The Light House!

I stumbled upon this blog post today that so proves the worth of Apple’s MobileMe service, when combined with your 2nd and 3rd generation iPhone.

It’s the story of a man’s use of the MobileMe find my iPhone feature. Take a look.

Thanks to mashable.com for this information. The iPhone 3.0 OS is now live for downloading, according to published reports. Here’s a first look at the OS.

And, here’s a guided tour on what you can expect from the iPhone 3G S, which arrives on Friday.

Here’s a look at 20 things to look out for, thanks to Tech Crunch/Mobile Crunch.

So the bruhaha is brewing, so to speak, about AT&T and Apple’s butting heads, in light of the iPhone 3.0 OS release due out this week.

Analysts have much to say on the various issues, including the lack of MMS and Tethering support out of the box, and presumed negotiations/AT&T & Apple’s working relationship into the future.

I have to admit that while all this sounds like all the juicy gossip out there that people sign on to, I won’t be jumping ship to Verizon. I am totally satisfied with my service, having had very limited issues with any of my AT&T devices, including the iPhone.

People tend to forget that these devices are created by human beings, their deployment dependent on conditions that human beings have to work through and much of the work that goes into deploying a major product is tremendous. So, that means upgrading switches, routers, repeaters, deploying servers and server upgrades and so on. It is unrealistic to expect that with the demand for the iPhone and other AT&T products, and the way we use our devices today, that any glitch should mean lashing out at the carrier.

I think also, in pointing out that Apple’s other partners around the world have rolled out many of the new bells and whistles for the 3.0 3G and 3G S devices, people are probably not taking into account that they have deployed far less of the phones, and so are maybe more likely to be able to quickly roll out the newer network based features?

Anyway, here are a few articles on the new device/software:

No extra cost for MMS for existing text bundle subscribers.

AT&T’s many missed opportunities.

Analysts say iPhone 3G S not Enterprise-ready.

iPhone 3G S: What you need to know.

iPhone 3G S features 7.2 Mbps, AT&T’s network doesn’t.

IPv6 Image

Let’s face it. Whether or not we all like it, IPv6 is here and it’s here to stay. While it may not mean changes for a lot of people, it will indeed mean changes. No doubt about that. If you’re completely unfamiliar with IPv6, here’s a primer, provided by our friends at Hurricane Electric Internet Services, a leading provider of IPv6 Services and Tunnel Brokerage Services.

So what is “IPv6″, and why do I need to know about it?

IPv6 or IP version 6 is the next generation Internet protocol which will eventually replace the current protocol IPv4. IPv6 has a number of improvements and simplifications when compared to IPv4. The primary difference is that IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses as compared to the 32 bit addresses used with IPv4. This means that there are more available IP addresses using IPv6 than are available with IPv4 alone. For a very clear comparison, in IPv4 there is a total of 4,294,967,296 IP addresses. With IPv6, there is a total of 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 IP addresses in a single /64 allocation.

To also help illustrate the sheer magnitude of available IP addresses using IPv6, you can get 65536 /64 allocations out of a single /48, and then 65536 /48 allocations out of a single /32. Many Service Providers are getting /32 allocations from their Regional Internet Registry (RIR) like ARIN, APNIC, RIPE, etc.

A significant difference between IPv6 and IPv4 is the address notation. IPv4 uses a period (.) between each octet, compared to IPv6 which uses a colon (:). With IPv6, if you have a series of zeroes in a row, the address need not be written out completely. You can use a double colon (::) to represent that series of zeroes, however you can only use that once. For example, if you have an address like “2001:0DB8:0000:0003:0000:01FF:0000:002E”, it can be written like “2001:DB8::3:0:1FF:0:2E” or “2001:DB8:0:3:0:1FF::2E”, but would never be written like “2001:DB8::3::1ff::2E”. You also cannot have three colons in a row (:::).

IPv6 availability depends on your Service Provider, either at home or for work. In a dual-stack environment, IPv4 and IPv6 co-exist along the same connection and don’t require any special kind of connection. If dual-stack is not available, you might find yourself using an IP tunneling product or service to bring IPv6 connectivity to you. IPv4 exhaustion, as of this writing, is estimated to happen sometime in early or mid 2011. When this happens, IPv4 won’t simply disappear off the face of the Internet, but continued explosive growth requiring more unique IP address assignments will mean using more and more of the abundant IPv6 address space.

Many Operating System platforms have native IPv6 support these days. The UNIX based platforms like Linux, BSD (Free, Open, Net) & MacOSX have had IPv6 support enabled for years now. Microsoft Windows starting having native IPv6 support enabled by default with it’s Vista and Windows 2008 products. Earlier Windows versions like 2000/2003/XP had to have it installed optionally, and did not have as robust features that are available in the newer versions of Windows. Even common web browsing and email software will use IPv6 if it is enabled and available, without having to check off an option or special configuration. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is being worked on to be as seemless as possible, and many might not even notice the subtle changes in the coming years.

Related article:

Why IPv6 is Like Broccoli

iPhone 3G

I waited a year or so before acquiring the iPhone, because I wanted the 3G device. In the year that I waited, I carried around a 16 GB iPod Touch, and a 3G Samsung BlackJack first edition device.

I have to admit that each device has its shortcomings, betweent the two of them, but, I wanted the combination of one device to do everything, and the first generation iPhone just was not going to do it for me. When Apple announced the release of the 3G device, I wasn’t really in a rush to purchase the new device, but I did need a new phone. My BlackJack had been having performance problems for some time, I had had to reset it several times, and even after the upgrade to Windows Mobile 6, it still had major issues. I was ready.

So, I got my iPhone at the end of July, and I have to say I am more than satisfied. My only issue was that I didn’t get the color I wanted, which was minor. I haven’t had most of the issues that most people have reported, although I did have to reload the phone 2 times in the first week. That was no fun at all.

The applications are fun and easy to use, except a few that were plain bogus, and I won’t name names. The ones I use consistently, some of which I carried over from the BlackJack, are:

• AOL Radio
• Jott
• Google Mobile Apps
• WordPress
• Facebook
• AIM
• ShoZu
• Eventful
• YPmobile and
• Pageonce

It would be very nice to have a Yahoo Messenger Application and a Live Search as well, as I found them both to be very useful.

One thing that the folks at iTunes and Apple/Apple App store should take note, if they don’t already know this: when we update an application, whether we do it by wifi on the iPhone/iPod Touch or through iTunes, we do not want it to reinstall the application every time it syncs. That also goes for purchasing a song on the iPhone/iPod Touch. That is very annoying. It should be that once it’s added to the library it stays there, but that is not the case.

Other than that, I am very satisfied with my iPhone. There are a number of things that would have been nice to have, like MMS, but hopefully those are coming soon. Using Apple’s own rating scale, I would give it a 3 out of 5 stars.