Jeffzilla

I just read over on Gizmodo, by way of Macrumors that the AT&T/Starbucks wifi access deal is starting up offering free Wifi internet access to iPhone customers. Sounds great to me - IF I actually had an iPhone. I do, however, have a Macbook Pro, with the latest version of Safari, Apple’s speedy fast web browser.

Can I get leverage the iPhone deal to get free wifi on my Macbook Pro?

One little known feature of Safari is the “Develop” menu bar. You can use this option to change the User Agent Safari presents. I think that by changing the User Agent of Safari to “Mobile Safari 1.1.3 - iPhone”, I could trick the Starbucks router into giving me free wifi. What do you think?

To enable the “Develop” menu, go into Safari’s preferences, then advanced, then check the box next to “show Develop in menu bar”. Then, when you go back to using safari, you’ll see a Develop menu in the menu bar. Open that menu, and under the “User Agent”, select “Mobile Safari 1.1.3 - iPhone”.

I haven’t directly tested this yet, but it would be great if it actually worked! Anyone had a go at this yet?

**Update Update**…. 

The timestamp doesnt lie. I reported it first. Just saw over on Engadget and and Macrumors Forums they are also reporting the same hack for starbucks wifi access with safari by switching the user agent. Did they get it from me? Who knows.. but look at the timestamps.. I put it up first! Wheee…

Could Last.fm be used by the music industry lawyers to find, track, and nail music piraters?

Here’s my thinking: a user downloads a pirated copy of a new, unreleased album from Bit Torrent, or any other file sharing site, puts it in their iTunes, and then starts listening. While they are listening, naturally, their Last.fm plugin is reporting back the track/artist/album names to Last.fm, to be posted in real time, time stamped, on their personal profile. If that album is unreleased, then how would the user be listening to it already? They must be stealing music. And those timestamps on each track are good evidence.

What’s the privacy like on Last.fm? Would they ever allow music industry lawyers access to their user/track database? With full access to that information, it seems it would be fairly easy to cross reference track names and listening times, then compare that information to release dates and narrow down a list of, for example, users who listened to tracks from Madonna’s new album before the release date. Then they just need to cross-reference those usernames with their real contact info/email address/other personal profile info, and bam.

Instant Messaging while on the go - It’s increasingly more essential, yet with many current software/hardware offerings, increasingly more frustrating. 

I carry a Blackberry Curve 8300, which has its strengths and weaknesses. The hardware is actually decent, well built, good screen etc. The software, however, is absolutely worthless. It honestly feels like a 1st try beta version. There are random menu items where they’re not needed (example: “call voice mail” option in the camera options menu - why?!?!), and the UI is so un-optimized that despite reasonably powerful hardware, the thing still crawls doing the most basic tasks. One of those basic tasks, which you’d think the curve would be able to do easily is instant messaging. The Blackberry Messenger does work well, but not everybody has a Blackberry - probably for the better. I use AIM and gChat mostly. While there are decent clients for both of these networks, when running either one of them, it causes the rest of the phone to grind to a halt - text takes 5 seconds to come up after you’ve typed it, and it takes till the 4th ring for the os to catch up and allow you to actually take a call. Amazing how they could actually sell a product like this.

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Pushing forward on the viral, social, apparel front, CNN is now printing one-off headline T-shirts. Now, if you go to the homepage, you can click the little mini t-shirt icon next to a headline, and poof, get a black, white or grey T-shirt made with that headline, time-stamp, and CNN logo on it. Absolutely amazing.

The best part about it is it’s hackable. You can put your own headline on custom CNN headline t-shirts simply by changing the text in the url. Imagine the possibilities here - put any headline or phrase you want into a CNN-branded tshirt.

Shirts are $15, plus $4.99 for shipping. They’re luckily printed on ultra comfy American Apparel shirts, which is very welcome - screw those crappy “beefy-t’s”. Looks like they’ve partnered with Spreadshirt for printing and distribution. More info on CNN’s FAQ.

Additionally, this is purely an impulse item. The headlines are only available to be printed while the headline is in the current news section - as soon as it’s old news, the shirt is history. Finally, CNN is fixing to go ultra viral on this. They’re including links to post your shirt to facebook, and since they are strictly time limited, the buzz factor is set to be huge.

Kroosh also posted on this at nearly the same time. We were competing to see who could get it up first/get the most crawl etc. Who won?

The latest album from M83, Saturdays = Youth is out as of April 14th, and it’s purely wonderful. A slight departure from the sounds of the previous albums, especially digital shades, but great in its own way. This album holds its own among Anthony Gonzalez’s repertoire of M83 sounds, but fits perfectly within it. The 80’s, song driven style is solid and makes the album listenable from beginning to end. M83 is one of those sounds that I very frequently put on when I need to buckle down to some serious work, focus, or just walk around and get lost in thought.

Additionally, offering it on iTunes as iTunes Plus (DRM free) makes it actually worth going for the instant gratification iTunes route. I’m a little sad to not have the full album artwork, and feel bad for contributing to the downfall of physical packaging artwork, but love the idea of not cluttering my bookshelf with more physical jewel cases. The higher quality and DRM freeness of iTunes Plus makes it a viable music purchasing channel.

Here’s the first single from the new album: Graveyard Girl by M83

My blog runs on the Wordpress platform, which works great. Lately, I’ve been trying to open up as many avenues for posting as possible. I want to make is as easy as I possibly can to publish - including what I’m reading, viewing, notes from my office, from home, from out and about in the city, all the way to remote regions I hope to explore soon. Being able to post from anywhere also ties into this story I read today about a kid who used Twitter via SMS to alert his friends of his arrest.  

Here’s a list of my current and future posting methods:

• Direct wordpress post - done
  • Easy - its the core of the basic wordpress interface.

• Writing/formatting posts offline, for posting when online - done
  • I’m using Qumana for Mac OS X, which offers great integration with my blog categories, posts, formatting etc. I can compose a post offline (such as while flying, etc), format it up, and then just hit the “post now” button when I get an internet connection. It even handles pinging for me.
     
• Posting Photos - Done
  • Another otherwise complex task, made simply by Flickr. I can use the “post to blog” button in flickr to post a selected photo direct to the blog. I went through a few setup steps, and that was it
  • Additionally, I can email Flickr photos using a specially formatted email address, and have Flickr add the photo to my Flickr photostream, and also have it post the photo directly to my blog. Great great for getting a photo up asap, and even better for posting photos “from the field” - IE quick snaps taken with my cameraphone. Action as it happens, baby.

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testing out posting to my blog via twitter - if this works, i will be able to blog via sms via twitter. any other ways to blog via sms?

Thanks to a link from Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer, I’m now fearing for my life. The New York Times just ran a piece on the blogger culture, where bloggers are paid by the post. They stress to the max to stay on top of the latest trends, churn out posts, and make their blog rise, or stay at the top. So much stress, in fact, that in recent history, bloggers Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant have both died - most likely at least partially from conditions brought on by the stress of the blogosphere. While my blog isn’t anywhere near the top, I’m still getting a little tinge of this stress. Throughout the day thinking about what the next story will be, who will read it, what else it will tie into etc. It’s great to have my own platform to discuss whats interesting - but a big responsibility too.

Wired’s “Death by Blogging” story also ties into an article published in the April 2008 Wired about the bitter rivalry between tech-gadget blogs Engadget and Gizmodo, and what it’s taken their editors Brian Lam and Ryan Block to stay on top. This includes competitive trade show sniping, year in advance hotel bookings, and two week long abstenence rituals, like Thai Boxing trainers. The stakes, and stress are ultra high for these guys - but so is the payoff. 

Read about Death by Blogging

Read about Tradeshow Sniping

Recently at the Beet.TV Executive Summit in Washington, Wall Street Journal writer Walt Mossberg spoke on the convergence of computer and TV entertainment, internet bandwidth, and the importance regulation/deregulation from the top.

I’m with Walt on this. The critical step for converging TV and computer content/entertainment, and allowing us to take the next step in rich content delivery, communication, and integration is bandwidth. Insuring that access to network bandwidth does not become more metered, restricted and taxed, and that it becomes increasingly more plentiful and open is critical.

Also in this talk, Walt foreshadows the release of the 3G iPhone in the next 60 days - I’ll be the first in line when it does come out! As for bandwidth and 3G - I think that when the 3G iPhone does launch, AT&T seriously needs to get their act together with the 3G data network throughput - having all those users able to browse the web, directly download/stream media, and use other data intensive applications (iChat AV?) is going to put a serious strain on the network.

Here’s the video of Walt Mossberg speaking on Beet.TV about broadband speed, rich media, and the iPhone.