I’m writing this while waiting for some work to be done on my car; but if anything I am sitting here reminded how over the last 2 days or so, I have been reclaiming my original setup due to the disastrous OTA by AT&T for my Samsung Captivate.

And celebrating how the Android communities helped me out in more than just a few ways.

So what happened? While out and about, I noticed that the phone was communicating with AT&T and downloading something. Since I am on that ultra-restrictive 200mb data plan per month, I canceled it. Bad thing to do.  According to MANY reports at the XDA-Developers forums, that is the last thing you want to do. In fact that is one action that will actually brick your phone. Not the lag fix, not gaining root access to your phone, not overclocking to 1.2ghz, nor flashing community sourced firmware.

No. Canceling an OTA update may brick your phone. And is there a warning? Nope.

So after a few hours of frantic searching and research, I used Odin to flash back to JF6, obtained root again, installed ROM Manager, used the Clockwork Mod to flash the Cognition 2.1.1 update that included the JH7 OTA update, applied the Voodoo lag fix, recovered from my Titanium Backup of my apps and fine tuned the settings and contacts.

And speaking of the contacts; that service from AT&T sucks. It will overwrite instead of merge each and everytime. Not cool AT&T. Y’all already on my bad side. Due to the restrictive data and a healthy fear of getting overcharged for data of all things.
AT&T… I cannot say that I’m happy with you. Android community; you’re the true heroes in my book.

If the Android community has helped you out, I insist that you donate to them. I have.

Earlier this week, Nokia announced a “big announcement” for folks. And here it is… a bloke wearing a standard fare cardigan, armed with probably comical looks and positions, it seems like Nokia is going to dive deep into the viral marketing pool with… a photo-based comic strip that sings the praises of the oft-maligned (by users) Nokia Ovi Store.

Today, we finally unveil (part of) the mystery.

Starting next Friday (July 30), we’re premiering an original comic series here on the Ovi Blog called “Old School”. We won’t tell you too much more about it, but it’s fun and we hope you love it.

And for those that were guessing, this isn’t a product launch or announcement. It’s just a thank you for everyone who loves Ovi and reads the blog. Share it, like it, comment on it, repost it: we’re looking forward to your reaction!

Here’s my chance to get on my soapbox.

Ok, I know I cannot be the only person that’s looking at the Nokia official blogs hoping that Nokia will finally start to do the things that they have not done in ages; effective marketing in North America. Nokia has gone from being perceived as a top notch handset manufacturer to something that you get when you want a free, subsidized phone on contract. Nokia N-series, largely unpopular with folks that don’t want to do any type of research – face it, most consumers are not willing to read more than a headline, pay more than a dime and learn more than a page of the user manual. Nokia N900, Nokia N97, Nokia N95… rare as hell in the US. Even more rare in Japan, yet another place where Nokia has stopped advertising.

So with the drama surrounding the current CEO, the fact that their stock has gone from ~$40 per share to under ~$9 per share in just two years, Nokia looks like a bust. But they’re not, they still sell millions of handsets and have open-sourced Symbian and have the open-source MeeGo partnership with Intel and the Linux Foundation. In fact, Nokia sells more than the next 2 manufacturers combined still. More than Apple, more than Blackberry. So what’s going on? Y’all can’t get advertising right? And… a friggin’ comic based on an office setting? Office Space came out in 1999, The Office (UK) came out in 2001. Nokia, it’s 2010. You guys can do much better than something so tried, so used up, so boring as an online comic.

“Old School” indeed. Nokia, get a clue.

[ Links: Nokia Ovi Blog ]

UPDATE: Due to some “angry e-mails”, I truly ask that if you have some comments, feel free to leave some comments. I’ll respond to each and every one of them. Guaranteed. Even the hate mail…

This almost pains me to write this rant… okay, actually it doesn’t.

I’ve owned the original Apple iPhone, currently own the iPhone3G, resisted upgrading to the iPhone 3GS and I’m typing this while using an Apple aluminum keyboard with the numpad on my Apple Mac Mini, and later today I’ll pack up my MacBook and probably go out elsewhere to do some work away from the home office. I’ve owned four iterations of the Apple iPod before settling in my gasp, horror Microsoft Zune 120gb, but that’s a different story.

So I’ve paid my dues heavily to Apple by shoving more of my hard-earned money to the Apple hype machine that delivered products that thought different, just “worked” and above all, were not the PC norm.

But on January 27th, Apple’s lead man Steve Jobs showed the world perhaps the worst kept secret, the Apple iPad. A 9.7″, 1024 by 768 tablet that has a P.A. Semiconductor A4 processor – that buyout of P.A. Semiconductors in April 2008 makes sense now, doesn’t it? – that’s based off of ARM A9 CPU architecture, which means that this isn’t an Intel x86 based tablet much like their laptop or desktop offerings and closer to… well, their Apple iPhone instead.

Yep, this is for all intents and purposes a huge ass Apple iPhone which means absolutely no multi-tasking – one app at a time only at the current version of the OS. Sure, Apple might update the OS to allow for some type of multi-tasking, but as it stands it’s only a serial tasking product. Not cool if you’re wanting to surf, copy and paste, then resume your Apple iWork project? Only one thing at a time.

It doesn’t have Adobe Flash. So that means websites like the New York Times, Google Analytics, Hulu, Joost or YouTube or Vimeo will not work either. Yet, Jobs stated that the Apple iPad offered the best browsing experience. Not so. Sure, YouTube and Vimeo are testing HTML5 versions of their players, but even that’s a battle because the video tag in HTML5 isn’t yet settled and might not be for a while – as a standard that is. So… yet again Apple snubs Adobe Flash.

It uses the same applications as your Apple iPhone. On the surface, this is a good thing. I don’t have to buy any new apps, I can buy my apps once and use them on my iPhone and on my iPad. But… it means that I’m tethered to the iTunes Music Store yet again. It’s a great ecosystem for apps, but to be honest I have some apps that will never show up… like Microsoft Office for starters. Or maybe Hulu. Again… I’m stuck with a closed platform that’s rather limited.

And ultimately, you cannot remove/replace the battery, once you buy one edition of the Apple iPad – with or without 3G – you’re stuck. You will have to buy another Apple iPad because you cannot upgrade it. You cannot install files from another machine, device, DVD drive. – you have to do it solely through iTunes Music Store, which is fine, but you’re no longer dealing with a tablet in the previously known sense of the word tablet.

And you cannot make cellphone calls from it. But through the magic of Skype, Fring, and Beejive IM, you can still talk with people. But… not in the same way of a cellphone. The fact the Apple iPad doesn’t have a forward facing camera makes teleconferences another problem too. Thanks Steve, you forgot to “one more thing” that, didn’t you?

This thing is nothing more than just a huge Apple iPhone. And since I already have an iPhone, I’d rather just hold my iPhone closer to my face and call it an Apple iPad. I’m not impressed, as a person that really didn’t expect anything, I can still say that I’m disappointed and even if I was given one for free take the hint, send me one, I’ll review/test it, the pricepoint happens to be one serious positive, it starts at $499 for wi-fi only – I probably would not use it any more than my Nokia N810, also called an internet tablet.

It’ll be a consumer hit to those that didn’t yet purchase an Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble nook, and the premise of buying and reading books on the Apple iPad is another, besides pricepoint, redeeming quality. But as a power user, a tinkerer, a person that never purchased nor wanted a Kindle or nook… I’ll pass.

Just say no to the Apple iPad.

[ Links: Apple iPad, Apple Insider ]

The other day it was noted that AT&T was getting ready to raise prices on U-Verse broadband, TV and VoIP customers (see the fine print on this U-Verse pricing page). Judging from some leaked AT&T talking points posted to BroadbandReports.com forums, AT&T is getting ready to hit regular DSL customers with some price hikes as well.

According to the leaked memo, AT&T says they’re making some “modest price adjustments” to both U-Verse and DSL pricing soon, and that users should be notified by mail of the changes. AT&T is currently offering “DSL Xtreme 6.0″ (6 Mbps), “DSL Xtreme” (3 Mbps) and “DSL Ultra” (1.5 Mbps) tiers – for the same price. Users who sign up now are given any one of the tiers for $24.95 for twelve months, after which the pricing reverts to $42.95, $37.95, or $32.95, respectively. Keep in mind of course that AT&T continues to test low caps and high per gig overages in two markets and may or may not expand those ambitions in 2010 as well.

Update: AT&T reached out to us to note that there will be a few price reductions on their higher end U-Verse tiers, and they’ll be eliminating their slowest U-verse tier:

On the U-verse High Speed Internet side, there are some changes for new customers, starting with decreasing the price of our higher-speed packages – Max (up to 12 Mbps) and Max Plus (up to 18 Mbps) – by a month across all of our 22-states. The Express (up to 1.5 Mbps) service will no longer be offered to new U-verse customers as of Feb. 21.

AT&T tells us the changes “reflect the greater demand and interest we’re seeing for higher bandwidth packages among our U-verse customers.”

Too bad “greater demand” is met only with “greater prices” and not “greater service”.

Link to the original article…

AOL continues an interesting trip that took them from one of the largest and most powerful ISPs on the Internet, to a fractured and financially-troubled company with dreams of becoming an advertising giant. Of course most of their problems were caused by their inability to adapt to (or really in some cases even recognize) the broadband market – something that was at least in part caused by former executive Lisa Hook, who went on to do amazing things with VoIP carrier SunRocket as well. With its spin off from Time Warner, the company this fall has undergone its latest in an endless line of evolution efforts, but has announced those changes will come with pink slips for about one third of AOL’s employees, or about 2,300 workers.

Link to the original article…