Thursday, June 24, 2010

IPhone 4 antenna and problems mar Apple product debut

The Apple iPhone 4
Apple's long awaited iPhone 4 is out today, and a long line formed near Apple's Flagship Stores in New York and San Francisco, and around America and the World. The iPhone, an innovative cell phone that's changed the way such devices are developed, has a number of new features that have created a lot of excitement. But the Apple IPhone 4 also has bugs with its antenna and other features that have marred it's debut.

The most exciting new feature on the iPhone 4 is the ability to created and edit high-definition video, which you can then upload to YouTube. This makes the iPhone the first smart phone designed for video-blogging use and can change the face of media. On Wednesday night ABC News Nightline featured an impressive segment that was shot entirely using the iPhone 4.

The other cool feature is video phone calling: the ability to talk to a person and see their face as they talk. It's a wild feature that calls into question how concerns about how teen "sexting" will morph into a concern about what this space will call "sexviding" or the act of one making a video phone call just to send a sexy video of themselves to the other person. (More on that later.)

But beyond launching a new teen social trend (and the prediction here is that "sexviding" will be that trend), the iPhone 4 also has a few problems. The most noted one is the issue of the antenna.

The tech blog Gizmodo notes that the iPhone 4 loses reception when you hold it by the antenna band, which happens to be the way you normally hold the phone. Gizmodo presented this YouTube video by Fame Foundry which shows the problem:



The antenna band is wrapped around the sides of the phone, so when you hold it, you're bound to touch the band, and cause the AT&T (man I hate AT&T) reception bars to decrease to nil, meaning no reception. You have to hold the iPhone 4 by the glass, which is a weird way to handle the product, to get reception.

Gizmodo asked users to confirm the problem by making their own video and that's what has happened. Thus, the Apple iPhone 4 is such that you can't use it effectively by holding it. It seems Apple could have installed a retractable antenna, rather than one that part of the phone's casing. Illogical. (As a note, Gizmodo has various fixes for iPhone users, the most effective one being scotch tape.)

The other problem most noted is with a "yellow spot problem" on the screen that Apple reports will go away within a day "or so."  The reason given is apparently that Apple was so busy rushing the iPhone to delivery that a kind of bonding agent was not given enough time to evaporate.

Stay tuned.

Columbia University eminent domain abuse by Suzannah B. Troy

It was yet another dark day for democracy here in NYC.  The big apple has seen so many dark days under Bloomberg, a mayor who denied the people of New York City a referendum so he could push threw a third term to crown himself king of New York also pushed a reckless tsunami of development and aided and abetted his developer friends.  Ditto for in my opinion the worst city planner in NYC's history, socialite mega-millionaire Amanda the people's Burden.

Amanda the people's Burden knows her reputation is shot so word on the street is she tells people she is doing Mike Bloomberg's bidding.   She and Mike may be one of the largest mass displacement of New Yorkers if you don't include the original real Natives, the American Indians.  King Mike, the nanny mayor,  has managed to piss them off too.  Mike Bloomberg was not smart enough to figure out if you displace people and than call them and ask them to vote for you either their telephone numbers are now disconnected and or they and their friends will hang up on your campaign staff.   Team Bloomberg found that out and also set a record for the most expensive -- $110 million campaign price tag for the most humiliating win.  Lucky for Teflon Mike The NY Post is not doing anymore investigative research on how Mike spent  109 million dollars and Cy Vance seems unwilling to give king Mike even a slap on the wrist for wiring money out of his personal account instead of the campaign account.   Mike Bloomerg also holds the purse strings to Cy Vance, the Manhattan DA's budget allotment.  Ouch.  Back to today's dark day and Columbia University doing everything but holding a gun to the peoples' heads to get them to move.   Who needs thugs when you have judges that side with ruthless developers and not the people?

Norman Siegel won a powerful first round against Columbia University but it was no surprise he lost round two since this was the very same set of judges that ruled in favor of eminent domain abuse in Brooklyn.

Read the Crain's article and decide for yourself.  My opinion is this is very sad  news.  A dark day for the people.   Watch my YouTube playlist and hear directly from people being abused by Columbia University's abuse of eminent domain.  http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=8C438F43D7335594  Watch  interviews of people being evicted by Columbia University abusing eminent domain.  I also have an interview with Norman Siegel at a protest on the Columbia University campus where even students joined the protest and sad "Not in our name!"




This is all part of the mass displacement under Bloomberg.   

Chevron Ecuador - Amazon Watch is afraid to sue Ecuador

In the never-ending Chevron Ecuador legal battle, Laywer Steven Donziger (the head of a decade-long battle to extort billions from Chevron for environmental damage caused by the Ecuador-owned Petroecuador and Ecuador President Rafael Correa's policy of allowing oil production in the Amazon, while having kicked out American oil companies) and the Amazon Watch organization yesterday called for additional damages against Chevron in Ecuador, citing alleged sabotage of the court proceedings by Chevron.

That's a joke on several fronts. First, understand that this effort is nothing more than Steve Donziger's ticket to billions, as this space stated in this video:



It's sad, that Donziger is accusing Chevron of somehow tampering with the Ecuadorian court system when, in fact, it's Donziger and his collegues who have been trying to manipulate the already corrupt court system in Ecuador.

An old view with roots in Berkeley

Ecuador oil mess caused by Petroecuador
What's really bothersome about this goes back to something that has its roots for this blogger at the Department of City and Regional Planning at The University of California at Berkeley. It was there, at what we lovingly call "DCRP" (and to which I owe a donation), that some of my fellow students rubber-stamped the economic development actions of governments in third-world countries.

Not to get too much off the point, but government's stealing petrodollars that could help the poor, and the overuse of narcodollars to line political pockets was seldom a focus. It was the classic "big company bad", "third world country good" ethic. An idea that I totally hated because it's simplistic; in this business the lines of good and bad are not so clear.

The people you think are "good" are some of the first ones in the Ecuador case, to shoot an arrow into your back.  It's a known fact that Ecuador's poor in the Amazon are hostile to outsiders even from their own country.  It's also a known fact that Ecuador's politics and court system are as dirty as the oil it produces.

At the time I was there, some at DCRP presented a "small group think" that escaped a hard look at corruption and never really solved problems for countries like Ecuador. Now, Ecuador's government ia allowed to get away with ignoring its poor without criticism. Ask Amazon Watch why it doesn't sue Ecuador itself?  The answer is simple: because they're in partnership with each other.

Donziger's credibility is lacking

Earlier this year, evidence submitted by Donziger and his team in Ecuador was repudiated by Charles W. Calmbacher, the very expert that Donziger and the plaintiffs hired to make a report.

Calmbacher, under oath in a deposition you can download here, said the evidence submitted by Donziger and the Amazon Defense Coalition was fraudulent and was not written by him.

All of which leads to one conclusion considering Wednesday's news: Steven Donziger, Amazon Watch and the Amazon Defense Coalition, are trying to divert attention from their own court fixing attempts, imply that American Chevron has done something wrong in Ecuador, and collect billions that would go to the Ecuadorian government, and to Donziger, and not the people Donziger claims to represent.

Ecuador's own lawyer Washington Pesantez, who's title is Ecuador's Prosecutor General, has already said it would get 90 percent of the $27 billion or $16 billion or whatever number Donziger's managed to conjure up of late.

That, folks, makes Ecuador a party to Steven Donziger's own lawsuit and calls into question all this jazz about helping the indigenous people of Ecuador.  But even with the information presented, Donziger and Amazon Watch press on with their claims.

Time is not on their side. There's still the issue of evidence of involvement in the Chevron Ecuador case by President Correa's own political party.

The New York Times ran an article on the bribery scandal involving then Chevron Ecuador case Judge Nunez and recordings that point right to President Correa's sister Pierina Correa as being in line to be approached about the bribe. This is what the Times reported:

In the same meeting, Mr. GarcĂ­a told Mr. Borja how to approach Ms. Correa, the president’s sister, about the bribe. "Tell Pierina clearly, 'Madam Pierina, what we came to do beyond anything else is to participate, participate in the remediation. That’s why I want to make you part of this.'"

Mr. Correa's party was to receive a million in the bribe effort.

Now, collect the dots here: we have Ecuador's own lawyer Washington Pesantez stating Ecuador will get 90 percent of the damage award, and we have allegations and evidence pointing to President Correa's own political party as getting some of that same damage award. This lawsuit is designed to do nothing more than make Steven Donziger rich and Ecuador's rich, richer, while Petroecuador continues to mess up its own country's environment.

Black Eyed Peas Will.i.am (@iamwill) Bentley robbed in Hollywood Hills

Will.i.am
The Black Eyed Peas star and Internet tech conference flavor of the year, Will.i.am (@iamwill) was the unfortunate victim of a successful robbery attempt.

According to TMZ.com, Will.i.am's Bentley was broken into and the robbers made off with "jewelry and several of the singer's personal items."

As of this writing the LAPD is in the process of recovering the stolen items, and have found some of them already. Where or how they were found has not been explained.

Will.i.am and Perez Hilton one year anniversary

This is the week that one year ago saw Will.i.am and Perez Hilton in a dust-up over a rather stupid set of comments the celebrity blogger made to Will.i.am at The Much Music Festival in Toronto, Canada. The result was a video change and a total meltdown by Perez and it may have been a contributing factor in his blog's decline in value. Here it is:



Will.i.am the Tech Star

In the wake of his celebrated battle with blogger Perez Hilton, Will.i.am has massively upped his PR game by first becoming associated with Twitter execs, even being a guest at Twitter Headquarters this year, and giving a speech at the firm's recent confab called "Chirp." Now, Will.i.am is slated to speak at the upcoming Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this November.

With that Will.i.am can be officially called a tech influencer. Will.i.am just needs to make sure he keeps his Bentley in a more secure location in the future.

Euro Yank calls blacks the N-word, then deletes Facebook account

Just a warning to African Americans about a racist person who goes by the name Euro Yank. If you encounter the person on Facebook, report or at least blog about it. Euro Yank has, or had a Facebook page, where he posed the question "Who owns the media?"

The question came up on my news feed, so I answered that anyone with a cell phone, blog, and YouTube channel owns the media. My point is that people don't understand the power they have. Or at least those not lining up to by an Apple iPhone 4.

Euro Yank's Facebook response was:

Euro Yank YOU ZIONIST LOVER - HOW MUCH ARE THEY PAYING YOU


And...

Euro Yank and stay the fuck off my wall you stupid NIGGER


Both are on my Facebook page as a marker. Someone can take the page link and research where the person came from if they wanted to. This is that link: Euro Yank, which was broken by him.

Euro Yank - or this version of Euro Yank - has issues. But it's a good idea to present this as a reminder that society still has a long way to go.

Tupac Shakur, Bill Cosby, REM work called "Culturally Significant"

Years after his death, the sprint of Rapper Tupac Shakur continues to live with us via his music. A series of works so powerful that one of them, Dear Mama, was called "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress.

Tupac Shakur joins Bill Cosby, REM, Willie Nelson, Little Richard, Mississippi John Hurt, Patti Smith, and others in the honor.

Tupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas in 1996 and during a feud with rival rappers that really should not have happened at all. Tupac Shakur was a major music figure in the San Francisco Bay Area, having moved here and to Marin City in 1988.

That Tupac Shakur's music has reached this lofty status should be a sign to urban economic development officials (if they're paying attention and most don't) that investing in the people who create music in a city can not only help them but give the city itself incredible visibility.

That's certainly true for cities like Oakland, California, which has a rich rap music culture, but this space knows that the Oakland Redevelopment Agency pays no attention to an industry, the music industry, in Oakland that many of its residents are already involved in, one way or another.

Tupac Shakur. Forever.

Cystic Fibrosis life expectancy longer than most thought

Diet is one big reason 
Cystic Fibrosis is at the top of search trends Thursday because it was found that the disease, in which the person suffering from it develops an ulcer in the pancreas, can be managed due to advances in treatment. Those advances have caused a larger group of people to live past age 40. 30,000 Americans and 70,000 people around the World have Cystic Fibrosis as of this writing.

According to the Associated Press, Cystic Fibrosis treatment include inhaled medications and a chest - vibrating vest to clear airway clogs. The Cystic Fibrosis disease causes a mucus to build up in the lungs, clogging them and leading to life-threatening infections. That same mucus also clogs the pancreas so the body can't properly digest food.

Cystic Fibrosis generally showed up in kids, who didn't make it to become adults. But what's happening now is that Cystic Fibrosis is showing up in people later in life. What's found is that proper care leads to longer life, but there's something the AP article does not address.

The impact of the non-smoking movement

Not discussed is the impact of the non-smoking movement on Cystic Fibrosis patients. It's wildly known that smoking can harm Cystic Fibrosis patients, but not talked about is the impact of the non-smoking movement and the attack on the spread of second-hand smoke.

Also not considered is the impact of the diet and vitamins movement. Also, exercise is an important consideration. Why those factors aren't mentioned in the AP article is a head-scratcher.