Search: “mis”

A friend of mine passed me his two iPhones today to unlock. He purchased them around the same time I purchased my last iPhone except his arrived with the 1.1.1 firmware while mine luckily arrived with the 1.0.2 one. Yesterday an updated version of AnySIM got released which I posted about and which supposedly unlocked the 1.1.1 iPhones but I tried it and it didn’t work.

The steps to unlocking a 1.1.1 iPhone are fairly easy, its just one tiny extra step compared to unlocking the 1.0.2 phones.

1) I downloaded the latest version of INdependence
2) I ran it and clicked on the option to Enter DFU mode (this is the option that you didn’t have to do with 1.0.2)
3) I quit INdependence, ran iTunes and restored the phone to version 1.0.2
4) I quit iTunes and ran INdependence again
5) I clicked on Activate
6) I then clicked on Jailbreak
7) I then clicked on install SSH
8) I FTP’ed to the phone and copied AnySIM
9) I ran AnySIM

Thats all the steps required to activate and unlock the iPhone. I also installed AppTapp but that can be done later. Now my issue is everything went smoothly except for the AnySIM unlock. It ran and gave me an error at the end which is normal, but when I rebooted it still wouldn’t work with the local GSM network. I tried unlocking both iPhones and had the same issue. Everything else on the iPhone works except for the phone. I don’t know if this is happening with other people or if I missed a step somewhere but whatever the reason might be it’s too late at night to figure it out.

Pepsi wins!

INDIANA, Pa. (AP) — The long-standing rivalry between Coke and Pepsi took a physical turn Friday when a Pepsi deliveryman allegedly punched his Coke counterpart in the face at a western Pennsylvania Wal-Mart, state police said.

The two deliverymen were “apparently bickering back and forth” while unloading their wares at the Indiana County store, police said. When the Coke deliveryman left the store, his counterpart allegedly punched him in the face three times, breaking his nose and giving him a black eye, police said.

No charges have been filed, but police characterized the incident as a misdemeanor simple assault. [Source]

A reader in the forum reported seeing a meteor on the first day of Eid over Kuwait and managed to take some pictures. I’ve never seen one live before not even a shooting star so I am kinda pissed I missed out on this. You can see the rest of the pictures in the forum. [Link]

Update: And here is a video of it! [YouTube]

Thanks Fattboa and q8h2o

I know a lot of people will be traveling to Europe during the Eid so I just wanted to share some handy travel software that will work on Nokia phones and in some cases other smartphones, iPods and PDA’s.

I already previously posted about A-Z Maps which I purchased before I traveled to London for the first time last month. It was an incredibly easy to use software which allowed me to navigate London very easily as if I had been there before. The company has maps for other cities also including Paris, Barcelona and Helsinki. The map starts up instantly when you run it and then you just type the name of the street you are in and the software will show you where you are on the map. It’s also not expensive costing around KD10. More details on this software is available on the publishers website. https://www.lumisoft.net/

Another software I recently purchased in my preparation for my London trip later this month is Tube 2. When I was in Paris last month I had a hard time navigating the underground subway system and this software will be making my life a lot easier this time around. I purchased two versions of the software, the Tube 2 London and Tube 2 Paris. How it works is you type the name of the station you are in and then type the name of the station you want to go to and the software will visually show you your route on the underground map AND it will also give you step by step instructions. Here is an example of a trip from the Marble Arch to Waterloo station:

Marble Arch to Waterloo
Time: 13 minutes
Changes: 1

1. Marble Arch to Bond Street
Depart Marble Arch via the Central line (Eastbound) towards Epping for 1 stop.
Service runs every 5 minutes.

2. Bond Street to Waterloo
At Bond Street change to the Jubilee line (Southbound) towards Stratford for 3 stops.
Service runs every 5 minutes.

3. Waterloo
Arrive at Waterloo.

As you can see it makes things a lot easier. The software costs like KD3 and its available for the London, Paris and New York subway system. You can get more information from the software publishers website. They also have versions that work on iPods but they work differently. https://visualit.co.uk/

The good stuff:
– It’s pretty
– Excellent browser
– Everyone wants to touch your iphone
– It has an iPod built in
– Touch screen is amazing
– Decent camera
– It’s cheap, KD95 for 4GB and KD130 for 8GB (with shipping to Kuwait) prices the iPhone very competitively to other regular phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson

The bad stuff:
– Once you have an iPhone you realize its just a phone
– If you have a lot of numbers its a real pain finding a contact
– Everyone wants to touch your iphone
– Typing on the iPhone is a joke
– Battery life is a bigger joke, barely lasts a day with below average use
– Adding a ringtone is a hassle
– Majority of headphones won’t work with it
– Not as useful or fun without a wireless internet or GPRS connection
– You have a lot of basic phone features missing like forwarding an SMS, turning off the predictive dictionary, different phone profiles, searching for contacts etc.. etc.. etc..

Would I recommend it?
If you aren’t a heavy phone user yes.
If you don’t send a lot of messages also yes.
For everyone else, no.

Final score, 3.5 out of 5. Nat loves it although she has issues with it. I personally could never have an iPhone as my primary phone.

Update: I now use the iPhone as my primary phone and can’t imagine life without it. The software 2.0 brought with it the app store which has made the iphone a lot more interesting for me.

I am at a location now shooting and there is a really cute 3 month old German shepherd called Enzo. I really miss my dog, can’t wait to get back to Kuwait and see him. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

Pearl, a fellow blogger sent an email to Jazeera Airways complaining about some problems she had with one of her flights. The response she got back from them was just unbelievable. The Jazeera Airways guy basically calls her a liar twice, accusing her of exaggerating and and making up facts.

I hope Pearl can post his email address and full name so someone at Jazeera can put some sense into him. [Link]

Update: Turns out I misread, someone left a comment on her blog on behalf of the airlines, it wasn’t a reply to her email which means there is no proof its from an actual Jazeera Airways employee. My mistake! [Link]

Last week I posted an iPhone versus iPod Touch post and argued the fact that the iPhone is a better deal. Well looks like a lot more people share the same opinion, here is a snippet from iLounge’s review of the iPod Touch:

In addition to the previously mentioned missing pack-ins, you also lose iPhone’s camera, phone functionality, built-in speakers, built-in microphone, side volume controls, superior screen, superior battery, larger suite of applications, and Bluetooth wireless feature.

Here is a link for the full review. [Link]

While in London I was able to walk around and discover the city without holding a large map and looking like a tourist because of a simple software I was able to get for my phone called A-Z London Maps. I don’t think I would have been able to enjoy my stay without this incredibly easy to use and practical software.

You don’t need a GPS device and you don’t need to connect to the internet to be able to use the map, the software installs everything onto your phone. To use the software all you need to do is type the name of the street you are in and the software will show you on a detailed map where you are. This helped me a lot since if I needed to find my way back to the hotel I would just check on the map to see where I was and then plan my route. Also if I found a street I liked I could easily find my way back. If I was using a regular paper map it would have taken me ages to find my location on it but with A-Z maps I just type my street and the software instantly circles my location on the map.

There are maps for London, Paris, Dubai, Barcelona, Helsinki and more but they only work on some Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. You don’t need to buy it to try it either, you can download the map and try it out for 30 days before you decide to purchase it.

I only found 2 problems with the software or should I say there are 2 things I would have liked the software to do. The first is the option to work with a GPS device. Although every street corner in London displayed the street name it would have been more practical if the software automatically recognized where I was. The second thing I would have liked would have been the option to search for shop names and then have the software find it for me on the map. Of course thats asking for to much but still, it would have been nice to have.

Final score is a 4 out of 5. If you are interested in the maps you can check out the Lumisoft website for more details and trial downloads. [Link]

I am at the Kuwait airport now waiting for my flight to Beirut. I was planning on having breakfast at Fuddruckers but I missed it by 15 minutes (they stop breakfast at 11AM).

My Gulf Air flight arrived at 7AM to Paris. Kuwait to Bahrain was a pretty lame flight, the plane was really old and the seats extremely uncomfortable. Bahrain to Paris was a completely different story. This was my first experience with sleeper seats and I love them. Now they aren’t as comfortable as real beds but they are more than enough for long night flights where you need to get some sleep. The entertainment system is crap though, its nothing like Emirates on demand system, its just the regular old system still used on Kuwait Airways flights.

After landing and checking in to the hotel we decided to do a bit of sight seeing since our first meeting was at 5PM. The weather here is great, yes its raining but I miss rain. It feels like winter and its hard comprehend how its 52 degrees in Kuwait and just 15 degrees in Paris! I should pick up my work schedule tonight and hopefully I will have some free time to do some shopping and take in the sights. [YouTube]

This post is a bit technical but its meant to be a small guide for bloggers who want to post using their phones.

The past two days I have been experimenting with different softwares and ways of moblogging. The easiest way I found to moblog was with a software for my Nokia called Shozu. It’s very easy to use, I just take a picture and a small window pops up asking me if I want to send it to my blog. I could then click yes and it sends it or I click on more options and add more details like a subject title and body copy. But I had two problems with Shozu. The first one is the fact that it resized my images down to a thumbnail size and you could only see the larger picture by clicking on the link. I didn’t like that and there was no option to change it. The second problem I had was that since the software is free, Shozu places their logo at the end of your posts. I also didn’t like that, they should at least have an option where if you pay for the software they remove the logo but they don’t so I looked for an alternative.

After a bit of experimentation and googling I found a better solution (for me at least). It’s not as practical as Shozu but I am in total control of everything. I decided to go with the Blog by Email route and here is what I did:

1) Created two new email accounts
2) Got a plugin for wordpress called Postie
3) Got a software for my Nokia called Resco Viewer

I setup one email account on my Nokia to send emails from. The second email account would be the one I would send my posts to. I then installed the Postie plugin in WordPress which is a must have plugin if you are planning to blog by email. Firstly, Postie allows u to attach pictures and videos to your emails and then posts them for you. it also gives you a lot of other options for example Postie has an option where it could palce the image above or below the body copy, I chose above so it would match my regular posts. Postie could also resize your images and compress them before it posts them which is really important if you can’t resize images on your phone. Finally I purchased the software Resco Viewer for my Nokia. With my phones camera I have two size options when it comes to taking pictures, 1600×1200 and 640×480. The max size for images on my blog is 400 pixels wide. If I wanted to I could take pictures at 640×480 and have Postie resize them for me but by resizing the pictures myself on the phone and compressing the images slightly, the file sizes would be a lot small meaning it would be cheaper for me since I pay per kilobyte.

So the process now goes something like this:
1) I take a picture on my phone at 1600×1200 pixels
2) I resize the image to 400×300 and compress it
3) I send an email to my blog and attach the resized image
4) Postie checks my email constantly, when it finds an email it posts it on the blog under the category Moblogging

Now the biggest problem is my phone doesn’t have a spell checker to expect a ton of misspellings. So thats basically how I will be moblogging while in Paris. I will continue to post regular posts but the photo ones are meant to be something new and something I haven’t done on this blog yet. It should prove to be entertaining.

I have tickets to the NIN concert that is taking place on the 22nd in Ireland but I will be missing it and instead going to Paris for work. I am disappointed I will be missing out on NIN but it’s not like I am getting sent to Dubai or Beirut. I’ve actually never been to Paris before so I am really looking forward to it. I will be leaving on the 21st and coming back on the 26th. While there I will try photo blogging since with my new phone (the E61i) I can actually do that. By photo blogging I mean taking a picture from my phone and then instantly sending it to my blog. I already have a software that will do that for me and I will try it out before I leave to France to make sure its working right.

update: Here is a link to my old photo blog, before I started 248AM and Miskan. [Link]

Last month I posted about how Bazaar used an illustration for the cover of their dining guide without crediting the illustrator, without paying for the image and without permission from the artist. They replied thanking me for finding the artist and that they contacted him and were going to reimburse him.

Well they did contact him but the amount they offered to pay the artist was just $200. Considering that rights managed images start at a $1000 and upwards then you could imagine how low $200 is. Anyway the original artist had this to say about the whole incident:

I have been invited to comment the case with Bazaar copying an image that once was created by me. The image was used without my permission. I was therefore never compensated financially and for good reasons I assume that I was never mentioned in the credit line. I was made aware of the unauthorized usage before Bazaar contacted me.

When they contacted me they offered to compensate me financially. I am sure they found that the compensation was fair but I have a different opinion. In fact we are in a position where we don’t seem to be able to reach an agreement. I have therefore decided that it is not worth to take this any further due to the cost and time that I would have to spend on this.

I have also decided that I will not accept money that Bazaar offers me since that would be accepting the terms of how they have used my image. So case is closed.

I think it is vital to defend the copyright law for many different reasons. In most countries it is seen as self-evident that you shouldn’t use an image without paying for the copyright, but from what I can tell by following the debate on this website I understand that Q8 might not be one of those countries. The sad thing is that in countries where the copyright law is not taken seriously the originator has little or no chance at all to protect his work.

I am a freelance illustrator and my only source of income is the images I create. I have a family to support and bills to pay. If I manufactured, let’s say bikes and someone took one of my bikes form the warehouse and used it without telling me, how would you characterize that? Should the unauthorized use of images be treated differently?

I have been featured on design blogs all over the world. I take it that most of the people who are publishing my work there are very young. But they all have something in common – they contact me before or shortly after publishing my images and very often they write “Copyright Bo Lundberg” . What is it that they understand and that some publishers don’t?

Another aspect is that when I create an image it is commissioned by a client. They are paying for the usage of the images. To illustrate what can happen when people copy my images I would like to give an example. Once I had a call from a publisher in the US that I had done more than 80 illustrations for. They were extremely upset with me since they had found all my illustrations in another book printed in Asia and now they were contemplating on suing me. What had happened was that someone just ripped my images from the original book and created a whole new book, obviously without informing me. I managed to reason with the original client but as you might understand it was quite a situation to have been copied and then facing a possible trial.

I wish all the designers in Q8 good luck in your efforts. And to those who commission work I would just like to ask you to think twice before using an image without authorization. In the long run – who wants to work as an illustrator or photographer if you are not compensated and protected by copyright law?

Bo Lundberg

The reason I think we have a big problem here is because Bazaar is one of the biggest and most respected magazines in Kuwait. If they aren’t going to abide by copyright laws and set an example to the smaller publishers who will? They might as well do what Campus Cruise did and just take pictures off flickr and put them on the cover.

Wasn’t there a law that got released that says companies can not take the passports of their employees? I thought that there was but I could be mistaken. The place where a friend works now are demanding all employees hand in their passports or else they won’t get paid. Do they have a right to do this?