Recently in Loopholes Category

Everyone who has been reading my blog today will know that I this morning sent my Macbook in to the apple store to have the case cracks repaired. Well i am happy to report that this repair was firstly free, and secondly a huge success! My macbook has no more palm rest cracks, though the bottom case is still cracked. That's mostly because i neglected to tell the repair guys that it was cracked in the first place. But other than that it was a fabulous repair. The ended up replacing both the keyboard assembly and the entire bevel for the screen. Which, so far as i can tell, included a new iSight camera for my computer. And on top of this all, having the keyboard be the right shape seems to bave bent my Macbook back into shape and allowed me to use my CD drive once again. That is fabulous, and was completely worth the time I was without my mac. And as you can see by the picture, the case is crack free, which is what i wanted in the end.

As everyone probably already knows, the older white MacBooks have this tiny little problem that Apple doesn't like to admit. Yes, i'm talking about the case cracks which turn your pristine white macbook into a 'Crackbook'. Well of course I had this happen to me, but didn't think that there was anything I could do about short of paying for the repair myself. I wasn't too keen on doing that, so I just let it slide and became best friends with a bottle of crazy glue to help hold it together. This worked for a long time and probably would have worked for much time to come. However, my father James found something out while getting the cracks on his iPhone fixed. In a conversation with one of the technicians at the apple store he found out that apple was in fact starting to replace the cracked palm rests and outer shells of these white macbooks. This got my ears perked up, so this morning I had James take my macbook over to the apple store on the way to work. Now, i had called earlier in the week to see if my macbook was eligible for this replacement program, and i got the standard apple response 'well, if your computer falls within a certain serial number range...'. I couldn't actually get anyone at apple to tell me what range this was, so i figured what the heck, i'd just bring it in. When James brought it in this morning, he was told 'if we see cracks, we fix em'. This was fantastic and as we speak my computer is getting surgerized and having its cracks replaced. The moral: If you've got a crackbook, go get it fixed for free. Apple is happy to help you out. 

In my everlasting search for the perfect way to use the full potential of Google Voice, I have stumbled across several solutions to make free VoIP calls from my Mac. I had stumbled upon Gizmo, which is still what I use for this purpose. However, I today stumbled across a new frontend for Gizmo that makes the whole experience that much better.

Well, I recently posted an entry on how to use Google Voice to get a free SkypeIn number. Well, after some searching, I found a little dashboard app that allows you to make calls without going to the google voice website. It is called GVConnect and can be obtained here. It allows you to  

Well, I finally figured out how to get a free SkypeIn number. NOTE: To do this, you have to have been accepted into the Google Voice beta. If you haven't already, then just sign up. You should get an invite in a few days.