Technology in Mind

Today my wife was talking to her friend in Germany over VOIP.  As I mentioned earlier our VOIP  adapter ‘bit the dust’, so she was using the X-Lite software. The quality is great, and the only downside is that you have to use the computer’s microphone and a headset rather than having the freedom of a cordless phone. But this method will do until we can purchase a replacement adapter.

Her friend mentioned that her antivirus software was saying it was out of date. Through a cross-conversation with my wife it seemed that her friend had demo software who’s subscription had expired.  I sent her friend a link for the free COMODO personal antivirus/firewall software.  She installed it, but I think she didn’t do something correctly which ended up blocking her off from the Internet.  The issue was made worse because the software was only available in English, so it seems that my good intentions ended up back firing.

So now I sort of felt obligated to correct the problem and help her uninstall the software.  But even after uninstalling, her Internet still wasn’t connecting, so I also walked her through doing a system restore to a prior date.

Afterwards I wanted to help her get an antivirus program reloaded and quickly searched google for a remote assistance solution. It brought up CrossLoop, and I had recalled hearing something about it a while back. I quickly installed it, and sent her the link to install.  She provided me with a generated number, and I connected right away to her computer and could see her screen as if I were sitting in front of it.

I then proceeded to reinstall the latest version of FireFox on her computer, because her other installation was having all sorts of issues. And then I found a German language antivirus program and installed it as well. CrossLoop allowed me to quickly diagnose and fix her issues than trying to explain how to do it over the phone.

Afterwards I found out that they have a program in place where independent technicians like myself can make ourselves available to assist people using CrossLoop. So I signed up and added their widget to my sidebar.  Perhaps this will add to my cadre of options for possible money earning opportunities.

But if you’re looking for a quick remote application to share your computer with someone, or access someone else’s to assist, this program is very simple to use.

I downloaded a program a while back called Zattoo that allows you to view live television over the Internet.  Right now it’s of little interest for most Americans as it’s only hosting European stations. That is unless you happen to be from Germany as my wife is. 

Using Zattoo, She’s able to view television show favorites that she used to watch while growing up via Germany’s ZDF and ARD stations.

It doesn’t work out of the box for people in the U.S. though as it only permits users in Europe to view stations from the country they’re in.  For example, if you’re in the UK, then the only stations available are those traditionally available in the UK.

The trick to making it work is simply using a VPN connection that gives you an IP to make it appear as though your computer is in that country.  I can’t cite the particular VPN solution I’m using because Zattoo has a tendency of blocking VPN providers that it learns is being heavily used in this fashion, as happened to SwissVPN this past February.  But it’s sufficient to say that you need a provider that will give you an IP in the particular European country you’re wanting to view the station in.

Note that I’ve also tried using Tor and European proxies without success.  It did permit me to crawl along, very slowly so that I could at least register and download the software. But I found it unusable without using the VPN solution.

There is a TV Guide in the latest version, but it doesn’t permit recording, so you have to make yourself available to view the program you desire at the European time. This can be tricky with the time difference.

Today I spent some time configuring my HTC S621 (aka Dash) to work using the OZ Messenger on T-Mobile.  OZ Messenger enables users to use AIM, ICQ, or Yahoo Messenger over their phone. Except instead of using GPRS/EDGE/3G, it uses your SMS text messaging plan (if you have one).

What’s funny is if you search on the Internet concerning this issue, you’ll quickly find out that most people are trying to do the opposite.  They want to use a web based platform in order to avoid SMS charges.

I’ve tried those methods using Fring, Palringo, and Mundu to name a few.  The problem is that in my low signal area the connection is too unreliable and I’m dropped frequently.  SMS tends to be more reliable as it doesn’t drop you everytime your phone loses signal.

Another reason is that the battery life tends to suffer dramatically from running these applications in comparison to using SMS.

So the OZ front end is nice, plus I can simply send SMS’s to most mobiles through the normal SMS interface for those not using an IM client.  The only issue I have found is that I can’t seem to IM via SMS through MSN Messenger, and of course Jabber clients (i.e. Gtalk) only seem to work through the Internet based applications.

What do you think?

  I’ve used the BVA8051 Leadtek VOIP adapter with Sipgate in Germany so that my wife could have a local Bremen telephone number. It worked great for many years but suddenly stopped functioning. I’ve reviewed my settings multiple times, even reflashed the firmware.  I also verified the proper ports were forwarded.  But it constantly gives me a busy signal.  On the other hand, when I downloaded the X-lite software from Sipgate, the soft phone functions just fine. Therefore, it looks like my hardware is really dead and I’ll have to purchase a different adapter.  The BVA8051 is a ‘dated’ item now, so I will be trying to find a more up to date device.

I’ve updated my theme to ‘Pixeled’ by http://samk.ca/freebies/ . I reduced the side columns to 1 instead of 2, since I’m finding that most wordpress themes seem challenged by the notion of a 2 column theme. I’m sure it’s possible to make this look correctly with enough fidgeting with margins and the like in the .css files, but I think I can get by with the 1 column anyways.

Now that the Presidential election is behind us, I hope to spend more time in the world of technology, sharing my thoughts on items of interest I find on the web as it relates to social networks, gadgets, mobile technology, and virtual worlds.

Technorati Tags: word press theme,pixeled

I just noticed that besides my blog being neglected by myself in providing new updates.  It was also suffering from some corruption in the cache that was rendering errors when viewed in Internet Explorer. In fact, you couldn’t even bring up the page.

Thanks to a word press forum post that had several troubleshooting options I was able to resolve it.

I’ve also been helping my wife setup her wordpress blog at http://oceanthoughtsyoga.com/blog. If you’re interested in natural health care and ‘living green’ ideas then check it out.

Let me clarify my concept of living green.  We both believe in treating the world kindly, reducing the trash being sent to landfills, reducing pollution, and trying to consume food that is not tainted with pesticides.  We do eat meat, mostly chicken and fish, and we expect the animals to have been well treated during their life span and fed natural food (not antibiotics, etc.)  On the other hand, we’re strongly against the concept of CO2 being considered a pollutant, or the premise of man-made global warming.  The Earth is cyclical in it’s cooling and warming. A lot of this has to do with sunspot activity which is a primary measure used by some meteorologists and has been a key measure used by the Farmer’s Almanac. In fact, the sun spot activity has been quite low for some time, so I expect that this will lead to a cooling.  I really wish this were incorrect though as I prefer warm weather.  I suggest anyone who has been confused by the deceptions outlined in Al Gore’s film, “The Inconvenient Truth” watch the movie, “The Global Warming Swindle” at this link.

On another note I’ve also updated my wordpress blog to version 2.6.2 .

I was invited several months back to try out the latest Skyfire beta and was pleasantly surprised.  I own a Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard device (HTC S621, not the device in the picture) and was quite impressed with how well this application ran on my phone.

I rarely used the built-in IE, and tend to use the free java Opera-Mini application for the most part. But Skyfire is able to access websites like youtube and online radio stations not available in the other browsers. Recently during a shopping trip in town with my wife, I found myself sitting outside a health food store waiting for my wife to purchase a few items.  I launched skyfire, viewed a flash video on CNN’s website, and then launched an Internet radio station from Bremen, Germany, ‘NDR2’.  They both worked great over EDGE, although when I started driving, the radio station did stutter a few times, like in the old days of streaming Real Audio over a modem.  Eventually as I left the strong concentration of cell towers in Wilmington, the station died out and never recovered.  Around my house, my carrier’s signal is too weak so I am unable to launch the application unless I turn on my phone’s WIFI.  Then it works flawlessly, even better than over EDGE/GPRS.

Having said that, here are Skyfire’s flaws. As you can imagine, a great browser like this is memory intensive and consumes a great deal of your battery’s charge.  Granted, I’ll admit that I think my HTC S621 device is in the need of a new battery, which is disappointing as it’s less than a year old.  But any amount of significant viewing time is going to drain your battery quickly with this browser.  Since this still is a beta product, I imagine that they’re working to reducing the memory size and the level in which it consumes the battery’s charge.

In the meantime, I still tend to use Opera Mini over Skyfire, unless I have a desire or need to view a video or something with flash animation.  And that depends on how soon I expect to be able to recharge my phone.

*Note that the only way to get an invite is from Skyfire, which they send out periodically.  I believe my wait was several months from the time I initially requested it. Some have been fortunate and received one sooner.  Also, the beta invites are tied directly to one’s phone number so they can’t be transferred to another user. Currently their beta product works on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones and Nokia Series 60, 3^rd Edition phones, both touch-screen and non-touch-screen, in the U.S.

11/8/08 Update – Skyfire is now in open beta.  They’ve also opened it up to users in Canada as well.

This is my first attempt at recording a video of my Second Life office.  No retakes or attempts to edit this were made. Of course, you might agree that I should have thought this out more.

But I really just created this as a means to display my virtual office skybox to a few friends and family members who I haven’t been able to convince to take the leap into this virtual world.  Even then, I might perhaps stage a better take, and possibly dub it with music and possibly voice for a better video at some point.  This video was produced using the open source software, Taksi.

I finally implemented google adsense on my blog.  It’s funny how currently the only ads being displayed are related to ‘Mind’ stuff.  I guess Google’s spider’s aren’t taking much into account except for the name of the website.  I hope that in time the searches will become more relevant to my different blog postings.  There’s still a lot I have to learn about how to use this effectively with consideration to my aesthetics and how to help it serve relevant ads.

According to Google’s TOS I’m not to click on my own ads and that’s a reasonable expectation.  And I don’t expect anyone else to click on the links unless it’s serves an ad that’s of interest to that visitor. If I make a bit of money from these ads then I’ll be happy, but if I don’t, I will still continue to blog concerning information that I find interesting.

I really don’t care much for websites that are nothing but a clutter of links with pretend information.  Perhaps these people do earn some money this way, but I don’t like them. When I’m searching for information using google. I don’t like to pull up sites that have a prefabricated article that someone added in an attempt to make it look like a legitimate find to a query. It becomes quickly evident that their only real intention was to be a page full of ad links.

I recently decided to relocate from the low rent office building to my newly purchased property.  There were a number of reasons for doing so.

1. Although the rent was inexpensive, I was only permitted 100 prims.  That gives very little allowance for setting up anything reasonable. On my new parcel I have an allowance of 703 prims.
2. I didn’t have parcel rights, so I couldn’t use radio or video streaming, or more importantly to me was the prospect of being able to use the ‘web on a prim’ functionality.
3. I purchased an inexpensive skybox for 27 Lindens from SLExchange. It gives me a nice office up in the Linden sky at about 500 Meters, with ample space for my office.
4. Since I have enough prims, my wife plans to use the ground level below my skybox office to eventually advertise and promote her real life business for yoga and selling Aloha oils from Hawaii.

In a virtual world such as Second Life, it really doesn’t matter where you locate your office.  There’s no necessity to be in a high traffic area, or a location where people will chance upon your place.  This especially holds true for a RL business.  You can promote the existence of your office in Second Life through your profile, favorite picks, and even through in world advertising if you wanted. At in-world business meetings you can give your business card with teleport location to others. In Real Life you can put a SLURL address on your web site and direct people to your virtual office.

As stated before, I’m using my office space as an extension of my web site with the purpose of exploring benefits and uses for in-world and real world integration.

The SLURL for my new skybox office is at  is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Gamma/178/225/547/ .