It is a free utility that uses data compression technology to reduce the amount of data your iPhone sends and receives when it is not on wifi. When Onavo’s saving is on, most of the apps running on your iPhone send their data compressed via Onavo’s gateway and your data usage gets significantly reduced so the chances you will exceed your plan are slim.

The app has a nice reporting module that shows total savings and breakdown by service/app. As you can see in the screenshot below, in my case – during the first week of Oct I saved 56% of all the data that was sent. This is huge.

One feature I would like to see added to the app is the ability to exclude certain apps from sending their data via Onavo’s gateway. The reason is that certain streaming apps like online radio often get stuck in a connecting mode and never play the stream when Onavo is on, and only way to make them work is disable Onavo completely.

Other than that, Onavo is a great – a must have utility for your iPhone. You can get it from http://www.onavo.com

Well, fixing it is easy – all you have to do is Reset Network Settings (under General…Reset…) and the good old Personal Hotspot option will appear again.

]]> http://www.meydad.com/2011/10/05/how-to-fix-the-missing-personal-hotspot-option-bug-after-the-ios-5-gm-upgrade/feed/ 10 http://www.meydad.com/2011/07/25/os-x-lion-the-3-features-that-worth-your-30/ http://www.meydad.com/2011/07/25/os-x-lion-the-3-features-that-worth-your-30/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:43:05 +0000 JayMeydad http://www.meydad.com/2011/07/25/os-x-lion-the-3-features-that-worth-your-30/ 1. Preview now lets you add a signature to any PDF

 
2. Resize any window from anywhere

Posted via email from Jay Meydad’s Posterous

The upgrade process is managed by iTunes and has three steps:
1. Backup existing data files
2. Download the ~350MB OS file
3. Copy & install files to the iPhone

For some unknown reason, the backup process takes a long longer than a typical backups that happen whenever you sync your phone. It could even take 2-3 hours (!) if you have lots of data on your device.

While I was doing it, the progress bar moved very very slow and gives the feeling that the process is hung. In addition, whenever you get a phone call the process terminates and you have to restart it.

After spending about 3-4 hours on 2-3 failed tries I tried a work-around that worked well and cut up the backup process time by 90%. If you are one of the many
who are experiencing the same issue, you might want to give it a try:

Before backup & upgrade, sync your iPhone one more time with minimal amount of data one it. This means that you have to delete all music, video, photos and apps that are on it (but leave mail, calendar, notes and other important settings). The steps for doing that are:

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer but DO NOT start the upgrade process
2. Select the Apps, Music, Videos, Photos tabs and uncheck the main Sync checkbox
3. Then sync your one more time iPhone. This will free up most of the disk space on your iPhone. Once this sync is completed you should see it in the Capacity bar that is displayed on the Summary tab
4. Finally, start the Upgrade process by clicking on “Check for Update” button in iTunes’s iPhone’s Summary tab
5. Backup should take about 5 minutes and the entire upgrade process should be over within 20 minutes.

Welcome to iOS4. Enjoy.

So, here is the list, created in the easiest way I know, a screenshot: My Mac Apps

BTW, I did that using  my favorite, the must have app, Jing.

Original post starts here:
According to Google Analytics this old post of mine is one of the most popular on this blog. It is time to refresh the list, add new Israeli radio stations streams and fix the broken ones.

The updated list below uses a stream url structure from fm1.co.il. Simply launch FStream on your iPhone / iPod Touch and configure it to use the following streams. Enjoy.

Galaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glz.asx

GalGalaz -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/glgltz.asx

88fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/88fm.asx

Kol Hamusica (classical music) -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-hamusica.asx

Reshet Aleph -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-aleph.asx

Reshet Bet -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-bet.asx

Reshet Gimel -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/reshet-gimel.asx

Regional stations

Kol Hacampus (one of my favorites, run by students, plays plenty of alternative music) – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/campus.asx
Radius 100fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/100fm.asx

Radio Tel Aviv 102fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/102fm.asx

Radio Lelo Hafsaka 103fm -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/103fm.asx

Radio Lev Hamedina -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/91fm.asx

Radio Emza Haderech -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/90fm.asx

Radio Kol Rega -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/96fm.asx

Radio Jerusalem -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/101fm.asx

Radio Haifa  -  http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/radio-haifa.asx

Kol Ramat Hasharon – http://www.fm1.co.il/playnow/kol-ramat-hasharon.asx

Here is how you could save a few hundred dollars per year on your home phone bill. It is called MagicJack, a VOIP service that requires a computer (PC or Mac) and an internet connection to provide extremely cheap local and long distance phone calls using a very small device that looks like a disk on key.

To get started you need to sign up for the free trail on the company’s website (or you could buy it at RadioShack). Once you have the device, simply plug it into the PC/Mac USB port and connect a regular phone to the jack on the other side (as in the photo below). Once plugged, your computer will automatically start running the dialer software and take you through a simple sign-up process, where you will be asked to select a phone number (currently they don’t support number portability). That’s it.

The service costs only $20 per year (no taxes, tolls and other hidden fees). The device itself costs $20 so your first payment (after the 30 days free trial is over) will actually be $40, but any subsequent year will be $20. And if you really want a great deal and lock the price for the next few years, you can prepay $60 for 5 years. That’s a pretty sweet alternative to AT&T’s $45/month + tolls and taxes, or Vonage’s $25/month.

Couple of side benefits some people might not be aware of:

1. MagicJack makes your home home phone portable while you are traveling  (assuming you travel with a laptop).
2. MagicJack gives you other features for free including call forwarding, voice mail and voicemail to email as attachment notifications
3. If you have relatives/friends who live abroad (like I do) and you & them spend a decent amount of money every month on international calls, you might want to buy a MagicJack for them. This way they will have a US number and all calls done between them and you will be completely free.

I have been using it for a few weeks now and very happy with the overall experience. The call quality is excellent. Rarely I had any echos problem and disconnects. And when those happen, I simply unplug the device from the USB port, reconnect and restart the dialer program. This “hassle” is worth $550/year in savings.

You might ask yourself how come I kept doing this. Very simple, I just could not find the right setting under the Preferences pane that would change the behavior. There is also no setting related to the positioning of the signature under the “Signatures”window to address this.

I finally found the time and did some online research and was able find the answer. I figured others could benefit from this tip as well. So, here it is. To get Entourage automatically add the signature at the top of the reply/forward, make sure you have the setting as in the screenshot below.

Alternatively, you could upgrade to Outlook which is a much better email client for Mac and is part of the new Office 2011, or use a webmail like Gmail.

So, if it took me that long to recognize a juice that I have been buying for a few years, something was not done right. Let’s take a closer look.

The old cartons used to have a large Tropicana logo, in a thick and bold “tropical island” font. The logo was horizontally displayed above a strong visual element – a picture of a large, juicy, fresh orange with a straw stuck right into it. White was a dominant background color which helped bringing the logo and the image to the front. The combination was very powerful. Cartons were easy to recognize on the shelves from 20 ft away. The entire design screamed freshness and it felt like you are buying a product that was made from oranges that were picked moments ago.

In the new design, the Tropicana logo uses a much smaller and narrower font. It is also displayed vertically which makes it really difficult to read. The slogan “100% Orange” is what is displayed horizontally and feels as the brand name. In addition, the main visual element was changed to a photo of a partial glass (visual illusion?), full with orange juice. There is also very little white area, so less contrast and more blur of visual elements. And when you actually look at the juice, it looks as someone spent hours in Photoshop trying to remove any sign of pulp and freshness. Overall, the box looks synthetic and of a no-brand orange juice made out of concentrate.

And there is more. The pulp levels labels in the new design are so small and hard to read compared to the old design.

The last funny thing is the website portion. When you visit the Tropicana website, the new box is displayed only on the home page, while the “Juice Finder” page shows boxes in the goold old design (see image below in gallery). Even the PepsiCo site still shows boxes in their old design!

I find it hard to believe that a company as big as PepsiCo, which spends millions of dollars on branding and marketing, would  execute so poorly. How can you throw away years of brand & identity recognition among millions of customers and replace it with such a lame design? And how can you release a product and start a multi-million dollars marketing campaign without updating your website?

It looks like the folks on the branding team need to read some branding books & guideline.

Update (Feb 23, 2009): The new design is gone. The good old design is back. More here.

Tropicana Juice - Old vs New Design

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