Blogging Calwell

A guide to mobile companies in Toronto - Where does your money go?

2010-09-09T10:23:00.000-04:00

Choices, choices, choices. The landscape of phone service carriers has changed enormously over the last year. Over the time you read this article, the landscape will likely change again. This information is current as of September 2010. Thanks to a great deal of competition and a number of new carriers on the market - we have choices. Lots of Choices! I decided to give you an idea of which company owns which brand. See the infographic at left for more!

In the vast array of deals, sales, promotions and rebates from cell carriers - I think I've seen it all. Previously I talked about switching a Blackberry to Google Apps, Running Android on a Netbook, and even using an unlocked phone. I have had most of the major phones and used most of the major technologies and service providers. I continue to look for new an interesting mobile technology to get more first-hand knowledge.

But, looking at the companies that provide cellphone services in Toronto, It's easy to get confused with the large number of handsets, phones and services. Go to any mall, you'll see kiosks, booths, and stores for carriers and even stores that carry multiple companies' phones such as The Telephone Booth. What to do? What to do?

The Big Guys

Let's face it - the cell phone market is generally controlled by three "big" guys. These three companies not only have cell carriers, but they also have a "low cost" branches to cater to the low-end markets.

Rogers Communications Inc. - Rogers has some 40% of the wireless market in Canada and at one time was the exclusive carrier of the Apple iPhone in Canada. Rogers is based in Toronto, ON and operates all over Canada.
Pre-Paid Brand - FIDO, and its parent company Rogers offer phones that use the GSM standard of cell service. Fido was the first carrier in Canada to offer phones on the GSM network when they opened. When you see marketing materials for Fido, they don't normally show or disclose a link to Rogers as a parent company.
New Brand: Chatr. Recently opened, Chatr is a low-end brand that sells phones without contracts, offers voice-only and pre-paid plans (at the moment). Chatr looks to compete directly with the likes of Mobilicty and WIND mobile.

Bell Mobility - The second largest of the Canadian carriers. They offer the network standards such as the (older) CDMA and the newer HSPA. Bell has undergone a number of changes recently, including a logo change and the removal of "mobility" moniker. Also, keep in mind, Bell is investing heavily in HSPA, so you should NOT invest in any phone using CDMA if you wish to have portability with other carriers. CDMA phones are those that do not use SIM Cards.

Pre-Paid Brand: Solo Mobile - Bell's low-cost branch generally uses the same technology and the same network as bell. You'll find pre-paid plans and 2 years terms at this outfit.

Low End Brand: Virgin Mobile (website) which started in Canada as a prepaid service to ultimatley start offering post-paid services later. Virgin Mobile was then purchased by Bell Canada and the Virgin name licensed as well.

Telus Mobility - Based in Burnaby, British Columbia, Telus Mobility is a large Western Canada carrier that expanded through Eastern Canada by way of acquiring Clearnet some time ago. Clearnet was known for the "Mike" phones that offered two-way radio communications (much like a walkie-talkie.

Low Cost Brand: Koodo Mobile (website) offers phones without contracts and a "Tab" feature that allows the customer to build credit towards a new phone. Koodo offers a limited phone selection and up until recently did not offer any smartphones.

The NEW Guys

WIND is the largest and older of the new crop of cell carriers. They are based in Toronto and owned by a company named Globalive. Launched in 2009, WIND uses the HSPA and AWS (the first in Canada) technologies. WIND's services are based in large urban centers in Canada.

Public Mobile offers primary CDMA services in the Toronto and Montreal area right now. They offer a limited number of phones and plans based on the technology in use. One note about Public is that they currently have no roaming agreement, so when you are out of the coverage range, there is no service. Public is run out of their Montreal offices.

Mobilicity, once named DAVE Wireless is a new company based out of Toronto. They offer a number of basic plans and decent coverage by way of sharing cell towers with Rogers. Using AWS technology (similar to WIND), Mobilicity currently has a stable of 6 phones as well as a mobile Internet device.

So, the question is: Where is your money going? If you get a phone and plan from Virgin Mobile today - you are essentially getting a phone from Bell Mobility. It's just wrapped in a different name.

Presently, I use an T-Mobile G1 (called The HTC Dream here in Canada) that I purchased, unlocked, for $120 used. This phone is currently running Android version 2.2 (FroYo) and runs on the WIND Mobile network using their Always Shout and Infinite data plans.

References:

Communications Monitoring Report - Wireless, 2009 - CRTC

Why the wireless war is good for you - The Globe and Mail

List of Canadian mobile phone companies - Wikipedia
J.D. Power and Associates Reports on Satisfaction: J.D. Power

Calwell Tech Weekly - Week of September 3rd

2010-09-03T11:41:00.000-04:00

What an incredibly busy week in technology. This week lots of new features, a huge Apple keynote (that no-one in the Windows world was able to watch natively), product updates and other interesting stuff in technology. The summer may be more or less dead, but you'll be glad you checked out this run down. If you haven't been watching the news closely as you would have liked, I'm here to help with this week's Calwell Tech Weekly.

Apple, Apple - In Apple's annual fall event (a) iOS 4.1 is going to be released as a bug fix with a few new features including Game Center, HD video uploads and High Dynamic Range Photos - this will be available next week and Free (b) in iOS 4.2 (in November), wireless printing will be possible and it's a free update (c) iPods are being redesigned a new clip-style iPod Shuffle (2gb for $49us), the iPod Nano will have a multi-touch interface (8gb $149, 16gb $179), the iPod Touch uses the new retina display, the a4, iOS 4.1 and a front and rear facing camera with FaceTime support (8gb $229, 32gb $299, 64gb $399). (d) iTunes version 10 will be released with a new interface with a new hybrid view, but it really doesn't look much different. A new "social network" for music called PING will be included that will aide in discovery. This seems very last.fm - ish. PING is available now and open to a possible 160 million users. PING will be available on the iPhone or iPod Touch too. No iPad? iTunes 10 is free and available now. (e) AppleTV will have a second generation and a fourth the size of the first generation Apple TV. The back connectors are very simplified (no USB). They are going to the "Rental Model" where presumably all content is in the cloud (streaming, no syncing). Renting a first run movie will be $4.99, to rent an HD TV show it will be 99c (commercial free). Netflix streaming library is also included. YouTube support is included. AppleTV will cost $99. It will be available later this month.

The Coverage is insane (here are just a few articles):
Gizmodo - The Apple Music Event
TUAW - iPad OS will be revved to 4.2 in November, unifies the line
Wired - Apple Takes Aim at Cable With Tiny New Apple TV
Engadget - iPod nano redesigned: smaller, lighter, better and costing $149 for 8GB or $179 for 16GB
LifeHacker - iTunes 10 Gets a Streamlined Interface, Adds a Social Network for Music
Mashable - Ping Is the Last Nail in the Coffin for MySpace

Other Stuff: Location of streamed video can be controlled from the iPad (through Airplay). What's most interesting to me is the new Nano (see video below) , and how the Apple TV will flesh out, it really can only go up from this point, and maybe streaming is the answer.

Exchange 2010 SP1 - Microsoft just released SP1 of their flagship mail server product. You can download the 522mb update here. Check the announcement here. Coverage: Znet, Windows7News, Ars.

ActiveSync added to Hotmail - In development for some time, Microsoft this week added ActiveSync to Hotmail. This allows users to connect Hotmail to a back-end Exchange server and/or enable push notifications to various devices. Coverage: Zdnet, BoyGenius, Cnet, TheNextWeb.

Windows Live Sync gets a new name - In the most nonsensical move possible, Microsoft this week will be re branding the Live Sync tool to Live Mesh. Coverage: Ghacks, DigitalHomeThoughts,

Canon Releases New Stuff - Canon releases a bunch of new lenses, and the Eos 50D DLSR. Coverage: DigitalHomeThoughts, DHT Again, SlashGear.

Netflix arrives on the iPhone/iPod Touch - For those that are lovers of Netflix, they'll have more to love now that iPhone and iPod Touch have a Netflix apps. Get the app here. Coverage: TUAW, LifeHacker.

Google Updates Realtime Search - in a move to bolster its real time search options, Google has split this new search off its mail page. You can find this at www.google.com/realtime. I tried this inside of Internet Explorer and it sucked - but clearly the appetite for real time search is here. Coverage: TheNextWeb, Google Blog, TheWindowsClub, ReadWriteWeb, SearchEngineLand.

Google Updates Reader - Adding a Full Screen option to the powerful RSS reader. Many have said RSS is dead, but this great application proves them wrong every time. Use the "F" and "SHIFT + U" to control this new feature. Coverage: Google Blog, TheNextWeb.

Google introduces Priority Inbox - Not slowing down one bit, Google also introduces a new mail sorting feature/algorithm inside of Gmail called Priority Inbox. This allows you to sort what's important differently from what's not so important. So far only one of my Google accounts has had this feature enabled. Killer Feature NOT in any other mail client. Coverage: TheNextWeb, GoogleSystem, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, DonDoge, Slashdot.

YouTube Movies - This week, YouTube has posted over 400 new full-length movies at youtube.com/movies. You will find more movies available on the US-Based site, but there are still quite a large number of movies on the Canadian page. TO watch an R-Rated movie, you'll have to have to sign up. Coverage: TechCrunch, TheNextWeb.

The ATI brand is dead - Yes, sadly AMD is sending the one-time Toronto-Based ATI brand out to pasture. The ATI brand will not be attached to video cards such as the Radeon. I think this is going to cause more confusion in the graphics market as more powerful cards come out and more and more are referred to by chipsets instead of who makes them (a la Nvidia). Coverage: Slashdot, Gizmodo, AnandTech, Engadget.

While here, check out some other interesting stuff:
- Previous Calwell Tech Weekly posts: Aug 6th, Aug 13th, Aug20th, Aug 27th.
- First Impressions - Office 2010 Starter
- Android-x86 on a netbook, is it ready? A review
- Book Review: Under the Dome

Market Shift: Why BIG changes have Bell and Rogers very, very afraid

2010-08-30T13:28:00.002-04:00

With all changes in life comes a reluctance to accept the change and a tendency to fight them. In Canada, we are undergoing a significant amount of change in the mobile and Cable TV markets. The loosers are clearly the main providers of these services, namely Bell and Rogers. I predict in five years or less, we will no longer need to pay for Voice, Long Distance (in North America), and the classic Cable TV. It will be replaced by something very different and all of it, travelling across data. No longer will you be paying for voice plans, long distance on the same continent or Cable TV services.

Have you seen one of these?

Voice/Long Distance - There was a time when most had a home phone, what many call a "Land Line". When you needed to make a call, you called from your home phone or a pay phone. Few had cell phones, and with cell phones the utility of the phones was generally limited to basic calls or pagers.

Now, finding a land line installed in a house is becoming rarer. Even more of a dinosaur is the pay phone, these are being removed from public spaces at a record pace. The Cell phone is most people's one and only form of communications. Long Distance calls with Cell phones are increasingly expensive. Bell alone has close to 7 million wireless subscribers [source], all of them with voice plans of some sort and Rogers with 8.6 million subscribers [source], this is no chump change to these big guys.

What will happen next, phone calls inside of North America will be free. Anywhere in North America. No long distance charges, no local plan charges. With the advent of easy and available VoIP (Voice over IP), users will no longer require large and expensive phone plans. Indeed, today most of this is a reality in Canada: Calling businesses in north america is free from any phone calling 1-800-GOOG-411. Smartphone users can install applications like Skype that allows for free Skype-Skype calls anywhere in the world. Gmail users can now use their computers to make Voice calls anywhere in North America for NO COST. If you have a computer or a netbook, you don't need a voice plan on your phone or a home phone. These services also generally allow for international calls at a much lower rate than Bell or Rogers would.

A blast from the past

Cable TV - There once was a time when you could only get TV though the cable provider or by way of the rabbit ears. With rabbit ears attached to your TV, you might get a few channels, Global TV, CBC (hockey is a basic right). You, like everyone else, were looking to watch the shows you wanted to see: Knight Rider, The Incredible Hulk, and Starsky and Hutch. With cable service, you could get all those shows and you watched them when they were on or had to wait for a re-run.

Today, we have a number of Cable TV options. We have the basic digital cable, HDTV options, package deals from the larger companies to entice us into long term contracts. If you wish to watch shows on the subscriber channels such as Showtime or HBO, you'll pay extra for that. Satellite options are provided from Bell and are generally on par with what the Cable line providers offer.

Fast forward to the future, you don't pay for cable service, you don't pay for satellite service. In fact, you are very controlled about any sort of monthly fees you pay. You still like all the great shows, but the way you see them is different. You have an LCD TV, 47 inches or bigger and attached to that is a computer connected to the internet. In this scenario, you can watch anything you can imagine:

You want to see a TV show: Connect to a proxy, open Hulu and watch the show
You want to see a movie: Connect to a proxy, open YouTube, Hulu, FreeDocumentaries
You want to watch a Blu-Ray rental: Pop it into your Blu-/Ray drive
You want to see a clip of something: YouTube has most short clips
You want to see an event: Go to the event's website to see free stream (IE CBC Hockey/Olympics)
Note: I have not mentioned the illegal downloading of content, this should be a moot point as all content is going to be available online eventually.

Why are the providers worried about this? - Cable TV services are one of the biggest earners of the cable companies (Rogers Cable makes close to $2 billion a year [source]) . When the content creators are able to get this content to people cheaper and faster, they will continue to do it without the cable companies. I'm sure Bell and Rogers are thinking about loosing that much revenue. When users start demanding the option to remove the voice plans from their services, the providers will have little choice but to comply - this will save the average subscriber $25 to $150 a month; Revenue that bell and Rogers are at loathe to loose kind of money.

The big companies aren't just sitting idly by while these changes take place. You'll notice more an more that Bell and Rogers are taking this major shift seriously. Rogers has recently reduced its bandwidth cap on all High Speed Internet packages (effectively raising the cost for Internet data use). Rogers has also been aggressively promoting the Rogers on Demand Online service - while it's not clear how this service will materialize in Rogers plans, but it's existence is a clear sign of Roger's intend to shift media operations. Also, with the news that Canadians pay the MOST for wireless services, don't look for this to drop any time soon.

What are your thoughts? Have you been ripped off by Rogers or Bell? Are you familiar with other ways that the market is shifting? Share your thoughts below.

Update: It's worth noting a great article at TechCrunch discussing more details about this shift. Check it out here.

Ever loose your domain name? Meet Asad from techaol.com who lost it to AOL

2010-08-27T12:10:00.000-04:00

While stories of companies and people loosing domain names to big companies are all too common these days - I had never met a person who actually had this happen to them. When I met Asad in Toronto on a recent trip from California, he shared this experience. He registered a domain TECHAOL.COM a few years ago and had it taken from him by America Online. Take a look at the brief video interview below. Please accept my apologies for the poor lighting in the video.

The domain techaol.com is now linked to, and owned by America Online. WHOIS information on the domain shows AOL as the sole owner and no mention of Asad. In fact, what I find most interesting is no mention or record of what techaol.com was before it was taken over (WayBackMachine has no records).

Asad likely has no fight here either - I'm no lawyer - but it seems that having the letters AOL in your domain and being in some way related to technology will land you in a similar situation. Have you met anyone facing the same problem?

Calwell Tech Weekly - Week of August 27th

2010-08-27T09:12:00.001-04:00

It's been a bit of a light week for me writing-wise. I have been working on a rather large upgrade and haven't had allot of time to get back to writing. No matter what, I still have your back when it come to tech news. Here's this week's Calwell Tech Weekly. Enjoy.

Apple Patent - In an apparent effort to hit back at all the evil jailbreakers, Apple has filed a patent for the process of disabling devices that it detects as jailbroken. Look for this cat an mouse to continue forever. Coverage: Slashdot. Apple has also apparently patented a touch screen iMac, could this be a possibility in the near future? Coverage: Mashable, Slashgear, AppleInsider.

Free Ebook from Microsoft - One from Microsoft titled "Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2" - you can get this book here (and you need a LiveID/Passport/Hotmail/Whatever Microsoft is calling it now to do so). Coverage: Windows7News.

Windows Live Sync for Mac - In a move that suggests Microsoft doesn't think the Mac will die anytime soon, they have released the beta version of Windows Live Sync Tools for the Mac. As to why it is called Windows Live Sync instead of Mac Live Sync? Anyone's guess. Coverage: Ghacks.

Alternative to Tweet Button - In my last week's post, I mentioned the Twitter Tweet button. If you are really going crazy over the idea and want the option to tweet any web page, perhaps the Tweet Bookmarklet is right for you? Or maybe a Chrome Extension? Coverage: TheNextWeb, TechCrunch, The Windows Club.

Google News - Every week you'll usually hear something about Google, but this week comes big changes. Google updated it's iPhone app to support push notifications- this is great news for those who have had to jailbreak to get this feature. Coverage: TUAW. The big news is Voice Calling in Gmail. This feature allows for free calls from your Gmail account to anywhere in the US and Canada. I have even tested this tethering through a 3G connection and it works well even at that speed. Truly amazing. Coverage: Cnet, Slashdot.

Fun! - And, finally, if you have seen the new trailer for "that Facebook Movie" named The Social Network (go check it out, if you haven't), then I bring you a parody trailer for The Twit Network. Amazing! make sure you aren't sitting down when you watch this :)

Calwell Tech Weekly - Week of August 20th

2010-08-20T09:31:00.004-04:00

Summer's end is almost upon us. For those of us in Toronto, Canada - a ritual of the last gasp of summer is the Canadian National Exhibition, which will open this Friday the 20th of August and run until Labor Day. For those of you who will be reading about tech instead of (or in addition too) partaking in the CNE, I give you the Tech Weekly:

Facebook Live - Facebook launched a Live Video channel. Presumably this would be to launch new features in the future. Coverage: ReadWriteWeb.

Oracle Sues Google over Java - This one is bound for years of litigation. This week Oracle (the owners of Sun/Java) filed a lawsuit against Google (and Android) for infringing on copyright. Coverage: MobileBeat, MarketWire, Cnet, Business Insider, Ars Technica, redmonk.com, Silicon Angle, Charles Nutter.

Twitter Tweet Button - Taking a page out of the "Facebook Social Graph" book, Twitter releases a method of tweeting interesting pages by way of a button. I'm considering adding this feature to the Calwell Blog too. Coverage: CravingTech. And problems and slowdowns with this new feature: ReadWriteWeb.

MySQL to MS SQL Migrator - On the 12th, Microsoft released a new tool to let folks migrate from mySQL to Microsoft' flagship DBMS named simply SQL. This utility is generally wrapped into the SQL Server Migration Assistant. Coverage: ZDnet.

Internet Explorer - turned 15 years young this week. The first version of IE was released on August 16, 1995 and the next beta of IE (version 9) is about to be released on September 15th. Coverage: Slashdot, The Windows Club, Gizmodo. In other (and widely less popular) news, Debian Linux turned 17.

The Web is Dead - A Wired story, ironically, released on the web first, talks about how the web is now dead. This story has all sorts of tongues wagging (AVC, Gawker, TechCrunch, GigaOM, The Atlantic, Silicon Angle, and a wonderful eye opener from The Technologizer) about how the web is, in fact, NOT dead. Does it really matter? should be the real question. While the Internet continues to evolve the method of getting at information will also continue to evolve. Dead? Not so much.

Facebook Places

Getting into the location-based game with Foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook announced Facebook Places on Wednesday (API Documentation). This was long rumored by the Tech Press and was announced on Facebook's new Live Video channel called Facebook Live. Canada will have to wait for this. Coverage: Mossberg, BGR, TechCrunch, Gawker, Wired, Altimeter, Slashdot, Xconomy.

Google Picasa Updated to 3.8 - Google's Flickr-like photo sharing services was updated this week to version 3.8. With this upgrade came more photo editing enhancements with the use Piknik as well as a photo movie maker that lets you create movies that pivot on faces in the photos. More: Google Operating System, Download Squad.

Intel Buys McAfee - Yep, for the small change of $7.86 billion dollars, chip maker Intel will buy security firm McAfee. This is a move that Intel seems to be making to add on-chip security features to its line up of hardware. Only time will tell how this turns out. Coverage: TechCrunch, The Next Web, GigaOM, siliconangle, EnGadget.

Thoughts on Negativity

2010-08-19T15:28:00.000-04:00

Recently, I read a nice little article on Pick The Brain about the idea that negativity can be a motivation killer. And another article entitled Why Optimists Prosper. I find myself in negative situations all the time. My work can be a cauldron of negativity. Most of what I generally do is about fixing problems - that's not a situation that breeds allot of positivity. I too, succumb to negative thought processes, and when I do, I usually pay for it. I usually snap out of it, but the challenge has always been to be motivated from a positive place towards a better future. I have been self employed now for more than 10 years, a testament to a sort of positive motivation. I have come across too many folks that, for some reason, are inherently negative and I always hope to see that change for the better.

I'll give you an example, you must know folks like this. Your supposed to meet your friend/lover/sibling/parent at a later time during the day, but your still working. So tied up, in fact, that you can't get to the phone as early as you would like. The day wears on and you finally get the chance to call and you say that you have to work late and you can't make it for your date/dinner/meeting/function. What's more, you say you don't know when you'll be done. Well, the more positive of you would probably say to themselves "OK, he/she's working late, no big deal. I don't know the whole picture, but I'll find out more when he/she returns". The negative thinker will instantly be thinking: "He's going to be late, he's (done something wrong /cheating / hurt himself/ fallen off a cliff / hit a moose)" and then that person would automatically start to feel anxious, or in some cases cry or act out in horrible or angry ways.

This tends to be deeper than just flipping out over late appointments, it's an instant and internal leaning towards the "worst in people" instead of a positive thoughts. In our daily lives there are all sorts of things that happen that are positive and negative. You might be driving along and another driver cuts you off, you flip him the "bird" and keep driving. Surely, that is a negative thing, but that is not what I speak of when I talk about negativity. You may be in a conversation and the person your talking to pisses you off, and in turn you go off on them and give them a piece of your mind. That's also negative, but not what I refer to here. These are all expressions of anger and annoyance, a human emotion. Often anger can be used as a tool to motivate others (or just as a release for us). Anger is a tool, it comes, goes and it passes.

The negativity I speak of is sort of an internal trigger for people. It's the sort of thing that keeps us from starting a businesses because of fear, laziness or or lack of confidence. It's the sort of thing that makes people use humor as a weapon to keep us from seeing their true sadness (and perhaps them too). This may also what makes so many act out in selfish or adversarial ways. The instantly negative thinker will assume everyone is trying to take something from them. I think, in many ways, this kind of thing is the underpinnings of what we might know as depression - but I don't say I understand that. Actually, I don't understand anything about the psychology of this, but, what I do understand is the loss that comes from loosing loved ones that have succumbed to this.

Being overtaken by negativity holds us back in so many ways. It keeps us from taking the time to understand other's points of view. It keeps us from looking at or exploring the more important larger picture and gaining a much-needed understanding. It keeps us from appreciating the many wonderful things life has given us, often hiding under the surface. When those that are in the throes negativity need to be motivated, it does not seem to be possible from within. Struggling towards a common goal is not possible because the struggle is stifling to them. I have met a great many greatly motivated, intelligent, and beautiful people who are held hostage by their own negativity. In many ways it cripples them all that know them.

So, why do so many get trapped in this negative mental process? What can be done to stem the tide of negativity? What if you're doing the things I describe here?

I know this doesn't happen overnight, but being surrounded by those that will support you is important. Being good to those that try to be there for you - this is hard sometimes - but good things breed more good things. I feel that, sometimes, forcing yourself to be patient also helps. Even if the outcome or answers don't exist- just stop and let it happen. Let it sink in until you have more details and you might simply free yourself from the negative shackles by waiting. Try to separate yourself from those that bring negativity in your life. Also, do this with negative influences like gossip or the news, if you can.

What do you think? Am I way off the mark here? Is there a better word to describe this than negativity?

Thoughts on US/Canada Cross-Border Shopping

2010-08-18T18:36:00.001-04:00

I'm a Canadian living in Toronto. I'm not far from the American border (about an hour and a half of driving to the east or west, give or take a few minutes). Being in the technology industry - I am always coming across scenarios where a particular product is only available in the U.S. or the product may be significantly cheaper than it would be if purchased here in Canada. Even with our currencies almost at par, the lure of going to America to get the exclusive tech and bring it back is tremendous. While returning from a small road trip yesterday, I had some thoughts about cross-border shopping.

The best case-study for our need to shop across the border was probably the iPad. When it was released to the American general public in early April of 2010, those of use who wanted one in Canada had to wait until late May before Apple made it available. This created a two-month window that many Canadians used to purchase the device in the U.S., bring it back to Canada, and then sell it at an extremely high price.

Helpful things to know before you travel
1. NAFTA is useless - For the longest time, I had thought that NAFTA would help save duties on electronic components. The reality, however, is that it only helps with stuff made in North America. When nothing really cool is actually made on this continent, NAFTA does squat for you (source).

2. Stay that extra 24 hours - Truth is, determining what the tariff would be on a product is voodoo restricted only to Canada Customs (here is some info about this - and the super-detailed docs are here) - there are some ways you can turn a border crossing to your advantage. One of them that I thought of is staying in the U.S. for 48 hours or more. After 48 hours, your personal exemption goes from $50cdn to $400cdn (source). This means that you have to stay 2 whole days or more, which really pushes it to more like three days.

3. Go to Delaware - In my various travels, I have come across one holy grail of a U.S. State. The state of Delaware charges no state sales taxes. That's right, if you buy something in the Newark, Delaware Apple Store, you'll pay 0% state taxes. That's a good deal, but the trip is a 9 and a half hour drive from Toronto. I have not, thus far, ventured to do this.

So, what do the scammers do?
I need to first say, what I'm describing is something that is extremely illegal. Doing these things may get you crazy penalties, a possible prison sentence and hell every time you try to get across the border. None of this is worth the pain! This all had me thinking as I was crossing the border - I thought about what those that manage to get goods across illegally do. I had purchased a belt and my sister purchased three pairs of jeans that we both declared without problem. I thought, what would a person trying to get high-priced electronics across do?

1. Buy it and hide it - This being the obvious, you by the stuff and hide it in your trunk and hope the customs agents don't find it. Probably not a great idea, since those guys are likely using super space age scanners, who knows?

2. Buy it, open it, throw away the packaging and keep it like it was always your own - this is probably what happens the most - and it seems like the most difficult thing for the customs agent to figure out. I'll give you a scenario. You go to the Apple Store, buy an iPad. Take it out out of the packaging and throw away the box. You keep the unpackaged iPad in your personal luggage. The customs agent, even when searching, would not likely be thinking that device wasn't yours when you arrived in the country.

The above things are probably not being done in high volume, so there are probably other ways that others are getting away with this. There is no doubt though, this is a big business. In one case, I saw the new Apple iPhone 4 (which, was not available in Canada at the time) selling in Toronto for $1,900.00 CDN. The U.S. selling price is less than $600 US (without a contract).

What do you think? Have you had any experience with this? Do you think it's even worthwhile to buy in the U.S. considering hassle and cost?

My brush with a pyramid scheme - how to spot the signs of multi-level marketing

2010-08-13T13:32:00.003-04:00

Muli-Level Marking company?

While at a Starbucks at Victoria Park and the 401, I came across, Kash Shahzada. He seemed like a very nice fellow, dressed well. He did not appear to be working at one of the nearby office buildings at all. Actually, while I glanced over to him, he had a book that said "How to deal with people" or something to that effect. The book was sitting in a fold up style of duo-tang that had more papers, possibly brochures. Hard to tell, I just glanced over. The truth is, you can tell so much about a person just by observing. I should listen to my observations more.

Kash's profile picture (at the CN Tower)

You have to know, I wasn't really paying all that much attention to Kash, I had been sitting on a chairs crunched up in the corner and that chair was painful on my back. When a couple chairs that wre more comfy opened up, I just at the chance to sit there. Kash started up the conversation by asking me about my laptop. "Do you like that type of laptop?". Off to the races I was with talking. I really don't talk to too many people in coffee shops, so this was a real treat to spark up a conversation there. I did spend allot of time talking about myself. maybe too much.

In between my talking, Kash would talk about how he was involved in Network Engineering, that he went to school for it and that it didn't really pan out. He decided then that he would become an entrepreneur. What was interesting was that he didn't have a whole lot to say about his company (one of the first warning signs that something was fishy). While he talked about his line of business, he would talk about how he was a "marketer" and that he did "business marketing". Kash talked about how his company used "the social networking" to reach clients and that it was very successful. I was kind of in this gray area, nice to meet someone self-employed, yet a little confused with what he was talking about. He was getting his business card primed and ready.

We exchanged cards. The one he gave me looked good on first blush, but it took me a few seconds to determine the more interesting red flags about the company. Here was his card:

The Kash Enterprises business card

Business Card Red Flags
1. The company name in bold KASH ENTERPRISES - this appeared to be named after him, and yet still called an "Enterprise"?
2. The moniker "I-Commerce Business Solution" - foregoing the typo, really what does this mean? It really seemed like a fancy way of looking technical but meaning nothing.
3. Lots of phone numbers, US numbers, Toll-Free numbers. Why all these phone numbers for a business that I still don't know anything about?
4. Lastly, his email address' domain name did not match up to his web site's domain.

This was all kind of happening as I was meeting Kash. He was a very nice guy, very affable. While I was chatting with him I turned and quickly reached over to my computer and typed in his website. I still didn't know anything about his business. but I was curious. I was met with this to start with:

I was thinking "Wow, I've never seen this before - what was so important that it has to be protected by a password?". I even asked him. His response was something to the effect of: "The business intelligence we offer is highly sought after, so we protect it". On the back of his business card he wrote the password to access this website: guest. Our conversation kind of ended abruptly, so I left it at that. I had to get moving myself, I was late to meet a friend.

The next day comes and I thought, I'm curious what this is about and I why I need to login. Let me take a closer look. I went to the site and was presented with the following video when I first logged in. Go ahead and take a look:

Of course, not really realizing, I included my real information. Somewhere in the time from of 2 to 3 hours later I got a call from Kash himself. His first question was "how the laptop doing"? He said that he had noticed that I logged into his site and wondered if I had questions about the content, what it was about. I clearly said I had no clue what it was about or what it was. I could hear noises in the background and the call ended shortly after that when he said he was about to be in a meeting. He requested the ability to call back and I said OK. This had me really intrigued - it clearly smelled of a pyramid scheme, that was that. But, I'm a curious fellow - I really needed to know more about the seeming contradiction of Kash's personality and more about how this company works.

The Man
I searched to find out more about Kash Shahzada personally. I found all sorts of information:

1. Twitter - http://twitter.com/Kash_Shahzada
He seemed to have given this up in March. I noticed that he had been in contact with the @ltdhq account quite a bit. He references a number of sessions or meetings. From what I could tell, Kash did not seem to be a social media expert based on his Twitter account usage and fall-off.

2. Linkdin - http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/kashif-shahzada/12/25a/a03
His Linkdin profile lists this as his occupation "I own a business system that coaches and teaches individuals how to create Passive income through Social Networking.". It also says he's been running Kash Enterprises for 7 years, 9 months. I also found another profile, one that Kash probably intended to delete at some point that lists his occupation as this: "I am part of LTD Team. We teach and train people in how to live a Rich Life Style. Self improvement is at the heart of LTD.". In both cases the industry listed is "Marketing and Advertising"

3. The kash-ent.com website - http://kash-ent.com (login: guest)

The page's top banner area lists information about the company. "Building People to Build Families to Build Businesses". I thought, what does this mean exactly? Boy was this confusing. One thing, however, was clear that whomever wrote this was not in command of the English language. The equation below "Time + Money = Freedom" is fine although really money is what generally equals freedom. I'm still confused.

The info provided on his website was also interesting. The address given seemed like the Center for Early Learning, though it's possible this could be an apartment building. He lists his direct blackberry email address (again, suggesting that he's not overly familiar with social media). During one call, he did mention that he lived in Scarborough. When I looked up his domain on who.is - I found the answer in his administrative contact:

Apartment #916. Is this a person who has been selling rich lifestyles for close to 8 years and yet lives in an apartment in a somewhat skeevy area in Scarborough? I was really curious now. What in the world has brought this seemingly nice guy a business that clearly seems not to work.

The Company
While searching for the above video, I cam across the fact that the kash-ent.com site simply redirects to a placeholder domain on the ldlteam.com domain (see below). Who was ldlteam.com?

It turns out ldlteam.com is the domain of a company called Leadership Team Development - I Then searched for more about Leadership Team Development:

1. A Blog that describes LTD as Quixtar and Amway - he goes on to explain the "The Perils of joining LTD, Quixtar, or Amway". There is allot of talk about religious undertones of this organization.

2. I found an interesting answer at answers.com. What was most interesting was the comment: "I got more information on how to recruit people to give them $200". Recruiting people for $200? That sounds allot like a pyramid scheme. Lots of other details line up with what Kash mentioned to me, including the McDonald's reference.

3. I found some very interesting complaints about the company, one such post sizes up the oppourtunity well:

LTD is supposed to be a web-based business, but it was clear that the speaker does not understand how eCommerce works. LTD's business model appears very weak, and requires constant recruitment to maintain any kind of cash flow. They create 'alternative' websites for companies to sell products, but why would a company need them? If a company can sell a product from its own online store, it makes no sense to pay someone else to sell it for them.

4. Searching google for the domain of ltdteam.com shows how many "enterprises there are (total of 909 pages referenced by sub domains). Each one of these sites were based on the same template, allowed login by way of a password of guest and included the same structure, the same description text with few variations, and videos. Also, included no information about the business itself.

5. Finally, I took my search to the Better Business Bureau - here is where you will find a clear rating of "F".

More Communication
We would talk at length by phone for a few days. I was really after answering one BIG question "You seem like a nice guy, why get involved in this?" - but the asking of this question is very tricky. In the beginning it was made clear that they (LDL, I presume) were interested in cutting off those not interested (IE Sane) people while retaining those excited about the opportunity. Fair enough, so he was slightly skittish, so I tried to ease into this. In the process I had a number of questions:

Me: "What do you do?"
Kash: "I'm a franchisee and also a franchiseor" "Take the McDonald's franchise structure as an example"
Me: "Do you charge franchise fees?"
Kash: "No, we are Private Franchisers"
Me: I pressed him for What Products they sold
Kash: "Health and Wellness - Nutrition - Skin Care Products" "We are not product specific"
Me: "How do you make money doing this"?
Kash: "This is not a money making proposition as much as it is a lifestyle proposition. I make money off of volume"
{click} DISCONNECT

Me: "You mentioned earlier that THE COMPANY gives you this support structure, who or what is the company?"
Kash: "Have you ever heard of Amway?"
Me: "Who is Learning Development Team, or whatever it's called" (I tried feigning ignorance)
Kash: "They are the support company, much like Burger University and McDonald's"

I asked him about the disparity between his McDonald's example (at the mcdonalds.com website they talk about a product - fast food) and his website (kash-ent.com has no mention of health, wellness, or health care products).
Kash: "Again, none of this is product specific. We are selling the business model"

Me: "How Long have you been doing this?"
Kash "Seven Years"
{click} DISCONNECT

We would get cut off mysteriously a number of times during he course of our conversation.

I finally asked him the big question: "Why"
Kash: "For security, financial security, security for my family - to live the lifestyle I want to live"

At the end of talking for more than an hour off and on. Kash finally said "Kevin.. can I call you back? Can you give me a call if your interested? It's been more than an hour and I need to eat something". That was the end of our conversation and presumably the last time we would speak.

What had me fascinated was how this role is played out by him - how his job seemed to be to intentionally keep the details light and confusing. It occurred to me that if this cycle of "Confused? Get more details here" keeps moving then it would allow him to get my eyeballs in front of the people who can REALLY sell the product (at the info session). In all of the buzz-words Kash used, the most interesting of them was the liberal use of "lifestyle". Kash really seemed like a nice guy - I wanted to help him, but didn't know how to do it. What makes people turn off the "bullshit meter" and get involved in these things?

I'd love to hear more about your own experiences with this, good or bad. Am I wrong to consider this a pyramid scheme?

Calwell Tech Weekly - Week of August 13th

2010-08-13T08:55:00.001-04:00

Wow, Friday the 13th is upon us. Some will be in Port Dover, some will spend time being uber-superstitious. Me, I will be gathering all the tech news you should know in one place so you can be better informed. Here is this week's tech news:

Rogers' Community Forums - Yep, hot on the heels of the Redboard, Rogers recently launches Community Forums that should allow for more bitching, moaning and venting about Rogers products. Why Rogers wants this is really the big question, likely the better answer is that Rogers wants to control the conversation. Coverage: BGR.

Bytes by... - Microsoft just announced a series of video interviews of various folks and development people. The two different sites are called Bytes by MSDN or Bytes by Technet. This a great idea for the three of you that are still developing on a Microsoft platform. Coverage: The Windows Club.

Arc Touch Mouse - Microsoft Hardware looks to have a new mouse product in the pipeline. The mouse can only be described as something close to the Magic Trackpad by Apple, though it's hard to say at this point. Look for this to be released in September 2010 at a price of $69.95. Coverage: SlashGear, Gizmodo, Neowin.

HP CEO Resigns - In big news from huge hardware maker Hewlett Packard, HP's CEO Mark Hurd resigns over apparent sexual abuse allegations. Lots of coverage on this: HP, Engadget, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Slashgear, Slashdot, BoingBoing.

Movement to save Google Wave - That's right, all those folks sad, disappointed and disgruntled about the loss of Google's Wave product are working on a movement. The web site at www.savegooglewave.com allows you to speak your mind and let the world know that Google should keep Wave alive. You can interact with the site in a number of ways including just a thumbs up (currently at about 22,500). Coverage: Gizmodo.

Limited iPhone Stock - Stock of the new iPhone 4 has reportedly been exhausted completely in Canada. There are even reports that people are waiting in line at an Apple Store without knowledge of sock and actually getting turned away. The Apple obsession is really being taken to new levels. I have actually not seen an iPhone 4 in Canada yet. Coverage: iPhoneinCanada.

Seesmic Desktop Beta 2 - Some of the best social networking clients come from Seesmic, including the amazing Android twitter client. With Seesmic's new offering, you can connect to, and get real-time Twitter updates. The application runs on Microsoft's Silverlight technology and is fairly similar to the Seesmic web edition. You can grab it here: http://d.seesmic.com/sdp/install.html?config=main. I'm testing it now, runs great on top of Chrome. More from Seesmic's blog here. Coverage: TheNextWeb.

Google, Google, Google - Google has really been in the news for privacy. First, a seven page document described as 'vision statement' from 2008 was leaked to the Internet. It seems to show, among other things, how Google intends to profit off the user data it has. Where is this document so you an I can read it? Who knows? Coverage: Slashdot, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo. In other GOOG-related news, Google and Verizon went public with a "Policy Framework" for Net Neutrality. This, of course, did not exactly meet much applause from the Internet at large. Coverage: Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, Dvice, FutureOfTheInternet, Wired, Ars Technica, O'Reilly, The Technology Liberation Front, EFF, Google.

New Android Features - Google also announces a couple new Android features this week: "Voice Actions" and "Chrome-to-Phone". Coverage: Google Blog, SearchEngineLand, TechCrunch. Here's a video describing one of those features:

Droid 2 - Launched on Thursday, this is the next evolution in Android phone. Buy here (in the US). The phone includes the newest version of Android (dubbed Froyo) and Flash support. Some specs of the phone are: 3.7" WVGA touchscreen, 5MP Camera, GPS, WiFi, 1GHZ ARM processor, 8gb built-in flash memory. Coverage: Ars Technica, Dvice, Engadget, BGR, Android and Me.

DeviantART Muro - DeviantART released an HTML5 based, free paint application (check it out here). You can do all sorts of stuff with this application (which is beyond my lack of artistic merit). If you draw allot, this is absolutely something you should check out. Here are some of the things you can do with this tool. Coverage: Wired, Red Ferret.

Blackberry Desktop Manager 6.0 - RIM announced this week the release of the 6.0 version of this utility. Most of the updates seem to be in the interface, but an added WiFi music syncing service looks to make this utility more interesting. Download: RIM, Coverage: BGR, Crackberry.

TweetDeck for Android - The beta is released on Thursday. The competition for androd twitter clients heats up big time. I have installed it myself and am testing it. Coverage: TweetDeck, TechCrunch, TheNextWeb, Jkontherun, loisgray.com, Android and Me.

Google Reader Sync? - Huh? A new service (not ready yet, sign up to get in on the beta) that means to update Google Reader on what you have read outside of the application. If this ends up also syncing the items I've already read inside Google Reader too - wow, this will be a killer utility!

VMware Host Profiles - On Thursday, VMware released a whitepaper explaing the configuration and use of Host Prfiles with Vsphere and ESX/ESXi servers. Well worth a read if you work with these products. Get the whitepaper here (PDF).

So, that's it for this week. What news are you watching in the tech world? Did I mis anything?

Why I sold my iPad

2010-08-09T15:29:00.000-04:00

I have a read a few blogs about why others have sold or returned their iPads and I really thought I should add my perspective into this mix. The iPad is the uber-popular tablet computing device created by Apple and sold in the bazillions. I purchased an iPad sometime in April and kept it until very recently. At some point I realized, all I was doing was using a more convenient (and fairly expensive) means of consuming content. Something I was already doing, but the iPad made the experience better. That was just something I decided I didn't need any more. Oh, and I wanted the money too.

I was getting good use out of it too, here are some of the things I was doing with the iPad:

1. Reading magazines/books - I was using the incredible Cloud Readers to transfer recently downloaded PDF'd magazines to the iPad. The magazines were transferable over WiFi and once stored on the iPad were readable offline.

2. Video - Using a combination of the Air Video server and client applications, I was watching great video content streamed on the fly from my server to the iPad.

3. Dropbox - using this native iPad application to view documents and files was great when moving files between my pc and the iPad

4. Web Browsing - While the poor support for Google Reader was a pain - and Safari is a horrible browser; some web-based experiences were an actual improvement. Gmail on the iPad is one very well done experience.

5. Showing Off - There were a bunch of little apps I would use to show off the iPad. Stuff like the AirVideo app, or using one of the really cool (referenced by a Scoble Video) DJ types of apps. There were always new apps to discover, install and show off to people.

If you look at the above list, do you see one thing that's missing? If you said the CREATION of content, your right! I found that, as I used the iPad more and more, I was actually using it to consume more and more content. I was creating nothing. The iPad was becoming a replacement for my television, not my computer. I even wrote a blog on the iPad, and although it was a great experience, I didn't find myself doing it again.

Here's one simple thing I would do on my PC that is near impossible on the iPad:

Open a browser, open Google Reader and start reading the news. Find something interesting and open a new tab in my browser to edit my blog. I take that interesting news item and I write a blog about it. I may need to draw upon attachments to add images to links to the blog entry as well.

This is not a complicated process on a computer, but the above process is either impossible or completely painful on an iPad. Google Reader's keyboard shortcuts are useless on the iPad. Google Blogger's interface doesn't even allow you to edit pages in WYSIWYG mode. I know these things may change in the future, but the barriers to actually creating content on the iPad are huge - because the device was always meant to consume.

Some other things I couldn't really do and would have liked to: Open RAW DLSR Camera photos and process them, Edit HD Videos and upload them to YouTube or Editing Google Docs Files,

Don't get me wrong - I'm not hating the iPad for what it is. I merely describe a point in time that gave me a realization that I didn't need this anymore. If the iPad was going to become the kind of success it is today - it was going to have to excel at one simple thing. All the rest would have to take a back seat until the product was entrenched. Look at the promo video for the iPad - even look at Steve Jobs as he used in on stage during the iPad announcement. He was not creating anything - web browsing, keeping tabs on a baseball game, reading news, viewing pictures, playing games.

I should mention also, when I posted this iPad online I sold it quick. Not only was the iPad taken off my hands incredibly fast, there was a serious competition for the device. So much so, that I sold it for MORE than the price I had posted online. That's the first time anything like that has happened to me.

Truth is though, I want to get another iPad, I think of how much more convenient it was to consume content and that makes me want to buy another one. Perhaps, in the future I will get another one.

Calwell Tech Weekly - Week of August 6th

2010-08-06T09:44:00.002-04:00

Information overload is a problem for most of us. For those interested in new technology it seems to be even worse. There are multiple places that cover the same news, many of them covering older news. It often hard to tell what's going on while staring at thousands of news items. So, I decided to create a weekly column that give you the heads up on things that have happened in Tech News this week. Without more delay, let's start the first Calwell Tech Weekly.

YouTube - The wonderful YouTube has increased video limits and now allows users to upload up to 15 minutes of video. Covered here. The story behind this, however, is that the video size is still limited to 2 gigabytes. At 15 minutes, HD video will be much larger than 2 gigs. Will we see a size increase shortly?

FaceBook for Android - This utility was quietly updated to 1.3 during the week. You can get more about it here. The app can be updated form your Market application or searching for Facebook. The download looks to be a whopping 2 megabytes for the installation, so you better be using WiFi! Coverage: LifeHacker

100 Million Facebook Users - A "security consultant" recently released information gathered on 100 million users as a torrent file. No one really cares because the info is just information already on the Internet anyway. Even worse, outlets reporting about this are generally vague about who did it, where the information is and implications. Gizmodo says companies are grabbing this stuff and using it. Cue the fear now.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - is released on July 27th. Lots of information and reviews coming from all parts of the internet. The lack of LAN game play is a serious sore point for many. I too have been playing the game and working on a review (no telling if it will see the light of day). Others are bothered by the inclusion of only one campaign race. Reviews: Kotaku, Ars Technica, CNet. Coverage: Slashdot.

Unlocked Phone? - I found a pretty cool Wiki page that lists information on pay as you go providers and what they offer in various countries. You can check that out here. Let's hope they add more to the list. Coverage of this here.

SysAdmin Day - Came and went without much fanfare. It's still not too late to let your system administrator know that you appreciate him or her. When is the next one coming? Take a look at sysadminday.com

Wolfram Alpha Widgets - In the beta release stage - these new widgets bring the usefulness of Wolfram Alpha to a new level. Given that some of the stuff you might do on Wolfram is fairly specific - widgets seem to be a perfect fit. To try them out, take a look at the widget gallery.

20 Billion Tweets - As expected, Twitter passed the 20,000,000,000 tweet milestone with this one. What does it mean? Who knows. A-Rod also hit hit 600th home run against the Blue Jays this week too. Is there a link between the two? Probably not. Still that's allot of tweets (and home runs too).

Steve Ballmer babbles on about tablets.. er.. slates - This is less news than it is just novelty. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked at the Microsoft financial analyst meeting about slate devices and other small-formed computing devices. Most of it was clearly from a company not even close to competing in this market. More, and more. Here's a choice quote (on slate devices):

"Some of you will say, well, when? When? And I say, As soon as they're ready. They'll be shipping as soon as they are ready. And it is job one urgency around here. Nobody is sleeping at the switch."

Office 2011 for Mac - Will be released sometime in October. All sorts of pricing details have been released. What this version of Office includes the forced-on-you ribbon interface and cheaper prices. More information can be found a Boy Genius Report. There is a very good chance that the desktop Office package is in the middle of a slow death march. online Office packages will likely surpass features of bloated and slow packages sometime in the next few years. Expect to get an upgrade to office 2011 if you buy office 2008.

Android sales overtake iPhone sales - Not a huge deal, but a very important measure of how fast the Android operating system is growing on smartphones since debuting in the last two years. Problems with fragmentation, app store spam and lack of developer profits are of concern to Google. Coverage: Gigaom.

Free WiFi available at the Toronto (YYZ) Airport - In a move many years too late - but still welcome - the Toronto airport now offers free WiFi Internet access. The overpriced, cold, and painfully slow mega airport now has at least one redeeming feature. Coverage: Toronto Star, Toronto Sun.

RIM announces a new Blackberry - Yep, the Torch 9800 was announced by RIM. This is the first slider type of blackberry and also includes touchscreen technology. RIM also released a first look at their new web browser. First Impressions: Slashdot, PCmag, more PCmag

JoliCloud 1.0 - Building on the popularity of mobile devices (or slates), JoliCloud has released the 1.0 version of their Linux-based operating system. The first time I tried a beta on an older netbook, it didn't recognize the wireless network card. Coverage: Gigaom, Gizmodo

Wave Goodbye! - Google has decided to say goodbye to Google Wave, the real-time chat services it created a year ago. Wave has had all sorts of trouble finding users and just by sucking so much. Coverage of this can be found on Boy Genius Report,

New and interesting tools - #5 - Swiss Army Knife Edition

2010-07-29T21:29:00.003-04:00

Back again with #5. First thing you should do though, follow my Google Shared Items - you'll find lots of cool and interesting articles. You'll be glad you did. I have in the past looked at tools like Wifi Stumbler, Ebeddit.in, Password Protection tools, and even a crop of Google-Related stuff. This has all lead us to today's stellar edition of tools and utilities that I like to call the Swiss Army Knife tools. These tools, you may not use all the time, but when you do use them - they are perfect for the task at hand.

Situation #1 - Drive Space

You may want to get a quick fix on what's taking up all that space on your laptop's hard disk. The NAS device that you've had for a year may be filling up faster than you thought. All of these common problems really require that, first, you narrow down your focus to what is actually taking up space on the drive you're looking at. For this I use Jam Software's TreeSize Free. Using this too allows you to find the location where space is being used and then make the choice about removing it or not. Get TreeSize Free here.

TreeSize Free in action

Situation #2 - Password Reset (in Windows)

You may be the Techie that gets called upon to get into a computer that everyone has forgotten the password too. You may be working with a computer that you have forgotten your own password for. In these situations, what's most common is the physical access to the computer, yet lack of access to Windows. In the case of a Home version of Windows - you can generally get into the Administrator account in safe mode - but for all other Windows versions, you need to take drastic action to reset passwords. What I use for this is a small bootable ISO file (that you can place on a CD or flash drive) written by Petter Nordahl-Hagen. More info can be found here. Note: I highly suggest that you simply CLEAR the password of an admin user on the computer, once you get back into Windows you can do the rest of what you need.

Using Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

Situation #3 - Quick access to Virus Scanning Tools

I'm often the guy called upon by others to fix the problems presented by viruses or Malware. I'm generally asked to look at computers when users start saying "weird" things are happening or things just seem slower. What i do immediately when I'm in front of the PC is take a look at what's running in the background and try to narrow down what causes the issues. For this, I use a few things (this will depend on Internet access as well). First, I use the incredibly useful web access to Sysinternals tools. This requires you open up a browser and point it too http://live.sysinternals.com - then you can download and run any of the many useful tools. Two of which are procexp.exe and autoruns.exe. Note: sometimes you may not have access to a browser if the infection is extremely severe - that's a blog for another day. Once I have identified files that seem to be troublesome - I use a quick browser-based virus scanner to test that file. You simply open up http://www.virustotal.com in a browser, upload the suspect file, and Virus Total will use 43 current virus scanners to determine what, if any virus that file holds - you'll even get a link to view the scanning reports that you can save for later, if you wish.

VirusTotal after scanning the Sysinternals utility Zoomit

Situation #4 - Computer Information
Another really common scenario for those that find themselves in front of computers that need help, is the need for information about that particular computer. The system information tools is such a common tool that Windows 7 includes at least two of them built-in (if not more). But, if what you're after is a quick, powerful took that gives you more than Windows would (For Example: The type and configuration of RAM on a system), look no further than the free HWINFO. There are DOS versions of this tool and 32bit Windows versions.

A Screenshot of HWINFO

Those are probably the most common situations I come across, or am asked about the most. If you look at each of those individually, you'll find a number of paid and free applications that do the same thing. I would definitely love to know what applications you use, or would suggest. Mac user? What do you use in these scenarios?

Book Review: Under the Dome

2010-07-28T20:41:00.000-04:00

From Wikipedia

As a techie, I am rarely presented the opportunity to read fiction books. Yes, most of my reading tends to be news, current events and articles or books related to the (sometimes dry) computer industry. When I saw Stephen Kings UNDER THE DOME in hardcover hanging on the shelf of my local Chapters, I was more than intrigued.

UNDER THE DOME follows a number of townsfolk living in Chester's Mill, Maine (King has a thing for Maine in his books). These seemingly normal people are transformed in crazy and interesting ways as a domed force field of some kind caps the small town completely. No one comes in, no one leaves.

This trapping of the towns people "like ants" is a perfect scenario for King. His beautifully descriptive writing tells stories within even the mundane of facts. He really gets into the "why" of what people do more than any other fiction author I have read (admittedly, not many). Those little tangents about what people are thinking at moments before or after things happen are classic King moves.

More than the descriptions too, the characters are very strong. The good guy named Dale Barbara is a strong fellow I imagine as big, rough looking. But with humility. The bad guy - Jim Rennie - is somewhat the same, but with the look of perfect evil. I can already see who will play these guys in a movie. I pick Ron Perlman for Barbara and Deniro for Rennie. Perfect. I can't quite place Junior, but I would have bet that someone like Heath Ledger could make that part great.

The stakes are high too. You might not think so, but the kind of crazy shit that can go down in a small town is really endless. When that movie is made, it will need some really cool special effects. Also, I expect this to be 'Hard R' - any less would be a disservice to the amazingly described gore and horrible acts in the story.

The gore is not all - I'm fascinated by the technology surrounding the dome. I wont give away too much about what (or who) creates the dome; but the tech behind the 15 minute pulses, the small holes in the exterior of the dome and the level of transparency. King doesn't delve into this nearly as much as I would liked. I wanted to know more.

I won't give you any more about the story either - you have to read the close to 1100 pages yourself. I think if you take the ride, you'll be happy you did.

Just a note: it took me seven damn months to read this book. Seven months! You can grab the book here from Amazon.ca: Under the Dome

It's HARD to say I'm Self Employed!

2010-07-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

From: Wikimedia

The question everyone always asks almost immediately when you first meet them is "What do you do?" or "Where do you work?". After this, I often try to deflect the conversation to something else - or try to make a silly comment to the effect of "I'm Unemployed". Sometimes, when I'm pressed, I will admit that I'm Self Employed or that I own my business. I have pondered this more than once though; why is it so hard to say I'm self-employed?

Some context here. Calwell has existed in some form or another for ten years now. Some of the first work I did for clients related to the Year 2000 bug that had everyone freaked out (for the record, I didn't expect a problem). Many companies had earned a great deal of money from all the fear and uncertainty surrounding the year 2000 and here I was starting out at the end of all this. I have never been known to take the easy path.

Hard was exactly how things were. I would live in a family member's garage for the first year while I worked to find enough clients to support myself. When you start a company with no investment - you're probably creating allot more work than you expected. After a few years the work would pay off for Calwell as much of the development work be put into production and Calwell's client list would grow.

Clearly, I've paid my dues. So, why is it so hard to say "Self Employed"? I have thought that the words are just hard to say. They don't exactly roll of your tongue. Try it - say those two words in a conversation and see if it doesn't just halt with a sweeping THUD. You don't exactly have your choice of pronouns here either - "I'm self-employed" sounds just as crappy with or without needing to add ownership. Maybe there is a better way to say it? Something cooler like "Freelancing! I love it" or "I do network engineering consulting services". That last one sounds like I'm a rocket scientist.

The other word, one that I have never uttered, is the "E" word. To call myself an Entrepreneur would be overstating what I do on a fundamental level. While I may be the very definition of an entrepreneur based on assuming ALL of the risks:

Wikipedia: An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome.

Calwell is not new, and nor is it much of an idea. More than those things though; I tend to see Entrepreneurs as "Business Engineers". These are the guys that are creating businesses and designing businesses from nothing. In my case, I'm more of a "Keep a business from dying" kind of guy. There are parts of a certain spirit that defines me as an entrepreneur, I would never define myself as one.

What is it then? Is this some sort of psychological defect (I'm sure some would say I have many!) that keeps me from proudly proclaiming what I have rightfully earned? Could I have a problem accepting that I have created a business with my sweat and kept it operating for more than ten years? Could there be a mental roadblock that, for some reason, keeps me humble and modest right to the last-minute? There must be this auto-humble translator in my head that keeps me from owning "self-employed".

Psychologically, there may be another reason for not wanting to be so proud of my business ownership. Most souls out there tend to be in a 9 to 5 job that they may not exactly love. For me to stand up and proclaim my self employ-edness in front of them may come off as slightly arrogant, condescending and rude. I would rather not.

I urge you to submit some ideas here; Continue the conversation. Is there a cooler, more hip way of telling others that you work for yourself? For the self-employed among you - are you finding it difficult to tell others about your personal independence?

Make your Google Apps domain and Chrome Profile your Default Mail Client

2010-07-26T17:07:00.001-04:00

This post is a simple follow-up to the great and useful post I found on winextra.com. There, you are given details on how you can set Gmail to your default mail client on Windows. I wanted to take this one step forward to those corporate or Google Apps users that have custom domains. Even more useful, what do you do when you have a custom location for your Google Chrome profile? I'll show you how to use both.
So, a quick look at how to use Google Chrome to open mail links by default:

(make backups of the keys you plan to change! careful editing the registry)

1. Open the Registry Editor in Windows (regedit)
2. Find the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command\
3. Change the "default" key to (%username% should be your username):

“C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1”

When you do the above, the command might looks like this (for example):
“C:\Users\calwell\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1”

Changing this to Google Apps

Take the above command and change that line slightly. The line will now look like this (%username% will be your current username and %yourdomain% is the domain you use on Google Apps):

"C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" https://mail.google.com/a/%yourdomain%/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1

Here's an example of what I would use:
"C:\Users\calwell\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" https://mail.google.com/a/cwl.cc/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1

Using your personal Google Chrome Profile

So, you want to wrap this all us so you (a) use your Google Domain and (b) make use of your personalized Google Chrome profile. You may want to so this because you have scripts or extensions installed that enhance Google Apps.

You'll need to added the command-line parameter --user-data in a format that looks like this (%username% will be your current username, %yourdomain% is the domain you use on Google Apps and %profilelocation% is where your custom profile is stored)

"C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir="%profilelocation%" https://mail.google.com/a/%yourdomain%/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1

Here's an example of the final command:

"C:\Users\calwell\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir="n:\profiles\chrome\User Data" https://mail.google.com/a/cwl.cc/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1

But, how do I know this stuff works? Can I just test it?
Good thing you asked that. You can most certainly test these changes. Probably the quickest and easiest way to test this is to RUN (Start -> Run/Windows Key+R) and type in something like this:

mailto: testaddress@hotmail.com

Press ENTER and see what happens.

Hopefully this helps you get the most out of mail and Google Apps. Also, these examples all use Google Chrome - you can get that here.

Android-x86 on a netbook, is it ready? A review.

2010-07-25T21:55:00.004-04:00

The recent flood of Android-based smartphones and tablets is starting to really pay off for Google. Thanks to this, we are seeing a large number of devices that may not exactly fit the Android use-case, but are nonetheless interesting. I have recently been very interested in the Android tablet and/or Netbook scenario. Why is this more interesting than ChromeOS or some other Operating System? Android has a much more streamlined use, it's much faster than that its Windows counterpart, and since ChromeOS isn't exactly ready today - some may turn to Android. But, is it ready? How well does it work? I will install Android on an older Acer Aspire One netbook to see how well it runs over Windows XP.

You may have seen HowToGeeks wonderful article on how to run Android on your PC or netbook - you can choose to follow those instructions or just simply boot Android from the live CD (downloaded as an ISO file). There are any number of scenarios you can follow - in my case I decided to install Android onto an SSD-equipped netbook. Here are the specs of the netbook I was using. After installation, I used it for a little while take a look at how well it runs (View this full-screen in HD for best results):

Installation
Since I wanted to install to disk (the fastest possible use) - I booted off the live CD and chose the "Install Android-x86 to harddisk" option (see below).

You'll go through a number of steps, but the process of installing did not seem to be able to remove the current FAT32 partition and create a bootable Linux partition. I ended up using partition manager external to the installer to clean the drive and then install Android. Be sure to install the GRUB loader too.

Android - The Positives
1. Speed - over that of the Operating System pre-loaded on this computer (Windows XP Home with driver enhancements), this version of Android booted faster, ran applications faster, closed applications faster. All around, everything ran much faster while using Android.

2. Device support - for the most part, I was very impressed with the the device support on first boot. I found that *most* of the devices on the system worked well, and even connecting a USB mouse worked well. Read more about some of the problems I had with devices in the negatives below.

3. The browser - the default mode of the browser may be to render sites as mobile, but the browser itself ran smoothly and quickly. It looks amazing on the 8.9 inch screen.

4. Mouse handling - a nice surprise, using a mouse on this version of android was nice. It will take you a bit of time to get used to it, but when you do, it works well.

Applications available after installation

Android - The Negatives
1. Lack of Device Support - the bad side of device support is that there tends to be one or two devices not supported. No matter what I did, I could not get either of the two SDcard slots working on this netbook. Also, the very troublesome Atheros AR5BXB63 wireless chip set would work for a while, disconnect and then not run again until a full reboot occurred. At one point, attempting to get the Atheros card working caused Android to reboot outright. When I did get the wireless card working, the wireless activity light on the outside of the Netbook didn't work even once.

2. No Market Application - This version of Android oddly omits the standard Market application in favor the AndAppStore client. Based on this seemingly filter list of applications, many of utilities i use on my own T-Mobile G1 were missing.

3. Very SD-Centric - for example, to use the picture application, an SD car is required. Given that I could not use either of the available SD card slots because of driver issues - this rendered the photo and video applications useless. Somewhat more of a failure is that the photo/camcorder applications were able to load and make use of the netbook's built-in webcam. Also a problem, there seemed to be no way to store data on the local (non SD card) drive.

4. No video support - Probably much worse than the previous negatives - this version of Android includes no support for Youtube videos or any other video support, for that matter.

5. No Flash support - This is not so much a negative, as it is just missing. This particular version of Android likely will never have flash support, further stifling the use of this operating system as a web browsing tool.

Is it ready?
In a word, No. This has some great potential as a great browsing operating system, as well as being able to turn older devices and netbook into much faster computers. The core theory of what Android-x86 represents is perfect and I would take it in a second. Considering the number o things that don't work yet, however, you'll have to pass on this until more application and device support comes along. if they are able to port Froyo with Flash - this would be a killer replacement for Windows XP on this netbook. As it is, I can't use it - so back to XP I must go.

Update: I should have mentioned - the live CD/ISO will run inside of your virtual machine application. I have tested it in Vmware Workstation.

Links:
Android-x86 Download Page: http://www.android-x86.org/download

Looking at Microsoft's "Getting started with Microsoft Office 2010" document

2010-07-08T20:11:00.000-04:00

You might have heard of the mammoth 257 page document Microsoft recently released entitled "Getting started with Microsoft Office 2010" (download as .doc here, view online here). The document covers quite alot of information regarding the newest version of Office versioned at 2010. Microsoft is very good at hiding useful information in a mountain of pages. Since I took a good look at this, I thought I would relay some of the more interesting details about this document.

The document is clearly made in an attempt to delineate changes in the various products of the Office package. The information listed seems to be geared more towards IT professionals, but as an end user, these details may also be of use (if you can plod through all the pages).

You'll find these sections of interest if you want to get to the the juicy details fast:

Page 30: User interface differences in Office 2010 and earlier versions of Microsoft Office - a decent look at some of the main features and how they have changed in recent versions
Page 39: Access 2010: Export to .pdf and .xps - likely no one on the planet cares about exporting to .xps - the new feature of exporting reports and other parts of data of PDF files in Access is indeed welcome, however.
Page 46: Excel 2010: Sparklines for Excel - a very brief explanation for the new charting feature in Excel. you can find out more about it here. Enhancing the ability to display data visually is always a nice addition.
Page 48: Excel 2010: 64 bit and Excel - notable for what's missing - Microsoft describes nothing useful about Excel and 64 bits. The useless entry in this document says nothing about what the higher size limits are - and what file sizes created with the 64 bit version of Excel might NOT open in the 32 bit version. Bad.
Page 63: OneNote 2010: Availability - noting the fact that OneNote is now available in all versions of Office 2010. Previously, in 2007, OneNote was only in the Home and Student, Professional, and Enterprise editions.
Page 67: Outlook 2010: Bitness Registry Key - Outlook looks to be the most changed application in the suite. Here Microsoft describes an interesting registry key for the "bitness" (is that a word?) of the installed version of Outlook.
Page 73: Outlook 2010: Exchange 2000 Connectivity - those that are running Exchange 2000 should note that Outlook 2010 will not connect to that version of Exchange Server (and likely earlier versions). Best to know this before you buy a computer with the new version of Office on it.
Page 73: Outlook 2010: SCANPST Removal - this very useful utility for scanning PST and OST files has been removed in office 2010. They recommend other steps that seem lame compared to repairing the file (especially if the files is more than 4gb). It is possible that Microsoft is moving away from the use of PST files in favor of some other format (cloud)?
Page 81: PowerPoint 2010: PPT format - nice to hear that the file format has not changed. Some features may not work in 2003, but the two version of PowerPoint will open files created by both.
Page 113: Word 2010: RTF file format - Microsoft is not supporting RTF (Rich Text) files in this version of Word, and going forward.
Page 114: Word 2010: Research and Reference Pane - this atrocious and abundantly annoying feature of Word has not been removed. Millions must be relieved to see that go.
Page 133: General Office 2010: System Requirements - if you were looking for this, page 133 is where you'll find it (and a table for each edition of Office).
Page 251: General Office 2010: Blocking and non-blocking applications - This lists applications that will block (or kill, I expect) the installation of Office 64 bit. You'll probably notice that the list says nothing about incompatibilities - that's your problem.

So, those are the highlights. From what I can tell, this document should be very useful in helping you tell what stuff to look out for in this new version of Office before you buy or install it. Let me know if I've missed anything.

Is there a way to stop "Internet Broken Telephone"?

2010-07-07T16:03:00.000-04:00

Broken Telephone. You've heard of that before right? When one person tells a story and the next person re-tells that same story, parts of it change. By the time many people have told the story - the most recent version you hear bears little or no resemblance to the original. You can certainly blame this on creative storytelling - but it's clear that there is something very human about getting things wrong. With the Internet, the broken telephone is taking on a new life with details outright changed or removed.

If you're a Twitter user, you will have no doubt heard of the recent Back To The Future tweet - this is how it came up in my stream:

Now, I vaguely remember the part in the first movie where he sets the clock. What's more, I remember in the beginning of the movie Doc Brown does talk about going 25 years into the future. Like a good little Twitter user, I re-tweeted he above. Notice, also, @hexsteph refers to the Doc as "Doc Scott".

Where this started
Apparently, folks over at TotalFilm started this. From the @totalfilm twitter account, this tweet was sent on the morning of July 5th:

More than that, @totalfilm supplied a picture on Twitpic that gave the proof that the above tweet was correct. The picture they provided was:

If you opend the Twitpic site, you would see that this was a hoax, thanks to a disclaimer under the image "We got it wrong. Apparently 5th July 2010 isn't mentioned in Back To The Future. So we went back and changed it..."

Truth is, this easily confiused folks. If you look at the first Back To The Future's script, you'll find that Doc Brown says: "That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series. " And apparently there is a moment when you see the time clock shown above, but with the Destination Time set to Oct of 2010.

Broken Telephone
The damage was done, however. The @totalfim account has close to 30,000 followers, many of them started to re-tweet the above, write their own versions of the tweet and carry on. Later that same day this would become a trending topic on Twitter and end up being re-tweeted by the likes of Elizabeth Banks. As the tweet passed through a number of people, you can even see facts in the original tweet changing (IE changing from "Great Scott" to "Doc Scott").

What's going on?
What I have started to see is that the nature of Social Media and electronic communications is starting to create a new set of circumstances around passing messages. The old-style of broken telephone is taking on new set of rules as it passes through the various social media sites like Twitter. The basic human need to pass on information in our own way still persists, but with the original information so hard to get to (or so far removed) the true nature of this data is hard or impossible to get at. As it passes through people, vital details are being changed. Take this example I found today on Twitter, here Internet broken telephone is removing vital data.

1. Annie Colbert tweets something that brings "Wayne's World" to mind:

2. This takes you to a small post on her blog with an image of what looks like Wayne and Garth in Google Street view. What you see is an image (and not embedded Google Maps). Below the image is a link to Huffington Post.

3. Opening the above Huffington Post link to see more information as to the location (as well as a Google Maps link), you are taken to a page on huffingtonpost.com that contains slightly more text but also just a picture, and a link to The High Definite below the image. The image appears to be the same as the one that was on Annie Colbert's page.

4. Opening the link to The High Definite yields the third new browser window and possibly the end of our route. This page contains the least information wrapped around the image, and it also has a link to the actual Google Maps location where this sighting of Wayne and Garth took place.

If you are interested in exploring the actual Google Maps location pictured above, you would get to see the building being these guys is apparently Plymouth High School in UK and these guys may have been doing some sort of play or show at school. You might decide to explore more and see the folks across the street gawking that these guys. Furthermore, seeing that The High Definite might have been the source - you could explore their site for more sightings? Perhaps there you could explore more?

Although none of the facts changed in the above example, the second effect of broken telephone becomes apparent. As useful information passes through a number of sites and is written about (or as some say curated), details about that information disappears. In the above case of Wayne and Garth, when presented from @anniecolbert, there is no link to the beginning source, nor is there a link to Google Maps. You must accept the information she provides or go through a process of opening three (or more) links to get to the source.

What's the problem?
As we continue to make use of links and social media it becomes clear that those providing us with new takes on information are going to need to be diligent about citing original sources. When the information passes through so many hands and is either changed or outright removed - we, as the audience, are placed in the position of not seeing the entire story and possibly making decisions based on part of the information. These decisions can lead to bad things (my stupidly re-tweeting a hoax).

Improving this process could mean some drastic changes - can you see a day when blogging sites such as Posterous or Wordpress force you to include and cite original sources? Can you see the possible inclusion of a "source" link below all tweets that include short URLs? It may seem far fetched, but changes like this could be just around the corner.

New and interesting tools - #4 - The Google Edition

2010-07-06T19:02:00.001-04:00

Another themed post! This time I look at - Google-related tools. I'm a Google Apps user and use all sorts of their great services. Today I wanted to look at some of the companion tools you'll see for the various Google services available. I tend to gravitate towards free tools - but if, for some reason a tool is not free - I will point that out and fill you in on pricing details. Today I look at tools such as Good Noows, Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer, Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook, .

Google Reader - I personally love the Reader's web interface - but many folks hate seeing RSS feeds in a mail-style interface. Here are a few tools that may help enhance your Reader Experience:

Good Noows - This great, free Web Application hooks directly into Google Reader and provides you with a very different take on reading your RSS feeds. I wasn't super-impressed with it's ability to integrate with Google Reader, but I expect this service will improve over time. You have to take a look at the display style to better appreciate if this is right for you.

Good Noows

Desktop Google Reader - If you prefer to read your RSS items via a Windows Application - the Desktop Google Reader may be for you. This free application supports a stylized interface, popup notifications of new items, inline rendering of pages (and even doing that with Chrome instead of IE!), and a number of external services.

The Desktop Google Reader interface

Google Docs/Apps - There is a wealth of potential with Google Apps and their Docs and Mail components. You'll find that because of this, there are a number of really cool tools that have been released to make use of this.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook - Leaving the world of Outlook and moving to Google's Apps? This free Windows Application created by Google allows you to selectivity migrate mail, contacts and other information into the Google Apps cloud.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer - This great Chrome Extension allows you to view PDF and Powerpoint files directly inside the Google Docs interface. Using this, you may have no need for Adobe's Acrobat viewer or Microsoft's Powerpoint.

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)

The Google Mail iPad interface - You can get at the custom-made iPad Google Mail interface on your computer. This great looking Web/Chrome Application link is accessible by creating a shortcut on your desktop that loads the following (substitute your own username instead of %username%). More information on this hack can be found here (LifeHacker):

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --app="https://mail.google.com/mail" --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10"

The Google Mail iPad interface

Google Command Line Tools - Most folks are fearful of the command line. For those that aren't - Google released the amazing and incredibly versatile googleCL. There are too many features and options here - surely enough to create an entire blog post. Hmm.

GoogleCL in action

So, there you have it. If you use Google's services, take a look at the above tools, and let me know if you find others that you love. Comment or get me on Twitter.

Use Google Reader on your iPad? Here's how to get the full keyboard support

2010-07-04T15:00:00.000-04:00

You just got your shiny new iPad and plugged it in, you even hightailed it to the couch to relax while using it. Your WiFi connection is good, now it's time to check out the news on trusty Google Reader. To your surprise Google Reader doesn't support keyboard shortcuts, nor does it support the "sent to" menu. Until Google does, here's how to do it (without having to install a paid iPad app).

This is what really sucks about the Google Reader iPad interface, so much of the most important stuff is either not there, or tied to a feature you don't want to use (read email). What I wanted was all of the support that I get on my desktop PC to be possible on the iPad. Here's what your going to need:

1. The iPad of course, you are also going to need to install the "RDP lite" application. Don't worry, it's free.

2. You need a server to connect to, there are a few options with regards to this, you might have a corporate terminal server you can connect too, or setup your PC as a terminal server (in administrator mode) and connect to that. If you're still not able to do any of these, try resorting to the free Logmein client and use the iPad-based Logmein Ignition to connect to your computer.

3. Once connected, run your browser of choice and open up Google Reader. Use the iPad's soft keyboard to navigate around the Google Reader interface. Some of the best short it's you can use are:

"N" - move to the next item on the list
"M" - mark that item as read
"O" - open that item inside of Google Reader's interface
"V" - open that item in a new browser window

Also, take a peek at the "send to" items, you're in a full browser - so all of that is going to work great. At least until Google get's it's act together, you can use this to get full Google Reader support yourself!

Calwell Vblog #1 - The G8/G20 protests

2010-07-02T10:46:00.001-04:00

Take a look at my first ever Video Blog here:

I speak about a number of G8/G20 issues. The key among them is the handling of protesters by the police and riot cops. There are a number of articles discussion the call for an inquiry into this by the government. This includes the Toronto Star, National Post, CBC, and even on Facebook.

I mentioned a law that was rushed in, secretly, giving the police a number of special powers. More information can be found on that at Slaw, Toronto Star, and CP24.

And then there are the videos. These are some of the best ones to come to this weekend.

The "Good Smariton" takedown of a thief:

The "Oh Canada" protester blitz:

.. and a better, closer look at it:

Also, take a look at the amazing coverage and videos from Torontoist here. You might also take a look at the faux-weapons on display here.

It's clear the actions of the police were out of step with what was really going on. Do you think there should be an inquiry into the police conduct?

UPDATE: It appears as though Chief Blair has announced a review of Police tactics during the G20. Since the Toronto Police Service will conduct this review - you probably don't need to be a psychic to determine that it will review in favor of the cops. But, it's a start.

Be the IT Guy: Recovering data from Outlook's OST files

2010-07-01T16:48:00.000-04:00

One sort of Voodoo reserved for IT guys is the recovery of certain types of mail data. Outlook keeps mail data in two types of files - the PST (Personal Storage) file and the OST (Offline Storage) file. If you look to Microsoft for the "Official" word on getting mail data out of the OST file, you'll be met with "not possible" or "not supported" or some version of those words. In the world of IT, when you need to get at user's mail data - "not possible" is not going to cut it. Here's how you can get some (or all) the mail data out of OST files.

But, first, I wanted to share an experience I had with a client. The client was a rather large law firm and their mail system ran on Microsoft's Exchange 2003 product. The stage was set for a major location move that would involve all the computers and servers. While the physical move went according to plan, the servers did not come out so well. Upon first boot - the Exchange Server's database would not mount. Looking for a recent backup proved useless since the last backup was quite stale and the safeguards in place to alert this condition were not working. Essentially, all the mail data was unrecoverable. Catastrophic. While the partners were freaking out, the current in-charge IT staff were licking wounds - I came up with a plan to get the mail back.

The layout of this client's email system was very simple. On the server end, they had an Exchange 2003 Server with all mail stored in this location. One the client computers: Outlook 2003 running in cached mode. So, the mail server's RAID array was dead. Inaccessible. The backup was more than a year old. Since none of the users had PST archives, we weren't going to have the option of recovering from that. All that was left was on the users' local computers in the form of OST files.

What is the OST file?
OST files (Offline Storage) are locally stored Exchange Data on the client that allows the user access to Exchange Server data when not connected (or offline). OST files are similar to that of the PST (Personal Storage) file. However, the OST cannot be directly opened or accessed from within Outlook. The problem is, each OST file is tied to the particular user. Even more so, that OST file is not accessible if the Outlook profile has been re-created.

Getting at the OST data
What I had were essentially two options for getting at the users' mail data. I would login to the user's profile and then Outlook in Offline mode and just copy the mail data to a PST file you create.Once you get the server back online, you can use that PST file to return data to the server. This is your best option and should be attempted first.

The second option, that's a bit more complicated. If you cannot get access to the user's profile and Outlook in offline mode, you will have to manually get the data out of the OST file.

Even more difficult
So, the first step is to find the OST file you need, this file is located in the users' profile folders. It's imperative that you, at least, take steps to protect the user's profile, even if that user cannot log in of even of files are locked because of permissions. Once you have permissions and ownership required to get at folders in the profile, you'll find the OST file in this folder (%username% should be replaced with the name of your user):

Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Windows Vista/7:
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

These folders will likely contain a file named outlook.ost, but it could have been named anything. The file will always have an OST extension. Most important, before working on this OST file, back it up! The reason why you are doing this in the first place is likely because you didn't have adequate backups, so don't let that happen another time. Backup this (and every user's) OST file.

Now, since the OST file is tied to the user by way of some sort of security key inside the file, you are not going to be able to just rename that OST file to PST. I have seen references to using SCANPST.EXE on the OST file and removing the security key - but I have not seen this work. Save yourself the time and don't bother. What you have to do is use a utility that can strip the security information and then pull the data you need out of the file.

Your going to need to get a utility that can strip the security information and then recover data from the OST file. Some of these utilities may purport to convert the OST file to a PST, that's fine, but be sure your getting something that can recover the data - even if you aren't holder of the correct profile. When I needed to recover the data, I used most of the utilities listed below. Sadly, I cannot recall the utility that worked for me. be careful, because these utilities can be quite pricey. Use provided demos to be sure what you get is going to work for you.

Tools of interest for this process:
OST2PST: xcopy32.com (free)
Recovery for Exchange OST: OfficeRecovery.com ($599.00)
ConvertOST: convertost.com ($199.00)
Recovery Toolbox for Outlook: Recovery Toolbox ($49.90)
Exchange Recovery: DataNumen ($249.95)

Your input on this would be greatly appreciated. If you have used one of the above utilities - or have had success some other way - please let me know.

New and Interesting tools - #3 - Password Protection

2010-06-28T23:25:00.001-04:00

Another one! This time with a theme - Password Protection tools. I tend to gravitate towards free tools - but if, for some reason a tool is not free - I will point that out and fill you in on pricing details. Today I look at tools such as Keepass, 1Password, and LastPass.

1. Keepass - Open Source - Desktop/Cross-Platform Utility - Find it here
Probably one of the best computer-based tools you'll find, this one is a must. Keepass is intended to keep your sensitive information protected. The beauty of Keepass is in it's simplicity, portability (your database will be only one file), and in it's flexibility. You can place information about your credit cards, web passwords, email passwords - really, anything you can think of that you might want to protect on your computer. Another amazing thing about this project is that it is being developed on more than one platform. On Windows, you can get KeePass, On Linux or Mac, you can try KeePassX, there are also versions of Keepass for PocketPC, iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, and Android. Truly versatile.

The Keepass (Windows) main screen

2 - 1Password - $39.95 - Desktop/Smartphone tool - Mac/iPad/iPhone, Windows (beta) - Find it here
Long a utility of Apple users, 1 Password has recently been making progress into creating a Windows version of their application. 1Password may remind you of a Roboform -Type of application in how it allows you to auto-fill passwords into websites. The similarities stop there, however. 1Password is designing to protect your online identities by (1) creating impossible-to-guess passwords (2) checking URLs of site you login too and (3) keeping track of all this in a local database.

Take a look at 1Password:

3 - LastPass - Freemium ($1/month pro version), Cloud/Browser Plugin - Find it here
If you tend to believe that storing passwords works best when combined with the power of "The Cloud" (or, storing the password data on someone else's computers) - LastPass may be exactly what your looking for. The platform support is quite impressive too, pretty-much any browser and smartphone is supported (yes, there is also a desktop application). What you get for free is lacking if you want smartphone support - but the common use of this utility is going to be more than enough for most. At $1 a month, the added features won't break the bank either.

Here's a look at how LastPass works:

That's it for the Password Storage tools list. Among the ones I listed above, I use the Keepass utility quite extensively and have recommended that to many clients looking for a locally protected way of storing passwords on computer or USB stick. If you're looking for something even more powerful, you may be looking to move into something like TrueCrypt - what have you used in the past to protect your sensitive data?

Personal Project: Coffee Table - Sanding, Staining, Varnishing

2010-06-24T12:48:00.000-04:00

Over the recent months I have taken on a number of projects to improve the look this house. In this case, I found a small wooden coffee table at a Value Village for $19.99 and I saw potential in it. I could visualize the look of it finished, even as it sit in the furniture section of Value Village. The table as I bought it was not stained at all - it had a number of large gashes on the top of it and the varnish had a somewhat off-color to it. The great thing about this table (besides the price) was how sturdy it appeared to be built. Nothing screams "project" like some basic solid wood. I'm going to show you how to take a coffee table, stain it and make it look great. This can be done for easily less than $30 ($70, if you can't borrow a sander).

Coffee Table: The original look of the table

Sanding is usually the most important part of the project. You want to make sure you get the previous varnish off the wood and yet don't want to take too much of the wood with it. To start with, I used an orbital sander with the (Velcro sanding sheets). These are generally about $40 at a hardware store. I started with 60 grit sandpaper. As I was sanding I decided I wanted to stain as much of the table as possible - so I took it apart into pieces. The roof of my truck was quite useful for doing some of this work from waist-level. Here's a look a piece of the table and the sander I was using:

After sanding everything with the 60 grit sandpaper, I moved on to the 120 grit sandpaper to smooth out the rough surfaces. Usually just two passes of sandpaper is enough, even though some will tell you that you need to do a third (possibly with 180 grit). With this finished, I was happy with the sanding stage.

Sanding Tip: Sand in the direction of the grain of the wood. Also, I was doing all this outside of my garage to keep from getting dust all over - when sanding, be sure to wear a mask!

The small bottle of stain used

After the sanding was finished, I started to stain. I used Varathane Professional Premium Wood Stain - American Walnut (236ml) - for this job. As you can see by the size of the can, very little stain is required. This can was half-empty when I started and still has some stain left - you will not use much of this stuff. I used a natural paintbrush and simply started to stain (continuing to stay with the grain).

Staining Tip: It's sloppy and tends to really show later if you make mistakes. I only placed one coat of the stain on the wood - but after the first coat I took the time to touch up some of the spots that I missed on the wood. be consistent and even whenever possible.

After letting the stain dry for a week ( yea, I gave it extra time), I came back to start the lacquer stage. The varnish is used to protect the wood and stain and create the finish of the table. For this process I used and for this I used Varathane - Professional Clear Finish (Oil Int. Clear Gloss) (946ml). The gloss is great for table tops because it really gives it that bit of shine you notice in a room. For this project I will put three coats on the wood letting it dry about 6 hours in-between coats. You'll use quite a bit more of the varnish than you will the stain, so you want to pickup a larger can - I used the 946ml size (roughly a liter).

The varnish used - note the "Clear Gloss" - this is shiny

Varnishing Tips: (a) give the previous coat time to dry, I gave it at least 6 hours. I didn't put new varnish on if the surface was still tacky (b) making sure you paint it all on evenly. This is a challenge with glossy varnish since it hard to tell where you last painted and (c) making sure that you do a light sanding or use a scrub pad on the previous coating of varnish . This takes away the air bubbles and makes the next coat smoother. In my case three coats was enough.

One warning, during all of this, water is your enemy. You have to use varsol to clean the brushes (not water). You have to make sure the raw wood does NOT come in contact with water or it will stain. I accidentally rested one of the legs in water (just after sanding) and here's what that did to the leg. Notice how prominent the stain is:

Now, the project is finished, the varnish on the table has hardened and I have to say - I'm very happy with it. This is a definite improvement over my previous table sanding project. I think I'm learning more every time I take on one of these. Here are a few more pictures of the final, stained table. Click through for larger versions.

I'd love to hear more about your own projects. What did you think of this? Do you have any staining tips of your own to share?

New and interesting tools - #2 - embedit.in, Second Shell, and Link Different

2010-06-23T10:29:00.001-04:00

The sheer volume of tools and tools I see just scream out to be discovered by someone just like you. I come across so many, I've decided to start sharing some of them. I have found a bunch more that you should take a look at when you have a chance. I should also note - I tend to gravitate towards free tools - but if, for some reason a tool is not free - I will point that out and fill you in on pricing details. Today I look at: embedit.in, Second Shell, and Link Different.

1 - embedit.in - free - online tool (File and Document Sharing)
With the proliferation of very rich browsers and applications in the browser that can handle more work, many tools are popping up that should deserve some great interest. Once that I use more and more these days is called ebeddit.in. The purpose of embedit.in is so simple, so utilitarian, that I wonder why no-one thought of this before. You simply select a file of the WIDE range of file types and upload that to the ebeddit.in servers (or use a URL). What you get is a a simple, free, and powerful viewer for that file that you can embed into your site. Think of YouTube, but for files. You are given a number of different ways to login to the service (including OpenID) and the result is quite fantastic. Here is an example (a manual for a laptop I had recently):

2 - Second Shell - Version 1.0.7 - free - Windows tool (Portable Shell Tool) - web site
Second Shell is a very small (about 420kb) shell tool that does a very few cool things. The key to what Second Shell does is to allow you make the best use of the screen real estate. You get a number of ways to move, re-size and maximize windows with various hot keys. This works well with windows you commonly use - and even better for those windows that may be un-sizable or fixed. You can even test this on the lone dialog that Second Shell offers (see below). Use the Mouse Shortcuts on this window. I took a quick look at this on Windows 7, and it does work too. Give it a try.

The SecondShell shortcuts

3 - Link Different - Free - Online Tool (Social Media)
Big Twitter user? If you are, then one of the more commons ways you get the word out about a topic is by way of a link. Most of these links are shortened (140 characters, after all) by using URL shorteners such as bit.ly, or 3.ly. What is often the case is that most of your followers have already seen the link your attempting to share and things might get a bit redundant if you give something your followers have already seen. So, enter Link Different (you'll need to login with your Twitter account - no account spam was seen in my tests). Link Different will scour your friends list and return the number of your followers that have seen the link your about to post. You'll get a bit.ly link to copy in the process as well. Link Different is best used as a BookMarklet in your favorite browser for quick access. If you tweet allot, this information can seriously improve your ability to target followers. Extra points if you notice the font style and homage here. Guess in the comments!

There you have it, another batch of tools - more to come! Don't be shy, speak up and let me know what you think. Want more information? Want a tool/platform featured here?

Ordering a US-Based iPad from Toronto - My experience

2010-06-22T17:48:00.002-04:00

I needed to get one. You may be just like me and you NEED to get one. What I speak of is that shiny new gadget called the iPad. It was available for pre-order in the U.S. on March 12, but us saps here an Canada can't officially get on until the end of April. I didn't let that stop me though, I had to get one I did some research and here's how I got a new iPad shipped to me here in Toronto. Use this advice with caution, your mileage may vary.

The challenge of course is how the heck to order a device that Apple will only let you access too from the U.S. and in many cases only let you actually ship to the U.S.? I don't have an American address nor do I have an American credit card. All of these issues are nearly insurmountable. Until now.

I came across a blog while watching for iPad news that was quite interesting. The blog is titled "How to Pre-order your iPad now, from anywhere in the world." and you can read it here. It goes on to explain a process by which you can order an iPad from a U.S. based company named USunlocked. In fact USunlocked had a blog on exactly how to order the iPad here. This was great, now I had a way to make this a reality with USunlocked.

To start off, you have to create an account with USunlocked. This process is free. USunlocked will be the company that provides all you need to get the U.S. based device shipped to Toronto by way of an address they provide you. The process is, however, quite daunting. You are going to be working with a number of companies and utilities to make this happen. First you will send money to USunlocked by way of Paypal, so make sure that you have a Paypal account and it is sufficiently loaded with cash (or your credit card works with Paypal). You will also be working with a company called NXpay - they will handle the payment system and your account with NXpay will automatically be setup by USunlocked. lastly, you'll be working with a VPN utility, freely available, to access the apple.com website as if you are in the U.S. With all that , I'm ready to get into the details of getting my iPad sent to Toronto.

Day 1
I setup the USunlocked account and spent some time understanding what was going to be required. The first step was to create a U.S. based credit card with USunlocked. This would cost $10.00us and is payable by way of a directed link to Paypal. The payment is made, and then I had to wait for a day to get confirmation off the credit card creation.

Day 2
I received confirmation (via email) that my new credit card was assigned to my account. I logged in and could see a fancy new credit card image with a credit card number. This coincided with the need to activate two new accounts with NXpay, one with a US address and one with my Canadian address. The activation of the NXpay accounts were done via email.

USunlocked Credit Card

Interestingly, I would also receive 10 email messages relating to a change in verification. I wasn't clear if this was a glitch, but there was not action to take on my part, so I continued the process.

Verification changed emails?

With that, the next step was to load (and or reload) the credit card. This process was completed by using Paypal to send money to USunlocked to load the card. As you might expect, this is where the service charges you incur are really going to take effect. Here is my experience (and cost) after attempting to send $500.00us and place it on the card.

An important calculation to use when loading card

I started with the above form (on the USunlocked site) and provided the value of 500. I found out in practice that this value has to be less than $1000 or Paypal won't recognize it. I chose 500 and clicked "continue". I would then be forwarded to Paypal and asked for a login. I do that and use my credit card to pay for the service charges and currency conversions Paypal uses. After the payment, here is the breakdown of costs and finally what would be on the card when the payment was finished:

Intended load amount: $500.00usd

Paypal Fee: $27.63usd

Total USD charged to my CC: $527.63

Total CDN charged to my CC: $555.68

Amount on card (USD) after confirmation of payment: $494.00usd

Cost to load the card to $500usd in cdn (at rate of 1=.949521): $35.38cdn

As you might imagine - this is is going to be the costliest part of the process, but there will be more. There may be shipping charges from the retailer, there will be shipping charges from USunlocked and other charges not seen. The next step in the process after the loading of the credit card was to create a US shipping address to use when ordering from the retailer.

The shipping address process was a little bumpy since Apple was not one of USunlocked recognized vendors. After I tried it a few times I was able to generate an address. The address was accompanied by a confirmation via email. You may wonder why an address had to be generated? THe address is a somewhat static thing - but you use the second line of your address to insert a code that let's USunlocked know what the order is. My US address looked something like this:

Kevin Costain

111 US Avenue

XXXXXCODE

City, STATE (State Name) 00000

(555) 555-5555

This address and the code generated was what I needed to use when ordering the iPad online.

Day 3

The iPad is available for pre-order today, I am ready to order! as you astute readers can tell I didn't have enough on the card to actually order an iPad, so I had to spend the day trying to find a way to get more money to USunlocked as fast as possible. I managed to find a way with the help of their support folks. This however, delayed my ability to pre-order the iPad until more money was on the card. Lesson, be sure to account for the amount you need to send and add a little extra if your not sure. The process (as you can tell) is often very time consuming.

Day 4 and 5
Waiting, waiting and more waiting.

Day 6
The money was ready to go - I had what I needed and was ready to order. Here's what I did:
1. As requested by USunlocked - I downloaded and installed a VPN solution called HotspotSheild - the download and install was fairly simple and all I needed to do was say "Connect/ON" from the task bar icon.
2. Once the VPN was active - I could then browse to http://apple.com/ipad and start the pre-order process. The process was not too complicated - and I simply provided the details that were on the USunlocked site.

The order was a success

Week 3
After waiting a number of weeks - expecting to hear of a shipping date - I received an email from Apple explaining an "Order Cancellation". Apparently Apple had determined USunlocked was a freight forwarder and cancelled the order. After speaking to USunlocked - they provided me with another address and I started the order process again. Because of this cancellation - I would miss the original shipping date for the iPad.

Week x - April 19th, 2010 - The iPad arrives via UPS. The UPS driver required a tariff payment on the spot to release the package. Add another $80.00cdn. Still, I am a happy camper.

This experience proved a few things. First, it's damn expensive to use a freight forwarder. This process cost upwards of $1200.00 CDN to get this iPad into Canada. Second, you need to work with folks that are on your side and extremely professional. USunlocked were there when I needed them - and extremely helpful. In some cases, there was nothing they could do - but when I needed to do a direct money transfer, they were very helpful. And third, if I wanted this on-time, it would have been smarter to buy it in Buffalo and bring it back in person. Now, after buying 6 iPads, I have learned that lesson.

If you plan to go after anything new - such as the iPhone 4 - and you take this route; I would love to hear more about your experiences.

Notes:
- USunlocked can be found on Facebook and Twitter
- Apple's Store currently has the iPad for sale in Canada, currently offered for $549cdn at the low-end
- Hotspot Shield is still available here as a download
- Using an NXpay card to buy from iTunes (US) will require you load at least $50 on the card. The NXpay site is the first and only site I have ever seen to require a Captcha every time you login.

New and Interesting tools - #1

2010-06-21T18:09:00.001-04:00

This could be an ongoing theme, I suspect. The sheer volume of tools and tools I see just scream out to be discovered by someone just like you. I come across so many, I've decided to start sharing some of them. I have found a bunch more that you should take a look at when you have a chance. I should also note - I tend to gravitate towards free tools - but if, for some reason a tool is not free - I will point that out and fill you in on pricing details.

1. Disk Space Fan - This utility is more of an interesting entry since I'm not sure really how useful it is. The rather poorly named Disk Space Fan allows you to find files that might be eating up your drive space while providing you with a very colorful layout of drive space. The image of drive usage is interactive and provides a number of details at first glance. When you drill down to a file you might want to remove, you are given a "delete" option in the right-click context menu. What you should not expect, however, is any indication of whether the file you find is useful or not. Be careful when deleting files too. Disk Space Fan is freeware (with a Pro version avaialble). It can be found here.

2. Social Mention - If you are a Twitter user, you want to know as much as you can about who's re-tweeting you, who's looking at your account and all sorts of other types of analytics related to your account. one of the best utilities I have come across for this kind of intelligence is Social Mention - this free web utility gathers all sorts of details about your twitter account and displays this information in an easy-to-use page. If say, you wanted to see my @calwell page, check this out. you can find Social Mention at http://www.socialmention.com

3. Wifi Stumbler - If your looking for a tool that helps you find wifi networks around you (and any corresponding WiFi noise) you will need to get a client of some sort that allows you to to pickup network in the area. One such tool by Meraki has a novel idea - do it from within your browser using a Java Applet. not only is this cross-platform, but it will also run in any browser. This is great if you may be at a client site and wish to search for networks in the area. One warning, though, the tool does not work all the time (an didn't work on one laptop I tested). You can get the tool here: http://tools.meraki.com/stumbler

Wi Fi Stumbler in action

Please feel free to suggest the tools you like to use for our next blog post.

First Impressions - Soluto [Updated a Third Time]

2010-06-01T15:55:00.000-04:00

(re?) Introduced at TechCrunch Disrupt, Soluto was one of the big stars of the conference. There's a good chance it will win the big prize at Disrupt 2010. What Soluto intends to do is allow the user to focus on the boot process, identify what applications are slowing down a computer and then let the user improve this by disabling certain items. Soluto has also embarked on creating what's called the PC Genome which looks to map problems and solutions in a large database allowing for future streamlining of the solution process.

Update: I have added a number of links to other blogs writing about Soluto, see below
Another Update: Soluto was declared the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 today. More details here
Third Update: I actually gain access to the Soluto system and put it through it's paces click here to see more

Here's an introduction to Soluto:

Robert Scoble sat down with the creators of Soluto in this great video interview just after their presentation at Disrupt 2010:

Soluto what?

So, how does this thing work? What does it do - and does it really have potential in the Windows world?

The first thing I did was, of course, download a beta of the application. The application is simply the client component that runs on Windows XP or Windows 7 machines. I installed my copy on a Windows XP virtual machine to test the application. Here's what I got right off the bat - a message about being overloaded. Overloaded? This application has been out less than 24 hours and already can't scale to what users it has? In fact, right now if you go to the download page of Soluto now, you'll be greeted with another overload message. Not exactly inspiring trust so far.

Even worse, when attempting to run the Soluto application a second time I'm greeted with this message:

In all, I have been a Soluto user for 24 hours and I have not been able to connect to the servers once long enough to make use of this application. My test computer was on the Internet without any connection issues. Even worse, though, is that Soluto REQUIRES a connection to it's servers to be useful on the client-end. Not good.

Here's the difficulty with an application like this. If the user is presented with some information (like the boot time at left), but the user is not able to interact locally with that information with, at least, a little bit of use - the application itself becomes a real waste. Soluto itself is just another application that wants to load on a Windows system and consume resources.

A closer look at Soluto

Soluto is installed to the "C:\Program Files\Soluto" folder by default.

Soluto also installs a driver named "PCGenFAM Mini-Filter Driver" - presumably to help with PC Genome information gathered. What the makers of Saulto should do in the future is change the description of this driver to help those looking for malware understand where this driver comes from.

Also installed in the "Soluto PCGenome Core Service" that is set to load automatically on the system.

In the root folder of Soluto is a file named "LocalGenome.sdf" - which looks to be storing the local data for the computer itself. This appears to use the Microsoft Standard Data Format (.sdf)

My thoughts about Soluto

With what amounts to shovel-ware for an application that cant connect to its' servers, Soluto is really not going to win anyone over with the application as it is. Sure, it's in Beta right now, but for an application billed as being "crowd sourced", it should at least handle the crowd right now, shouldn't it?

This doesn't even involve the segment of Windows users that Soluto really needs - the power users and more technically gifted. If they are thinking technical users are going to let and application like this sit on their computer in it's current iteration - they are going to be surprised. No technical user would allow this to consume local resources. Considering also, that Soluto's business model is to build a database of fixes and then sell these in an automated fashion for less technical users - Soluto really needs to treat those that will be the core of how those solutions are gathered, better. Possibly a different, scaled down and more useful client?

The idea though, is incredible. I swear I have seen this sort of over-ambitious idea from other folks and vendors including Anti-Virus companies. They don't seem to be able to realize this in any concrete fashion, but the idea is indeed incredible.

Other Links:
Screenshot Tour: Soluto speeds up your Windows boot time with help from the crowd - Lee Mathews
Can Soluto really make PCs less frustrating? - Ed Bott
Soluto Review: the Boot is just the beginning - Gal Mor

Why I've always been a fan of Magnum P.I.

2010-06-01T14:49:00.000-04:00

This is one of a very few personal posts you'll see me write here. The regular fare on this blog is usually a mix of computer, technical stuff with the occasional outrage over something with a dash of vacation stories added. After spending a little time over the last few days (re) watching the 8th (and final) season of Magnum PI, I thought I would stop and reflect on what that show has meant to me over the years. It's almost corny now that I'm 36 years old that I would have identified with a television character so much.

To understand this, you really have to have a sense of timeline. Magnum PI was in it's first run on TV from 1981 to 1988, this would have placed the show on CBS in the rage of years for me from when I was 8 years old to just about the middle of my 14th year. I was a kid in every sense of the word when this show was running. Magnum PI was also a very popular show - one of the higher rated shows for it's time. If they wanted too, the producers of the show could have kept it going for some time after it ended. But, in the spring of 1988, the show ended.

I know what you're thinking, and your wrong. This show turned out to be more than a show for me in a number of ways that go beyond some pipsqueak kid watching the boob-tube. This is the unusual story behind this show and it's effect on me when I was so young and it's apparent effect on me now. As it turns out I'm in the middle of the years that the Thomas Magnum character played out on the show (33 to 41). In many ways its interesting, and sometimes scary to see this show with fresh eyes as an older and (somewhat) wiser person - seeing things that the kid could never have seen. I've also only seen the last season, none of the 7 seasons that preceded it.

There are so many coincidences that have happened in my life that have linked me to the Magnum PI character. perhaps as a child, I just needed a character to identifiably with - something akin to GI Joe for a generation before me. But, there always seemed to be more.

In 1984, as an 11 year old, my father decided to take me and my sister to a baseball game. Since we lived in Sarnia at the time, it would ave been difficult or impossible to get to Toronto to see a Blue Jays game. We, instead ended up going to Detroit to catch a game at the Tiger Stadium, watching a team that was on a serious tear that year and one that would go on to win the World Series. This essentially became my favorite baseball team as I followed the Tigers more and more as I got older. I don't recall seeing the Magnum PI show at the time, but to see that he was a big Tigers fan was really cool!

There was the season when I finally started to watch Magnum PI in first-run episodes. This being the last season, I was surprised to find that in the final episode - they would use allot of Otis Redding's music. I had heard allot of music from Otis Redding after seeing some John Hughes movies years before and had become a huge fan of soul music, and Otis Redding. I remember in the mid-80's, working in downtown Toronto and after hearing Otis Redding for the first time - I wanted that music! I remember walking up and down Young St searching through all those classic record stores just to find any of his stuff. To hear that music in the final episodes was an amazing coincidence, and kept me watching.

There were other things, that naturally as a kid, I would end up emulating at the time. I remember walking around with a Detroit Tigers baseball hat quite a bit - but I also remember at the time thinking "am I wearing this because I'm a fan of the Tigers or because I'm a fan of Magnum PI?". I guess it wasn't much of a big deal, but in the mind of a young boy with no identity to speak of, it mattered to me. Seeing stuf like the logo on Magnum's shirt as he would kayak - it was of a man's head and the number of 14. Naturally I would find this interesting because my own birthday was June 14th.

Much of my younger years were a bit crazy, and having an escape like Magnum PI actually helped me enormously. I found myself enjoying the friendships between all of the main characters - Magnum, Rick , T.C., Higgins and the two dogs, Zeus and Apollo. The chemistry between all of the actors was amazing - something we rarely see in today's polished CSI'esque shows. As I would start watching the show more, I would see allot of the re-runs as they were aired in syndication - but I never managed to get to see the real narrative of the show as it was released. In fact, not only have I not seen all of the 162 Magnum PI episodes, I haven't really sen many of them in sequence either.

And I get some of the in-jokes of the show (if you want to call them jokes). I know that, for example, the number of 162 episodes was not a random number - it's actually the number of games in a Major League Baseball season. When I watch the show more these days, there are others that I see too. It's amazing what you see, even after the years have passed.

Now that the show is entirely out on DVD (Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) I suggest you go check them out, or at the very least buy me one of them. I have always wondered how many other Magnum PI fans there are out there besides myself. I did once come across a customer how had a model of the same Ferrari that was used in the series too. Behind the model was a picture of him sitting in a Ferrari in a setting that looked like Hawaii.

This is the next step for me as a fan of the show. I would like to finally get up and go check out the location where all of this was filmed. I want to finally make the pilgrimage to all the various locations to check out what it's like down there. After all of these years, I have no doubt that everyone there has forgotten about this 80's TV show, but I certainly haven't forgotten. I look forward to digging up more episodes and checking them out. If you're a fan too, I'd love to hear about why you are!

More on Soluto: Have they cured my frustration?

2010-05-27T20:38:00.001-04:00

Soluto did win the Techcrunch Distrupt 2010 conference, and for that, I thought it really deserved a real look-see. Since I wasn't able to actually get Soluto working the first time around - I decided to wait and try again. Well, today is that day, I finally have access to Soulto's cloud network and can put it through it's paces. Here's what I found.

The interface is indeed quite slick. I could see that the authors of this software put allot of time and energy into making this application look great. There were a number of transitions that really looked nice, and whenever information about components was displayed - that information was interesting and usable. I especially liked the idea of "Recommendation" and the answer was fairly well-informed.

Editing application information itself was also quite flashy. The process was straight forward and was explained as you changed the various text items. The "Wiki Editing Mode" allows you to describe and recommend actions that can be taken for the application (see below). Here's the thing though, the text in the edit boxes was incredibly difficult to see - and there was not spell checker to speak of. Perhaps these are two things that could be improved as users start writing things for Soluto. I still though it was too flashy though, would a power user allow this kind of thing to run?

So, what does Soluto do when an application is disabled? Well, as an example, I took the "SunJavaUpdateSched" - "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Java\Java Update\jusched.exe" and took it through the various modes of Soluto .

The key above is located in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

When I pause the above item, the registry entry is removed from the Run key above and placed in the cloud (?) somewhere. I found no evidence of a temporary location for storing this data. It also appears at though Soluto assigns a "GenomeID" to each computer. Mine was "1C3A4A6F-9D65-48C5-957F-5F26287D4676".

This raises a number of concerns, especially if the computer is actually disconnected from this Internet after making changes. Could they restore their computer to the pre-Soluto state? To test this, I disconnected the computer from the network and rebooted it. I then attempted to restore all of my paused applications. It did indeed seem possible to restore all applications without the requirement of an Internet connection - a great improvement over the last version I saw of Soluto.

I also found it interesting that Soluto itself was considered a required item, not able to actually be removed. So, Soluto will, at least, protect itself from the user.

So, I thought, what if I install one of the many derivatives of viruses out there and see how Soluto handles that? This could be interesting. While I was running the Soluto beta, I installed the wondrous (and totally fake) "Security Tool". Soluto didn't stop it (I didn't expect it too) and furthermore, din't stop the Malware from wreaking havoc on the system, in this case Soluto was stopped from loading completely.

Also, when using the menu-item that says "My PC just frustrated me" - the same thing happened. Soluto was prevented from loading or doing any work to improve the system. Should I expect that Soluto can protect itself from such attacks to it's own operation? Yes.

Overall, I'm liking this application more and more. I would love some sort of corporate-ready functions (AD installable, group policy settings for mass pausing, control over user interaction). Given that, this a plication may find itself in on a great deal more computers.

Give it a shot yourself, the download for Soulto can be found here. Let me know how it goes.

Speeding in Toronto? Be careful, watch out for ignorance!

2010-05-27T13:52:00.005-04:00

Yes, it's those unrealistic cops and other ignorant folks you need to worry about in Toronto and outskirts. Today, I had a basic exchange with one such member of the police about speeding on Twitter. The officer, Tim Burrows, who Tweets as @trafficservices had the following exchange with me:

Now, I need to qualify all of this. Car crashes are dangerous no matter how fast you go. I have been in a number of them myself as a driver, passenger and a pedestrian. Always be safe when driving and *always* drive according to your better judgement (the may not always be what's posted on a sign).

Here's the thing, we should all be ashamed of the system we drive in. The process of catching speeders and other traffic rule breakers is clearly nothing more than a cash grab, or possibly a tax on us. Let's be clear, traffic collisions can be scary and dangerous, but most of the rules we have to follow on the road have nothing to do with safety.

His basic points were three things (1) speed traps are in plain sight (2) speeding tickets are revenue neutral and (3) rules are all about safety. Let's look at these ideas, because you should at least be more informed than the officer on what we face on a daily basis. Don't drink his Kool Aid.

Let's look at this, point by point.

1. Speed Traps are in "plain sight" - There are a number of examples of this being just plain false. The cops in Toronto don't want you to see them as you approach because you'll slow down, so they resort to a number of tactics to hide themselves. As a deterrent to speeding, this is useless, because if no one sees the cop, they are reminded of nothing, much less that they should slow down. Here are a number of examples:

Found on a blog named Spacing Toronto, the picture is small, but you can clearly see that the Police have done what they can to hide themselves behind the trees. If not for the speeder they stopped, you would not have seen these guys on approach. Another spot I'm very familiar with is the corner of Gerrard St E and Blackburn St. This is a common hidden location for the police to hide and catch those coming off the bridge covering the Don Valley Parkway. It looks like this (source: Google Maps):

You can probably tell what they hide behind in the summer months, yes, the trees, the sloping pavement and the fence all create this perfect way of tricking people into thinking nothing is there. Another common trick I have seen used is the lone cop standing on a bridge pointing his speed gun down on the highway below. Once they catch someone, they call ahead and get a cruiser to stop you. Plain Sight? If you are lucky enough to catch the cops in the act of hiding a speed trap, I would love to see the pictures. We have to prove this major fallacy wrong.

2. Speed Traps/Tickets are Revenue Neutral after all costs factored - this is one big example of a fuzzy accounting process. The process where they count up all the costs to ONLY the parties you deem important and then leave all the rest out. The costs to those drivers who are fined at these incredibly high rates are not revenue neutral at all. To most, the high cost of the ticket is just the beginning. There is the social stigma attached to being a speeder (more on that later), the high cost of taking time off work and/or hiring legal representation, and the insanely high cost of the insurance if you were to be convicted of one of these charges. In some cases it gets even worse, you may in some situations have your license suspended (without notification) and/or face demerit points. Add all this up, and you have an incredible loss of the little spending money a person takes home after tax - even for the most minor of speeding charges!

Look at the number of paralegal companies that exist in Toronto, my search on Google yielded 1,333 results! The hide-and-catch speeders game not only pads the pocketbooks of the Police, it has created an entire market for legal services. Not to mention that many of these paralegal companies prey on the more uninformed folks who are clearly intimidated by the cumbersome legal system we have. That's a post for another day.

3. It's all about safety - This is one of the biggest lies that the cops will ever feed you. They are not hiding behind the trees with radar guns to keep us safe (revenue generation). They are not trying to create the "speeding is criminal" stigma to create a safer road environment (public support, fear). They don't over-legislate rules like the "racing law" that get's your license suspended, gets you fined up to $10,000 and your car towed immediately - because they want safer roads (all of the above). None of the current speed enforcement policies or budget goes to safety.

What, then, would the Police and Government be doing about all of the above if they were actually trying to curb collisions and keep us safer? I'm glad you asked, that is the most important question here. We need to collectively stop these jokers from screwing us over. I personally don't trust them with tax money as they stay "revenue neutral". Here's what we need to go in the right direction:

Roundabouts - Many studies have concluded that roundabouts on our roads reduce collisions. A Washington-based study concluded the following about roundabouts:

- more than 90% reduction in fatalities
- 80% reduction in injuries
- 40% reduction in total number of crashes

Source: "Safety Effect of Roundabout Conversions in the United States: Empirical Bayes Observational Before-After Study." Transportation Research Record No. 1751, Transportation Research Board (TRB), National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Washington, D.C. 2001

Even an article in The Economist (subscription required). talks about the benefits of roundabouts. Provinces like Alberta are starting to install them - here's what one looks like. But here in Toronto, little or nothing but talk. And, how many roundabouts do we have in Toronto? I'm sure you can count the number with your fingers. How much of that "revenue" could be spent on roundabouts for safety instead of more radar or laser guns?

Speed Limits - Did you know that the 401's speed limit was actually 112km/hour in 1976 before it was dropped to the current 100/km an hour (source). Did you also know that the minimum design speed of the 401 is apparently 130km/hour? Speed Limits need to be adjusted to be appropriate to the area they are in. In the case of the above Gerrard St E speed trap, the road itself is usually heavy up to River St. when you arrive at the DVP Overpass, and then the road opens up. Those drivers who enjoy this brief relief of traffic and go faster than the posted 40km/hr speed, are however, clipped immediately by the cash hungry cops. The speed limits on the roads need to reflect real world conditions, and not just set (and used) by the police for their advantage. Many other locations probably deserve lower speed limits, but the majority of the roads in Toronto have speed limits set WAY too low.

The key statistic about speed, though is really not that "high speed kills" as they would have you believe. It is actually the deviation from the normal speed you are travelling on. Yes, that means Grama driving at 40+km/hr lower than others on the 401 will be MORE of a risk than someone driving 40+km over the normal speed. Here's a graph to illustrate that (source) :

The speed "stigma" and this the push to make those that might speed look like criminals - needs to stop. The cops need to stop wasting our money on hiding in bushes trying to catch speeders and put that money in more useful endeavors (like building roundabouts, catching actual bad guys, perhaps?). Everyone needs to call or email their local politician and tell them that the current policies are unacceptable. When you hear a cop talk stupidness about speeding policies - correct them!

iPad in Canada: Take Two: The Pre-Release Edition

2010-05-26T23:51:00.000-04:00

The iPad is due to be unleashed on us Canucks this Friday. Will you be buying one? After my last, short experience with a iPad, I really wanted to get my hands on another one. Having only 24 hours to work with the last time, didn't give me the time to really sink my teeth into using this thing. This time, I might even have it permanently. In fact, I will type this entire blog on this new iPad to really get a feel for how well the iPad keyboard works and feels.

I have to fess up though, just after I brought the iPad home, I kind of felt that this would become something of a novelty, definitely not a content creation device. My expectation was mostly met. As you get it - the iPad is essentially useless as a content creation device, the power comes from the apps you install. From what I can tell so far there aren't many free apps that allow you to create content. It's all swayed towards the consumption of content.

Consumption is really where the iPad shines. As I'm using it more and more, checking out the NPR application, the IMDB application, WeatherBug and some of the many other free apps - coupled with a WiFi connection available all over the house - wow. This is incredible. I really only wish I had two more of these. When folks over to visit, people just tend to be drawn to the iPad.

My two nieces had never seen an iPad, but when they grabbed it and started to mess around - they immediately knew what they had to do. They wanted a game - so I loaded the air hockey game and started it in two player mode. I was impressed, there was the iPad, this new technology never seen by these kids and they were instinctively playing this game as if it was absolutely normal to them. Here is the key power of the iPad: there is absolutely no learning curve to using this. We all know how to touch things. When the touch screen of the iPad, being, so accurate, kids and even those who may not have ever used will take to this thing immediately.

The amazing Penn, from Penn & Teller seems to have a different take on this. Check out his short video about how he uses his iPad:

He is, of course, entitled to his opinion, but I think he's totally missing the "Point" about the power of this device. He may have a discipline problem (who doesn't), but the iPad has proven to be incredibly versatile. I think this is why the iPad has sold so many in the first month - some reports are more than a million. Sure, this may have been intended, but very few will have said that this would happen for Apple where others have failed.

You may not know, but tablet computing devices have been around for upwards of 15 years. Clearly one of thee bigger failures has been the user interface, Windows (the operating system of earlier tablets) is not as touch screen capable. The iPhone operating system (the same as what's running in the iPad) was built from the ground up to be touchscreen based - and it succeeds in this regard. The next thing Apple needed to perfect was the keyboard - and I'm happy to report that this keyboard is amazing. It works the way you might expect a real keyboard too - the response from the keys is perfect, with a small sound played each time you hit a button. This, I would say, is the best soft keyboard I have ever used. You do have to be careful not to hit above the top bar of the keyboard though, all sorts of havoc was created by doing this (I prematurely published this article).

I took it even further - venturing out of my home WiFi connection, I stopped at the local Starbucks to give the iPad a chance to connect in the real world. I'm happy to say the connection worked great. While sitting on the table, I decided to prop the iPad up with my wallet, this worked perfectly for getting the iPad into the correct angle required for typing. What I planned next was to use an app named DropBox to view files and books. The meeting went amazing, while the person I was meeting had never seen an iPad before, the combination of touching the screen and seeing the zooming action made it simple for him to see and interact with my proposal. It was great because we discussed the project, then went back to the document, discussed, went back... This cycle was perfect for two people sitting at a type and going over an idea.

DropBox (iTunes Link) is this great free utility that gives you space in the cloud to use for viewing files on the go. One of the nicer things about DropBox on the iPad, is that it doubles as a viewer for these files. This is really useful when you don't have any sort of PDF viewer installed (and some of them actually cost money).

With this iPad I'm finding new and interesting ways to use it too. I've figured out how to get the full Google Reader interface and am always on the lookout for really cool ways to extend this past just simple browsing and playing games. Everyone I have shown this iPad so far has been impressed. I didn't think I would be either, but I can't help it - I still am.

When the iPad finally arrives here in Canada in an official capacity on May 28th, I suspect many more of you will have your hands on this great device. I haven't seen a causal iPad user yet - but I have met at least 10-15 people in the last few weeks that tell me they'll be buying one. If you have any experiences to share about your new iPad, I would love to hear about it.

Also, those looking to buy an iPad in Canada can do so here: iPad - Apple Store (Canada)

First Impressions - Office 2010 Starter

2010-05-25T16:22:00.001-04:00

Gone from OEM and newly installed computers is the "ugly-duckling" Microsoft Works application. Enter it's replacement - Office 2010 Starter Edition. The Starter Edition of Office is intended to be installed on New and OEM computers and is ad-supported. This copy of Office is intended for free use and only includes limited-feature copies of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Excel 2010. It will run only on Vista SP1 and Windows - with no support for Windows XP.

See My complete Office Starter 2010 Edition Gallery here.

Office Word Starter 2010
The version of Word included is very similar to that of the full version of Word (at first blush) however some of the bigger differences are the lack of programmability, table of contents and being able to track changes of a document. Inf fact, if you look at the File -> Info screen, these limitations are outlined and you are given the option of purchasing the full version of the product. You'll also notice an advertisement in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen (all the ads I saw were Microsoft Ads). One of the sites linked to (on Microsoft) outline the different versions - the final will likely change.

Of the new (coming) features of Office Word 2010, here's I've noticed as being included:
- Save to Skydrive (Cloud)

- New visual printing interface
- Saving Directly To PDF

I've noticed some missing features, these are:
- Reading an Writing To Template files
- Envelopes and Label printing
- Ability to MailMerge
- The ability to include a screen Capture
- The Inclusion of SmartArt?

Office Excel Starter 2010
Excel Starter also includes a number of limitations - probably the biggest omission is the ability to create (and or) run macros. in many cases this may be a killer limitation when users need this feature to use files. Other notable differences found - No support for PivotTables, Tracking Changes, frozen panes, and password protecting files.

Office To-Go
This version of Office also includes a utility named "Microsoft Office To-Go Device Manager" - this application allows users running Windows Vista and Windows 7 the ability to run the office applications from a USB or flash drive regardless of whether they have Office Starter installed on the computer.

Other Stuff
Another noted new feature in use here was something called Click-To-Run - more: http://url.cwl.cc/oukit - this involved a streaming (or virtualization) these office applications. The presence of this tech was not clear, until I took a closer look. This version of Office Starter may not exactly be how the final version is delivered, but this was a great introduction to the underlying technology involved.

Another interesting thing I noticed, when disconnecting the computer from the network, launching an Office application was painfully slow - possibly due to office Starter phoning home somehow. After a reboot - a clean run from either one of the Starter applications was not possible without an internet connection. This was not greeted by any errors. Office Starter will also not open certain files, .xla, .odc, .udl among them.

Delving Deeper
Looking at the file structure, however, yielded some more interesting bits. There was a directory called:

c:\Program Files\Microsoft Application Virtualization Client\

This clearly indicates some sort of virtualization is going on (or possible). This is possibly the same virtualization framework in use for Microsoft's APP-V? - More: http://url.cwl.cc/qkiev. Starting office required calling the CVH.EXE file - or the "Client Virtualization Handler" - suggesting this entire package is being virtualized.

Another interesting thing found, which indicates Microsoft intends this technology for other office apps. you can change the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\CVH\{20140066-0066-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE}\{56BD3CE5-21EF-46EB-9356-F15D9D2B5369}

Change the value of "BitmapId" to a different number (decimal), here are some of the different splash screens you get:

4050 = Access
4051 = Excel
4052 = Excel Starter
4053 = OneNote
4054 = Outlook
4055 = Powerpoint
4056 = Project
4057 = Publisher
4058 = Word
4059 = Word Starter

Also, a component of this virtualization was a drive letter that was created from the host to the server. On my test system this drive was reserved as Q: and used the "AppVirt App FS". What was interesting was that this drive was exposed only from within the application - not locally on the computer (or client). Getting at it involved going to the "File Open" dialog, choosing "Computer" and then opening the Q: drive. Clearly this drive contained all of the office applications (including WINWORDC.EXE, EXCELC.EXE). These files were all contained in a directory named: Q:\140066.enu and accounted for about 600mb of files.

Overall the speed of this version of office was nice - it was also nice to be using the application that should have been included on computers back when the Works application was being installed. The ability to open, edit and save word documents on any computer, for free is a major boost for Microsoft. If they are listening - they should remove any sort of activation/control from this version of Office and allow anyone to use it. Early indications inside of log and help files show mentions of an activation framework.

One other note - this version of office does not include Outlook - Microsoft's flagship mail client. I think it's high-time Microsoft made a serious play in this market and offered this application free (or a limited edition) free to all who would like to use it. It could greatly compliment the recent announcement to open up the Personal Folders files (See more: http://url.cwl.cc/jlrqb). For more on this, take a look at my own case for a Free Outlook.

Also of note, this version of Office does not expire.

References and Further Reading:
"Introducing Microsoft Office Starter 2010" - http://url.cwl.cc/pkswg
"Microsoft announces ad-supported Office Starter 2010" - http://url.cwl.cc/vqvtp
"Office Starter 2010: The fine print on Microsoft's Works replacement"- http://url.cwl.cc/thivb

Thoughts on Google I/O May 20, 2010 - LiveBlog

2010-05-20T11:22:00.003-04:00

It's coming! Today should be the big announcement of Froyo, Google's newest Operating System. I'll be LiveBlogging this event today. Check here for updates as it happens. if you would like to watch the keynote yourself, check it out here.
It's started, again I missed the start of the keynote. I should stop answering the phone.. :)

Wow, "a future we don't want" - a HUGE shot at Apple!

In 18 months they have over 60 compatible devices. Big Names. Lots of progress in 18 months. Daily activations are now 100,000 a day. Nice. Android looks to be taking off. Talking about Navigation, it's not available here in Canada yet. Boo. Search has increased 5x.

Android Usage

50,000 Android apps in the marketplace now. 80% of them are wallpapers :)

Time for Matt to demo some of the Android stuff. Time for Froyo (Android 2.2). Talking about the Dalvik VM. Now they are adding a Just In Time complier. A nice demo of the speed of Froyo. Now, on to business stuff.

Lots of new Exchange features, very nice. Address Book lookups. Sweet. A new Application Backup API. Nice. LOL, a great crack about "lack of multitasking".

Other Things:

- Application Push API - Wow, sending "intents" to the phone, can load maps directly into the phone. Could be scary for the SPAMers to get this power

- Tethering and portable hotspot - We can do this with a rooted phone, but now supported in the OS. Bye Bye stupid data charges from Rogers!

- Browser Performance now - the Froyo is really killing the iPad

- Wow, a delay here - now talking about speech. Should be more places to speak into the phone, wow, on the fly translation. Cool

- Now time for Flash! People clapping when they see the slide, speaker doesn't need to say a word. Open-ness, not like the iPad

- Finding apps is a problem, moving apps around. Searching for data apps. Providing a quick way to quick search the apps. Google is providing a way to allow the user to search within the app's data.

- Allowing the user to move an APP to the SD Card, this can be done with a rooted phone, but is very welcome! They showed Need for Speed, nice looking game.

- The new "Update All" button is now in the Marketplace. Auto Update is now possible for all apps too. Does it work well? They didn't demo this

- Now looking at crashes on Android, wow an entire stack track on bugs when they happen. Straight from the users. Very cool.

- The android marketplace is now available on a pc/web browser, no way OTA installation automatically? That is amazing. That should have been done by Apple a long time ago. Going even further, non-DRM music can have stuff available to to be streamed from a computer. Very cool. Looks like it's coming out of an iTunes installation.

- Advertising. They will probably talk about the 77% increase in Ad impression. Lots of tools available to advertisers. Ponys? Starting to look at AdSense for mobile. The ads are ugly. Banner ads. The trouble is that the user is taken away from the running app. Wow, expanding apps looks nice - it will be bad if the application will start forcing them on us though. Click to call? Will anyone do that? The ads are pretty active and even interactive. I do think Apple does ads better though. Finally the immersive ad. Impressive. Talking about open-ness. Mobile ads are open to everyone at the conference.

Time to talk about the 4G HTC Evo, that's a pretty phone. 8 megapixel camera. Oh wow, giving that phone out to everyone at the conference. I should have been there!

Next up is Google TV - "a new platform that will change the future of television". Big words. TV is a HUGE market. Presenter says "TV has basically stayed the same". So many devices are dumbing down the web, so true. All of these custom interfaces suck. And, yes, they are all closed and locked-in. Google seems to want to blend the TV and the web together. "TV Meets web, Web meets TV". What will this look like? This seems like it will be a box added. A special remote control. The demo is showing Dish Network. Looks like there will be a "search box" added to the TV interface? Whoops, looks like some problems here. The input device is not working. Direct searching tunes you into a channel directly. Wow, recording too. Very nice. These tech issues seem to be annoying. I wonder how embarrassed these guys must be. They are asking people to "turn off their phones". The series result looks great. Taking the user to the web or from the TV feed. Very cool. "A single experience across both".

Google TV Search Interface

This is nice, using the web directly inside the TV interface. That is incredible. It doesn't look as simple as it should be, but this is the way TV should really be done. The "home" screen looks pretty too. I wonder how cable companies would like this? Another box though? I don't know if this would really work unless the cable companies were on board for this. Accessing YouTube looks to easily accessible too. This is like cable with a computer instead of a computer with cable (the way you would do this now). There are podcasts. This idea is endless, great stuff.

Notice how all of the content, TV and Web-based is listed

"This is big" - and it is. I do think this may really kill the traditional cable TV feed. I wonder if this would support multiple feeds (Satellite + Digital Cable). Now he's going to talk about sports - oh, if he could pull up quick stats and such. Picture-In-Picture and then hit the web. Wow, this thing is insane. Bringing the web and TV makes sense - right now I have a computer that handles web content and I watch it from there (without a TV feed). Now the speaker is moving to music and games. I don't see how the Google TV device will play video content stored locally or streamed on the network. The versatility of this is amazing.

A game-web mashup, game is playing in bottom left corner

Hardware seems standard - but having an Android phone paired to control the Google TV box. Speaking a search into the phone. Wow. Using a smartphone for this - Comcast *just* came out with something like this too. This is going to be a big for TV. I imagine there will be Android-Only device meant as a remote control/keyboard device.

Now on to the software of Google TV. All built on Android/Chrome/Flash with OTA updates. Oh now, they will even allow Android apps run on Google TV. That I didn't see coming, cool. This may really transform the TV - imagine maps controlled by a smartphone on the TV.

They then go on to push and "Intent" to the TV over the web, let's see if this things is going to work? Wow, they pushed the "Twitter" app to the Google TV box.

I imagine the development process for the a TV-based Android app will require a different process. This is going to create another fragmentation problem for Google (as if they don't already have this problem). It's time to demo a YouTube app called "LeanBack". This custom interface is kind of what they were moving away from, wasn't it? I guess if this is just another Android app. A beta will come along soon on the YouTube website.

Now a demo of an NBA digital application. They have made a Google TV app - it looks pretty, doesn't seem to do much but provide option sand direct links to DVR functions. I imagine buying content will be included.

Britney is up with the Google Listen application. Having this on Google TV would be cool, I think. I just don't see why this is any different from the smartphone experience? She's being overrun buy the guys talking in the background trying to fix the problems. I really like the Google Listen application.

The next demo is an on-the-fly translation of TV content? Looks to be subtitles added on to the TV feed that are being translated on the fly for folks watching. Signing up for more information about Google TV is going to happen here.

"Your TV just got allot smarter". Does a Rogers/Bell really want a smarter TV? Time will tell. Coming in Fall 2010?

Now Eric Schmidt is up to talk about partners. Looks good.

So , this concludes my LiveBlog of the Google I/O event. I will spend a little time and clean up these blog entries. The keynote hasn't ended, so I hope there aren't any more big announcements!

Thoughts on Google I/O May 19, 2010 - LiveBlog

2010-05-19T12:41:00.003-04:00

Thanks to a few delays today, I really came to the party late. I was looking forward to seeing Google's I/O presentations live online at http://www.youtube.com/GoogleDevelopers. I sat down, and started watching about 5 minutes into the presentation.

A presenter was talking about HTML5 - it seems the big part of this presentation is about HTML5. I wonder what Goodies are coming along. First up was some demos of applications that use HTML5 - there was MugTug Darkroom , and Clicker.Tv - and Opera Runnng Video in in thier browser. The video tag will now be in the VP8 format.

Next Up, Kevin Lynch from Adobe. I wonder f we'll see some Apple Hate..? He starts talking about HTML5 and Dreamweaver. Cool CS5 will show a preview of a site in various form factors. It doesn't look like this will be mobile browsers, it seems more likely that these are simply just resolution previews. Dreamweaver also has nice feature that does live previews of pages after CSS or code is changed. It seems some of this is going to start overlapping Flash, I wonder if Adobe wants to halt this progress. This last example Kevin showed looked like a Flash animation. Crazy. And support for VP8, great. He's done.
Now the presenter is talking about finding apps. Could this be headed towards an App Store? Ah, Chrome Web Store. Time to take a look at that. It looks alot like the main screen of the Chrome OS. Do these links favor HTML5 applications written on the web over that of any other tech? Monetization too - apps can be sold through this app store. This is a great idea, but Google really needs to get better at helping people actually discover apps. Apple is crappy at that and Google's current Android Marketplace is just ok. This could be a real chance for them to make big waves in this market. Chrome App Store seems not to be live n the greater Internet right now.

Now time for the publishers to talk. These guys are dying - now we know they are old.. lol. Sports Illustrated. What on earth are they thinking of with HTML5? This looks so much like Flash. I wonder why they never did it with Flash? Free, he said free. Wow. This is really what the old-style publishers SHOULD be doing. It looks great. I wonder if they are going to pull this off the same way on the iPad (or are they already doing it?). Many have to be thinking that this what an enriched magazine should be. How will they make money off this if it's free? Re-imagine. RE-make. Open. Searchable. Everywhere. Bold words for a publisher.

No date yet for the Chrome Web Store. Cross-Browser support too? I wonder how apps will be submitted? Will they need to be approved?

Time for Lars and Google Wave. Scoble says Wave is an Abortion. What is Wave going to do? Wave s now open to everyone. Now everyone will see that Wave sucks. Wave is going to be part of Google Apps? he glossed over that one. I personally like the ideas behind Wave. It's just not easy to use. Wow, back to apps, Wave can be enabled in Google Apps domains for free. Sweet. Lars says come back and take a look. I think it's totally worth a look. I really could see Wave as a commenting engine on a website or blog. Commenting with an app like Wave would really change the interactiveness of comments. Lars is done.

Now David, talking about how more web apps are at work. Talking about how hard it is to move to the web application. One of the biggest benifits of having apps on the web is the mobility and ability to run the stuff everywhere. David also mentions lock-in (hello Microsoft?). Rapid web application development? Web-App-Delphi? Who understands open? Vmware? Bring out Paul Moritz.

Is Vmware going to be hosting some sort of app development cloud? This is the Google Project Hosting cloud I think. He's also talking about the Google Web Toolkit and Spring framework. I like that Google wants to spur on the development of these apps. This could have a huge impact on the development of future apps - I can think of many vendors that would like their apps to be mobile/hosted.

Now time to build an expense report application. Wow, he's building this incredibly fast. I notice he's also running Ubuntu Linux there. Amazing!

While showing a "Rich Web Application", the presenter is explaining how amazing the UI looks - though I wonder if he'll talk about being unconstrained by the browser and utilizing the keyboard. Most of the best applications lean more heavily on the keyboard and can be full screen. The next demo, Speed Tracer looks pretty indeed. Speed Tracer for the server? Spring Insight. Wow, that is a rally cool performance tool. I'd love to have something like that for a Windows Server. The UI looks slick.

I wonder how all this stacks up to something like Windows Azure? This also seems to lead up to the possible cloud hosting that Google might be announcing? The speed is a huge component here. If a user doesn't feel responsiveness, the speed was not impressive at all. Looks like an error on the presenters part. Wow, going through 5 million records was fast when connected the wired network. This is not good because the app will need to be as mobile as possible. Given the number of records, it seems quite speedy. I'm not sold on the speed. Would the enterprise use this?

Next is making the app "mobile ready". Ben and Bruce showing the mobile apps. On the iPad the app looks incredible. Then on Android. Eesh, the speed is not the greatest on Android. The first run-though failed. I think they're expecting live updates on the iPad. The network is overloaded? They don't have a WiFi network allocated just for them? The widgets are horribly small on Android. Wow it worked. Having the data come up in real-time. It's pretty flaky, but the app is quite nice - "Aside form the network glitches" - lol.
Next up, flexible deployment. No lock-in. Cloud portability. It looks like you can do this stuff really from anywhere, which is amazing.

Then Kevin Gibbs is up from the Google Apps Engine. Something to "manage" applications? The problems here is that no enterprise will be only Google Apps, but a centrally managed app manager would be cool. Enter, the new Google App Engine for Business. I like what they are doing with this stuff - offering an SLA,support and a real console. This should really go a long way in helping Google appeal to the Enterprise. I think business has had a tough time taking Google seriously. Google now has the apps, the toolkit to make the apps and the marketplace to sell the apps. Incredible how much Google wants to be a part of.
Pricing too, $1000 per app and $8 per user? Just simple, and amazing.

For now, this will conclude my LiveBlog. I look forward to blogging about Google I/O tomorrow morning. I hope to see you then!

My Niece's 2010 Spring Concert footage

2010-05-04T15:20:00.001-04:00

Every time my nieces Cara and Jessica are in a concert at their school, Harmony Heights Public School, I try to attend and gather some useful pictures and video. Most of the time I fail - my camera just doesn't cut it. I'm in the market for a decent HD camera, but for now we're stuck with this. I should also note that I'm not exactly in the best position to get this either - I should probably have been in the area where the gawker parents go to get footage, maybe next time :)

So, without further delay - here is what I have gathered for all to enjoy.

First up is Cara on the recorder - she is going to be the third from left on back row. Here's a picture of all the kids playing:

If you would like to see and hear what they sound like, check out this blurry video:

Next up is Jessica, she was actually involved in a couple songs in this concert. She sang "My Favorite Things" and "The Hockey Song". Here's a shot of the kids about to sing - Jessica is the first from the left on the bottom row:

If you would like to hear them, take a look at the video:
"My Favorite Things"

"The Hockey Song"

There you have it... enjoy the videos and let me know if you like them. I look forward to making more (and in better quality).

Kevin

Ch, Ch, Changes to the Blog!

2010-05-02T13:13:00.002-04:00

Hello again folks. For those of you that read my blog from time to time, I say thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to read what I have to say. I will continue working hard to make this blog the best it can be - providing you news, details, interesting stories and other stuff from the technology landscape.

What I wanted to point out today, though, are a few changes I have made to this blog and why I decided to make the changes:

1. The Name: "Calwell's Blog" is now going to be called "Blogging Calwell" - I think this is a better representation of what I am (being of Calwell lineage, after all) and what I'm doing (blogging). I have thought of making the title of this blog something a little more catchy - but this has never been about catchy slogans for me. Why start now?

2. Removing Ads: Ads are a way to monetize a blog (I do appreciate you clicking on them from time to time), but they can also suck. I decided to remove the Amazon Search Box because it wasn't really doing what it needed to do.

3. Facebook Like Button: You will also find a "Like" button at the bottom of every post - so if you use Facebook, go ahead and "Like" this post. Spread the word!

A better way to manage Twitter Overload

2010-04-30T16:00:00.000-04:00

A number of folks I have spoken to about Twitter complain about one big problem. The main reason that causes them to walk away from Twitter. Overload. They join Twitter, start following closely related people (brother, sister, boyfriend) and then start branching out. Eventually their Twitter stream starts growing to point where they can't possibly keep up with all the tweets. A new study by PARC and MIT sheds some light on this problem and they even offer a new client.

This story is similar for me too. When I first joined Twitter I followed some people I knew, and then I started following celebrities. My first brush with overload came when I started to follow @joerogan - you know him right? He's the guy that used to host Fear Factor. Well, I found out he also hosts UFC fights too. One evening while I was checking my Twitter stream, he started tweeting about the fights. This drowned out every other tweet forced me make some serious Twitter-Choices.

I imagine many of you Twitter users have either gotten to this point or eventually will. For the majority that have this problem, they will abandon Twitter. It's true, according to Edison Research's "Twitter Usage In America" - only 7% of Twitter users are actually using it.

So this is a problem, and some are starting to work on solving it. Like these guys from PARC and MIT. They have even created a twitter client, named Eddi, that helps you better understand and view your stream. Take a look at this document that describes their research:

Here's a video of what the Eddi client looks like:

What do you do to manage Twitter overload?

Look! An Apple iPad in Canada - here's what I think of it: Impressive

2010-04-20T01:12:00.000-04:00

As one of the few Canadians who have had the chance to see and use and iPad, I felt honored to have it finally in my hands. This device will not be available here in Toronto until sometime in May - so imagine my joy at getting to play now. I really wanted to see what the hype was all about. I had heard and seen many reports - but for many, the mantra had been "You have to see it and touch it to understand how amazing it is". So, today, I will do that.

As I looked at the box and opened it up - I wasn't really sure how big the iPad would be or even how it might feel. I picked it up out of the box and the size was actually perfect. A few years ago when I was in Panama using an iPod touch to get email and browse the web - this would have been incredible to have. I was also surprised at how heavy the iPad is - by no means is it a lead weight, but I thought it would be lighter before I picked it up. It didn't seem that I'd get away with holding the iPad in one hand and browsing pages with another, we shall see. As shipped , the iPad is covered in plastic. I can just tell right away this thing is going to be a fingerprint magnet.

When you first get the iPad, you're required to plug it into a computer with iTunes running on it. When you plug it in, nothing really happens with either side - but then the iPad is unlocked and can be used. When I connected the very straightforward USB cable to my Toshiba Tecra M2 notebook via USB cable, the iPad displayed a message "Not Charging" at the top-right of the screen. I suspect many folks with PCs will get that same message.

Holding it is truly quite awesome - one of the first things I did was connect to a wireless network and go see a movie trailer in HD. All I can say is woo, incredible. I wanted to install an application but that was going to require an AppleID so I skipped that process. Given the lack of apps, the best I can do with this now is gong to pretty-much be browsing.

I took a look at Google's new interface for Gmail and actually went to the Google Books site to view some books. I found the iPad to be incredibly responsive to the touch gestures and the interface of viewing a magazine in Google Books was incredible.

The next thing to try was the much-lauded soft keyboard. I decided to open the Google Blogger interface and try to type a paragraph or more with the iPad on my lap. I'm happy to say that this is the best touch screen keyboard I have ever tried and might even be better than a real keyboard. I like at the iPad is correcting my words as I go too. The keyboard aside, there are problems here. The posture when typing on this keyboard is all wrong. If I don't have my legs elevated above my hips, I'm either going to have to lean forward and my back will hurt - or lean back and get a view of the screen that is not so easy to see. The real kicker though, is if your legs managed to end up below your hips and the iPad happens to lean forward - you'll see the iPad's screen flip upside down! I should note that one of the outside buttons on the frame locks the accelerometer - so this annoyance can be stopped. Occasionally too, I would accidentally hit outside of the keyboard area and the keyboard would vanish.

I then moved the iPad to the desk and leaned it up against the edge of a laptop and typing was great. I suspect many will have trouble with posture and ergonomics with this device because it really does push bad-posture to higher-than-laptop levels. The lack of an arrow key was a little weird too - but I got used to it and managed to make the touch interface work for me.

I should note too, that the default WYSIWYG editing interface inside of Blogger's page did not work correctly in the Safari browser. I tended also to notice the lack of flash on a few sites, but it wasn't a deal-breaker for me. Frankly, I have never thought Safari was a very good browser. I look forward to seeing Chrome or Firefox on the iPad.

I was also keeping an eye on the battery usage, the default indicator just shows a percentage like: "82%" which I really didn't see falling that fast. Through writing this entire blog, so far I've only used 5% of the battery power -Impressive.

Also of interest was the WiFi connection. While writing with this iPad, the WiFi connection was dropped and reconnected a number of times. Was this related to the recent problems with the device, or something else - it's hard to tell. The problem really became annoying when the iPad would refuse to connect to the router from within the webpage I'm working on - causing me to loose a paragraph of text I was writing. I went into the interface of my Linksys router and dropped the "radio band" from 40mhz to 20mhz and this seemed to improve the wireless reception - I expect more testing would be required to really understand this issue.

Wondrously, I managed to get apps on the iPad! I was excited to get the chance to see some of the cool apps I could find. Since I couldn't buy anything at this point - all that could be placed on this iPad was free programs. I started by installing Google Earth - this app was actually an iPhone app, so it had to be scaled to fit the entire iPad. It looked great, but I could tell that it was a scaled iPhone app because of some interface pixelation. I went looking for native apps. What I found, wow - these free apps like Reuters Galleries, Marvel Comics, Weather Channel Max, Dragon Dictation, and Air Hockey really show off what this iPad can do. I especially liked the interfaces or the IMDB and BBC News, even though they probably could have done it int a browser like that.

Altogether, this package is impressive. This is really something to feel and use. I can't help but think that Microsoft is not pleased to see how Apple has taken the tablet and essentially perfected it. When the iPad gets OS v4 and multi-tasking, I don't see any other device out there that can beat this. As a content consumption device, the iPad is perfect. I can see two of these sitting on my coffee table for guests, and a 3G model for my backpack when I'm on the road.

Here is more on the iPad from Apple:

I've also noticed Amazon is selling the iPad for $610.00 - Apple iPad MB292LL/A Tablet (16GB, Wifi) - I'm pretty sure that is not going to be shippable to Canada, however.

Are you another Canadian iPad user too? Please share your experiences and thoughts on the iPad - a game changer?

3 Interesting Utilities you should check out

2010-04-12T12:10:00.000-04:00

Of the many utilities I come across (desktop/mobile/web-based), I rarely keep them or use them long enough to give them the credit due. One of the most important things you use (and probably don't know) are the software utilities that sit on your many personal computing devices. Let me highlight some of the best I've seen recently.

1. Share Monitor 1.0 - Apparently developed by Abdollah Zavari for Softpedia - this portable Windows utility allows you to monitor accesses to files and folders you share from your computer. This a great idea and a wonderful alternative to the standard ways of doing this (Computer Management or Auditing). This utility is 32bit and is free. Download this utility here or use the QR Code on the right.

2. JavaRa - Another amazing idea - this utility's use is to remove older versions of the Java Runtime Environment from a computer. This utility was made for most Windows versions (without UAC enabled) and should be a godsend for those who may have many different versions of the Java runtime on their computer taking up space. The utility appears to allow for silent operation and other command-line options. With any utility you ma use to remove data, you should use caution and test this out thoroughly before using this on an important computer. One scenario I would be very wary of would be having a utility pre-packaged with a java runtime (like Alfresco) and what JavaRa might do. This utility is Open Source. More info here - download here or use the QR code to get to the homepage.

3. Scribefire - As it turns out - I'm using Scribefire right now on Google Chrome, and it's great! Scribfire is a browser extension that allows you to create and edit blog posts from within your browser. This utility is great for those looking to create quick posts or others who may not be exactly overjoyed with your current Blog's web interface. The interface is simple and powerful from what I can immediately tell. More info on this utility can be found here or use the QR Code at right - you can download for Chrome or Firefox. The utility is free and is currently in Alpha for the Google Chrome.

So, that's it for now. I look forward to showing you more stuff I see on a regular basis. Please feel free to suggest a utility you love and I'll post it in a future column.

A feature idea for Google Reader - Keep the stream centered

2010-03-24T12:09:00.000-04:00

I use Google Reader allot. I mean ALLOT. I have come to understand some of the best ways to make use of the sometimes massive stream of data by using the keyboard only. This is great because I can see in reverse chronology what I haven't seen before and by moving through the list with the "M" and "N" keys I can mark the articles as I go through. The trouble with this is that I always have to keep propping up the stream. Google Reader needs to offer the feature of keeping the stream centered.

Here's what's going on - as I run through the list of items in my Google Reader Stream I come to the bottom of the stream. This also happens to be the bottom of the browser I use as well. I tend to like to see at least 10 or more articles in advance (I'll tend to skip some things when I know duplicates are coming, etc). When I get to the bottom of the browser, I must press the down arrow or the page down key to see more of the stream I'm about to read. It looks like this:

I feel that Google Reader is still the best way to get news (with Twitter a close second). If there was a feature to keep the stream of items either at center or slightly above center I would be able to navigate the Google Reader faster and with many less keystrokes. Google Labs, are you listening?

What the next version Windows needs to FIX to remain relevant: Migration

2010-03-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had to migrate your data from an older computer? Of course you have. Have you done this on a Mac? If you have, you'll see one of Microsoft's serious flaws in the war to keep Operating System users. For Windows to march into the future - this has to be a major point of improvement. If you are a long-time Windows user - you'll know what sucks the most - Migration. I admit, some of this may be fueled by the fact that Microsoft didn't offer in-place migration/upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. You may think this is a sound practice but when Windows 7 was released on October, Windows XP had rough install base of 63%. What Microsoft effectively did was force millions of loyal product faithful to use their "Easy Migration" tool. Sure, easy, but a guarantee that most users understand how Microsoft really sucks. Don't think this a major fail by Microsoft? The fact is, you may not even know what you're missing if you haven't seen what's possible otherwise. The answer is in the process of migration on both platforms. Let's take a look.

Mac OS Migration

When you buy a new Mac computer and you want to move data to the new computer - you have a number of options. You can use a direct fire wire cable (that supports a number of "older" connectors) and do a direct migration. This tool also supports a direct connection via Ethernet. You want to choose the fastest possible connection, in most cases this is the fire wire connection. Migration Assistant transfers User Accounts (selectable), Applications (not including base OS apps), Settings, Files, and volumes. apple provides a myriad of cable options to make sure this can be done.

Mac Migration: Migration Assistant

You might be shocked at how effective this process is. After the migration process, I usually cannot tell the difference between the old mac and the new Mac. This is an extremely powerful and simple process for the user. There are application incompatibilities and problems as well, but the nature of applications on Mac (stored in the /Applications folder), this process is usually smooth.

Windows Migration
If you choose not to do a direct upgrade (either by choice or because it's not supported) you must use the utility named "Windows Easy Transfer". Replacing the older "Files and Setting Transfer Wizard", Windows Easy Transfer copies the old system's User accounts (selectable) Files and folders, Settings, Files and Folders (selectable). You can do the transfer by way of an Easy Transfer Cable which is a USB cable, by way of an Ethernet network, or by way of a CD/DVD or a removable disk. It is clear, that if you use an older USB connection, this could take forever. FireWire is a faster connection than USB, which is great - these are just architectural benefits you'll get from using the Mac.

Windows Migration: Easy Transfer

See what's missing? Yes, the migration process of Windows does not transfer applications. None. None of the simple utilities you may have installed, none of the essential applications you had previously setup and configured and, not Microsoft Office. What is, instead, waiting for you is the joy of reinstalling the application in question (hopefully you remember what it was and you have the right version) and once installed - you're left to hope the configuration you migrated across with your profile is brought forward. This is where the lights should go off, wow, this is not really a migration - this is just a backup and restore! That's right, and don't think this is a problem for Microsoft? Take a look at this.

What's wrong with Windows?
Taking a look deeper at why Windows fails so miserably in this regard; here are the biggest reasons the Mac comes out superior to Windows:

1. The systemic differences
These differences make the transfer of applications so much easier. With applications on the mac stored solely in the /Applications folder, all the information required to transfer these applications are easy to get at. Application settings could be in the /Library folders - but that is all there is to transfer. On the Windows platform, applications are generally in the \Program Files folder, but are not always found in this place. Newer applications are using the Windows platform more efficiently and installing applications in places like Chrome: \Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\. There may be applications installed in \Windows\System32 or other locations. Application settings, for the most part, are located in the Windows Registry which tends to be a bloated mishmash of information. Getting at all this information on an older Windows looks to be next to impossible for Microsoft.

2. The architectural differences
This is something that Microsoft can't be faulted for - but it a serious problem if Microsoft is to really give a complete migration option. The easy transfer cable option is lame at best, slow and clunky. If you have a user with a profile more than 10gb - you're going to wait forever. With the external drive option - you are generally still limited to a USB connection. The Ethernet-connected migration tends to be too complicated for most users. What really stands out with the Mac is the simplicity of migration. This process on the Mac built-in to the Operating System, not just an add-on utility. When you start a new Mac, the first thing you're asked to do is Migrate. The Mac also has a FireWire target disk mode you can use on the older computer's boot up - you press and hold down the T key until the FireWire icon appears on the old computer, and then start the Migration Assistant on the new Mac. Simple.

3. Complexity
The Mac's ability to transfer information is simple. It's the first thing you see on startup of a new system; the Mac has a hot key to enable transfers built-in to the startup of the system. The ability to migrate appears to be a serious and system-level part. In Windows, this process is needlessly complicated and haphazard at best. If you're migrating from a Windows XP system to Windows 7, you must download and install the "Windows Easy Transfer" utility (validation required). Once this is installed, you can look a the Windows XP system and see that both "Windows Easy Transfer" and "Files and Setting Transfer Wizard" are installed and available. This creates incredible potential for confusion since the user must use the Start Menu to run the migration tool after installation.

Microsoft's Migration: The user can access both utilities

It so true, that if a user is given many options, the user is going to be confused. I'm surprised that this is not more of a problem. Also adding a level of confusion, a new computer purchase on Windows 7 will present the user with a number of questions, but none of them involve the "Windows Easy Transfer" tool or a mention of migration. I wonder how the non-technical user would know what to do? In a basic configuration, using the "Windows Easy Transfer" on two locally connected computers and a key (provided by the tool) doesn't work unless you synchronize at least two accounts/passwords on the computers in question. Needless complexity in this case generally nulls out the usefulness of the utility.

What Microsoft needs to do in the next version of Windows
There really needs to be a system-wide transformation for Microsoft. First, migration needs to be a system-wide and integral service. Users should be able to use any built-in transfer utility in Windows to get the same results. The new computer should give enhanced details of connection information and request authentication (if required). Microsoft needs to also retire the registry, application variances and the archaic process of treating all users like pirates. If you have a license, you should be able to transfer that application's license to any computer (just like you can on the Mac). Applications should be transferable in a seamless and robust manner. Migration should become such a system-level process that users are not required to configure machines or troubleshoot to make it work. No new computer user should see anything but a Migration tool on first boot-up, they can opt-out if they choose.

Conclusion
Microsoft is at something of a crossroads. Windows 7 has been a successful undertaking, but Microsoft is clearly struggling to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive O/S climate. With Mac gaining market share, the Desktop PC being replaced by mobile and tablet options, and new O/S players like Google's Chrome - Microsoft has to re-vamp the system that generally enjoys a monopoly today. Microsoft has to simplify and integrate the Migration process going forward or risk loosing more customers to other vendors.

Links, and more reading material:

Microsoft - Explore the features: Windows Easy Transfer
Microsoft - Microsoft Answers
Microsoft Download - Windows Easy Transfer for Windows XP
Microsoft - Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7
Wikipedia - Windows Easy Transfer
SteveX Compiled - Mac Migration (or, FireWire Fun)
Apple - Transferring data with Setup Assistant / Migration Assistant FAQ
Wikipedia - Migration Assistant (Apple)

Can't put a
in Blogger's Post Feed Footer? Do this.

2010-03-12T23:36:00.029-05:00

Blogger can be a real pain in the arse sometimes, there are a bunch of tags that cannot be used in the Post Feed Footer section of Blogger's Site Feed settings. Those of you that aren't aware, the site feed is your Blogger site's RSS feed and contains either a short snippet of each of your blog or the entire text. The Site Feed Footer can be used to add consistent text (or links) to the bottom of each feed entry - much in the same manner as you might create a document feeder.

The trouble is, Blogger doesn't support a number of HTML tags in this section, among them are the very useful <hr> and <br>. You'll find that no method of using, say, the <br/> tag will work correctly. So, here's what I do to get around this issue.

Instead of <br>
If I want newlines and can't use the <br> tag, I put paragraph tags, or <pr> <\pr> around the line of text I want to stand on it's own line. You cannot, however just put together <pr> <\pr> to get separation. That sucks, but it should allow you to separate your footer text from your blog. This is not perfect unfortunately, but it may be the only way to get some spacing between your blog and the footer.

Instead of <hr>

If I want the horizontal rule, you can't use the <hr> tag, but what I do is surround a bunch of underscores with the paragraph tag. it will look something like this:

<pr>________________________________________<\pr>

These are my suggestions, I haven't tested all possibilities, do you have any other that you have tested?

A guide to preparing bootable USB drives for Windows/Linux installations

2010-03-05T08:57:00.001-05:00

I have found a number of tutorials on the Internet that describe how to take a regular bootable ISO image and place it on a USB flash drive, but none of them really laid out what utility was needed and what ones won't work. There are a number of uses for this since most of the newer computers that exists today can boot off of USB drives. If you place your Windows installation disc on a USB drive - installing Windows again is breeze because you don't have to worry about scratched discs or other related disc reading problems. Also, installing from USB allows you to directly edit files (if you use an answer file or OEM drivers) and you're installation will be a much faster process than reading off a traditional optical disc. In fact, if your computer doesn't have a disc drive, it likely does have a USB port that can be booted from.

What won't work the way you want
To start off, I want to rule out a few utilities you may have come across that won't work if you looking to setup a bootable USB drive and install your OS. As of the time of this writing, the following are not going to get you where you need to be:

Jolicloud USB Creator - This is a great and simple utility to place your installable Jolicloud image onto a USB disc. It won't, however, work for any type of disc other than the type Jolicloud provides. It requires a hybrid ISO image as well as lacking a bootmanager for your Windows install. This won't help you. Use this utility only with Jolicloud.
Xcopy - While copying the contents of the ISO image directly to the USB disc is a good idea - you will need to also prepare the disc to boot (MBR modifications) and build some sort of boot manager to pass the boot process to the Windows installation. Xcopy cannot do this.

What's and ISO image?
An ISO image is a perfect copy of a CD or DVD disc. When you make a copy of a CD or DVD ROM disc as a file on your computer, this file is called the image file. If you had, for example, downloaded the ISO image of Windows 7 Enterprise 90-Day Trial from Microsoft, the file name might be "7600.16385.090713-1255_x86fre_enterprise_en-us_EVAL_Eval_Enterprise-GRMCENEVAL_EN_DVD.iso"

How do I make an ISO image from disc?
There are a number of tutorials on the Internet, I recommend you use the Open Source Windows utility Infrarecorder to create the image. Note: Yes, it's intended for recording discs, but you don't need a burner to install an use Infrarecorder to make an ISO image.

Get the USB Drive
You want to get a good USB flash drive for this process. There is quite a selection out there too, so you really can get something with great size for pretty cheap. I would suggest that you get something 3 gigabytes or larger. Your standard Windows 7 installation CD clocks in at 2.4 gigabytes or more in size. You might try something like the Kingston DataTraveler I - 4 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive.

Gather your ISO image
You either want to create the ISO image from disc (if needed). Or, in the case of something like MSDN you will have directly downloaded the ISO image from Microsoft. Most Linux distributions will allow you to download the installation disc as and ISO image. Download or save all of these ISO files for the Operating Systems you want to use on a directory that is easily accessible. You will need space for all of this too, be sure to leave 50 or more gigabytes of space to work with.

Preparing a Windows 7, Vista or XP install from a USB drive
Get The WinSetupFromUSB utility. You can get that here.

Start off by extracting the entire directory structure from the ISO file. For the DVD-ROM based disc (like Windows 7) you'll need a utility like Isobuster to read and extract files. Next, re-partition and format the USB stick with the utility name "Bootice" or "RMPrepUSB" (provided). Once you have the program configured correctly click on the start button to finish the USB stick. In most cases you'll want to choose the default options whenever preparing your USB stick.

WinSetupFromUSB in action

To create the Windows XP Installation I did the following:

a. Insert the USB key and load WinSetupFromUSB, be sure that it is recognized.

b. Use the bootice utility provided (second button along the top). Yo will see a window that looks like the one shown below. There aren't many options, just click on Process MBR to setup the USB drive

c. Return to WinSetupFromUSB, choose the folder when your extracted Windows XP ISO files are (using the fist option shown above), and then click on the "GO" button.

To create the Windows 7 Installation, I did the following:

a. Insert the USB key and load WinSetupFromUSB, be sure that it is recognized.

b. Use the RMPrepUSB utility provided (second button along the top). You will see a window that looks like the one provided below. Choose the options laid out in this image. If this program is updated or changed in the future, try to match what you see below with the interface provided.

RMPrepUSB Utility

c. If you haven't done so, be sure to copy the contents of "\files\grub4dos" to the "\files\tools" folder so that RMprepUSB can see and use the Grub Bootloader

d. Highlight your USB stick and Click on "Prepare Drive" (this will format it)

e. Click on "Install Grub Bootloader" to install the boot manager onto the USB stick

f. Return to WinSetupFromUSB, choose the folder when your extracted Windows 7 ISO files are (using the second option), and then click on the "GO" button.

Things that may go wrong:

You get the error: "error 15 file not found"

This happens if the file "bootmgr" from the root of your Windows 7 Installation ISO file is not copied to the root of your USB drive. In most cases, you can simply just copy that file to the root of the USB drive to get setup running.

You get multiple setup options in the Grub Bootloader

You probably installed the bootloader more than once, go back and start again and make sure you start or create a cleanly formatted USB drive.

Linux installation from a USB Drive (preparing it in Windows)
For Linux-Based ISO images, use the UNetbootin tool. You can download this utility here and run it on Windows or Linux. Since this is a graphical utility, you just need to run the file you downloaded.

The UNetbootin-408 utility

Once running, you choose the "Diskimage" option and choose the ISO drop down option. Next, browse to the location of your ISO file. Be sure that along the bottom type is "USB Drive" and the drive letter coincides with what your system detected when you inserted your USB drive. Click OK to start the process.

Using the two above ways, you can create USB flash disk installers for all your most commonly used Operating Systems, even Windows PE - but that would be another post. Questions? Thoughts?

Be the IT Guy: IP Addressing your network - What's in the numbers?

2010-03-01T10:45:00.000-05:00

I'm an IT Guy. I'm human, but I do make a living in Information Technology. I'd like to give you a peek at some of the things I do when I'm after something. My hope is that you find my adventures interesting - and, yes, feel free to correct me! Today I bring back an article I wrote years ago - it's still relevant today.

Many times I talk to people inside my industry and outside - thinking about getting into the industry; they tend to be lacking in knowledge of TCP/IP and proper IP Addressing conduct. I often go into offices that have been previously setup and find the network is 150.150.150.0, or all of the hosts on the network are directly connected to the Internet. While these practices all work, this industry is begging for consistency and there are recommendations as to the proper use of IP addressing to simplify your network management. Have you ever wondered why a network's hosts might be numbered 10.x.x.x or 192.168.0.x?

Private Addressing and Public Addressing

On the Internet each host has a globally unique IP address. This address is represented as four numbers separated by dots, for example 142.204.1.21 (My old college). This number is referenceable by anyone connected to the Internet and is the address of the computer (some computers or devices may even have more then one IP). It cannot be used by any other computer residing on the Internet. As you might have heard, the numbers of Internet hosts is ballooned out and IP addresses are simply not available like they were. To address this problem the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force, the international body that sets standards for the Internet) built a best practice for the use of Private and Public IP addresses. The details of these best practices can be found in RFC (Request for Comment) number 1918. If you intend to be a network administrator or someone who wants to understand IP addressing, you must read RFC 1918. The definition of Public and Private IP addressing calls for a set of three classed networks to be used solely for the purpose of providing computers with IP addresses that do not need the use of global IP addresses.

When do I need Global IP Addresses?

In most cases, users of computers in an organization that is connected to the Internet , that being external connectivity - or the ability to offer services to users on the Internet and allow connections. Most users are going to need to connect out to use their web browsers, FTP clients, Telnet Clients, etc. These and more services can be offered by using an intermediary router that uses a protocol called Network Address Translation. Using a server that takes your private client's request, sends it to the Internet and then when it returns - relays the message back to the user on the Internal network. In this situation, all of the client computers in the office have Private IP addresses, and the server need only have one Global IP address. To the IETF, the reduction in Global IP addresses is noticeable.

There may be other desirable reasons for this type of setup as well. The computers on your private network are not directly accessible. In well designed networks, the server that does the network address translation will be isolated from your internal network and effectively become the only point of failure. In a network with many Global Hosts on the Internet - each one of these hosts is a point of failure or compromise.

What are the networks?

The IETF has defined three networks for use privately. No hosts on the Internet are allowed to use, or given these addresses. You have a choice between class A, B, and C subnets.
10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)

When do I use which network?

The answer to this question lies in the size of your network. If a class A network address is used, you would likely be in a large organization expecting future expansion. If the company is small (less then 65,000 users) the class C network is for you. The most commonly used network is 192.168.0.0. If you expect future expansion the go with the class A network.

A Configuration Example

This very small network has one server doing the Network Address Translation (NAT) and three workstations that use strictly internal addresses (non-Internet).

Figure 1: A small network using the class C network starting at 192.168.1.0, you can start at 192.168.0.0 if you wish. The computer that translates (Using NAT) typically has two network cards attached to it.

The Internet is something that has become essential to the computer consultant and the enterprising person looking to make a place for himself as a network administrator. Knowing the concept of public and private IP addressing will set you ahead of many technical people who have not bothered to understand the technology (and just implement it). I seriously Recommend that you read RFC 1918.

Switching email on a Blackberry to Google Apps (Gmail)

2010-02-24T18:09:00.002-05:00

I have long used a blackberry address (@rogers.blackberry.net) that connected to my phone directly and then forwarded email messages to the phone from the various accounts that I held. Since moving to Google Apps more than a year ago I have noticed a number of improvements to the Blackberry Internet Server(BIS) and Google Apps Servers. I have decided today I would make the switch and show you how it goes.

1. I had to login to may Google Apps server on cwl.cc and enable IMAP access. This is required by the BIS. While here, you'll want to stop forwarding messages to your @blackberry.net address.

2. Login to your BIS Server, in Canada it may be Rogers, Bell, Telus or WIND Mobile. Once logged into this, click on "Setup Account" and enter the required details. These details are very simple, and the BIS will know that you're working with a Google Apps account. When you have sucessfully activeated - you'll get a message sent to your phone:

You'll also going to want to remove the Blackberry (or other email addreses) you may have setup on the BIS before continuing.

3. Install the Enhanced Gmail Plugin. When you go to the http://www.blackberry.com/gmail site with your Blackberry Browser it will look like this on your device:

The installation should go smoothly and you shouldn't have to reboot your device. With this, you're ready to check out the features of Google Apps and test a few things.

Testing:
First and foremost, send a test message to your Google apps email address, was it pushed to the blackberry? great.

Second, delete the message off the blackberry and check on your Google apps mail box, was that removed there too? Great.

Features:

With this new email plugin, you'll find a number of useful features over that of simply forwarding your Google Apps mail account. Here are the most useful ones I've come across:

- Grouping, emails will now be grouped in the main messages screen in a similar fashion to what you see on the Google Apps server. You can also delete an entire group of messages and it will be removed on the server.
- Capturing Sent Messages, probably the most useful of all new new features you'll get. Sent messages from your BlackBerry will all be stored on the Google Apps server.
- Access to common Google Apps functions, functions like archive, labeling, adding/removing a star, marking as spam can all be used while in your messages screen.

Missing Features:

Also as interesting - what you won't get from this setup. Here are some things you you won't get (or loose) from making this change:
- Shortcut Key, if you're used to pressing "M" on your Blackberry to access messages - you'll have to give that up. When you view all messages, you won't have access to the added features in Google Apps.
- Calendar/Contact Sync, Yes, you'll still have to use Google's Mobile Sync to synchronize your Calendar and Contacts.

Not all that bad really, and with a major update to the BIS/Google Plug-in - you're really going to want to make this transition now if you use Gmail or Google Apps. This is a great compliment to the power of Google's Mail system and a much better fit than the mobile Google Mail app that can be downloaded.