Some have criticized Apple CEO Steve Jobs as having a "God complex." Could that have led to the purported antenna "death grip" design flaw? According to an unnamed source speaking to Bloomberg, Jobs was warned about a possible issue during the early stages of the iPhone 4's design.

In fact, according to an anonymous source speaking to Bloomberg, Apple's senior antenna expert, Ruben Caballero, voiced concern to
Jobs during the early design phase of the iPhone 4 last year that the external antenna design could lead to dropped calls.

Additionally, another anonymous source told Bloomberg that a carrier partner reportedly voiced concerns to Apple as well. It's unclear which carrier; while AT&T is Apple's most prominent carrier partner, it's obviously not the only one.

The iPhone 4's antenna issues have been labeled the "death grip." If the gap between antennas on the lower left-hand side of the device is bridged with skin, many have seen signal strength, or even calls, drop.

Because the iPhone 4 has multiple antennas, the metal bezel could not be constructed in one piece. It would have to be separated into sections, and therein was the issue that Caballero raised, and which is being seen. Caballero said that if a user covered one of the seams between the sections, their finger would act as a conductive material, interfering with the signal.

While it is true that other smartphones exhibit the same behavior when gripped, their signals do not attenuate to the point of a call drop, because the iPhone 4 is unique in its antenna design. While a nice industrial design, it may be a poor technical design.

Apple has scheduled a press conference for Friday morning to discuss the iPhone 4. While not specific in its invitation, the conference will undoubtedly cover the issues with the iPhone 4 antenna design.

Tags: Anonymous Source, Antenna Design, Antennas, Apple Ceo, Bloomberg, Conductive Material, Death Grip, Design Flaw, Design Phase, External Antenna, Friday Morning, God Complex, Grip Design, iPhone, Left Hand Side, Seams, Signal Strength, Steve Jobs, Unnamed Source, Voiced Concern

Some people ask how much information they should give out on social networking sites. It appears the credit card you use when buying something, no matter what the site says about security, might be one thing you don't want to give out.

Social networking site Blippy, which allows you to share what you buy with your friends, had a problem on Friday morning. Or at least, it had a problem that some enterprising user discovered. Using the query site:blippy.com +"from card" resulted in a list of results, many of which include full credit / debit card information.

This was first reported by Venture Beat.

However, if you try that query right now, you will get the response (from Google):

We're sorry...

... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

which translates to "Blippy spoke to us and we're blocking that query."

Blippy's response to the security hole:

Here are the details:

• Say you buy lunch at Quiznos. Your credit card statement shows a complex entry like "Quiznos Inc Store #1234 San Francisco." But Blippy cleans this up to only show "Quiznos." We refer to these as the "raw data" vs the "cleaned up data."
• Raw data is typically harmless. But it turns out that some credit cards (4 out of thousands in this case) show the credit card number in the raw data. For example, "Quiznos Inc Store #1234 from card 4444...."
• Many months ago when we were first building Blippy, some raw (not cleaned up, but typically harmless) data could be viewed in the HTML source of a Blippy web page. The average user would see nothing, but a determined person could see "raw" line items. Still, this was mostly harmless -- stuff like store numbers and such. And it was all removed and fixed quickly.
• Enter Google's cache. Turns out Google indexed some of this HTML, even though it wasn't visible on the Blippy website. And exposed 4 credit card numbers (but a scary 196 search results).
• We're working with Google now to remove Blippy from their cache, and they inform us it will be completed within a couple of hours.

While it's great that it was "only" four numbers, it's still not great that this happened. This type of incident should give any considering using Blippy at least some food for thought.

Tags: 1234, Credit Card Info, Credit Card Number, Credit Card Numbers, Credit Card Statement, Credit Cards, Credit Debit, Friday Morning, Google, Html Source, Lunch, People, Queries, Raw Data, San Francisco, Security Hole, Social Networking Site, Social Networking Sites, Store Numbers, Web Page

Kareena’s elder sister and actress Karisma Kapoor gave birth to a boy on Friday morning at Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital.

According to hospital sources, the mother and the newborn are doing fine.

This is Karisma’s second child with hubby Sanjay Kapur, a Delhi-based businessman. They already have a six-year-old daughter named Samaira.

 

The Kapoors were with Karisma at the time of the baby’s delivery today morning. Meanwhile, Karisma’s friends have already begun congratulating her.

 

Her good friend, jewellery designer Farah Khan Ali, posted on her Twitter page: “Karisma Kapoor just gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Many congratulations to her and her family.”

 

del.icio.us Tags: Karisma Kapoor boy baby,bollywood gossips

Technorati Tags: Karisma Kapoor boy baby,bollywood gossips

Tags: Actress, Ali, Baby Boy, Beautiful Baby, Beautiful Boy, Bollywood, Breach Candy Hospital, Businessman, Elder Sister, Farah Khan, Friday Morning, Friends, Good Friend, Hospital Sources, Hubby, Kapoor Kareena, Karisma Kapoor, Sanjay Kapur, Technorati Tags