Last night I took the plunge and updated my iPhone to software version 2.0. It’s taken me a while to warm up to the idea, mostly because I was scared that it would make my iPhone unuseable. Also, there are a few software packages that I was waiting to have ported over to the new Cydia/Installer so that I could get the same functionality that I enjoyed with my version 1.1.4 iPhone.
I would like to say that the upgrade was successful, painless, and I thoroughly enjoy my “new” iPhone!
I’ve tried the new browser from Google called Chrome. I kind of love it. It is amazingly fast, especially on google sites. I love the ease at which you can drag tabs out of the window and into it’s own window. The homepage that shows thumbnails of your most visited sites and the bookmark links listed down the right hand side is very useful as well.
A few other items that I really enjoy are:
At this one point, there is really only one thing that I would change about Chrome. You can’t set a master password for all your saved passwords. I guess it’s not that big of a deal when it’s on a desktop in your own house but it would be something I would want on a notebook. If there are other things that come up as I use it more, I’ll probably post an update.
Download Chrome here and try it for yourself. [Windows Only]
Google – Now searching one TRILLION unique URLs.
Interesting… all those sites and I still can’t find one that will help me to get a gmail authorization letter to successfully be accepted by Juno or, at least, a work around for my issue.
Okay, so I’m going to visit Costa Rica in late August and I figured it would be cool to have my iPhone weather app show me the weather in San Jose. I started up the app, added San Jose, CR to the list, and waited for the update. I was shocked to see the temperature in the 50s. I thought to myself, no way! It’s a rainforest! How can it be that cold!? For the last few weeks, I’ve just thought that I had some warped sense of what the temperature should be in San Jose, Costa Rica.
This past weekend I was in the car with Mike on our way to Las Vegas. The temperature of Costa Rica came up. Mike has been to San Jose, Costa Rica. He mentioned that, when he was there (about the same time I’m going), the temperatures were in the 80s. This got me thinking and today I decided to look up the temperature on Weather.com. Guess what!? The temperature in San Jose today was 82 degrees. A far cry from the 52 that my iPhone was telling me. So what gives? The weather is supposed to be coming from Yahoo! but even on their weahter site, the temp for San Jose differs greatly from what the iPhone says. Has anyone seen strange behaviors when it comes to the weather application?
*iPhone screenshot courtesy of my cousin Adam.
I’ve spent a good amount of time these past two days updating my album art in iTunes. Like most people, I enjoy the coverflow feature in iTunes but I’ve recently become fed up with the missing artwork or the lesser quality images that some of my tracks have associated with them. That’s is why I decided to take on this endeavor. Lucky for me, I have a lot of images already in my library and the updating isn’t too massive. It’s still taking a lot of time though. Currently, I am on the R’s in my library. Just a few more to go, I hope. Going forward it will be easier to keep my new tracks up to date. I get these weird obsessions every once in a while, but is that such a bad thing?
Mint.com is a website that allows you to view all of your financial accounts in one location. It gives you an overview of your financial life. Signing up for Mint is incredibly easy and takes only a few minutes. The only identifying information that is asked of you is an email address, zip code, and a password. Once you have an account created, you can begin adding your financial accounts.
Don’t worry, Mint is safe. (view a video about it here) Mint utilizes Yodlee for financial account storage and connection. Yodlee has been around for 10 years and powers many of the large banks that allow for online banking (Bank of America). If someone were to gain access to your Mint account, all they would be able to see is how often you go to the grocery store and how much you spend each time… and this info wouldn’t be attached to your name, address, or other personal information, just your login with Mint. Pretty safe, in my opinion. Of course, there are people out there that aren’t going to be comfortable with Mint and giving up their login information and that’s fine.
For those of you who do want to give this a shot, please do. The founder of Mint used to balance his check book every month, but soon fell behind. He realized, as I did quite a few years ago, that balancing a check book isn’t the only way to keep on top of your spending or keeping your various accounts in check.
By the way, I have every credit card account, every investment account, and my main banking accounts (checking and savings) tied into Mint at the moment. I’m loving it. I have SMS alerts setup for when payments are due on the credit cards. I have Mint setup to send me a SMS if an unusually large purchase is made or a banking account balance falls below a specific amount. I also have a monthly budget setup that greets me every day when I log into Mint so I can see how I’m doing. It’s a one stop shop for my financial account health and it’s already saving me time.
So, do you use Mint?
I’ve always been really slow to return my NetFlix movies. Sometimes, I’ve even been known to keep a disc for a couple of months. Yeah, I know, I’m Netflix ideal customer. :) Anyway, these past few weeks I have been really good at watching 2 or 3 movies a week and returning them. My queue still has about 250 movies on it but at least I’m trying to make a dent. So, do you use Netflix? If so, how good are you at moving through your queue?
Well, I’m now able to stream audio and video to my XBox360. The system refresh I did last night worked like a charm. I’m totally getting tired of all the things that can and do go wrong with PCs. I think that my next desktop purchase will be a Mac. There used to be things that I would use a PC for that kept me from going all Mac but I can’t really think of any of them now. I’m going to have to keep a list when I do come across these things to see if there is a way to accomplish them on a Mac. For now, I’m good and my PC is behaving. How long will it last?
Firefox is trying to set a guiness world record for most downloads of a software program in a 24 hour period. They have setup a site where you can pledge to be part of it and they will send you a reminder on the day that Firefox 3 is released. If you’re a Firefox user and you are going to download the new version anyway, why not pledge to download it on the day it’s released and help them achieve their goal? I’ve been using a beta version of Firefox for the last month and some of the improvements are amazing.
My PC problems are on the way to recovery. Last night I did a fresh install of Windows Vista on my PC. WatchNow from Netflix works once again. I’m hoping that the other issues I was having with my Vista box and my XBox360 have been fixed as well. I will test that out later this evening. Right now, I’m just happy that the PC is back up and running.