Recently in Technology Category

I run a tech site. It's just a small blog where I will occasionally post news and videos and such. I have never intended for it to be one of the huge gadget blogs, don't consider it a 'contender' or anything like that. I just enjoy writing. I also run a very specific site targeted toward HTPCs and home automation, two of my hobbies. As a result I surf tech sites a couple times a month looking for cool new gadgets or software that I might be able to use or that I might want to post about.

So I decided to check out Google Chrome and downloaded it the other day to check it out. I am back to using Flock again as of this morning but I am still not happy with it.

I really liked Chrome and probably could have come to use it as my default browser. As a matter of fact I had even set it as default until last night. It is faster than Firefox, Flock and IE 7 (and 8) on my system and used quite a bit less memory. I also like the way it compartmentalizes the tabs and memory usage. If one of them became non-responsive the rest were fine and I could kill the task without crashing down the other 25 tabs that I might have open at the same timr. I was very impressed with it. Using Flock, Firefox or IE for a couple of hours and a bunch of tabs and windows open I usually have to kill the whole process after a couple of hours and forget using iTunes and actually listening to music at the same time. WIth Chrome I was able to not only listen to iTunes but keep several different windows open and working at the same time.

So why the switch back to Flock?

I spent two and a half hours working on a post last night. Several thousand words. Shadowscope was apparently offline for 40 minutes or so for some reason so the last autosave Movabletype had done missed 3/4 of the post. I wasn't aware of it because my connection was fine. Anyway, I went to publish the entry and of course got a DNS error. When I tried to go back to the previous page most of the entry was gone. I wanted to cry. With Firefox and Flock I can spend an hour or two working on an entry and if for some reason my draft isn't saved on the server I can go back to the posting form and most or all of it will still be there. I have even used Task Manager to kill flock and when I reopened a new browser window it has saved my entered text. That in itself is worth sticking with to me.

I don't even mind not having access to plugins. If Google would add in saving of text entered into forms I would switch back in a heartbeat. It's just not worth losing two frigging hours of work.

I used to use Windows Live Writer to post blog entries but it's too damn buggy, which is why I switched back to the MT interface in the first place.

Technorati Tags: Google, Firefox, Flock, iTunes, Windows Live Writer, Google Chrome

I came across the links over at Live Crunch. Personally I paid for the wife's upgrade the day it came out but for those of you that want to save $10 here are a couple of links...

(Mirror 4) Download

(Mirror 5) Download

Go check out Live Crunch if you get the time...

There are some pretty cool additions to the software which includes the app store.

Pete was on the cell phone a couple of days ago chatting with one of her friends as girls do when she dropped it in a bucket of water.

She was watering the plants out front.

And talking on the phone at the same time.

It was the wife's phone since neither of us believe that the kids should have a cell phone.

oops.

Needless to say the wife was not terribly impressed by this. We set it up with the blow dryer on it for 40 minutes or so but no go. It was on when it got dropped and it didn't have the chance to dry out properly before it got turned on again so the circuit board is fried. A couple of the keys work but you can't dial out, answer or make calls or do anything else useful.

Luckily I took insurance on her phone when I got it, and the same on mine. In general I believe that you shouldn't take any type of extended warranty on any kind of electronics as it's not worth it but with each phone upgrade we get the phones are more expensive and if you are in the middle of your contract and the phone dies you get to pay full retail rather than getting the deal that new folks do.

Luckily for us I took the insurance. It's a $50 deductible and they have already shipped her new phone out. I did manage to back up her pictures and contacts using Bitpim rather than pay the extra $10 that Verizon rips you off with charges you for transferring the stuff to a new phone, so she won't have to pay for it.

I still have a bit of phone envy for the new iPhone 3G but I am pretty sure that I won't get one. AT&T doesn't offer 3G where I live or work, the iPhone has useless GPS and no Bluetooth so it would just be an expensive MP3 player. What a waste. Maybe I'll get an iPod Touch instead for Christmas or something. I'm leaning toward one of the touchscreen Blackberrys that's supposed to be out before the end of the year though. I've really grown to like my Blackberry and while the HTML browser leaves a lot to be desired it's still the best game in town. The only problem with upgrading is that I'll have to upgrade my accessories as well. Cell phone holsters, extra battery, memory card, USB cable if it doesn't come with it, the list goes on. The case or holster is particularly important for me. I would prefer to just keep the phone in my pocket but it gets such heavy usage at work that I have to wear it on my belt or hanging out of my pocket. The only issue with that is that I beat the crud out of my phones. My current case has paint all over it, scratches, grease and all sorts of other nasties.

I've been using Charter internet access ever since it became available out here in the boondocks a few years back. Prior to that I had DSL through Bellsouth. While I liked having a static IP address (which I had to pay extra for) Charter High Speed is certainly much faster than DSL ever was, at least for me.

One of the other things I liked about it is that in order to get Charter High-Speed I don't have to have any of their other services. I do have cable of course, but they don't force you. With DSL, the phone company said I would have to pay for a phone line in order to get DSL. What the heck is up with that? We have two cell phones here, why would I want or even need a land line?

Anyhow, they have this limited-time offer thing going on right now that I wish I were eligible for. You can get Charter High-Speed for $14.99 a month, try the first 30 days risk-free and when you sign up online you get a $25 Shell gas gift card. The 30 day risk-free thing is a 30 day window for cancellation just in case you aren't happy with their service.

Some other benefits to being a Charter High Speed customer include:

• Get the fastest and most reliable Internet speeds available- Get speeds up to 5Mbps to surf up to 90X faster than 56kbps dial- up and 3X as fast as 1.5Mbps DSL!




• Automatic protection from viruses, hackers and spam - Charter High-Speed Security SuiteÆ has the fastest response to new virus threats and best virus detection.




• 10 e-mail accounts - enough for the whole family plus 20MB of Web space.




• Download in seconds, not minutes plus a reliable always-on, always-fast connection.




• Exclusive content on charter.net- get your news, weather, local movie listings and more!

Go check out the web page if you get some time and see what I am talking about.

I've got a thing for gadgets, specifically PDAs. I'm not sure what it is but I like the idea of being connected and being able to do my computing in the palm of my hand. It's not all it's cracked up to be though. I've gone from a Palm M100 to a Palm Vx, HP iPaq, Motorola Q9m, Samsung i730 and finally a Blackberry Pearl. My favorites are the Blackberry, the Moto Q and the Palm M100 believe it or not. My Palm's were a much more intuitive and easier to use interface than any of the Microsoft WIndows CE offerings. The Windows Mobile gadgets also tend to lock up and once I combined them with my cell phone they really make a mess of things when they are having memory and lock-up issues and you are trying to use the phone at the same time. Not fun.

I like the blackberry as well. I'm not sure what benefits the bigger Blackberrys have over the Pearl other than more screen real estate though. That's what I miss using it. A bigger screen and a touch screen interface. Eventually if Verizon ever gets the iPhone I may go that route. I like the iPod Touch that I gave the wife for Christmas and as long as I can sync my calendar and contacts with it I would be good to go.

Anyhow, I like to check out accessories to go with my PDA as well. Preferably cheap PDA accessories although I prefer the quality to be something I am willing to use. SFPlanet.com has plenty of Cheap PDA Accessories for my window shopping as well as when I get ready to order stuff. There's nothing better than being able to find cool stuff for my phone/PDA than being able to find it while I'm sitting on my rear end :)

They've got some pretty neat stuff as well. Stuff that I haven't seen in the local Verizon store either, like an official Mickey Mouse finger strap thing with a flashing LED that lights up when you get an incoming call. Sweet. I have a pen that does the same thing but Mickey is even cooler. I also found a Krusell leather case I want. It has the thing on the back that will fit on a swivel clip. I hate the belt clip on the back of my Verizon Case. It's a decent quality case but when I asked if they had one with a swivel clip the dude told me that they pretty much quit using them because they break. That's not an issue for me (well, not much anyway) but I like being able to clip it on to my pocket and get it off easy. The last couple of days I have just been carrying the phone in my pocket. It's about a third smaller without the case and if I can't have one I like I just won't use it. I may just have to spend the $22 and but the Krusell case when I get paid, well, maybe in a couple of weeks. It may take all my extra money for the next few weeks to pay off the IRS :(

Supposedly my Freedom Keychain GPS device that I picked up last year while I was still using my Samsung i760 will work with the Blackberry Pearl. I know the GPS device does work because I have gotten it to partner with my computer as well as my old cell phone, but for the life of me I can't seem to get it to work with my Blackberry. It's not a hugely important detail in the grand scheme of things, but I have spent several hours off and on over the last week trying to get the thing to sync up and just can't do it. I am at a loss right now and seriously considering getting something else. The idea of having a GPS receiver and being able to use it with mapping programs is just really cool.

Something else that's pretty cool are the devices that Land Air Sea produces. Their GPS Tracking Key is a small device that picks up signals from the DOF GPS satellites and records the location every second. It's pretty cool that it can get your location within about eight feet. Eight Feet!

You download the data by plugging it into the USB port of a computer and using something like Google Earth you can see where someone or something has been. Since it's small it's easily concealable and the magnet is strong enough to be placed under a car. It's also water resistant as well.

Last year the GPS Tracking Key helped to solve a murder. George Ford's wife thought that he was having an affair and placed on in his car. Originally he had been charged with reckless endangerment but after getting the data from the GPS Tracking Key the Chenango County Police charged him with murder.

There's other reasons to have something like this besides cheating husbands. Three words. Teens with cars. That's enough to make me want tracking devices, cameras, all kinds of stuff on a car. I can also see where it would come in handy if you have a fleet of cars or trucks as well. The device records how fast you travel, the directions you are facing, how long you are stationary and the route you travel. Using just those four things you can extrapolate all kinds of other information as well. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Fall Back. Spring Forward.

Or maybe it's spring back and fall forward.

Doh!

I get it. Spring forward and Fall back.

I'm sure I must be brain dead or something. I'm riding home from drawer change tonight and it struck me. Spring Forward. Fall back. As in the seasons. I'm sure I already knew that but for some reason the play on words hit me as if I had just learned something. Working where I work must be steadily retarding my brain or something. Just give me another decade and I'll be a gibbering drooling fool.

Oh wait, I already am.

Can it get any worse?

So here it is about 10:30. Or 8:30. Shit, it's 11:30 and I have to get up at 5 am. So does that mean I'm getting up at 6 or 4? Can't I just call in and forget this shit.

Why can't the government just let Mr. Sun and Mr Earth's rotation take care of time. They seem to have done a pretty fucking good job of it prior to our meddling. Now you have 482 different time zones (unless you are smart and live in Arizona) and they change twice a year. What the fuck?

So I need to be in bed. It's midnight now and I am not going to be worth a crap in the morning.

The girls are in South Carolina tonight. I suppose I'll sleep on the couch as I usually do. If I happen to be off I will sleep in the bed but I am so afraid that I will oversleep when the wife isn't here that I crash in the living room.

On an entirely different note (pun not intended but well used) I love music. I hate earphones though, thus the reason I don't have an iPod. The earbuds are fucking irritating and headphones are almost as bad. That's one of the reasons I gave the Marine my Jabra Bluetooth earpiece. I tried it for a couple of weeks two different times and I just hate it. I love the quality of the music with headphones but I always feel like I'm missing something with them on. I also can't do like the wife does and only keep one in her ear while she's pretending to pay attention with the other one (the deaf one). I am not easily fooled.

Wait a minute. Actually I guess I am, but I digress.

When I bought the Blackberry last month (did I tell you I'm selling my Samsung i760 on eBay?) it came with a set of earbuds. These are kind of nice. They are heavy. Damn, they actually have metal in them and aren't some cheap ass piece of crap plastic junk that I'm going to tear up in two days. I set them aside. Since there's no one in the house but me and I don't want to hear the yipping of the dog as I kick him through the house I figured I would try them out tonight. Very nice. I also like the media player that comes with the Blackberry as well. The only problem I have is that it won't let me hide shit from it, so along with every fucking song on my SD card I also get 2 seconds dings and pings and assorted whoops in between songs. I don't want that shit going off when I'm listening to music. Can't they fix this shit?

Speaking of eBay, the auction on my phone should have been complete several days ago but they killed the first one. AND charged me $27 bucks for it. "KEYWORD SPAMMING" Here's a keyword for you. Two, actually. FUCK YOU.

I had it listed as a Samsung i760, almost new. Hell, I have used eBay for about seven years now, but I am not on there very often and I don't know anything about keyword spamming. It IS almost new you bunch of shitheads. They fucking waited until six days into the auction when it was up to at least the amount I really want for the phone, THEN they cancel the fucking thing. Bullshit. So I have about three bids right now and it's only going for $250 right now. If'n you are looking for a Windows Mobile 6 phone, head your happy ass on over and bid. Just because I hate the fucking thing doesn't mean that you will. I understand it's supposed to be a pretty good phone but after three months of usage I hate it.

Now the Blackberry Pearl this thing's the shit. It had better be for $450. It's not the perfect phone by any means but it's pretty cool. I think someone needs to ship me their iPhone and let me use it for a couple of months so that I can see if I like it or not. You go into the Verizon place (or wherever the fuck you shop) and they have these stickers on the screens and very few working models around so you can't really tell how much of a pain in the ass it is going to be to use or if you are going to like it or not. And these geeks that write the call phone reviews are all fucking retards anyway. What the fuck do they know and how many times have they had to try and cover two different shifts with people that have called in in three different stores while they are driving somewhere anyway. With a cup of coffee in one hand and a smoke in the other. Now THAT's the test of a goddamned phone! If I can call out and answer while playing with myself at 80mph that's the phone I need and don't give me any of that hands free bullshit. The same thing applies to hands free devices that does to earbuds and head phones and retards that look like they are talking to themselves in the car need to be run off the road anyway.

Well, now that it really is late I have to hit the sack.

I received this email earlier while at work it best to just reproduce it here in it's entirety. If you are in favor of the act make sure and contact your congressional representatives.

My web host has suggested that I move to a new server they have online. That will be nice as it should make things a bit faster. I received this email earlier:

That will be pretty darned nice. I have had to disable 90% of the plugins and addons for MT due to CPU usage and the fact that I couldn't even log in. I even had to disable my server stats plugin, MT-VisitorStats because the MT dashboard refused to load even after upgrading to the newest release. It will be nice to be able to use some of them again.

RecordNations offers a document scanning service as well as storage for your important documents. Their records storage lets you free up space on your servers and keep them in a secure off-site location.

Not keeping proper records cost business millions of dollars every year and sometimes entire companies go down because of lack of proper planning. Look at the woman just arrested in Florida last week. Her employer was looking to replace her and she found out and then erased 15 years of architectural records, costing the company something like $8.4 million. Had they used proper storage management and had their important records stored in a secure off-site location it never would have happened.

I used to do a bit of maintenance on a local attorney's network but he was too cheap to buy proper storage and ended up losing his server and quite a few records in the process. I was able to recover most of them for him as added cost to his office, but had he kept his records secure somewhere else, losing a server would not have been such a big deal. He did have to reproduce most of his payroll records by hand since that was one of the things I was not able to recover.

There are plenty of document scanning services out there, so make sure that you are using one such as RecordNations. Dependable and extensive data backup experience is what you need, in addition to through security procedures.

I started my browser up the other morning and realized that Flock had been updated again. I think I am currently running version 1.07. I am really starting to like Flock. I don't really use the Media bar but it does support all of the Firefox plugins, or the ones I use anyway. It also seems to use less memory than Firefox and while I realize that the memory leaks in Firefox are mostly caused by 3rd party plugins, Flock doesn't seem to have as many problems with it. It does use more and more memory than FF but I seem to be able to use it at least two or three times longer than Firefox. Pretty big difference, particularly when I am blogging.

I probably use about 10-15 different plugins on a regular basis including toolbars and a popup blocker, as well as a few others that just make it easier for me when I am surfing the web.

As a web site, Cellware is still in it's beta version but from what I have seen at the site, you couldn't tell. It seems to be in full release to me unless they are going to be adding more features.

Cellware is a free portal for mobile downloads such as ringtones, wallpapers, video, games and applications.

In addition to being a download site you can also set up a profile and it starts looking more like a mobile social networking sort of place. Pretty cool actually. When you first sign up for a free account through Cellware it lets you invite your friends from several different services to come check it out, including MySpace, Friendster and Facebook. You can also import contacts from your webmail services as well.

Aside from the content that they have (and lots of other web sites have as well) there are several things that seem unique to Cellware. You can create your own ringtones right on the sight by uploading a file. Any music or sound file that's on your hard drive can be uploaded and turned into a ringtone. Once it's uploaded you use their ringtone editor to select the 20 second portion of the file that you want to keep, enter some information so that you can identify it and then save it. Then you just download it to your phone or even share it with your friends.

I have used several different sound editors to create ringtones from mp3's in the past and it can be a pain. You have to get it the right bitrate and length and then use a program like Bitpim (which voids your warranty) to copy it over to the correct place in your phone's file system. Cellware makes it pretty easy.

You can also use their mashup editor to mashup two different ringtones. You can put them end to end to make one long ringtone, or you can actually overlay the two. Very cool, particularly if you have an instrumental and a bit of cool spoken text or verse you want to combine. Another pretty neat option is to use their text-to-speech editor to turn text into a ringtone. They also have ringtones that contain your name or that of your friends. Nametones. Personalize your friends ringtone to the max.

One thing I did notice while browsing the Name Tones is that there are quite a few of them on the site. It would be nice if they would add links to each letter. It does let you jump five or six pages at a time, but that's not exact. It also doesn't let you change the view to alphabetical. It seems to be listed in order of upload rather than anything else. Of course I may just be slow on the uptake too. Their IS a search function. Once I searched for my name I managed to find four ringtones that contained it. Vain, aren't I? Once I located the one I wanted and previewed it right there in my browser I then navigated to their WAP page from my cell phone browser, entered the download ID number and got it right on the phone.

Cellware has a pretty cool image editor as well to create and share your mobile wallpapers as well. It lets you add special effects, rotate and crop your images and then send it to your phone.

One thing you may want to check out is the fact that Cellware bases their business model on sharing their site revenue as well. As you create and upload content they share it with the content creators.

You can set up in your profile to view (or not view) certain content as well. Initially when you first sign up it only lets you see "G" rated content, which is a great thing if you have kids or teenagers that might access your account. You can choose from "G, PG,R and X" for your content viewing pleasure if you want to get a little racy with your downloads.

As more and more web sites are created as or convert to mobile sites for cell phone and smart phone use, the mobile content available will continue to improve as they have over the last couple of years. Go check out Cellware and see what I mean.

Updated - I stopped at the hated Wal-Mart and picked up a Dell widescreen 19". This is sweet. It actually has a much smaller footprint than the five year old LCD I was using. Now I can close the rolltop desk it sits on. Resolution on it is 1440x900. I feel the need for a bit of gaming. Maybe after I nap for a while. It was a long day and day number seven at work for me. I only have two more to go (if I don't kill someone in the meantime) until I get two off in a row. That will be the first two days off I have had together since December 8th and 9th. I have actually only had two off since then, not including a half-day that I took, but still had seven hours of meetings. No wonder I have been such a bastard lately.

Damned if my monitor hasn't crapped out on me this morning. I have known for a while that it was dying but I was hoping that it would last a little while longer. Back before Christmas I gave everyone instructions not to turn it off because I wouldn't be able to get it back on again and they have done pretty well.

I woke up this morning and have been messing with it for a while but it is completely dead. So much for that. I suppose a trip to the Wal Mart is called for this morning before I go to work. I keep a $0 balance on one card but had planned to keep it that way, so much for that.

Sorry about the slow loading times for the site today. I'm not real sure what's up but it appears to be hanging up on MyBlogLog's JavaScript tracking widget. I will give it another hour or so before I yank it from the site.

I have been getting quite a few hits lately from the post I put up a couple of years ago when Meedio and crew sold out to Yahoo and crapped all over the users that had donated and purchased Meedio from them. Anyhow, at that point I was hosting Meedio here for download but the bandwidth got to be too much and I took the file offline.

Here is a link for anyone interested in downloading Meedio. It seems to be pretty reliable. I will also see if I can locate some others when I have the time and post them as well as others.

http://members.chello.be/sf15418/MEEDIO.1.41.setup.exe