As we all know there has been a lot of buzz about the new iPhone. Most of it is for the good, but a lot of it is certainly also for the bad.

The most discussed topic with regards to the new iPhone 4 is the antenna problems. Last Friday hosted a press event in which this problem was covered. Steve Jobs’ conclusion was that that the reception loss was not worse with iPhone 4 than any other smart phone in the market. To prove this Steve showed videos of the top 5 smart phones on the market all dropping signal when the antenna was covered with a hand

It’s all good and solid proof, no doubt about that – It’s physics, and we don’t wanna argue about that!

But what Apple “forgot” to mention was, that the signal drop will happen on the iPhone 4 if you only just touch it in the right spot – the right spot being the seam between the WiFi and the GSM antenna on the lower left side of the phone.

When this spot is touched the excact same thing will happen. And it’s certainly not because the antenna is covered – It’s because you are making the iPhone 4 short circuit temporarily! If this is not a design flaw, I don’t know what is!

Several users on Youtube has documented this problem, and I will show you some of them right here, and I hope that this problem will be getting more attention.

iPhone 4 one-touch reception loss

All of the videos below shows, that the iPhone 4 can lose its signal with only a touch of a finger

Like almost any other iPad owner, I experienced love at first sight, as my own iPad was the first one I ever laid my hands on.

I will spare you for a review, since the the interweb is littered with reviews already – this time I was not an early mover. It was quite a struggle to get a hold of an iPad here in Denmark, unless you are willing to pay 2-3 times the official Apple price.

Even before I received my iPad I started shopping for accessories on eBay and DealExtreme, and I’m going to recommend some of them to you.

A protective sleeve

I wanted to be able to protect my precious from day one, and that’s why my first eBay item was a leather sleeve at only $7.17 including shipping to europe.

Despite the rather low price, the sleeve feels quite exclusive. The interior is imitated suede and gives you a reassuring protective feeling when shoving the iPad into the sleeve. The exterior is actually not leather, even though this was advertised. The exterior is a sturdy nylon material, that gives the sleeve a nice and stable feeling. The velcro-powered closing “mechanism” is in (imitated) leather though.

Im quite satisfied with this sleeve for transpiration use, but I ordered a Apple-ish flip-style case as well, which I’m yet to receive.

A great alternative to the leather case is the $8.40 manilla-style sleeve from DealExtreme

A sync/charge dock

As you may know, Apple is not selling the iPad in Denmark yet. This means, that their official dock is not available in Denmark as well. This “forced” be to go eBay shopping again. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE eBay shopping!

I was able to find a quite nice looking iPad dock at only $6.31 including shipping to Europe. It’s available in both black and white. I picked the white one as it matches my iMac the best. The dock has the same rubber base as Apple’s own docks and therefore quite “skid-proof”. Besides the normal dock connector in the back it sports a line-out port as well. The only problem with this dock is, that the iPod app thinks that the iPad is mounted in a speaker dock and therefore enables the line out, and disables the built in speaker.

iPad Wall-mount kit

After seeing this video I just HAD to order 3 feet of white vecro setting me back $3.50 – Now I can mount my iPad almost anywhere – In the kitchen, over the bed, in the car or even on window glass! The only drawback is that the vecro is ruining the lovely alu back of the iPad.

iPad stylus

After receiving my iPad i quickly got hooked on the Pictionary-styled drawing game Charadium HD. To be able to make more detailed drawings i decided to try an iPad Stylus from ebay. I have ordered a couple of alternatives from Deal Extreme, and I will update the post when I know which one to recommend.

Audio Splitter

This summer I’m taking my fifth trip to USA, and the iPad is going to be the best travel companion for me and my girlfriend. For us to be able to share a movie on the iPad, I decided to order a nice Apple-ish head phone spitter from DealExtreme at only $2.20 with free shipping. DX claims that it’s a genuine Apple audio split adaptor… Uhm.. no so much! But with the $2 price tag I won’t complain.

Last but not least – Micro Fibre Cloths!

Even though Apple added some kind of anti-fingerprint oleophobic coating to the iPad’s screen it WILL get smudged in fingerprints eventually. Don’t use any harsh cleaning products or attempt any excessive polishing as you can and will wear off the oleophobic coating. Just use a plain mirco fibre cloth, and the smudges will disappear like snow in the sun!

How do YOU accessorize your iPad?

Do you think I missed anything? I most likely have, as the iPad accessory market is already quite gigantic! If you have bought a nice gadget or accessory for you iPad, please let me know in the comments.

I present to you: EgoTweeting

I chose to rename my book to “EgoTweeting” because that’s what Twitter Marketing is all about in the end: Tweeting about yourself and your business – And being good at it!

The EgoTweeting eBook will cover subjects from Twitter Monetization, over Twitter Marketing Ideas to Automating Twitter and will also cover a lot of the Tools needed to perfect your Twitter Marketing Campaign.

Choosing the right price for the eBook was one of the hardest parts of the eBook-production-process. My first price was $19.95, since it seems to be the “Magic Price” that every one else uses, but I would really love for every one to be able to afford this handbook on Twitter marketing. That is why i changes the price to $9.95.

I have made the book in both a printed paperback physical book and a digital PDF eBook. The price is the same: $9.95, but some shipping will be added to the printed book. If you order the printed book before March 22 you will get FREE shipping using the following promo codes:

• USD $ blurb promo code: WESHIP
• GBP £ blurb promo code: WESHIP2
• EUR € blurb promo code: WESHIP3

I hope that you will go and have a look at my eBook, and if you like my idea and you would like to know your way around Twitter Markting, I think that you should give it a read, it’s an eBook on only 12 condense chapters and is the optimal book for your night stand!

If you want to read a review of the eBook, please take a look at the review from TechPatio, who was nice enough to read it before I published it, and give me a little feedback.

Please post your comments and tips below, this is the first time have published and eBook so I really need the feedback

I’m currently working on a Twitter Mashup.

You can see a video demonstration in the bottom of this post.

The idea is actually quite simple. I have worked out an algorithm, that can make a giant mosaic from any Twitter Profile Image. The final image will be around 100 megapixels, and will be made from 50.000 small 45×45 pixel thumbnails from your followers profile images. The follower-images will be sorted beautifully to resemble the colors in your Twitter Profile Image. You can see a small scale version to the right, and make sure to see the demo video below.

@TechPatio’s profile image made from his own followers’ images:

Update: Browse the full 100 Megapixel image

eBook Cover Rendering

In the progress of writing my eBook “Twitter As Your Day Job” I was wondering how all of those 3D renderings of eBooks and software Box Shots were made.

I know that you can make them yourself in Photoshop, but there must be an easier way!

I stumbled upon a product called Cover Action Pro which automated the process of making eBook covers and Box-Shots in Photoshop – Splendid!

To the right you can see what I managed to create in a matter of 30 minutes. It’s simply amazing how professional the result is! This example is made using just one of the many templates included with Cover Action Pro.

Business Card Rendering

When familiarizing myself with the application I made a couple of other samples seen below. The first one is a 3D rendering of my business cars.

The second one is virtual gift-cards for my upcomming eBook – Just an idea inspired by one of the templates. There are ALOT of templates, and they are all very professional looking.

The last sample is an included sample from Cover Action Pro – thinking about using this if I’m going to sell my eBook on eBay, where digital delivery unfortunately not  is allowed

 

 

Virtual Gift Cards

The progress of making the above mentioned product shots is actually quite easy, as long as you have worked with Photoshop before, and know how to execute a Photoshop Action Script

If  you are ever to make a virtual book-cover or a software cover shot, I hope that you will take Cover Action Pro for a spin!

 

 

 

 

Cover Shot for a DVD-product

FaceBook Lite

What does the terms Lite, Feather and Fade have in common? Nothing it seams, but if you look closely you can see a new trend is seemingly spreading through the mastodon webpages. Both Facebook, Google and YouTube have been slimming down their designs under the code names FaceBook Lite, YouTube Feather and Google “Fade”.

Cutting the crap seems to be the new black. Lite, Feather and Fade removes the excess features of Facebook, YouTube and Google respectively. Let us start by looking at FaceBook Lite compared to the normal Facebook.

Facebook announced a “lite” version of the site back in august 2009, intended for users on slower or intermittent internet connections. Facebook Lite offered fewer services, excluded most third-party applications. Even though the original intension is

YouTube Feather

to meet the NetBook users, my guess is that another audience has anticipated this version of FaceBook even more: The audience, that use FaceBook to its original purpose: keeping contact with friends, family and business partners, without having to flick through several pages of surveys, trivial browser games and updates from you friends telling you what kind of furniture they are. I for one love the new FaceBook Lite. I can see my friends’ updates, pictures and everything else that was in the original version of FaceBook when I signed up 3 years ago

So FaceBook just turned the knob on their website 3 years back in time? Yes, you are right! And it seems to be the same situation with YouTube Feather. If you compare the look of the new feather-light version of YouTube you will see a strong resemblance to how

Google "Fade"

YouTube looked 3-4 years ago.

Does the mean that the conglomerate websites are finally realizing that they do not need to be bloated with features to be able to deliver their well performing services? I sure hope so. Why not keep it simple like Twitter does it. The Twitter homepage delivers what it promises and nothing more. But is it only a matter of time before Twitter gets bloated with features, and a Twitter Like is launched? I hope not, but i sincerely hope, that FaceBook Lite and YouTube Feather has come to stay, and that these version of their service will be the only version availble, since this will probably show the rest of the internet conglomerates, that cutting the crap is the new black!

BlogInTheBag Logo

Due to a number of long-dead blogs in danish, i felt inspired to try to blog in english. Furthermore I will broaden the topic of the blog this time. My last two blogs were about food and Apple, but this time, inspired by the personal blog-style of TechPatio, I will blog about everything tech-related that comes to my mind.

So, why start a new blog, when the interest has been lost twice before?
I’m very attracted to the idea of blogging and having a window through which I can share my thoughts on my interests. When I started my Food-blog I was in a progress of restructuring my diet, and for that reason preparing good-looking food was one of my main interests. When I had the new diet on track I lost the general interest in blogging about food and thus the blog died. The situation with my Apple-blog was a bit different. The Apple blog was launched when one of the major danish Apple sites died, and the danish Apple community needed a new place to meet and read Apple-related news. The blog MacSiden.dk was launched to meet this need,  but very soon other and better alternatives came along. The two blogs together has around 800 daily visits, so I guess the content on the blogs is still relevant.

BlogInTheBag.com is an attempt to continue blogging in the rate as when the two danish blogs were on their highest, since tech-related content has always been, and still is one of my main interest.

I hope that you will enjoy reading my new blog!

-LarsD