My friend pointed out to me that jailbreak mods don’t count because the average consumer couldn’t enable then and a majority of users would never experience the expanded feature set jailbroken software offers.

Here is what I say.  The rivals are chasing a ghost.  Many of the features and advantages other phones may offer and highlight are a simple modification away.  The software already exists, it works, the iPhone is fully capable.

The dark side to Apple is that they leave a lot off the table.  They have a lot of technology ready to go but won’t realease while their current products are still hot sellers and miles ahead of the competition.  If sales start slipping or the guys in Cupertino feel threatened, they can release these features at the drop of a hat.

If you really want to beat Apple and the iPhone, your going to have to take a page out of their book – Think Different

Right now pretty much the only advertising we do for Refined Pixel is on Craigslist; We run 2 in Chicago and Columbus every day.  I spent some time creating a nicely formatted ad that worked with craigslist’s rudimentary formatting rules which is about the same as designing an html email.  You can check out one of the ads here.

Honestly the plain text ads seem to be about as effective as the formatted ones but I definitely notice a pick up in activity when I run the ad for several days or weeks in a row.  Since Refined Pixel has only been around a few months I pitch the ad as a portfolio builder sale.  I think it’s been a good way to stand out in the crowded market that is craigslist.

When I would quote prices for prospective projects I would quote the discounted price and many times the client would ask something along the lines of,

“Is that the sale price?”

That question can really take the wind out of a sales pitch.  From now on I’m going to quote the full market price and then offer the discounted sale price.  I think this method will eliminate any potential confusion on the customer’s behalf and will make for a more dramatic and compelling sales pitch.  I will let you know how it works after I try it a few times!

Step 1) Turn the phone on, connect it to a computer, and open iTunes.  Even if your phone gets stuck at the Apple logo screen, turn it on.

Step 2) Reset the phone by holding the power/sleep and home buttons.  Keep holding both buttons for 10 seconds.

Step 3) Release the power/sleep button after counting to 10.  Keep holding the home button.

Step 4) In just a moment iTunes should pop up a message saying your iPhone is now in DFU mode.

That’s all, hope it works for you!  Oh and P.S. – don’t update to 3.1.3 if you have any interest in jailbreaking your iPhone!!

I first got into web development when I was still an undergrad at The Ohio State University (Go Bucks! @}-`–).  I was going to make a website for my dad’s computer store, Computer Bay. The store was in the somewhat selective Apple Specialist program (back in the days before Apple Stores).  I remember my dad bringing home an original Macintosh and I played shuffle puck cafe, stunt copter, and some crazy game with robots. It had text to speech, which seemed so far ahead of its time. My dad always made sure I had some new or interesting electronics to play with.  Crazy side note – my day’s birthday is January 24, the same day the Macintosh was introduced.

Back to the website…  I designed mock ups and plans for the site but my dad ended up selling the store to OWC before I got very far with it.  Another crazy side note – the guy who started OWC actually used to come in to the store when he was a teenager.  It was the right time for my dad to sell.  Traditional computer stores started dying when the big box retailers like Best Buy began stocking computer equipment and our suppliers like Apple started competing with us at the retail level.  OWC innovated by getting into the ISP game early and marketing their own products like external hard drives and cpu upgrades.

After getting ready to make a site for my dad’s computer store and having it falling through, I decided to try and make a website for someone else.  I convinced my roommate to join on, he taught himself how to code and I handled the creative and business side of things.  We got lucky because it didn’t take long to find someone was looking for a new website.  We took it on even though neither of us had ever made a website before.  It took us a few months but it actually turned out pretty well, you can check it out here.  It’s about the same as it was when we put it up back in 2003.  The check had four digits and as a college student that went a long way.  We always talked about finding new clients but between classes and extracurricular pursuits nothing much came of it.

My other roommate was playing a lot of online poker at the time.  I played some but really took an interest in the affiliate programs the poker sites were offering.  I set up affiliate programs and got a wholesale hook up on poker chips (something like $22 for 500 11.5 Gram Clay Poker Chip Set in a nice aluminum case) and offered them free to my affiliate sign ups.  The best programs were paying $150 a sign up or 20-50% revenue for life.  I got into the market late and I knew it so I took the quick cash but the guys who got in early and opted for percentage commisions must have made insane money.

The poker affiliate business went well for a year or so, then we graduated and my roommate and I went our seperate ways.  I started promoting clubs and bars in Columbus – I basically got paid to party, hard. I played around with some DJ & Audio Production stuff but I didn’t do much with web development for the year or two I was promoting.

Fast forward to June 2009.  One of my good friends got a job at a web hosting company and convinced me to get back into web development.  Up until this point I never developed a site by myself.  I started reading up and by the end of June I had Refined Pixel up.  I posted ads on craigslist and started getting projects.  It’s still exciting when people fill out the form on the site, those people are usually pretty interested in doing business.  I got swamped by November and cut back on the craigslist ads.  I’m wrapping up a few projects right now and taking the extra time to work on some personal projects I’ve had on the back burner for a long time – like this site.

I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro with extra ram, a new hard drive, and Snow Leopard.  When I started getting everything setup, I spend a good amount of time getting my boot camp partition working well with Windows 7 Ultimate x64.  The only issues I still had were dealing with start up.  I installed NTFS-3G in order to read AND write to my ntfs partition while booted in mac, but that removed my boot camp partition from the Startup Disk preference pane.  That’s when I stumbled upon rEFIT , a boot loader designed to work with modern mac’s EFI.