Square, the company responsible for putting credit card processing into the hands of the masses, gleefully announced the release of their Square reader at big-box retailers across the country, including: Apple, RadioShack, Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart.  With a retail price of around $10, this is sure to be a boon for Square and consumers.  The good news is that you can still get a free Square reader by visiting their website at http://www.squareup.com/.

As someone that has infrequently used their service, it’s easy to see that their business potential could be taking off and when you compare this to some of the other solutions on the market – PayPal for instance – it’s easy to see why people might want to switch.  Don’t get me wrong, I love PayPal, but their swipe service is virtually non-existent and for someone that wants to, from time to time, accept real credit cards with very quick turnaround, the service is excellent.  Definitely worth a look.  Works on all Apple devices and with most Android phones.

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When the original iPhone was release, it took Apple 74 days to sell a million copies of the then AT&T only device. 74 days. A scant few years later and Apple’s wildly popular phone manages to sell 3 million units in three weeks, creating a worldwide stampede in the process. With it’s recent release of the iPhone 4s, now in two colors (black and white) on three different carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint), it took apple a single weekend to sell more than 4 million iPhone 4s phones. One weekend; 4 million phones.

Adobe Reader is, by far, the global standard for viewing and sharing PDF documents across platforms and devices. Creation is easy and with the wide range of products and depth of quality, Adobe Reader has become commonplace on nearly every device out there, except the iPhone, until now. That’s right – GoodReader was good enough, but the standard is here now and the free price tag is perfect. Get Adobe Reader from the App Store (link)

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Initial delays when activating the new iPhone seem to be extensive. Of the 10 or so people I’ve talked to so far this morning, none have been able to activate. All are with AT&T. What are you seeing as you try to activate? is this another case of Apple selling too many phones at too quick a pace? It’s day one, I am sure that they will get this straightened out pretty quickly.

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Apple iPhone 4s releases to great fanfare and typical Apple success . What has your experience been like?

Bloomberg is reporting today that all three US based wireless carriers have sold out on their initial allotment of iPhone 4s phones. Apple, Verizon and newcomer, Sprint are all showing that launch-day availability of smartphones is no longer available. Most of the sites that were visited are showing up to three weeks for delivery and even Apple is quoting 1-2 weeks before people get their phone.

On an up note, if you’re willing to start sitting outside your local Apple retail store it’s likely that they will have a bit of inventory on hand for those of you not wanting to pre-order their phone.

geek

iOS 5 was released a few weeks ago as one of the most stable beta releases that I have seen in recent years and the improvements over previous software were significant. The notifications functionality is outstanding and well worth the price of admission – which n the iPhone 4 was what appeared to be a slight lag from time to time. This afternoon, Apple released iOS 5 beta 2 (9A5248d) to developers, and an updated version of iTunes 10.5 beta 2.

While I’m sure Apple is doing the best they can to make this an easy upgrade process for developers, it’s frustrating, to say the least that after installing the new release of iTunes you will be unable to sync your beta 1 iOS 5 device until you have upgraded it to iOS beta 2. As those are ~750+MB downloads, it’s a bit frustrating. To resume syncing, connect you idevice and follow the upgrade process as you did when originally installing iOS 5; it will work successfully.

Some other highlights culled from notes and the internet:

• iTunes 10.5b2 can’t sync iOS 5 Beta 1 devices
• iOS5 Beta 1 devices can’t iMessage iOS5 Beta 2 devices and vice-versa
• WiFI Sync works with OSX Computers only (has to be enabled in iTunes 10.5 beta 2) – Sorry Windows users
• Over-the-Air (OTA) updates have been released – none current available
• General speed improvements (thank goodness) and bug fixes

That’s it for now – I will add more as I get it.

~geek

Like most Mac users, I have always been using the dock as a simple launching pad to get to programs, recent downloads, and other miscellaneous tools. Today, new doors were opened for me, thanks to a Macworld.com article on how to improve your dock. (link)

The tip tat they offer is to provide a special stack to your dock that includes recently use items of your choice, including: Applications, Documents, Servers, Volumes and Items. You have to switch through each type (by right-clicking and choosing the option), but the ease of use and benefit of having these front and center is huge.

Earlier this morning Verizon finally acknowledged a problem with it’s 4G LTE network. Through their official Verizon Wireless Twitter account (@VerizonWireless), Verizon Wireless has reported that “We’re aware of an issue with #4G #LTE connections & our network engineers are working to resolve quickly. Will update here.” As a Verizon Thunderbolt customer, this is a wee-bit frustrating, with the most interesting read coming a few hours later: “Investigating 4G LTE network issue; ThunderBolts making voice calls, may get slower 1xRTT data. Will update here.”

Cisco has announced today that they are killing off the mildly successful, consumer-oriented Flip video camera line and eliminating 550 related jobs. Once the darling of the blogosphere and often given responsibility for jump-starting the handheld video market, Flip’s camera hasn’t kept pace with advancing video-equipped smartphones like Apple’s iPhone.