Tumblr Search is Badly Broken
This is something that has been bugging me for ages. Despite having a search capability in both the dashboard and the blog page, it’s practically impossible to search for anything in your own Tumblr blog.
While the search drop down in the dashboard offers multiple options including searching through your own posts, it would almost always return zero results. Sometimes it would return posts that have been tagged accordingly but even then it’s never a complete set of results, many posts with relevant results would go missing.
Searching for a word or sentence that clearly is there within a particular post would never return that post in the results page.
If search is so difficult to implement for Tumblr, why not hand it over to Bing or Google? Tumblr should have a properly working content search ability. Categorization is one thing but often search is the best method to find content. If a search query for a particular text cannot find the relevant results even though they are actually there, then either don’t have it at all or outsource it to someone else.
iMessage Activation Issues
Today I found out that iMessage on my iPhone had stopped working. Last time I used iMessage was last weekend but yesterday I had taken out the SIM card from the phone for the first time in months and did not realize until today that iMessage was turned off. Now I’m having problems with iMessage activation.
Ever since iOS 5 came out, I’ve been using iMessage in place of SMS whenever possible. I registered my iPad and iPhone 3GS using the same email address and through a little bit of trickery, avoided registering my phone number for it. In other words, iMessage on my iPhone works only through email and that’s how I want it.
Another reason why I don’t want to register my phone number to iMessage is because I’m using Axis, an Indonesian carrier which isn’t registered with Apple as its iPhone partner. In most cases, only approved carriers can have their customers registered to iMessage and FaceTime. There is an unexplained anomaly that allows Indosat numbers to be accepted by Apple’s activation server for iMessage and FaceTime despite the network not selling iPhones.
Trying to register to FaceTime or iMessage with a number from a non-partner carrier will result in your phone credits being drained without your knowledge because it uses background SMS process to send, acknowledge, and receive activation requests.
If the phone fails to receive an acknowledgement from the activation server, it will keep sending background text commands over and over again through the SMS channel using international rates. Fastest way to lose money through your phone.
Source: Laughing Squid
Comparing phone sizes
Haven’t linked to this, so I figured I should before I forget. Unfortunately it’s down now.
Telkomsel and XL Axiata begin selling iPhone 4S in Indonesia today
Today Indonesia’s Telkomsel and XL Axiata will begin selling the iPhone 4S. In a departure from past pricing plans, this time each telco has markedly distinct packages and even different pre-paid costs. Additionally, there is approximately a 10% increase over the cost of past iPhones while in the US it has remain the same since 2008 for every iPhone model.
Previously outright cost of iPhone 4 used to be Rp 7 million and Rp 8.2 million for the 16 GB and 32 GB respectively. The iPhone 4S now start from Rp 7.7 million for the 16 GB all the way to Rp 10.3 million for the 64 GB.
The 4S being released in January may seem a little late compared to the December release of the iPhone 4 in 2010 but one needs to remember that it wasn’t until mid October last year that Apple began selling the 4S in the US, so now Indonesia is only four months behind instead of six or more. The 3G was released in March 2009 and the 3GS in February 2010.
New and old Techmemes. About the redesign.
How the US lost out on iPhone work
This incredible investigative report by the New York Times takes a look behind the scenes on why Apple outsources its manufacturing work to Chinese companies and workers.
The company held out for as long as it could to maintain manufacturing within US borders but eventually caved in and in 2004 shut down its last US plant in Elk Grove, California, which was making Macs. The former plant now serves as a call center for Apple.
As to whether the US can reclaim manufacturing jobs from China, this part is damning:
Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.
In China, it took 15 days.
The Atlantic last year calculated how much an iPad would cost if it was manufactured in the US, it was $1,140. That point was rebutted but then the rebuttal itself was claimed to have been taken through a misunderstanding. If this is all too confusing to follow, let’s take this discussion back to the point in the NY Times article.
“What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”
China’s Foxconn can and has done this.
MPAA chairman Chris Dodd threatens to cut funding to US politicians over SOPA failure
“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”
This is an incredible statement from a former Senator who is chairman of the MPAA and is one year away from being eligible to directly lobby the government.
CrunchFund partner MG Siegler has harsher words to say about Chris Dodd.
More on Chris Dodd’s statement.
The Pirate Bay press release on SOPA
Brilliantly written and this paragraph at the end is precious
Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.
Hollywood drops support for Obama for siding with Silicon Valley
Hollywood drops its support for Obama? Maybe they need to update their business models like when the movies went to home projectors and then to televisions, then to video cassette tapes, optical discs, and now digital stream/downloads.
It’s technology. Adapt and make money off of it, or attack and be hated, reviled, and abandoned by the consumers.
These Hollywood big guns keep making boatloads of cash off every new technology that they decry, it’s almost like putting on a show for nothing.
Piracy is about access. Look at how the video game industry transformed itself with online multiplayer games. Video game networks like Blizzard’s Battle.net, Microsoft’s XBox Live, and Sony’s PSN are doing well fending off pirates by limiting access to only legitimate members.
Look at how the music industry is being converted into digital. Not fast enough to make money? It’s only been just over a decade since consumers began to embrace digital downloads and less than a decade since iTunes Music Store debuted. iTunes makes it really easy for people to acquire music legally. Spotify and Rdio are doing the same thing for streaming services.
Content business is going digital and Hollywood should have been working with Silicon Valley on how to make money off of that instead of attacking those who take advantage of their lack of foresight. On that note, how would you transform entertainment?
