http://www.meebo.com/notifier/
Meebo , my favorite web-based IM solution which allows me to cross-connect all the IM services with no install and awesome ease-0f-use, which in the recent past has added groups and an API, as well as other enhancements, is doing it again. Now they have a (Windows) desktop notification app. I don't know how I feel about this, as one of my favorite things about Meebo is no install, so that wherever I am, including on my iPhone (but not my Windows Mobile Samsung i760 on Verizon) I can instantly put in the url, log in, and get access to all my friends on Gtalk, AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo IM. However I am sure there have been tons of people clamoring for this, and I can totally see the value. Nice job!
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Verizon Femtocell network extender
I have read a lot of comments to the various tech articles wondering what the point of these devices is and why anybody would ever pay for one. Aren't you already paying for wireless? Shouldn't the cell phone company pay you to basically host a tower through your broadband connection?
The people who write those comments will never be able to understand why within minutes of hearing that Verizon was offering a femtocell I had my credit card out and their web site in my browser. You can't understand unless you too have no cell service at your home. I don't mean just one or two bars, I mean no service at my home for six years. I'll leave the inconvenience of that to your imagination.
On to the device. Basically it looks like a modern home router. Good long power cord with a brick. 4 wild blue lights. Stick antenna in the back, along with ethernet and power. There's a port that looks like HDMI hid under the base, with no explanation for what it does in the manual. Finally there's a sliding cover on the back of the top, which you can remove to access the GPS transponder and its associated port - this is because you have the option of removing the transponder, hooking it up to a long provided cable, and remoting it closer to a window. Nifty!
There's an FAQ at http://support.vzw.com/faqs/Equipment/network_extender.html . The device needs to be two feet away from any wifi access point. It can take AN HOUR for the GPS to finish initial setup. The phone needs to come close (10 feet?) to the device when you are bringing it into the extender network (each time), but once it is "connected", you can move much farther away from the base. No EVDO, but supposedly it will do 1Xrtt. You can bring it with you when you are traveling (in the US).
I fired it up first without remoting the GPS transponder. The GPS and system lights never turned blue from red. However I was able to "see" the device on Verizon's site and almost immediately manage the restriction list. After about 15 minutes I shut it down again, and ran the transponder over to the window. After almost another 10 minutes, the GPS light finally went blue. It took another 5-10 minutes for the system light to finally go solid blue. Within a minute or so two of my phones had full bars, and test calls were successful and clear. So far I appear to have a good signal in every part of my house I have tried. The device is actually located in a hutch too.
I can't wait to try out text messages, and also see how well the signal lasts through the night in my bedroom. It's early days yet, but so far the extender seems awesome, really amazing. I can't believe this long vigil is finally over, and this dream ending, out of nowhere honestly, is real.
The people who write those comments will never be able to understand why within minutes of hearing that Verizon was offering a femtocell I had my credit card out and their web site in my browser. You can't understand unless you too have no cell service at your home. I don't mean just one or two bars, I mean no service at my home for six years. I'll leave the inconvenience of that to your imagination.
On to the device. Basically it looks like a modern home router. Good long power cord with a brick. 4 wild blue lights. Stick antenna in the back, along with ethernet and power. There's a port that looks like HDMI hid under the base, with no explanation for what it does in the manual. Finally there's a sliding cover on the back of the top, which you can remove to access the GPS transponder and its associated port - this is because you have the option of removing the transponder, hooking it up to a long provided cable, and remoting it closer to a window. Nifty!
There's an FAQ at http://support.vzw.com/faqs/Equipment/network_extender.html . The device needs to be two feet away from any wifi access point. It can take AN HOUR for the GPS to finish initial setup. The phone needs to come close (10 feet?) to the device when you are bringing it into the extender network (each time), but once it is "connected", you can move much farther away from the base. No EVDO, but supposedly it will do 1Xrtt. You can bring it with you when you are traveling (in the US).
I fired it up first without remoting the GPS transponder. The GPS and system lights never turned blue from red. However I was able to "see" the device on Verizon's site and almost immediately manage the restriction list. After about 15 minutes I shut it down again, and ran the transponder over to the window. After almost another 10 minutes, the GPS light finally went blue. It took another 5-10 minutes for the system light to finally go solid blue. Within a minute or so two of my phones had full bars, and test calls were successful and clear. So far I appear to have a good signal in every part of my house I have tried. The device is actually located in a hutch too.
I can't wait to try out text messages, and also see how well the signal lasts through the night in my bedroom. It's early days yet, but so far the extender seems awesome, really amazing. I can't believe this long vigil is finally over, and this dream ending, out of nowhere honestly, is real.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
GPT versus DiskPart
So I had a hard drive with a Linux filesystem on it (from FreeNas specifically). I tried to manage the drive in Windows and this was the status - "gpt protective partition". I was unable to remove the partition or reformat in any way.
I googled the phrase and came up with http://blog.paulgu.com/2008/01/06/how-to-delete-gpt-protective-partition . This worked perfectly, and now I have control of the drive in Windows again!
I googled the phrase and came up with http://blog.paulgu.com/2008/01/06/how-to-delete-gpt-protective-partition . This worked perfectly, and now I have control of the drive in Windows again!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Ice Dams
I'm taking a little break from computer technology today to pass on what I have learned about ice dams. I own an older home which was not designed to keep the various parts of the roof cold. Therefore I have ice dams, which is when water backs up into your home when it gets trapped behind ice which build ups at the roof's edge because the eaves (edges) are colder than the rest of the roof.
I have had the home about 6 years now. Several years ago, I didn't know what ice dams were. I thought the hanging icicles looked great. Then some water backed up into the roof, along a seam and down a wall, across a poorly-grounded electrical switch and caused a house fire. Thank God there was relatively minimal damage. An electrician repaired the wiring. A roofer flashed and re-shingled half of that particular roof. I repaired and repainted the wall and ceiling damage.
I did a lot of reading about ice dams at the time, educating myself. In the end I decided to get a roof rake, to try to prevent ice dams from forming by keeping the snow off. It's literally too much work to clear all the roofs with it, so I try to get at least the last 4 feet, which is recommended for ice dams.
I thought that was working well until last year, when I again had some water leaking into my house, in a different place this time (right where the computer was!). Basically what had happened was that sometimes storms come in such a way (such as an ice storm followed immediately by snow) that even with roof-raking, the roof will not be clear at the eaves, and then the ice dam forms. I assumed as long as I kept the roof raked, thereby minimizing the material there, that everything would work out. I was wrong.
I ended up putting up a ladder in the snow in middle of the night in freezing weather, and climbing up to chip channels in various spots along the dam, letting the water out. Cutting channels was an emergency method my dad had heard of. It was supposed to be much more effective, easier on your roof, and safer, than trying to clear all the ice. Once the channels were clear and running I kept them clear with liberal applications of calcium chloride. (Sodium chloride should never be used for this by the way, as salt will damage your roof, your home, and any vegetation below.)
Fast-forward to this year. The ice-followed-by-snow scenario took place again last week. I had two leaks in the same week this week, one in the place where we had the fire, and one in the same place as last year. I handled both with the emergency channel-chipping method which so far appears to be successful in stopping any further damage or leaking. But it looked like it was time to re-google the current state of ice dam technology.
Here is what I have learned. There are several ways to go at the problem, all with pluses and minuses, which I will attempt to enumerate here. Suffice it to say the first ones are very expensive and intrusive, with the benefit of needing less or no maintenance. Effectiveness is really going to depend on specific circumstances as best as I can find out. If your solution is well designed, and implemented by an expert, you could have great results. However if either the architect or the builder is uncommitted or inexperienced, good intentions and lots of money mostly likely will not bring success. It has to be said that baking this into a new home is far preferable to retrofitting an older one. The last solutions are cheaper and less intrusive, however they involve lots of maintenance, and wear on your roof. As reactionary measures, rather than preventative ones, they are naturally less effective.
(1) Redesign your house. This is the only truly preventative measure, and even so it is not guaranteed to work. The idea is to create an area above your heated living areas that is unheated. Your new roof goes on top of that. Ice dams do not form because the roofs thaws evenly. Obviously the drawback is expense. The benefit is no further maintenance required. Theoretically there are weather conditions which are impossible to engineer against, but there are edge cases for everything, and emergency methods should help prevent permanent damage.
(2) New roof with a moisture barrier. There are standard products and methods available now to put a waterproof membrane under your whole roof. The drawback again is expense. The benefit is it should be cheaper than option 1 while still calling for no maintenance.
(3) New roof with a ventilation layer. The idea is this is a retrofit way to accomplish the best possible scenario, a cool roof. The technology appears to be fairly new, and fancy (as in perhaps a little complicated to implement effectively, in such a way that it would last). However I didn't look at it closely.
(4) Metal roof. I saw mentions of metal roofs, but no explanation offered as to why they would be effective in battling ice dams. I'll be keeping my eye on this, as I also like the sound rain makes on metal roofs! However I have one on my garage, and there are weird weather conditions where it leaks big time through every (rubber-grommeted) nail. This has happened a couple of times, I think usually when there are temperature extremes in the same day (going from way hot to way cold, or the reverse?).
(5) Heat tape. I know people who swear it works miracles. However the comments online and by professionals are universally against it. It wears out quickly, shortens the life of the roof, and while it does melt ice, the ice dam simply re-forms above it on the roof. It is put on in a wave pattern for some reason.
(6) Heat panels. This is something new since the last time I looked. Heat tape is run through aluminum panels attached to the roof at the eaves. I couldn't find any outside evidence of the success or failure of these products, nor could I find any prices. Until both of those exist I'd leave any recommendations to the experts. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.bylinusa.com/roof_ice_melt/RIM1.html
http://www.thermaltechusa.com/
(7) Roof rakes. There are a couple of variations on the plain roof rake, including wheels and wires and slides. In general, at least in my experience, it is roofs with poor pitch that have ice dams, and I doubt any of these tricks would work on such roofs. One hint my Dad came up with is to buy thick (and lined for the cold) rubber (or plastic?) gloves. There is something about the wet aluminum that easily ruins any other type of glove in minutes. The drawbacks I am seeing with the roof rake are:
-It is ineffective (I am still having leaks).
-It damages the roof. It is amazing how much material I have lost off the shingles.
-It is maintenance-intensive. This easily adds an hour or two onto every snowstorm. And until you have to work with your arms raised above your head under load for an hour, you can not imagine the agony in your shoulder muscles. Then once you are done, all the snow you have brought down is now packed tightly by the fall onto your porch or walk, where it will take many times the effort of initially shoveling those areas, to clear them again.
(8) Ice dam sock. This is my new find! You take nylon panty hose, fill it with calcium chloride (18" long), and tie off the top somehow (velcro seems to be common for reuse). You place it on the roof at and perpendicular to the edge, every 10-15 feet. Refill roughly every 30 days. This creates the channels I talked about before, but instead of being an emergency afterthought, these channels are there draining the roof from the get-go.
Conclusion: I think I had two problem-vectors. The roof rake handled the simple task of clearing snow off of the lower part of the roof to prevent ice dams from forming in most cases. The more complicated vector however, was when despite my best efforts and sometimes as a result of mixed precipitation and weather, I would get ice dams anyhow. I plan to use the socks to handle that vector, creating relief valves in the dams even as the dams are forming. The only thing still to work out is how to roof-rake around the socks!
I have had the home about 6 years now. Several years ago, I didn't know what ice dams were. I thought the hanging icicles looked great. Then some water backed up into the roof, along a seam and down a wall, across a poorly-grounded electrical switch and caused a house fire. Thank God there was relatively minimal damage. An electrician repaired the wiring. A roofer flashed and re-shingled half of that particular roof. I repaired and repainted the wall and ceiling damage.
I did a lot of reading about ice dams at the time, educating myself. In the end I decided to get a roof rake, to try to prevent ice dams from forming by keeping the snow off. It's literally too much work to clear all the roofs with it, so I try to get at least the last 4 feet, which is recommended for ice dams.
I thought that was working well until last year, when I again had some water leaking into my house, in a different place this time (right where the computer was!). Basically what had happened was that sometimes storms come in such a way (such as an ice storm followed immediately by snow) that even with roof-raking, the roof will not be clear at the eaves, and then the ice dam forms. I assumed as long as I kept the roof raked, thereby minimizing the material there, that everything would work out. I was wrong.
I ended up putting up a ladder in the snow in middle of the night in freezing weather, and climbing up to chip channels in various spots along the dam, letting the water out. Cutting channels was an emergency method my dad had heard of. It was supposed to be much more effective, easier on your roof, and safer, than trying to clear all the ice. Once the channels were clear and running I kept them clear with liberal applications of calcium chloride. (Sodium chloride should never be used for this by the way, as salt will damage your roof, your home, and any vegetation below.)
Fast-forward to this year. The ice-followed-by-snow scenario took place again last week. I had two leaks in the same week this week, one in the place where we had the fire, and one in the same place as last year. I handled both with the emergency channel-chipping method which so far appears to be successful in stopping any further damage or leaking. But it looked like it was time to re-google the current state of ice dam technology.
Here is what I have learned. There are several ways to go at the problem, all with pluses and minuses, which I will attempt to enumerate here. Suffice it to say the first ones are very expensive and intrusive, with the benefit of needing less or no maintenance. Effectiveness is really going to depend on specific circumstances as best as I can find out. If your solution is well designed, and implemented by an expert, you could have great results. However if either the architect or the builder is uncommitted or inexperienced, good intentions and lots of money mostly likely will not bring success. It has to be said that baking this into a new home is far preferable to retrofitting an older one. The last solutions are cheaper and less intrusive, however they involve lots of maintenance, and wear on your roof. As reactionary measures, rather than preventative ones, they are naturally less effective.
(1) Redesign your house. This is the only truly preventative measure, and even so it is not guaranteed to work. The idea is to create an area above your heated living areas that is unheated. Your new roof goes on top of that. Ice dams do not form because the roofs thaws evenly. Obviously the drawback is expense. The benefit is no further maintenance required. Theoretically there are weather conditions which are impossible to engineer against, but there are edge cases for everything, and emergency methods should help prevent permanent damage.
(2) New roof with a moisture barrier. There are standard products and methods available now to put a waterproof membrane under your whole roof. The drawback again is expense. The benefit is it should be cheaper than option 1 while still calling for no maintenance.
(3) New roof with a ventilation layer. The idea is this is a retrofit way to accomplish the best possible scenario, a cool roof. The technology appears to be fairly new, and fancy (as in perhaps a little complicated to implement effectively, in such a way that it would last). However I didn't look at it closely.
(4) Metal roof. I saw mentions of metal roofs, but no explanation offered as to why they would be effective in battling ice dams. I'll be keeping my eye on this, as I also like the sound rain makes on metal roofs! However I have one on my garage, and there are weird weather conditions where it leaks big time through every (rubber-grommeted) nail. This has happened a couple of times, I think usually when there are temperature extremes in the same day (going from way hot to way cold, or the reverse?).
(5) Heat tape. I know people who swear it works miracles. However the comments online and by professionals are universally against it. It wears out quickly, shortens the life of the roof, and while it does melt ice, the ice dam simply re-forms above it on the roof. It is put on in a wave pattern for some reason.
(6) Heat panels. This is something new since the last time I looked. Heat tape is run through aluminum panels attached to the roof at the eaves. I couldn't find any outside evidence of the success or failure of these products, nor could I find any prices. Until both of those exist I'd leave any recommendations to the experts. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.bylinusa.com/roof_ice_melt/RIM1.html
http://www.thermaltechusa.com/
(7) Roof rakes. There are a couple of variations on the plain roof rake, including wheels and wires and slides. In general, at least in my experience, it is roofs with poor pitch that have ice dams, and I doubt any of these tricks would work on such roofs. One hint my Dad came up with is to buy thick (and lined for the cold) rubber (or plastic?) gloves. There is something about the wet aluminum that easily ruins any other type of glove in minutes. The drawbacks I am seeing with the roof rake are:
-It is ineffective (I am still having leaks).
-It damages the roof. It is amazing how much material I have lost off the shingles.
-It is maintenance-intensive. This easily adds an hour or two onto every snowstorm. And until you have to work with your arms raised above your head under load for an hour, you can not imagine the agony in your shoulder muscles. Then once you are done, all the snow you have brought down is now packed tightly by the fall onto your porch or walk, where it will take many times the effort of initially shoveling those areas, to clear them again.
(8) Ice dam sock. This is my new find! You take nylon panty hose, fill it with calcium chloride (18" long), and tie off the top somehow (velcro seems to be common for reuse). You place it on the roof at and perpendicular to the edge, every 10-15 feet. Refill roughly every 30 days. This creates the channels I talked about before, but instead of being an emergency afterthought, these channels are there draining the roof from the get-go.
Conclusion: I think I had two problem-vectors. The roof rake handled the simple task of clearing snow off of the lower part of the roof to prevent ice dams from forming in most cases. The more complicated vector however, was when despite my best efforts and sometimes as a result of mixed precipitation and weather, I would get ice dams anyhow. I plan to use the socks to handle that vector, creating relief valves in the dams even as the dams are forming. The only thing still to work out is how to roof-rake around the socks!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Finding the best iPhone Application
I wish there was a site that took all the iPhone apps that did the same thing, and had a shootout, so I could just go there and see which one was best and get it. Of course it would not be an easy job, as there are over 10,000 apps. They are being updated all the time. New ones come in, some disappear with no warning. Perhaps this site already exists and I just haven't found it yet.
For example I wanted an app to track domestic airplane flights. A search of the app store using "flight", and a browse of the "Travel" category turned up the following apps:
FREE
flight sites
airport status
PAID
flight track
flight status
flight update
fboweb.com flight tracker
POPULARITY
airport status
flight
flight sites
flight status
flight update
fboweb.com flight tracker
flight tracker
flights
in-flight
nextflight
air travel
airports
flight 1.0
flight traveler
travelocity travel tools
"Free" denotes apps that were in the top free apps column. "Paid" is a list of apps in the top paid apps column. They are in order of appearance, as is "Popularity" which is what I pulled out from the 30 pages of apps in the Travel category sorted by popularity. The other three were apps I didn't see in browsing by popularity, perhaps from the search by flight.
Now I have the nasty job of navigating to each one of these (or at least the top couple in each column) within iTunes and reading the description and pondering all the comments, trying to figure out which one fits my needs best, is a good deal, and will cause me the least heartburn. In interests of doing a good job, I probably will also self-insist :) on googling them to see if I can find any comparisons on some of the popular iphone app sites. Now you see my pain.. about 8 hours worth to pick one app I will probably use 5 times ever.
Two other apps I noticed in this search that bear mention are:
faawait - check for faa news stream on airports (not specific flights, but early warning on regional delays)
airport codes - common and standardized codes for each airport - handy for plugging into flight-tracking apps..
For example I wanted an app to track domestic airplane flights. A search of the app store using "flight", and a browse of the "Travel" category turned up the following apps:
FREE
flight sites
airport status
PAID
flight track
flight status
flight update
fboweb.com flight tracker
POPULARITY
airport status
flight
flight sites
flight status
flight update
fboweb.com flight tracker
flight tracker
flights
in-flight
nextflight
air travel
airports
flight 1.0
flight traveler
travelocity travel tools
"Free" denotes apps that were in the top free apps column. "Paid" is a list of apps in the top paid apps column. They are in order of appearance, as is "Popularity" which is what I pulled out from the 30 pages of apps in the Travel category sorted by popularity. The other three were apps I didn't see in browsing by popularity, perhaps from the search by flight.
Now I have the nasty job of navigating to each one of these (or at least the top couple in each column) within iTunes and reading the description and pondering all the comments, trying to figure out which one fits my needs best, is a good deal, and will cause me the least heartburn. In interests of doing a good job, I probably will also self-insist :) on googling them to see if I can find any comparisons on some of the popular iphone app sites. Now you see my pain.. about 8 hours worth to pick one app I will probably use 5 times ever.
Two other apps I noticed in this search that bear mention are:
faawait - check for faa news stream on airports (not specific flights, but early warning on regional delays)
airport codes - common and standardized codes for each airport - handy for plugging into flight-tracking apps..
iPhone and GrandCentral
So I am planning on using Grand Central ( http://ww.grandcentral.com ) to front-end my various phones. One oversight I made, was to not check out how Mobile GrandCentral and the iPhone felt about each other. Big mistake. The mobile stylesheet which looks great on Windows Mobile is practically unreadable on the iPhone. Then there is the dealbreaker of (GrandCentral) visual voicemail requiring Flash which the iPhone doesn't have.
So I did some googling, coming across one iPhone app ( http://www.google.com/search?q=granddialer ), GrandDialer, which enables you to route calls through GrandCentral. While cool, this does not address my problem. I also came across a web app for working with voicemail - iVoicemail ( http://rectu.ms/iVoiceMail ).
I am hoping that I can make the combination of the horrible-looking GrandCentral mobile web page (for admin) and iVoicemail (for triaging messages) works for me until something better comes along. It gives me the heebie-jeebies handing my account info off to a website in the .ms TLD with no usage or privacy page, but they have some respect in the Apple community ( http://www.apple.com/webapps/utilities/ivoicemail.html , http://www.appsafari.com/phone/6646/ivoicemail ).
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
iPhone Calendar Alerts and Synching
Ok some weird behavior has come up in reference to round-robin syncing between Google, Outlook, and the iPhone (Outlook <-> Google over gSyncIt and Google <-> iPhone over Nuevasync). The problem is that calender event reminders (also called alerts) are lost. Even the parts I can get working have hard caveats - for instance the iPhone 3G has an upper limit of two days, whereas I prefer two weeks for Birthdays.
What I have decided to do after testing out many scenarios, is to leave all calendar event reminders blank by default. This is because it turns out that empty alerts cause Google calendar to use the default alerting mechanism (set in properties) - which I have set to an email one week beforehand. The nice thing about the email is I tend to miss the iPhone alerts because they are so minimal, and the Outlook alerts just pile up and bug me. This is a nice middleground - emails I can respond to when I feel like it, but am unlikely to miss.
Now, for any events I create less than one week before their appointment date/time, I will put in a reminder of two days (or less). I think more testing will be required to get this working reliably - but I think we are on the way to a workable solution.
Latest Iphone Apps
Here is a screenshot from iTunes of my latest app status:
I also wanted to share something nice. If you move your iPhone from the machine where you usually sync in terms of apps, it seems definite that you will lose all your data in those apps. It seems that way until the very last second. First you see that you can't sync apps from the iPhone to the new pc. Then you see that you will have to download all the apps again (which is a pain but you don't have to pay anything additional). Then there is a scary warning message when you go to sync to the effect that everything is about to be deleted. However in my experience it turns out you lose nothing as long as do download all the apps from the iTunes store into your iTunes library first, and you don't uninstall the apps from the iPhone before you sync. Phew!
I also wanted to share something nice. If you move your iPhone from the machine where you usually sync in terms of apps, it seems definite that you will lose all your data in those apps. It seems that way until the very last second. First you see that you can't sync apps from the iPhone to the new pc. Then you see that you will have to download all the apps again (which is a pain but you don't have to pay anything additional). Then there is a scary warning message when you go to sync to the effect that everything is about to be deleted. However in my experience it turns out you lose nothing as long as do download all the apps from the iTunes store into your iTunes library first, and you don't uninstall the apps from the iPhone before you sync. Phew!
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