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Apple G4 PowerBook and iBook Battery Recall

Apple G4 PowerBook and G4 iBook Battery Recall (Coral Cache Mirror) - Check your model now. Some will catch on fire!

I just checked my G4 AlBook, it's not affected. And Brandy's iBook is a G3 iBook, not a G4. So we're in the clear! :)

Apple Announces Recall of Batteries Used in Previous iBook and PowerBook Computers Due To Fire Hazard

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announces the following recall in voluntary cooperation with the firm below. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries with cells manufactured by Sony for certain previous iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 notebook computers only.

Units: About 1.1 million battery packs (an additional 700,000 battery packs were sold outside the U.S.)

Battery Cell Manufacturer: Sony Energy Devices Corp., of Japan

Computer Manufacturer: Apple Computer Inc., of Cupertino, Calif.

Hazard: These lithium-ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire hazard to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: Apple has received nine reports of batteries overheating, including two reports of minor burns from handling overheated computers and other reports of minor property damage. No serious injuries were reported.

Description: The recalled lithium-ion batteries were used with the following computers: 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch PowerBook G4. Consumers should remove the battery from the computer to view the model and serial numbers labeled on the bottom of the unit.

Computer model name	Battery model number	Battery serial numbers
12-inch iBook G4	A1061	ZZ338 through ZZ427 | 3K429 through 3K611 | 6C510 through 6C626
12-inch PowerBook G4	A1079	ZZ411 through ZZ427 | 3K428 through 3K611
15-inch PowerBook G4	A1078 and A1148	3K425 through 3K601 | 6N530 through 6N551 | 6N601

No other Apple notebook computers are involved in this recall.
Sold Through: Apple’s online store, Apple retail stores nationwide, and Apple Authorized Resellers from October 2003 through August 2006 for between $900 and $2300. The batteries also were sold separately for about $130.

Assembled in: Japan, Taiwan and China

Remedy: Consumers should stop using the recalled batteries immediately and contact Apple to arrange for a replacement battery, free of charge. After removing the recalled battery from their iBook or PowerBook, consumers should plug in the AC adapter to power the computer until a replacement battery arrives.

Consumer Contact: : Contact Apple at (800) 275-2273 between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. CT Monday through Sunday or log on to Apple’s Web site at http://support.apple.com/batteryprogram to check the battery’s serial number and request a replacement battery.

MacBook Wireless Vulnerability

James McMurry is trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the MacBook Wireless Vulnerability. Anybody cares to chime-in?

Mini's here :o

Mini's here :o
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

Skimmer Kid, Hermosa Beach, CA

Skimmer Kid, Hermosa Beach, CA
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

I took this pic 2 years ago exactly.

Traffic Shaping in Mac OS X Tiger

"Tiger finally has dummynet support in the kernel. What this means to you is that now you can do traffic shaping with no additional software."

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Introducing SIPCasting - Broadcasting for the Masses

What is it?

It's peer-powered broadcasting leveraging the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and a few SIP-enabled tools and services to relay streamed data across multiple peers. It's currently not a "software package". It's a methodology, that might one day motivate the community to define key protocols, perhaps one day leading to the development of software packages dedicated to broadcasting over SIP. Until then, we'll explore what can be done today using freely available SIP software and services and start pinpointing limitations to be addressed.

Why not just use PeerCast and other dedicated P2P Broadcasting technologies for streaming media?

I can't think of a reason! They're worth trying out, and if this post does nothing but bring them publicity, we'll be off to a strong start. Check out projects similar to PeerCast.

Why Peer-to-Peer for Broadcasting?

While the vast majority of "content" can be consumed asynchronously, such as with podcasting, certain timely events and massively shared experiences warrant more "real-time" coverage.

P2P's already actively being used for digital asset delivery: thanks to pioneering peer-powered digital asset distribution frameworks such as BitTorrent, RedSwoosh, and Dijjer, it's becoming easier to leverage aggregate "visitor" bandwidth to more effectively deliver content.

Broadcasting in real-time to large audiences needs more P2P-love, as it remains today too onerous for independent authors to broadcast in real-time to masses. Leveraging peer-to-peer technologies for broadcasting is a fascinating human evolution in further freeing ourselves from our dependency on Big Media.

Phone, Cable, Media companies, are working around the clock lobbying legislators to keep a choke-hold on distribution of content, and the way we use broadband. Smart, legal, exciting applications of peer-to-peer technologies can further help legislators understand the importance of unfettered broadband connectivity.

When was SIPCasting first more or less successfully used? And how?

Well, in theory as early as the first time a group of people connected together in a SIP audio conference. The SIP RFC is dated circa 1995 so there had to be some geeks back then trying some cool stuff on local networks. But most recently, during the Apple WWDC 2006 Keynote, by a few TheAppleBlog readers, eager to listen to live spoken updates from a field correspondent, as a complement to textual coverage performed elsewhere. Here's an outline of the logistics of setting-up a basic SIPCast.

How is SIPCasting different? What does SIP give us?

SIP enables slightly different use cases: When two peers have established contact via SIP/STUN, both peers can exchange data in real-time over UDP. Data can go both ways. This enables SIP to power many forms of real-time communications. Traditional "broadcasting" is very-much a one-way process: Data flows from one source, to be passively received and consumed. SIP provides a strong framework for content consumers to also send data back to the "broadcaster". In essence, in a basic SIP session, there is no real such thing as a "broadcaster" and "consumer", but rather a tacit agreement between two peers, designating who "talks" and who "listens". In the specific use case of a live audio broadcast, a "listener" might choose to "speak up", in a more interactive framework. This may often not be desirable, and dedicated software would seek to provide a measure of control over available interactivity.

SIP provides a standard framework to execute the dirty work: SIP, STUN, SDP already define the low-level mechanisms for peers to find each-other, agree on the logistics of the session, and exchange media RTP packets over UDP, even through the vast majority of NAT configurations. Many peer-to-peer frameworks keep reinventing their own protocols to solve these problems.

SIP is versatile: SIP enables a slew of peer-to-peer applications based on mature, open standards. A while back, EarthLink R&D released a proof of concept SIP-powered peer-to-peer file sharing application written in Java: SIPShare.

SIP is highly interoperable: If something speaks SIP, chances are just about anything can conceivably connect to it. You've got a SIP-based radio broadcast? A Zyxel wifi phone user just might give you a ring from an airport Boingo hotspot. Perhaps a MindSpring, GizmoProject, or Free World Dialup user might plug your SIPCast address into their phone. Heck, if you mapped an ipkall.com 360 area code phone number to your SIP address, anybody with a plain old cell phone would be likely to dial you up and listen-in.

SIP addressing is powerful ... and convenient: Consider one of many possible forms of SIP addresses: sip:theappleblog@earthlink.net. Looks familiar? Just like an e-mail address. SIP also supports "session forwarding". I can arbitrarily decide to forward calls to my SIP address to another SIP address. Domain name registrars need to capitalize on this today, and add this as a feature alongside wild-card mail forwarding @somedomain.bleh. This is achievable by declaring your SIP proxy host as a handler of SIP traffic via DNS SRV records.

What Now?

We need to attempt more practice-runs of larger-scale audio SIPCasts using SJPhone, and/or perhaps even asterisk.
We need to document the many obvious and not-so-obvious limitations of this ad-hoc setup.
We need to define some use cases for SIPCast software that allows control over interactivity levels, and streamlines the peer discovery and media relay processes.

off to San Jose

off to San Jose
Originally uploaded by chrisholland.

TAB Audio Party Line Relays

This is a follow-up to this post.

For those interested in being an audio party-line relay:

We're still looking for more standby relayers for the audio partyline.

1) Configure SJPhone with a SIP account following these directions

2) in the Preferences menu, "Call options" tab, check [x] automatically accept incoming calls.

3) Make sure the conference button is clicked,

4) e-mail your SIP address to frenchy@gmail.com. In the e-mail, also tell me what your upstream/downstream speed is on your broadband connectivity ... if you know it.

For everybody else interested in audio party-line:

1) Install MindSpring (PC Users), or GizmoProject (Mac, PC, Linux) or run any other SIP-capable program.
2) plug the following sip address in your SIP program: sip:theappleblog@earthlink.net
3)Find the mute button and keep it pressed unless you need to speak-up :)

If all you have is a phone, try this:

(360) 526-6161

For those interested in a text chat with live keynote updates:

Head here! Go to AIM Chat Room: TheAppleBlog

WWDC 2006 Live Keynote Coverage/Chat

Chat with hundreds (if not thousands) of other mac users during The Apple Blog's live keynote coverage and chat.

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FCC Supports Broadband over Power Lines

"The Federal Communications Commission decided Aug. 3 to reaffirm its stance on the deployment of broadband-over-power-line technology." "By adpting this order, the FCC rejected requests by several groups, including the amateur radio community, the aviation industry and broadcasters, to either limit the service or to disallow it completely. "

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Apple may restate profits amid accounting scandal

The accounting scandal engulfing Apple deepened today as the computer company warned Wall Street that its earnings figures over the past four years "should not be relied upon," sending its shares tumbling.

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Del.icio.us Traffic Plummets

Unique visitors have dropped by 22%, and page views
have dropped by a whopping 75%, erasing all gains in traffic this
year. Del.icio.us is effectively at the same traffic levels as they
were when it was acquired in December 2005



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Chad Vader - Episode 2

awesome! :)

"Strike me down with your hatred, and claim your refund".
"Chad, vomit clean-up aisle 5".

Chad Vader

1st episode.

Beyond AdSense: A Business Model Checklist

Brian Oberkirch of Like It Matters offers a useful list of "the various business models available to developers of live Web apps & services."

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