Now Charter says I need a new modem because mine is old and not “optimizing” my experience…. Does that mean I will get slower speeds??

I’ve been wanting to get a custom skin, and Stitch has been one of my favorite characters, so I took the plunge with Skinit.com:

Goes with my Stitch startup logo…

I am still trying to find the ‘perfect’ case for my iPhone 3G.

I’ve tried a few from Marware, and I like them ok enough, but they aren’t quite what I’m after.

The first I got is the CEO Glide.  It works well, but I don’t like to have to use both hands to get my phone out and usable.

So I tried one of their other cases, the CEO Sleeve.  Not bad either.  Now I can have it on my belt and pull it out on-handed.  The clip has popped off my belt, but only after too much pressure.  The style is nice and it protects the phone well, just a little thicker than I wanted… Maybe I’m too picky?

My favorite case for the first iPhone was Griffin Technology’s Elan Snap-In (although the black one).  It’s only Achille’s heal was the tab on the top tended to damage the chrome on the phone.  Other than that it was great: thin and easy to use.

Griffin just came out with the equivalent for the iPhone 3G, the Elan Clip, so I was really excited and ordered one online.  I received it this week and eagerly opened it up and slipped the phone in.  The top clip is curved to hold the phone in place and it is easy to get it out.  I’m not sure if it will damage the chrome or not, but I believe it will over time.  So I put the case on my belt and within 2 minutes, it popped off the belt.  Popped off!  What’s that about?  I looked at the clip, and I must say it has to be about the worst design I’ve ever seen.  There’s basically a ridge on the clip side and the case side that meet when close.  The edges of these ridges are rounded!  There is absolutely nothing to encourage the clip to remain on the belt, except the tention of the clip keeping it self closed.  I can’t imagine why they designed it this way, and it makes it absolutely useless for trying to keep your iphone safely on you belt.  I was very dissapointed.

My brother spotted a case from a company called SwitchEasy.  The CapsuleRebel is the 3G follow-on to the original Capsule for the first iPhone.  This case has two layers, a soft layer they say is made of “Adaptive Dynamic Soft Polymer”, and then snapped to that is what they call the “UltraFrame”, a frame made with Lexan polycarbonate hard plastic.  I find the combination pretty nice as it is nice to hold, but easy to slide into my pocket as well.  The soft layer is very well made and fit precisely over the chrome rim and lines up with the camera and buttons quite well.  The case itself covers the volume and top buttons, while leaving the vibrate switch covered.  At the bottom, the case fits around the speaker/mic and dock openings quite nicely.

The case comes with a universal dock adapter to fit the iphone with it’s new case, a plug for the dock connector on the iphone while travelling, two screen protectors, a screen wipe, and a small stand to put the iphone on to watch videos.  Pretty darn good deal compared to other cases considering it is $28 shipped!  I’m using it now, and so far so good.

Now, I’m hoping they come out with version of their VisionClip for the new case!

Here’s what I’m using in our van to power our GPS, XM radio, and charge up an iPhone or two. =)  (That leaves another spot in case we need to pull out a DVD play or something.)

I got mine from Wal-Mart, but click on the first picture to go to a website I found that has it. (No, I don’t get a cut of the sale.. lol)

Here’s a few pictures of mine to see what it looks like with the light off.  Mine doesn’t glow quite that blue when it’s on.

Ever since I bought my 16GB iPhone, the camera only works some of the times. The majority of the time when I go to the camera, the iris opens, but there was no picture. Sometimes, there would be a picture, but certainly not acceptable for this costly of a device.

So I made a Genius Bar appointment (fortunately I have a store about 15 minutes away) and took it in. After showing him what it was doing, he suggested replacing the device right away. I was relieved that he didn’t tell me I had to send it in and get a loaner!

Anyway, I thought I’d share and see if anyone else has been having the same issue. I Google’d it, but couldn’t find much about anyone else having the same problem, just problems with pictures not actually saving correctly.

Ok, I really, really tried to keep DSL. Some may wonder why I tried, but really DSL has been so darned reliable for me, I wanted to keep that. AT&T seemed to have other plans, however.

I wanted to get rid of the traditional phone line since it was costing way too much for what I was getting out of it. I signed up with Vonage, who couldn’t port my phone number since DSL was ‘attached’ to it. So I called up AT&T and asked to switch my DSL over to a dry pair. In the process of doing so, they ‘moved’ my 6Mb DSL to the dry pair and it magically became 1.5Mb DSL. No amount of calls, technician visits, etc. could explain why they couldn’t give me back the 6Mb DSL. The technician that came out tested the line and said it was capable of 4.8Mb, but that the switch was probably maxed out. Sigh.

So I tried, and gave up. And did what I really didn’t want to do, and called Charter Communications. We already had over-priced cable from them, so I was a little reluctant to go further, but my neighbor assured me that it was reliable and fast. I won’t bore you (too late!) with all the issues I had getting it set up the way I wanted to, but in the end, I wound up with 10MB cable internet. 10Mb that is really 10Mb!

Testing through Speedtest.net has consistently scored over 9,400Kbps, and this morning it tested:

Which isn’t really fair to compare that to this:

But it’s AT&T’s fault I even got the chance to!

So for now, I’m quite happy! I can’t really believe I said that about my cable company.

Of course, most of us that have iPhones are anxiously waiting for Apple’s update on the SDK and what that really means for custom applications on the iPhone.

I’ve read rumors that Apple will make it so they approve new applications and make them available via iTunes. (Ringtones anyone?) If that’s the case, I am sure we will see good applications come out. But how what and how much will we see? I believe this will stiffle the flow of innovative and unique applications that we might otherwise see. Look at what the very cool things the current community has come up with already. If they were given the official SDK and a relatively painless ‘approval’ process to go through, where they could make the applications available at will, then I think we would really see an explosion of great apps to use on this already great piece of hardware.

And don’t get me started on the “gotta have 3G”ers out there. I like my battery life just fine as it is, thank you very much.

SG <out>

##Update: RIP SmartDeck. Looks like Griffin has canceled it… I had to put a different picture below because they pulled the original. (the one below is the original version, where the later one was just a standard dock connector)

My favorite iPod accessory is the SmartDeck by Griffin Technology. It hooks up to your ipod through the dock connector and when you use the play/pause/fast forward/fast rewind commands, it sends signals to the ipod to replicate the function. It’s awesome.

Unfortunately… it doesn’t work 100% with the iPhone. I hooked it up to my iPhone and while it obeys the commands, the audio doesn’t get piped through. Bummer!