After a long flight from Toronto, stopping in LA and listening to some annoying kids the entire way with them kicking the back of our seats, we rolled in to hot Vegas last night around midnight local time.

We are staying at THEhotel which is attached to Mandalay Bay. It is a gorgeous boutique hotel that is basically all suites. So we are quite comfortable in our 1.5 bath, 1 bedroom 800 sq. ft. suite. And they even clean up after us here!

Last night we went and played some slots, and currently I’m up. YAY. It is a good feeling not going to be an loser!

So here is a quick little video tour of our room.

Today was the first day that I tried this… but only after a hectic workout of handstands, push ups, hanging pull ups, and ring dips.

So at the end we did standing box jumps. We started at 24″ and I managed to work up to 38″. Hopefully this helps my volleyball blocking!

Actually, no, the S is for Speed.

We had a personal shopping appointment at the Eaton Centre Apple store today for 8:30. We were there of course early and didn’t get into the store until 10. As our friend RJ said… It was not an issue waiting since since he doesn’t Boxing Day shop… today was his Boxing Day.

I want to say that the Apple Store staff are stellar. Friendly, polite and apologetic for the wait times. And the wait times weren’t even caused by them! Of course, like last year, Fido and Rogers systems were overloaded, down, and the queue to call in was long. But despite this, there was always a smile on their faces, the store was properly staffed, and everyone who we talked to from the Apple Corp representative down to the line organizers were great. They even had various pastries and coffee for those of us in line that was served by the staff.

Once we got into the store and our Genius rep made it through to Fido it went smoothly. I have to note too, that even he was extremely polite and sociable to the Fido rep on the phone, who wasn’t that knowledgeable and who had to have everything explained to him.

So now I have iPhone in hand and I’m moving all my video and music over. I’m quite excited for the 32GB of memory because now I can retire my first generation Touch.

I should note too, that I may was interviewed via iPhone by CityTV before entering the store and on leaving so I may appear on the news as one of the first people to get my hands on a 3GS (although I wasn’t).

It was also a great surprise that Rogers and Fido offered additional discounts for previous owners, so I didn’t have to pay full retail. This was announced last night and we hadn’t heard until we got into the line. So that was a nice bonus!

First impressions… way faster and snappier… I’ll work it in this weekend while I’m at my friends cottage! Take a look at first video here! Probably the first of many…

Now to sell my old iPhone…

When Apple first announced Find My iPhone, the service through mobileMe that allows you to track down your iPhone, people thought that was creepy. Lucky for us, it is all password protected…

Now that 3.0 is launched on the iPhone with push notification, a bunch of new apps are now showing up on the App Store with fun new features. One of the first next generation apps that we added was HeyWAY (iTunes free). It is pretty damn cool, so I thought I would share.

After installing the app, you make all your friends, lovers, boyfriends download it too. You then establish that they are your friend and you want them to find you by sending them an e-mail or using the new Bluetooth connectivity to authorize.

Once you are authorized you will see them in your friend list and this is where it gets fun! At any time you can initiate a request that will alert them using the new Push notification (your iPhone will alert you) asking if you want to send your friend back where you are. If you decide that you are where you say you are, you can agree and they will see your location on a Google map.

The possibilities are endless…

• Let your friends know you have arrived so you can make a grand entrance
• Find your cheating boyfriend/girlfriend (he would be pretty stupid to reply though)
• Find out where your friends are drinking so you can join
• Find your groom on wedding day
• Find your kids after curfew
• Constantly remind your friends that you are in Antigua and they are not

Do you really want to be found? In case you are lonely or want all of your friends to know that you are at that dirty movie theatre down the street, you can instantly send all of your friends your location and they will be notified with a map of where you are.

I think this is a great little app and I’m looking forward to more cool things to come using all of the funky new features of 3.0.

BTW: As of 9:29 Brad was indeed on his way to work… at Rosedale station.

A lot of people are having issues with missed calls on the Fido and Rogers network, and I'm included in that group. I think something has to be done. Just like how AT&T in the states denied any issue with their network, I have a feeling we are moving in that direction with Rogers/Fido.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been getting voicemail and the (annoying) WhoCalled text message without the phone ringing. And there is no excuse for it. More and more it is happening, and more and more I'm hearing my Twitter friends and other iPhone users experiencing the exact same thing. And I live right in the middle of downtown Toronto and I always have 5 bars of signal strength. So it isn't like I'm in a low use area, I'm in the opposite, a busy area with a lot of 3G users.

I have reason to believe it is the Rogers network for a couple of reasons:

1. It only started happening in the past month or so. If it was a phone problem we would have been experiencing it from day 1.
2. There are more 3G network users using the Rogers/Fido. Especially with the Blackberry Bold now using 3G and other smart devices.
3. iPhone users around the world would be complaining about this same issue if it was hardware.

So I thought I would take action and you should too.

I called Fido customer support today and talked to Wei. The first question he asked me was if I was on an iPhone. So I'm definitely not the first person to call.

I explained to him what is happening and he said he wanted to run some tests, but I couldn't be calling from the iPhone. Well I only have the iPhone here, so I made him call me to see if my call waiting would kick in. Great, he got through. But do so a lot of my calls. And as I tried to explain to him it was intermittent. Two phone calls aren't going to prove anything.

I told him I'm not going through the entire process of removing all my apps, and performing a lot of tests so that they could push the blame onto the hardware. If it is hardware fine, but then millions of users would be all complaining. And Rogers should be a little more concerned.

I asked him where do I go from here? He said unless there is an issue and Rogers acknowledges a problem there is nothing I can do except call back on a different line and have them run some tests. Very helpful.

So this is what needs to be done, more people need to call Fido and Rogers to complain. We need to express what is happening and make Rogers see that there is an issue. Even if it does turn out to be an iPhone issue at least Rogers has checked their networks to make sure that it isn't on their end.

Rogers boasts that their 3G network is one of the newest and best, but that was before there was a flood of 3G devices.

Do you really want to miss more calls? What if it is an emergency? What if it is someone calling from a payphone to ask for help? What if your wife is going into labour and you missed the call? What if there is a one day sale at Holt Renfrew?

If any of your friends who (gasp) use Blackberries on the 3G network are experiencing the same thing then they should call too.

Rogers: 1-888-764-9111
Fido: 1-888-481-3436

And make it easy on yourself… just hit 0 and ask for technical support.

[UPDATE] Monday November 24, 2008

I just called technical support at Fido and he pulled up my account. I did question him at first if he would be able to help me but he said he has done this with about 100 people and he hasn't had anyone call back. Well I proved him wrong…

First of all he had me go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings.

We reset and then rebooted. He did say it did help if he did something on his end. So I thought maybe that was the key…

So he called me. It came through. GREAT. Well then there was silence and I thought I was waiting for something, but he came back on and told me he had just tried twice to call me and nothing came through!

Success! I was very happy that he could experience it and prove that I wasn't just making it up. He said there was no doubt that there was validity with what I was saying. Obviously it is a common occurance.

I asked him if it could be the network and he said that he has a Samsung Jack which runs on the 3G network, and yes, he experiences the same thing! Success again, proving my next theory right that it is indeed the Rogers network.

He had me switch to Edge and tried calling me 3 times and every time the call came through with no issue. Then I went back to 3G, he called me once successfully and then the next two times no luck yet again!

He then escalated my call to the next level (now I'm on level 3 support) and explained everything to that technical support. Luckily I didn't have to talk and re-explain. I was thankful for that since it would have been a pain especially if I would have had to go through all the tests.

After about 20 minutes of being on hold (thankfully I have a headset)
he came back on to let me know that they are just making sure that they
are elevating this properly since it is a major ticket and they want to (well at least Fido support does) get this fixed for me and for everyone. Hopefully, they are finally taking this seriously!

The total time I was on the phone with support was: 1 hour 20 minutes. Luckily I was able to work at the same time. Maybe they weren't taking me seriously and went for coffee so I would just shut up and stop blogging about it.

So to wrap it up they have opened a "Major" ticket as he called it that I can follow up on at the end of the week. He did encourage others who are having the problem to call in and open tickets too. You probably won't have to be on the line for that long, but everyone who calls in will help get this problem fixed. Make sure you don't call from you iPhone since they need to call and test. And don't forget, this doesn't affect only iPhone's, these are your friend and family that also use Blackberry Bold's and other 3G devices. If you don't want to do it for yourself, at least do it for them.

I have to say his service was fantastic and his demeanor was great. I did come off a little stern at the beginning since I'm so frustrated, but he was incredibly helpful and I know he was trying his best to help me. He even came back to let me know he was still on hold with technical support after a couple of minutes. He was apologetic that it took so long, but I didn't mind, I would rather not miss calls!

I wonder if Ted Rogers ever misses calls? Or is he with Telus?

So I just downloaded the Google Mobile application for my iPhone with voice recognition. And it is pretty neat… in theory. How it works is that when you put your phone up to your ear you talk into it, it reads your voice and then returns the Google results.

So first thing I tried is:

[Steven] Where is the closest Starbucks?
[Google] rocks

Well okay, that one didn't work very well.

So I tried it again…

[Steven] Where is the closest Starbucks?

[Steven] Where is Aki Creative? (My company)
[Google] Where is tacky creation?

[Steven] How old is Madonna?

Maybe I mumble, or maybe it was the excitement of trying it that made it not work that well. But I'm sure it will get better.

I am a little disappointed though. I wish it was a little more integrated instead of just search results. If I say the word "WHERE" at the beginning it would be nice if it took me directly to Google Maps and dropped the pins. That would be great.

I will test it some more, but what the heck, it is free, so give it a try. It isn't updated fully on the App store just yet, but you can get to it using this link.

[UPDATE]

Okay, after playing with it some more, the voice recognition hasn't improved but there is more functionality than I found before.

If you click on the Magnifying Glass to the left of the search you can tell it what kind of search to do. iPhone and Web, Maps, Images, News, Shopping, Wikipedia.

That is a little better, and a little more functional. So if I have it on Maps it will give me all the locations around me and I click on the location that I want to see on the map.

Good, but it would be nice if it knew from what I said what kind of result I wanted. I tried saying "map starbucks" but it just gave me regular Google result again. It should know to switch into Maps mode.

Well I did, and it finally has all the functionality I have become accustomed to in the normal Facebook. Be aware, I can now comment on your comments and posts from anywhere! So go ahead, update your Facebook. Well worth it!

And remember how I used to say: only install applications to your iPhone from iTunes? Well since I have had iPhone software 2.1 I have downloaded and installed from the iPhone App store with no problem. So go ahead, update your Facebook from within your iPhone… The installs and updates are way quicker, no more waiting for the progress bar to fiill that last 10%.

Yeah! I’m excited. I was going through withdrawal for the one day that I didn’t have my iPhone jailbroken.

After the software was released yesterday, it has only taken one day for the iPhone Dev team to jailbreak the newest version of the iPhone software, 2.1. So I’m back in business.

It took me exactly 9 minutes to get my iPhone jailbroken and now I’m just restoring the software back onto it.

Then I have to load up the applications that can only be used on the jailbroken phone.

• Winterboard – Allows me to change themes.
• Intelliscreen – Allows me to view SMS and e-mail without having to slide to unlock.
• Flashlight – Allows me to get to bed without turning on a light with our new blackout blinds.
• QIK – Stream video right to my QIK profile.
• Snapture – Let me zoom in on ugly people to take their pictures when they aren’t looking.
• Videorecorder3G – Allows me to make video. Not good video, but great for catching crimes.

The jailbreaking is so easy to do, but of course, do it at your own risk! You can get details here. I use the PwnageTool for the Mac. If you have the courage, I’ll be more than happy to assist. There is one step that isn’t too clear, but it is just about pressing the Option Key at the right time.

And in my opinion, this shouldn’t do any harm to your phone. I have jailbroken, restored to 2.1 and re-jailbroken. It is a software jailbreak… but if something should happen and you frack it up, it is not my fault!

Take an hour out of your day to get the update and hopefully fix all the annoying software issues that have been plaguing the iPhone 3G since day 1.

The updates include the following:

• decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• significantly improved battery life for most users
• dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• faster installation of 3rd party applications
• fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
• improved performance in text messaging
• faster loading and searching of contacts
• improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

Now how do you update? Well it is easy. Plug in your iPhone. I would back up before you do anything, that could take a while if you haven’t done it recently. Go for a coffee.

iTunes may pop up with a window saying there is an update available. Do it.

If it doesn’t you can probably click on Check for Update. Do it.

And let it work it’s magic. If you haven’t updated iTunes to version 8 yet either, probably a good thing to do since they work hand in hand. Especially with the new Genius playlists.

Have fun, good luck! And the update does say the backups will be quicker, so you won’t have to wait so long next time!

The rumor is that a new version of the software is coming out tomorrow! So hook up that iPhone, and push that magic little sync button to get the backup going.

Keep in mind that backing up takes a lot longer if you haven’t done it in a long time. I normally back up daily just to be on the safe side. But with this new update, hopefully the backup time is decreased. Regardless, you will have to backup before you update.

So plug it in, leave it overnight if you have to, but do it. Be ready when 2.1 comes out and hopefully all of the iPhone woes are fixed!