Last Friday I went to check in via Foursquare on my iPhone 3GS here in Madison, WI. The suggested locations were odd. I opened up maps and Google put me in Neenah, WI, 100 miles NE of my current location. I did the normal troubleshooting with no luck.
I returned to the office and asked a friend to check his phone. Same result. I threw my issue out on Twitter, asking other Madison folks to confirm. Sure enough, multiple folks with iPhone 3GS in Madison have suddenly been re-geolocated 100 miles NE.
The solution? Disable 3G and your iPhone will correctly identify your location back in Madison. I understand in absence of a GPS signal the iPhone triangulates your position using AT&T’s network, as scary as that may seem. However,
a) Why does the phone apparently *not* use the GPS receiver when it *does* have a 3G connection?
b) Why is the 3G connection suddenly registering Madison AT&T customers 100 miles NE?
c) Why has it gone 4 days?
Today brings an interesting new twist in the saga: AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive carrier in the US, tells the FCC that it had nothing to do with Google Voice being rejected. Meanwhile, in a separate statement, Apple says that “contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.” [From ODD: AT&T and Apple Both Deny Rejecting Google Voice From App Store]
Ok. So AT&T didn’t kill the Google Voice application on the iPhone. But Apple leaves the door open.
I predict Apple approves the Google Voice app in short order, completely throwing AT&T under the bus by allowing everybody text-messaging for free over Google Voice instead of paying for AT&T’s criminal text messaging rates.
There. Apple, while you are at it, enable that one tethering application from a while back. And iChat.
…statements from both AT&T and O2 suggest sales (iPhone 3G S) are already outpacing last year’s, and should put Apple out far ahead of analysts’ estimates.
AT&T has time to count their sales, but 24 later I still can’t activate my new iPhone.
A new study of 2008 broadband adoption reveals that subscriber growth continued its declining trend. Between factors like excessive premiums, comparatively slow speeds, and a segment of the population that has yet to be wooed away from dial-up, the US’ broadband market is more saturated than ever.
While it’s not quite related, today I struggled to get a 28k connection. Jailbreaking my iPhone and sitting in the right part of the convention center got me 3g access, but drained my battery in what seemed like 30 seconds.
“The reason that people who use wikis become extremely passionate advocates – like Apple fans – and stoke successful grassroots growth in organizations is that they’re simple and understandable. People get how to use them very quickly, and genuinely like that they don’t have to fight with the wiki to do what they want. So wikis get used during projects (instead of after the fact), and the more they get used, the more their use grows because they become hubs for knowledge, interaction, and collaboration. An elegant experience goes a long way in making this possible.”
In case you hadn’t heard, a few months back we launched 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) in the U.S. It’s a free telephone service that lets you search for businesses by voice and get connected to those businesses for free.
Today, your GOOG-411 experience just got better: during your call to GOOG-411, just say “map it”, and you’ll get a text message with the details of your search plus a link to a map of your results right on your mobile phone.
Buried in my travels of the past month I took the big leap into the smartphone market. Not an iPhone. A Blackberry 8703. It’s services like this that make this new thread of learning very, very interesting.
21 day road stand coming up. I’m in Hayward, WI this week doing a 4 day long “Web 2.0 in Education” workshop for a group of 20 folks. Reports as I go. Hayward has a really big Muskie museum. I may have to revisit this thing during the week.
Thanks to all for the phone advice. I couldn’t hold back any longer for the iPhone. I pulled the trigger and went the way of a Blackberry 8703.
I’ve played with cell phones for a while, but this is my first “serious” phone. The nice folks at our local cell shop didn’t have this model in stock, so they ordered one overnight shipped, threw in a car charger, and will call my wife when it arrives and is charged up tomorrow. Despite it not being in stock, the Alltel dealer in Platteville, WI was far and away the best experience I’ve ever had shopping for a cell phone.
Here are my primary objectives…
1) I want it for text messaging & Twitter. QWERTY keyboard.
2) I want a camera to send things up to Flickr.
3) I want access to my Gmail and Google Calendar.
4) I want it to play well with my MacBook Pro.
Everything else is secondary.
While I’ve been waiting on the iPhone, AT&T is the worst option in terms of service in the area in which I work.
It took me 9 months and a trip to Texas to meet other parents of students in my daughters class back in Wisconsin.¬† It took me an hour to scout eating options in Houston in Google Maps.¬† It took me 10 seconds to type “anybody familiar with Houston, Texas?” in World of Warcraft guild chat to find somebody that grew up here.¬† Who’s in your network?
As I mentioned earlier, I’m stepping completely out of my element and attending a Marily Burns math workshop.¬† Learning to teach teachers how to teach math.¬† In a certain sense, it’s very similar to me going schools and singing the praises of web 2.0.
Let history note:  I broke the iPhone release date of June 29th before Engadget.  6+ months of speculation on all the channels, I caught on the television playing in the background and broke the news on Twitter.
