Month: September 2012

How to Get an iPhone 5 in Just 12 Hours

~ Doug ~ 1 Comment

Apple is currently quoting 3-5 weeks delivery on an iPhone 5 in the U.S. But I was able to order two and pick them up the next day. Here’s how.

  • Log into the Apple store website and almost complete the purchase process. Do everything except the final checkout.
  • About two minutes before 10pm local time, go to your shopping cart and change the delivery option from “ship” to “pickup at an Apple store”.
  • Enter your ZIP code when asked and scroll through the nearby stores. You probably won’t find any phones available.
  • Keep trying. At some point just before or around 10pm, you should see a phone or two show up as available at an Apple store near you. At this point they’re only getting a few of each model each day at each store. Don’t hesitate. You have only seconds to grab it. Click on a store you’re willing to drive to and complete the online ordering process.
  • Early the following morning you’ll receive email from the store, saying your new iPhone 5 is ready for pickup.
  • Go and get it.

This worked for me on Thursday night 9/27 for a 32GB black Verizon model, which I picked up in Palo Alto, CA. Last night I did it again for 16GB black Verizon model for my wife. Picked that one up this morning closer to home at the Corte Madera, CA store.

One word of warning: If you’re like me and are simultaneously switching form AT&T to Verizon, be prepared to spend 1-2 hours at the Apple store completing the provisioning process. Verizon is totally f*ed up on this. Two hours yesterday, even though I had answered all the questions, etc., online. Today I just had to switch my wife’s phone from AT&T and add it to the family Verizon plan. Still took an hour. If you’re not switching carriers, it should go much more smoothly.

 

BTW, the phone is great. I skipped a model and upgraded from an original iPhone 4. The camera is awesome. Same as the 4S. But the phone’s CPU is much faster than the 4. It’s just much more responsive. And I love LTE. No more 3G for me, let alone the dreaded Edge network. Luckily I have decent LTE coverage in my neighborhood.

The Conversations Network: Mission Accomplished

~ Doug ~ 53 Comments

(The following letter was sent to all members of The Conversations Network earlier today, Sunday, August 16, 2012.)

Hello, Members of The Conversations Network!

It’s been a long time since I’ve sent out a Newsletter, but we’ve been working behind the scenes on some important changes here at The Conversations Network. We’ve been discussing these plans for the past two months with our Board of Directors, Executive Producers and Senior Managers. Channel-by-channel and site-by-site, here’s what we’re going to do.

  • Social Innovations Conversations will continue at the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. All existing programs will be migrated to CSI’s website, which is where all new episodes will appear.
  • CHI Conversations will return to its original home on the BayCHI web site.
  • IT Conversations production of new programs will cease around December 1.
  • SpokenWord.org will be shut down around December 1.

The remaining assets of the Conversations Network (cash and intellectual property) will be acquired by the Internet Archive, another U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. All existing programs will be moved to the Internet Archive where the world will be able to continue to listen to them for free.

Trying to anticipate some of the questions you may have:

  • We hope to preserve all existing URLs by running a “redirection server” for many years if not permanently.
  • We will stop accepting new and renewal membership dues and donations within 48 hours.
  • All monthly subscriptions will be canceled via PayPal within the next 48 hours.
  • Dues and donations already received will be used to help preserve the content (audio files and webpages) we’ve published over the past 9+ years.

So why are we doing this? A bit of history will help explain.

Our flagship channel, IT Conversations, was the second podcast ever published and today is still the longest running of all podcasts. In The Conversations Network’s nearly ten years we’ve published more than 3,300 programs on our three primary channels.

When we started this project, no one else was publishing free audio from conferences or other events. We were the first to stream live tech-conference audio and the first to offer recordings of conference sessions as free podcasts.

We created the Levelator software to standardize audio levels. It’s now in common use by podcasters and broadcasters worldwide and has been downloaded more than 350,000 times.

SpokenWord.org, our a metadata/search site for all audio and video recordings of spoken-word content, has cataloged more than 1.5 million audio and video programs.

Most significantly, we pioneered the concept of a worldwide distributed team of part-time (essentially volunteer) writers, audio engineers and producers to publish broadcast-quality programs. Since 2003, 215 people in all corners of the planet have been members of TeamITC. They are the real force behind what you see and hear on The Conversations Network.

And we’ve done it all on a shoestring budget thanks to our contributing members, content providers, underwriters and Limelight Networks, our long-time content-delivery partner.

We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. Much of what we’ve pioneered in the past ten years is now commonplace. Our goal was to make it easy for others to produce audio recordings of events and make them available to the world for free. That’s now the norm. We have succeeded.

We’ve helped event producers and podcasters to create and publish programs themselves, and increasingly that’s what they’re doing. There simply isn’t as great a need for a service like The Conversations Network. So we’ve decided to complete our mission by helping our remaining partners continue their podcasts on their own websites.

If you have any questions about these changes, feel free to reply publicly or privately. The best place for your public comments is here on my personal blog.

Thanks again for listening and for your support of The Conversations Network.

…doug

Doug Kaye, Executive Director
The Conversations Network
A 501(c)(3) Non-Profit
doug@rds.com
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