These are my links for July 25th through August 10th:

• Social Plugins – Facebook Developers –
• Matt Damon’s 5 Best Unscripted Political Moments | Pajiba: Reviews, News, Quotes & Cultural Commentary –
• WEB BROWSER COLOR MANAGEMENT Tutorial –
• Mizar – Self sufficient dental care –
• Magic Lantern Firmware Wiki –
• The Mission to Get Osama Bin Laden –
• Developer’s Guide – Google App Engine – Google Code –
• AMD OpenCL™ Coding Competition – zero copy buffers
• Bitcoin P2P Virtual Currency –
• Allied Star Police – Owain’s Wish – Owain Weinert designed this game with the help of Popcap and Make-Wish foundation.
• OSX Lion connection error with Time Machine fix –
• Telnet Console for netgear –
• The Hot Violinist –

These are my links for September 21st through October 4th:

• George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay
• First World War officially ends
• Infusion Profusion: Game-Changing Fast ‘N Cheap Technique
• Tilt-Shift Van Gogh
• Electron Switch Between Molecules Points Way to New High-Powered Organic Batteries – University of Texas discovery
• How-to: set up dual-band WiFi (and juice your downloads)

Well, the wife and I got iPhone 3G’s today.  But they really should be called iPhone 2.5G’s.

After Wired’s article about the survey they did of 3G users in various locales across North America, I was ready to discount the iPhone 3G’s troubles with the 3G network as mainly due to faulty local networks.

Then again, something didn’t sit right in that conclusion.  It all became crystal clear as the young, stoked Apple attendant was ringing up the phones.  We talked a bit about the Wired article, and I told him I was confident about the iPhone being ok here in Austin, because of the article and my current phone.  I have had a Samsung Sync SGH-A707 for almost 2 years now, and the one problem I have never had with it is bad reception.  I have 5 to 7 bars (which is max on the phone) on 3G almost the entire time I am in town.

Then he said, “look at it now”.  I did and it showed 5 bars of 3G on the Samsung.  It never wavered while my wife was getting her iPhone setup.  Then as my iPhone was setup, I saw that it has only one bar of 3G for a brief moment and then switches to 3 to 5 bars of Edge.  That was enough test for me.  The Apple store employee says they never get 3G at that store or around it on the iPhones.

I sit here now, in South Austin (the store was in North Austin) with the new iPhone showing 5 bars of Edge, reading this rebuttal to a rebuttal of the Wired article…  essentially saying it is ‘mostly’ still the network.

It’s not the network.

I remember that the Samsung Sync is known for its exceptionally high radio strength.  But Wired’s survey chart certainly shows Austin as solid green for network stability/strength.  And yet the phones we just purchased have a very hard time connecting anywhere in town with more than a couple bars, and drop to Edge a majority of the time.  It was a good theory, and I appreciate the survey, but unfortunately it isn’t backed up in reality.