What's Best Next

Apple Stores Now Fixing Cracked iPhone Screens In-House

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If you’ve ever had the misfortune, as I have, of dropping your iPhone on concrete, here is some good news from the Infinite Loop blog:

An iPhone falls to the ground in slow motion and makes its first impact on a corner. You watch as the cracks branch out over the screen like a spiderweb. If it hasn’t happened to you, it has happened to someone you know—and now, Apple can fix it on the spot at one of its retail locations.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop has confirmed that Apple retail stores have begun performing this in-house repair with what amounts to a big suction cup in the back. The machine separates the broken glass from the rest of your precious iPhone, letting the technician install a shiny new one.

The cost will be $199, and it is not covered under warranty or Apple Care.

The Common Denominator of Success

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From Stephen Covey and Rebecca Merrill’s book First Things First:

The common denominator of success is not hard work, astute human relations, or luck, although all are important. It is putting first things first.

Great news. Except that that among all the things they listed (and all the other things they could have listed), that’s the hardest to do.

If There's Always Room for Jello, There's Always Time for Learning

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From Seth Godin:

This is one of the great cultural touchstone slogans of our era. A culture where there’s so much to eat we need to try to find a food that we can eat even if we’re stuffed.

Often, we’ll decide that something is full, stuffed, untouchable but then some Jello shows up, and suddenly there’s room.

Think about your schedule… is there room for an emergency, an SEC investigation, a server crash? If you took a day off because of the flu, is your business going to go bankrupt? Probably not.

So, if there’s time for an emergency (Jello), why isn’t there time for brilliance, generosity or learning?

Coming Friday at 11:01 pm CDT: Custom URLs for Facebook Pages

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Facebook usernames are coming Friday night at 11:01 pm Central Time. This means that the url for your profile will be as simple as www.facebook.com/mattperman, rather than www.facebook.com/id=592952074?!#@4832

From the Facebook blog:

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

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From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook. The one place, though, where your identity wasn’t reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like “id=592952074.” That soon will change.

We’re planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.