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After much hassle, I finally have an iPhone 3G. It's my first "smart phone" and I love it.

My biggest complaint with the iPhone is it's battery life. After setting up the iPhone to sync both my gmail and exchange mail, I was lucky if the battery would last until I got home from work.

Turning off the Wi-Fi helped a lot. Over the weekend I turned off the auto syncing of mail and all of a sudden, the battery seemed to last forever.

Thus far, I have found two "killer apps" that are really making me love the iPhone.

The first is Shazam. Ever heard a song in the background and wonder, what song that is? Well, you don't have to wonder any more. Shazam has the ability to pick out songs in loud places and determine what is playing. It then provides links to iTunes and YouTube for the song.

The second apps is Pandora Radio. You tell Pandora a song you like, then it starts streaming songs similar to it over the iPhone. A few votes up or down on what it selects, then you have a stream full of songs you like. Now I have the ability to stream internet music in my car. Sweet! Best part, it doesn't seem to kill the battery (that fast).

Microsoft has applied for a patent for what they call a “device
manners policy” (DMP). This wireless zone-enforced protocol would allow someone to remotely turn devices features (or devices) on or off based on specified policy.

Their logic, if you can't enforce good manners on people, enforce it on their electronics.

Besides the obvious application for shutting down phones at
theaters, such a policy could be used to enforce no audio or video
recording rules at concerts, etc., etc.

The better answer would be for the theaters to just kick people out
(without refunds) who use their phones during a movie. But they don’t
have the nerve to do this.

Some problems with this type of technology are:

o) What type of range does it have? 20 feet outside the theater? 50
feet outside the theater? Will it interfere with a neighboring
business?

o) What happens if my battery dies after been disabled? Are there
any routes that would prevent a disabled phone from being reenabled?

o) Is this only for incoming calls? If someone is having a heart
attack (happens), will we have find a pay phone (very hard to find) or
run 50 feet outside the theater to call for help?

o) Once the protocol is established, what is to prevent a malicious person from jamming devices where they are allowed?

I hate when society punishes responsible people for the sake of catching all the irresponsible people in one net.

Teenage hackers are responsible for the Comcast DNS issues I fought last week. Dark Reading claims Comcast was under attack for about 5 hours. I believe it was longer. I can feel a little less angst towards Comcast now that I know they where not directly responsible for the DNS issues.

During our brief visit to New Orleans, Adine and I stumbled upon a wedding at the Plaza de Armas while exploring the French Quarters. Adine was intrigued by the outdoor wedding and sneaked behind the action to get one of the best views in the house.

Other fun activities in New Orleans included eating at the Cajun Cabin (good eats! - but warning - they include the tip for even parties of 2), winning at Harrah's, and tons of window shopping.

Comcast's DNS servers for home broadband users are now pointing traffic back to Comcast. Adine's father called me for help because his internet was down. His AOL account would not login, but gave no reason as to why.

I started firefox to determine if the problem was local to his machine or if he could hit his router. With Firefox, every page I attempted to visit returned a 403 permission denied error?!?

What???

After checking his firewall, I tried MSIE. With MSIE, all URL's served some Comcast page requiring him to install software on his machine and create a Comcast email account.

What does this software do? How many instabilities will it add to his machine? Why didn't they warn him of the change? His internet had been working for years.

After playing with nslookup, I discovered all DNS searches returned the same Comcast IP address (sorry, I did not write down the address). A friend suggested I override his DNS configuration to use Open DNS. After this change, everything started working again.

What is Comcast up to? Why did they make their capture page MSIE only?

Luckily, their system is not as intrusive as most hotels and we where able to get around it by change DNS servers. But how long until they stop this too?

Comcast included a copy of the "Comcast Agreement for Residential Services" in my most recent bill. I don't really have the time to read the 32 pages of fine print. However, I was lucky enough as I was thumbing through it to see point 13 about Arbitration.

Because of all the horror stories I have read on the Comsumerist about people being screwed over by arbitration, I started to read how just how few rights I have. Their definition of Arbitration means "you will have a fair hearing before a neutral arbitrator instead of in a court by a judge or jury." I was wondering if this meant that if the arbitration was not fair that it would not be binding. As if.

Anyways.. I get down to clause C. Right to Opt Out. "IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE BOUND BY THIS ARBITRATION PROVISION, YOU MUST NOTIFY COMCAST IN WRITING WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS OF THE DATE THAT YOU FIRST RECEIVE THIS AGREEMENT BY VISITING WWW.COMCAST.COM/ARBITRATIONOPTOUT, OR BY MAIL..."

The online form was easy and quick. I wonder how many people will see this clause and opt out.