Technology

Web Hosting

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Ok, I made a mistake by canceling my web hosting account. I miss the flexibility of having a hosting account even if I don’t really need one all the time. I went back to Site5. They were good, and the only reason I canceled the account was because I didn’t want a provider at all. I am in the middle of configuring the site now.

I am trying to keep my Internet spending down this year so to offset the hosting costs for the year I am getting rid of .Mac. I don’t really use it, so I am going to let the account lapse when it is up for renewal at the end of February.

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The Kindle

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Since I traveled full time back in 2000 I have loved the idea of e-books. The idea was great but in practice it had a lot to be desired. I have read a handful of books in the ebook format. Most notibly when I was on the road on using my HP Jornada Pocket PC. It had a big screen but for reading books it wasn’t ideal. At the time it was the only game in town, and since there were times I didn’t want to carry a book with me having a book on my PDA was nice. Ever since I have been on the hunt for the perfect device to read books off of. Eventually I figured e-books would become more common, but so far they haven’t taken off so much.

When Sony came out with there reader I was fascinated by the technology. The size was right, it looked easy to read off of. I was all set to buy one until i read that you could only buy books from Sony for the reader. That on top of the fact that Sony’s selection wasn’t too hot I opted to hold off on my purchase.

That leads us to late November when Amazon announced the Kindle. It was very similar to the Sony reader, and it was backed by the book store at Amazon. I was still a bit hesitant to order one due to the DRM in the Amazon file format, but they offered over four times the books Sony did and they expected to continually add more books. After going back and forth on my decision I ended up placing an order for one in early December.

I was concerned about my choice because I read a few mixed reviews. I felt a bit better when I read Howard Morgan’s review late last month on his blog. I cannot remember a bad technology decision that he has made since I have known him. Well, I don’t count the fact that he wont switch to a Mac!

I found out late last week that my order finally shipped and I should expect to get my reader tomorrow. I already ordered 2 books for it that i was planning on reading. They should auto download to the reader when i turn it on. Hopefully this device lives up to my expectations since I have been waiting 8 years for it.

Google Apps

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I remember when Howard & Gus were talking up Gmail when it came out. A gig of storage for life free they said. It was a closed beta so you had to have friends who had an in get you an invite. In a short period of time (shorter than I expected) I had an invite. I was like why do I need this? I want and use my own domain’s personal email. Why would I want @gmail.com in my address? I mean the idea was very interesting but I didn’t think it was for me.

Not too much time went by and people were still talking about Gmail. I figured I need to use my invite so I can at least secure the username that I like to use, so I did. As predicted I haven’t used Gmail that much. I do route mail to it that I don’t want in my regular mailbox’s, but I could go weeks without logging into the account. That was until a month or so ago.

Recently Google offered Google Apps for free. Google Apps is a collection of web applications that you can use with your own domain. They have cool features like Google Talk, Calendar, etc. What got me interested was Gmail. Now they offer a Gmail front end that you can use for your own mail domain. Better yet it is free for personal use. I get 100 accounts with as of this writing 5.8 gigs of space. Now this information on its own would be interesting but nothing more. In fact when I first read about Google Apps I setup a mail domain pointing to the system and played around with it, but nothing more. I like to get my mail via IMAP, and Google didn’t offer that. The final clincher for me was when they announced that Google Apps would support IMAP, also for free. For the past week I have been routing some mail to my domain I had them hosting mail for, and so far I haven’t had any hiccups (fingers crossed). Because of that I am beginning the task of routing all my mail to Google Apps.

I can be a cynic. I know that, but I am very impressed by how this tool has evolved. I am even eying the Premier version of the service to get some of the more advanced features. I am not sure if I need them so the free service is fine for now. It is just too bad that I wasted some money moving to a new email hosting provider in September. They are great, but they can’t compete with 5gigs free IMAP storage.

10.5 Compatible Applications Follow Up

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When I first installed Leapord (OS 10.5) I wrote about the compatibility issues I had with some programs that I use. Well it has been almost two months and allot of those issues are resolved with one or two still lingering.

I found out that the ecto beta for 3.0 is a free upgrade for me since I owned 2.x. So far 3.0 is working fine in beta and thankfully isn’t crashing so I can write this blog entry without aggravation.

Mark/Space has published a beta of the Missing Sync for the Palm that works with 10.5. I had issues with it like I did with the original version of 6.x. It stops syncing tasks and calendar items from my Treo. Thankfully since I wrote the first post and now I have switched phones to a Symbian based Nokia E61i so I don’t need to rely on this software.

PGP Desktop may be the de facto standard in security products but it is not cheap ($70 or so for 1 year). Add the fact that they didn’t have a working product (even in beta) when 10.5 came out I began looking for other products. I have looked into Knox several times before I went with PGP Desktop, but now I took another look at the product that is basically an add on to Apple’s DMG file format. Knox gives me all the functionality I want, plus added features that a simple encrypted DMG file does not. I gave the trial a go and already bought myself a license (only $34.95 for a license not a one year subscription). I have let my PGP subscription expire and so far I am happy with my choice. Converting the encrypted stores I had took some time but I think I am finally done.

Mactheripper is a totally different story that I wont go into now. I don’t want to write that much.

Marketcircle has had several beta’s of Daylite 3.6 out. Their latest still has sync problems with Apple Sync services. They have been very responsive so I am patient for now. I can use the program but I can’t use alarms, or I can’t sync it with my phone. This is probably the most frustrating issue i have right now.

Other than that I have not had many issues with Leopard. I am not using all the new features that I thought I would, but overall it is a great OS.

Custom VOIP

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I don’t know why I take on projects that suck up my free time that I probably don’t need to be involved in, but I do. This weekend I began tinkering with a Cisco 7940 phone I have trying to get a Gizmo Project SIP account to work on it. I spent a few hours on Saturday working on it.

First I had to remember how to upgrade the firmware on the 7940. It has been a while since I tinkered with these phones. I realized that when the downloaded firmware I had was 6.03 or something and the latest availible is 8.8. I had to break out the old TFTP server and remember all the files I needed to get the upgrade to work. Cisco has documentation on the process but it is not so easy to follow. After getting the firmware flashed I had to sift through google search results trying to find someone who has posted a working config for a Gizmo Project account working on the Cisco 7940 IP Phone. I found one config and a few references to settings but not much else. The config I found isn’t working correctly. I have tweaked it significantly and I still can’t get a call to complete. I can get dial tone, but that just means some sort of signaling is working. I am so close, but for some reason I can’t get calls to connect!

I am about to give up on getting Gizmo working directly on the 7940, and instead try to get Tribox or some other Asterisk setup working. Unfortunately the Tribox VM i downloaded last year is a year old and I am having problems getting the latest one up and running. I may be putting this on hold for a while. I am going to also ask for some help from one of the network guys at work who used to work for a VOIP provider.

Crazy Tech Buying & Selling Spree

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I don’t know what it is about the past few weeks but I have been on a crazy buying and selling spree. I have finally gotten rid of my old 60gig iPod. I have had my new 160gig silver one for a while but after a few problems with eBay I never actually sold the old one. I finally put it up on Craigslist and sold it. Even with my new Nokia 6120 Classic, I have been going back and forth with that phone and my Treo 680. The 6120 is great but I realized I need a phone with a keyboard. I think a phone is not a smartphone without one!

Going back to the Treo wasn’t going to work for the long term so after a false start I ended up picking up a new Nokia E61i off of Craigslist. It is big, but so far is doing everything i need it to. And it has Wifi to boot. I am still getting used to the Symbian OS, and the different applications I need to get to work. I already don’t like the PIM (Address book, Calendar, & Tasks) functions, but that is a trade off for not crashing and a phone that generally does what it is supposed to do. Stability has become important to me more so in recent days. More discussions on the E61i as I continue to play with it.

I am going to keep the N810 tablet because it is just interesting if anything. I don’t need it for any real reason but I am enjoying tinkering with it.

I am also in the process of cleaning out my closet and finally selling the extra DVD player I have (it is new in the box) and my old Tivo. I probably have a bunch of other stuff lying around so I have will be busy for a while.

I guess this is a good time to be doing all of this anyway with the holidays coming up and all.

Nokia N810

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The N810 finally came out late last week. I was actually very lucky and found a reseller in downtown Manhattan that had them in stock. I picked on up and have been playing with it for about a week. It is a really interesting device. I am finding that I am not going to use it for what I originally planned (as a PDA/Internet tablet to complement a normal mobile phone) but I still like it just the same.

The Palm VM on it is really cool. I have been playing with that for a while. I am getting addicted to mine sweaper again. Email, Chat and browsing on the tablet is cool also. I also think that Skype & Gizmo on it are amazing. You can barely tell that I am on speakerphone when using Skype on it. I did an entire conference call on speaker using skype and wifi. It was really cool.

I am waiting to see what other applications get ported over to the Maemo 2008 OS.

NYTimes.com

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AOL For Free?

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I went online tonight to do some research for my mom and dad regarding their AOL accounts. First I realized that my dad has been a member since 1996. Wow, time has flow. I was poking around his account for him so I can figure out how to keep his email address (and my mom’s) but not pay the BYOP monthly charge of $14.95. They have been paying that to keep the simplicity of AOL for years after they switched to Road Runner cable. Now a days they don’t use the service for anything more than checking email, so why pay for all those extra features. It turns out that AOL got wise and is now offering a basic BYOP plan for free, as long as you don’t use any premium features. That works perfectly for them. I was set to move them to google apps. I even had a domain name bought and configured for them before I figured out I didn’t need to move them. Lets hope that there is no hidden gotcha’s to this change, but from AOL’s web page it doesn’t look like there is.

Not having to cancel their account is also very helpful for me too. I totally forgot that my AIM screen name is in fact an screen name attached to my dad’s account. The screen name pre-dated my use (or the existence for that matter) of AIM. I used to use it for some web hosting back in the day. I haven’t logged into the AOL software in so long (for the record it hasn’t been on my computer in years) that I forgot that it was a screen name and not a stand alone AIM name. I might have had problems if i canceled the account and wanted to use the screen name for AIM. Not having to deal with the issue is a good thing, especially since I don’t really want to change it. It is like a phone number, it hasn’t changed in years and everyone I know has it.

A Phone That is Not a Smartphone?

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I have been having a love hate relationship with my Treo 680 (well several Treo’s over the years) but I haven’t found a suitable replacement so I have been stuck with a great phone that crashes all the time. It has been driving me crazy. I know I shouldn’t get emotional about technology but I work with technology all day long and I live off my phone(s). So when I am expecting a call it would be nice for the phone to ring, and if I don’t hear the ring the voice mail chime should go off. Instead I have on more than one occasion had the phone do nothing until I think to reboot it and then get 5 voice mails.

Needless to say I am very frustrated. I need the functions of a PDA, but all stand alone PDA’s don’t have built in Keyboards, so until very recently it has been a smart phone that does everything but does everything not so great or a PDA and a phone that doesn’t do everything I want. That was until I found out that Nokia was making the N810. It is an internet tablet that has a slide out keyboard. I have been eying the N800 (didn’t have a keyboard) for a while, but no keyboard means I didn’t get it. The N810 isn’t a PDA so when I first saw it I was still stuck with my Treo (and still may be), but then I read that Access the makers of the current version of the Palm OS released a VM of their OS for both the N800 and N810. That means I can install and run all my Palm applications on the N810 and get all my PDA functions that the device was missing. In theory this sounds great. Now all I need to do is get an N810 when it comes out and see if it works the way I think it will.

In anticipation of the new Internet Tablet, I needed to get a good regular mobile phone. My current “regular” phone is a now aging Motorola Razr V3. I always liked the form factor of the Razr but the functions sucked. I can’t stand the Motorola UI. Why does each phone number for a contact have to be its own address book entry? Nokia and Sony Ericsson both have multiple numbers per contact, it just makes sense. That issue and the fact that the Razr doesn’t support high speed data I needed something new. Unfortunately finding something new wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

After some research I ended buying a Nokia 6120 Classic. It wasn’t my first choice, but every other phone I wanted first didn’t cover some basic function that I wanted. To be clear I wasn’t asking for things like video calling, or Wifi, etc. I wanted BASIC stuff like a quad band phone, aka a phone that will work in the USA on both GSM frequencies here. Apparently most of the really good phones I liked are sold as Tri band phones, and don’t have the new 850mhz frequency on them. Eventually I found the 6120. It is actually a cool phone. The initial things that I didn’t like about the phone I found ways to work around. The only thing that I don’t like so far is the fact that the keypad is so small, but that is why I have an address book!

So for now I am happy with my change. I am the first to admit that i am fickle, so since it is less than a day since I switched the jury is still out on if I keep this setup, but the real test will be when the N810 comes out and I use it and the 6120 together. Until then I will keep my Treo 680 in my bag and use it as a simple PDA. Oh and to be completely accurate about what I am writting, I know the 6120 Classic actually a Smartphone. It does have the Symbian Series 60 OS, but any smartphone without a keyboard isn’t really a smartphone to me.

10.5 Compatible Applications

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Since I was upgrading to Leapord I knew there might be issues with the new OS and applications I typically use. So when I was upgrading this week I also got a small portable hard drive that I replicated my existing Tiger install onto using Carbon Copy Cloner in case I need to use applications that don’t work with the new OS. I am glad I did that since there are several key applications that I use that don’t work just yet. So far out of everything I use the following don’t work or have trouble working with 10.5:

ecto: 2.x doesn’t work so thankfully I am writing this with a trial beta of 3.0.

Missing Sync for Palm: It doesn’t work, and Mark/Space recommends waiting until a working version comes out. They claim this will happen in the next 90 days.

PGP Destop 9.x: Pieces of it might work according to the forums I read, but it was recomended not to try to use it since it might cause issues with encrypted disks I have. A beta of the latest version that will support 10.5 is supposed to come out in November, so that means in 30 days or so.

Daylite 3.5: The awsome support guys at Marketcircle have a beta (3.6) that will work with Leapord but hasn’t publicly released it. They said if you ask nice they will give it to you. Since I was dealing with someone regarding a problem with syncing in 3.5.x I asked for and got a copy of 3.6. Unfortunately all the problems they were able to fix for me in 3.5.2 are back in 3.6 (or what appears to be the same issue). I can use the application but I can’t sync with Apple sync services. Another separate post on this is pending since using this program is changing how I am productive. The breakthrough was when they released version 3.5 with access to sync services, but as I said more on this later.

Mactheripper: I am not even sure if this application is supported anymore but I love it. Unfortunately it crashes allot now. Not sure what to do with it just yet.