Google Phone

This is a rumor that has been going around for a while, it is the reason I started to listen to RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech podcast. Now I see that GOOG is trading at an all time high, very close to 700 and CNBC is reporting that it is likely that they will anounce a phone in 2 weeks. This is huge, I guess my N95 will be obsolete even before I activate it. CNBC then mentions gPhone again a bit later in the broadcast this morning, very interesting.

MobileCampLA

Sunday I took Eric to MobileCampLA. We ended up on a table with Charles, Arif, RoBo, and Susie and came up with CarWatch on the HalfBaked.com competition and all got N95 or N800 phones a sa prize, sweet. Our product was a way for people of warning people of impending tickets and more, basically you pay strangers to watch your car for you.

I just found Heater Vecent's blog, more info there, we had a great time and very good prizes :)

OS X

Yesterday we went out for lunch in Monterey Park at the Golden City at Garfield and Garvey, got lots of strange dishes, I even tried the ducks feet. Then on the way back to the beach, decided to show them the iPhone, turns out that the Apple store wouldn't open for another hour, wouldn't you know it Leopard was being released, they closed the store for 2 hours, I am what the heck, there is enough to do on 3rd st. Line was 12 people long at 5PM, how hard can it be, we had dinner at Baja Fresh, tacos were good. Filled up several times on the drinks and back, now the line is 100 people long, I ask the guy at the store where the iPhone line is, get in Leopard line, OK, takes 20 min, but we are in, all 4 of us get t-shirts, and yes like Leo LaPorte was saying on one of his many TWIT podcasts, there was neck hair in the line.

I demo the iPhone, but still the biggest question is can it work in China, perhaps, in fact the last earnings, Apple said that they will open a store in Beijing. That is interesting, I hadn't thought about the implications of podcasting in China.

Blogging

Why do we blog, mostly for ourselves probably, we are trying to keep a record of things that are important to us and we might want to look up someday. Since it is easy to do it on the internet, hey we might as well make it open to the whole world and share it. This way if I am taking to someone about something I have written about, I can just send him to my blog, easy. Perhaps I will find someone who goggled to me and adds more value to what I wrote or corrects me. Maybe if I get good enough at this I can someday publish a book.

I own some shares in Google, it made sense that I try out some of the other tools, besides the excellent search, mail, video, ... adsense is something new for me to try, BlogSpot is definitly something new as well, although I have been doing this since spring, it is still very much something I am learning. Just the other day I tried the integration with Picasa2, easy way to put a picture in your blog and then write an article around it, and isn't that the way it works? We take a picture, upload it to the computer and then write all about it.

TomTom Go 720

Slightly too late picking up from the airport, ended up driving instead of on a bus, which would have been far easier. Hertz is a place that processes many buses of people from LAX and has no parking for cars, so you might as well get there on a bus.

I took the old GPS with me, but after a rather unimpressive lunch at WholeFood's Asian Express we went to Best Buy and then Fry's . Turns out that BestBuy has some pretty good pricing on GPSs and Fry's now has a 15% restocking fee, which makes it much less interesting to buy a GPS from them, but we did, we now have a TomTom Go 720 to play with $399 before taxes.

Much nicer then the $1200 old Magellan. It now has a battery, you can use it on its own. The 3D maps look sharp. Got to say that not updating the maps on the old one was probably the right idea, not that I wouldn't take them for free if offered, but another $99 for maps on that old unit is a bit of an insult. This is far worst then the iPhone price drop to screw the early adopter.

It seems that when I updated the software I lost many features were there originally. It seems strange. I might want to try installing the CD software again, after all it was feature rich, with the update, I don't see many things that were there before. I didn't get a chance to play with the original PC software, darn. One feature that I really need is moving addresses from the computer to the GPS. Seems like I should be able to cut and paste an address from an email to the TomTom.

Ev posted this article about Gizmo to UUASC, thought it was worth keeping the link.

Yesterday I was out in the smoke taking some pictures, went to George's Barbershop on 222 Richmond St. 310 640-0027 and business was really bad, even Second City Bistry across the street was empty. It was over 80F outside, a record temperature for this month. Must be all that fire out there.

I am trying uploading the pictures from Picasa2 today. It is a great little program, however it makes me use IE instead of FireFox, strange, since Google pretty much endorses FireFox, they put it in the Google Pack. IE6 breaks on the scripts, darn.

They are selling the old cosmetology chairs in the background on the right for $50.

Apple rulz

It is now my biggest holding, after blow out earnings it really shot up. I got Eric on GizmoProject again. I think that they currently have a better deal then Skype for free calls. Plus they integrate with my SIP phone, so of course I am partial to them.

I saw the moon come up today and it is very orange, must be all the smoke from the fire in the air.

Readme

I keep writing, and it is probably time that I get a larger audience. I get feedback from 2 people on this blog. I don't think anyone in my family even knows I write this or much less can Google me. If you are out there, big announcement in November.

So this morning everything here went haywire. The IP phone seemed to have lots of problems, Gizmo wouldn't work right, then later I heard that the internet had major problems.

MyComputerWorks 800 990-4629 infomercial on Ch. 19 TWC. They claim to give computers support for 19.95/month. Almost seems worth paying to get your parents of your back, not that it seems to make sense that they could offer this for so cheap. Indian workers? I have no reports of how well this works, would be interested in accounts, this is not an endorsement of any kind, just find it hard to believe they will give great service at that price

Free WiFi

I had a long talk with Fach this morning, he is running a small Linux based company in Santo Domingo. I met him only once in person back when I spoke at the local LUG http://www.codigolibre.org/??, can't seem to find it in Google, I think it was a YahooGroup back then. So much goes on these days. TWIT mentioned a good site: http://meraki.com still have to look deeper.

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

This is what we have all been clambering for and it seems like ATT will let Apple do it. In a note from Steve, I am guessing jobs on the Apple.com/hotnews section of their great website. I wonder if that has been pushing the stock up to new highs? They really do have a product people want and at a discount now will sell more units. I keep telling people it is a GOOG AAPL world and the market will probably buy into the stocks. Anyhow we should get an SDK in February, so start thinking of what you want to program for it.

Fall Cleaning

Still looking for something to do with the pile. I need to get the space back. So today I am going to do some eBay listings, time permitting. I want to get my score up, currently only at 2.

I was told that this was a personal blog and boring, I guess that is all true, I did start this as a personal blog and then put some technical stuff on it. Keep the comments coming.

Today Ubuntu is having a release party, they released 7.10, which I had upgraded 7.04 to recently. Now my system is XP dual booting with 7.04. I am at a point where I might not boot into XP anymore. Ubuntu has FireFox, where I spend most my time using Google Apps, Open Office for that occasional file I need to open or create, and I can run a LAMP stack, so I don't need to run a separate Linux server like I have been doing for a very long time. Now if WINE would only support the rest of apps, or I could not use them, they are not as crucial. In our area LiLAX had a Ubuntu meeting and today in Santa Monica Ilan called for another.

So I am booting into XP one day and Ubuntu the next, deciding what to settle on. Ubuntu is pretty strong right now.

Cold

So I call TimeWarner to complain about the crappy Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HDC box. I had decided not to use the HDMI cable this time around, because last time it gave us all sorts of trouble with the 8300HD. I am sick of these boxes and really would like to use my own equipment. I would rather have MythTV then these crap boxes, however I would have to pay for that, right now TWC is giving me the box for free for a year, so what the heck, I will let them replace the darn box and hopefully might get one that works a little better.

8300HDC
Needs 2 reboots per day
Flashes some message on many channels that the box isn't authorized, reboot Will sometimes clear this message
Very slow
Sometimes it doesn't display a channel or a recording at all
3x is the fastest speed that it will forward :(, however it doesn't have the very Annoying delay that 8300HD had when pressing forward repeatedly. I suspect this was by design, not to skip commercials.


8300HD
This box was no great thing either. However it was more usable then 8300HDC. It did have faster forwarding, somewhat more stable, but still lots of reboots. Seems like MythTV would be a great thing for CISCO's SciAtlanta. The software they currently have stucks. The box might be compatible, maybe it is time to hack it and put MythTV on it. Drivers could be a problem. Anyhow time to Google. Seems like CableCard is PCMCIA, that is great, so maybe I can take this thing out of the box and put it in a computer.

So reading the FCC warning on the cable box gave me a great idea. I could put an antennae on the RF out and do a wireless connection to a TV on channel 3. The message expressly prohibits doing this, but if it hadn't been on there, it would never have dawned on me. I can't imagne that it would bug the neighbors if ch3 was used for this, 2 and 4 have signal, but 3 is empty here :)

Today I decided to boot into Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibon and so far I love it. Last week my XP wouldn't let me login. I have reinstalled and got to say happy with the results so far.

My YouTube ad generated a call, so I decided to try one for Charles. Feel free to call me if you are interested in hiring either of us, dispite what you may think, the pennies of ad revenue on this page, don't pay for hardly anything, maybe laundry, if I don't mind doing it monthly. Now how to reach me? If I publish a PSTN number here I am afriad I would get all kinds of SPAM calls. So to make price 0 and let you call me if you like, lets try this: find a number at sipbroker.com under PSTN that works for you. Then dial the code for FreeWorldDialup and my number is 630551. You can also reach me in the UK under: 08449334887, however be advised I am in California, therefore PST, is my timezone, UTC/GMT -8 hours. So far Ubuntu has worked with all the websites I go to, the camera, I may be staying in it. In the past I always needed Windows to use some program, but I got to say that Linux is getting easier, Ubuntu is great.

Google Maps is awsome, I decided to review a local tire shop as they were very nice to my wife when she was had a flat. I got to say that these Web2.0 apps are working for me. Everything is very slow, and sometimes FireFox will blow up, especially in Windows, but hey what can you do?

iLO

From time to time Benton calls and I listen to his life. Mostly it is fights with big companies, he is a feisty guy. However lately he seems to have mellowed out and is now working at the same place for more then a year. Hami often asks about him, he was his roommate who he met in a plane to SD. He quickly moved out as the rent was too high.

So benton was talking to me about iLO bing the solution to my remote install problem. Truth is that as good as it sounds cheap hardware probably only has PXE boot right now. So I guess good call, but the bean counters will not do this.

Weekend

I guess I slept like a puppy this weekend, didn't get to blog. First we had our LiLAX meeting, not HA like Charles had announced on the website, but an install fest and Ubuntu release party. We had no speaker, however ended up talking about VoIP again. It turned out to be a productive day, however LiLAX is running dry. Then we went to a BBQ.

On Sunday I was listening to NPR and there was an interview with a Dominican American that got my attention. He wrote a book: Oscar Wao,

This morning Jacques calls me to talk about a talk by the President of Ubuntu at Google Tech Talks. I did in fact find it, but first listened to Larry Page. Great stuff is available on the net. I learned about Google Trends from there and saw that they now use the same graphs they have in Finance, they mark in time when the stories happen.

Today I got a job offer out of TX, I am to replace a guy out of Pakistan, but gosh, can't see how that is possible, maybe I have to leave the country to make the economics work.

Missing software

So now every time I want to do something I have to install software. Today I need to put some pictures on my blog, of course I remember that this SONY Cyber-shot DSC-M1 doesn't have drivers on the system, that has always sucks, maybe I can move the relevant data over, install the latest version of Picasa, iTunes, PDF reader,

dawn

I drove on my donut again, need to get around replacing tires one of these days. Time to get my receivables in order. Still working on setting up XP again, finally scanned the old drive with ClamWIN and CA(10/10/08). Decided to clean this afternoon. Time to get rid of stuff as well, maybe load drivers for the camera so i can show what I need to get rid of.
Still need to tweak my computer.

Busy, faster internet

So I got put back into a faster class of service. Latency hasn't improved. I can get ISOs faster now I guess, but honestly it does me little good. I hear that DSL has better latency, maybe I should test it or look for tests of it.

Now it was great I had 2 days of relatively little to do, today I didn't even get to have breakfast until now.

TimeWarner

So today I finally take an hour out of my day to talk to TimeWarner about my slow speed. Turns out that they moved me to the Basic service back on April 18th. They didn't bother telling me, I could have moved to ATT for 14.95/month a long time ago, saving money. I am not saying they would have been any better, but at least cheaper. Maybe at some point I need to figure out a way to have both. Anyhow my current connection is still substandard. Besides they are going to pave my street so it is really time I get out of here and do something somewhere else, maybe use that new WiFi at the library.

Wasted time

Still slow bandwidth. Spent Sunday at the office trying to hammer out a way to share revenue, not exactly happy with the result.

XP reinstalled with all open source apps

So I have been playing with my virgin copy of XP. No more malware, no apps or any data. It is a new beginning. So far installed most applications from the Ubuntu CD like FireFox, ThunderBird, and ClamWin. Ekiga. The idea that they have is they first get you used to the apps, then the next machine you buy comes with Ubuntu pre-installed. It seems like such a simple transition path. So far I have left the pre-installed Works, but I am sure soon I will install Office.

I really got to call those bozos that give me access to the internet, they are still slow.

New Beginnings

I finally broke down yesterday and did a factory reinstall to the original 80 Gig drive that came in the PC. I got to say that it works so much better, I can not only login, but it is fast now. I have so far installed FireFox and Skype. This really makes me want to do that new computer company that sells Ubuntu machines with first rate support again. Not that XP worked completely horridly, it did work for some years before I had to reinstall, but having to reinstall is a real pain. I also installed Ubuntu 7.04 on the 200Gig drive that has all the data. I think that once I switch the HD back to the big one I will be inclined to fix the login problem and then use Ubuntu for a while. My Laptop runs Dapper, and it is great, had no problems yet, but then again haven't tested it as long as I tested XP Home. FireFox has to be the program I use the most, I could get it done in IE, no problem, but there are some little details that make FireFox the better choice for me. I also like Skype better the the Messenger App that comes with XP. Probably not a real need, after all the Messenger does all of that. I also stuck the Ubuntu CD in and installed ThunderBird and CamWin. So I lasted 6 years without a factory restore, I did reinstall XP on top of the current install several times, but that didn't get rid of all the crap. For the record I guess I should mention the procedure:
1) Recovery CD option 4 Factory Restore
2) Windows XP SP2 CD, which I had ordered from MS a long time ago, but never used.
3) All patches
4) ClamWin
Meanwhile still trying to get Peter to answer my call. I wonder if all of his clients have such a hard time. They must be getting terrible service, unless I am the only one he doesn't pay attention too.

So Ron calls me to say that Vista is upgrading just like Linux distros, right away, no more Tuesdays where your Windows XP Home gets bricked, now it can happen any day :) So eEye and Nod32 are the Anti-virus and anti-spy ware that he had recommended but also Windows Defender is free for XP, ships on Vista.

Windows wows

So I am still offline on XP, can't check my email because I don't know the password, time to hack, if others can get my passwd, so should I be able to do this. I found out that it is stored in signons.txt � Saved passwords. Requires the "key3.db" file to work. http://kennethhunt.com/archives/001519.html
A little searching told me that ~/.mozilla/firefox/os3hmeay.default is the directory that holds this in Linux and /mnt/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/r.SHI/Application\ Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/pqgzrhs6.default/ in my XP. But the file is signons2.txt and key3.db there.

Alas, copied the files, no passwds, geez...

I then decided to copy /mnt/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/user/Application\Mozilla\Firefox to my directory in Linux and got all my settings, way call.

Now I am experimenting with downloading the latest firefox.

Venture capital

I was very impressed with Guy Kawasaki's talk.

Movies to see

Our cable company here gives us DHTV on channel 6, which is broadcast from a university. They are showing OlliONLINE discusing some Westerns:

Lone Ranger
Cisco Kid
Roy Rodgers
The Gunfighter
DHTV
highnoon
Shane
Bonanza
The Searchers
Gun Figher at the OK Corrall

So some other movie to see. Maybe I sould just list them under this topic from now on.
Warren Ashley Micheal Berlin

Million dollars

We sometimes go to Santa Monica on Weekends and end up walking up the 3rd St. Promenade. There I usually go to the Apple store and check out the excitement, talk to a salesman and watch the presentations. I feel like I should know what my company is up to at all times, but it is also a great place to go and I would even if I wasn't invested. Funny thing is that I haven't bought the expensive Apple equipment yet, don't feel a need to replace this computer, delete all the crap of it has to do for now. I bet that I could tune this baby to be fast again, someday I must as well.

As I was walking around I noticed that many people had very large bills in their hands, I figured that they must be fake, but the did look cool. Sure enough someone gives me one, together with some questions about which commandments I have broken. Have I ever lied, well I must have at some point in my life, probably many times, stolen, ..... you get the picture. I am going to hell according to my answers he says, I didn't bother talking to him about redemption or Jesus, since it is the 10 commandments that I would be judged by. I would have filmed the guy had I had a camera with me. So I looked up the president on that bill and found a very funny article, seems like someone used a 200 dollar bill with George Bush on it to buy a sundae at Dairy Queen and other such stories. I wonder on which YouTube channel or TV channel I will appear, of course I didn't sign a release, so geez, maybe I can make that money real. I followed the guy to his next sinner and this guy came up much cleaner then I, or so he claimed. Maybe that is why he was homeless on the street? Anyhow I offered to give all the stuff in my trunk to a good cause, but Warren didn't want to hear of it, seems he is happier entrapping people with fake bills that look very much like money. But what the heck it was all in good fun or is it? The back of the bill points to hopechapel.org and livingwaters.com salvation takes work. Someone tried to use the bill in a store.... later I heard they were being investigated for printing money.

turtle

This is got to be looked into, if I am going to have service this slow, I want my monthly fee reduced to $12 from the current 35, it is ridiculous.

Pain

I took it easy today, Monday was a very long day. Didn't notice that my internet really sucks until the afternoon when I tried to make a Gizmo phone call, lousy quality tipped me off.




Perhaps it is time to move to ATT, they keep talking about low intro teaser rates, might try them.

Energy

So I wake up at 4 something this morning and decide to turn on the computer in the office. For what, to blog, see the post below, starting to think that this is my FaceBook, I will start to time how long it is taking me and how much it takes away from the productive time I am trying to bill. Funny thing is right now I have 2 things I need to get done to get paid and also want to setup the UUASC library, finally, it is time I get this all done, but what am I doing Blogging? crazy isn't it?

So now that we have established that I tend to be a starving artist, here is the reason I came this morning, had a good start, then went to the beach for an hour, I figure that I got to start taking care of myself, my family seems to be growing as well, mostly horizontally.

My usual call from Jack Chen, well I called first from the beach I guess took me off track, I am easily distracted when the phone rings. Maybe I should try DND, it does have that button.

Priorities today: Hotel WakeUp system, Ernie's user, Tires, collect outstanding accounts, pay for tires... and now I am going to Peter's office, grrrr.... time is scarce for me these days.

Windows Live, Linux Kernel

What a strange thing to dream, Microsoft uses the Linux kernel and the OS is more of way to run internet widgets then an operating system. This way Microsoft no longer pays for Windows development, and makes money off open source. They perceive Google as the threat these days. So the Windows team is sent home, the shareholders are happy for the savings, they buy Linux, which is all but a trade mark right now, of course they fund the development and give pay for ad free web powered apps or free ad supported ones, but maybe that will just be the competition, Google. After all MS isn't ad supported right now, so why should it be in the future.

It is funny all that the new site is missing is having the logo change every special day, like Google's still does for those of you who haven't switched to iGoogle. I don't get why the special Google Logo changes, Google doodles isn't used on iGoogle.

Yea right, maybe Canonical will buy them somday, or they base their distro on Ubuntu like Linspire did, does MS get it? Or are they doomed to extinction?

Speaking of doodle, in reading the WikiPedia definition of it I got an image of making a movie of Alberto doodling, would be a rather neat thing to make this half real life half cartoon movie, maybe post it on YouTube to see if we can get some traction before going into real production and releasing. I keep thinking that some lucky company will hire this great cartoonist, like when Mad Magazine found Sergio Aragonés.

I keep getting the FaceBook invites, hear about them in the news and given that it seems like the 15 billion valuation that some are tossing around this sounds like a power house. I even heard an interview on the GoDaddy podcast about them. Amazing how someone created a free version to help Harvard students find things on campus and connect and they pretty much shutdown like so many student run things do. So in seeing my iGoogle HowTo of the day widget how to quit facebook, wow maybe I shouldn't ever get into this, or is the truth I need to start logging how much time I spend on this blog? Maybe this is my addiction that I could kick if only I kept track of how much time I spent doing this and then considered the alternative uses for this time?