Wireless Data

Wireless Broadband Woes

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This weekend I broke out the Verizon Wireless Broadband card I have for my work computer to test it to ensure that it worked for my trip. Turns out it didn’t. I spend about an hour reinstalling the software a few times and troubleshooting as best as I could. I ended up giving up and called Verizon on Monday for help. My knowledge on the subject and my volunteering all that I did got me right escalated to a level 2 guy and then a relatively quick answer for my problem when he was stumped also. It turns out when you actually know as much or more about the system you are calling about you tend to get the tech support guys to get you to someone higher up quick. Something (they didn’t say what) wasn’t provisioned on my account properly even though the card worked a week and a half ago when I used it last.

So far the card has been working for my trip. I do have to say (hopefully I won’t jinx myself) that the coverage and quality of service on Verizon is better than what I had with T-Mobile. I am just personally not a fan of the company and some of the customer service practices. Won’t go into them here, but you get the idea if you read past posts. In general the service is still great though.

I will blog about the details of the trip in other posts to come.

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The Evil Empire Is Evil, But Has Good Signal

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After an issue with really poor signal at our new office while setting up some gear we have decided to ditch our Nextell’s. I like the direct connect, but having the phones work and recieving email all the time on the Blackberry’s are more important than having a cool feature. So we took the plunge and got Verizon Wireless phones. I personally don’t like the heavy handed tacktics they use to keep customers (2 year deals, and limited time frames to upgrade phones) but their service is still probibly the best in NYC. I finally ported my number from my personal T-Mobile line over and now am very happy with my new Treo 700P on the EVDO data service.

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54 Wireless Networks

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With my new Macbook I find 54 wifi networks in my apartment (See the first page of them in picture below). it is crazy. With my iMac or Powerbook I found only like 9. The antenna is that much more sensitive on this new Macbook. Now I have to find out how many of them are open with good signal strength. I also need to make sure my own wifi network is not getting bad signal strength because it is sharing a channel with too many nearby networks.

54 Wireless Networks

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Security Is Inconvenient

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If anyone has every told you security is convenient for you, they are lying. Security is very inconvenient. The more secure something is the more difficult and or expensive it is to use. it is much harder to support a group of people you force hard passwords on vs a group you let set a password to anything they want. You know I am right. People give lip service to wanting more security, and when they are given it they don’t like how hard it is to use whatever system you secured.

Take for example something I read a few months ago that said AOL was offering a secure ID like FOB for people to enhance the security on how they log onto their accounts. I have used Secure ID’s for years (i haven’t used it in years, but I have used them long ago, they are not new) and it is not some new wiz bang system. Will the masses use it? probably not unless they are forced to. Do you really think that (i always use my dad as the example) my dad would carry around a keychain secure id to just log into AOL? He would screw it up and get frustrated inside of a week.

Westchester county in NY is trying to legislate securing Wifi networks. In principle it is nice that the county is trying to protect citizens, but come on! Do you really think a person or small business that is ignorant enough to put up an unsecured WIFI network will be compelled to register with the county and secure the system just because there is a law saying it. Hello people this won’t do anything but piss people off and generate some revenue for the county. Like I said before, security is a myth. You cannot legislate the population into security compliance. If you could people in rural areas won’t still leave their houses unlocked and keys in the car!

This of course will be the problem going forward with everything becoming digital. The more secure you try to make something, the less mainstream it will become, but the more mainstream something becomes the more secure it needs to be to protect the public.

Visa, MasterCard or OTHER!

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I am an American Express Card holder. I am happy about that. Amex treats you right. I don’t remember any major problem (nock on wood) with them as a credit card company. I do remember all the good things they have done when I have had problems. Sometimes without me even asking. That is good service. Yes I pay allot for that service, but isn’t that the point?

Because I am so happy with my Amex I have decided long ago that I don’t need any other card. I mean I have a charge and credit card with Amex. Well since my bank has given me a Debit card allong with my ATM card I figure I can use that if I ever come accross a place that does not take Amex. I must say that I have been known to leave stores when they don’t take Amex. If you want my business you should take a credit card that huge portions of he popuation have, and the vast majority of stores take. Being cheap about the percentage point or two that Amex charges over Visa/Mastercard is just petty and looses my business. I got that attitude from my dad. He had a Visa card that he never used. I remember on a few occasions where we would leave stores if they didn’t take amex, even though he could use the visa card. I am the customer, I want to pay in a legitimate way using this card. If you won’t accomodate me, I am leaving. And leave we would. I am like my dad (even though sometimes I don’t like to admit it). We can both be stuborn. he a bit more than me, but as a customer I am right. Aren’t i?

I am here in Maine. More on that later. The inn I am staying at has WIFI. I was like cool. I have 2 hours to kill so let me get online and check my mail. Yeah, that didn’t work. Why you ask? Well the wifi company doesn’t take Amex. I was a bit miffed but then said ok, this is why I have my debit card anyway. So I broke out the debit card and punched in my digits only to get rejected. The credit card authorization company does not recognize my debit card as a valid MasterCard. So I am stuck with no WIFI. I am actually cool with that, but I am really pissed at a company that makes it so difficult for me to use there service. OK, I know everyone DOESN’T take amex, so I use my debit card, and you STILL won’t take the dam card. Come on. I am still not going to run out and get a Visa or Master Card. I will spend my money at a place that is willing to take it!!!

The New Razr

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I bought a new Razr (Motorola V3 Razr) last week. After a week of issues with getting it shipped, the place I bought it from on eBay came through and dropped it to me via Fedex Saturday delivery. I guess they had issues getting the phone unlocked like the auction said. After a (minor) fit by me the guy got the new phone to me before my trip. I charged it up yesterday and I am now trying to use it as my main phone. The Treo is not going away just yet. Since I cannot find a palm with a good keyboard the Treo will remain at least as a PDA for a while. I also do find times where I like to put the SIM in it and use it instead of the Razr. I did that with my old Sony Ericsson T-610 for the past week and a half.

First impressions on the Razr is NICE! Besides the address book, I find the phone very nice. Slim, good sound quaility, nice screen, etc. It was trivial to sync with my Powerbook.

Like I said the only issue I have is the address book. I don’t like that it doesn’t have 1 contact for each person, with a sub section for each phone number. Instead it has a different entry for every phone number for every contact.

Setting up the Razr to be a wireless modem for my Powerbook was also simple. I found the scripts for the phone allong with some nice tips off of some guys blog and he was dead on.

Travel Essentials

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As I said the other day, I don’t travel anywhere near as much as I used to. Just because I don’t go out of the office that much doesn’t mean that when I do I want to be any less connected. I did a quick overnight trip Monday-Tuesday. I (bored on the train) now write about what I relied on during the trek.

While in transit nothing says keeping in contact with the world like a Blackberry. When you can’t or don’t want to bring out a laptop it is essential. I hate it for everything else, including the stupid direct connect. I find that if I want to hold a conversation I might as well call the person than have a 20 minute conversation on DC. For email nothing beats the Blackberry, yet.

My powerbook was the laptop of choice this trip. My thinkpad is acting funky, and I don’t want to wipe it since I am getting a new one next week. So the powerbook stepped in and performed flawlessly (so far). I used it to watch some tv shows I recorded last week. Checked mail, did work, blogged, etc. All over Wifi!

Without the iPod I would not be sane. It makes train trips, and quiet hotel rooms that much more tolerable. It also is a great portable hard drive to store said TV shows that I watched on my powerbook. I say YES to plug and play!

My Treo is great (always carry it), but this trip it was used as it normally is. Still great, and a must for travel. What I used instead was Extension Mobility on Cisco Call Manager. It is the ability to log into any CCM phone and your extension moves with you. That coupled with the Cisco WIFI cordless phone make working in a different office just like I was in NYC, even when I was running around between 2 floors.

My new Omega X-33 watch was also a must this trip. I use my watch as an alarm wherever I go. I took my timex (broken band and all) along just in case the Omega didn’t do its job. It worked fine. I almost fell out of bed with the loudness of the alarm this morning. First impressions is this watch and I hopefully will have a long friendship!

Lastly I loved my Broadvoice VOIP phone, & Skype. I didn’t use broadvoice this trip, but I used its voice mail. I got all my VM emailed to me so I stayed in touch with everyone. I would never have checked my NYC VM without it. Skype is great since I can use it on my powerbook with my Sony Ericsson HBH-65 bluetooth headset from anywhere I have an internet connection. For this trip it was free calls from the hotel. I didn’t even need my cell phone for it. If I had broadvoice soft-phone I wouldn’t even need skype.

I have talked (praised) most of these items before, but when you use them all together you have a very smooth travel experience. I will most likely be using most if not all of this gear on my next extended trip. Now if only Amtrak could accommodate a nice ON TIME trip and travel would be painless.

The train is approaching Penn now. About an hour and 15 minutes late. So I will wrap this up so I can put the powerbook away. More mobile reviews when I use the stuff and have time to write about them! This post was written on Tuesday afternoon 5-17-05…

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Cisco 7920 IP Wifi Phone

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I have had the opportunity to play with the Cisco 7920 Wifi IP phone recently. I have said before I am a fan of Cisco Call Manager (CCM). I use it, I like it. I thought the 7940 wired IP phones were great. This Wifi phone operates just like a 7940 but it is a cordless. I have taken it between 2 locations with the same WEP configuration and it worked seamlessly. I took it between 2 floors with seamless wifi setup and it worked without a problem. The battery life leaves a bit to be desired, and a cradle would be nice for what these things cost, but the phone is still great.

I am tempted to get a wifi IP phone for my personal Broadvoice account. They offer help on configuring them, and they even sell one through Hello Direct. I am just not sure if the quality is as good as the Cisco one? Too bad the 7920 is only a skinny based phone and wont work on SIP.

On-Call This Week

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After weeks of flying under the radar I got the joy of being “technically” on call this weekend. I mean technically since I am always on call. I get calls for problems even when I am not the person who is supposed to be called. It comes with my position. One of the worst things that can happen to me is to be sleeping and get woken up with some major systems outage. It get the same feeling I used to get when I ran on an EMS squad in college and a call would come in late at night. The only difference is being on call at work usually does not require me to go out in the cold to respond to something.

To set a good example I took the on call pager this week. Well it is not really a pager. We all have nextel’s (most with Blackberry’s), so we just route the emergency number to the Nextel of whoever is on call. Of course most of the team was happy when I got to be on call. They assume if someone calls for a non emergency I will give them a verbal beat down. They are probably correct.

Hotspots

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Yesterday Jayson, Danny, & I took off to Starbucks to study (tech books), talk about work, etc. We have wanted to try that for a while but have been busy. We finally made it out. James joined us for a bit, but was busy and had to go. First, the starbucks in Union Square was noisy. Yes there are actually 2 Starbucks in Union Square but I assume the other one was as noisy as this one. Jayson says the one by his house is not as bad and he has gone to read and drink coffee for hours without problems. I felt like I was back in High School with two tables of extremly loud high school girls sitting rite by us. The place was packed. 4 of us sat at a table made for 2. Totally not the laid back experience we were looking for. not sure if I will suggest that again.

We did make productive use of our time while we were there. I tried out the T-Mobile Hotspots. I used it in Delta crown rooms before but I wanted to give it a shot at Starbucks. There were 3 free networks in range (or so the laptop said), but I couldn’t connect to any of them. So I paid. it is not cheap, but it works great. We ended up shopping for an LCD TV online. as I said in my post yesterday the specs I want are just too pricey right now.