About two weeks ago, I did something I very rarely EVER do. I broke my phone. 3 years – no drops, dings, nicks or bad scratches. Originally, I had planned on upgrading my iPhone 3G at the end of the month but I was shuffling some stuff around on my desk and the phone slid off the edge. Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal – I’ve got a case for it and it’s only about a 2ft drop. Apparently this time it was enough. Phone fell flat on the front face. I picked it up an when I turned it on – white screen of death.

After a couple hours fiddling with the internals and some Google searching I had two options – hope the internal connection re-seating fixed it or replace the entire LCD screen and digitizer. Breaking it apart and putting it all back together didn’t work and I figured I was so close to swapping it out anyway, I might as well upgrade early. So after about 2 hours in line at the local Apple retail store that night, I walked out with a new iPhone 4.
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I’ve created an iCal compatible calendar for general public use. Basically, any mobile device like an iPhone, iPad, Droid, etc. or software client like iCal for Macs, Outlook Clients, etc. can add my shared iCal formatted calendar to their client.

I’ll keep my master Google calendar updated with game times, Win/Losses, etc as the season progresses and more information becomes available. If you have it set up as a iCal subscription, any updates I make will sync with your client automatically. However, if you import the iCal .ics file directly, it won’t. I’ve included the entire 2010 Fall Gator Football schedule plus the 5 BCS National Title games.

iPhone/iPad Calendar Subscription

1) On your iPhone/iPad navigate to: Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Add Account -> Other -> Add Subscribed Calendar
2) For the server address, type the following (case sensitive): http://goo.gl/O35m
3) Click Next and leave all the other default settings as is.

Once it verifies the link, you’ll be able to view it like any other calendar loaded on your phone/iPad. If you type the short URL incorrectly, you’ll get a generic subscription entry with no additional calendar content.

Outlook

1) Download and save the basic.ics file to your local hard drive
2) Navigate to: File -> Import and Export -> Import an iCalendar or vCalendar file (.vcs)
3) Click Nextand then navigate and select the basic.ics file you downloaded in step 1

Because Outlook imports the calendar directly from a file, it won’t update the entries automatically when I make changes to the my master Google calendar.

This one came directly from a friend and fellow iPhone user I met in Columbus, Ohio last weekend. At the moment, AT&T doesn’t officially support tethering. They have a seperate 3G USB adapter product that costs an extra $60/month. However, with the latest 3.0 OS release, somebody over at BenM.at figured out a way to modify the default carrier profile to enable the feature (already built into the new OS).

It doesn’t require jailbreaking or a funky SIM/Service hack, it’s 100% reversable and on U.S. carriers, doesn’t seem to affect IMs. You can turn it on/off via a config interface under Settings -> General -> Network -> Internet Tethering.  It supports both USB and BlueTooth connections (after pairing with your laptop, look for a new network adapter).

Of course at some point, I’m sure AT&T will try to squash this hack. We already pay for “unlimited” data service via the iPhone interface so I assume that as long as people keep their tethering usage to a minimum, not much will happen until AT&T figures out how to trap and charge people for the service.

Not much new to report, just trying to get re-acclimated to the oppressive heat during the Georgia Summer while watching Maddie grow up.

• Madeline has pretty much given up crawling and is now walking almost full time!
• Apple just announced the new iPhone 3G S is set for release on June 17th – looking over the hardware changes … meh, I’ll keep my 3G and not worry about it. I don’t need a better camera, I don’t need more memory, I don’t need a compass and I really don’t care too much about voice control. It’ll be interesting to see what the performance differences are though.
• In conjunction with the new hardware platform, the 3.0 software set launches on the same day. This is what I’ve really been waiting on.
• Melissa’s birthday is coming up fast!
• I really like the Luminox 3000 Navy SEAL dive series but I like the Traser H3 P 6500 Type 6 even better. (Traser happens to license the P 6500 design directly to Luminox)

FYI: Leave it installed. Otherwise you’ll spend 20 minutes trying to figure out why your iPhone/iPod/iTouch won’t sync or kick into charge mode. A little more important than say, Bonjour.

Which btw, is a completely useless discovery protocol that CAN be safely deleted off your Window’s network as long as you don’t run anything related to Mac OS X or a handful of applications like Tivo desktop.

Every couple of weeks I browse through the iPhone App store hoping something catches my eye. 3rd party app development has really taken off – everybody with the SDK and a Macbook is hoping they’ll strike it rich with the next virtual fart machine, beer glass, etc. Sifting through all that useless crap can take some time but occasionally you stumble on a useful or productive application that enhances your iPhone.

This isn’t one of them. In fact, this app is the anti-christ of productivity. Simple to play, addictive and relatively cheap. Three components that make it easy to waste a couple hours staring at your iPhone screen.