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Stephen Pickering

Category: Blogging

  • The iPhone Could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (9).

    Update 10/07/10 – It definitely could be just a bad USB port causing it. That same port that was causing this error for me is also crapping out every few seconds when I plug in a mouse. So that’s definitely what it was for me. I don’t know why or how USB ports can go “bad” or what to do about them, but I see that it can happen.

    Update 9/20/10: Well I just successfully updated to 4.1 without a hitch (But not without some fraying nerves, mind you!) so in this case it looks to be like solution 1 below, simply changing the USB port that the phones chord is connected to is the ticket. I learned this from Joseph Thornton @jtjdt on Twitter, so if you run into further problems you might try to contact him. Which begs the question: Why isn’t such a simple solution not mentioned on Apple’s website? And what’s the difference between one USB port and another that would cause this problem to begin with?

    If this situation happens to you try:

    1. Simply hook your USB chord to another USB port. Simple as it sounds this solution worked for me for the 4.02 update, and I assume it would have worked for the 4.01 update a month ago, but I didn’t know about it.
    2. If that doesn’t work, try the solution mentioned in this MacRumor’s forum post. This is what I did when I initially had problems with my 4.01 update, and it did work.
    3. Before you Update your iPhone always make sure that copies of your photos, notes, videos etc. have been transferred over to your desktop. Because by the time you get this error message, although you will be able to fix it with one of the solutions above, all data is wiped out on your phone. You’ll have to restore from the most recent sync.

    Days, after I got my iPhone 4 in July, Apple came out with an update 4.01. So, while the phones is tethered to iTunes on the Mac, I click the button to update. It goes through the process, everything’s looking fine. The little meters that show progress are humming along. The Apple Logo comes on the phones screen, then the white update meter on the phone is updating. Then when everything’s almost finished, it stops and in iTunes a pop up message says, “The iPhone “iPhone” could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (9).

    So then your phone gives you an image like so:

    Then it says that because of this error I needed to restore the phone from its last good backup. But trouble was, when I attempted this, the identical thing happened. It gets almost to the end and says the same thing, “Unknown Error (9).”

    So there I was, first day I’ve got my iPhone and the thing is bricked with seemingly no way out.

    Well, I googled and found a solution in a forum that worked for me. Ah, it was a MacRumors forum. Here’s the link to the solution that worked for me in unbricking and successfully installing 4.01 onto my new iPhone 4: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=969080

    Now the only bummer is that I lost all the photos and videos I’d taken on the new phone because I hadn’t transfered them over to the desktop. It was only a few, because I literally had only had the phone a day, but still, just enough to get under your skin. So definitely lesson 1 is to never update your iPhone before you’ve transferred all your media to your desktop.

    I think this also highlights a weakness Apple has around data. They’re just not good with data. They don’t treat your data with the kind of respect it needs to be treated. This is an advantage that Google/Android has.

    So fast forward to last week. New 4.02 update after the Apple announcement. Every time I plugged my phone into my computer I became wary. There was a pain in my stomach. Didn’t want to do the update. Felt like something bad would happen.

    Anyway, I felt like since I had downloaded the RecBoot to solve my first upgrade problem that that same program would keep me immune from another one. Still, I made sure that I copied all my phone’s photos and videos over to the desktop before I did.

    Sure enough the same problem and error message happened again. And sure enough I wasn’t even able to restore it. AGAIN!. GRRRRRRR!

    So I Google,  but I couldn’t find that same solution that I had found a month before.

    I had tweeted the solution, feeling like I was being a good ‘netizen’ to all the other souls with the same problem who may be searching for it in ‘real time’ on twitter.

    But here’s a good lesson when it comes to social media. I’d been better off blogging that information. Because with Twitter, I couldn’t find the tweet through a search. If I’d blogged it, inane as the post may have been for those who read blogs expecting original content, it would have been in my own repository of information that I could have easily retrieved (with the search function in WordPress and I assume that’s also in all the other blog platforms.)

    Twitter doesn’t treat your data with much care either. Although they are coming on strong with new features, and I’ve heard that searching your data base of tweets is one of those features coming. Still, you can never completely trust a third party with your data. You need your own copy of your data at your fingertips at all times. And the blog is the best solution for that. Also the blog has two more salutary effects: Writing about something helps you learn more about the topic, expand on it, and so become more educated in general. Writing, in fact, ironically, is more important to learning than it is for teaching, for broadcasting a message of sorts.

    Then of course, when you blog about a solution. Its searchable in Google to others looking for said solution and you also can create more links, images, meta information around it and also have a place where folks can comment and contribute to the conversation.

    So I’d say, score one for the blog. Of course you can tweet it too, but make sure blogging it is your first priority.

    After the post is done, then you can tweet the post itself. Remember Twitter, Social Media in general, are yesterdays newspapers, and your tweets are like ads in those papers.

    Oh, anyway, back to my 4.02 adventure. How did I resolve it. I had seen in my initial searches that some had solved this problem simply by changing USB ports. At first I thought that sounded too simple, but then after I had tweeted about my problem using the hash tag #iphone an Apple employee reached out to me and advised that solution.

    Turns out it worked. So I’d definitely try that first before downloading some software like BootRec. And I was pleasantly surprised that 4 or 5 knowledgeable people reached out to me on Twitter. I had almost gone into a phase, like Leo Laporte that Twitter had become a vast echo chamber and no one was listening, certainly not personally engaging.

    Also, I was pleasantly surprised that not only an Apple employee reached out to me, concerned about my problem, but that an Apple employee was even on Twitter itself, seeing how the company seems to feel about Social Media in general.

    Well my phone did get updated to 4.02, and I didn’t lose data because I took precautions, but the state of the phone was not the same. All kinds of apps weren’t on it that had previously been on it, etc. So it was still unnerving. Of course, I simply had to drag those apps over from iTunes onto the phone again. But still my folders structures that I had spent time setting up were gone. Stuff like that. Just a pain. And unnerving that your data can so easily, and quite often does, disappear, as well as “meta” data such as your folders, etc.

  • Great Resources for How to Use Twitter

    Update: 6/23/11 - How To Answer The Question “How Often Should I Tweet?”http://j.mp/kyTYGR http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/how-to-answer-the-question-how-often-should-i-tweet_b10529 I saw a tweet today by Chris Brogan called "50 Power Twitter Tips." I want to remember this post and go back and read it often. As a side note about blogging: A lot of times I think of my blog as a self serving tool, a second "brain" if you will, for storing stuff that I may need months later. I had this happen twice today. I was trying to network my Linux machine to my Mac to transfer some files. I had dug up the techno info months ago and made it a blog post. I can't keep that stuff in my brain all the time, especially when its something I use a few times a year, and its not a task that's in my everyday profession. So today, using WordPress's search function, I easily found the post and got my task done quickly and painlessly, because I had done the painful leg work of finding the info months before. Now, yes, I could just as easily store that same info on my Computer, no doubt. But the additional benefit of the blog platform is that it makes the information available simultaneously to anyone in the world who may have the same problem. The blog becomes a "scaling" solution as well as a self serving one, simultaneously. The great benefit of computers and the internet is not only in processing mundane work, but offloading mundane but necessary information onto your "second" brain, so as to free your organic brain to be more spontaneous. I'll keep adding to this list as I discover more great resources. Do you have any of your own you would like to recommend? Leave a comment. I'd love to read it.
    • 50 Power Twitter Tips - ChrisBrogan.com - I need to read this list every day, or at least every week. These tips are succinct (they are all short enough to be "tweeted" individually) , and they can be put into practice immediately. These tips will not only help you to get the most out of Twitter but also make it more fun and additionally increase your "influence" in the Twittersphere in a natural, authentic way. Chris Brogan is a special guy. He's a bonafied internet, blogging, twitter "celebrity" but he has no hubris. He really likes people. He really likes to help them. He's genuine, down to Earth. He's not trying to impress or be part of some "elite" class of individual, although as a by product of his activities he has become part of that group, maybe even at the top of it, through acting in a way that's the exact opposite of most of the Twitter "illuminati." A genuine "Trust Agent" as his book goes. And one of the most enjoyable speakers you'll ever watch.
    Update: 09/17/10: Just saw this blog post by Brian Solice: "The Science of Retweets on Twitter" It's a very interesting post about how to construct tweets to give them the most chance of being re-tweeted. Interesting read. I just tried it myself on a tweet I just did: I wrote a blog post and tweeted: "Please Retweet: New Blog Post: The Best Way You Can Use Twitter http://bit.ly/d9bgUi Stephen Pickering"  (link to tweet) I asked for the Retweet. I used the words Blog, Post, and You in there. I used a bit.ly shortened link also. But judging from the post, I should have waited until about 4pm EST to tweet it, instead of 6:30am. But according to the report Friday is the best day, so I did get that right. We'll see if I get any retweets. Update 9/18/10 Ran across this today. It's a similar topic as Brian's but more quixotically taken on by Tim Ferris: Blogging by Numbers: How to Create Headlines That Get Retweeted It's mostly about how to write headlines, headlines for blog posts, but then as those headlines also become Tweets, it fits nicely into this study.

  • Paul Thurrott Praising and Commenting on “Crush It!” by Gary Vaynerchuck

    Paul Thurrott on Crush It! and Gary Vanyerchuck

    Link to listen on iPhone


    I love Gary Vaynerchuck, his personality, his passion, what he’s done, and what he’s doing. So at the end of last week’s Window’s Weekly podcast #139 with Paul Thurott and Leo Laporte, I was excited to hear that his Audible recommendation was Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, the first book by Gary, which explains his how he turned his New Jersey wine store into a 70 million dollar business using Social Media, and how everyone can turn their passion into, if not a career, at least a living. This is because of the huge paradigm shift that’s happening right now in the communications revolution. Billions of dollars of advertising money is rapidly exiting “old media” and flowing into the new media world of the web. Advertising is becoming social and niche, and the advertisers are more and more diverting their budgets from the dying old media model of unengagement, the new media model of social, internet, and engaged, with the overriding theme of “real.” They are doing this because it is where the future is headed, or maybe I should say where the present is right now. They are getting more bang from their buck from interested, highly engaged, and authentic audiences, who themselves are becoming not just the consumers, but also the creators of the content that is informing the world.

    Some highlights:

    • “If you have any thoughts about getting ahead in life, I think you need to listen to this podcast, even if you can’t stand wine, because this guy is absolutely fascinating” – Paul Thurott
    • “If I could boil it down to the simplest thing, what this book is all about, its that you need to really care about it” (i.e., the work you are doing) – P.T.
    • “Anyone can start a blog. Anyone can start a website. Anyone can start a podcast. The trick is to keep doing it.” – P.T.
    • “And the reason I keep doing what it is I’m doing, is because I love technology, and I love this work” – P.T.
    • “I stick with things…er I should say I stick with the things I really care about. And you have to have a passion for it. You have to really care.” – P.T.
    • “This is an incredible book by an incredible guy, and someone I don’t know, but respect so much.” – P.T.
    • “He’s the real deal, and the essential point of this is right. The prescription in this book is absolutely right on.” – Leo Laporte
    • “And you hit the nail on the head. There are times when this is going to be tough, whatever it is you choose to do is going to be tough, its going to be slow going. You may not get the rewards you want, but if you do something that you are passionate about, it will carry you through those times and you will succeed.” – Leo Laporte
    • “You could jump start your life with this one. It could be that book that you go “Wow, I wouldn’t be here today, if I hadn’t read this book” – Leo Laporte


  • 4 Keys To Adsense Success

    1. Traffic (Content)
    2. Relevancy of the Ads (SEO, Keywords, Good Copywriting?)
    3. Ad Placement (A fine art of being “clean but seen.” Too much in the way drives readers away. Not enough exposure, and they won’t get noticed. What’s the ideal answer here?)
    4. Design. Clean and professional. (Either you know good design and how to code it, or you must hire someone or learn it.)

    And I can’t seem to get a damn one of them right. Well, that’s not true totally. I’m an artist and a good writer. I think I can produce good content. The other stuff is fun to a point, but then it begins to get on my nerves, and I start pulling my hair out.

    I think I need to get something I can live with, then study each day a little of the other things to make them incrementally better, and then of course spend most of my time doing what I love, which is to produce content. I may need to consider hiring a designer. Well, I do need to consider it. It’s just a question of whether I’ll pull the trigger.

    What do you think about all this stuff? How do you approach it?

  • How to Put Space Before the First Paragraph in WordPress
        I searched and searched for this, how to put space before a beginning of a paragraph in WordPress, or in other words to skip a line or more before the first paragraph, and I couldn't find anything that worked. It was so nerve wracking that something so simple could be complicated. I was wanting it because I was experimenting with Ads above the content like it says on Google's Heat Map. But whenever I placed those ads the text would wrap, and in this case it was really weird because the text would snake up between the two ads. But the normal tag for a new paragraph or for a line break don't work in this case. Those only work after some text has been initially written, to cause space. Put those in before any text has been written, and WordPress simply wipes them out. Isn't that crazy? Why should something so basic and simple be this crazy? Well anyway the only thing I found that worked was this code:
     
    And then remember this. Save it without looking at the visual editor. I've found that if you look at the visual editor before you save it, it'll wipe it out. This will get you one line of space before any text begins. Depending on what your doing, in my case putting two large image ads at top, you may have to use a lot of them. Here is a link to the forum where I found this solution. There's a lot of other solutions in there including using that above code above once, and then using the <p> tag as often as you want, but that didn't do anything for me. Some people said different things worked for them, so you might check it out. Well, then, and that comes to the ads themselves. I found another charming site that taught me how to put them up there and having them look nice and tight and side by side, and then automatically creating that space for me. I'll write about that in another post, or when I'm less tired.

  • A Blogger’s Blue Print – Chapter 1

    Comment!

    Search for and visit sites and forums with topics that you are interested in. Read the posts, and make thoughtful, sincere comments. Of course put your name and site address in the comment form. This "puts you out there," gets you exposure and drives traffic to your site. The better the comment, the more traffic. It's a win win. You're adding valuable content to another's site, learning more information about your topic and in return getting a link back(more link juice) and at least some more direct traffic. Join Disqus. Giving your comments a social edge. This will make your commenting more effective, socialized, and it will archive them, putting you out there even more. Read all of the other comments. Any interesting ones? Visit their website and check them out. You may find an additional source of information and inspiration. Good Karma to have them perhaps visit you. *An added benefit: If your comment is bringing up an additional angle and happens to be a particularly long comment, you have the makings of an automatic new blog post to boot. The more blog posts you have equals incrementally more Page Rank which inevitably leads to more traffic.

    Blog Posting

    What are you really, really interested in, especially at this moment? Don't worry about SEO, or will it make money. That's editorial stuff that you can come back to later, but first you've got to get the lyrical part of your soul out first before you bring the editorial part in (copywriting, SEO, monetization strategies, etc.) You put those latter things first and it might work, but you won't be happy, and it won't be worth it. Let's start with small baby steps first. What is the one thing you would like to do right now for the next hour, next two hours, whole morning or afternoon? Sure there's things you need to do, and you make a list or read a book about getting organized and you do them, but in a relaxed way. The things you need to do, however small or insignificant they seem, can make terrific blog posts. You can turn problems into opportunities. For instance, let's say you have a problem. (The more specific the better) You've searched and searched Google and found no easy or direct solution, but since it must be done, you do manage to find a way to figure it out, and you can explain it more clearly and simply than others. Bingo! You've just found an opportunity to help others, and you are also solving your own problem in a more creative, productive way. People will relate to you more than the experts who know what to do, but speak a lingo no one understands, or for whatever reason want to toy and withhold the information. And that builds trust as well. "Make a virtue out of necessity," as Shakespeare said. So yes, the things you need to do, you must do, and the more of a challenge they are, the more of an opportunity they can be to find a better way and for you to express that better way to the world. But back to what you want to do. After the needs have been met, surely you can find a couple hours a day for yourself? Like golf? Shoot some video of yourself during your next round. Who knows, you might just hit a hole in one! Thank that shot caught on video might not make the rounds on Youtube? New media shouldn't be a distraction. It should be a new way of expressing yourself, and it can be a psychological tool really. Think about it. Got a guilt complex about doing the things you want to do? New media gives you a channel, a focus, to make doing what you like, important. It's a long tail that will make that little complex crumble. and that's a great mixture. Relax. Take some breaths. What one little thing, and I don't care what it is (shopping? ladies there are a lot of men out there starving for an education on how to shop well!) lowers your blood pressure for a few hours, relaxes you (cooking, reading, working out, meditating, hunting or fishing?) These topics have audiences out there just begging for a fresh voice that will educate, entertain, and inspire them. And doing the things you love to do will inspire you too. The Google bots are being tuned for fresher, newer, different takes on the every day things we do in life. Really, Google and the other services of their ilke are working on the Search & Engine part of the equation. The Optimization comes out of your natural exuberance. All that silicon is just begging for a real, natural, spontaneous experience, and the deepest part of you is too. It gives us all a chance to inspire and be inspired, to fulfill and be fulfilled. So the best step is to step away from that computer (unless its computers your really interested in) and do what really inspires you. Theirs an audience for that, but find the thing that you most want to do even if there wasn't.