• Added Mizrach Compass (iPhone 3GS Only)
• Added Luach Calendar Subscriptions & Alerts
• Revised Luach Event Management
• Revised Map Feature using Native Apple Maps
• Setting to Turn Off Nekudot in Siddur (for speed)
• Setting for Turning Off Sleep Mode in Siddur
• Force Portrait Layout for Luach & Mizrach Compass
• Cleaned up Benching in Ashkenaz and Sefard
• Shows Tachnun After Shavous by Default
• Bug Fix for Rosh Chodesh
• Bug Fix for Nusach Ari text in Benching and Al Hamichya

Also, here is a video demo of the 4.0 iPhone Siddur.

This game is more than just a game. I play against clients and colleagues for bragging rights.

Here is a picture:

Why did I get it? Well, because I help out here and there at the Google News Forum as part of my Search Engine Roundtable research and discovery morning routine.

Hope to hang it up in our conference room soon.

Thanks Byte Level Research!

My very popular iPhone Popcorn Trick:

A relevant ad in my last weekly search video:

I guess I can potentially now make money from my videos? :-)

The main difference that you will notice is the speed of the map loading and the responsiveness of the zoom and panning through the maps.

Here are the new maps:

Zooming In:

What did the old version look like?

I then hooked up my AdSense account to it and then agreed to the terms of service, which was actually a hoot - the way they took you through the rules and made sure you read the copyright rules over and over again.

In any event, I am now fully set up and I can now "enable revenue sharing" on my videos. The cool part is that you can pick and choose the videos you want to enable the revenue sharing on. Here is how to do it.

(1) Go to my videos

(2) Click on the "Enable Revenue Sharing" button under the video(s) you want to enable it on:

(3) Fill in a description about the video and read those terms again. Do note, if YouTube reviews the video and it has legal issues (copyright, etc), they will completely remove it:

Then you are done. YouTube may eventually add ads to it or they might remove your video.

How do you know if the video is enabled with revenue share? Two ways:

(1) You no longer see the "enable revenue sharing" button on the my videos page.

or

(2) You see a "Tube" Partner logo on the video view page:

Example, see my iPhone Popcorn Trick video page, and look for that tube logo.

When my sites and servers went down, I first went to Rackspace to login to my account. But I couldn't access the site. So I then tried calling, but I was getting a busy signal, due to the volume of people calling. I then tried Twitter and found @rackspace there. There were no updates yet, but I followed @rackspace and waited.

I then saw the first tweet that read "We are having an issue that is affecting part of our DFW data center. No details yet. Will update as we get more information." More followed. Twitter Search was swarming with mentions of [rackspace], so it was good to know I was in good company. I noticed people began to say there sites were coming back up, which meant mine was coming up soon also. I assume they began flipping on the power to the servers slowly until all came on.

The most incredible part was that @Rackspace doubled their twitter followers. Before the outage, they had about 1,300 followers and now they have over 2,300. Like I tweeted yesterday, "Expensive way to get @rackspace more followers ;-)." That tweet was when Rackspace had about 1,300 followers.

In any event, I always find it interesting how my customers react to outages. We haven't had an outage in a really long time. But when this happened, some emailed, some IMed, some called. Some of the ones that called were not happy. I wasn't happy either, but I told them what I knew and sometimes that is not good enough, sometimes it is.

The outage, I believe, lasted about 40 minutes or so. Was it the end of the world? No, but it wasn't something that should be accepted. Will I switch from RackSpace? Probably not. They have been the most stable and most responsive company in this space I have ever dealt with and trust me, I have been with many and I spend a fortune on this stuff.

By "really local" I mean, within the same office building as RustyBrick. In fact, my general doctor and my dentist (who I really need to see) are both in my office building. My dentist is on the same floor, just down the hall. My doctor is a floor up.

Why do I like really local doctors? Because they are better! No, I am kidding. In fact, I think one of them is actually not that great of a doctor.

I like them because I don't have to sit and wait in a waiting room. Some of my old doctors, I had to sit for hours before seeing them. I don't like the, sit and wait game.

These doctors (dentist) call me when they are ready. They say, the doctor is ready in a few minutes and that I should walk into their office. I then walk into the doctors office, bypass all the people waiting and go into the room to where I will be treated.

I always feel some guilt when I walk pass the people who have been waiting, but I go really local for that reason.

I don't use Facebook like a good Facebook citizen, I use it like a spammer. So I warn you.

I don't post useful pictures there. I don't talk to friends on there. I'll ignore your Facebook messages. I won't reply to Facebook IMs. I am the evil Facebook user.

I only go on to /reqs to accept friend requests. I pretty much accept everyone, so no one gets insulted.

Here is a screen capture of me breaking the 1GB barrier:

Here is a picture of the "About Uploading" section that tells me the limit is now up to 20GB!

Do you see the same thing?

Oh, since you are here, why not follow me on Twitter @rustybrick. ;-)

Update: So I checked a different YouTube account and this shows only 2GB. Still up from the 1GB file size, but not the 20GB limit my main account has:

After some trouble shooting with the GoToMeeting support team, they said they know of a work around. So to save you all time, here is what you need to do.

(1) Open Keynote
(2) Go to the "Preferences" section
(3) Click on "Slideshow" tab
(4) Check off "Allow Exposé, Dashboard and others to use screen"

Then GoToMeeting should show your presentation in presentation mode. Do keep in mind that the GoToMeeting presentation tool where people can ask questions, does not display to the presenter in presentation mode.

Hopefully this will help others with the same question.

The funny part of getting this ticket was that after the cop took my license, insurance and registration and went back into his car to issue me a speeding ticket, I decided to tweet it. I wrote:

Err. Cop pulled me over. http://twitpic.com/8bdyt

Then I began getting responses of support and encouragement. Some people thought I may have been in trouble. Was it a drug bust? Did I rob a bank? Did I leave comment spam on Matt's blog? No, no, no! I just got a speeding ticket.

The officer was actually nice. He told me to plead not guilty, see him in court and work out a deal. I said thank you and he said, have a good night.

How many people have tweeted that they got a ticket and snapped a picture of the cop as they write the ticket? Not many.

Basically, Mizrach means east and that is the direction most Jews pray, depending on your current location. In America, you point eastward because that is the direction of Jerusalem or the Kodesh Hakodashim. When you are in Israel, you might not pray eastward, depending on your current location. So this compass plots the longitude and latitude of the Kodesh Hakodashim (the most widely accepted opinion) and then based on your current long/lat and direction (based on the digital compass in the 3GS), we point you in that direction.

Here is a preview of how it works on my iPhone 3GS. We hope to release it shortly.

We built an application that loads a page of Hebrew text in mobile Safari. I put two iPhone 3G devices next to each other, one running 2.x and the other running 3.x and you can see how much slower the 3.x is running. In fact, it is a full 7 seconds slower.

Just how crazy is that? I submitted this bug to Apple time and time again. The bug ID is 6869094 and you can also submit it at this page.