• Do a “reboot” of your iPhone. Hold down the power button and the home button until you get a screen with an option to “slide to power off”. This will turn off your iPhone. Once it’s completely off, hit the power button again to turn it back on. You’ll need to do this periodically. — This gave me a noticeable increase in speed.
• Clear your text message history. — I didn’t find a way to clear them other than one by one. I fortunately don’t do alot of SMS texting so this didn’t take long but probably did not have much of an impact for me speed-wise.
• Clear the Safari cache. Settings > Safari > Clear Cache. — This made Safari snappier for me but I didn’t notice any other speed increases.

Results from this? Rebooting your iPhone occasionally is just a Good Thing™.

Image via oskay

His big question is, is of course:

How do I apply?

You can go to the unemployment office itself. However, the unemployment rate in South Carolina is 12% right now and it’s probably a very long line. To avoid that line you can apply online.

The site lets you register for work (a requirement) and unemployment at the same time online. Just click on the Online Claim Filing link on the front page. You can check your claim status and do your weekly benefit certification online as well or by phone.

I had two big questions which were answered on the SC Employment Security Commission’s FAQ:

How big will my unemployment check be?

If eligible, you can expect to draw approximately half of your regular pay, up to a maximum of $326.00 per week in South Carolina. The regular state program provides for a maximum of 26 weeks.

When will I get my check?

Most people can expect to receive a check in about 3 weeks.

Hopefully he won’t need the unemployment check for long but I’m glad it’s there.

SC Unemployment Claim webpage: http://www.sces.org/ui/claimant/index.htm

Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Sun Microsystems. But Google, which has hundreds of thousands of servers and considers running them part of its core expertise, designs and builds its own. Ben Jai, who designed many of Google’s servers, unveiled a modern Google server before the hungry eyes of a technically sophisticated audience.

Google’s big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there’s a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers–each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.

via cnet news

The standard iPhone apps like Safari, Mail, iPod, Youtube, Stocks, etc do not neccessarily close themselves when you hit the Home button. You need to hold the button down for 8-10 seconds while in the application to force it to quit. Umm, okay.

An alternative is to shut down your iPhone a few times a week. (Hold down the power button till you get a screen asking if you want to power down.)

Heat really reduces battery life so this is definitely worth keeping an eye on and powering down whenever it starts overheating.

via Macrumors forum