LG VU and other feature phones go for $0 with a two year voice contract. Similar unlocked phones sell for in the ball park of 200 to $300. Apple should consider launching an iPhone without a mandatory data plan and complete own this market. They are doing this with the iPad and there no reason why they shouldn’t do the same with iPhone.

Similar comments echoed here.

Go get it here http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/umail/id361070910?mt=8

But once installed, this thing worked like charm. My collection on iTunes went from random file names to beautiful cover art. This application is perfect for those who are struggling with duplicates, random file names etc and it worked like advertised.

There is a free version, that limits the number of tracks that can be processed to 100. Then there is a “paid” version for $39. That is super expensive, even though this is a good product. So I recommend it, but not at that price.

http://www.tidysongs.com/

Search for “Chrome Plugins” and listed below are the search results

What I was hoping to find was “https://chrome.google.com/extensions” at least in the first 10 results.

Run the same search without the adblock and the correct URL is the first sponsored results.

Earlier this week, Robert Howe QC, appearing for the group, said the the band’s deal with EMI stipulated that their "seamless" albums should not be split up and that they "wanted to retain artistic control".

I would hate to see them disappear from iTunes.

What you need

• • Google Voice account
  • A local phone account. This is a hassle free calling service, which provides a local US number for each one of your international contacts. Their international call rates are the lowest in the industry.

• Once you are ready for call forwarding log into local phone account and add the international number that you want your call to be forwarded to as a new contact. The local phone service will in turn give you a local US number as “unique local access number”. Say that is 222-444-5555
• Make sure your “Google Voice” number is set up as one of the calling numbers in local phone. This is besides your mobile phone or home phone or any other phone that you use for accessing local phone.
• Now log into your “Google Voice” account and navigate to settings setup Google voice to display your Google Voice number for all incoming calls . Refer to the screen shot below

• Set-up Google Voice to ring your international access number. In this case “222-444-5555” for all incoming calls.

That’s it. You are all set for low cost international call forwarding.

Apple should consider forking the iPhone SDK to reduce the time required to get apps approved. Should release SDK lite or something of that sort, which is more secure and has limited API’s.

Developers should be encouraged to use iPhone SDK Lite because

• No approval required for apps developed using SDK lite
• More restricted environment, with limited set of API
• More secure and more sandboxed
• Will bypass the approval process and the time to market is quick.

Looking around , Loadstorm offers a simple solution to load testing. It a web-service with a free and premium service. Up-to 50 concurrent users is free and there are different tiered pricing if you want more.

Load Storm, has a simple UI where you can

• Authenticate your website
• Create test steps
• Schedule one or more load testing session etc.

The problem with this announcement is, the signup page doesn’t take me anywhere nor can I find any “sample” sites that are running azure. It looks like a work in progress and will be sometime before it is released to the developers. I just wish they(Microsoft) make their websites simple and not generate so much of noise, with no significant information. Make an announcement if it is ready and I can take it for a spin.

The previously released Microsoft SSDS ( Sql server data services) is a part of this whole azure tech stack.

• Windows Azure for service hosting and management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking
• Microsoft SQL Services for a wide range of database services and reporting
• Microsoft .NET Services which are service-based implementations of familiar .NET Framework concepts such as workflow and access control
• Live Services for a consistent way for users to store, share and synchronize documents, photos, files and information across their PCs, phones, PC applications and Web sites
• Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services for business content, collaboration and rapid solution development in the cloud

One of the most significant advantages of Azure is going to be support for “ALL” languages. I don’t know when this is going to happen, but is something they are promising. Support for PHP, Rails etc is fundamental for the success of azure , because of the body of open source code already existing for these tech stacks. It will be quite simple to port the existing PHP application on-to azure when it is available.

One of the biggest problem with Appengine is, there are no “open source” code base which can be leveraged to build apps. Simple functionality, which is normally pulled off the web and implemented with a copy paste, has to be laboriously hand-coded for Appengine.

Just hope azure serves as wake up call for Appengine team and they speed up their releases.