Gogo iPhone Internet Speed

I flew back to Fort Lauderdale from LAX on Virgin America today. Using
Gogo Internet, the download speed was 902 kbps and 264 kbps upload.

Use Gogo Inflight on two devices

How to Use GoGo Inflight on your laptop and iPhone

After signing up for the GoGo Inflight Wi-Fi 30 day plan, I wanted to
know if I could use two devices for my account. So instead of throwing
a dart and testing it, I used their Live Chat service. Here is what I
was told:

1) You can't use two accounts simultaneously.

2) You can log-off one device by going to: http://airborne.gogoinflight.com
such as your laptop/Macbook.

3) After a sucesful log-off, you can log-in with the other device such
as an iPhone or Smart Phone.

In my case I added the URL http://airborne.gogoinflight.com to my
iPhone home screen.

After I power-off my MacBook Pro, its nice to be connected. This
includes on trips to the front or back of the plane --you get the
benefit!

Why I dislike the Class Action Lawsuit Against Yelp.com

I recently read that there are new Class Action Lawsuits against the company Yelp.com filed by several law firms in the name of a handful of businesses claiming that advertising sales representatives at Yelp.com offered to investigate and or take down any negative reviews if the company purchased an online yellow page ad. Yelp.com is one of my very favorite sites and I'm really disappointed to hear of any class action law suits against this company. Here are my issues with this situation:

• Sales Puffery -- I wonder if this claim was merely sales puffery by an over eager sales person stating that if the customer signed up for an ad, then the sales rep would do everything possible to personally investigate the authenticity of any negative reviews? The sales rep probably had not authority to take down any reviews.
  
• Litigants -- Did any litigants actually pay for an ad and have the negative reviews removed or did they merely speak to a sales representative?
• Bad Service -- In the cases in which any potential litigants wanted a negative review removed, were the businesses possibly guilty of providing questionable service? And if the reviews were legitimate, why didn't the business try and personally contact the Yelper through Yelp's free service and offer the Yelper an apology, and an invitation to try their businesses or service again and change their review.
  
• Negative Reviews -- In my 4 years of writing reviews, I've never had one of my reviews taken down without my knowledge. If I wrote a negative review about the company that I felt very strongly about and a Yelp representative asked me to remove it and I saw a plethora of other negative reviews about that same business, I would probably stop writing reviews on Yelp.
  
• Organizations like the Better Business Bureau - In my eyes, Yelp provides a service like the Better Business Bureau except that the information is public. With the information public, I think it's much more valuable to the consumer.
  
• Class Action Law Suits -- I really hate to see the lawyers get involved in class action law suits like stock securities.
• Yelp, Google, Other Review Sites -- Other than Yelp, there are so many sites on the Internet in which a disgruntled customer could post information about their experience with a business. It really must be the growth of the Yelp community that really makes this a news story but it's really sad to see Yelp singled out in a situation like this.

Also, I would be shocked if there are a large number of businesses out there that actually did buy advertising on Yelp in exchange for getting negative reviews removed. It could have happened but certainly not widespread enough as is implied in the media. I really hope the media doesn't provide too much free promotion for this story!

Finally, here is a link to one of the Class Action Lawsuit litigants:

Yelp Class Action
http://www.yelp.com/biz/cats-and-dogs-animal-hospital-long-beach

Facebook iPhone Application working again!

AS of Saturday February 20, 2010 11:48 a.m. PT, my iPhone Facebook App is working again. It now allows me to login. I wonder if the Facebook login server prevented me from logging in due to a maximum number of unsuccessful iPhone login attempts? Or was their API just down due to the reported server issues? It would be nice to know the answer to these questions the next time FB iPhone App crashes.

Facebook Site and Iphone Issues - Sat Feb 20

The first official acknowledgment from Facebook in Palo Alto was posted to their Twitter page just after 10 a.m. Pacific Time (http://www.twitter.com/facebook). According to their message, some people are having trouble accessing Facebook and site features because of an isolated server issue.










The company did not acknowledge that for iPhone Facebook Application users -- it's all users since the Facebook API appears to be completely down.

When issues like this occurs, I think companies should be open and honest with their users. With the Facebook iPhone Application, the service no longer remembers your password so users most likely will re-enter it. When they receive the error message below, they will probably think they forget their password or will re-enter it multiple times which can't possibly be good for the Facebook "isolate server". I noticed on Twitter that some users deleted and re-installed their Facebook iPhone App which I admit that I thought about until I went to my Mac and logged on successfully to Facebook. What is probably the most frustrating that when Facebook is experiencing a serious incident like this, they should at the very least have a single Technical Support page on their website that users can go to for updates ... go back to the basics of software or application technical support. What would be even better is a Technical Support number that users could call before wasting their time and energy on this....

Facebook iPhone App Cant Login

It appears that the IPhone Facebook App is currently down and will not
allow users to login according to tweets from many Twitter users.

Some iPhone Facebook users are reporting the App freezing at the login
screen beliw while others are receiving the error message:

Login Failed, Unable to connect to Facebook. Please try again later.

I was able to login to my FB account on my Mac although I did receive
several Opps Something went wrong. We're working on getting it fixed
as soon as we can dialog boxes.

I wish Facebook had a technical support blog to keep their users
informed.

iPhone 3.1.3 Software Update

I finally installed this update today. On one of my PCs, the iPhone update always seems to fail and I need to attempt the restore multiple times. When this occurs, I always ending having to re-synchronize my apps, music and photos. For whatever reason, the restore process loses those items but does not lose my phone call, voice mail and text message history as well as my calendar. Unfortunately, it takes several hours to restore these items as well as manually backup my restore files from the following PC directory:

c:\Documents and Settings\User_Name\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
• Resovles issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances.
• fixes bug that may cause an app tocarash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard.

http://support.apple.com/manuals/iphone

Spam or Phishing Email - Check the Spelling

I received this spam or phishing email today. Check the spelling and grammar if you are unsure if a message is Email SPAM or not! You should not open this email attachment and should delete it.

FROM: ICS Monitoring Team
SUBJECT: Your internet access is going to get suspended
ATTACHMENT: report.zip

SPAM MESSAGE

Your internet access is going to get suspended

The Internet Service Provider Consorcium was made to protect the rights of software authors, artists.
We conduct regular wiretapping on our networks, to monitor criminal acts.

We are aware of your illegal activities on the internet wich were originating from

You can check the report of your activities in the past 6 month that we have attached. We strongly advise you to stop your activities regarding the illegal downloading of copyrighted material of your internet access will be suspended.

Sincerely
ICS Monitoring Team

Apple iPad - Who wouldn't want one of these?

Apple iPad - Apple's new tablet

Okay, who wouldn't want one of these for reading your magazines, watching movies and playing games?