Everyday, no matter how hard it is, it has it’s (small) silverlinnings;

1. I got promoted!
2. Today I met an old friend for a coffee, when was the last time you had a cup of hot coffee to catch up with an old friend?
3.  I placed some time aside to relaunch my blog (this one).

I couldn’t set an alarm to my contacts birthday list on IOS, but today I just found you can do so with IOS5. I don’t know if in previous versions this feature was available. I hated to have an extra calendar in Google Calendar for my contacts Birthdays but now there is no need for it. You should do as follows:

Settings>Mail&Contacts&Calendar>Scroll to calendar>Default Alert Times>Birthdays and ¡choose your time!

Easy uh?

A convinient feature Apple was forgetting is now available in a not so easy way to enable it.

Steve is gone. Everyone has been talking about all his astonishing life, quotes, his leadership management capabilities and a huge so on. But I want to talk about one of his creations, the iMac, why do I own one? What made me choose him and his brand among many other choices?

Before my 24” iMac I first had a Packard Bell PC, after an IBM T30 laptop, and a clone PC from a convenience Computer store with a Samsung 15” flat screen. This clone computer lasted me 8 years, I changed everything from the CPU except the processor to extend his life, new USB connection ports, new graphic cards, new ventilation system, new HD, new power system, I really had fun tuning my machine. But I had to deal with an OS like Windows that when time went by just couldn’t do the thing, so I switched to Linux’s Ubuntu distribution to try and gain a bit more time for my PC.

As the Christmas period came closer I had improved my knowledge of the Ubuntu OS to feel quite comfortable with it and I used Windows (in another partition) when I needed some programs I couldn’t find for Ubuntu or for some sporadic gaming. But one day I looked at my old PC, all the amount of cables connected to different peripherals, web cam, speakers, screen to the CPU, mouse, keyboard, cables like if my computer was in the ICU. And I thought to myself:

I want a beautiful computer.

I spent in front of my PC long hours of blogging (I had an F1 blog), gaming, video watching, music, reading, information searching and I simply wanted to work and have fun with a beautiful piece of industrial design. Something that looked gorgeous on my table, something that was like a piece of furniture (high tech furniture). I bought with care the pictures hanging in my room to decorate; I tried to have a nice beautiful room paying attention to details… ¿an I had an old crappy PC that when it turned on seemed like a 747 was going to take off in my room? I might seem pretentious but I wanted some glamour on my computer device, therefore I bought a Mac.

I didn’t care about the OS, I didn’t care about performance, I just wanted something beautiful on my desk. So we can’t start the classical fight about virtues of Mac OSX against Windows or any other geek performance fight. I just wanted a nice piece of computing furniture, and to me, the iMac on that Christmas of 2007 was the nicest one.

I just saw this image a day later from watching “Inside Job”… How appropriate.

I’m a frequent traveler to the United Kingdom and from time to time (not as much as I would like) to the USA. Therefore I decided to purchase a Truphone sim card to keep in touch with my email when being abroad and also to try and control the cost of my phone calls.

I got from my dad an old Blackberry 8310 to use with my new sim card, but it had a couple of problems:

1. It had a company configuration.
2. It was locked to one cell phone carrier.

The first thing I did was to wipe out the company configuration (I will talk about it in another post) so I could set up the device to my desires and afterwards I unlocked it at no cost with the following process:

• You need to download the MEP Reader (Windows Only) from HERE.

Afterwards:

1. Run the program.
2. Without connecting your device click on “READ PHONE”.
3. Now turn on your BB and connect it.
4. Wait a few seconds.
5. You will have two sets of numbers your IMEI number and your MEP code.
6. Take good note of those numbers.

• Next step is to go to THIS WEBSITE.

1. Scroll down until you find a “Code Request Form“.
2. Fill it in. Field number 2 is your IMEI and the last field is the MEP code we retrieved from the previous process.
3. Submit the form.
4. Wait up to 24 hours (mine took only 6 hours).

• You will get from the guys of Free My BB a 10-digit unlock code, we now have to introduce it in our Blackberry to unlock it. You can check HERE general procedures to see where to introduce the code, I will now tell you what I did for my model:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Advanced Settings.
3. Sim Card.
4. Type “mepd” (you won’t see it on the screen).
5. If your phone is locked you will see beside “Network” the “Active or Enable” words.
6. Type “mep(alt)2” (you won’t see it on the screen) (Press the alt button, don’t write it!).
7. Type your 10-digit code.
8. It will get a message “Code accepted“.
9. YOUR BLACKBERRY IS NOW UNLOCKED!

The process needs some patience because it has 3 different parts, anyway you can easily have it done during the weekend saving you some money.

Awesome!

Yup, that was my answer when 4 years ago, in my second ever internship in a firm in London, I was told about my participation in Lufthansa’s plans to provide their transcontinental flights with mobile coverage. As a trainee I had, obviously a very small role, which ended in the end looking up about legal restrictions to that service once the flight was over another country different to Germany.

The point is that I was able to participate in every discussion, despite my role, about the global approach of the project. The main concern between my colleagues was at that time that you didn’t want the flyer next to you to spend talking the whole flight. Therefore, by providing only data coverage, leaving voice coverage out of the services provided, the problem was easily solved

At that time phones weren’t as sophisticated as they are right know, so initially the service was thought only for laptops with Wi-Fi. On those days Vo-Ip wasn’t as important as nowadays so the real chances of having an annoying partner during any flight were considerably small.

But today, things are different. Smart phones with Wi-Fi capabilities and applications with Vo-Ip can make anyone’s flight a nightmare depending on who is in the close rows to you.

My point is, that I love having to shutdown my smart phone during flights. Thanks (or not) to mobile data coverage I can be located easily on every part of the globe, a phone call, an email, a tweet or even today an sms. I’m far away from an intense user of smart phones, but I can’t evade emails and other notification applications. And I’m also very little required by others, but the truth is that I love the feeling of disconnecting.

On my last trip I left my smart phone at home and took with me an “old” Nokia 6100 with the impressive features of calling and text messaging, that kept me from looking to my phone every 30 minutes to see “what was going on”.

In conclusion, an everyday flight is not a holiday, but in a long day having to shut it down on flight brings you some little disconnection and a great excuse “so sorry if I haven’t answered I was on a flight”.

Photo Credits:

#1 | Air Alaska

# 2 |  Gadget Highlight

I’m an economist. We receive lessons about how people choose given some circumstances. And not a single teacher in my faculty in 5 years came even a little close to Ms. Sheena Iyengar. I haven’t seen a research about our every day decisions and satisfaction like this.

In every marketing class you take, first thing every (boring) teacher tells you, is how critical the firms statement (or mission) is.

Is the very first time I see the statement of a firm shown in one of their shops.

It’s really interesting to read what is the firm’s “motto”, at the sime time you buy!