A quick note for anyone who upgraded to iPhone OS 3.1 recently. Upon upgrading and syncing, iTunes told me that my computer was no longer authorized to use the iPhone apps I downloaded, and if I did not authorize the computer immediately, all of my apps would be deleted. What could I do? I authorized, of course, but only to have iTunes 9 tell me that I now have 2 computers authorized out of the allowed 5 (instead of just 1, like it’s always been).

If anyone else has this issue, here’s the quick fix. In iTunes, go to the Store menu item, click it, then click on Deauthorize Computer. Enter your password to deauthorize the machine. Then do it again. That’s right – deauthorize your computer a second time. Then go back to the Store menu item in iTunes, and click Authorize Computer. Enter your password to authorize your computer, and voila, the count is back to normal. At least, that’s how it worked out for me. Good luck!

Why should our blog posts be limited to product launches and company goings-on? I was thinking about a cool feature that Apple could (and I think should) implement for the iPhone. Below is what I sent to Apple.

I was playing with my new iPhone 3Gs the other day, when a thought occurred to me. It would really save me some headache, and save my phone some major battery life, if we could have a profile manager for the settings app. Then I could keep 3G, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and GPS turned off (to conserve battery life), then activate them on-the-fly (in any combination I wish via different profiles) when I’m out and about.

Even if it’s a pain for Apple to do this as a general feature request, doing it, then pushing it as a way to potentially have the phone’s battery last more than a day, will probably result in a very positive user response. Apparently, battery life is an issue for many 3Gs users.

Even cooler would be a way to let people rearrange their home screen app icons based on the profiles they choose. Thus, if they have a work profile, maybe any apps they use for work can be placed on the second page, whereas with a home profile, maybe games would be placed on page two. Something like that may appeal to fewer users, but the bottom line is, with this sort of device, we should be able to make use of profiles for the myriad settings the iPhone already lets us control. I think it would make life a lot easier for many of the users.

What do you think? Is this a feature you would use? If you’d like to second my idea, or have an idea of your own, you can not only comment here, but submit it to Apple yourself, by going to http://www.apple.com/feedback/.

We’re proud to announce syntronics.net is now live. This is a project we designed and developed a couple of months ago for Syntronics LLC, a company located in Fredericksburg, Virginia that provides products and services for defense and homeland security.

The site uses the MODx content management system and sports an original clean and simple design. This is just one of the many sites currently featured in our portfolio.