How To Remove Unwanted U2 Downloads From iTunes

 

There, I fixed that for you.

So, there was this thing where Apple automatically downloaded an entire album onto your iTunes.

To be fair, during the Apple event they stated, “We’re giving every user a free album.”  However, what they didn’t say was that they were going to go ahead and just push it into your iTunes account.

The much longer, full event is here.

Yup, they did it.  They didn’t sugarcoat it.  They didn’t say, “Available for download.”  They just gave it to you whether you had the space or not.  They pushed it to you whether you were roaming or not.  (AT&T has a $19.95 per megabyte download charge if you’re roaming and download it.) 

Now, is it your fault?  Yes and no.  Did you have your settings set to allow this to happen?  Maybe.  But does that matter?  No.   

The problem we, as consumers, face is we buy something because we want it or think we need it, but do we really have control of it?  It doesn’t matter if we pray at that house of Jobs or go with the other devices, your account is a shared ownership.   You bought or acquired the device.  They provided you with the content.  Who owns what?   Most corporations will tell you that you only license the product, you don’t it, much like people found out from Sony when they wanted to keep Linux on a PS3.   You don’t own your games.  You don’t own your music.  These are the arguments that go on infinitely among nerds and anarchists.  Present company included. 

But, we buy into the hype.  We have to have the new thing.  And because we buy these things or get them or sell our souls to have them, we need to take ownership and really find out what it means to have them in our lives…. EVERY SINGLE FACET OF OUR LIVES.  I know I found that out when I couldn’t carry the games I purchased for $10 on my old LG EnV2  and the couldn’t be transferred over to my LG Cosmos thus rendering my phone into a handheld gaming device.  So, if you are concerned about the reach Google has into your browsing or Facebook has into your private lives or Apple has into your pictures on their cloud… do a little research before you just shut up and give them your money.

By the way, if you want to remove that album… here you go.

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2010 D-Bag Awards Round Seven: In Charge D-Bags

Those wacky CEOs. They’ve got the world on a string. And some of them are the biggest d-bags in business. Here’s the lowdown on the final round of nominations for the 2010 D-Bag Awards.

Steve Jobs
Normally, I wouldn’t care what Steve Jobs did. Normally, I’d be willing to praise Apple for what it has done in the tech sector. I loved my iPod and even though I am not a Mac user, I do like them in the case of doing graphic design. Well, that has all changed. 2010 was shining big ball of poop for the Apple CEO. Dating back to the invention of the iPhone, Apple has become a bit of a snob with its products. Yes, you can blame the issues with coverage on AT&T but the bottom line is that Apple is responsible for making that business decision to go solely with AT&T.

The latest version of the iPhone, called iPhone 4, had a huge flaw that was a tipping point for ole Stevie ending up on the list. The gap on the case caused dropped calls when you touched it. It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature, right? Wrong. As in, “You’re holding it wrong.” That was Steve’s message to the masses about the issue. Well, if you are using the phone as a phone and aren’t used to holding it with the particular hand that Jobs is telling people to use, then it’s a flaw, in my book. Telling people that they’re doing it wrong is not good customer service. It’s back peddling over an issue that you either knew about and tried to sneak past the censors or it’s something you were oblivious to and are now coming up with a story to cover your ass. Oh, and did I mention that Steve was detained in an airport following the discovery of ninja stars in his luggage? Steve said he’d never visit Japan again after being detained for trying to take the weapons aboard his own private jet. Um, just because it’s a private jet and it’s yours doesn’t mean you couldn’t decide to take them to another airport and do something. It would be nice if Japan decided to stop using Apple products in return. Hey, Steve. YOU are doing it wrong.

Bob Nutting
I so wanted to give the round to Bob. I really did. As a Pittsburgher and a once huge fan of the Pirates I really wanted to bring Bob down, but I couldn’t. First of all, I don’t have that kind of power. Secondly, it’s not like Bob doesn’t already know exactly what he is doing. He’s made losing a profitable science. 18 years. 18 YEARS of losing is what we are used to in Pittsburgh and we are not a town that understands losing for a profit. We went to the Super Bowl, on the road, as a sixth seed which did nothing to earn the city any money in tourist revenues and we were happy about it because it was about winning and being the best, not about money. Now, that’s not to say that the bottom line is that we don’t want the money. You need to pay the players and you need to fund the organization. However, when you specifically do what you can to lose which nets you millions in profit, that’s is worth of being a d-bag.

Now, I cannot say with 100% certainty that Bob Nutting is purposely trying to lose in order to keep his payroll low and turn a profit from season ticket sales and revenue sharing from the bigger market teams. But it does look to be a little suspicious. Oh, and how are Rinku and Dinesh doing? Oh, that’s right. You released Dinesh after the season. And Singh, well he was promoted to Class A Short-Season affiliate. Any chance He’ll be making it through to the big game?



And the winner is?



Roger Goodell
Again, I am a little bit biased because I am from Pittsburgh but I think it is safe to say that Roger Goodell is clearly the winner here. I have gone on, at length about how I despise him. I think he is turning the NFL into a ridiculous corporation bent on making money and not about upholding any values. He talks about wanting to protect the players from injury and yet wants to add two more bone crushing regular season games. If this year is any indication of how much the regular season punishes players then imagine going into weeks 18 and 19 with hardly any starters because of injury, not to mention playoffs. He talks about reckless tackling, leading with helmets and defenseless players, yet the officials do not call penalties on half of the more serious offenses to players such as personal fouls against certain quarterbacks. After all, someone as pretty as Tom Brady and as marketable as Peyton Manning would certainly draw a personal foul if a defensive player merely looked at them wrong, but other quarterbacks are chopped and drilled and slapped and punched and bloodied in the name of “legal contact.”

Oh, and where is Brett Favre’s punishment for doing what he did. Granted, he may never face any legal action for what he allegedly did, but it’s on par with what Ben Roethlisberger supposedly did and he was given a six game suspension. I am neither defending nor condoning what Ben may or may not have done. I am merely pointing out a lateral argument. Both were involved with allegations of sexual harassment or conduct unbecoming an NFL player and yet Ben was given a six game, reduced to four, suspension and Brett has yet to see any kind of punishment and will probably retire before any is doled out. If there were any more contradictory behavior on the part of Goodell he would have ended up on my political list. But for now, he earns the praise as d-bag extraordinaire as a man in charge.

A Chicken In Every Pot And An iPad in Every Room

Back in January I laughed off Apple’s iPad by comparing it to those oversized button remote controls that you buy for Nana and Peepop.  Lord knows how many times I’ve had to fix the settings on my father-in-law’s television because he mistakenly pushed the SAP button on his remote, changing the sound settings to secondary audio program ones.   “Why is Law & Order in Spanish?!?!”  LOL.

But for all my chagrin and snark over the iPad I’ve had a change of heart.  Well, I’ve had a change of mind.  I still believe the iPad was a fundamentally flawed concept due to its limited capabilities.  A USB port would be nice.  The ability to run more than one App at one time would be, too.  "The iPad is meant to be an easy-to-use appliance, not an all-purpose computer. A USB port would mean installing  drivers for printers, scanners and anything else you might hook up."   Steve Jobs says in an article from Wired. (NOTE: Multi-tasking should be available this fall.)

Appliance?  Appliance for what?  It’s a digital device.  It’s THE digital device, the one we’ve supposedly been waiting for to revolutionize hand held mobile devices.  Could it be that Apple couldn’t get to do all  the nifty things we, as tech-geek consumers, wanted it to do but had to release something in order to stay ahead of the curve?   Maybe.  After all,  if we’ve learned anything in the computer and digital age, the early bird gets the worm.  If Apple can hook everyone on the concept of the iPad, they can go back and work out all the wrinkles in time for the second generation.  It worked for the iPod.  Other portable media devices have tried to knock the iPod off the top of the market share hill but with every iteration or next gen iPod more features continue to draw in customers, including ones who had bought the previous version.

However, the iPad makes a leap, in terms of technology, and in this case, Jobs better start listening to the masses and add some of those features quickly, because while the early bird gets the worm, the second mouse gets the cheese. If someone figures out a way to emulate what Apple has done with additional features that please the consumer, Apple may be stuck in the trap.

An appliance? That makes me laugh. I do not pretend to be the geekiest geek that ever geeked but from a user standpoint I can see so many more uses for a tablet PC than to just read a book or run goofy apps, one at a time. I think in terms of outside the box application. Finding ways to use technology in areas that it was never originally intended to be introduced to. The iPad or a tablet PC by any company gives freedom. Yes, you can do a lot of things with a mobile device like an iPhone or Blackberry, but the tablet gives you greater ease of interface and visual aesthetics. Some people, like me, have fatter fingers or aren’t as good at fine manipulation of objects. Those of us suffering from banana hand syndrome or have all the dexterity of an oven mitt need a larger area in which to work. Case in point, I don’t text. I use a laptop but would much rather have a standard keyboard to type on and a mouse in my hand instead of a pad on the laptop to run my finger around. In that instance, a tablet PC would give me more workable area to maneuver my flippers around.

Like I said, don’t get me wrong, mobile phones already have the ability to do what I would like them to do. My brother showed me live images from security cameras where he worked on his phone. He could run an office from his phone, if given the chance. But one would think that, with the introduction of a device that is built on the technology introduced in the iPhone, it would be able to do that much and more.


So, I invite you into my fantasy world. Not that one… The other one, the Mongo Sandbox, where I have a disposable income and a blank slate on which to build anything I want. And for this sand castle I am using the “Mongo” brand smart tablet to run everything.


Back in my June post about the iPad I mentioned that it would be nice if you could come home from work and prop your feet up in front of a small screen to catch up on the news or sports. I’m not talking about a 50” LCD HDTV. I’m talking about a sleek and stylish thin screen sitting on a small stand hooked, via USB cable to a digital tuner. Once you are done watching Sports Center, you decide you want to read a book. You stand up and walk over to the screen you’ve been watching, unhook the USB cable and take the device from its stand. You turn it 90 degrees and now you have an eBook reader. That was my original idea. But in the sandbox of my mind that was only the beginning.


What if you decide that the lights are too bright in the room for you to read the eBook. You simply minimize your reader and open the app HOME which runs your home. You can then navigate a path to something like Systems\Utilities\Lighting which shows a wireframe map of your home by floor. You choose the room and, with your finger, adjust a slider which controls the level of lighting in the room, much like volume control on your computer. You then close that app and restore your reader app and continue reading your ebook.


Let’s say you get a phone call. Simply minimize your reader again and use the Phone App to answer the phone. Either through a blue tooth handset attached to the tablet or even by using the speaker on the tablet you can chat with your friend who wants to go catch a movie. Without ending the call you can open up the Web Browser and look up show times and purchase tickets which can then be printed via WiFi to your printer. All while you are still talking. I know phones can already do this, but this is a bigger interface that is tied to more systems and works with several other devices.


Remember, in the sandbox, the possibilities are endless as well as the funds to make them happen. Now, you could say all this dependence on a tablet PC is bad, like Skynet bad or Wall-E bad. True, but what if you are elderly or confined to a wheel chair or have the inability maneuver around your space to achieve these tasks? This might make your quality of life a little better and, in an age where medical costs are rising or they are not being reimbursed as well as they used to, the ability to be more independent with this type of technology could be a welcome savings. So, that covers one application in a small capacity, but I’ve got bigger ideas and with multiple devices around the home, thanks to that sandbox income. The previous scenario covers perhaps a den setting. Let’s move this towards the whole house.


One of the greatest things about my car, which I miss, is the remote start feature. I went to change the battery in the key chain remote and one of the solders broke, severing the circuit. I’m just too lazy, and probably inept, to fix it, so I have to go out and not only start my car on a cold day, while inside it, I have to use the key to unlock it. Since the car only has one key hole, I have to use the driver’s side lock to unlock all of the doors and open the hatch. But what if GM had an app for that? Well, someone does.


So, now when it’s ten degrees out there and a foot of snow is on the ground, you can use the that same technology, along with a few others to get to work easier.   Now, the simple solution would be to park your car in the garage, but what if you forgot too or some other reason prevented you from doing that.   You’ve got to go outside and get in your car, which is cold, and there’s a foot of snow in the driveway.   You just don’t have time to shovel or get out the snow blower before work.   With the Mongo Smart Tablet, you don’t have to.  From any Smart Tablet in the house, you can call up your automobile app, and remote start your car.   But what about the snow?   Easy, when you first get up in the morning and notice the snow, you use your smart tablet to turn on the radiant heating system that is installed underneath your driveway.   While you shower, shave, and have your coffee, your driveway is clearing itself of all that snow.   You simply walk out onto the empty driveway and get into your already warm vehicle.   Warmquest is a company that can do that.  This same company can also install under shingle roof deicing equipment which would have been perfect this past year with all the reports of collapsed roofs due to snow from Snowmageddon.   Not to mention, icicles are dangerous and could be eliminated in this case.


Wasteful energy could be a thing of the past with your Mongo Smart Home because you could remember that you left the lights on upstairs or in another part of the house and the smart tablet could alert you and could be used to turn off the lighting in those empty rooms.    You could check out noises outside the house by accessing the CCTV system, like my brother showed me, activating or deactivating flood lights to get a clearer picture, and call authorities if needed.   CNN had an article about this, but it was only one of eight different money saving tips which was crudely advertised as an article devoted to running your home on an iPad. 


The applications are limitless in the sandbox of my mind. I could be in the kitchen, getting ready for guests and be using the smart tablet there to follow a recipe online while setting the light levels in the house, deicing the driveway and starting up the fireplace for ambiance. It sucks when you are trying to do 15 things at once while watching a pot of sauce or soup. In the event that you have to leave the kitchen and attend to something that requires some time, you can use the smart tablet in any room to call up kitchen functions and shut off the stove to keep things from boiling over. One of the coolest amenities we had in the beach house we rented this year was the sound system. From a main receiver/tuner in the living room we could supply the entire house with audio. There were individual volume control knobs in each room wired for sound, but the source of the audio came from the living room. We discovered this by accident after setting up my Nintendo Wii and letting my father in law play Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 while we were outside on the deck one night. It was all peaceful and serene on the deck, overlooking the sound, when all of the sudden gun shots ripped through the air. We thought we were under attack. Hell, the neighborhood probably thought they were being invaded, Red Dawn style. We just didn’t know that all the volume knobs were left on by the previous renters and the surround sound of my father in law blasting away Bambi echoed outside and across the street. So, yeah, it would be nice if your smart tablet could control something like that, without having to go into every room of the house and adjust the volume.


All of these innovations are reminiscent of a Merry Melodies cartoon, called "Design For Leaving", where Daffy Duck retrofits Elmer Fudd’s house with buttons of all sorts. And to that end, all sorts of things could go wrong. As much as I would be a champion of this style of design, I understand chaos theory and Murphy’s Law very well. The power can go out, Blue Screen of Death types of failures, firmware issues, updates, and viruses could render your Mongo Smart Home inoperable. I would never dream of turning control of your home solely over to a computer. Everything would still function as it would without the smart tablet interface, but the addition of the interface is like a dimmer installed in a light circuit. You use a switch to supply power to the light but dimmers installed in certain places can adjust the settings to the already powered lights. The same here, it’s an added feature not a control over the functionality of the appliances and utilities.


Okay, perhaps the sandbox ideas are a dream for those who have the income and technical savvy to pull it off in the real world. But that’s the fun of imagining what a device like the iPad can do. There are plenty of real world, business applications for a smart tablet. Schools are beginning to adopt the iPad in the classroom.  Teachers can conduct a lesson and students can interact with the lesson, adding notes and asking questions into a notepad style environment. Just think about huge lectures, with 400 students in them. If students had an iPhone app or smart tablet in the classroom, they could ask a question from the back row and the TA could capture all this for the professor to expound upon or address during the lecture, while it’s fresh. The student, at the back of the room does not have to shout or draw unwanted attention because the question could be anonymously asked, filtered by the TA, of course. The TA could even respond with an answer without having to disrupt the flow of the lecture.


As a Theatre Arts major in college, I have gone through tech rehearsal boot camp. You get up really early on a Sunday and come down to the space, ready to spend the next 12 hours doing mundane but very important work. You begin pulling together the important changes and cues that occur during a show with all of your tech heads like lighting, sound and such. With a smart tablet interface, you could run a sound board or light board remotely, while sitting next to the director or stage manager instead of up in the booth. The process could become more efficient without a lot of shouting back and forth or headset chatter.  The director could simply lean over and talk to the designer or tech. No yelling, “Give me channel 4 up 10%.”   Here is an article about the application.


Also, notes could be taken with a handwriting converter. I’ve done it and I’ve worked with directors who have stood there and tried to decipher scribbles into an important production note. Some of these innovations are already in place with iPhone apps but, again, broad spectrum, bigger interface and multiple applications running at once.


And let’s not forget the healthcare field. Doctors could see a patient, look at their charts, prescribe meds which could then be printed at the receptionist desk to be handed to the patient or even sent to the pharmacy, eliminating handwriting errors. Doctors could be linked into a database of information about symptoms and diseases. The CDC could help control an outbreak by recognizing these symptoms and posting to a board where providers could tag them and compare against diagnoses they have in their office, all during a patient’s appointment. Doctors could monitor patients’ vitals remotely and prioritize various patients from their tablet. Of course, there would have to be a huge amount of security attached because of HIPPA. Applications are endless.


Facilities management could be streamlined. Systems could be monitored for changes or failures. Lighting levels and schedules for automatic lighting could be adjusted on the fly. Sensors could pickup issues like security or climate controls. The ability to pinpoint a problem could correct it faster. And with that built in webcam, missing from the iPad, you could snap a picture and send it to the tech who will be correcting the issue in the case of building and grounds issues.


So, my mind isn’t too far into the clouds when it comes to technology. When I started writing this post, did the bare minimum of research to see if what I had thought of was already in use. Some things were there for the iPhone and some were there for the iPad but not everything as far as I can tell, although Smart Homes are a reality in regards to mobile devices.    For now, I have little interest in buying an iPad because of the missing features I feel would be important.   Also, as much as I tout being a geek, I don’t even have a data package for my phone.  I don’t text and I use my phone to um… make calls.   Whenever Apple or another company comes up with the smart tablet that I would want I’ll think about crossing that bridge.  Until then, there’s always room in the sandbox.  

Got any ideas on  how to use an iPad for something it wasn’t designed to do?

No Apple, You're Doing It Wrong

The latest in technological gadgetry came out to a resounding…. OOOh, Awww, Dooohh! The iPhone 4 hit the shelves and even Jason Bateman had to have it so bad he was willing to endure the boo birds as he was given the opportunity to skip to the front of the long ass line. But as people flock and grab and go giddy over this new toy a problem has arisen. The signal may drop from holding the phone.

That’s right. You’re new iPhone may just end up being a smaller iPad. Why? From all the jargon and technical speak I’ve read it seems as though the constraints of building bigger and better devices in smaller spaces has caught up with smart phone makers. Requirements laid out by FCC and other bodies will only allow so much radiation and over scary words to penetrate the body so smart phones have had to move the antenna placement into the bottom of the phones. The iPhone 4 went rogue and put the antenna on the sides along the metal band that wraps around the casing. One side for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the other for cellular reception.

Pretty heady concept, but realistically, I guess it has to make sense since I don’t remember the last time I used a mobile device that had an antenna sticking out of it. Great, now I’ve got nothing to chew on. The problem with the iPhone is that there is a small gap that can be bridged by your hand that may [read: most likely] cause you to drop a call.

Apple owned up to the issue [read: feature] after people complained. For once, AT&T wasn’t to blame but I’m sure people were quick to grab some pitchforks and torches. Nope, Jobs pretty much said that it’s most likely user error. In other words, “We screwed up trying this new idea and we pretty much think you’ll still buy the damn thing because you guys are addicted to crack and Steve Jobs is the biggest dealer around.” And sales haven’t slumped by the looks of it, so people are willing to put up with the possibility that the iPhone may not actually work as a phone.

Now, that’s not to say that Steve Jobs didn’t address the problem and offer a solution. The man who can do no wrong, and I give the guy somewhat of a pass for taking on cancer, has a fix for the masses of angry consumers. “You’re holding it wrong.” Steve, I’m sorry, I must have bad reception, did you say what I think you said? Oh, right, it’s our fault. That makes sense. I mean from every commercial we’ve seen we learned how to hold the phone so I guess we can say, “I learned it by watching you!” The other more MacGyver-y fix is to put a piece of scotch tape over the hole, bridging the gap and keeping your mouth breathing, sweaty palm, window licking self from causing the problem. Or, you could put more money into the pocket of someone by getting a rubber case.

My solution? Buy something else. Vote with your wallet. At least never buy the first version of anything new that comes down the pike. The 2.0 version of the IFailed 4 will probably fix the issue and all those early birds will have to buy a new one. It’s called genius marketing. Put out a device that just makes it worth buying and then bring out another version that addresses all the public’s concerns and at least half of those people will buy the newer device as well. It’s like the home movie industry rereleasing new DVDs of the same old movies, now with more bonus features. How many versions of the same movie do you need to own before the Ultimate-Directors Cut-Unrated-Double Wide version finally gives you what you want from a movie that you will probably watch once and then never again?

So, frankly, my comment to Apple is “You’re Doing It Wrong” yet we still buy the crack because we are all Tyrone Biggums and Apple is throwing a Free Crack Party. I just wish they’d release a phone that actually functioned as a phone. I mean isn’t that why they call it a Phone in the name of the device? Can you hear me now, Steve? Am I holding this thing right?

Probably not.