Of course, once I got home I immediately upgraded my iPhone 3G to the latest 3.0 firmware. After the interminable download, sync and install process, I got my first glimpse at the new front page. Almost immediately, I noticed that I not only had a battery icon, but also the percentage of battery power remaining!

My first thought was that it was a new feature of the OS. I was pleased, but not completely surprised, because I had a bit of a secret. You see, once upon a time I used a jailbreak on my phone. It was a heady time for me, running two apps simultaneously, recording video with Qik, and most importantly using a hack that turns the battery icon to a percentage view. And, once I decided to un-jailbreak, all my various interface hacks and other things vanished, except for that surreptitious little battery percentage toggle.

Through a couple of iPhone OS updates the battery hack stayed with me, apparently hidden away in some configuration setting or firmware file. And apparently, that setting triggered a feature that is only meant for the iPhone 3Gs when the firmware installed. Excellent!

What’s weird is that this is distinctly different from how it appeared on older firmware revisions. Gone is the ability to tap on the battery to toggle it to a percent.. now both appear, all the time. And of course, since I don’t have a 3Gs, there is no setting in the Usage menu for me to turn it off. Good thing I like it.

Now how do I tell my iPhone to play music through my bluetooth headset? sigh.

More discussions on this:

Phone 3.0 comes with battery percentage meter – The iPhone User Guide
How to get battery percentage in 3.0- [Archive] – Mac Forums
iphone 3g battery percentage.. am i lucky-
Battery % Hack – Mac Forums

Apparently, I (along with anyone who is anyone) should already have known about a gem of a beta product called TinEye by Idée. Apparently, it’s been out for a few months. Apparently, it is freaking awesome.

Apparently, people assume too much and don’t promote enough.

You know what they say: If you assume, you make an a out of Su and me. And believe me, Su doesn’t like being an A. So don’t do it.

If you think a product is great, promote it! Tell people. Write up an article. Whatever. But don’t say, “Gee, yeah, I really loved that last week when I used it for 5 minutes and now you’ve missed the bus.” Because that is what you are saying. To me. And to Su.

Su doesn’t even have a car. Now he has to walk.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love last.fm. It’s a great service. I don’t think any other product comes close to providing the same functionality of building a music profile and then matching it against other users. No, that part I have absolutely no problem with.

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Just joined FriendFeed? Want to know some dirty secrets you can exploit to gain you popularity, followers and perhaps a bit of fame (or at least infamy)? If so, I have some tips for you! Keep reading and I’ll make you a master of the craft in no time.

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A rare weekend post today, on a topic that most people probably will not find interesting and some people will find extremely awesome. I am speaking, of course, of the dozens of plugins, mods, and other bells & whistles that I have added to this blog over time.

Feel free to skip right over this post unless you love this sort of stuff.

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Man, I really need to step up my commenting game. I’m not saying I need to game the system or whatever.. you know what I’m talking about.

Just look at it. It’s not good.

Even if you don’t know what clout is you can guess that three is pretty low. We aren’t playing golf here, the point isn’t to get as low as possible.

What is Disqus clout?

Glad you asked. Without going too deep into what the Disqus comment system is and how it is similar or different to other comment systems (including the one built-in to WordPress), the high-level overview is that Disqus manages my comments on this blog, as well as comments on thousands of other blogs. Because these comments are managed centrally, on Disqus’ site, this means that people using the system to write a comment only need one login everywhere that Disqus is used.

Aside from the convenience of a single login, this also means that each user gets assigned a clout value. By default the clout value is 1. When you comment on a blog, and someone likes your comment, they have the option of voting your comment up using a small arrow next to the comment. Each vote adds one to your clout. Conversely, they can vote you down as well, taking away a point.

As you can see the official FAQ documentation is deliberately vague. I believe that clout can’t drop below 1 (at least, I’ve never seen negative clout), and right now, having a lot of clout points doesn’t really net you anything awesome except a certain kind of Disqus-specific prestige. So far.

So Lets Talk About My Clout

Yeah, so the point is, my clout is in bad shape. I’m not sure if this is because my commenting is spotty and of low-quality (probably) or people are forgivably forgetting to vote my comments up (they are busy, no worries), or there is a vast conspiracy to destroy my clout rating (they follow me wherever I go!) Whatever the reason, I am now on a campaign to get it higher. Take a look at some of my peers’ clout ratings:

Ok, so putting Daniel Ha in there can be seen as cheating since he is a Disqus developer, and pretty much answers all the questions on the Disqus Blog and Forum.

Also, I cleverly didn’t list anyone who had less than 10 clout. Hey, it’s my blog.

What You Can Do To Help

Ok, so my goal is to provide more insightful and interesting comments on a wider variety of blogs using Disqus. What you as a Disqus user can do, to me and anyone else you notice writing a good comment, is to vote more. Or, if you are lazy, you can just vote me up.

I won’t complain. I promise.