Garth Gillespie

I recently received a Visa Gift Card, which is a very nice thing to get, but unfortunately has a couple issues when used online. Namely, there is no ‘Billing Address’ associated with the card, so trying to use the Visa Gift Card as payment at online merchants such as the Apple Store, Apple iTunes Music Store (iTMS) or Amazon, the payment is unable to be processed.

What to do?

So I headed over to Safeway and bought some gift cards for Amazon and Apple iTunes, paid Safeway with the Visa Gift Card and then proceeded to redeem the vendor specific cards as needed.

A little convoluted, but it worked.

Nobody seems to know. I’ve asked three people at the local store. They didn’t know. I sent a note to QFC via their online contact form about a week ago – no response yet. So today I called their customer support number, and the operator didn’t know and now it has been sent to “research”.

Seems like a question for their marketing department – but we’ll see. I had no idea Camden’s simple question would be so hard to answer. Seems like employees should know about their company’s logo and what any symbolism means.

Maybe – ‘Quality is King’ – seems like a good guess – but let’s see if anyone at QFC corporate knows.

Update: I did actually get ahold of the current marketing director for QFC and while she was not sure of the definitive reason for the crown in the logo, she does have an old advertisement in her office where the slogan for QFC was ‘Royal Service.’

Update: June 8 – Guess not! OS 3 drops June 17.

Just some Tuesday morning conjecture.

After I updated the our Macs to iTunes 8.2 last night and synced the iPhones, I noticed that the ‘next check’ for iphone software updates is June 5. It seems to me that normally the ‘next check’ goes out a couple weeks at least, so based on this and some practical matters regarding Monday’s Keynote, here’s my theory.

iPhone OS 3.0 drops Friday. Apple then basically owns the Friday news cycle with the new features in OS 3.0. Palm Pre launches Saturday – but weekends are rough for news, so Palm will get press, but reporters will have valid comparisons to make between the Pre’s Web OS and the iPhone OS.

WWDC Keynote is Monday – this again lets Apple own the Monday/Tuesday news cycle. I predict the keynote will cover two things, Snow Leopard and new iPhone/iPod hardware with a mid to late-June, early July release.

This has the result of really taking the wind out of Palm’s sails and gets Apple through a weekend where some users will be tempted to switch to a Pre.

With the new iPhone hardware rumors coming fast and furious, I’m figuring that OS 3 has already gone gold and is the hands of manufacturers now for new iPhone assembly. So why not drop it before Monday? I don’t see Apple wasting part of a Keynote re-hashing iPhone 3.0 features they went over in the ‘Sneak Preview’. It’s a developer conference after all and they want to talk about Snow Leopard and reasons that you “need” to upgrade from Leopard.

Just posted the following on the dslreports forum detailing success using an Airport Extreme in front of the supplied Actiontec and getting Remote DVR working.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22395674-

Maybe it helps someone else.

I sent this to Apple today to let them know of yet another lost revenue opportunity. Not expecting a response – but they really need get out of ‘hobby’ mode and improve this.

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I thought it would be great to watch Pinocchio with my son as he’s never seen it. It was released this past Tuesday (3.12.09). I go to iTMS and lo and behold, its not there. This despite saying last year that Disney was the first studio to support the ‘Same as DVD release date’ availability in the iTMS.

So really, why isn’t it there? And this isn’t the first time. You really need to improve this. I can buy it from any number of retail stores right now (CostCo, Best Buy, Blockbuster – I can order it from Amazon) all of whom are your competitors. Which one should I buy it from to sting the most and prompt some changes?

This is another lost sale for Apple. Apple really needs to improve this. Tuesday mornings should have all the same new DVD releases as Best Buy, Amazon, etc. if you want this business.

At the very least say when it will be available on iTMS. I know Apple loves to keep secrets – but c’mon, it’s already out there and it’s Disney, your second best studio buddy after Pixar.

Confused and bewildered,
Garth Gillespie

14″ of snow around Xmas.

Use the Force … cool

2008 has been good to the Internet. Amazon has reported higher sales orders over last year and electronic mediums continue their march to overtake print sources.

NY Times: Year of the eBook

Pew Study: Internet Overtakes Newspapers as News Source

TooneTown Blog: 10 steps to a multi-protocol iChat..

This is a pretty cool way to add more services to iChat and enable Video Chatting most of the time. Still need Adium for some things – but OpenFire and Chax are great.

Very Clean Screenshots in OS X.