iTunes 7.7 released, includes iPhone app store

Continuing on with the iPhone theme this week, i just downloaded the latest version of iTunes (7.7) which feature the new app store for the iPhone 2.0 firmware.

You have to enable first by going to preferences > app store. Obviously you won’t have any apps in there yet so simply click “Get more apps” and u get taken to the shop.

Anyone who is familiar with iTunes will be able to instantly notice the layout. Basically you have your app categories, along with a few promotional spaces on the front page. Its nice to see that there are plenty of free apps for users to download too.

I went ahead and tried to download a free app, this worked very nicely and the app appeared in (surprisingly) the apps section of iTunes. Obviously since my current iPhone is still using 1.4 firmware the app wont actually sync to your iPhone, that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Overall the apps aren’t all that to be honest, there are a couple which might be useful to some people but most of the really good stuff has already been released on Installer. On that note, i think the big apps will be a well made MMS client and Copy + Paste… i am not sure how easy they would be to make though.

So in closing the new app store on iTunes is pretty swish, and should be a seamless transition to sync once u have 2.0 firmware on your iPhone.

Looks like i might be getting my 3G iPhone after all

So after not knowing what the hell is going on with the iPhone upgrade it seems that i might be getting one after all.

Basically when i tried to order on Monday the website kept crashing, and when i finally got through to the confirmation page it was on the fail over server. I rang o2 and was told that my order hadn’t gone through… obvously i was a little pissed off.

Yesterday i logged onto the O2 site and went to the MyO2 section only to find that under orders i had “in progress” flashing for an Apple iPhone 3g 16gb. From looking at the forums it seems like a lot of people have had their orders pushed through manually.

About 20 minutes ago my order changed from in progress to complete, i also have an assignment number so it looks like it should be coming.

I still have had no emails so i am holding my breath a little, hopefully my phone will arrive tomorrow morning, keep your fingers crossed for me.

I still think O2 could of handled the upgrade process with there website a little better, but i have got to tip my hat for them working through the thousands of orders and actually getting the product out to people. I think they just needed to offer a little more communication to their customers.

O2 (kinda) mess up iPhone 3G Launch

Along with a ton of other people i awoke this morning to find that i had a message from O2 telling me that i could order the new iPhone 3g from the O2 website, however when i try and login to the site i get an error message telling me its down.

Taking a look through the o2 forum it is apparent that the system went down less than 15 mins after it launched and some people are claiming that the system won’t be back up until this evening.

I had heard that o2 had put a lot of effort into making sure things were going to run smoothly today but it seems that has gone the shape of a pear, i expect that as i am writing this there are a few emergency meetings going on at O2 HQ, and possibly a number of employees about to look for new jobs?

It seems that the website came up again about 11:15am, i went through the process of putting all my details in and the site just submitted me back to the homepage. I rang o2 customer services and she told me that it was because they are all out of stock which is really frustrating since a) The website has been down all morning so how the hell did anyone successfully order one? b) Surely the order form should tell me that they are out of stock before i go through putting all my details?

Looks like it will be queing at the shop for me then :o(

Google faces issues with UK Streetview

I had to laugh at this when i was reading BBC news today. Not because BBC news is particularly funny, on the contrary, since most of our news is dominated by youths getting stabbed up in London… innit blood?

No. The reason i was laughing is because Google are facing some issues with street mapping in the UK, yes thats right, the UK. The country which has the most CCTV cameras pointed at its citizens in the world!

Apparently Privacy International wrote to Google asking what measures can be taken to keep people anonymous.

“We’ve spoken to Google in the past about this and received a snide response telling us to look more closely at their blogs.

“We’ve been told by engineers at Google that the technology is not ready to be deployed.”

Now lets just look at some stats about CCTV Camera’s in the UK shall we?

  • The UK has 1% of the world’s population and 20% of the world’s CCTV cameras
  • Croydon has more CCTV cameras than New York
  • London’s Metropolitan Police Force have approximately 200,000 cameras installed around the capital
  • Almost every bank cash machine in the country uses CCTV to record you making your transaction – bet you can’t see the camera!
  • The UK has more CCTV cameras per head of population than ANY other country. About one camera for every 14 people
  • Harrods London store has in excess of 500 CCTV cameras installed
  • It is estimated that there are in excess of 4 million CCTV cameras in the UK, approximately 20% of the World’s total
  • In London you are likely to be caught on camera 300 times a day

So with all that to think about, is anyone really going to be bothered with the tiny percentage chance of being caught by a Google street view camera… i think not!

WordPress Image Upload HTTP Error

I have been enjoying using the latest version of WordPress but i am getting seriously pissed off with the fact that every time i try and upload an image i am presented with some red text that tells me “HTTP Error”.

As you can see that text is really not very helpful, so its hard to find out exactly what the issue with WordPress is. Now i have been searching the net for the answers and the most common answer is to insert this code into your .htaccess.

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

However, if like me you tried this and it didn’t work, your problem might be something a lot more strange.

[JUMP TO SOLUTION WITHOUT READING MY FINDINGS]

I got onto my hosts because i thought it might be something a bit more serious on the web server, when George (the web host guy) tried to upload an image he managed to do it ok without any sort of problem, i thought it was a bit weird so asked what OS and browser he was using and it turns out it was XP and IE.

I finished off the chat and booted my MacBook into XP mode, opened up IE and sure enough i could upload an image into WordPress, how fucking weird? Well next i opened Firefox in XP and tried to do it… worked again.

So i booted back into OSX and tried it from Firefox… didn’t work, so i opened up Safari.. didn’t work, i even asked the Evil Green Donkey and some others in my office to try it from their Macs… didn’t work.

For what ever reason which i really can’t get my head around, it seems that this is an issue that is specifically with Flash on the mac, it doesn’t even seem browser related. And i have tried this on over 6 different installs of WordPress on multiple hosting accounts.


I reinstalled flash for the mac and tried every possible solution to this problem which are listed on the wordpress blog and on another site i found and still no joy. The ONLY way i can upload images to any of my blogs using OSX is to disable the flash image uploader by using the no-flash-uploader plugin, this reverts it back to the html version. To use, simply put that file into your /wp-content/plugins/ folder and then activate it through the plugins section of your admin area.

Now i can have images again, but i do hope that someone finds the issue and fixes it, in the mean time enjoy a picture that proves that none of this is an issue with my hosting and that images work fine once the flash uploader has been disabled. Now all i need to do is install the above mentioned plugin on all of my sites :o(

As usual, please leave a comment if you have experienced this issue.