Well I installed iOS 4.0.1 on my iPhone 4 and it sure did change how my bars are displayed. In fact, I don’t have any bars but instead the “Searching…” status message. I let my phone sit for 10 minutes and it only went away after two hard reboots.

Anyone else experience this?

One another note, I do like the new way bars are displayed. It seem to me that Apple was displaying the lower bars too small compared to other phone on the market.

Posted via email from Georgeology

So far my iOS 4 experience on my iPhone 4 has been very good. There are however a few bugs that have cropped up.

The first major bug is with sending email with Gmail configured to use Exchange/ActiveSync. With this problem any emails that originate from outside Mail, such as emailing a photo, get stuck in the outbox until you manually go in an click send on each individuality. This goes not happen when it is configured to use IMAP.  

The next bug is in Photos or the camera roll which will occasionally displays images misaligned with the screen or just a plain black background (it should be white). The picture below should show the images in your camera roll tiled on the screen but instead it is just black.

Posted via email from Georgeology

Whether it technically is a “retina” display or not, after looking at a side-by-side comparison of the iPhone 3G S and the iPhone 4, it is pretty clear that the new display on the iPhone 4 is an impressive improvement.

Click to see high resolution version. Photos from Robert Scoble under (cc) license.

Dropbox

The most hyped of these services and the one I have the most experience with. I have used Dropbox to sync my school files between a netbook and my main desktop at home for the past two semesters and it has been rock solid. I have had absolutely no issues with Dropbox in this time.

Pros:

• Simply installation with no configuration necessary.
• Free 2GB plan.
• Public folder
• Fast uploads and downloads.
• File versioning.
• Fast synchronization
• Web interface
• LAN Sync
• Windows, Mac, and Linux

Cons:

• Most expensive. Cheapest paid plan is 50GB for $10/month.
• Would like a $5 tier.
• Limited to only one sync folder. (This feature is planned for 0.9 release)
• No way to specify which computers to sync to. (This feature is planned for 0.8 release)

SugarSync

SugarSync offers the most features of any of these services at an affordable price. Is my favorite of the group but has one major handicap.

Pros:

• Ability to sync any folder.
• Ability to specify which computers to sync to.
• Create public links to any file.
• Web Archive (Cloud-only storage)
• Most affordable with 30GB for $5/month
• Fast uploads
• Web interface
• Windows and Mac

Cons:

• Download are painfully slow. Downloads seem to average around 50kBps.
• Free 2GB plan is limited to 2 computers.
• No Linux support.

SpiderOak

This is a newly discovered service I have been testing out because of my problems with SugarSync.

Pros:

• Ability to sync any folder.
• Ability to specify which computers to sync to.
• Public “rooms” to share files.
• Web interface
• Best value with 100GB for $10
• Fast uploads and downloads
• File versioning and saves deleted files.
• Windows, Mac, and Linux

Cons:

• Would like a $5 tier.
• Synchronization is slower that the other two. Near instant vs. 15-30 seconds.
• Stability issues?? I have notice some stability issues related to connectivity and the client crashing.

Overall I like Dropbox for its simplicity and robustness but I can not justify the price until versions 0.8 and 0.9 are rolled out in the next year. SugarSync is the service I would probably have settled on until I noticed the speed issues. SpiderOak is nice but I would like to see a lower pricing tier. It also is backup services first and a synchronization service second.

I will for now continue to use Dropbox to synchronize my working files while I rely on JungleDisk for backing up other data.

In this tech tip, I show you how to easily install multiple applications on a Windows PC.

In this Tech Tip, I show you how to use the inline Dictionary keyboard shortcut in OS X.

In this Tech Tip, I should you how to use the file path save dialog found in most (if not all) OS X applications.

After some searching a found an option in the VLC preference pane to increase the streaming cache (buffer).

Steps

1. Open the VLC preferences and select the “All” radio button. This will give you the advanced options.
2. Drill down the “Input/Codecs” > “Access Modules” menu and select “HTTP(S)”.
3. Now raise the cache value to a higher number. I am currently using 8000 (8 secs) but you my want to find a different value that is best for you.