Month: May 2010

iPad SIM-locked in Japan

You’ve said “The iPad with 3G, which is locked to a mobile carrier…”, but it’s not locked. It’s unlocked. Mr Jobs says so in the keynote at 1:14:33. I’ve uploaded an excerpt of it here for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vakJfz1X7aoI don’t see any reason at all that all iPad models won’t be supported for warranty issues globally.

Now that more news has come out about the iPad it looks like the iPad is locked to one carrier in Japan, but can accept SIM cards from other countries. Softbank has also stated that it will not support iPads from foreign countries. This presents repair problems for anyone who brings in their foreign iPad to a Japanese Apple Store. I assume iPad repair policy will look like iPhone repair policy: repairs can only be done in country of purchase.

Forcing Facebook to Federate: A question for developers

One of the biggest fears in deleting your Facebook profile is the lack of alternatives. The sheer monopoly that Facebook has in the SNS space is overwhelming, making it hard to abandon ship. The ideal situation for social networking in the future is federation. Standard protocols are decided upon, and customers rely on interoperable service providers. Think of how email operates: Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail customers can all email one another. Each service provider offers different features to its customers, but email is email.

Facebook could open its protocols, allowing interoperability with other service providers, and potentially own the space. They could be the Yahoo or Hotmail of SNS. Chances are though, that they won’t do this.

One potential strategy for present and future alternatives to Facebook is to allow members to communicate with Facebook friends left behind — allow contact with those “who feel trapped”, to put it in Dana Boyd’s words, and fear leaving the service.

Using Facebook’s API, could an application be built to allow FB users to connect with friends on other networks? Such an app would allow posts and photos to travel “between walls” through standard protocols like RSS, XMPP, JSON, ActivityStreams etc. This would dampen fears of being “disconnected” from friends and family when deleting your Facebook account. The app might also potentially be used to export your FB data to the new service provider. This could be a band-aid solution until — or even lay the groundwork for — the day true federated social networking arrives.

Not being a dev myself, I must ask all of you, can this be done?

Fraser Speirs: Getting really real on soft dev in the future

Excellent article. Some choice quotes:

Be clear: I’m not saying OS X is dead, nor that Apple has no interest in improving it. I am saying that I suspect that the days of everyone buying a MacBook to get online are soon to be over. I’ve already written about how I see our three-Mac family turning into a one-Mac, three-iPad family over the next hardware cycle and I imagine that scenario repeated industry-wide over time. Already the ratio of iPhone OS devices to Macs is 5:2.

And:

I’m Scottish. Frying things and pessimism are our two main industries.

[I created this post back on May 6th and published it from my iPhone. It looks like it was stuck in the Drafts section of my beta Tumblr app, and I didn’t notice it until today.]

Fraser Speirs: Getting really real on soft dev in the future

Farewell Facebook

For the past 2 weeks I have been seriously considering deleting my Facebook account. The tech community is rife with doubts about how Facebook is running its business, and where it is going in the future (check any number of tech blogs to see coverage of this). I don’t want to be a part of that future.

The privacy issues are of obvious concern. Being an advanced computer user I have no difficulty protecting my own privacy by dealing with Facebook’s 50 settings and more than 170 options. Though, I cannot speak for the general user. But my motivation to leave FB is about more than privacy. It is about how Facebook is trying to insinuate itself into the infrastructure of the web through technology like Open Graph — a frightening thought. Facebook has the power to seriously hinder the internet, and they get that power from their massive number of users. I don’t want to be one of those users.

I could simply stop using FB (apathetic), or fill my profile with fake info (defeats the purpose of FB), or disable my account (also apathetic). However I think I should put my money where my mouth is and join the increasing number of users completely deleting their accounts. My decision will probably not influence any of my FB friends, and I have no delusions that a minor personality such as myself could influence FB policy. But “Deleted Users” is a growing statistic that FB cannot ignore.

I will delete my account in 1 week, giving me enough time to get everyone’s contact info into other applications and make sure I am connected to you on other networks such as Twitter. I would also like to hear any feedback you may have so please leave your comments on this post (on Facebook), or you can always email me or ask me.

If FB changes its policy and direction in the future, I may come back. In the meantime, you all know how to reach me:

Status updates: http://twitter.com/chadkoh
Blog: http://chadkohalyk.com
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandbaggerone/

I have other, more private, places of publication as well. Contact me if you would like access.

See you elsewhere on the web,

Chad K.

ADDENDUM: Looks like i will be postponing until May 31st.