Apple

Fixing the iPhone Daylight Savings Problem

Did your iPhone wake you up an hour earlier today? It’s 28 October and clocks around the world went back an hour so we could sleep from 2am to 3am twice! But the iPhone didn’t and woke us up on Daylight Savings Time.

The good news now is that you have an extra hour at hand and that the problem is a known iPhone bug. It’s going to take you two minutes to fix:

  1. Go to Settings > General > Date & Time
    Date & Time Screen on the iPhone
  2. Switch the Set Automatically to OFF
  3. Reboot your iPhone
  4. Go back to the Settings > General > Date & Time screen
  5. Switch the Set Automatically back to ON

You should notice the iPhone automatically resetting the time to the correct one. Problem fixed.

Have a great Sunday!

The two deaths that got everyone talking in 2011… and what can kill the Internet as we know it

According to Storify, their users selected two major events to build stories from tweets this year. Both are deaths – that of Osama Bin Laden and that of Steve Jobs. If one had to draw a similarity between the two persons, apart from both having worn a beard, it is surely that they have both been disruptive (challenging) of the status quo. By its very nature, disruption causes people to talk, and they did.

On 1st May 2011, somebody else was disrupted – this time, from his attempt to take a break. Sohaib Athar had left the city of Lahore to live in quieter Abottabad and had no idea he shared ground with Osama Bin Laden who lived just a few kilometres away.

The Storify team looked deep at the data of the 3 million times that Storify users searched for a tweet, found it and pulled it into a story – this year.

The 2nd ranked is the tweet of Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual). His tweets of 1st May are indeed a live coverage of the event. His story is all over the internet and you can read that part of history somewhere else. So what’s the news?

@ReallyVirtual: Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).

Recently, Sohaib Athar tweeted to @Storify saying that their site had been blocked by his ISP. This apparently followed Storify’s mention of the tweet that made history. Both events happened on the 15 December 2011.

Outrageous… you’d say. These things would not happen in America!

BUT that is not necessarily going to remain true for ever. Sohaib Athar, as the copyright holder of that tweet, may soon stop anybody from reproducing it on another webpage! Legislators in America are discussing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, explained that Reddit would not exist says if SOPA was around in 2005.

If someone submits links to a piece of copyrighted material on Reddit or Facebook, our whole site could be shut down.
(Alexis Ohanian)

The Attorney General can issue restraining orders against infringing websites. If Sohaib Athar made claims against the reproduction of his tweet (above), search engines like Google would stop showing links to the whole of WordPress.com even if only one post, from the millions it hosts, allegedly breaks copyright! And Paypal would stop processing their payments!

If you’re wondering how many times WordPress.com bloggers embed tweets, YouTube videos, google maps and Flickr images, this too collectively runs into millions (official stats here). It’s interesting that each one is potentially a copyright breach. And people do it because it’s the nature of the Internet to link and embed. And because social media is all about that.

Comic on SOPA Bill

More Information

1. Petition for the President Obama administration to veto the SOPA Bill. (“This will kill the free flow of information and conversation on the internet.”)

2. Storify is blogging for everyone. Anybody with a Facebook or Twitter account can write a story and link it to all the gossip from the social sites… also YouTube, Flickr, Google+ etc.. The Storify beta website went live eight months ago in April 2011. Analysis of which tweets were used to build stories revealed that the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th talk about the death of Steve Jobs. The 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 9th talked about the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Kia “I Like It” – is integration with Siri next?

I thought that “I like” was a facebook fans thing. But it, along with the FB thumbs-up icon, are now being used by Kia in a global marketing campaign to attract more followers.

At no point does the ad ask you to go and “like” Kia’s facebook page. I found the ad on YouTube in Italian and German after having seen it on TV. The respective facebook pages each have about 35,000 likes.

The real success is in the global page with 1.1 million + followers. The “I like Kia” section is consistent on country pages. And this resonates well with what Doug Schumacher from Zuum, reveals about Kia’s extraordinary 17% increase in facebook fans in 2 weeks (Full report here).

Kia comes with a 7 year warranty. Reliable.

Kia adopts the term closest to facebook, “Like” as part of its brand. Social.

A reliable car manufacturer that is fast becoming part of the social fabric. The next thing we know, it will be tethering an internet connection with your iPhone, taking commands on Siri and giving you personalised updates as you drive. I like it.

KIA “I Like” Brand website

Missing Personal Hotspot on iPhone? How to enable Internet tethering if your carrier disabled it.

NOTE: THIS POST WAS WRITTEN FOR IPHONE IOS 4.x. THIS POST MAY NOT NECESSARILY HELP YOU IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING THE SAME PROBLEM WITH VERSION 6.x AND LATER.

Here is the solution to get Internet tethering (sharing) back if you are suddenly missing Personal Hotspot with iPhone’s iOS 4.3.5 upgrade.

My post about tethering the iPhone Internet connection with the iPad was one of the most popular until Personal Hotspot was introduced in iOS 4.3. I thought it was the end of the problem with tethering. Very short-lived though as iPhone allows the carrier to disable Personal Hotspot. A friend of mine who is on Go Mobile Malta lost his Personal Hotspot function when he upgraded to iOS 4.3.5.

No problem.. this is how we sorted it out! The following works and gets Personal Hotspot and re-enables Internet tethering if your carrier stops it.

1. Take note of your cellular data settings before you proceed. If you don’t complete this step, stop here. The configurations are available at Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network.

2. We will now reset these to original factory settings. Settings > General > Reset. Here choose Reset Network Settings. iPhone will ask you to enter your personal code if your passcode lock activated. The phone will reboot to reset. Keep your fingers crossed :)

3. Return to the APN settings screen we talked about in step 1 (Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network) and complete all the settings details copied before. You will find that in addition to this there is an Internet Tethering section at the very bottom. Use the same APN key as for the Cellular Data section which you will find at the very top of this screen.

Cellular Data Internet Tethering for Personal Hotspot on iPhone
Cellular Data Internet Tethering for Personal Hotspot on iPhone

4. Once you have the APN settings complete you need to return to the “Network” screen. Click on the Network back arrow shown below to do this.

Network Back Arrow

5. From the Network screen switch Off the Mobile Data and then switch it On again. You may not need this step but sometimes it helps to kind of reset the data connection with your carrier.

After you have completed the above you will find that there is a Personal Hotspot option in the Settings screen.

And Hey Presto! Enjoy using your mobile Internet connection with other devices like iPad, Macbook or your other laptop while you’re on the go. You can even share your iPhone’s Internet with friends over WiFi or Bluetooth.

Will your Kia be tethering iPhone’s internet connection and taking commands through Siri?

Attention:

If this solution has worked for you please share it with others.  One more click to tweet this solution or post it on your facebook.

Share iPhone 4 Internet connection with your iPad

Have you tried to tether your iPhone 4 internet connection to share it with your iPad? It’s not possible. But now that iOS 4.3 software update is out and downloadable through iTunes, iPhone 4 users are offered a new function called Personal Hotspot. Apple’s website says… “Enable Personal Hotspot and share your mobile data connection with your Mac, PC, iPad or other Wi-Fi-capable device. You can share your connection with up to five devices at once over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB.” Thanks Apple…. it’s been a long while coming but we’re all grateful that this basic feature is finally here.

In my post on iPad 2 of the 14 March I had mentioned the Piper Jaffray survey that found that 65% of those who bought an iPad 2 on its US launch date already owned an iPhone. Now, I ask, will any iPhone user buy an iPad 2 with 3G? Probably not. It will be interesting to look at the trends of purchases following Apple’s release of Personal Hotspot on iOS 4.3.

iPad 2 first sales statistics from the US

Ten days ahead of the lines that we expect outside of the Apple store on Regent Street and Covent Garden in London, we have access to the first statistics on the sales of the iPad 2 in the United States. Piper Jaffray, the investment bankers and Deutsche bank, the leading global financial services company are both reported by CNN to have found that authorised retailer sold out their stocks on the first day. Piper Jafrray report sales of between 400,000 and 500,000 iPad 2s in the United States.

The photo below shows queues reported by the Daily Mail last September, of people waiting to buy iPhone 4s “which they can sell for vastly inflated profits to customers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia where the phone is not yet on sale”.

Is this what we should expect with the iPad 2? Here is a picture of 5th Avenue in New York on the 10th March – the launch date of the iPad 2.

Piper Jaffray are reported to have found that 70% of iPad 2 buyers were new to iPad. This is a stark reality when compared to the  23% of of buyers who were new to iPhone 4 on its launch. The same report finds that 65% of the iPad 2 buyers on its launch date already owned an iPhone.

The iPad 2 is clearly the most wanted tablet. Changewave interviewed over 3000 customers in a survey and their research found that 82% of those who planned to buy a tablet wanted the iPad. This is supported by the Piper Jaffray survey mentioned above which found that 78% of people who bought the iPad 2 considered nothing else!

Looking forward to the launch in Europe…