There’s a saying that the market corrects itself when the hype gets overboard. It’s happened to dot.coms, bloated Big Media companies… and apparently it’s happening to Apple’s new-found status at the top of the cool phone lineup (if Mac fans are to be believed).

Gizmodo has a good post some time back on the real world performance of the iPhone versus the advertised one. See if this is all that the wonder gadget is all that it’s made out to be by all the hype-sters out there.

Barely acknowledging a problem with its over-hyped iPhone 3G gizmos, Apple has released a fix that would “improve communications with 3G networks”, according to the Associated Press.

According to the report, a spokeswoman for the company declined to say what improvements came with the update, known as version 2.0.2. But it is widely expected to fix some of the reception problems that users have had with the gizmo.

From Australia to Germany, users faced slow download speeds with the device compared to other 3.5G phones, and many operators and experts blamed this on the iPhone’s hardware, which could not log on to a 3G/3.5G network as well as other phones.

The patched up version will come as relief to telcos like SingTel, if they manage to load the new software the iPhones that they are preparing to sell (and hype up to high heaven) at a launch tomorrow night (actually midnight).

Expect the hype – again – as the iPhone 3G comes to town (weeks after parallel imports have made their way here).

Finally, after weeks of waiting for PC buffs, ATI’s 4870×2 graphics cards are starting to appear in Sim Lim Square stores.

Cybermind is selling a 2GB Powercolor version for S$799 – that’s the price of two 4870s ($399 each), which together boast only 1GB of RAM, of course.

The new card is not exactly cheap, but it seems about right now that Nvidia has dropped its prices for its slower GTX280s, the cheapest of which can be had at Sim Lim for S$649 to S$699. Expect more price drops in the coming weeks, as the competition heats up.

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It’s becoming a piece of bad news a week for Apple’s over-hyped wonder-gizmo, as reports from around the world now claim that the 3G iPhone has poor 3G reception that is “well below the standard”, which as a result, causes the battery life to be shortened.

The latest one today comes from a Swedish weekly, which said the fault is due to Apple’s hardware.

“The most likely cause of the 3G problems is defective adjustments between the antenna and an amplifier that captures very weak signals from the antenna. This could lead to poor 3G connectivity and slower data speeds.” (Source: Associated Press).

Another report from Information Week quoted an analyst saying that this could be down to an “immature” chipset from Infineon.

Wherever the problem lies, Apple appears to be keeping silent on the issue, despite consumer complaints from Australia to Europe.
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From today, Twitter will no longer deliver outbound SMS messages over their UK number. While you can still post updates using the default UK number via SMS, your followers will no longer receive your tweets on their cellphones.

According to an e-mail I’ve just received from Twitter, the cost of relaying your tweets to followers has grown too much to bear:

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren’t charged ten times–that’s because we’ve been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price.

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Yo! jogging fans who can’t pound the pave (or revolving treadmill belts) without music being piped into your cranium, what’s your favourite headphones?

The search for a pair that is lightweight, comfy, sounds superb and sticks to ears has been a frustrating one for me.

Just bought a pair of Nike Sport Flight (pix below) at Harvey Norman this week, and I’ve been let down again.

While this pair of behind-the-neck ‘phones sounds ok, stays on fairly securely and is lightweight, the inflexible earpiece hurt my ears so bad near the end of my hour-long run yesterday I had to ditch the music.

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Where people used to just passively absorb TV images beamed at them at home, today’s Net-savvy crowds share their thoughts instantly online through Twitter, that microblogging site that lets people post instant, quick comments on what’s going on in their lives.

According to iReport, Twitter traffic surged through the roof during the opening of the Olympics opening ceremony.
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Microsoft Singapore is giving a 43 per cent discount on Office 2007 Home and Student edition so you can now get it for $143. The software giant issued a press release on this hailing it as a special 43rd National Day discount for Singapore.

But I checked online and Microsoft’s website shows it is going for US$109. So is there really a special discount for Singapore’s birthday? Or is it just a National Day marketing gimmick to commemorate worldwide pric cuts on MS Office?

The News:

According to Reuters , the chief executive of  Warner Music – the world’s third-largest music company -said Guitar Hero and Rock Band music games need to pay more to license songs.

Edgar Bronfman apparently compared the state of the music licensing in music games to MTV’s launch 25 years ago and the iPod’s launch five years ago. 

“The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small”

Techgoondu’s take:

The music industry is in trouble. Sales of music CDs continue their decline year after year and the increase in digital music sales has not made up for the loss. As U2′s manager Paul McGuiness aptly put it when I was in Hong Kong two months back: “The music industry is in a crisis.”

When Red Octane started the first Guitar Hero, they could not get the music companies to license a single original or what they call master track. They were all cover versions. Of course all that is now changing, with bands like Aerosmith and Metallica desiring their own special expansion pack where their songs dont only appear in the game, the band members themselves also show up – at least their virtual avatars.

Now that Guitar Hero has become a billion dollar business, the music industries wants more money for their licenses? Greedy bastards. No wonder we have all been milked on paying $20-$30 for an album all these years when we only want to listen to 2-3 songs from the list. Hey music companies, please, it’s time to “wake up your idea.”

The time is about 10 plus in the night, and my StarHub connection suddenly went down… first MSN, then my FTP, then Web browsing.

Reset the router, then the modem and realised that I’ve got an IP address from StarHub but things can’t move. Called StarHub and they were swamped by calls – an automated message just tells me to e-mail them and hung up.

Then my friend Albert told me it’s StarHub’s DNS servers being down. So I changed the “auto” DNS settings to point to another ISP’s DNS and things started moving again. That’s how I am blogging about this now.

Since I first noticed the problem, StarHub’s DNS servers have been up and down past few minutes. Share your experiences here if you got the same problems.

Update: It’s about 12 midnight now, and things appear back to normal.