It seems there are tons of people out there who are getting the “an error has occurred, please try again later” error on Youtube. Various solutions have been suggested, from updating the flash player or clearing cache and temp files to uninstalling and reinstalling all Adobe software and Java. For some people, it seems nothing works. I had a friend with this issue, and she came to me for help.

Now, she had the problem with all Youtube videos, all the time. It was not an intermittent issue, or a problem with just a few videos. I scanned her computer for spyware, malware, adware, etc., and, though it found a couple things, they had nothing to do with this issue. I also uninstalled Flash, then reinstalled. Then I checked through her temp files, first looking for anything out of place, then intending to delete them. As I scrolled down, I noticed something strange – there were files created in the future! As soon as I saw that, I knew her computer’s calendar date was wrong, and that this was the likely culprit.

It’s not going to do any good to talk about why your computer’s date needs to be correct (or at least not set in the future) for Youtube’s videos to play. Just make sure your date’s set correctly. Hopefully this simple solution will help someone out there with this vexing Youtube issue. I know there are lots of people who use the Windows Clock and Calendar to check past and future dates (myself included), and it’s easy to accidentally save the incorrect date.

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/.