Today when logging into my Apple Developer account I noticed a nice little surprise. A new iPhone OS beta was available for download via Apple Developer connection. I have yet to download the beta considering many people are having issues with the network connectivity and such however I did want to point out some interesting modifications in the new firmware.

After reading the Developer Forums it seems as if apple has re-enabled the MMS feature but currently MMS is not working. I still believe AT&T needs to enable the MMS feature on their end but it does seem that MMS will be enabled when the iPhone OS 3.1 is publicly released.

For all you iPhone 3GS users it seems you get a great new feature to go along with the your excellent video recorder (Can you tell I have not upgraded yet?) Apple has added the ability to copy video clips in the editor. I am still unsure where we can paste the clips but I think it will be used mainly to allow us to “splice” two video clips together.

Smaller changes include:

• Modem firmware upgrade bringing the carrier software version from 4.0 to 4.2.
• Adding feature to when the phone is put into “move mode” (when you can move apps) the device vibrates.
• Fixed issue with Voice Command and Bluetooth.
• Phone Keypad now allows you to copy and paste.

Most issues with the beta seem to be with the network connectivity and the iPod app. Some users are stating that the iPod app will not even open. As of now I am going to stay away from the 3.1 beta OS until said issues are resolved and I strongly suggest anyone considering updating to the beta do the same. I will keep you posted when I get more news.

Got questions or your own comments? Leave them below!

The Podium Revolution! The only desktop stand for your iPhone/iPod Touch you will ever need. Alright, sorry for the infomercial type intro but the Podium Revolution is one of the best iPhone/iPod Touch stand on the market. The stand itself comes in both white and silver both built with perfection in mind. A great finish for a great iPhone/iPod Touch Stand.

The Podium Revolution is great for just about anything you can do on your iPhone. Everything from turning your iPhone into a digital alarm clock while you are in bed. To helping you become more organized at your desk. I have noticed myself using the stand to help me keep track of daily tasks and events. Using to turn my iPhone into a digital calendar that updates automatically. If money were no object I would buy an iPod Touch and this stand just for iCal but that is a story for another day.

I highly recommend anyone interested in a great iPhone stand to click the animated image above. Overall the Podium Revolution is a great stand and great choice for anyone looking for an iPhone stand.

Updated way to enable tethering:

Simple! Just go to this website on your phone.  http://help.benm.at/help.php

1. Click on mobileconfigs.
2. Select your Country.
3. Select your carrier.
4. It will ask you if you want to install.
5. Click install.
6. Enjoy your tethering via Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering

Old way to enable tethering:

iPhone 3.0 is live! So I am going to repost the tethering tutorial. Now there is no need to download anything (aside from the carrier file). Seems you can just run a little command in terminal (Make sure you are on OS 3.0 on a 3G iPhone and iTunes 8.2):

So open up terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE

After that, the steps become a lot more simple.

1. Download this file (for AT&T) and mount the disk image (thanks Gizmodo) for other carriers, try here.

2. Option-click on “restore” in your iTunes with your iPhone attached. Browse to the opened disk image file and hit OK. It will update phone settings for a few seconds.

3. You have tethering. Now go into your iPhone/settings/general/network/Internet Tethering and turn it on.

Boom – 3 steps to tethering…

As a side note is highly recommended that you not use this as your primary internet service. Please if anything try to stay under 5GB’s of transfer per month to avoid service termination.

This post is long overdue but I am excited to be getting the opportunity to review the Xpad4Laptop’s and share my opinions

First and foremost this product does exactly what it needs to do. When using the Xpad4Laptop’s it was able to keep my HP DDv2700 series laptop up to ten degrees cooler than just sitting it on the desk.

One of the great things about this cooling pads is that it does not have any fans. It’s design is sound and allow the air to flow in and out of the laptop more naturally or how the laptop was designed.

When comparing the Xpad to other more complex cooling pads the Xpad not only out performed but also provided a more stable pad for the laptop to sit on. (Compared to the rocketfish fan cooled system.)

Overall I think this is an excellent product and recommend it to anyone looking to get a fan-less cooling pad.

As a side note I put the Xpad under my mac mini just to see and to my surprise it was able to keep the mac mini right around six degrees cooler.

P.S – View review coming soon!

Today I ran into an interesting problem where a virus infection on a computer caused a major issue with IE7. After doing some research and messing around on my own I found the easiest way to get IE7 back up and running if you run into a similar issue.

Description of the issue:
Internet Explorer 7 will only open for a brief period of time and closes. Users are unable to get into internet options from control panel or by right clicking on the IE7 icon on the desktop.

Cause of issue:
This issue is most likely caused by some type of malware on the system. Please before you attempt any repairs of IE7 run your virus protection software to ensure the system is clean of infection before you continue.

Resolution to issue:

• First and foremost if SP3 is installed please remove it from the system. This will allow you to uninstall IE7 and have it roll back to IE6.
• After you have removed SP3 reboot and remove IE7.
• I highly recommend after IE7 is removed that you rerun your virus scanning software to ensure the infection has been removed off the system.
• After confirming the infection has been removed run windows updates to reinstall both SP3 and IE7.

Conclusion:
I am making this post because I could not find any resource on the web that would give me a straight answer. If you have any questions just leave a comment below or shoot me an email at support@geekologist.net

So your mom, sister, or even best buddy calls you up and says, “My computer is broke help me fix it!” Instinctively you would rush over to help them with their computer needs. However here are a few things to thing about before you go rushing to start the repairs.

1. Before beginning any repairs on the system be sure you ask the End User what they would like backed up. It is very important to backup any crucial data before you start troubleshooting the system. Computers are tricky and we never know what will happen when we start poking around it’s insides. So before you do anything BACKUP
2. Tell them what you plan on doing with the computer. This does not mean “I am going to fix it”. Tell them what you think is wrong and if anything else happens along the way let them know. It is much better to keep them updated rather than breaking all the bad news at once!
3. Privacy!!!! No person on this planet wants their person data floating around. When you backup do it to a secure hard drive or to a disk. Never throw the disk away!! Even if you do not use the disk to restore the data give it to the family member or friend. This ensures that if the data is lost or stolen that you are not responsible.
4. Respect! You might be dealing with data of all types. Just because you are fixing the computer does not give you the right to snoop into the My Documents folder on their computer. Respect them and don’t do it!
5. Treat the computer as if it was yours. I know we can all get lazy and not be considerate at times. However it is very important that you do not damage the computer during the repair process. I am sure your Family Member or Friend will not be very happy if you break something that will cost money to fix.
6. Enjoy helping out your friends and family but be professional about it. I am sure that if you do you will feel guilt free and kindhearted!

Post your own comment/question to twitter :

http://tinyurl.com/dg3kl4 –

Comments Posted from Twitter :

UPDATE : Twitter has restored full functionality to the unfollow feature on both @aplusk and @cnnbrk.

If you have not noticed CNN and Ashton Kutcher are doing a battle on twitter. As of today April 16, 2009 Twitter has removed the ability for you to unfollow @aplusk or @cnnbrk.

I can understand where twitter is going considering they do not want to loose a user base or active users after this little contest. The real question however is it right for twitter to remove the ability for you to unfollow certain people? In my opinion No. Regardless of what is at stake the users should still maintain the ability to choose what updates they get and what updates they can do without. By twitter forcing a user who has 1. Mistakenly followed or 2. Someone who got caught in the moment and really does not care for either party is wrong and I feel sorry for the people who got suckered into this little battle and now will have to put up with these twitter updates. (Honestly not what I want in my twitter client)

The internet is a place for individuality and the conversations about what is right or wrong will always be common place. Give us your opinions by leaving a comment or by adding #apluskcnnbrk in your twitter update.
Post your own comment/question to twitter :

http://tinyurl.com/dmem6w –

Comments Posted from Twitter :

First please watch the video above as it will help you better understand the tools required to get this job done correctly.

I have always had the issue of Mac OS X not having the best IRC clients. So I decided to start using mIRC within a VM (Virtual Machine) Running windows XP. However the problem I ran into was not getting the fancy growl notifications when I received a PM or Highlight. To solve this issue we at Geekologist have found a way to get mIRC to send notifications to Growl via SSH.

Requirements :

• plink.exe – It can be download from putty’s download page. (Just google Putty)
• growlnotify – This is included in the software bundle when you download Growl
• mIRC (Obvious)
• SSH enabled on the Mac – (Follow the instructions in the video to do this)
• Growl installed and running on the mac

mIRC Scripts you will need :

For Highlights :

On $*:Text:*:#: {
if ($highlight($1-)) {
if (($0 == 1) && ($1 isnum)) return
else echo $color(highlight) -ts -Highlight- $nick highlighted you in $chan $+ . ( $+ $replace($1-,$ifmatch, $+ $ifmatch $+ ) $+ )
/run -hide plink.exe -ssh MACIP -l YOURUSERNAME -pw YOURPASSWORD /Users/YOURUSERNAME/growlnotify –image ‘/users/YOURUSERNAME/images.png’ -t ‘ Highlight from $nick ‘ -m ‘ $chan $+ : $replace($1-,$ifmatch, $+ $ifmatch $+ ) $+ ‘ -n ‘ mIRC ‘
}

For PM’s :
On $*:Text:*:?: {
if ($nick == $active) { return }
/run -hide plink.exe -ssh MACIP -l YOURUSERNAME -pw YOURPASSWORD /Users/YOURUSERNAME/growlnotify –image ‘/Users/YOURUSERNAME/images.png’ -t ‘PM from $nick ‘ -m ‘ $1- ‘
}

Please replace YOURUSERNAME with your mac username, YOURPASSWORD with your mac password and MACIP with the IP address of the mac running growl.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Dave answers your questions about how he records audio for our podcasts and shows you a few tips getting started with your own audio setup.

Using his Alesis MULTIMIX8 FireWire Mixer he can record up to 8 different channels, gives a brief description of the “knobs” on this mixer and shows you his preferences for mixing his audio.

Along with his mixer Dave uses the Marshall MXL990 XLR Condenser Mic and Heil PL2T Mic Arm to position the mic for optimal recording.

Next Dave explains how to setup the Alesis mixer in Garage Band to get the 8 different recoding channels if need be. Along with setting up the mixer we get a look into some basic features of Garage Band and techniques for podcasters!

Watch the video above for more details and if you have any questions do not hesitate to leave a text response below or shoot Dave and email at David@geekologist.net

Remember when your computer was new? The new computer smell, and extremely responsive interface? Today the time it takes to boot up your computer seems to take forever compared to it’s younger and more youthful years.

You might think what is going on with this slow computer. I just bought it last year. Well to be honest what you are experiencing is very common and can be easily fixed.

As you continue to use your computer, you install new programs, surf the web, and download music, and movies. Your computer becomes very bogged down. I have compiled a list of tasks you can do to keep that computer running just like it has been pulled out of the box.

1. Remove any old files, folders and programs from your computer.

• The easiest way to remove programs from your computer is to navigate to your control panel under your Start Menu click on control panel and navigate to Add/Remove Programs if you are on Windows 200o or XP. If you are on windows vista please click the icon titled Programs and Features. In this window it will show all the installed programs on your computer and tell you how frequently each program is used. You can remove any program you know is old or you are no longer using.

2. Remove all temporary or cached files from your internet browser.

• Assuming that the majority of you are running Internet Explorer as your browser navigate to the tools tab and click Internet Options. In the first window you will see an option to erase both your cookies and Temp Internet Files. It is alright to remove both because all that is stored is some simple information about where you have been on the internet and some pre cached images that will help the page load quicker next time you visit.

3. Disable programs from running at startup.

• You may have noticed when you installed a program that a new icon now shows up next to your systems clock even when the program is not open. This means that the program you installed runs in the background. Most of the time programs do this to make it quicker to start the program when you are ready to use it. However if you have to many programs running at startup your computer can become very slow and even unusable. To remove programs from startup go to your Start Menu and click run. In the run dialog type msconfig and press enter. You will see a new window on the desktop and you will need to navigate to the startup tab. In this tab msconfig will show you all the programs that run when you boot your computer. Please uncheck any box next to a program you do not wish to run at startup. Note! – IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT A PROGRAM IS DO NOT UNCHECK THE BOX NEXT TO IT. IT COULD CAUSE YOUR COMPUTER TO BECOME UNBOOTABLE. Once you have removed all the startup items you wish click ok and restart your computer.

4. Organize your files and folders.

• This may not get your computer running any faster but just like you clean your car or home your computer does need it’s own spring cleaning. Try to put common files in folders and label them. Trust me you will not regret taking time out of your day to do this when you save time not searching for that paper.

5. Update your anti-virus, anti-spyware, and Windows.

• This is a MUST DO. Installing the latest Windows updates and ensuring that your Internet Security software is up-to-date is crucial to the health of your computer. If the updates are not installed or your Internet Security software is not updated your will be at risk of getting a virus that could render your computer useless. Please make sure this step is completed if none of the above are. The tech community and I can not stress enough how important this step is!

Other ways to get that new computer smell back.

• Install more memory. – Join the live chat at http://geekologist.net/live and we can help you find the right memory for your computer.
• Get an external Hard Drive for your files. – Keep your music and photos externally to save valuable space on your Hard Drive.

Keep your mac running like new coming soon!

If you have anymore questions or would like to offer your own tips to our readers do not hesitate to leave a comment below!