Fixing my laptops display

By Josh Highland in hacks, hardware, Josh's Rambling, tutorials

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Last June, I got a new (used) Toshiba M55 laptop.

I got it for an awesome deal because the hard drive was broken, and the screen flickered a lot. I figured for the price it was worth the gamble, even if I had to replace the screen it was still a bargain price.

The hard drive was DOA, and was replaced immediately. I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Gusty as the main OS with windows as the second OS. Easy enough to do.

The screen flickered a bit, but if i messed with the lid enough, moving it back and forth, I could get a good picture. Over time the picture just got worse and worse. It was time to do something about it. I did a quick google search and found a Toshiba M55 LCD replacement guide.

I figured it had to be something with the connections on to the screen or board because when the screen was working, it was working good. The image was great, but it took a bit to get it there.

I followed the guide exactly. I powered it on when I had it torn apart and it worked! It seems that there was to much stress on the LCD cable connection, causing it to freak out when the lid was in specific positions.

I followed this guide to open up the keyboard. (steps 6 – 8 only). I was able to give the cable a bit more slack, and every thing started working like it should! I put it all together and it’s like I have a new laptop, and all it took was an hour of my time and the guts to do it. I should have cracked this thing open 6 months ago if i knew it was going to be this easy!

I hope this helps someone else with a similar problem.

iPhone + Gmail IMAP = Awesome

By Josh Highland in internet, iPhone, software, tutorials

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If you read my blog, then you know that I love my iPhone, and I love Gmail. However, out of the box, paired together, I just didn’t like how they worked.

My problems come from the fact that Gmail has been using the POP (Post Office Protocol) for accessing email outside of their Web client. POP is lame if you check the same email account on multiple devices. The Emails are downloaded onto the device that checked the mail. Copies of sent and received emails end up in your inbox and read emails aren’t synced to the server, so if left unchecked the number of unread emails in the Gmail boxes on your iPhone grows rapidly. It got very confusing when responding to emails on the go also.

Recently Gmail opened up IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) to their users. IMAP keeps your devices, computers, and Gmail all in sync! If you send an email from your iPhone, it will be in the sent box of all your other devices, read something, its marked as read in all the other devices. It’s the ultimate in email protocols. Trust me, once you’ve gone IMAP, there’s no going back!

To get your iPhone hooked up with Gmail, Google has released some instructions (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77702), and a youtube video

[youtube uQ22euWXYog]

Trying to photoBlog from my iPhone

By Josh Highland in internet, iPhone, Josh's Rambling, software

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I like my iPhone, and I like Flickr, I also like to blog and photoBlog.

The iPhone has a really good camera and a constant internet connection and real web browser. It sounds like the ultimate photo Blogging tool, right?

Problems

  1. There is not file access to iPhones pictures through the web browser, so forget uploading pictures directly to Flickr
  2. It’s possible to email pictures to Flickr, but AT&T has a hidden back door charge of $0.50 for ever picture emailed via the iPhone, so uploading 20 pictures would cost me $10 extra! forget that!

I modified my iPhone a while back, and there are two applications currently that get around both of these problems, iFlickr and Pushr

iFlickr sucks because you have to take the picture using their application, and you cant upload any existing pictures on your IPhone.

Pushr is closer to what I want. You take pictures with the default camera application, then fire up Pushr. Pushr will push ALL the pictures you have on your phone to Flickr. This sounds good in theory, but what if you don’t want to push all your pictures to Flickr? You have the option to de-select the pictures you don’t want to send. So if you have 100 pictures, and you only want to upload one, you will have to de-select the 99 you don’t want to send. The whole de-select process seems counter intuitive. I think you should be able to select the pictures you want to send and just push those.

Because of the current limitations of both iPhone Flickr related apps, I am with out a good way to send my pics to Flickr.

I decided to send an email to Chris Lee the creator of Pushr and ask for a change in the software…

Josh Highland to Chris Lee:
Is there a way to make Pushr work in such a way that a user selects what pictures they want to send to flickr, rather then picking the photos they dont want to send?

example : I have 100 photos on my iphone, and i only want to send one of them to flickr. I would liek to select that one photo to send, instead of removing the 99 photos to not send

Chris Lee to Josh Highland
Hi Josh,
Currently, there is no way to do that. However, it’s a feature request
I’ve gotten, so I may add a preference for it in a future version.
Thanks for using Pushr!

So at least a change like that is on the radar of the developer of Pushr. I hope it gets implemented soon. Until then I’m stuck having to wait until I get to a computer to upload all my cool pics to my photo blog.

If you know of a good solution to my iPhone + Flickr problem, please let me know!

iPhone, after the honeymoon

By Josh Highland in hardware, iPhone, Josh's Rambling

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I’ve owned the famed apple iPhone for about 3 weeks now. In that time I have grown to both love and hate aspects of the iPhone.

I understand that this is a first generation phone with the 1.0 software running on it. Despite knowing this, I dove right in and bought it.

I’ve had enough time with the phone to fully explore it.

below are the biggest problems with the iPone that I have

  • ring tone is too quiet even when on full volume
  • vibrate mode is too discrete, i want to to shake longer
  • text message notifications are to quite
  • no notification of missed text messages without turning the phone on
  • text messages can only be sent to one person at a time
  • horizontal keyboard mode is only avaliable in safari

I guess that isn’t a very large list of things that I want changed in the iPhone. Actually those are all software problems that could be fixed through a software updates. Apple hasn’t released any updates to the iPhone as of yet, so we will see if the problems I am seeing, are ones that Apples feels like they should fix.

iSold out and got a iPhone

By Josh Highland in iPhone, Josh's Rambling

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For over a year and a half, I have used a windows mobile 5 based phone, the T-Mobile MDA (which is actually a re branded HTC Wizard). The MDA was such a great phone that I created a website for modifying and customizing it, MDATweak.com

I liked the fact that I could add 3rd part applications to it, like pocket putty (an ssh client), and the web browser was the best mobile browser on the market. I also liked the fact that I could sync my contacts and calender from outlook to the phone,

When the iPhone was announced, I was super excited about it. I was in a contract with T-Mobile, and was happy with with my MDA. I didn’t want to wait in the lines, and more importantly I didn’t want to pay the price tag for the iPhone.

Last week I was talking with my friends Bill Garoutte in my office, going over my list of reasons why I was not going to get an iPhone. As I was talking to him about how I liked my MDA phone, I managed to knock it off my desk. I have dropped my phone tons of times in the past. Its always been ok. This time was not one of those times… I was charging my phone through the USB connection on the bottom of the phone. The phone must fallen perfectly because the USB cable popped out. I picked the phone up and plugged the USB cord back in. The USB jack on the phone pushed up and into the phone.

The USB jack broke off the board inside the phone and was free floating inside the device! The phone still worked but without the USB jack to charge the phone, in a few days, my MDA would become a giant paper weight.

I called T-mobile, and they told me it would be almost $200 to replace my aging MDA phone. It was $300 to move up to the newer version of the MDA, the T-mobile Wing. Looking at the options, I was going to have to shell out some cash to get another phone, and I only had a day or 2 to figure it out before my phone was going to die. I talked to T-mobile about my situation, and the lady I dealt with was not nice to me at all, and wasn’t willing to work with me on figuring out a solution to get an upgraded phone without renewing my contract with T-mobile. I was so frustrated by the experience I decided to bite the bullet and move over to AT&T and get an iPhone.

I placed an order for two iPhones (the wife wanted on also) on July 3rd, and I received them in Saturday July 7th. So here I am with two new iPhones. I will post later with what I think about them once we have really started using them.