Hijinks Inc.

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  • AT&T’s New Data Plans

    Death StarThis is more of a rant than an informative post…

    By now, I’m sure all of you have read about AT&T’s “fantastic” new data plans, offering such wonderful options as a DataPro plan with 2 friggin’ GBs of data a month! Holy crap!!

    Did anyone see my data usage for last month? I’d be screwed if they weren’t letting existing customers keep their unlimited plans, but now I can never cancel and re-up with the same plan at a later date, basically locking me into the very contract I was promised I’d avoid.

    The iPad is a fantastic platform to consume media with, I do so quite a bit while traveling and often in places that don’t have WiFi access or worse, charge for it. During the original announcement of the iPad 3G one of the primary selling points for me was the unlimited data plan, and before AT&T’s announcement of the their awesome new plans I was going to purchase a second iPad 3G for my wife to use, but frankly, 2GBs a month is in no way a ‘Pro’ data plan. I burn through that on my iPhone in a week, on my iPad in a few days. Really AT&T? You couldn’t at least top Verizon’s MiFi cap of 5GB? Now even though I admit I’m not a typical user, nor do I represent a typical users bandwidth consumption, I think we all can agree that these new plans are terrible. How can this be considered a competitive move in todays market, especially for drawing in new customers?

    I love how MacRumors pointed out that it was previously thought that Apple launched the iPad on AT&T based primarily on the $29.99 unlimited data plan.

    Apple had been expected by many observers to launch the iPad in a partnership with Verizon, but the Apple CEO Steve Jobs surprised many at the device’s January introduction by announcing that it would appear as an AT&T exclusive for 3G service in the U.S. Speculation centers around AT&T having outbid its competitors with its data plans for the iPad, offering unlimited data for $29.99 per month.

    There goes that theory…

    All in all, I’m concerned both as a shareholder and a consumer. This seems to be a major tactical misstep for both Apple and AT&T, am I just missing some massive piece of the puzzle?

  • Starcraft 2 For Dummies: The Big Five

    Starcraft 2Its been a little over 12 years since Blizzard introduced Starcraft to the world. Besides making them millions and subjugating a small country, Starcraft set the bar for near perfect balance in a strategy game. Over a decade later a Starcraft killer is finally here, and it’s in the final stages of beta. If you haven’t been playing Starcraft in that interim decade, or if you’ve never played at all, these posts are designed to put you back on a somewhat level playing field with the world of Starcraft junkies that HAVE been playing the whole time.

    Starcraft strategy is divided into two categories: macro and micro. Macro is concerned with your overall economy. This includes resource output, base building, unit building, and research. Micro is specific unit control. For example, focus firing key enemy units down, keeping your ranged units in the back and melee to the front, and using special abilities. For now, we’ll focus on macro. (more…)

  • Use Air Display Over a USB Cable

    From the department of the less than useful, i.e. my mind, comes a hack of debatable usefulness.

    Stepping back for a second, one might argue that this could come in handy for those who have crappy wireless networks or are working from a coffeeshop which has a completely rubbish network, as many do… But then you’d probably just switch to an ad-hoc network, nonetheless, I present for your general amusement, a way to run Avatron’s Air Display app [$9.99] over USB.

    Things you’ll need:

    (more…)

  • How To Easily Install Android on Your iPhone

    AndroidLess than a month ago, some crazy guy released instructions on how to install Android on your iPhone, now while I followed those instructions and got Android installed it was more than a little complicated, so I didn’t write it up. But now comes iPhodroid.

    iPhodroid will automatically copy the required files to your iPhone, and the best part? No more needing a Linux virtual machine to pull this off. This solution is only available for Mac users currently.

    First off, you’ll need:

    • An iPhone 2G or 3G running 3.1.2 (doesn’t support 3.1.3 yet)
    • Your iPhone should be jailbroken with Blackra1n, PwnageTool, or RedSn0w. Devices jailbroken with Spirit won’t work.
    • OpenSSH installed with default password (alpine)
    • Macfuse installed on your Mac
    • iPhodroid

    Step 1: Disable auto-lock on your iPhone. To do this, go to Settings-> General-> Auto-lock and set it to Never.

    Step 2: If you haven’t already done so, download Macfuse and iPhodroid.

    Step 3: Install Macfuse.

    Step 4: Extract iPhodroid to your applications folder.

    Step 5: Connect your iPhone to your Mac. Open iPhodroid and hit run. Expect the process to take a few minutes.

    There you have it! Just keep in mind that Android on an iPhone is still buggy and will drain your battery an in hour, but it’s pretty cool to play around with.

  • iPad 3G Data Usage for May

    My first 30 days with my iPad 3G have come to a close and AT&T has sent me a confirmation email letting me know I’ve been charged for the next 30 days, not a nasty letter saying I use too much data. Even if that may be true.

    I’ll let this little screenshot tell the story:

    Yes, that’s 16.2GBs of sweet bandwidth usage, not bad, right? Guess this means AT&T wasn’t lying about unlimited data… At least for now. Though I should note that I did cheat a bit and enabled the downloading of apps over 20MB from the App Store, which likely accounts for a few gigs of usage.

    Fellow iPad 3G owners (or iPhone owners) what’s your bandwidth usage look like for the month of May?