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INTERACTIVE AGENCY
Web Development
Networking
Sprint AIRAVE
Ok… so we haven’t had the best of luck with Sprint (see here, and here) and while our company is slowly moving toward AT&T due to “some device” that came out in the last few months, I do have to hand it to Sprint for be one of the first companies to actually release a “why hasn’t somebody thought of this sooner” product.
What Is Sprint AIRAVETM?
Sprint AIRAVETM is a device that creates a CDMA signal for your mobile phone (like a miniature cell tower). AIRAVE provides enhanced and reliable mobile phone coverage in your house or office even if your existing wireless coverage is poor.
Seagate’s Portable WiFi / Bluetooth HD Solution: DAVE
A few days ago, Seagate released a statement about some new technology that they have dubbed “DAVE” (Digital Audio Video Experience).
From the release:
Using Bluetooth or WiFi connections, DAVE is the answer to providing substantial storage capacity without impacting the design or cost of mobile handsets. Built for portability and about the size of a centimeter-thick credit card, the DAVE mobile platform slips conveniently into a shirt pocket, backpack, or purse - anywhere up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) from the phone. In addition, the mobile storage platform is open source, enabling third party software developers to create new applications for the mobile phone utilizing the hard drive’s unmatched capacity and performance. The DAVE technology is offered to telcos and mobile handset OEMs for sale under their respective brand names.
Free 411 Calls (Directory Assistance)
It seems that directory assistance (411) is getting more expensive every year. Cell and local carriers continue to charge more and more - all while more and more Internet sites offer it for free. The good news for carriers is that people continue to use it, to the tune of 6 billion directory assistance calls made per year (in 2005). At $1.00+ per call, that’s pretty lucrative!
Alas! Now you can have your directory assistance free (again)!
comcast woes
Well, we were and are giving Comcast a shot for our new office’s internet access. While I am personally averse to Comcast’s service and reputation, their product offering of 8Mbps/1Mbps throughput with a static IP is too much to resist. That is, it would be if we were actually seeing that. We’ve only had our firewall up for 6 hours, and here are the speeds I am seeing to our server in Dallas:
The Internet is Down!
Nearly everyone that has worked in tech support before (or even those that haven’t) has a joke or story about some naive end-user calling about a routine problem but describing it as “the Internet is down!” — when really all they needed to do was reboot or something. It’s funny, and we nerds all get a laugh, but what happens when it’s true and you have to explain it to a customer?
This happened to me a few months ago. We had a customer calling to ask why they were being flooded with calls from their users about their web application (which we host) was down.
MS Access Error: Disk or network error.
One of our clients called and reported an issue with a MS Access database. The user was able to open a network based .mdb file, but when they tried to click on a switchboard button they received the following error message: “Disk or network error.” There are many resources that deal with this error, but none of them provided the needed solution. The TMP/TEMP directories were set properly, the JET Engine was updated, and the .mdb file was not corrupted (verified on another computer).
Ma Bell Rises
With the news that SBC is buying AT&T and Verizon and MCI merging again, the rolling back of regulation in the telco industry continues apace.
Check out the AT&T breakup on wikipedia, which has a rather hilarious disclaimer at the moment:
This article has recently been linked from Slashdot.
Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism.
You can’t take those slashdot kids anywhere.
Non-Profit Technology Planning
We had and have a lot of non-profit clients, and this article at TechSoup is a great primer on planning for technology needs for non-profits. Check it out.
VOIP Sabotage
Broadband news posts an interesting article about the potential for incumbent telcos to purposefully deteriorate the quality of VOIP over their circuits to better compete.
The full story is here.
Map a drive to your FTP server
If you have an FTP server that you’re constantly uploading to and downloading from, it can be a pain to use an FTP program to manage everything. Novell’s free program, NetDrive, let’s you instead map your FTP server to act like a local hard drive, so that all your remote files are accessible through the file manager that you’re used to. All of the uploading and downloading will be done in the background — almost seamlessly.
Due to licensing restrictions, Novell cannot provide a direct download from their site, but you can easily find netdrive.exe through a little Google search. Also, you can check out a step-by-step tutorial over at Engadget.
