Products Publicly Recommended (or Bashed)

I'm purposefully not naming this ongoing entry "Product Reviews" as some may begin to wonder why the growing list of items is so highly ranked. Lest people think I'm a "me too" product hawker allow me to explain the rankings; I try to buy as little stuff as possible. Everything I get is a tool, even if it's a toy, it's also practical. I do a lot of research before buying things therefore trying to avoid bringing products into my home that suck. I also resist writing up scathingly bad reviews unless I have firsthand experience with a) trying to use the product and b) trying to fix the problem or work around the inconvenience.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on May 19, 2006 | Comments (0)

Hacking Hackers on Moveable Type

In all the years I've been blogging I have not seen a single useful "trackback ping". Ever. In beginning to see them being exploited by spammers the feature seems almost to have been invented for that sole purpose.

One of my blogs started with an early version of Moveable Type and was upgraded over time. Somewhere along the line most of the entries were tagged to allow trackback pings. The spam started rolling in, gaining in volume and peaking at almost 100 per day. There was no way to batch change ALL entries to have trackbacks turned off from within the Moveable Type interface -- only batch DELETE the ones you didn't want to keep. (Which are all of them, really)

Was I doomed to have my site slowly crumble under the weight of texas holdem, porn, and weight loss ads? I thought not.

Using phpMyAdmin I:
- navigated to my blog's database
- selected the table "mt_entry"
- typed in: UPDATE mt_entry SET entry_allow_pings=0
...and hit Go

All entries were now marked as DISALLOW pings. Opening individual entries in the MT interface confirmed it -- the "Accept TrackBack Pings" was unchecked.

Later that day, another 100 trackback pings appeared in my inbox.

So something didn't translate -- I logged back in and did a "rebuild site" -- all files, just in case the change needed to be written to all the HTML files (which seems obvious in retrospect).

No dice.

After consulting the SixApart forums and not finding anything useful we just applied a good old fashioned "hack" and renamed the mt-tb.cgi file (Moveable Type TrackBack) so it could not be executed. So far it's been working like a charm.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on May 18, 2006 | Comments (0)

Jet Blue Offering wifi on flights?

This one is a little weird but I thought I'd post it anyway.

My office is located in Brooklyn below approach paths to both JFK and La Guardia airports. There is a constant stream of air traffic overhead day and night.

Last Saturday (the 22nd) I was doing some neighborhood scanning and saw what you see here: a six minute blast of "Jet Blue hot spot" ad-hoc network that lit up the screen, then disappeared.

Six minutes seems a little long for a plane to fly into, and out of wifi range, and I am quite skeptical that this is real but it seemed like a tantilizing prospect. As far as I know there are no "Jet Blue" corporate laptops, and in my 'hood there are *very few* networks to join to ad-hoc from. Also I doubt I am living in the midst of Jet Blue fanboys/girls.

Any general thoughts from the web on the sighting?

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on April 28, 2006 | Comments (21)

When do I need a new computer?

Sometimes I'll get asked the question: "How do you know when it's time to buy a new computer?". Even though my job is technology and I've been pushing hard towards and am nearing convergence (goal is to have all television, DVD, audio, written work, and more in a single computer with a single large monitor and speakers) I am actually quite pragmatic; my main workstation is currently 4 years old and I have no immediate plans for replacing it.

I use my computer all day every day. As I type this I have 11 programs open: PhotoShop, Mail, iTunes, Safari (11 tabs), Adium, Address Book, Calendar, Clock & Track, BBEdit, Transmit and FireFox -- and it is critical that they all work, quickly, and without crashing. If this machine was hindering my productivity I certainly would replace it, but the fact is, it's fast enough and is stable as hell. It never crashes. It doesn't panic under constant heavy load.

As a matter of fact, that is how I judge if I need a new computer: load factor.

I keep a little application called "Activity Monitor" (found on Macs in /Applications/Utilities/) running in my dock. It tells me how hard my computer is working at any given time. If I go through a day where the CPU is spending most of it's time at 90% usage or more it's time for an upgrade or a new machine. Servers can easily handle this kind of stress all day and night (I work with machines that do this), and a workstation certainly could, too -- but at this point you start to notice tangible slowdowns in your applications which lead to loss in productivity -- and that's what this is about, after all: being as productive as you can for your dollar.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on | Comments (0)

Windows as seen in Signage

Penn Station Subway, New York, NY

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on April 17, 2006 | Comments (0)

Apple Mail search "entire message" Saga

Recently I, like many others, lost the ability to search in "entire message" in mail.app. We could search From, and Subject just fine, but not IN our messages (which is tragic when you have a lot of mail).

The problem began somewhere around OS 10.4.3 and persisted through updates all the way to 10.4.6

Here are a few solutions that were suggested on various bulletin boards:

1. Back up mail, remove and re-import into mail.app. This was reported NOT to work so I didn't try it.
2. One fellow suggested that this worked for him:
   You need to use 'terminal' and 'mdutil' to re-index your hard drive.

   In Terminal, turn off indexing for your drive. example:
   sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1

   Then use mdutil again to turn indexing back on for your drive
   sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1

   I tried this and it did NOT work.

3. Re-index HD:
   a) open System Preferences
   b) choose "Spotlight"
   c) click "Privacy" button
   d) click the "+" button
   e) choose your hard drive
   f) click the "-" button and close System Preferences
   g) click Spotlight magnifying glass at the top right of your screen and enter any search word -- you will see that your computer is re-indexing your HD for use with spotligh -- but ALSO for mail.app as they use the same underlying technology.

   I tried this and re-indexing of my 400GB HD (with confirmed search within M$ Office documents!) took all night (good thing I did this before bed and never turn off my computer M-F).

   When I awoke the "entire message" search did, indeed work again.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on April 5, 2006 | Comments (0)

iMic = YES

Now I am no audiophile by any stretch of the imagination. My only claim to aduio expertise is that I've owned a lot of audio equipment, which I have sold and consolidated into a single PowerMac with iTunes and output to a pair of analog harman/kardon soundsticks w/jellyfish subwoofer. (Yes, I actually sold my entire CD collection in 2004 after scanning the cover art and ripping all the music at high quality to liberate my bookshelves and have a larger "randomizeable" playlist)

I listen to music from my collection, streamed from neighbors apartments, and from internet radio. Music is playing from every conceivable genre about 10 hours a day from my home office.

Until recently I thought the setup sounded pretty good to my ears. This is until I talked myself into buying Griffin's iMic. Immediately after plugging it in and resuming the song I was playing I finally understood what people mean when they talk about a "sound stage" as I had just gotten one free with my purchase.

At the same volume settings the playback was louder, and there was much better separation between the highs and the lows. There was more full bass, filling the room instead of feeling like a directional speaker. There were also frequencies I seemed to be hearing that I wasn't before -- kind of like there were gaps in the spectrum that were now filled in. In short, my music came alive.

For some it will seem a little pricey for a device that let's you do the same thing you've already been doing (sound in/out) but it is true that it's a lot cheaper then almost any other audio device that does the same thing and I'm sure you'll notice the difference.

TECHNICAL NOTE: On a generously equipped and recently patched PowerMac G4 QuickSilver there are very real performance issues using the iMic with the internal (USB 1) ports. Music playback is steady for just under a half minute before it "skips". I am not sure if this is a software issue or a bandwidth limitation of USB 1, but there are absolutely no problems using it with a USB2 PCI card.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on March 24, 2006 | Comments (0)

When Supply & Demand goes wonky

I recently found myself going through a long and tedious comparison of a few cell phones as it's almost time to upgrade to one that is more appropriate for a tech person on the go. This morning I saw this post in the New York craigslist that I had to reprint here because it's true, a few of these smartphones are still miles ahead of anything else on the shelf, and are desireable enough to be messing with how the marketplace works:

Why are so many people trying to sell USED Treo 650 's at RETAIL PRICE
Date: 2006-03-23, 4:04AM EST

a used Treo 650 costs $275-300. if you look around enough you can find one for $225-$250. People are crazy. The value of things goes down after you use them. Its called "depreciation". Treo 650's are not fine wines, rare jewels, or collectors items. As a customer you need to demand a fair price. Don't offer more than $300 for a treo, wait a week and save yourself $100. or buy one new for $400

Another post in the search results for "Treo 650":

Will trade magic beans for your Brand New Treo 650
Date: 2006-03-21, 6:28PM EST

lets get real people

It goes to show irrational exuberence can flare up anywhere in the tech world. This should be a clear message to phone makers: stop with the baby step crap and produce a decent phone that does what people want at a decent price.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on March 23, 2006 | Comments (0)

Cell Phones: The Long Constant March

March 15, 2006 (You have to date entries like this so you can get the historical context weeks later when they are obsolete): Why do we buy so damned many cell phones?

It used to be that when you needed a phone you saved up for it, went to your local hardware/department store and brought home a 10lb brick of a phone and it lasted forever. Really, we all know someone, either an older relative or a thrift-store surfer who has the old rotary phone, or the first-gen button phone in their home, that still works -- bell ringer and all.

I bought my first cell phone somewhere in the vecinity of 1997. It lasted me two years then there was a fancy new james-bond like flip phone that I just had to have. Did it have any tangible improvements? Well, it was a little smaller, and the screen wouldn't scratch when closed and that was good enough for me. I forget how much I plunked down for it, but the way cell phone companies work, you pretty much double the advertised price of any phone (even if on sale and even with the signed service agreement) -- there are a lot of service and activation charges, taxes, blah blah blah.

This phone lasted three years, which was the longest I've owned any single cell phone to date. It survived through four batteries and two antennas (they used to be extendible and very delicate when unsheathed). The reason for the upgrade? Well, everyone was starting to do this "text messaging" system and it seemed very useful. I also *really* liked the idea of bluetooth syncing of my address book with my computer. So the deal was made and my new phone was plugged into the network.

Though I wasn't shopping for a phone with a camera, mine came with one. The quality is so bad that it is actually hilarious, and the blues are always off. I've affectionately referred to it as my "digital lomo". So the phone is great, I can make calls with it, text, bluetooth sync my calendar and contacts... but of course the internal memory was rather small so not all of my contacts will fit in it. I'd also now like to play music files on it as many phones on the market can today...

You can see where this is going.

The march of the cellphones (and digital convergence) is not a conspiracy, WE are the ones paying for their R&D by continuing to upgrade our phones every year or two -- sometimes at a ridiculous cost.

If you want phone the you've always imagined (and with each new feature you get the next one becomes easier and easier to imagine, doesn't it?) then all you have to do is buy the one that's close to feed the machine and it will spit out your dream in 6-12months, by which time you'll want even more.

At some point there is the potential for phone sales to stall while manufacturers toe the chasm between "convergence phone" on one side (adding all the features that are easy, one at a time to keep sales high) and actual computer phones on the other.

Both sides will represent different kinds of people and likely the "phone" side will stagnate and become the side that gives you "free" phones when you sign up for plans; already there is a group of die-hard cell phone users that only want their phone to be... a phone.

The other group wants to push phones as far as they can go -- but would they stop at live 3D holograms of the people they are talking to? That is yet to be seen, but there's no reason to think that this side of the chasm will want to sit for long when there are so many new and amazing things you'll be able to do with these portable supercomputers.

The long and the short of it is that for the time being cell phone manufacturers and distributors are completely addicted to this extra revenue stream of phone sales and it's not likely that they'll quiet down about the newest phone and flog you with advertisements and promotions to lure you into buying.

Before we get to excited and look at our existing phone as "obsolete" and not worthy of keeping, let's consider what modern cell phones can actually do, and what features they have that people actually use:

Today's cell phone can:

• Place and receive phone calls from almost anywhere
• Send and receive text messages (useful if you need to contact someone while they're in a meeting and can't have their ringer on)
• Use GPS to find you if you call 911
• Let you talk using a wireless headset for freedom of movement
• Browse the web
  

Today's cell phones have replaced these items that would otherwise be on your desk:

• Digital Camera
• Rolodex
• Phone book
• Calculator
• Mp3 player
• Stopwatch
• Timer
• Alarm clock
• Big, clunky desk phone (many cell phones have speaker phone
• Watch (cell phones sync with network time and daylight savings
• Note pad and pen
• Long distance calling cards (long distance is included with calling plans
• Camcorder (for short 30-second recordings)
• Calendar
• Wires and cables (bluetooth to transfer files, though still USB to charge some phones)

Tomorrow's cell phones will replace:

• Computers (you'll be able to "dock" them into KVM)
• DVD players
• Game consoles (you'll emulate or play native when phones run Linux/WinX/MacOSX)
• GPS Devices (get realtime maps)

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on March 16, 2006 | Comments (0)

Turn Your PowerBook Into The Wifi Lone Ranger

It seems that a lot of the decisions Apple makes are not just made by Steve Jobs and his eccentric (and usually brilliant) design team; more and more they seem to rely on surveys (like when they recently polled PowerBook users to see how many used the modem port and decided to axe it from the MacBook Pro. They likely didn't ask when people *do* use it, how important it was, otherwise they might have been left in for another revision).

My guess is that Apple asked people how they use their wireless and 90% said in their home or office or said they paid to use internet at a Starbucks or similar -- therefore reducing the need for a sensitive, powerful wireless antenna.

So this works for most -- the artists and fashionistas and those in the suburbs with paper-thin walls. Those in the city, those who travel a lot and those who are of a technical bent (read: power users, network admins, Unix heads, etc.) need something a little more robust but may not realize there are very workable options.

Say you want to keep the sex appeal to your laptop while you're at home/work (and use the built-in AirPort Extreme card) but need some extra range when traveling, you can do it with the purchase of 2-4 parts:

1, MANDATORY: A PCMCIA wireless card that uses a chipset other than the broadcom chipset (which Apple Airport cards, Buffalo cards, and others use) like the Orinoco Gold:

• http://www.proxim.com/products/wifi/client/11bgpccard/index.html

2, MANDATORY: The Wireless Driver For Mac by OrangeWare which controls these non-broadcom wireless cards and integrates seamlessly into the system preferences allowing you to flip back-and-forth between your built-in AirPort Extreme card and your "power user" card of choice. Here is where to find the driver and the list of cards they support:

• http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/wirelessformac.html

3, OPTIONAL: If you purchased a card with an antenna jack (like the Orinoco Gold) you can buy a 5DB antenna to affix to your laptop screen for big gains (see list below):

• http://radiolabs.com/products/antennas/2.4gig/wireless-laptop-antenna.php

If you want to be "crafty" you can do the following "fashion upgrades" to your antenna setup:

• buy some clear/white velcro from your local hardware store (the antenna only comes with black)
• spray paint your triangular antenna fixture silver (the standard mount, too, only comes in black)

Velcro attachments for antenna mount

Antenna mount spray-painted silver to match Aluminum finish of PowerBook

Installation is very straightforward:

1. Download and install Wireless Driver For Mac (you get 10 minutes at a time to test -- if you like how it works you can register through the System Prefs pane)


2. Plug in your wireless card


3. Open system preferences and click on Wireless Driver and go through the tabs to get set up -- free networks can simply be selected, other networks will require a key.
   NOTE: If your AirPort Base Station is using 128-bit encryption and you set your password as an actual human-readable word you will need to open Airport Admin Utility (in Applications/Utilities), connect to the base station, and select the menu "Base Station/ Equivalent Network Password" -- this is what PCs would have to enter to join your network and what you will have to type when using the Wireless Driver for Mac.


The Driver in System Preferences
4. Click on the "Network" System pref and you will be notified of a new port being available. Give it a try!

Tests:
I live in a "railroad style" apartment and as such I have three "zones" in my apartment where the signal goes from strong to completely non-existant which makes it the perfect testing ground for this new setup. Green denotes strongest signal.

ZONE ONE: LIVING ROOM (NEAREST TO BROADCASTING BASE STATION):
Airport Card: 54
Buffalo AirStation: 55
Orinoco (low-power 10mW setting): 82
Orinoco with antenna: 100

ZONE TWO: KITCHEN (ONE WALL AND A MICROWAVE AND SOME PIPES FOR INTERFERENCE):
Airport Card: 37
Buffalo AirStation: 53
Orinoco (low-power 10mW setting): 50
Orinoco Antenna: 79

ZONE THREE: BEDROOM (THREE ROOMS WITH ALL KINDS OF APPLIANCES AND METAL IN THE WAY):
Airport: 10 (though no web pages load)
Orinoco (full power): 0
Orinoco Antenna: 55 (usable)

The Orange Wireless Driver allows you to control the power usage for battery savings. I did not notice any tangible difference between performance on any setting until you hit 10mW, where web pages loaded slightly slower even if the signal strength was high.

Antenna jack in use

Even in the livingroom where the Airport Extreme has "4 bars" the Orinoco with antenna does feel tangibly faster when loading pages -- nearing that "snap" of PCs

View of PowerBook with 5.5DB gain antenna

PowerBook with 100% connection, user view

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on | Comments (0)

Using technology is also to use momentum

A large and unchanging component of life is:
- creators/distributors of things conspiring
- the rest of us trying to figure out what it is the creators/distributors are doing, exactly

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on March 15, 2006 | Comments (0)

Norton will hang on tooth and nail

If you made the mistake of installing a symantec product on your computer and are harassed by messages like this when you log into your computer (even AFTER uninstalling the software):

---------------------------------------------
NORTON UTILITIES

Norton Utilities has detected a new version of Mac OS
X. You may need to update your installed Norton
Utilities or Norton SystemWorks components.

Please check service.symantec.com/numosx/.

[ ] Hide alert until an OS update requires it.
---------------------------------------------

...then you probably need to delete this entire folder here:
/HD/System/Library/StartupItems/NUMCompatibilityCheck

and *immediately* shut down your computer. After a reboot you should no longer be harassed by the ghost of Norton.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on January 24, 2006 | Comments (1)

Our Networked Earth

Strange bedfellows or shared graphic designer?

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on January 20, 2006 | Comments (0)

One set of speakers, two computers

In this day and age one would expect more people to have run into this scenario: You have two computers, each with female 1/8" mini outputs, and one set of skeakers with a male 1/8" mini, and we want to play sounds from both computers into this single set of speakers.

Apparently Radio Shack has missed this boat (with no adapters of any sort that address this w/o many conversions to 1/4", RCA, or XLR) as has Guitar Center (who suggested I get a full-on mixing board, then adapters).

If one of your two computers is a Mac then you're in luck. You can download a free little application called Linein which can play sounds through the mac to the speakers.

Here is how you do it:
- get a 1/8" extension cable (male on both ends) and plug into the "sound out" (green) port on PC sound card and into the "sound in" port on the Mac (you might need an adapter like the iMic).
- Start Linein
- Set your input (whatever device you plugged the cable into, in the example it was plugged into a TV Tuner card), your output (external speakers) and click "pass through".

Now you can listen to the bell-like alerts of your PC firewall in stereo sound!

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on December 22, 2005 | Comments (0)

Microsoft Wireless Expose

If you're looking for a keyboard/mouse combo that is dark and has lots of extra buttons and such, the Microsoft Wireless Desktop sets can be very compatible with Mac OS X.

Recently we ran into an issue where Expose functionality mysteriously disappeared. We:

• Made sure Expose was enabled in the System Preferences.


• Checked that the default keyboard keys were assigned (from the MS Desktop 5.1 software CD)


• Confirmed that the MS Wireless Keyboard options F keys (F-9
  through F-12) are clearly set to "Handled by OS"

So what was the problem?

In their constant pursuit to cater to everyone in the universe and to add functionality far beyond what any sane person would use they doubled-the functionality of the F-keys right out of the box. So if you hit "F-Lock" all the F-keys get special functions as set by M$ and marked in light gray on the F-keys.

If this happens you may find yourself with a "connect to server" dialogue box instead of "show all active windows" when you press F9.

To restore Expose simply press F-Lock (circled in red in illustration) and the software and keyboard should remember this setting on reset.

Posted by Aaron R. Deutsch on December 5, 2005 | Comments (0)

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