Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

If your iPhone is broken and won’t turn on because you dropped it in water, got it wet in the rain, or spilled your favorite drink on it, don’t worry it may be repairable. The first thing to try is drying it out. Don’t try to turn it on, don’t plug it into anything, that may only increase the damage, or damage another component, or electrocute yourself. Instead, dry it out with a hairdryer for a while, and then spray compressed air into the earphone hole at the top, and the dock-adapter hole at the bottom. If you’re lucky, at this point it will turn itself on automatically!

If this doesn’t work, follow the instructions here to open the base of the iPhone and proceed to dry out your internals. Note that this is a dangerous procedure and will void your warranty. Please don’t open up your iPhone! It’s probably a better idea to just take into the Apple store and let their geniuses figure things out.

(Note: the iPhone can be “reset” by holding the top power button and the circular “home” button at the same time for a while)

A choice many young professionals make on moving to NYC, NY to work for one profitable company or another is where they should live. The choices are typically Manhattan, Queens Brooklyn, another borough of NY such as Staten Island, or New Jersey. Weighing the neighborhood, rent, social scene, and proximity to fast public transportation are not the only choices you should consider; the tax rate of NY and NJ are worth thinking about. In fact, New York City is one of the few cities in America to charge a unique city-tax for residents in any of its boroughs.

Our young example is a 23 year old woman working for Citigroup. As an entry level programmer working in straight-through-processing, she might make $100,000 a year in taxable income (it’s a round number, not a real one). She is single, and will not be claimed as a dependent. Now let’s run the numbers for NY:

- $100,000 taxable income
- 6.85% state tax
- $1,706 plus 3.648% of excess over $50,000 NYC tax
- $7,500 standard deduction

So the total NY taxes she’ll pay is ($100,000 – $7,500) * .0685 + $1,706 + ($50,000 – $7,500 ) * .03648, which is $9,593 in taxes to New York. The New Jersey tax works slightly differently:

- $100,000 taxable income
- 6.37% state tax
- $2,126 post-tax deduction

In NJ, she will pay the following taxes: $100,000 * .0637 – $2,126, which is $4,244 in taxes to New Jersey. This is $5,369 in taxes she gets to keep in her pocket, an extra $450 post-tax dollars a month of savings. Please note that I am not a tax accountant or lawyer, so these figures should not be taken as advice; they may very well be wrong. But to me, they provide real evidence that living in NJ has substantial tax benefit.

Today at work I found myself reading Mac Rumours Live for the latest iPhone news from Steve Jobs’ 2008 WWDC Keynote, and as expected, he announced the iPhone 2.0, with a huge number of new features:

• 3G network and GPS support
• Improved battery life and performance
• Applications via iTunes (including Spore, Monkey Ball)
• Chinese language input and handwriting recognition
• Support for opening Microsoft Office files
• Enterprise features, including encryption, authentication, email, activesync, exchange, and remote-kill
• The previously announced iPhone API stack
• Improved audio, flush headphone jack
• $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB

The Apple Store is touting the iPhone 2.0 as “Twice as Fast at Half the Price,” with an expected release date of July 11th. Also note that if you bought an iPhone after May 27th you can exchange it for an iPhone3G for free!

This is pretty impressive news; except for MMS support, video chat, a red iPhone, 32GB of storage, and a better digital camera, it seems like Apple has incorporated all of its consumers feedback into making a better and more appealing product.