their liking. Which brings me to my next point…

Plugins

WordPress plugins are awesome and incredibly easy to use with WordPress 2.7. They allow you to add great features to your blog or website with little fuss and ease of use. They provide great functionality and are free! My favourite plugins are  Twitterpress by Peppery, Optimal Title by Aaron Schaefer, FireStats by Omry Yadan and flickrRSS by Dave Kellam. What are yours?

Ease of Use

I use Dreamhost as my web host. As with other web hosts they provide awesome one click installs of some popular software. This makes it incredibly easy for someone to install WordPress. The navigation and admin panel in WordPress looks and acts amazing. It’s very easy to get around. They key elements are easily positioned. WordPress gives you the ability to operate a website without any programming knowledge. If installing WordPress on your blog is too hard for you, you can always try wordpress.com!

It Just Works!

It’s Apple’s favourite line but it’s very much applicable to WordPress. Since WordPress is so easy to use and there is such a large community behind it, it is always in its best form. Only occasionally do you get any error messages, if you do it’s normally on your end not WordPress’s. If you do come across an error with WordPress there is a huge community to help. Or feel free to Google it!

Themes!

With one click of a button you can easily change the look and feel of your blog! There are thousands and thousands of themes out there to easilly change your blog. A simple visit to the WordPress Themes Repository or a simple Google search will get you away with finding awesome WordPress themes!

Using WordPress makes you smarter.

Yes, it’s true, you’ll gain IQ points when you blog with WordPress because you do need to learn to take full advantage of it’s power. WordPress may be intimidating at first but after a walk-through of the system and a few tips, you begin to add plugins, try out different features, and generally start exploring all that WordPress has to offer.

Download WordPress today!

- – -

I have just touched on what WordPress has to offer. There are so many other features out there! What I love about WordPress is the versatility. Feel free to point out any other awesome uses or features of WordPress.

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

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So as you know I love list posts! Here I will describe the best parts and uses of Twitter I have discovered over this year.

Real Time Search and Results

Twitter Search has been named as a Google killer. What do you think? The keyword here is real time. With Twitter Search you can instantly know what is going on in an event straight after or during it. For example the Mumbai attacks were tweeted by thousands of people in real time. Events first were heard about through Twitter rather than any other classic news source. The news about the Hudson Plane Crash was first heard on Twitter by Janis Krums who posted a picture.  Another example was the President Obama inauguration. The list of events tweeted real time are endless.

Immediate Answers

Another awesome feature of Twitter is almost immediate answers to a question or anything else. For example if I were to ask “Why do some folders in Windows have blue text?” I would get the answer that the “folder is compressed” instantaneously. How cool is that?

If you are working on a project or trying to brainstorm ideas Twitter is even better! Just post a tweet and get loads of responses (depending on how many followers you have). The possibilities are endless!

Interact with your Favourite Companies

The companies on Twitter I love to interact with are Orcon and Vodafone. Not only can I know what is currently happening on the network and know about new features but I can easily message them for support. If I’m having a problem with any one of my accounts I can just send a message to one of the awesome guys there and they can
easily help me out! I’m not saying this is the right channel to go for support but it is one awesome way to get it quickly!

Building Awesome Relationships

This point is short! Over the past year I have made awesome online friends, you know who you are. With these people I haven’t tried to befriend them to get information or help, just want to hang!

Just Interacting with Your Friends

Well, isn’t that the point of Twitter? You’re right! Just finding out what your friends are doing is the best feature for me. Long are the days when you would have to wait to call your friends them to find out what’s new in their world. Twitter is here and it’s set to stay!

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Here I have just surfaced the uses of Twitter. Have anymore? Discuss! Can’t wait for my next year of tweeting!

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

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This is why I love Tumblr:

Easy As

It’s literally not much more than a click of a button (ok, maybe two or three clicks) to update your tumblelog. This feature of ease of use attracts many people to Tumblr as most people don’t have the patience to maintain a blog and write lengthy posts. My favourite ‘Goodie’ in updating my tumblelog is their bookmarklet. if I come across a nifty photo, video, link, quote or piece of text I want to share with my readers and friends all I have to do is click the Share on Tumblr bookmarklet in my bookmarks toolbar in Firefox and it automatically reads my mind in what I want to post. All I have to do after that is click Create and it posts the content to my Tumblr. Easy huh? Other nifty goodies for updating your tumblelog is an iPhone App, Mac OS X dashboard widget, call in audio, email posting and a variety of other awesome third party apps.

Customisable

With very little design or tech know-how you can easily create a beautiful tumblelog. One can choose a theme from Tumblr’s extraordinary Themes Garden or easily create one themselves. (It’s not that hard!)

Another cool feature is that you can register your own domain and link it with your tumblelog. This is a nifty idea for a lot of people as they can have their easy, great looking space on the web with their own domain name. This also provides uniqueness so that you are not just a subdomain of Tumblr.

Great Content

One can follow different tumblelogs and they can appear in their dashboard. As I look through my dashboard I see awesome  types of content. The content is almost always aesthetically pleasing and great looking. It’s great to know that people are putting out this awesome content not just to profit off ads but to add benefit to the Tumblr community.

It’s Cool

Tumbling is cool. It’s easy, takes little effort and a lot of fun. I can often sit and spend the whole day looking throughout different tumblelogs. Tumblr helps to promote your creativity and uniqueness.

If your not on Tumblr you should definitely sign up. It’s the place to be. While your exploring why don’t you check out my tumblelog?  Have any other reasons why you love Tumblr? Comment!

Enjoyed reading this post? If you want more you can subscribe to my RSS feed. Subscribe by email. Or if you want to know what I’m doing you can follow me on Twitter.

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So with the help of a fantastic plugin called InstantUpgrade (which is now obsolete due to to WordPress having this inbuilt feature) I quickly updated my blog. The obvious huge change was the visual design. All the actions are now on the left sidebar with drop down menus making it easier to find what you want when you want. The overall feel of the admin panel is much nicer due to the matching soft colour tones.

Another cool feature I have found is Quickpress, this lets you write a blog post right in your dashboard

and quickly and easily update your blog without any complicated hassle. WordPress has also added a feature called Turbo which allows for use with Gears. This will let you store most of WordPress’ images, scripts, and CSS files locally on your computer. This speeds up page load time. Another productivity tool that comes with WordPress, is the ease of uploading plugins. You can either search for plugins from the WordPress website or upload them, this is straight from your admin panel. So if you are at a computer without an FTP program you can still easily add plugins to your blog.

However with a beta release there are still going to be features that have not been included with this release. This beta release is for users to try out and find bugs etc. Already I have changed some CSS of my theme and now I cannot access the editor. I’m sure this will be fixed in the final release, due November 10.

So what is your favorite feature in the WordPress 2.7 beta 1 release?

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1. What I Learnt from my Blog FAIL

So basically the other day, my blog died. I spent an hour trying to restore it but my WordPress database was corrupted and I hadn’t backed it up since two months ago. So from then till now I have been trying to desperately repair my database and thanks to a few free tools and people I have succeeded.

However this has been a huge pain and wasted a lot of my time which could be spent doing many other things I have to do, so this is basically what I learnt from my blog FAIL.

1. Backup your database every night

Your database is the brain of your WordPress blog, it contains all the posts, comments, tags, categories, modifications, settings etc. Without this you would have no blog so this is a must do. I use a plugin called WP-DB Backup, which emails me a copy of my database every night. So if a problem ever happens It won’t be to much of a problem to restore it.

2. Have the latest version of WordPress running

This post mainly applies to WordPress blogs, but can be used universally. Newer versions of WordPress constantly fix up security holes and bugs in your blogging platform. Having the most up to date version of your blogging platform running means that you will have the best protection offered at that moment. Instead of struggling to upload the newest version each time it comes out there is a plugin called Instant Upgrade for WordPress which will easily take the files from WordPress and upload them to your blog with very little work done by you.

3. It’s not really the end of the world

It may feel like it but its not. All it is just a pain. If this happens to you and you havent followed steps listed above then take a deep breath and get to work. If you have a RSS feeds then your actual posts arent really lost as all the content is still in your feed.

So save your time and energy, a few moments spent now will save you a lot of time in the future.

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