Hello Millampers!! It has been a very long time since I’ve posted anything. Sorry about that. Well some pretty exciting things have happened since we’ve last seen each other. My band, The Sky Divided, released our first full length record. You can find it on iTunes and Spotify. Some of you may even find some songs off our record on your iPod after you get it back from a repair.

Another cool thing is that I have now been to Haiti twice with my church. Once in June and then again in October of 2011. I was blown away by how much help they still need. It has now been 2 years since the earthquake and there is still trash and rubble everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, progress is being made. From June to October I could see some big changes in certain communities, while others still are struggling. During my first trip I met a group of young men called “The Yung Goddis” (young men of God). This is a group of young men that gave their life to christ shortly after the earthquake and began to help rebuild their community. I was amazed at how much they look out for each other. One day while working on a project removing rubble from where someone once lived, we made them peanut butter sandwhiches. We had enough for each of them. Well once we started handing them out they would tear it apart and start sharing with the next guy. They didn’t know we had enough for all of them and their first instinct was to make sure everyone ate. No one tried taking the first bite. I was in shock. When was the last time I did anything like that? I don’t even share with my own brother!

I was so humbled and inspired by these guys. So, one morning I woke up, grabbed my acoustic guitar and went up on the roof of the orphanage we were staying at and wrote a song. That song is called “Hold On”. I wrote it with these guys in mind. Life isn’t easy for them. They never know when their next meal is coming. So I got back to the states on a Friday morning, by Saturday afternoon my band was in the studio recording the song. Then we filmed a music video for the song. Our goal for this video and 3 song EP is to raise money for the Yung Goddis. All the money we raise will go their school supplies. Uniforms, books, etc. So, if you get the chance, check out our video and see what life is still like in Haiti. Then, if you feel it in your heart, you can purchase our 3 song EP for a minimum of $2, but you can give as much as you would like.

I hope you have an amazingly blessed day, friends! – David

To see our video for “Hold On” visit:

http://youtu.be/RH4hwWZOsmU

To purchase “Hold On” visit:

http://theskydivided.bandcamp.com/

twitter-username-during-ecommerce-checkout

Coming soon to a milliamp checkout near you: the ability to enter your Twitter Username (e.g. @milliamp) when you are going through the checkout process on our websites. This is something that I have never seen before on an eCommerce site, but something that I fully expect you will see more and more over the coming months and years.

Imagine: in addition to recording your name, address, email address, phone number, and and special order comments, you can also add your (optional, or course) Twitter Username. The idea here is that, in addition to getting a shipping notification or device status emailed to you, you could also get an update tweeted directly at you (and for your friends to see and remark on as well).

How cool is that?!

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
milliamp.com

Time and time again, I have seen the power and beauty of Twitter with regards to our iPhone, iPad, and iPod repair business that we conduct here at milliamp.com (you can follow us at @milliamp, btw). Rather than talk about how Twitter has become a powerful tool for us to engage with our customers in near-real time, I thought that I would just show you a recent exchange here:

And this gentleman was kind enough to leave us a nice review when it was all said and done, too!

busy-iphone-repair-beavers

We have been busy, busy, busy, not only trying to keep up with the deluge of iPods, iPhones, and iPads that hit our doors each day, but also making sure that our websites look good, convey lots of information and trust, but also function properly as well.

You would think that, after more than SIX YEARS in this business, we’d have shopping carts, conversion funnels, hover-over text, order data extracts, etc. nailed, but it is a continuous, frustrating process, but we are determined to get our websites working and looking great, no matter what it takes.

Most people do not know it, but many of the emails and phone calls we get each day from customers wanting to buy something from us also give us suggestion (or harsh critiques!) on what they liked and did not like about our website. These suggestions never fall on deaf ears – we weigh each suggestion accordingly and then often improve the site – sometimes within hours of the suggestion.

It seems that, whenever I take an order at our front counter or over the telephone, I see something on the site that jumps out at me, be it a rare typo or price discrepancy, a weird link, goofy graphic, or a field that looks out of place in our shopping cart. What a great team that we have where I can take a snag-it screenshot, email it off to my hard workers, and hours later have it fixed!

In closing, I wanted to mention a new business that recently sprung up – it’s a site that is all about twitter marketing and is called outsourced-tweets.com, and it is pretty cool business idea, if I do say so myself.

Have a great evening, and remember, if you spot an error or even a fancy new addition to one of our websites, you can be sure our busy beavers will have/had something to do with it. Chomp on!

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner

On Friday, we reported that we had been informed of issues with the newest version of iOS (4.3.3), the iPhone 3GS, and our replacement batteries. We had a similar instance of incompatibility this time last summer, but fortunately, this time around the issue is not much of an issue at all. After extensive experimentation and research, we have concluded that the Milliamp iPhone 3GS replacement batteries are perfectly compatible with iOS 4.3.3, so if we alarmed you with our blog on Friday, I’d like to apologize on behalf of the entire company.

What’s perplexing is that we confirmed the “error 29″ issue a customer reported to us, but when we tested our batteries again today, there was no problem at all. I feel so strongly that our batteries are compatible because of the number of times I was successful in installing 4.3.3 on an iPhone 3GS with our battery inside. I currently have one of our batteries installed in my 3GS and running 4.3.3 so I can field test the performance and look for any issues that may crop us as a result of our battery. I’ll post any significant findings here.

So, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to call us, email us, facebook us, tweet us, or even leave a comment on this blog and we will get back to you post-haste.

If you’re interested in replacing your iPhone 3GS battery, take a look here (we offer a DIY kit/intructions, too!).

possible-apple-ios-iphone-3gs-battery-compatibility-issue

We had two folks that contacted us today (one in Singapore and the other in Chicago), each having experienced issues with a third-party iPhone 3GS battery whilst upgrading to the newest iPhone operating system available today, iOS 4.3.3, specifically, Error 29.

Hearing this, even from just two people thus far, made us quake in our boots – we experienced a similar issue before when Apple released iOS 4.0 and blogged about it right away back then as well. We eventually figured out how to obtain new iPhone 3GS batteries that played nice with that operating system, but it was a pain in the ass to manage all of those folks that needed their recently-upgraded batteries upgraded again.

Taking one of our iPhone 3GS’ that was running an earlier iOS, we installed one of our iPhone 3GS 1200 mAh batteries, and sure enough – freakin’ Error 29. When we re-installed the old stock battery, the device worked with iOS 4.3.3.

While it is WAY too early to tell how big of an issue this is going to be, you can rest-assured that we will be on the front lines and will figure our a solution.

Until then, hold off on upgrading to iOS 4.3.3 if you have recently installed a new battery in your iPhone 3GS.

More information to follow as soon as we have something more definitive to report.

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Email: anthony@milliamp.com
Cell Phone: 210-787-9482

 Now that Apple has “finally” released the white iPhone 4 out into the world, the luster of the white iPhone no longer lies in the hands of those individuals who paid to have their iPhone’s parts converted to white. Bummer, man. If you happen to be one of those individuals who went off the grid to make their iPhone 4 white, don’t fret, you can, again, experience that same feeling of being unique and get the attention and jealousy of all your fanboy (or girl) friends. Just let Milliamp “mash-up” your iPhone 4 with custom color replacement parts that come in colors that are vastly more interesting than white!

We here at Milliamp have purchased some of these custom parts and have been “field testing” them for the past month or so; those pictures above are 2 of the phones we field tested. The parts have been awesome, they totally match the quality and durability of the original parts that were installed on the phone, and that’s not even the best part! The best part is having a totally unique phone that even HTC EVO users drool over.

From gold and diamond (read: not real diamonds) custom frames to replace the…. YAWWWWN… aluminum frame, to clear front displays and back plates with no Apple logo, there are a lot of really cool looking, QUALITY custom parts for this device, and we plan on bringing them to you very soon.

Consider this the official announcement of our Milli-Mash-Up; I don’t know if we’ll actually call it that; it does sound pretty awesome though! We are in the process of ordering a wide array of custom color display panels, home buttons, and back plates, and we’re developing a system to let you pick and choose how you want your phone to look and actually see an example of that exact configuration in real time! BUT WAIT! THAT’S NOT ALL! Our prices on these items will be our competitors’ envy!

Now that I have you drooling, go ahead and “Like” our Facebook page so you can keep up to date with our release schedule for this awesome service and be the first on your block to have an orange, black, and pink iPhone 4!

Go on! Go like us!

Strongly considering this as an alternative...

Recently, my husband and I acquired a super cool Subaru wagon as a second vehicle and have been really loving it so far. Sure, it’s from the ’90s, has about 160k miles on it, but dangit, it’s in excellent condition and fun to drive! Plus, there’s tons of room inside which is really nice for a certain baby that’s coming this July (:))… Moving along, it has been fantastic not having an extra car payment, so I’m in heaven with this car (though it will never take the place in my heart reserved for my cute, little red Mazda).

However, I must say, I am DESPERATELY missing a simple feature that I never thought would be absent from any: CUP HOLDERS! Lord, how I miss the cup holders when I drive the Subaru. Apparently, there was such thing as a time when cars were meant for driving and not as miniature living environments. I really hadn’t a clue that this was the case is many (if not most) older vehicle models, so I’m obviously either sheltered or spoiled. However, now I am a little wiser and will keep this in mind when my husband asks to use my car!

Seriously, imagine your vehicle without cup holders. You might think, “Eh, no big deal,” but it’s a helpless feeling when you have a cup in need of a secure spot. Sure, you may not always use a cup holder for, well, cups, but it’s nice having a little extra space where you can put your iPhone or iPod in, or even store your spare change here and there.

If you’re like me at all, breakfast is somewhat of an afterthought. Meaning, I’m about to leave and realize I haven’t put anything in my stomach since the night before! This usually means that it’s a ‘cereal in a cup’ kind of morning. Ya know, grab some mini wheats, pour ‘em in a plastic cup, add milk, grab a spoon and go! I can be really innovative sometimes. To be fair, I only eat at stoplights, but that doesn’t mean it was a hassle driving with one hand while my delicious breakfast stared at me in the face.

The lesson of the day is:

Don’t take your cup holders for granted. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Yea right. haha. Ok folks, I ate at some more new places.

“Texas Roadhouse” – I’ve heard some really good things about this steaek house from friends and family, so I was really excited about going to it. Once I walked in….my guard was up. Peanut Shells!!! All over the floor. They have a billion hosts, give one of them a broom and start sweeping!!  For it being a Friday night, we got our table pretty quickly. Our waitress was very nice. Great customer service. She gave us some rolls and  the weird butter/spread. My mother tried dooping me and said I wouldn’t like the butter. So I ate a peice of break with out it. That bread is awesome!! So then I put some of the cinnamon butter on there and it was even better!! Silly Mom. I ordered a 16oz New York Strip (go big or go home). I DID NOT like their original steak sauce recipe. I didn’t bother asking for any other kind because the steak was pretty delicious on it’s own. My sides were veggies and mashed potatoes. Both were just….ok? Eh. Throughout my stay, the floor felt slippery under the table. Well, as I walked out of the place, I realized there was steak sauce all over my favorite pair of chucks. :-/ Not cool. This place gets a 6 out of 10.

“Yard House” – A good friend and I got try this place out Saturday night. I really, really liked it. The place was packed, but we were seated right away. The service could have been a little better, but they were super busy, so I suppose it’s understandable. I ordered this really strange new dish….yea….right…. I ordered their bacon cheddar burger. It was pretty stinking awesome!! The bacon was crispy and had a really great pepper flavor. The cheddar cheese was just as good. I dont know how they did it, but it was very melty all the way through. Maybe the burger was so good that I ate it quickly. The beef. Wow. It was juicy and cooked perfect! I believe they served what is known as “shoestring” fries. Whatever they were, they was pretty awesome too! I really enjoyed this meal. So good. Apparently they have a pretty good beer selection, but I don’t drink so I couldn’t give you any info on that. On their sign, they say something about classic rock. Well I was jamming! The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and Peter Frampton were just a few of the great classic rock artists that were playing the soundtrack to my great meal. However, at some point, they decided that Owl City’s “Fireflys” (or whatever it’s called) was pretty classic rock and played it. Boo. Despite that one screw up, I can’t wait to go back and see what else they have to offer.  They get a 9 out of 10.

We’ll I hope everyone is having a great spring break. Be safe and stay classy!