Well, maybe I should have titled this “Cleaning Your Laptop”, but this works on other things, including my iPhone.

I have many people ask me how to best clean their laptops, desktops, and other computer electronics.  As you may know, there are many solutions sold at most gadget stores.  Usually, these solutions are for cleaning LCDs, and contain isopropyl alcohol mixed with water.

However, many manufacturers do not recommend the use of chemicals.  Companies such as Apple, recommend that when cleaning their screens, you use only water, or if necessary, a mild glass cleaner.

My solution is similar to what Apple suggests, but I make a slight modification.  When dampening a lint free cloth, I recommend you use very warm or hot water.  The reason for this is that hot water evaporates much faster, and is therefore less likely to cause streaking or drops left from the water.  It’s also good not to over dampen the cloth, since it leaves more water on the electronics. If possible, filtered water works best.

This solution is effective on all my computers, my phone, iPod, etc.

For those of you who happen to have a white macbook (you know, one of the most popular laptops ever), there is an extra step for getting that discoloration off of the palm rests (and anywhere else).

It’s called the “Mr Clean Magic Eraser“, and it rocks.  I have repeatedly brought the shiny white happiness back to my wife’s laptop.

NOTE: Since this product must have some abrasive qualities, don’t ever use it on your screen. Also, I have never used it on any laptop other than a macbook, and it may damage other surfaces.  Consider yourself warned.

If you know of any tricks and tips to better clean electronics, leave a comment.

Android – the Google “Open Source” answer to smart phone software, doesn’t seem like it is really ready for primetime.  I was surprised this week when T-Mobile and Google announced the new G1 phone and Android software.  It was an event full of “It will probably” or “we imagine someone will…” promises to support how great their new platform is.

It’s just another product in the long list of “beta” solutions from Google.  This time, it seems like a desperate move for connecting people to the Google service suite.  There is no desktop syncing software.  If you want calendar, address book, and push email – you must do it Google style.  The big open platform is tied to a single service.

Furthermore, where is the outrage for it being tied to a single carrier?  What about the contract needed to get the good price?  What about the fact that T-Mobile has no 3G coverage in most of the US?  All things that people went after Apple and others on, Google gets a pass.  All in the name of Open Source.  What a joke.

Even Microsoft’s dated Windows Mobile 6, and the many phone options from HTC blow the G1 away in quality, features, and design.  I really hope they get this phone and software in better shape by the time it ships in late October.  Unless they do, this will not be a real smart phone alternative.

When I bought my first iPhone, and read the many reviews online, there was the occasional murmur from geeks wishing for a tethering solution for their iPhone.  

Tethering is the process of linking your phone to your computer, and using the phones data connection on your laptop.

While i thought it would be kind of cool, I didn’t really care.  The first gen iPhone is EDGE only.  We all know that EDGE means SLOW.  It’s fine for most iPhone tasks like checking email, getting RSS feeds, and mobile-formatted sites.  Otherwise, it is slightly painful to use.  That’s really not a good tethering solution.

Fast forward to today, we have the iPhone 3G now.  If you are one of the lucky folks who have 3G in your area, tethering becomes a much more plausible thing.  The problem is, AT&T still doesn’t have a solution for us iPhone users.

This past week I read an article about a new application in the iTunes App Store.  It’s called NetShare – and it let’s you tether your iPhone.  As soon as I saw that, I immediately opened the App Store and tried to download it.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t!  It was gone.  The article was less than an hour old, and the app was no longer around.  Not sure what the deal was, I just gave up for the moment.  That evening, I was browsing the App Store, and decided to look for it again.  This time it was available, so I grabbed it.

Tonight, I finally had the opportunity to setup it up.  The instructions are very straightforward, but if you need a visual queue, here is a link to a user on the Mac Rumors forum who snapped some screenshots.

Unfortunately, where I live, there is only EDGE.  So the speed of it was pretty dismal (as expected) on my Macbook Air:

The important thing for this test though, is that it actually works, which is all I wanted to know.  The cool thing will come tomorrow, when I go to work.  I work in a city with 3G, and I can’t wait to try it.  I’ll upload a speed test after I get a chance tomorrow.

Unfortunately for most folks, even those in 3G areas, the app is once again not available for the moment.  Not sure what is going on with the store, but hopefully it comes back for the masses.

Update 08/04/2008: 

I brought my laptop to work early today so I could test this out.  I was very surprised and pleased at the speed difference:

One thing of note.  The connection seems slightly unreliable.  I sometimes have to retry page loads, etc, to make it work.

Like most iPhone owners this weekend, I was having a blast with the new 2.0 software.  Also as a .Mac user, I have watched the painful Mobile Me transition unfold (well, it still is).  While waiting for the Mobile Me rollercoaster to stop, I spent a lot of time experimenting with or reading about many of the 500 applications now available for iPhone and iPod Touch users.  Interestingly, I noticed one important application not on the list.

While AIM showed up for opening day to provide its users with a chat program, everyone else was absent.  More importantly, no third party developer had a multi-protocol chat client available!  I was very surprised that an iPhone equivalent of Adium or Pidgin wasn’t available.  Of the 500 applications available, I still find myself crawling back to Meebo, to accomplish something I should have a program for.

Oh multi-protocol IM client developers, where art thou?  Please make an app available.  I would happily pay for such a solution.

The day apple released the iPhone, and in the process, provided only minimal support for its own .Mac service – I was perplexed.  What the heck were they thinking?  Every other Apple solution allowed for total syncing of Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, and more.  Why didn’t the iPhone?  In the age of ActiveSync, Blackberry Enterprise, and other solutions offering full sync of at least email, contacts, and calendars it makes no sense.  The iPhone seemed a perfect match for .Mac services, and therefore a point of discontent as a .Mac user.  (I immediately took the opportunity to provide feedback to Apple.)

To me, this was the one big screw up of the iPhone.  The phone is great otherwise.  Why would they not make better integration?

This week’s announcement of “Mobile Me” finally provides an answer. It just happens to be a bit late - a common theme for .Mac.  It seems as though they finally got the details figured out on making all this push and sync stuff working with their own services; something that should have been done long ago.  When Steve Jobs commented during his keynote that they finally “got it right” with .Mac, it seems that even he recognized the blunder.

The question for Apple will now be, is this enough to draw more people to .Mac Mobile Me? I think there is potential, but it may be a hard sell job.  The ability to keep all your messaging and collaboration data in sync on any of your Apple devices (and even Windows now) is huge in my book.  I no longer have to plug my phone into my Mac to sync that stuff.   To finally have a more complete web-based solution to go with it, definitely a plus.  The 20GB of data storage seems a bit meager on the surface.  However, in the context of how iDisk works (local syncing to your desktop), I can see why larger storage could potentially be a nightmare to keep under control.  I still think they could offer at least 40GB, and sweeten the deal.  After all, they are asking $100 a year.

The web hosting is fine, and good that they have already allowed for personal domain names.  However, this piece still seems incomplete.  Why not include DNS hosting for that domain?  Why not let users have email accounts at their personal domain?  I hope that they work on this part of the package.

All in all, Mobile Me looks like it will be a welcome change, and big step forward.  I hope they continue improving it after launch.

I have had my iPhone since the product was first released.  I have really enjoyed it, and I have always been interested in the updates Apple brings.  I have also played around with the “Jailbreaking” process, which allows you to apply 3rd party applications and modifications to the iPhone.

For a while now, Apple has been secretly working on the iPhone 2.0 software.  Not secretly in the sense that nobody knows, but secretly in the sense that there is no real detail about it, short of some screenshots.

Tonight, I did a search online for iPhone 2.0 beta.  For the first time, there was a copy of the new beta firmware out. “SWEET”, I thought.  I downloaded the file.

I plugged my iPhone into my laptop, iTunes launched, and I was ready to roll.  I option-clicked the “update” button in iTunes, which allowed me to specify which firmware file I used, and I selected this beta.  It went through the full process, and rebooted.  That was as far as it got, it wouldn’t activate!  Ugh.

I decided to attempt a no-no.  I tried to use the Jailbreak application “ZiPhoneOSX” to activate my phone, and things got worse from there.  It was a no-no, as the ZiPhone app doesn’t yet support the iPhone 2.0 software.  Needless to say, it got stuck in a reboot cycle.  No matter how many times I force reset it, or turned it off and on, it was hosed.  It would no longer detect in iTunes, so I couldn’t do a restore.  I started searching on Google, and found a few others stuck in the reboot loop (although they wouldn’t admit attempts at hacking the phone).  Unfortunately, there was no documented solution I could find.

I then stumbled on something.  If I held the “Home” button on the phone down during the reboot long enough, it would eventually come to the screen where it shows the end of the dock cable.  It then showed up in iTunes, and I could choose “Restore”.  I did so, and then let it work through the restore of the normal firmware.  In the end, it would error out, but I had a feeling that the 1.1.4 firmware was back on the phone.  I decided to re-open the ZiPhoneOSX app and choose “refurbish”, which puts the iPhone back to its original state.

After the phone rebooted, iTunes detected it again, and I was able to restore from backup, and the phone is now back in service. Whew, I didn’t permanently kill my $500 phone.

All that to say, be careful when messing with your iPhone.

“Isn’t the iPhone already big?”, you ask.  Well, sort of.  In the smart phone market it is beginning to see a decent percentage and is in second place to Blackberry.  That’s good news, and is a good sign for us early adopters, who from day one hoped that Apple’s first attempt into the cell phone business would pan out.

While the news is good around the iPhone, I dare say it is going to get a lot better (and I don’t say it because I own one).  Think about it, they have sold over 7 million of these already.  7 million of a $400-$500 cell phone.  In the past, cell phones have been subsidized by 2 year contracts, etc.  No such discount here, yet people jump at the chance to get one.

It was interesting to watch as the Engadgets of the world complained and moaned when the iPhone released.  They said it didn’t have enough of this or that, and the EDGE was just so terrible (it is no longer cool to review an Apple product without needing to point out some perceived major flaw, you know, to be “fair and balanced” – can’t be labelled a fanboy).  I am really glad nobody actually cared what they thought.  As usual, their geek perspective is so out of touch with reality, it is humorous.

Anyway, the good news is continuing without much interruption.  Every week I find another co-worker, friend, or relative has purchased an iPhone, and is having a blast with it.  I have never seen that with another new cell phone in the past.

The thing is,  the best part of the iPhone is yet to come.  This past week, they announced the “SDK” (software development kit), which allows developers to make 3rd party application that can run on the iPhone.  Finally, Apple is opening the doors to outsiders.  On top of that, they are making aggressive moves at the enterprise space by adding features like Microsoft Exchange support, with “push” email, calendar, and contacts.  All this is being dubbed “iPhone 2.0″, and it will be a huge hit.

The number of really innovative applications and games made for the iPhone will set the device further apart from the crowd.  Not to mention, the number of companies creating iPhone specific portals is growing by the week.

If 2007 was a big year for the iPhone, 2008 will blow it away.