PhoneTrips' posterous

By the phone phreak formerly known as Mark Bernay.

Moving the Indianapolis Telephone Building

I've had these two scanned pages on my hard drive for years and posted them today to show to a couple of people on twitter.  I later did a web search and found they are already posted elsewhere along with more info, so look at these pictures to get intrigued, and then click on the links for the story.  Note that this was done in 1930, took less than a month, and the building remained in service the entire time with all it's equipment and employees working!

Indiana Bell Building Move

Indiana Bell Telephone Building

 

Moveindianapolistelephonebuild

0moveindianapolistelephonebuild

Everyone is wrong: Loopt will NOT run in the background on iPhone

Everyone is twittering and blogging today that Apple is making an exception for the Loopt app and will allow it to run in the background.  I think you are all wrong, and the app on your iPhone will have nothing to do with this.

Loopt didn't actually say the app will run in the background; all they announced at https://loopt.com/loopt/background/ was that your iPhone's location will be reported automatically from time to time.  This reporting will clearly not be done by your phone, but by AT&T based on triangulation of cell towers that see your phone.  From the FAQ:

Q: How accurate are the location updates and how often will they occur?
A: Location accuracy can vary from a few hundred yards to a few miles depending upon the distance to the nearest cell tower. Updates usually occur once every 1 to 2 hours.

If the location were coming from your phone with Loopt running in the background, then the accuracy would be far higher because Loopt uses the GPS, and I would imagine them letting you set the update time yourself, based on how often you want it to be vs. battery life.  Also if Loopt were allowed to run in the background, then this would be dependent on a new version of the iPhone OS, wouldn't it?  The announcement invites people to sign up for the service now, and doesn't mention needing to wait for 3.1.

So if the FAQ is correct about the accuracy, then there is no need for the app to run in the background because AT&T's servers can supply the location based on cell towers just as well as the app can.