Mike Cohen

Change.gov will become Whitehouse.gov

by

According to Federal Computer Week, at 12:01PM Tuesday when Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president, Obama’s change.gov site will become the new whitehouse.gov.

This is huge. Until now whitehouse.gov has been a one-way static site for dispensing information, announcements, and press releases with little or no interaction and no way to get involved. It’s also a very dull and old-fashioned looking.

Picture 1.png

Change.gov, on the other hand is highly interactive and encourages participation. It’s a clean modern-looking Web 2.0 site that has been described as a bold experiment in interactive government or “open source democracy”.

Picture 2.png

This is one change I can believe in.

New iPhone

by

As I blogged a few days ago, my iPhone was unable to make outgoing calls although I could receive calls, even with 5 bars of signal. After restoring, resetting network settings, and making sure the SIM card was properly seated, I made an appointment and brought it into the Apple store today.

After the Genius did some tests and tried restoring the iPhone, he determined it was a hardware problem and gave me a new iPhone.

Getting a new iPhone meant I had to add the device ID and create a new development provisioning profile before I could use it for development in XCode.

Apple – Steve Jobs = Apple

by

Apple is a lot more than Steve Jobs, and you can be sure that Apple has plans to go on without him. Don’t forget he’s still very much alive. It’s much too early to start writing his obituary.

The media craziness has reached epic proportions with people like Michael Wolff writing drek such as:

Indeed, the logical answer to what happens at Apple without Jobs is that it dies. What you have, demonstrably, is a company without any managerial wherewithal beyond Jobs; these are Stockholm syndrome people. The big guy is dying and his crew is ready to go with him (taking the shareholders’ money along).

Apple is in very capable hands with Tim Cook, who already had experience running Apple while Steve Jobs was out for his surgery. Apple still has other great people like Jonathan Ives, who is responsible for the design of most of their products. Enough of Steve Jobs’ vision has permeated every level of Apple that almost any Apple employee can ask themselves “What Would Steve Jobs Do” and know what to do.

Microsoft seems to be doing just fine without Bill Gates and I never saw any predictions that it would die when he retired. I can see a similar path for Apple and I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Steve Jobs will still be alive at the end of this year. I predict that Jobs will live long enough to go into a retirement similar to Bill Gates, probably in the not too distant future. In the upcoming months Apple’s leadership plans will be made clear.

Neat Receipts really is neat

by

Today I got my Neat Receipts package, which I ordered right after Macworld while their show discount was still available. It really works amazingly well.

The USB bus-powered scanner is very compact and quiet. I discovered that it works with VueScan as well as their NeatWorks software.

The NeatWorks software lets you scan business cards, receipts, and other documents. It can also import contacts into the address book. I found the OCR to be amazingly accurate. It’s also very smart about recognizing fields, even recognizing abbreviations such as ‘T’ for main phone number & ‘M’ for mobile.

I found that it scans most business cards 100% accurately, even in colors other than black & white. I tried one very ornate card with lots of graphics, which I didn’t expect it to recognize at all, but it still picked out the name, title, and company.

Renewing iPhone signing certificates

by

My iPhone development signing certificate expired yesterday. Thankfully I found that creating a new certificate is quick and painless. Luckily I still have my Certificate Signing Request (CSR).

All you really have to do is upload the CSR. If you don’t have it, you’ll have to create a new one by following the instructions in the certificates tab in ADC’s iPhone center.

After uploading the CSR, you’ll have to approve it by clicking the ‘approve’ button in the certificates tab. In a few minutes, the certificate is ready to download.

An eventful day

by

Today has been a crazy, unsettling, eventful day. For starters, my friend lost her job.

Later, the offer I had made for a foreclosed condo I was planning to buy & rent out was rejected.

Finally, a driver hit one of the buildings in here and caused some serious damage.

Damaged Building

Maybe I’ll buy Apple stock with the money I would have spent on the condo, since Steve Jobs’ health concerns made the stock drop.

links for 2009-01-13

by

iPhone Developer Certificates are expiring

by

Thanks to Craig Hockenberry for pointing out that iPhone developer & distribution certificates are beginning to expire. I checked my keychain and found that my developer certificate expires tomorrow and my distribution certificate expires on the 25th. I’m not sure if I still have my original certificate signing request (CSR), so I’ll probably have more work to do.

For any other iPhone developers reading this, open Keychain Access, do a search for ‘iPhone’ and note the expiration dates. Don’t be caught by surprise.