One Sunday, about two months ago I woke up to four email receipts from Apple’s iTunes store each with around $40 in charges. The list of purchased items in these receipts was absolutely ridiculous, with many of the apps not available in the US flavor of the App Store, and since my iTunes account was linked to my debit card the money was withdrawn directly from my back account. Since Chase, my bank, has a solid track record with refunding fraudulent charges, I wasn’t all that worried about the missing $160.

After speaking with the bank it became very apparent that this was a sticky situation. The bank claimed that since I authorized iTunes to purchase in the past, the transactions where accurate and the fraud was not their responsibility. I tried phrasing this a number of different ways, but the clerk on the other end did not seem to understand how this happened. Shortly after this frustrating conversation, I called Apple to find out what they would be able to do for me. As it turns out, nothing.

Apple claimed that if I had admitted to mistakingly purchasing an app, they would be able to refund my purchase, but since I bought $160 worth of Chinese applications there was nothing they could do. I explained to the support person that their was no physical way, aside from visiting China or spoofing my IP, that I could have purchased these apps from the store. I also used basic reason, stating that my account showed five devices were authorized on my account, when I only had three. I even tried to do her job for her, asking her to pull up metrics that I’m sure they keep on each purchase to prove that this could not have been me. On all accounts they refused and to hush me up, they sent me a wireless keyboard.

I initially thought that this was a rare case. One that myself and perhaps a handful of others may have fallen victim to, but the overall public would never have to worry about. I soon found out that this was an epidemic spreading across the iTunes store. Stories began popping up on a few major tech blogs of Chinese developers hacking into accounts in order to purchase and post positive reviews for their apps. Most recently, it seems iTunes and PayPal have been together hit hard by hackers.

The fact is, I’m not sure Apple fully realizes how much damage this is doing to their digital store. When my account was hacked, I immediately removed all payment options from my iTunes account. I was no longer comfortable storing my financial information on Apple’s servers. I also instructed my friends and family members to follow suite, and most did. Now, in order to make a purchase, I need to travel to a brick and mortar store and purchase a gift card. This means any app I purchase is planned and well thought out. This is in contrast to the convenience and spontinutity that the app store has billed itself as. I can confidently report that I spend significantly less money on books and apps each month since removing my card.

If Apple can’t make it’s customers feel safe enough to store their purchasing information on their account, whether that is a credit card or a PayPal account, I believe they will be greatly punishing themselves. To date, much of the iTunes marketplace has been billed as convenience and instant access. When users feel the need to purchase credits for items from a brick and mortar retailer, a portion of these properties are lost. I’m not saying this will make or break the future of the digital marketplace, but I do think that until Apple makes a solid effort to fix these gaping security concerns, many users will not feel comfortable giving them their credit cards. The business lost will most likely never be quantifiable, but I believe it will prove to be a significant mishap.

• For some reason, I find it in my hand more than the 3G ever was. Whether this is a result of multitasking/better apps/better battery or just because the screen looks so damn nice, I’m not really sure.
• All these reception problems we’ve heard about, it can get annoying. It doesn’t affect me when I’m on the phone (I guess I don’t use the death grip) but I sometimes notice it when checking Twitter/ email or using Safari.
• The Bumper Case from Apple is one of the nicest rubber cases I’ve ever purchased for a device, although slightly over prices ($29). I’m the type of person that hates covering up well designed hardware, but I must say the Bumper covers just enough to make it manageable.
• The camera is fantastic, but low light photo’s are still nothing to write home about. I can’t see this replacing my S90 for photo-centric events.
• The video capturing is great as well, the only question is why Apple would disable the ability to upload in HD. The process of getting the video online does not make any sense. Take video-> edit in iMove-> plug into computer-> pull off of phone-> upload to site. I honestly have no idea what Apple was thinking when they plotted this one out.
• I haven’t used FaceTime yet, but I can’t see it being that useful. I surf the internet/ pace around/ read emails when I’m on the phone. Looking at someone’s face doesn’t seem like a good trade off.
• Integrated 3rd party media controls means Pandora is one of the greatest apps on my phone. I’m going to hit my 40 hour monthly limit for sure now.
• The killer feature is the retina display. Without a doubt, I enjoy doing everything on this phone more because of this display. It really makes it difficult to switch between the iPhone 4 and iPad.

Like many reviewers have said, this is a substantial step forward for the iPhone. If the jump from the 3G to the 3GS was a refresh, this is an upgrade. For anyone on the fence and willing to deal with AT&T, the rewards outweigh the risks. I must say though, AT&T is not getting any better. I truly think if the phone was available on Verizon, much of the load currently placed on the AT&T network would be relieved, and all the upgrades done over the past three years would shine.

It’s no secret that each version of the iPhone is missing key features, favoring stability over first to market. With the newest release, the previously long list has taken a big hit, with more big name features added to iOS and better equipment on the new hardware. Just as before, people will complain, and just as before, Apple will eventually deliver.

Why does Posterous strip out all of the picture’s metadata before sending it to a specific service? For instance, the post here on Posterous has location data, but when sent to Flickr, it’s gone? The specific metadata I’m looking for is the picture’s geolocation, which by default is turned on when snapping iPhone (or any other App Phone) pics. It’s nowhere to be found on the Flickr end, but is clearly on the Posterous side.

I’ve got an email out to the developers. Hopefully it’s something they can fix in the future.

Update: The response from my inquiry to Posterous.

Michael –

That’s really weird and should not happen. We definitely upload the original file that you sent to us to Flickr — if there is any metadata on the photo, it will go along for the ride.

Cheers, and thanks for using Posterous,

Vince

So the question is, if they send the picture, as you send it to them, directly to Flickr, what happens to the geolocation data along the way?

It seems like almost all airports have pay-per-use wifi, and the only other choice is to use a tethered phone or air card. Now, what if there was a way to get online, for free, but only to iTunes? From their you could rent/buy that movie you forgot to download before you left, without having to pay that ridiculously high fee for wifi.

If Apple could strike a deal with Boingo, there’s no doubt in my mind that they would get some serious traffic. Say you forgot to pick up that huge iPhone game for you iPod touch before you left you computer, and Internet, at home. If you get access to iTunes for free, that would sure make it tempting to buy a game, or maybe even a movie you would normally download through “alternate” channels.

Now with the iBook store open for business, I can picture a traveler with a delayed flight buying a book they may not have originally anticipated picking up, or at the vary least get the sample and purchase the full version after their hooked. We’ve seen this approach work before, with specialized iTunes stores at Starbucks offering free Starbucks exclusive content and free wifi access to iPhones.

There is of course the argument of iDevices that have built in wireless connections, and while this applies to quiet a few, files as large as movies and games cannot go over the network, and must be transferred over wifi. Plus, no one wants to stain poor AT&T’s network any more than it already is. Hopefully in the future, we see companies that control our data working together better together.

Most everything about the iPad has been said over the past week, with all major news outlets contributing a review, almost all of which were glowing. My two cents, that I didn’t read about anywhere else? For one, no one told me this thing has spell check. That’s a total game changer for myself, the world’s worst speller. I can now confidently write emails and blog posts, like this one, from the comfort of my couch. Also, it’s not to ergonomic to type on. I’ll be investing in a case/stand probably before the day is out. Lastly, the iPod on this thing is stellar. I mean, yea Safari is nasty and all the apps are swell, but having that kind of navigation on a portable device is brilliant.

Anyway, I’m going to get back to playing around with this bad boy, and if i feel up to it tomorrow I’ll post a little longer, more in depth review.

The HP 210 is a good looking device, if I may say so myself. Continuing with the recent trend of stylish laptops that HP has released recently, the HP 210 has an “artistic” design, chick-let keyboard, bottom cover and new-and-improved track pad. I assume the new track pad has taken some cues from Apple, as it has multi-touch gestures and the entire area is a “click-able” button. After playing with it, the track pad was one of the biggest selling points in my opinion. Netbook’s generally have small track pads with oddly placed buttons and are a bit difficult to use. With the method HP has taken, similar to the Envy 13, two fingers are used to scroll, physically clicking the bottom portion acts as buttons, and pinch-to-zoom techniques work throughout the OS.

Without breaking down the specs too much (complete specs below), the netbook lasts around nine hours while surfing the web, and has enough power to watch a show on Hulu, use Gmail and check your RSS feeds, which is all I can ask for. Down the road, I’m sure a memory upgrade will be in order. The standard OS on the netbook is Windows 7 Starter, but it also includes an instant on OS built into the chipset (I’m assuming). Believe it or not, this branded Splashtop instant on was much smoother than Jolicloud or Moblin when I tried these two out, although my tests where limited. As a note, it boots into this OS within 5 seconds in my tests. The next few weeks will be a good field test for the netbook.

Below is the spec sheet from HP:

Update: Even though the netbook proved to be very useful when both traveling and at home, it just couldn’t hold up against the iPad. I’ve recently sold it.

[Amazon]

So, I’ve been playing around with Google Wave for about two months, and have really been enjoying it. The main thing it’s missing is contacts. I don’t know anyone personally that’s used it. This past week though, Gwave left the dev sandbox  title behind and entered into the realm of preview. What does this mean? Well, instead of 2,000 people, there are now 100,000. Also, each person has eight invites, but these are going out slowly in order to properly scale the system.

I almost published a huge review of Gwave a few weeks back, but decided against it. Chances are you have heard of it, and if you want to find more info out about it, every site, from CNN to TechCrunch has a review/preview of some sort up already, not to mention the loads of YouTube vids that Google put out to help users adopt the service. If you are in the preview, lets Wave away. If not, I still have a few invites left, maybe I’ll be feeling generous.

Note: The below wave will not show up if you are not part of the Wave preview. Hopefully in the future this will not be the case, because embedding waves doesn’t do a whole lot if people can at least read it’s content.

The Wave

[wave id="googlewave.com!w+MEYR_QuYE" color="#000000" height="500px"]

The father of this concept is Foursquare, the little cousin of Dodgeball. Dodgeball is now owned by Google, and has been rebranded Latitude. Foursquare allows users (in some cities) to check into the location they are at, and they are rewarded accordingly. If the user completes an achievement, such as going out three days in a row, they get a reward (a badge). If they are the top user/patron at a specific location, they become the mayor of that spot. This concept has worked so well, some owners of businesses in the supported cities reward mayors with free drinks or discounted food. The biggest downside to Foursquare is the lack of cities. For instance, of the 23 cities currently supported, Cleveland is not one of them. This means I cannot play Foursquare unless I travel to a supported city. There is no way for users to add places to cities that aren’t supported. I have been lobbying Foursquare to support Cleveland with no luck to date.

This is where I picked up on Gowalla. Gowalla is similar to Foursquare, except for one major difference; users can submit their own places regardless of the city. Also, users can create trips. These are a series of spots that are laid out within a city, and the user will get a reward for visiting them all.  There are also differences in the way stamp (badges) are rewarded, and there is a gifting interface that adds a “collect them all” element to the check-ins. Gowalla is new, so the user base is scarce, and it’s only supported on the iPhone right now, which limits its footprint even more. Foursquare has been around, received the attention, and gained a pretty big user base.

Just like all social services, they don’t really work unless people use them. Unfortunately, I really don’t see people moving to Gowalla, no matter how superior to Foursquare I find it. The lack of device support alone will make gaining any market share next to impossible. In major cities, where there are many more iPhone users than there are here in Cleveland, people have already began using Foursquare, and I’m sure very few will switch for the ability to add places not in their home city. Don’t get me wrong, until Foursquare comes here, I will be using Gowalla religiously. Chances are if you visit C-town and use Gowalla, I will be the one who created the entry, mostly because I’m the only person using it here right now. But when Foursquare does come, if Gowalla still has no device support, I will probably be switching over. If you have an iPhone, definitely give Gowalla a try though, even if you already use Foursquare.

I really haven’t been posting too often lately, and it’s not because I don’t want to. Truthfully, it’s been on my to-do list for a few weeks, with a big long post sitting in draft waiting to be proof read, but I just never found the time (plus it’s way too long and no one would have ever read it). So, just as a quick update before I start posting again, I thought I’d share with you what I’m working on.

The main time consumer, besides class, is 216 Food. My friends and I where just discussing Cleveland’s above average food places, and we decided to share our experiences with our friends and family, and maybe help out a few resaturates in the process. The site is anything but finished, or even to a point that is easily updatable, but it is a fun side project. I think my favorite part about it is the social networking. It’s something I really can’t do with m lapida because it doesn’t have a set demographic. I’ve been tweeting, facebooking and flickring my way to more readers. Another thing I really enjoyed was creating the logo. Something about rolling into Adobe Illistrator and creating a logo/brand is uniquely satisfying.

So, between the new site and school, I defiantly have a few articles that I have been wanting to write up. In the meantime, if your from Cleveland, and you haven’t heard of 216 Food, or I haven’t already annoyed you with it, check it out. Leave me some feedback and tell me what your looking for in a food review/discovery site.

p.s. If your one of the five people that have been to this site before and noticed the theme change, let me know what you think. That old theme was super ugly. Makes me want to go back to SquareSpace sometime.

Allowing Aardvark to contact you and in turn you contact it when you are available makes the service shine. About twice a day I get an instant message on my GTalk account asking me if I am available to answer a question in one of the fields I tagged as being knowledgeable in. Aardvark tells me the tag, then lets me choose whether to view the question or not. After viewing the question, it again lets me choose if I would like to answer it, or pass it on to another Aardvark member.

I ask Aardvark questions every once and a while, but not nearly as often as I answer them. Something about the community of it all makes it very enjoyable. The handful of times I have asked questions, I received responses

within minutes of asking. This brings me to the next handy thing about Aardvark, they have an iPhone app in beta right now. The app has push notifications and the ability to view all unanswered questions. It only pushes you answers to questions you have asked, which is good in my opinion, as I would not want question notifications popping up on my phone. The answering feature is an awesome time waster when sitting in a car or at the doctors office.

The more I interact and use the service, the more pleased I am by its ease of use and usefulness. The site and how it works has been well thought out, not leaving too many features too be desired. Like most community based web applications, the more users that use Aardvark, the better it becomes. A smaller feature that will hopefully one day be very useful is it’s ability to pinpoint a geographic area that a user is familiar with, and present relevant questions to that user regarding that area. This will play a huge roll in their upcoming, geo-aware iPhone app. The app uses the iPhone’s GPS to locate the user. If the user asks a question about, say, nightlife in a city while they are located in said city, a user that has identified that city, and potentially neighborhood will be able to answer the question.

All in all Aardvark get two thumbs up in my book. Ease of use, rich feature set and plenty of ways to take advantage of it are all the makings of a winner. If you get a chance, give it a try.

Update: They have added a bunch of new social features to the site itself, allowing users to ask and answer questions from it, rather than use an IM service or email.

[Aardvark]