Actually, what initially convinced me was their recent partnership with Coca Cola’s MyCokeRewards site, redeeming some free single-song downloads. It takes quiet a lot of points, but we had them laying around anyways… Today I noticed they added not just song downloads, but also Subscription plans! I didn’t do the math, but I think 3 months subscription is best value. It gives you 15 song downloads (for keeps) and 3 months of unlimited streaming of any kind of music out there.

Sadly, they don’t let you stream to phones. In fact, they go extra mile to block any streaming from mobile devices, since essentially it should be possible as your mobile smartphone is on the same Internet as everyone.

Anyhow, until Spotify gets here, only sensible option I found is GrooveShark. Their $3 (or less) per month plan lets you stream unlimited music to their iPhone app, but of course many people will be satisfied with free Pandora or Last.fm radio Apps for iPhone.

Enjoy!

Overall I really love it so far, and although I experienced the famous disappearing bars issue first hand, I am really not concerned. One negative so far I noticed is the camera. There are comparisons to other smartphone cameras that say iPhone 4 is better, so maybe I just expected too much… Here’s best shot I managed today, judge for yourself (click for original). This one was outside, but inside photos not as nice, even with flash…

I listed below main positives that I did Not see in mainstream media. I feel that these are really Biggest innovations and they don’t get nearly enough coverage:

• Long Battery Life – Yes, it easily lasted 3 days with pretty heavy usage, including WiFi on all the time, steaming video over 3G and over WiFi, games, surfing, etc. This is amazing technological achievement and was main selling point in my considerations versus Evo and other competitors.
• Fast Internet – I felt that surfing is way faster, but couldn’t explain it. Today I found technical details, and I immediately ran my own SpeedTest to confirm: 4 Mbps down and 800kbps up!! Just in a random mall location! Interestingly enough, there was HTC Evo on Sprint 4G network on display at the mall today, and Internet on it didn’t feel any faster; in fact whole phone didn’t impress much…
• Reader Friendly Display – This is the Secret Feature; Sure everyone is talking about Retina display, but the truth is the screen is not only very sharp, it also feels softer, lending itself to effortless reading! The fonts are paper quality, think laser printer, and the backlight can be adjusted to soft luminance, making reading a joy! This definitely makes iPhone an ePaper competitive reading device – think 10 hours battery life, beautiful soft display AND colors! And of course interactions and video, what more do you need?

Overall – Amazing device and so far I am really satisfied with my purchase. Organizing icons into folders is fun and allows for quick access as well as ability to see what Apps I have in each category, to help me cleanup things I may not be using. I didn’t try the voice recognition features yet, but certainly planning to. I also noticed that typing is easier for some reason. Somehow it is even better at recognizing buttons I want to click, and I find myself able to type faster. Another win for Apple and shows us that closed hardware/software combination can achieve some amazing heights.

So, Not much to report yet, but you know now that I decided to lock myself in with Apple and AT&T again, for perhaps as much as two years. Yes, Android EVO 4G from Sprint was really tempting option and I even tried to have educated discussion about it on Twitter. But my big concern was battery life and with my heavy usage it most likely wouldn’t last a full day even…

Versus advertised 10 hours video and Wi-Fi surfing on iPhone 4 with their custom CPU! And yea, there’s an App for almost anything, hard to resist that aspect also. And Gazillion games, many of which I paid for and now get to enjoy on two devices.

The new packaging is small yet still impressive – see picture with Sprite for perspective.

Stay tuned for actual usage reports!

I raved about Mass Effect 2 in the past, it’s a Movie gone Game, or Game gone Movie, either way makes for amazing Sci-Fi experience. I also love Steam, with their sensible license allowing you to install the game you purchase on your PC and on your Laptop, and play on either one, depending on what you happen to be on at the time.

If you are not reading this on June 19th, the sale offering this game for $23.95 is likely gone, and so I am sorry.. But, I am sure with time price will come down to even lower level! Or just pony up the extra cash, it’s Worthy Investment (ahem…)!

To be fair, I myself did a lot of Flash/Flex development and still do! I really like what ActionScript can achieve, much more so than messing with JavaScript and CSS/HTML. But, times are tough, so here is my proposal:

How about we setup an Open Source project to build Flash alternative based on Dalvik VM and some existing Android platform components. We already know that it’s very capable, and if Google is true to its mantra, they wouldn’t mind sharing! Why not reuse the great UI library and 3D API’s, and others, and bring them into the browsers on all platforms – Windows, Unix and of course, Mac and iPad/iPhone! Can’t we all just get along?! Plus with JIT for Dalvik, and potential for native hardware video acceleration on Windows/Mac/Ubuntu/Handsets, I see very bright future!

I am not ignoring Silverlight or HTML 5, I just don’t see either as viable solution. Silverlight is still proprietary and you need specific Microsoft tools to develop for it, while HTML 5 feels like a bit “future-ware” and even when materializes, it’s unclear that it can provide all the richness of visual effects, 3D support, overall speed and pixel level manipulation which we expect in this day and age.

But what about JavaFX you ask? Feels like DOA to me, sadly. I love Java, which is yet another reason why I think Android approach is great, but JavaFX is just “overweight” out the door, and many posted about other major shortcomings.

Plus true modularity is still not there with neither technology! Why are we (developers) still forcing users to go through complex installation ritual to get new software on a system? Why does it have to be a gamble, especially when installing complex applications, whether it will interfere with other applications on the system and break things?!

So, I want to see comments! I know it’s rather big project, so without some people weighing in as to it’s merit (or with offers of participation), I am not going to bother starting even. Besides, probably Googlers are already doing it, whether in their 20% or even as main task, who knows…

UPDATE: I just discovered that someone implemented Flash player in JavaScript!? I didn’t think it was possible, but it is seemingly done using HTML5 browser features in modern browsers. More details and browsers compatibility list on the Gordon project on Github.

First, I am not convinced that going through this annual ritual is good for US Residents nor US Government. Accounting is getting more complex every year, and way too many “grey” areas still exist in the code. On top of this, creative return preparers often taking on “risk” in your name, because ultimately each of us is fully responsible for their Tax return.

Solution: Fairtax.org – which sounds like a great idea to me! In fact, I say bump it up to 25 or even 30% ! It simplifies accounting for all, and should provide boost to our overall GDP, IMHO.

As an alternative, I say we should introduce government mandated accounting cloud. In fact, the two solutions aren’t mutually exclusive! Such cloud will have strict requirements for reporting directly from Point-of-sale systems, inventory systems, and other software systems companies already use in-house to track their own accounting! Only this time all these systems will be unified by single standard and have specific requirements for “calling home” to the cloud within 48 hours of transaction, for example. I know everyone is afraid of “big brother” effect, but accounting anyhow ends up being reported one way or the other, and providing country-wide standard should only help keep it all fair!

I am still blogging less in a futile effort to minimize “ramblings”. But I am out there on the Web, on Twitter and now on all encompassing Google Buzz, which you should be able to subscribe to via my Google Profile page.

This story unfolded literally few minutes ago, and I believe entire thing happened online within past few hours, at the most.

Some “entrepreneurial” guy registered blizzard-admin.net domain and setup a fake Login page to mimic World of Warcraft in every way possible, all in a classic phishing scheme. But, this time they took it a bit further. As I was catching up on my late night gaming, a direct message came in over from someone called “blizzrdadmin” within a Game, telling me to go to this web site to register for Rare in-game mount.

I think it took me about 2 seconds to report that account as Spammer, and from what Blizzard promised in the past, they review such complaints very seriously, often within minutes of complaining.

And here is where Google Chrome shines – I decided to still check out how clever these “phishers” were, and told my Chrome to show me the site. I was pleasantly surprised when a Warning came up, telling me to Stay Away! Excellent!

And here’s the kicker, neither Firefox nor Internet Explorer, which also contain anti-phishing technology, knew yet that this is a Phishing site! They both took me to the site…

This is just further reinforces my admiration for Chrome and I am sure I will be using it more and more as my primary browser. I don’t recall if I wrote about it before, but I also find Google Chrome under Windows 7 to be by far the fastest of browsers. I believe part of the reason is unique architecture of Chrome, as it creates separate Operating System processes for each Browser Tab or Window.

In unrelated news – I realize I haven’t been blogging much lately, apologies, and will improve!

• Without any option or checkbox anywhere, it installed HP/Yahoo Co-branded Internet Explorer Toolbar! What GIVES!? I hate those thing for so many reasons! Since when is it Ok to bundle Toolbars with Printer Drivers? Seriously, why does reputable company bundle what can only be called AdWare in a box with (supposedly) premium printer?!
• We invested a little more specifically to get Wireless capability. So I set it up in the corner of the room, on dedicated little desk. Guess What – You can’t complete Wireless setup without “temporarily connecting it to a computer via USB cable”. Huh!? Am I supposed to drag it across the room to set it up, and then back?? Luckily laptop was available, and helped the situation by installing on it first. I must say that once connected to a PC, it installed quickly and painlessly, transferring proper wireless setting to the printer over USB.
• Apparently (per documentation) only 5 home computers can use it over network. I don’t like limitations, especially Artificial Ones!!!
• They still haven’t figured out wireless scanning – if I try to click “scan to a computer” on the printer, it simply says “try doing this from a computer”. Brilliant user experience, no question.

Well, I will report more in the future. Our previous Epson all-in-one printer lasted for 4+ years, if not more. We’ll see how this one does. So far I tried printing single photo on their provided photo paper sample – unimpressive. But, I didn’t really buy it for photos, just regular round the home printing, and for kids school projects.

On a side note – I am going to resume blogging, apologies for long delay. I seem to spend my spare time Facebook games these days, and what may be accidentally left over goes to WoW.

Naturally, after I replaced the graphics card on her Windows XP system, I updated the driver to match the newer nVidia chipset. Then I decided to test out Sims 2, her favorite game, as a final confirmation that the upgrade went well.

Only, the game didn’t start at all!!! So I proceeded to try her second favorite game, Sims 3. Same result, doesn’t start! No error, no clues, nothing!!! I proceeded to run DxDiag utility (all you do is type it into your Run prompt), and it showed that “No Problems Detected”.

I spent hours, reinstalling the game, scouting online articles for ideas. Checking settings, resetting graphics options, touring the registry. Much fun….. ..NOT! As a father, don’t you hate it when you disappoint (and UPSET) your child!!! I was really upset!

What I eventually found on Sims support site (and not main EA support site, where I went first) was Unbelievable! Latest nVidia drivers, they say, CAUSES THE GAME NOT TO START! And the only solution right now is to uninstall new drivers and roll back to August version!

Well, I can confirm now that this resolves the issue. But, what is this incompetence?! Did nVidia mess up most basic compatibility tests and unleashed Faulty drivers onto the world! Or did EA developers simply not use DirectX APIs properly?

Game on, fellow Sims lovers, and here’s to hoping EA and nVidia will get together and resolve this unfortunate disaster, via an Update (both games support auto-patching!) before major Class Action Lawsuit materializes!

I guess Vista didn’t shut down properly or something, so in the next reboot into Windows 7 it detected problems on my Vista hard-drive and decided to “Fix It”. I was not really concerned, since Windows 7 surely knows how to read/fix Vista partition — OR DOES IT!? An unsettling “Replacing invalid security id with default security id for file” messages popped up, and kept going for thousands of files.

Long story short, after it finished, Windows 7 gave me “Access Denied” error when trying to view Vista drive, and even Vista itself couldn’t boot — just goes into black screen. So much for thinking that Win 7 chkdsk was smart enough to not break Vista partition.

Well, here is how I managed to dig myself out of this, and it wasn’t easy! Boot into Windows 7, right click on the Vista drive (E:\ in my case), and choose Security. First, you need to change Ownership to something public, I decided to change it to “Everyone”. Apply that ownership to all sub-dirs/objects also, obviously. Once you take ownership. Click on Security tab and reset that also, again, I did Everyone Full Control and added Guest full control. Not super secure, of course, but that is old partition I am transitioning away from, so I gather it’s good enough. Voila, after that everything is fine. Although, I did notice that if I “push” files from Vista into Win 7 file system, sometimes they come out with “funny” security. It was just one occurrence, but…

Overall I am still loving Win 7, it’s fast and stable, but I guess I should accelerate my transition away from Vista.

Knowing that 64 Bit Vista and Windows 7 RC don’t like my motherboard, I decided to replace that also. So had it shipped just in time for Oct 22 release date, and set out Friday night to rebuild the whole box and install fresh Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit. For those who care, here are some components I updated on my PC, via Newegg, of course: P45 Motherboard, nVidia 9600 GSO and 640 GB hard-drive for clean install. I kept other components, including my 4GB memory and my Intel Q6600 quad-core CPU.

It installed without a hitch, besides minor snag where it wouldn’t activate right. During the install, I disconnected my Vista hard-drive, as I didn’t want it to touch that boot loader (it has dual Vista/Ubuntu boot). When I later came to activate Win 7, even with fully licensed Vista right there on the other HD, it complained. Luckily there is simple fix for this bug.

Since I used mainstream components, it seems that 64 Bit drivers was mostly non issue. I had strange issue at first with my Motherboard embedded networking card. It worked, but then stopped. I later found that Windows Update decided to “update” networking driver to OLDER version. Once identified, a simple “rollback driver” button click resolved the problem.

I was happy to discover that Zune software has 64 Bit flavor, and so does iTunes (though it’s only drivers, I think. iTunes itself runs as 32 bit, blah). Steam works great, and this is again why I love steam, as I was easily able to reinstall games I wanted and purchased in the past. World of Warcraft works great also! In fact I saw FASTER FRAMERATES, on what is essentially the same hardware (but 64 Bit and newer drivers, faster HD).

Another HUGE improvement – SILENCE!!! This is both when it runs, the HD is not overused and generally fans are running low also. And Hibernate works GREAT! I can just walk away, it goes to hibernate after 30 minutes and I can just turn it back on when needed, entire resume is under 30 seconds.

I am still installing software and bringing over my documents, etc. I am reluctant to put Office 2007 on, and rather wait for Office 2010 (betas are planned soon?). Did you know that iTunes can sync contacts Directly with Yahoo! Address Book?! And Plaxo can sync directly with Yahoo! Get the picture, folks!?

To summarize, so far – very stable and fast! I am enjoying it!!! I’ll report more in the future!

And Yes, Picasa is FREE, fully featured edition.
Thank You Google!!!!

The latest edition finally brings us Face Recognition, taking this already excellent photo organization and editing program to Whole New High!! I found a spot in Picasa that shows me all my photos in collection, hope you sitting down – 57,975 is the number, occupying 66.1GB space! Yes, that’s almost 58 Thousand Photos!!!

I find tagging experience especially amazing. I tried to start it off with tagging more recent (higher quality, clear faces) photos, and it went back and picked up same people over the years. Including Baby and Childhood photos!!! The mere process of tagging, where it presents the many stages of person, in one quick/easy to navigate view, is spectacular.

Yes, I do have 4-core computer, and it still takes a while to scan all the photos. It does that in the background, or I would recommend tagging few people in recent photos, and let it work overnight if you have a lot of photos.

Another tip is to find Confirm All button on top of Name tagging frame – do a quick scan to see if any need to be excluded (mistakes, especially happen during baby years, or with brothers and sisters, naturally). After that, quick press on Confirm All, and voila! I already have over 1000 faces confirmed and only 16k more to go

The recognition algorithm is really impressive, there were few rare occasions where I wasn’t even sure myself, but computer was right in face recognition!!! Even partial faces like this one here, recognized correctly!!!

There are countless other features, here is a quick run down of major new additions. Charge Forth and download this amazing piece of technology. It is Priceless (aka: Free) and is sure to improve your experience of this living we are all doing.

PS: Maybe I missed it, but I did not see much news about this in main media. Where are CNET or TechCrunch folks, or Scobleizer perhaps? No-one mentions this amazing leap forward, not just in face recognition technology, but in producing this overall package with such Ease of Use and convenience (and I didn’t even touch on massive web sharing options available).

Big mistake, after reading today what happened to Scobleizer (top of Techmeme, so thanks to both for heads up), I rushed to make the most recent backup of my blog and upgrade it to 2.8.4 wordpress. The upgrade itself was quick and painless (as usual with wordpress), and it actually much improved, as auto upgrade of plugins worked flawlessly in this latest edition (haven’t tried full upgrade yet).

I thought I was out of the woods, but reading people’s comments, they mentioned an Admin account, that hackers create for themselves. Not seeing anything in the Users list, I was not worried at first. But then, someone mentioned “hidden” in their comments. So I went to WordPress tables in mySQL and FOUND A HIDDEN ADMIN account created there! Complete, with evidence of crime! The darn trick is as simple as inserting malicious JavaScript which elevated the user to Admin, into their own First Name field!!! I promptly deleted the invader’s account, and hopefully this is the end of that (read below about other things I checked).

I must say I am disappointed with Wordpress security, although it remains the easiest to use and very fast/flexible framework for blog/site. But, haven’t we learned from all SQL injections in the past? Validate Field Lenghts on the Server Side!!! Especially for any input/fields or account registrations that are in World Visible unsecure area!

I know the hack was fixed in 2.8.4, and I haven’t taken the time to review how it was fixed. But, I truly hope this is something they go back and double check elsewhere, as much as possible.

I don’t know if this breach left any other backdoors on my blog, I certainly hope not. Here are some steps I took to review site integrity after following standard Wordpress Upgrade instructions:

• If you do find phantom Admin user in your wp_users table that you don’t recognize, check if that user has wp_user_level of 10 in the wp_usermeta table (same user_id) – Record the offending user_id or IDs (if you have multiple breaches). Promptly remove all records from both tables for that user_id, obviously.
• Review all other tables, especially wp_posts, for found user_id above (called post_author in the wp_posts table). It also helps to review any old posts and check their post_modified field, to check for any recent modifications that you didn’t perform yourself.
• Review your file system for any new files. I presume that you upgrade as per instructions and completely wipe your old wp-admin and wp-include directories before placing new ones there. But, what about wp-content with your Theme, plugins, widgets and uploads? Review these directories as much as possible!
• I have no idea how to review wp_options table and whether anything suspicious may be lurking there – If you have suggestions on this one, post in Comments!

Here are some more links to review from experts and fortify your site as much as possible. Of course, you may also reconsider moving into relative safety and simplicity of hosted blog, such as Wordpress.com and others.

Me, I prefer the “fun” of messing with my own site, and having complete control, seemingly.

UPDATE: Found another older post, but more good suggestions there. For example, I did review my .htaccess file and found it a bit suspicious, so I replaced it. I just forgot to explicitly mention it above. Better stay alert!

UPDATE2: I am still lurking around the Net and reading up on this. Seems that latest vulnerability could also allow someone to reset Admin password of the “default” initial Wordpress account. So, I also took the precaution of resetting that password to something new ASAP. Read up more here.