Happy Counterterrorism Day

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!

Happy Counterterrorism Day” by Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine).


WordPress iPhone Admin Plugin

Jared Bangs and Dan Cameron have recently released version 2.0 of their iPhone admin interface plugin for WordPress.

I just installed it and it seems to work quite nicely. Thanks guys.

The only limitation for me is that it’s hard to write long posts or add links on the iPhone. That has nothing to do with their plugin however. Just lack of copy/paste and fast typing on the device.

Note: This was all typed on the iPhone interface but the links were added on the laptop afterwards. Lesson is to only use the phone for quick entries with limited or no links.


Amazon MP3 Downloads

Amazon just launched an iTunes competitor. They’re offering DRM-free MP3 files for about 10% cheaper than iTunes. I gave it a quick spin and the service works pretty well.

Definitely good to see some competition in this market. Hopefully, this will improve iTunes and add another nail in DRM’s coffin.


Unlocked iPhone on Fido

iPhone on Fido

They arrived late today – yesterday technically. Me and a coworker picked them up from the states. 40$ in taxes. It wasn’t until later that the public open source hack was posted.

My coworker tried it first. I was going to wait. He’s braver than me! But ultimately who can resist?



The Puppet Master?

As always, an interesting article from Robert Cringely. All about Steve and the iPhone price drop.

I was surprised when talking to random friends to hear how many of them thought that the price drop was a “desperate” move by Apple to sell their excess inventory of iPhones. My take on it is that it’s an aggressive and totally calculated move to outdo the 1 million units sold benchmark by the end of this year. Apple needs to secure a good chunk of the cell phone market this Christmas to be a credible force next year. This is a good way to do it and it also doesn’t hurt to charge early adopters extra money.

Cringely also has a good take on the gift certificates. I didn’t think about it at first, but it’s quite true that many of the customers that will be getting these gift certificates are not current purchasers of other Apple products. This is a great way to make them buy more stuff and Apple is still going to make a profit on that 100$.