July 19, 2008
Who says Sony’s afraid of competition when it comes to the handheld race? Definitely not John Koller, if you ask him. Actually, he was asked just exactly that in the closing moments of E3. And he believes that the PlayStation Portable is just as primed for the big 08.
With iPhone joining the fray and Nintendo’s DS consistently raking in the bucks, the PSP brand manager is still optimistic that the PSP still has got more experience under its belt than its competitors that it will still stay ahead despite the features offered by others.
Let’s take it point by point.
July 18, 2008
It was only a matter of time before someone exploited the adorable image of a penguin and turned it into a homebrew game on the iPhone. Apple iPhone School’s Brooke announced that the latest version of PenguinPanic is now available for download through the BigBoss repository source.
Version 3.5 of PenguinPanic now allows you to submit your high scores online. You can now compare how the antics of your flightless bird compares with others around the world. The High Scores list displays the top 25 scores sorted among the top players of the Day, Week, or Month. In addition, the new build now highlights the Start and Donate buttons on the main intro screen upon starting the game.
Penguin Panic is still available for free through Installer.app. Like we mentioned earlier, if you want to download and try out this adorably cute puzzle game, just search for it through the Community Sources under the BigBoss source.
We hope you enjoy this latest homebrew game for your Apple iPhone. Don’t forget to keep yourselves tuned in to this spot for the latest Apple homebrew updates.
July 18, 2008
The three primary publicly traded offshore outsourcing companies have turned cautious about the future even as their financial results remain strong.
Among the worries–a weak dollar that’s hurting revenue and margins, economic uncertainty, murky IT budgets and a concentration of financial services and retail customers. Meanwhile, CIOs are antsy, commanding better pricing and there’s a connection […]
July 18, 2008
Yahoo’s argument that billionaire investor Carl Icahn is a short-timer with no clear plan to run the company has won over a key investor. Legg Mason.
Legg Mason said Friday that it will vote for Yahoo’s slate of directors. Legg Mason owns 60.7 million shares, or 4.4 percent of the outstanding shares. However, there is a […]
July 18, 2008
Everyone that knows me is aware that I’m addicted to games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. It’s only natural that I would be drawn to the game Tap Tap Revenge for the iPhone. It’s a relatively simple concept, much the same as either of the two rhythm games I mentioned. You’ve got orbs that come down your screen that correspond to music being played.
There are only four songs included with the game which are separated into four difficulties. Two of the tracks are used twice (in higher difficulties) effectively giving you six tracks to master. Sure, that’s not a lot of music, but the game is free, which more than makes up for it. You can also currently download four additional tracks to the game. It’s very possible that more will be added over time. I’d definitely recommend this if you’re looking for something to pass the time with.
July 18, 2008
iPhoneAlley notes that AT&T has once again posted information on their website indicating that all iPhone customers have free access to their more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots access across the U.S., including Starbucks locations:
AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and free Wi-Fi even hotter, which is why we are proud to offer iPhone customers free access to the nation’s largest Wi-Fi hotspot network with more than 17,000 hotspots, including Starbucks*. Now users can relax and access music, e-mail and web browsing services with their favorite blend in hand from the comfort of their favorite location.
AT&T provides an online tool to find a Wi-Fi spot near you.
We had first reported on this topic back in April when AT&T had turned the feature on at hotspot locations across the U.S. This was quickly disabled just a few days later. Another week after that, AT&T advertised the new feature on their iPhone website, and again quickly removed it. When the service was active, AT&T simply required you to enter your current iPhone phone number as authentication.
There was some speculation that the delay was due to the fact that they had not yet completed their Wi-Fi deployment at Starbucks. AT&T had won the Starbucks contract from T-Mobile in February and is already offering free Wi-Fi access for their DSL and business customers.
via http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/18/atandts-free-wi-fi-hotspot-access-for-iphones-finally-announced/
July 18, 2008
A number of users report crashes from various iPhone applications, both Apple-supplied and third-party. The most common iPhone crash is one where the application you are working in suddenly ceases operation, the screen momentarily turns black, then the iPhone home screen appears. In a slightly more serious manifestation, the crash will result in a complete freeze where the iPhone is unresponsive.
Sometimes, when an application crashes, it will refuse to properly launch thenceforth, crashing immediately after its icon is tapped.
Generally, one of the three following procedures will resolve this issue. Try them in order.
Full reboot Perform a hard reboot of your iPhone as follows: Turn the iPhone off completely, by pressing and holding the Sleep/Wake button (on top of the device) for a few seconds then slide the red slider. Turn it back on by holding the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears. This can clear potentially problematic data, preventing some crash-types.
Restore the iPhone Try performing a restore of your iPhone. Connect it to your Mac or PC and, in iTunes, click the Restore button under the Summary tab. Restoring the phone will erase contacts, calendars, photos and other data on the phone, but will restore automatically backed-up information including text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, etc.
Reinstall the application
- Touch and hold any application icon the icons begin to shake.
- Tap the “x” in the corner of the application you want to delete.
- Tap Delete.
- Press the Home button.
- Download the application again, either from your iPhone or your desktop computer (there will be no additional charge for the redownload)
If an application freezes or becomes unresponsive, force-quit it by holding down the home button for several seconds. This can eliminate problematic or hung processes that might be draining the battery.
To prevent future crashes, keep adequate free space on the iPhone’s internal memory. Like its desktop relative Mac OS X, the iPhone’s OS X operating system needs some head-room on the internal flash memory in order to operate properly. Try keeping at least 10% of the total space free to potentially prevent some crashes in applications, freezes and other problems.
As a last resort, go to the Settings application, tap General then select the Erase All Content and Settings. This will delete all media and data on the iPhone, as well as recent calls, etc., and all other settings. If you perform this operation and stop experiencing crashes, you might have problematic data being synchronized to the iPhone that is automatically put back when the phone is restored. In this case, you might want to go to iTunes, select Preferences from the File menu, then iPhone and delete your backed up iPhone settings — this includes text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings. Again, one or more of these data might be problematic.
Finding out what caused crashes Just like Mac OS X, the iPhone generates crash reports when things go wrong. These files are sent back to your computer whenever the iPhone is connected and synchronized with iTunes. In Mac OS X, they’re located in /Library/Logs/Crashreporter/MobileDevice/.
You might find a variety of files here with different prefixes that end in .crash. For instance, files that start with:
- “Maps” indicate a crash in the Google Maps application
- “MobileSafari” indicate a crash in Safari for iPhone
Finding out what caused crashes Just like Mac OS X, the iPhone generates crash reports when things go wrong. These files are sent back to your computer whenever the iPhone is connected and synchronized with iTunes. In Mac OS X, they’re located in /Library/Logs/Crashreporter/MobileDevice/ under the name of your iPhone.
You might find a variety of files here with different prefixes that end in .crash. For instance, files that start with:
- “Maps” indicate a crash in the Google Maps application
- “MobileSafari” indicate a crash in Safari for iPhone
You can open these files with any text editor to view their contents. Let’s look at a crash report generated by AOL’s instant messenger client for the iPhone.
- Incident Identifier: 9AFE6F0D-8F0F-4C3F-97C0-C53728C06C24
- CrashReporter Key: 7fc1bd07059a19504f4e83afe1ba44d1146fd901
- Process: AIM [1193]
- Path: /var/mobile/Applications/10915669-D64C-4ABE-993C-A07C1E586808/AIM.app/AIM
- Identifier: AIM
- Version: ??? (???)
- Code Type: ARM (Native)
- Parent Process: launchd [1]
- OS Version: iPhone OS 2.0 (5A345)
- Report Version: 103
Process tells you the name of the application that crashed, and its process number (in brackets). Path tells you where in the iPhone filesystem the application that crashed resides. Parent Process This is usually SpringBoard, the iPhone’s application launcher.
As you can see, you’ll also be presented with information about the version of OS X currently being used by the iPhone, the date and time that the iPhone crash occurred.
Next you’ll see:
- Exception Type: 00000020
- Exception Codes: 0xdeadfa11
- Highlighted Thread: 0
This tells the user exactly what type of processor exception caused the crash.
Next you’ll see the backtrace, which shows, in reverse chronological order, the series of events that happened right before the crash in each thread, e.g.:
- Thread 0:
- 0 libobjc.A.dylib 0×300c8884 0×300bb000 + 55428
- 1 UIKit 0×30a9edd0 0×30a54000 + 306640
- 2 UIKit 0×30ab1990 0×30a54000 + 383376
- 3 UIKit 0×30aa6a0c 0×30a54000 + 338444
- 4 UIKit 0×30a80eb8 0×30a54000 + 183992
- 5 QuartzCore 0×31e875c0 0×31e7f000 + 34240
- 6 QuartzCore 0×31e874d0 0×31e7f000 + 34000
- 7 QuartzCore 0×31e9e92c 0×31e7f000 + 129324
- 8 UIKit 0×30a7e9b0 0×30a54000 + 174512
- 9 UIKit 0×30ab07cc 0×30a54000 + 378828
- 10 UIKit 0×30aa8da8 0×30a54000 + 347560
- 11 UIKit 0×30aa45ac 0×30a54000 + 329132
- 12 AIM 0×00003b0a 0×1000 + 11018
Now you know (in the above example) that the crash occurred while libobjc.A.dylib was being accessed, but before that came the UIKit process, and before that the QuartzCore process. You’ll see files with the dylib suffix often in crash reports. These are OS X dynamic libraries integral to core-level iPhone functions.
RIght now, the best use of iPhone crash logs is seeking of patterns. Look for the most commonly implicated applications and processes, then direct your troubleshooting techniques appropriately. Lots of SpringBoard crashes? Try a reset. Repeated Safari crashes? Clear the cache, cookies and history as aforementioned.
A secondary use is to look for data that might be implicated in the crash, then delete it as mentioned above in the Preventing Crashes section.
Also, remember that you can send these crash reports to Apple when your iPhone is connected, providing the IPhone software team with valuable data that might be rolled into a future update.
via http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/07/16/iphone-application-crashes-preventing-and-fixing/#more-814
July 18, 2008
Notable headlines:
Earnings wrap:
Larry Dignan: Can Dirk Meyer save AMD? News.com: AMD’s Ruiz steps off the roller coaster
Google earnings fall short; says it can thrive in down economy. Techmeme
Sam Diaz: IBM: Big Blue beats expectations
Microsoft: $60 billion in annual revenue, but sour 4Q
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: AMD posts seventh straight quarterly loss
GigaOm: Why Silicon Valley Should Be Worried
Dennis […]
July 18, 2008
[The opinions expressed here are mine alone, and not those of Google, Inc. my current employer.]
I’ve been spending far too much time reading a blog recently. Normally I dislike reading blogs, or as my friend from the IT News site “the Register” Andrew Orlowski calls them; “Wikki W**kers”. They are usually rather vacuous and the […]
July 18, 2008
Updated: Google’s second quarter earnings missed Wall Street estimates and executives moved to allay concerns about the company’s ability to weather a dicey ad environment.
The search giant on Thursday reported net income of $1.25 billion, or $3.92 a share, on revenue of $5.37 billion excluding traffic acquisition costs (statement). Excluding charges, Google reported second […]
July 18, 2008
AMD CEO Hector Ruiz has stepped down and the chipmaker has named chief operating officer Dirk Meyer as its new leader. The news comes amid the latest financial miss for AMD–a second quarter loss that missed estimates by a wide margin.
According to an AMD statement, Ruiz will become executive chairman.
Ruiz lost a lot of credibility […]
July 18, 2008
updated: IBM, a bellweather that analysts have been watching as an indicator of the tech industry’s economic health in the U.S., reported second quarter earnings of $2.8 billion, or $1.98 a share, an increase of 28 percent over the same quarter a year ago. Revenue was $26.8 billion, a 13 percent increase of last year. […]
