Posted on: December 24th, 2009 by Famous Phil

Wow, it has been a long time since I’ve posted here.  It is actually pretty sad since my goal was to post at least once a week on an interesting topic back before the fall 2009 semester began.  Anyways, now that the semester is done, its time to move on and start working in new plans for my site, I will probably disclose these tomorrow sometime since I don’t want my blogs to be too long anymore   I will also probably discuss the last semester sometime within the next few days… it was a rough semester!

Today’s interesting topic relates to my personal HP Laptop (Tablet PC – tx1000 series).  More specifically Microsoft Windows User Access Control (UAC) and the graphics card in it.  If you own any computer or laptop with an NVidia GeForce 6150 graphics card in it, this will be incredibly useful to you.  So, the problem is: does your computer dim the screen and take forever to come back up?

If so, I have a solution… but first some background into the problem. Normally with any new operating system, I normally wait at least a year before I consider running it in a production environment (I’m quite conservative).  My tablet originally came with Windows Vista about a year ago, and I threw Vista out the first day I got it to put Windows XP on it.  I would never consider running Vista on any of my computers because of its horrible performance!  Windows XP served me well, but Microsoft recently stated that they wouldn’t be supporting XP anymore.  This coupled with a few really good reviews of Windows 7 prompted me to try Windows 7 when I first got it.

Back in late August, I got my hands on a copy of the Windows 7 Release To Manufacturing (RTM) and I installed it.  To my surprise, it seemed much better than Windows XP ever could be.  There were a few bugs, but nothing that I wouldn’t mind suffering through.  Of these bugs, the only major annoyance was the Nvidia 6150 dimming the screen for UAC (User Access Control) prompts.  I will get to that in a bit, but first, I want to make something very clear.  Windows 7 is the first operating system that I have ever ran in a production environment without it being fully released!  Microsoft should be very proud of themselves for making me feel safe while running a possibly unstable Windows 7.

The Windows 7 update software is quite impressive because it also found all of the missing drivers on my tablet and installed them for me.  Out of all of the drivers, it also got the latest Nvidia graphics driver for my card.  Prior to the driver being installed, UAC prompts and key combinations such as ctrl-alt-delete popped up the appropriate screen immediately.  After the driver installed, the screen would dim and then go blank for a good 10 seconds before it would come back up.  Back in August, I found no good solution to solve this but it was the only annoyance I had, so I decided to stick with Windows 7 for the college semester instead of doing a 10 minute restore of XP.

Now that I’ve got some background and some time in to solve the problem, the solution to this problem was quite simple.  For some reason, Windows 7 scales your computer screen and this takes longer to dim it due to the scaling problem.  To solve this, all you need to do is right click the desktop and goto the Nvidia Control Panel.  Click the advanced button and ok it.  Goto the “change flat panel scaling” option and turn it off entirely.  Once you ok this, your screen will now dim quickly (and properly).

Hopefully this will help someone else out because it was a big annoyance to me for a long 4 months!

Tags: 6150, dim, nvidia, tablet, uac
Posted in Mobile Technology
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Posted on: June 20th, 2009 by Famous Phil

First I guess I should apologize for not posting anything in the past week here!  I really hate it when I have to ignore my own blog for more important admin business elsewhere.  The good thing is, I always manage to learn a lot of new stuff that I can easily share

Over the past week, I got a new server to host Microsoft Exchange which is a powerful email server from Microsoft.  Before you go all crazy on Microsoft (I know I typically do), Exchange is one of the few excellent products they make.  I am actually very hard pressed to find anything that compares to it that is open source and can easily run on Linux which 99% of  my hosting business up until now has ran off from.  Man, I never thought that I would say that

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Tags: 1and1, 3dgwebhosting, active directory, Admin Reference, administration, Elite data hosting, email, exchange, exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, fsckvps, mailxchange, Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange, mobile, outlook, outlook web access, owa, server 2003, vaserv, vps, windows
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration, Mobile Technology, My Site
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Posted on: June 8th, 2009 by Famous Phil

In this post I’m going to detail my first week with the MagicJack. This device converts a USB port into a Phone Jack that is compatible with any landline phone that you might have around the house.  I will touch on clarity and ease of use.

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Tags: call, clearity, evdo, landline, magicjack, skype, university at buffalo, voip, yahoo
Posted in Mobile Technology, Technology
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Posted on: June 7th, 2009 by Famous Phil

This is part 3/3 of my evdo quest for fast internet.  In this post I hope to explain the shortcomings of all of my available options for internet access and which one turns out to be the best.  I will be providing several screenshots of different internet connection methods to prove a point including actual ping trials.  I actually had to borrow a dialup account to do this and was sort of unsuccessful at obtaining a speedtest (so I had to borrow one).

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Tags: allowance, bandwidth, broadband, comparison, dialup, evdo, fast, hughesnet, latency, ping, reliability, rev 0, rev a, satellite, signal, speed, speedtest, stability, strength, wildblue
Posted in Mobile Technology, Student Life, Technology
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Posted on: June 4th, 2009 by Famous Phil

This is part 2/3 of my EVDO quest.  This is where I’m going to post pictures and detail my setup. I will also mention a few technical details of the different types of mobile internet and what is what.  This will focus mostly on the Verizon network.  My next blog will compare dial up, satellite, and evdo with in depth technical analysis.  Lets get into the details shall we?

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Tags: 3g, at&t, cband, cel, cell, evdo, phone, rev 0, rev a, speed, tower, verizon, wi-ex, yx500, zboost
Posted in Mobile Technology, Technology
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Posted on: June 2nd, 2009 by tiffanymdavis82

There was a time when people were thankful that the computer had shrunk considerably and they could carry them around more conveniently. And with the advent of the Internet, WiFi and mobile data plans, it was easy to stay connected. But then, the march of the Smartphones’ brigade commenced and you could now use your phone to do anything your computer could, and more as well.

It’s no wonder that these phones are extremely popular and that every single mobile phone manufacturer has introduced one or two models to get a piece of this well-paying pie. Some phones are costlier than most computers, but there is no dearth of takers for these gadgets in spite of their steep prices.

Although many people are quick to get their hands on the latest Smartphones as soon they hit the market, they usually have no idea of how to utilize them to their full potential. They’re finally relegated to being just phones, chic and sleek no doubt, but only phones all the same.

Some people load their phone with too many third party software and applications that are available as free downloads on the Internet. While this allows your cool phone to do even cooler things, it clogs up the memory and makes your phone more sluggish and slow. You may also see your phone hanging and crashing more often.

The key to using your phone more efficiently is to manage its memory. While some gadgets like the iPhone come with huge internal memories, others have limited on-phone memory capacities and are dependent on external storage cards to expand their holding capacity. Most users are not tech-savvy enough to change default settings that are on the phone and that store your Internet browsing history, temporary files and cookies in your main memory. Of course, you are asked where you want to save programs, so you can choose to do so on the memory card.

But if you use your phone to surf the Internet excessively, your internal memory gets really full and your phone starts to act up and become slower by the day. If you know your way around your phone, you could use the tips found here to shift your browsing history, cache, and cookies to your memory card and also enable future files to be stored on the card. The process involves creating file folders with the same names on your card and then deleting the ones that exist on your main memory.

If you’re not sure about your navigation skills (the problem with Smartphones is that they’re sometimes too smart to be understood fully), get someone who is not technologically challenged to help you out rather than risk ruining your phone.

A Smartphone becomes more interesting and intriguing the more you use it, so learn your way around it by taking some time to get acquainted with it as soon as you bring it home with you.

This post was contributed by Tiffany Davis, who writes about accredited online universities. She welcomes your feedback at TiffanyMDavis82 at gmail.com

Tags: online universities, smartphone
Posted in Mobile Technology
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Posted on: April 25th, 2009 by Famous Phil

The other night, I was working on installing a new RSS feed reader that is similar to Google Reader.  I first found out about Google Reader from a friend (Chris) here at my University over a lunch.  I then looked at it and discovered that it is much better than going to each and every blog site and reading the posts on each blog directly.  This reader basically gathers all of the full text blogs and puts them in an email interface format, making it extremely easy and painless to read a bunch of RSS feeds while on the go (for me, on my windows mobile smart phone on the bus going to class or during dinner when I’m too lazy to get up and return to my room).

Anyways, I am not a real fan of using everything Google when I have an alternative that runs in ssh and doesn’t require an additional login (or saved password).  I found 2 alternatives that run in ssh, one is snownews and the other is newsbeuter.  Both of these programs are extremely simple and do exactly what google reader does, but they run in the SSH window like Pine or Pico does (Pine is an ssh email client, and pico is an ssh text editor).  Snownews is not really good at reading rss feeds because it looks at the description tag of RSS 2.0 feeds which only puts a brief outline of the feed on the screen.  Newsbeuter is much better and places the full content of a post on your screen like Google Reader does.

So, what does newsbeuter look like?

Here is the Main Screen, a main listing from a single rss feed, and a single blog post from an rss feed:

Newsbeuter is a great program, I’m willing to put up with no images, videos, and sometimes some gargled text to save time.  As you probably know, I use public keys for ssh and and to get to this reader from my pine email takes a matter of seconds and no mouse movement.  I’m slowly working on getting my instant mesengers to ssh, however we will see if that ever materializes.

So now onto my rant about partial vs full text feeds.

When I was configuring newsbeuter, my main concern was, “would it read a full feed that is in the rss file, or would it just show the description cropped by [...] like snownews did”.  Because I compiled this on my server from source, I didn’t want to waste effort installing dependancies (a compiling problem) if it wouldn’t work in the end.

Luckily, it did read full rss feeds, except for John’s blog. I asked John what was different about his blog, and he told me he turned off full text rss feeds.  His reasoning is, rss feeds make it very easy for someone else to post dynamic changing content on their own websites.  While I totally understand this concern, I really wonder if it will kill off readership to his site, which I know he might eventually want to make money off from some day.   I know for sure that I want famousphil.com to eventually make money for itself although I’m still debating how to put ads on it without hurting the design (which will be changing in a month or two again to make it easier to read).

I have looked at several blogs debating rull text vs partial text feeds (they aren’t hard to find), including the following:

1. http://econsultancy.com/blog/018-rss-strategy-full-text-vs-partial-text-round-2
2. http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004717.html. Although this site says the problem was fixed, I think it grabs my true feelings about partial feeds
3. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cartoon_partial_text_rss_feeds.php “So nowadays those sites only get my attention when the teaser looks absolutely irresistible — and that’s a bar that’s high and rising.”  Thats how I feel (although I have yet to move many of my favorite feeds into newsbeuter.

For me, I will probably keep his blog on my feed list and look at his teasers.  I will probably not actually read any more than his teasers though (mostly because I don’t have time to go look at these other sites that feel too smart to post a full feed).  I don’t use other people’s content for my blogs normally without citing then adding significant material onto their blogs, therefore, I don’t consider myself a blog theif either.  I do however visit other sites if I feel like leaving a comment

Finally, with wordpress, if you use a “more” tag, this material will not show up on your blog feed.  I will likely begin using this a bit (only after my site becomes eye friendly) because I do have long blogs and sometimes that material is an aid, but not necessary to know everything about my blog.  If people want to read the aiding material, then they can then visit my site.

As for this blog, always expect a full feed, if there isn’t one, I will do everything I can to help.  Comments are appreciated as always   If you host with me, feel free to use these programs I mentioned as they are installed on the main server

Tags: blog, content, description, feed, full, newsbeuter, partial, pico, pine, rss, snownews, ssh
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration, Mobile Technology, My Site, Personal, Technology
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Posted on: March 28th, 2009 by Famous Phil

Over the past few days, I’ve ordered about 75 bucks worth of x10 modules and controllers to make my computer control my lights more efficiently (Yes, I know that the website looks like  a scam, but it is legitimate, I used ebay though just incase).  As a few of you might know, I’ve been using a clapper with a speaker script to simulate a clap and control my lights.  I decided that that script wasn’t efficient enough for me, and therefore I’ve gone with X10 for its price and expandability.

Anyways, I got a great deal on ebay with a usb controller/trasceiver, a light socket and 2 remotes, I also bought a 3 pack of light sockets separately and had them all shipped here.  I got them here and it worked perfectly with about 20 minutes of figuring out how to program each light socket.  Needless to say, I now have all the lights working and my 1 computer that remains on all the time working in harmony.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to replace my existing clapper system because I had a web interface where my pocket pc phone could operate my lights.  After a bunch of digging through documentation, I discovered a software development kit that allows me to program for my x10 system.  A few hours later, I now have a server working perfectly that will execute commands based on a php script.  To execute my php script on the server without a password, I use a local html file that has the password in it.  I can also view what the status is of my room lights from this html file.  This html file exists on my phone, which now solved my original problem of I wanted a better system for controlling my lights.

Overall, I highly recommend x10 to anyone who wants automated light control.  My next project will deal with voice activated lights.  I also plan on releasing my code with semi detailed instructions so that others can have a similar system, that will become available on dev.matthouse.us sometime within the next month.

Tags: automation, control, light, x10
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration, Mobile Technology, Programming, Technology
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Posted on: March 4th, 2009 by Famous Phil

IMPRESSIVE.  That is the first keyword that comes to mind when mentioning this router.

Instead of talking about what this router is capable of, I’m simply going to link you to Jordan’s blog for all the details and his experience.  Jordan convinced me to pick up this wireless router for my verizon wireless connection.  I was hesistant at first due to the price, but after finding an excellent deal on ebay, I decided to pick one up with 2nd day air for 200 bucks on the nose.

I was not let down when it arrived.  Out of the box, I connected my phone and computer and it immediately picked up my vx8000 model phone’s data connection and connected my network to it.

As for the failover capabilities of this router, I tested this with a super high speed connection that the University at Buffalo provides (100mbps, true LAN connection with 100Mbps speed tests).  I disconnected my phone and immediately my router started using the UB wired connection and although I changed ips, my aol instant messenger and other messengers switched immediately to the wired ub connection with no real issues.  My browsing and sessions were NOT altered in any way (I had my email open and it continued to work over the failover).

I am aware of the dynamic dns capabilities of this router, and hope to test them more fully when I get home, however I’m sure that they will work flawlessly.  I wish that dnsexit was supported, however I will likely try dyndns and like thier service.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this router to anyone who has a wireless phone with a data connection, it is just simply impressive!

Tags: broadband, cradlepoint, internet, mobile, router, verizon, wireless
Posted in Mobile Technology, Technology
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Posted on: February 13th, 2009 by Famous Phil

Jordan,  the founder of codecall (http://codecall.net) requested that I blog about my experience with Windows Mobile Applications, more or less, talk a little bit about my favorite applications.

I have a XV6700 Mobile Phone with a Modified ROM image of Windows Mobile 6.1 along with a Verizon plan consisting of little talk time and primarily data.  I use my phone mainly for email, next to remotely controlling lights in various locations I reside (including but not limited to my college dorm room).  I rarely use it to talk / text, and that is the primary reason why you get a faster email response from me than you would ever get by calling me.  I feel weird holding a Windows computer to my face and talking to it, so I generally ignore phone calls

Anyways, The number one useful application on my phone is called Meeting Mute.  It is shareware, meaning you have to pay 8 dollars for it.  You can get it from: http://www.pocketconcepts.com/MeetingMute.html This was written for pocket pc 2003 and I had to adknowledge that there is a bug in this program when ran on Windows Mobile 5 and 6, which is the category mute functions don’t work because Microsoft changed the database backend for categories.  I really like this application because it monitors my live calendar, then mutes my phone if I’m supposedly in an appointment.  Being a college student, this application mutes my phone while I’m in class, and I never have to fear being embarrased by having my phone ring during class.  I’ve never had that happen (mostly because I don’t give my number out freely), however just incase, its useful to have!

The next application I couldn’t live without is called 1&1 Sync, which is an addon to 1and1.com’s MailXChange email service.  This is a Microsoft Exchange – like mail software that is open source.  This syncs my smartphone’s contacts, files, calendar, email, tasks, and texts (if I want) to my online email inbox, and it auto syncs every 5 minutes to keep my email up to date on my phone.  With this, I have eliminated the need for internet browser based email like gmail, atmail mobile, hotmail mobile, etc.  It has also eliminated the need for me to sync my phone to my comptuer manually since it automatically happens with the pc’s software to do the same sync with outlook 2007/2003.  One small missing feature is a bookmark sync, which I am still looking at implementing sometime in the near future!  I seriously recommend this service from 1and1 because it works so flawlessly, and this software for my phone is great!

The next application that i use is free!  Its pocket putty.  Pocket putty is a mobile based ssh client from http://www.pocketputty.net/.  This software helps me do server administration from my phone when my laptop is not convient to pull out and use.  I can easily login to my servers and look at top and kill processes / restart services from my phone quickly and easily.  Since it supports ssh keys, I have keys auto configured so I don’t end up struggling to type in complex passwords that I can never remember.  I would recommend pocket putty to anyone who is a linux system admin (or windows admin with an ssh server running with powershell).

Next up is mundu’s IM client.  I use trillian on my pc, however on my phone, there is nothing else that is closer to trillian other than Mundu.  You can get Mundu for 20 bucks from http://mundu.com/ I use it for IM while I’m in the car and don’t feel like getting on a laptop, and don’t need to be on long.  For example, I often use mundu for sending messages to other admins with quick messages that I may not remember for later.

Next up is a great program called tcpmp.  It is a free media player.  My main use of it is for shoutcast streams.  I often play the 977 shoutcast streams from shoutcast’s main website.  This is a great player with a lot of options, including a built in equalizer for when you have good quality headphones and want a better sound from them.

Blackme is the next logical program.  This free program will disable your entire phone except for the power button (sort of like a lock).  With this program, you can easily start a media stream then black your phone and save battery power while continuing to listen to music.  Its great for long term listening to music while walking, running, jogging, etc.  Please note that I do not run or jog, I simply walk   Yes, I’m a bit lazy lol.

MyMobiler is another great free application.  With this application, you can use your pocket pc or smartphone directly from your desktop.  It will show you your pocket pc’s screen on your desktop computer and with that, you can easily install applications / use your phone without touching it.  I use it often to project it onto a screen to show other people features on my phone.  I also use it to take screenshots of my phone for friends asking what I have on my phone.

I do use skype mobile on my phone.  It is a free program that enables skype on your phone.  The nice part about skype mobile is that I can use my unlimited skype account to make world wide calls for free with my data connection instead of paying for minutes which cost a lot more.  This program has ok sound quality, however it is a great addon for a phone if it can handle it.

Pocket opera is great for those who don’t like pocket IE that comes with the mobile phone.  It gives IPhone like functionality of a browser with a little speed sacrifice.  It is a great program for when I want to view a full website very small then double tap the screen to zoom into the site.  As I said, it is a bit slow, and it does cost to get this great browser!

Finally, the last program that I’m going to mention is a free IRC client for your phone called ZSIRC.  Although I’ve only used this program once (an administration emergency on an IRC server that I manage was my reason), I like it.  If I took the time to use my bluetooth full size foldup keyboard, I would be able to easily use this application anywhere to replace trillian as my IRC client.  This free program connects you to an irc server and lets you communicate with others in the room you join.

Thats all the applications that I use on my phone aside from Pocket Internet Explorer and Pocket Windows Media Player which come with the phone.  Comments on other programs might be useful to others

Thanks for reading as always

Tags: mobile, pocket pc, smartphone, Windows Mobile
Posted in Mobile Technology
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