The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘apple’ Category

Remember the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld?

“No soup for you!”, he would exclaim when he determined someone was unworthy of his tasty broth.

Ever wonder what happened to the Soup Nazi since the TV show went off the air?

He works for Apple, rejecting iPhone app submissions. “No app for you!”, he exclaimed as he considered an app from your favourite independent blogger and internet god.

I mean me.

I don’t get to have my very own iPhone app, the App Nazi says so.

Apple’s recent policy change banning independent bloggers from submitting apps to for publication on iTunes is still pissing me off.

And here’s the thing, it would still piss me off even if I wasn’t directly effected by their decision. Its wrong to silence any voice, however big or small. We all have a right to express ourselves, on any platform we choose, on any subject we choose.

I chose to put an app together to bring my content to the iPhone platform. Apple, as the provider of the platform, have locked me out.

I should have tried to publish a fart app. Apparently, you can’t have too many of them.

It could be argued that my content is already available on the iPhone platform, via Safari, the iPhone’s browser. You’d win that argument, its true.

All my app did was present this website, along with some other entertaining content provided and owned by me in a very iPhone friendly format, via a custom designed app. One tap on the northlondonhippy icon on your Home Screen and you’d be here, hanging out virtually with me. No bookmarks or URLs, just a clean, easy to read interface, with groovy NLH graphics.

It would have cost Apple pennies to host my free app. Its not like they’re strapped for cash, they’ve got billions just lying around, doing nothing.

They could shut me up with a couple of million. Or a free iPad.

But they don’t need to shut me up. Nobody seems to give a shit. I emailed a few tech websites and newspapers with my sad tale of Apple app woe. Nobody bit.

Links to my previous entry did get tweeted around Twitter and buzzed across Google Buzz, or whatever the kids are doing these days but I am still waiting for a groundswell of popular support which would push Apple to reconsider this very foolish, pointless and spiteful decision.

Apple began in Steve Wozniak’s garage, with Woz and Steve Jobs knocking together the first Apple computer. Blogging is not much different than that, we’re all out here just knocking stuff together. Some make it into the mainstream, some toil in relative obscurity, but most just seem to give up. Many blogs lie dormant after a brief, unsatisfying flurry of activity, but not this one.

I know I’m not the most prolific blogger, but I’m still here and have been for 6 fun filled years. Ok, they haven’t been that much fun, but I am still here.

I’ve been toying with the idea of hanging up my hippy hat. This isn’t meant to be a threat or some drama queen strop. I’ve considered giving up before, but I’ve always managed to find reasons to keep going and ended up reinvigorated at the end of it.

Right now, I just feel tired.

The iPhone app was meant to re-inspire me and it would have, if only briefly. But isn’t that the way this works? You are constantly searching for new inspiration to keep you going.

The weird thing is, for a niche blog that doesn’t get updated very often, I do some good business. When I look at a graph of my visitor levels, its always an upward incline. I make a bit of dosh too, with my limited advertising and solo affiliate scheme.

I’ve recently been speculating that would still be the case, even if I didn’t post anything new. There’s a lot of content on my website, six years of spewing drivel will do that. I could probably just let this website sit here, do nothing and still maintain my reach.

Yes, I’ve been giving serious thought to giving up and quite stupidly, mainly because Apple refused to publish my app. Maybe there is no place for independent bloggers in the world any more and Apple is just ahead of the curve. If your website doesn’t have a staff of 30, then no one takes it seriously and you might as well not exist.

What’s a self obsessed weedhead and middle-aged failure at life to do?

If I knew the answer to that one, fuckers, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing out this shit, would I?

My iPhone app was rejected, again. That’s twice in the last month.

I heard back yesterday. This time, the app has been rejected on the basis that Apple have changed their submission policy and no longer allow apps that “…are solely intended for an individual blogger with a small audience…”.

Isn’t that most independent bloggers?

I’ve been blogging for 6 years, my anniversary is next week. My website was never going to be mainstream, but that’s kind of the point of its existence and the existence of most blogs. We cater to niche audience, but an audience none the less.

Are my readers less important than the readers of the New York Times website? Every reader counts, whether its one thousand or one million.

Why does Apple hate me? Why does Apple hate my audience?

Why does Apple hate independent bloggers?

Let’s put this into a bit of perspective. I invested time and money into creating an app that I thought would be of interest to my readers. The app is quite simple, but well designed, effectively creating an iPhone-optimised interface linked to all my online northlondonhippy related content.

There’s nothing wrong with my app, it all works smoothly, the design is clean and simple, and the graphics are slick and professional. The price, there was none, I wanted to offer it via the iTunes store for free, I wanted to give it away to anyone who wanted it.

So why do Apple hate me?

They shouldn’t, I am an unashamed Apple fan boy.

Currently, in the room I’m sitting in, there’s a 27” Quad Core iMac, a Core Duo Mac Mini, A Core Duo black MacBook, an iPhone 3GS, an iPod Touch, an Airport Extreme, several Airport Expresses, I use Final Cut Express and Logic Studio and iWork, I buy apps, music and films….

You get the idea, I own a lot of Apple kit and just because they hate me, doesn’t mean I won’t continue to purchase their toys. iPad, you are next on my list.

And I don’t just buy a lot of Apple stuff, I recommend it to my friends and am responsible for countless sales to many recent converts.

Apple should love me, like I love them, they’re like that girl who gave you a drunken pity handjob once, but now looks at you with disgust whenever you run into her sober and you keep hoping you’ll catch her a bit pissed again, but you never do. The desire is all one way and it only ever ends in bitter disappointment.

I praise Apple on my website and won’t stop just because they hate me. I can handle rejection, I’m used to it.

In short, there’s nothing wrong with my content, including all my weed related entries. Apple don’t have a problem with cannabis and there are several marijuana related apps available on iTunes, including one that will direct you to the nearest medical dispensary. Mine’s apparently in Amsterdam, last time I checked.

So why do Apple hate me?

Why does Apple hate all indepedent bloggers?

I’ve written a couple of novels, and was watching with great interest to see if Apple would have a route for independent publishers to get books on to their upcoming iBook Store for the iPad, but now I am not so sure.

If Apple are censoring iPhone apps to the point where they won’t consider submissions from independent bloggers, is there any point to me investing more time and money developing my eBooks for the iPad, only to have Apple change their policies suddenly.

Maybe you think a northlondonhippy iPhone app is a bit pointless, maybe I do too, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is freedom of speech and expression and if I wish to bring my message as an independent blogger to an established, popular mobile platform, I should be able to do so, without any impediment from the corporation who supplies the platform. What’s wrong with giving the little guy a chance?

It would be like Sony banning you from watching homemade videos on your television, only Sony Pictures DVDs would display on the screen, but not your holiday or wedding videos.

Maybe no one would have downloaded my app, maybe millions of people would have, but I’ll never know. Apple have killed it, dead in its tracks for no good reason other than on a whim they have decided to lock all independent bloggers out of the app store.

Will Apple reconsider? If people make enough noise they might. It wouldn’t be unprecedented, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

All I wanted to do was expand my online reach, just a little. I invested time, I invested money, but more importantly I invested my hopes and dreams on a little iPhone app that I could call my own. I would never have guessed that this little dream would become a nightmare of censorship and unchecked corporate power.

Does Steve Jobs know about this? If he finds out, he’s going to be mighty pissed off.

I bet having a recipe as my top post confused a lot of my new visitors and that was the case until I posted this particularly unplanned foray into sharing my thoughts.

This is not a food blog. A recipe is something out of the ordinary. Normal service has now resumed.

As I sit here, typing away, we are around 9 hours from the expected Apple Tablet announcement. Its pretty big news so I expect you’ve already heard all about it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go on about it too much.

I’ve got 2 predictions, one is an easy one that’s probably true, the other is a long shot.

Prediction one: It will be a premium product with a premium price for early adopters. Yes, I mean it will be very expensive, but will be cheaper in a year.

Prediction two: It will be called ‘iBook”, which used to be the name of one of their best selling laptops. They already own it, so it would be an easy yet inventive choice. I am far less certain of this one and will be pleasantly surprised if I am right. I’ll also brag a lot about it too.

I’ve wanted something like what’s expected today for years. Yes, I will buy one as soon as they are available though I am guessing it will be like the original iPhone, sold is the USA exclusively for 6 months, then launched in the UK. That will be frustrating!

Today isn’t just tablet day. Had my mother still been alive, today would have been her 80th birthday, but she missed it by around 13 months. I miss her, a lot.

At least Apple were nice enough to schedule their announcement on the same date as my mother’s birthday, its a welcome distraction.

So roll on 18:00gmt, when the big show starts in California. I’ll be online, following the announcement live as best I can and I’ll be tweeting my impressions as well. That is, assuming the entire internet doesn’t come crashing down to a screeching halt under the weight of all that Apple Tablet hype.

Oh yes, that’s my last prediction, Twitter is going to crash like Oceanic Air 815 as soon as Steve Jobs takes the stage. Maybe I should just plan on tweeting again tomorrow.

Happy New Year fuckers!

I hope you’ve all bought new calendars and you aren’t still writing 2009 on your cheques.

Do people still write cheques?

I do, sometimes, but that really doesn’t have anything to do with anything, so I’ll swiftly avoid the diversion in that dead end direction.

Instead, I’ve come to share the latest news from the land of your favourite north London-based hippy. Its actually kind of big news.

Dig this, I submitted “the official northlondonhippy iPhone app” to Apple yesterday, it should be available on the iTunes store very soon for your mobile surfing pleasure.

This isn’t one of my little funny wind-ups, its an honest to god, actual app that runs natively on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

How cool is that?

On the hippy’s cool-o-meter, its off the fucking scale of coolness into a brand new realm of cool that has yet to be discovered by normal folk. Once the app is available, that new realm of cool will be yours for the taking.

The app delivers in an iPhone friendly format, all of my internet content. If I publish something, it will magically pop up on the app. You will receive my latest posts from this website, as well as having easy access to my busy Twitter feed. I’ve also included my TwitPics and YouTube videos, which are all easily accessible inside the app.

How much would you pay for a northlondonhippy iPhone app?

Really? I kind of expected that, which is why it will be available to download for FREE. That’s a price I’m sure you can afford.

My aim is to make this app the number one northlondonhippy iPhone app in the world. I don’t think it will be very hard to do, as it will be the only northlondonhippy app available, at least officially. I’m sure all the other kids will be creating their own versions to compete with mine.

Ah-hem.

I don’t want any of you to think I went off and learned how to write code for an iPhone, because I didn’t. I used a website called www.appmakr.com which automated the process to such a degree that even a moron like me could do it. If you need an app made for the iPhone from RSS feeds, you could do a lot worse than try this site out.

I will of course, reserve final judgement on AppMakr until I see my finished app on my own iPhone, but so far I am very happy with the service they provide. You will be too once you are rocking my app on your muthafuckin’ iPhone.

Keep watching for my announcement confirming that my app is live on iTunes. Until then, you can join me on some tenterhooks as I try to patiently wait for Apple’s approval process people to whatever voodoo that they do.

While I am quite pleased about my app, I am less excited about my birthday this month. Is there a law that says you have to have birthdays? Can we get it repealed?

Some years I am not too bothered about being another year older, but this year is not one of them.

I suppose a lot has to do with the awkwardness of my impending age…forty-fucking-seven. Its an odd number in more ways then one. Mainly, it marks my decent into my “late forties”.

I don’t like the word “late”, it makes me think of death. I think about death enough already, I don’t need stupid words tacked on to my age to remind me that the mortal coil is getting distinctly shorter every year.

My bones tell me, my muscles tell me, my world weary expression tells me, all pretty much on a daily basis. I am plumbing the depths of middle age.

I’ve been contemplating having my very own mid-life crisis, but I can’t seem to settle on what form it will take. On the menu are:

- a grown-up gap year to trek through the Andes
- a hair transplant
- 3 months of Swiss shin stretching
- a small, red, convertible sports car
- a sexually experienced 19 year old girl on the side
- a mental breakdown

I reckon to make it a proper mid-life crisis, I need to chose at least 3 things off that list, then pursue them with gusto.

Trekking anywhere is out, because it sounds too much like hard work.

A hair transplant just sounds messy and expensive and for what? To look like Elton John? No thanks.

If I was going to have my shins stretched, I should have done it 20-30 years ago, but it didn’t exist back then. I don’t think I am going to live long enough to make the pain & suffering worth it. You only gain a couple of inches in height anyway, so screw it, I’d still be short.

The little red convertible sports car is cliche and I don’t really like red as a colour for a car. Unfortunately, because of my age, red is the only colour a car dealer will sell me, at least for a 2 door ragtop. I’ve checked, its a car dealer bylaw, right their in their charter.

Does it all make sense now? That’s why you only ever see bald, fat middle-aged guys in red Ferraris (or Corvettes if you are stateside). And all this time, you thought they were choosing the colour. Now you know, its the law.

The nineteen year old girl seems on the surface to be an easy option and if I was a member of the Rolling Stones they would be queuing up at my door, but I’m not, so they’re not. Besides, 19 year olds haven’t lived enough to be interesting, so unless I can cram a 50 year old’s brain into their 19 year old body, I don’t see much point. And if I am honest, the only way I am going to get a hot little 19 year old is to rent one for an hour. I certainly couldn’t afford the care and feeding of one full time and I am a hippy on a budget, so this is out too.

A mental breakdown? Don’t I mainly have them on the internet or as it is otherwise known, a running blog.

This website is my therapy, which I guess makes all of you my shrinks. Every time I ask a question, you just have to say “well, what do you think?” Go on, its easy and I just saved you seven tedious years of university and medical training.

Email me for your certificate or degree from the University of North London (hippy). That and a pound will get you a ride on a bus.

I’ve had my geek on for the last week. I successfully updated all three of my Macs to Snow Leopard and I swapped my iPhone 3G for the new 3GS.

Snow Leopard
——————–
The upgrades were very smooth and simple, though I did have some hardware trouble with my three year old Mac Mini. The Snow Leopard installation DVD would not mount in the SuperDrive, instead it would try to read it, then spit it out. A healthy dose of canned, pressurised air sprayed into the DVD slot cured it and I was able to complete the installation.

The changes with Snow Leopard are subtle, but welcome. Expose and Stacks are noticeably improved and more useful, the Finder tweaks are also quite cool, especially the icon sizing and preview functions. Mainly, everything is a lot faster, start-ups, shutdowns and especially sleeping and waking. When I wake up my iMac now, it reconnects to my network almost instantly.

The best thing is the amount of hard drive space I got back on each computer, around 10-12gb. Streamlining is a good thing!

I bought the family pack version of Snow Leopard, which cost £39, so that’s thirteen quid per computer. A bargain!

I haven’t had any serious issues so far, all of my regular software is working fine. Safari seems especially fast and launches like a rocket. Oh and maybe I’m crazy, but the screen seems sharper, like they’ve improved the graphics card drivers, or the way it renders images, I don’t really know.

iPhone 3GS
—————–
I’ve had it in the back of my head that if I didn’t get a new iPhone by the end of the summer, I would leave it until next July. I’ve tried to buy one a couple of times, but they haven’t been in stock. They are apparently still in great demand.

I decided that if I was going to do this, I would buy the iPhone outright, getting it on Pay As You Go, rather than getting it as a contract upgrade. By doing it this way, I will then be eligible for a subsidised upgrade next Summer, when the next model comes out.

What finally pushed me towards acting is a friend of mine lost his iPhone 3G and needed to replace it. O2 wanted silly amount of money from him for a new one and he offered to buy mine. I agreed, if I could find a black, 32gb 3GS on PAYG.

O2 didn’t have any, the Car Phone Warehouse didn’t have any, but the online Apple Store said they were shipping them on 5 days delay. I went ahead and ordered it last Tuesday.

It shipped on the Thursday and arrived in my hot little hands on the Friday. Wow, that was fast!

Swapping phones was an absolute breeze. I popped my contract SIM out of the old 3G iPhone, then popped it into the new 3GS. I connected the 3GS to my iMac and it instantly appeared in iTunes. It was activated in seconds, then offering to restore it from my most recent back-up, done an hour before. It restored and synced my media quickly. It was set up just like my old iPhone, even my apps were in the same places.

I did have to re-enter a few passwords for email accounts and tweak a few settings, but I would say 98% of it happened automatically.

Wiping the old phone took longer than setting up the new one. The old iPhone switched on and worked without a SIM card and I was able to reset all settings with a couple of clicks. Be warned, it takes around 2 hours to wipe a 16gb iPhone.

So what do I think of my new iPhone 3GS?

I’ll say this right now, it is not an essential must-have upgrade. I’ve gained a few useful and welcome features and a lot of speed, but that alone is not worth the money.

The increase in speed is obvious, the entire phone is faster and more responsive. Apps launch almost instantly, there’s no lag at all.

The video camera is good, not great, but better than no video functions at all. The tap-to-focus feature is very cool and really works. The compass is also a nice thing to have, especially if you use the Map app to get around on foot, it really helps to orient yourself in new surroundings.

And who wouldn’t want extra storage?

I’m sure I will sell my 3GS next summer when the next iPhone upgrade comes, it will still have considerable value then. If the 3GS is considered an evolutionary upgrade, then next summer hopefully we will see a revolutionary jump in iPhone technology. At least, that’s what I’m gambling!

I flirted with Twitter for around 6 months before I properly signed up and started tweeting. I didn’t really get it at first, which is not unusual, for it has become a virtual sub-culture on the internet, with its own rules and etiquette, that must be observed if you wish to play a part.

By rules, I don’t mean anything official, perhaps conventions or an informal code of practise would be more accurate, but for simplicities sake, I’ll stick to “rules”.

As I’ve used Twitter, I’ve developed my own set of rules, or rather they’ve evolved as I’ve learned bit by bit what works for me.

And that’s what I believe is the key to Twitter, learning what “works for you”. Different people use it in different ways and I’m going to share few things I’ve picked up since I started tweeting.

Following people:

At first, I really didn’t know who to follow beyond @wossy and @stephenfry and while they are both entertaining and prolific tweeters, it wasn’t enough to make Twitter worth my time. And its one thing following celebrities, they expect your attention and adoration, but how do you find other people to follow?

I was a bit shy about following people at first, after all you are choosing to learn a great deal about someone who is a random stranger on the internet, but I’m far less so now.

When I started, I only really followed people who followed me first. Silly, eh? Don’t be afraid to follow someone if you want to, even if their updates are protected with a padlock. Mostly, that’s to keep out spammers and pornbots, not genuine people like you. Occasionally, an account is truly private, but I’ve yet to personally encounter one.

Nearly all of us are on Twitter because we want to be followed. And who wouldn’t want some cool rockin’ hippy like me trailing them in cyberspace? Now tell me, what colour is your thong today?

Unfollowing:

Occasionally, I unfollow someone and if it is you I unfollowed, I don’t mean any disrespect. The biggest reason I unfollow people is they tweet too often and its meaningless crap – and that’s my job on Twitter!

Recently, I’ve unfollowed people because of the content of their tweets. I’m rarely offended, so if you managed to offend me, you’ve said something extremely loathsome. And I’ve unfollowed people who’ve signed up for advertising tweets – I don’t want your stream to be interrupted by a word from YOUR sponsor. It reduces Twitter’s value for everyone.

Followers:

Its not a numbers game. Don’t be suckered into thinking that it is.

At first, I was concerned about how many followers I had, and what people would think of me, if I didn’t have many. I soon learned the number of people following you doesn’t matter as much as the quality of your followers. And if the quality of your tweets is high, you will attract followers soon enough.

If you have a smaller number of like-minded people following you, that beats millions of random followers any day.

If I cared about the numbers, I’d let all the spammers and marketeers continue to follow me, but I don’t – I block them. If I did leave them in place, it would probably double my number of followers.

If you follow me, I won’t automatically follow you back. I might follow you, but only after I’ve had a look at your profile to see if your style of tweets would be interesting to me. If I don’t follow you, please don’t be offended. I only take a quick look and then make a snap decision. Sometimes I get it wrong.

And if you want me to follow you, just send me an @ message and I will. There are too many “online marketing specialists” who can help me make money on Twitter trying to follow me, or girls who want to show me their sexy private pictures, for it to be sensible to automatically follow back.

Finding people:

I stumble upon new people all the time, in many different ways.

Sometimes, someone using a hashtag I’m tracking will catch my attention.

I often look at who other people are following or followed by as well. And on occasion, I see someone I’m following exchanging @ messages with someone and while following the conversation thread, the new person catches my attention.

A lot of people think #followfriday is another good way to find new people, as its the day to recommend new people for you to follow. I have to be honest, I still don’t really get the etiquette of the whole thing. To me, every one of the nearly 500 accounts I’m following are worth it, or I wouldn’t be following them. So I choose people to recommend, knowing I’ve probably unintentionally left someone very worthy out, or I’ve embarrassed someone by recommending them. Clearly, I’m too neurotic to be playing in public with strangers.

My tweets:

I make a lot of jokes, or at least I try to, but some fall flat on their faces. I am occasionally serious, sincere, angry (more than occasionally), but mostly I am sarcastic with a dash of irony.

I tend to treat Twitter like one giant open-mike night and let my inner-comedian run wild. If you worked with me or hung out with me in person, it wouldn’t be much different, only I would type less.

The important thing is I don’t tweet anything that I would be embarrassed or ashamed of later. I’m polite and friendly to others, but most importantly I am true to myself.

It helps that I’ve blogged a long time and have learned how much of myself to share with the wider world. Too fucking much!

DM’s and @ messages:

I try to reply to all I receive, as long as you are not offering me a free MacBook Air or telling me how to get 16K followers in a week, and make money doing it!

If I haven’t replied to your message, its because I probably missed it. And Twitter’s not perfect, as some messages and tweets get missed out from client to client. I know this because I use a variety of methods to read my tweets and messages and I can see that sometimes things aren’t exactly the same from client to client or device to device.

Twitter is fast moving plus I keep weird hours most of the time so I do occasionally miss things.

If its important, message me again – I’d rather have your message twice, then have you think I was ignoring you.

I’m happy to hear from anyone, especially if you’re in Nigeria or a member of the US military in Iraq and looking to transfer large sums of cash into my bank account.

Invest time

You need to properly invest time interacting on Twitter. You can’t just send the same tweet over and over, selling your product or service. People won’t pay attention, they’ll classify you as noise.

Start out slowly, gradually building your network. Give more than you receive on Twitter, if you can answer someone’s question accurately, then do it. Don’t be self-centred or self-serving – people can smell it a mile off and will avoid you.

Know what you want from Twitter:

This is the best advice I’ve found on using Twitter, so I will pass it along. Think about what you want to get out of Twitter and be focused on that.

If you want to extend your social network, or use it to promote a product or service, go for it, but do it well. There are many guides available on how best to use Twitter for your business. Heed their advice.

I won’t lie, I joined to promote my website and “brand”. Are you shocked? Saddened? Will you not look upon me with the same adoration you had for me yesterday? I’m crushed.

Its worked, I’ve seen a dramatic upward spike in visitors to my site since I started tweeting regularly.

What I didn’t expect but found anyway, is a community of extremely nice, kind, helpful, genuine people.

I’m quite reclusive by nature and more than a bit of a loner, but I find myself exchanging @ messages with people quite frequently. Its an unanticipated, yet welcome benefit of being a member of the Twitter community.

Now, I wonder how many of them would loan me some money? I don’t need a lot, just a few grand to get this shylock off my back. You don’t want to see a certain north London based hippy with shattered knee-caps, do you?

I’m angry.

I’m pissed off.

I’m hopping, fucking mad.

Apple showed off the new iPhone 3GS a couple of days ago and it is a desirable piece of kit. While not a huge leap in technology, the new hardware-based features of this new model make me want one.

You’d think, in the middle of a deep recession, that spending my hard earned cash would be easy.

Think again.

O2, the mobile network here in the UK that has exclusive rights to sell iPhones are being quite foolish about upgrades to existing customers like me. They seem to think its sensible for me to take out a 2nd mortgage to upgrade to the new model.

Existing subscribers are gold dust to companies like O2 or at least they should be, but it seems this time that is not the case.

In the cell phone industry, networks refer to it as “churn”, or the loss of customer to other networks.

There was a lot of “churn” here in the UK last summer, when loads of people dumped their existing networks to move to O2, so they could have an iPhone 3G. I was amongst that large group of switchers myself.

I love my iPhone, its easily the coolest device I’ve ever owned. I have no regrets about changing networks to get one.

Early adopters, like myself and many of my friends and work colleagues, drive technology sales in that we buy first, pay full whack, then show it off to our mates who end up buying them too.

I can think of half a dozen people right off the top of my head, who bought an iPhone because I personally introduced them to mine. I’m sure the same is true for many other early adopters; we should all be on commission really.

Instead, O2 don’t respect us and are actually going out of their way to penalise people who bought their iPhone 3G’s last July. Do you think that makes me keen to persuade others to get an iPhone from O2 now?

O2 want to sell me a 32gb iPhone for the same cost they’re selling them to new subscribers, £269 I believe. I could just about wear that, if I had to, but they also want me to pay the remainder of my contract as a penalty.

A penalty?

I want the latest handset from my current network provider and they want to charge me a penalty? Why not just smack me in the face and get it over with?

I have 6 months left on my current contract and I am on the £45 a month tariff.

£45 x 6 = £270 (it doubles the cost of the phone).

Its stupid beyond belief.

They want me to pay £539.00 to upgrade my handset, when someone off the street just signing up to O2 would get it for half that.

Its madness!

I’m an existing customer, I should be treated better than a new customer. Show me a little love and I’ll show you some back, but try to screw me over and I’ll cost you money.

How?

I’m still working on that, but I have a couple ideas.

Everyone who wants to upgrade their iPhone should each spend at least one hour on the telephone with O2 customer services.

You’re not going to get any joy, but you are going to waste their time and in business, time is money.

For every minute you keep one of their sales reps occupied, that’s another minute they are not selling a brand new phone.

Be polite and just keep repeating yourself, its what the O2 rep is going to do, so you might as well do the same.

Escalate too, they hate that. Ask to speak to a supervisor, then the supervisor’s supervisor, then the department manager. The key is to keep them on the phone as long as you can. And call them from your iPhone, because the call is free to you, but it does cost O2 in network bandwidth.

Say anything, use some of my arguments, sing them a song, tell bad jokes, whatever will keep them talking.

Then use the word “churn”, that will scare them.

Keep telling them existing customers are getting a raw deal.

O2’s line is that the iPhone 3G was subsidised, which is why they want to force people to see out their contracts before getting a new handset. Its bullshit, but that’s the tack their taking.

Like I give a shit about their profit!

If they did a bad deal with us last year, tough. Don’t try to fix it by screwing us over a year later. That’s not smart.

I don’t want the new iPhone in 6 months, because it will be a six month old phone then.

And I know 6 months after that, a better iPhone will be released. And here’s the thing, the differences between the iPhone 3G and the 3GS aren’t that huge, but that might not be true with next year’s model. Who knows? And who wants to gamble on it?

The really smart thing to do is buy the new iPhone 3GS privately once an unlock is available, then switch networks. O2 are being so myopic about this, I am very tempted to follow this path and show others how to do it too!

O2 are going for short term profit, when success in customer relations only comes by playing a long game.

People are seething over this, check out mobile phone forums or Twitter. Every newspaper has had a story on this massive O2 cock-up too.

I’m definitely not the only one who wants to push back hard at O2.

I can’t do this alone, we need every other iPhone owner looking to upgrade to take action.

“Brand management” is a marketing buzzword these days and O2 have done some real damage to themselves. They might be able to put a ridiculously high price on upgrading, but having a well-respected brand is priceless.

Can you hear that, O2? Its the sound of your stock price dropping fast. I don’t see a net to catch it, do you?

O2 can either work out a better plan for us to upgrade, or they will start to haemorrhage subscribers. If O2 don’t make us all happy and soon, its going to cost them plenty.

( #O2fail – search for it on Twitter! )

This is a little warning from your friendly, neighbour hippy.

Do you tweet from your iPhone? Are you broadcasting your location with every tweet when you are at home? Do you know what I am talking about?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, especially that last one, you really need to pay attention to this.

Your iPhone is location-aware, so to an extent is your iPod touch. You probably know this already. It means it can work out your location using GPS, wi-fi and/or cell phone tower information to a reasonably accurate degree. That feature is built right into the core architecture of your iPhone.

Having that information at the core, means applications like many iPhone Twitter clients, can magically grab your exact location (expressed in latitude and longitude) and attach it to your tweets and Twitter account.

If you look at people’s Twitter profiles, occasionally you will see two sets of numbers where their city would normally be…if you cut and paste those numbers into Google Maps, it shows you their exact location.

Perhaps there are times when you want to broadcast your location, for example, you are visiting a famous landmark and want your tweets to reflect that. Or maybe you are out on a Saturday night and you want your friends to easily be able to find you, because its your round. That’s all cool.

But what if you are at home, merrily tweeting away about your two-week holiday abroad that starts tomorrow and you’re not aware you’re sending out your home address with every message? Suppose you have a photo of yourself on your account, or hundreds of them on your linked Facebook page.

What would it take for some enterprising criminal to park up on your street and watch for you to leave, knowing your flat will be empty for a fortnight?

Very little.

Think I’m being paranoid? Think again, because something like this happened recently in Arizona. Here, check out this local report.

So what can you do to avoid this happening to you?

Simple, become more aware of location awareness.

If you tweet from your iPhone (or iPod Touch, or any other location aware device, if one exists), go into the settings of your preferred Twitter client and turn off location services. The setting is someplace different in every app, and if you can’t find it in the app, look on the main settings section from your home screen.

When the app asks you to turn them on again, like it did the first time you used the app, say “no”, unless you want to broadcast your location. And if you are home, or where you work, this should probably always be “no”.

You can re-enable this feature if you do want to use it, when you are out and about, but I really recommend keeping it switched off as your default setting.

Also, check your own Twitter profile, to see what you have listed as your location. You might discover a little surprise.

If you wish to change it, log into your account from the web and go to Settings, then find the little box for location and type something suitably vague. Mine says: “north London, UK, Earth”, in case anyone confuses it with the Venusian version.

There’s one more simple thing you can do to protect yourself, when you send tweets, don’t give out too many specific track-able, real-world details about yourself.

I realise if you are tweeting under your own name, and can be found by directory enquiries or (gasp) in the white pages, it may already be too late, but if you are at all privacy minded, neither of those things will be true of you. They are certainly not true of me, but I am extremely protective of my privacy online and off.

If you’re someone who didn’t realise you’ve been practically attaching your home address to every tweet sent from your iPhone, this advice is especially for you. Just send me what you saved in the increase to your home contents insurance post-burglary and we’ll call it even.

With the massive success of the iPhone app store, app development is on the upswing. I’m seeing report after report about people who’ve never written a line of code in their lives, suddenly trying to learn how to create apps for the iPhone.

Its sensible, as the relative ease with which you can sell your app combined with the potential profits make this a very appealing proposition to many.

Personally, I haven’t written any software in nearly 30 years, when I used to have a very rudimentary understanding of BASIC. Here’s a sample of what I mean:

10 Print “Fuck You”
20 Goto 10

Yes, that’s about how sophisticated I got. And wow, did that little programme make people laugh. Things have changed a lot since then.

The problem with developing apps for the iPhone is the amount you need to learn to do it. It’s the steep learning curve that is probably putting some people off trying.

What if you didn’t have to learn anything?

What if you could piece an app together the same way you’d design a website or automator action?

Enter iApp, the latest software to join the other programs in iLife.

Well, technically it hasn’t yet, but I am taking a wild guess that it will in the future.

iPhone apps are just chunks of code and APIs strung together, so why can’t Apple build an iLife style application that would allow dummies like me to design applications for the iPhone with a simple, clean and easy to use interface.

Just imagine assembling a list of simple instructions, the same way you would put together an automator script, which are then compiled and transferred to your iPhone via iTunes.

Apple have already done this for music, video, DVD authoring, ring-tone creating and website design, so why can’t they do it for iPhone applications?

The short answer is that they can and if I was to venture a guess, they are probably working on just such a product right now.

Think about it: they could completely democratise programming apps for the iPhone, allowing anyone with a good idea and some free time the chance to design their very own application with a very gentle learning curve. And if you think your app is good enough and would be of interest to others, you can register to sell it on iTunes and watch the dosh roll in.

Do I think this is coming soon? Who knows?

I do think some form of simple iPhone app creation will come. And its going to be a major game-changer when it does.

Hey fuckers! I’m blogging from my iPhone again.

I am having a rather dull and dreary night at work with precious little to actually do.

Covering a war is lively at first and then you settle into a routine. Yes I am as callous and jaded as I sound. I have been covering wars for around 20 years, they’re all pretty much the same. People die, lots of them.

Life is so fragile and we are all so breakable. Its a wonder more of us aren’t killed more often.

The thing about covering wars from a distance, as I’ve mostly done, is you get to see some of the most harrowing scenes of suffering. By the time it arrives on the tv in your living room, its been sanitized and censored, to protect you from images you are likely to find distressing.

I strongly disagree with that. You have just as much right to see the uncensored horrors as I do and my media colleagues should not be denying you from seeing the truth.

I don’t find strong images offensive, but I do think war and the needless slaughter of civilians is extremely offensive.

I guess I picked the wrong job. Or rather the wrong job chose me!

(blogged from my iPhone)