IM

Nokia N810

by

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

, , , ,

AOL For Free?

by

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.

We Can See You!

by

Today I went out and bought some iSight camera’s to test out. I have said it before, but I will say it again. Most of the time I can say I play with toys for a living and I won’t be lying. One of the business managers wanted a video camera solution so people in one of our offices can see what others are doing in another office, and vice versa. The theory is to bridge the gap between the offices by seeing a small glimpse of what goes on in each location. I thought it was a really cool idea. After looking at several options I came to believe that the iSight cameras were the best bet. Several wireless network cameras were several hundred dollars each. Plus the computers and monitors we would need to show the other offices camera on, the cost got to great. With iSight we can get a computer (Mac Mini) a monitor and the iSight camera and that is all.

To test the setup I got 2 camera’s. Jayson and I plugged them into our Powerbooks and we took them for a spin. The picture looked good in full screen mode on my 19″ LCD. Jay took it a step further and plugged his Powerbook and iSight into the 42″ Plasma we have in the office and went full screen. It looked good enough that we can use 23″ LCD TV’s for this project. The picture in general looked really good. Granted we were on the same LAN, but we have decent bandwidth between both offices so it should work fine.

What is even cooler is we were able to use the video chat functions of Jabber, and not even use AIM. After showing that we can use these iSight cameras for the solution I went out and looked to get the computers. At first I was going to get the really cheap $499 mini’s but then I realized we need the wifi for one setup, and maybe need it for the other one as well. It was worth the extra $100 to have it ready if needed. I love that this stuff just worked. I plugged in the camera and the software immediately said there was an update ready for download. I clicked ok to download it, and in less than 2 minutes and one OK click later I was chatting via video. Not bad for an OS that has less than 5% of the market!

Now that we know the cameras will work for this solution I now want them to use for day to day video conferencing between the people in my department in my office and the other one! That would be really nice!

Projects Abound

by

Our Jabber server is acting up. I think it is another application running on the box. We need to migrate the app to a new machine. Our new guy, Andrew is working on the new Jabber server. We are going to do a Jive server running on Suse 9 enterprise. I got the budget approval from bob today so we ordered a box. To get things going quicker we took a box earmarked for a domain controller in Kingston and borrowed it. We won’t need to deploy the DC until after the new hardware gets in anyway. We hope to have the new server built by the end of next week. Andrew has a test instance of the app up now. Hopefully we can have all the users configured in under 2 weeks for a cut over.

Jayson spent the entire day friday at our data center working with EMC setting up our SAN. For some reason I always underestimate time needed to do things at the data center. Besides the SAN he was working on 2 new database servers we are deploying to replace our existing box’s. They will hold us over until we cut over to the new database cluster design utilizing the SAN.

Our 5th cabinet is finally completed at our data center. we now have room for the growth we are expecting in our server farm. That also means we got rid of the last desktop computer in our data center. They were plaguing me for years. I blame Gus for saying just put anything up there. We finally are doing things right by only putting in nice rack mount servers!

I spent my days this week working on getting quotes for a new 6500 series switch at our data center. it will also do load balancing for our websites, or that is the goal. if we don’t it approved we will go with a standard load balance system. I still think the core switch idea is best. I also did research into a new gateway router for our call center. Actually when I think about it I did more quote, and status update work this week than I did technical work. Man, the management thing is pulling me deeper and deeper each week!

Besides the regular work this week I had enough problems. Jayson was dealing with a core switch at our data center that for some reason would wig out when touched on Tuesday. Again on Friday it seemed to reboot on its own. We are going to observe it and see if it does anything weird when no one is physically near it since both incidents happened when Jay was working on or near the switch. We also had problems over last weekend due to water damage on a smartjack that controls one of our internet circuits. Dam leaky roof in our call center. Then Friday we had another circuit go down at the call center. This time it was our local voice circuit. it took out all inbound local service and all outbound service. the call center can operate with all the inbound calls but can’t make calls out. our LEC is working on it, but they are SO slow. Several other minor issues riddled the week also.

I most likely have to goto our upstate office next week to interview people for the 2 support positions we have open. Originally Kai said I had to come up for 2 days because there were so many people he wanted me to meet, but then we got the number down to a level where I can do it in a day. I don’t like staying overnight up there so a day trip is good for me. it is a long day when you factor in all the travel, but it is a short work day since I am only in the office up there from 10:30 is to 3-4pm. that is needed in order to get back on a decent train. I will have more news on that early next week.

One Of Those AIM People

by

Are you one of those people who leave themselves logged into AIM (if you don’t know what AIM is just stop reading this now)? I used barely use AIM. I have a cycle. Sometimes I won’t turn it on for days, and I get people asking me if I am logged in every. Then there is the other side where you log in once (lets say at work) and never log off. I have lots of friends who do both. I am sort of in the middle. I use iChat (that is how I get onto AIM) on my Powerbook. When I turn on the powerbook I launch AIM. Never auto-start it but almost always I start the program when I start doing anything. I then leave it logged in as long as my computer is on. That means that friday night I turn on my computer at home and usually leave it on all weekend. However that does not mean I am sitting there waiting to take anyone’s IM’s at any moment. So if it says I am idle for 16 hours, or if it says I am unavailable or away I am most likely maybe away or unavailable. Why then do people feel like they have to IM anyway?

Back On The Grid

by

I would have written about my return to work, but I got back and things were so crazy I was unable to write about anything. I am back now. Things are busy as ever. I need another vacation.

I am back connected. You don’t truly know how reliant you are on some technology until you are without it for a while. Then you don’t realize how much you may want to do without some technology until you return to it and find it more of a nuisance than helpful. For me I am less of a fan of IM than I was before I was disconnected. I like IM, but it gets really annoying when anyone can interrupt your thought process when writing something by popping up on your screen. There are several people I know who know no IM etiquette. Going without my mobile phone was a bit harder. There were a few times I wanted to make a quick call and couldn’t. The first thing I did when I landed on Wednesday was see if I had VM. I only had a manageable 7 of them. Not bad for 6 days. Unfortunately I had like 500 emails when I got home. I could do without email (or some email) for a while, but it is still something that I use and is helpful more than harmful.

Now that I am back online, I hope to get some more writing done.

Remote Problems

by

Tuesday I had to deal with problems while I was 2000+ miles and 3 time zones away. First we are having lingering issues with a mail server. No one can log into it locally but the email services are running. so for now we are in a wait and see state with it. we are making sure we have good backups of everything on the box before we mess with it more. Also Kai and I being away isn’t helping.

A reporting function of Zeacom failed again. The only solution is to reboot the system. This is what the brain trust at Zeacom support tells us. Rebooting that system is not without its own risks. Kai and I are the only ones who have rebooted it before. Brian will do it tonight, but it will be his first time. He has seen Kai do it so hopefully we have no issues.

We also had performance issues with Jabber and some other minor crap. I had to juggle this, Dan complaining of site performance issues and 4 lectures. it was a busy day. The problem with the site performance issues is we see nothing wrong on our end. Dan is just frustrated. Not sure what else we can do (from my end) right now. it is not like the local director is acting up again (thank goodness), that I can make a change and magically it is all better. that is what he is hoping for.

iSync Perfection or One Big Mess?

by

I switched from using Entourage to iCal/Address Book for syncing my data to/from my Treo 650 on the Mac. I want the slick UI and terrific integration of Address Book & iCal, but I am concerned about some issues. Firstly I rely on Palm/outlook categories on my Treo. Primarily I use them for distinctive rings on the phone. if work calls I get a specific ring. if people I don’t want to call my cell are in a specific category they goto voice mail and don’t ring, etc. Looks like iSync does not keep the categories intact if I make changes to the categories. This sucks. If I create new contacts on my Mac I need to manually assign them categories when the contact goes onto my Palm.

It also looks like some fields don’t carry over either. I don’t see birthday’s that I entered into Outlook now that the contacts are in Address book. I think IM names are also not carried over.

Don’t get me started about my iCal invites not working in Outlook. There is some hackish fix out there but I don’t want to mess around with it.

Why then do I move/try to move to this? The integration between Address Book, iCal, iChat, Mail, etc is fantastic. That I can add a contact to address book and associate that contact to my AIM contact list in iChat is fantastic. The same goes for my jabber contacts. Linking every contact to email in Mail is also great. I can also sync everything using .Mac to my min and powerbook! Top it off with using spotlight to search everything, and I am a happy person. It makes for easy day to day use. The problem is when I want to get that information out into my Treo I run into issues. I don’t even care that I have problems when I import everything from the Treo to Outlook. I don’t want to use outlook anymore. I have had so many problems with it recently that I could live with using it just for an email archive. But at least work in the Treo!!! I am continuing my search of the internet for solutions or work around’s to my little issues. So far, no luck.

iChat Plus Jabber = Cool

by

I never really warmed up to Apples iChat program until this week. I liked AIM. I never really used MSN. So I stuck with AIM. I like AIM (the service, NOT the program) only because I could not find a better program that will get me on AIM (the service not the program). GAIM, Trillian, etc didn’t do it for me.

On the flip side I use Jabber at work. I love it. It is another fantastic tool that Gus turned me onto years ago (wow, it has been years). Well my love of jabber and my use of my Mac had issues since there was no good jabber client for the mac. I have been using PSI for a while now. it is a good tool, but it had some serious quirks that I didn’t like. Actually they drove me crazy, but I had no other tool that came close to it on the Mac. Then came Tiger. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that iChat now supports jabber. After a few minutes of tinkering I figured out how to get my jabber server up on my iChat software. A few customizations with iChat (that I didn’t know I could do before) and now I am thinking differently about iChat.

Now I have another windows program that works as good or better on my Mac! Dare I dream to work completely off the mac without dealing with my Thinkpad crashing all the time? I have to stop myself from getting excited!

Sean And Kelly

by

My friend Sean and his wife Kelly are visiting today. They flew into DC a few days ago and are driving up to NYC today. They will hang out tonight and stay over by me before they continue their drive up to his parents place near albany tomorrow.

I haven’t seen them in almost a year and a half. It doesn’t feel that long, but I think it has been. Sean is one of those friends that I am sad lives very far away. I have other friends that I wish lived that far away. Go figure.

We IM a few times a month and keep in touch, but it is hard when people are so far away. It will be good to see them.

We are planning on hitting Angelo and Maxis by my office for dinner. I will need to fast today to eat their later.

I got the air mattress from my parents last night so they have a place to sleep. I love that air mattress. I slept on it for almost 6 weeks when I moved to Baton Rouge. it is comfy. Just plug it in and hit the button and it inflates. Ah the joys of technology.