Category Archives: Tech!

Free memory card recovery tool from Lexar

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It looks like Lexar is giving away a free tool to recover deleted files on your digital camera’s memory card.

According to the Lexar Image Rescue 3 website, the application… “recovers photo, video, and audio files from any brand or type of memory card, using any card reader”

That’s a pretty good tool to have in case of emergencies.

There’s a version for both the Mac and PC, and the site requires an email address before letting you proceed with the download.

Head over to http://store.lexar.com/imagerescue3/ to download a copy while the promotion lasts!

Recall : Spot-2 Satellite GPS Messengers (and a review of Spot Series One Satellite Personal Tracker)

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Spot Personal Tracker

I’m a big fan of SPOT Personal Trackers. I have a series one unit (like the image on the left), and it’s been one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. It’s saved my butt a few times already and also gave me a very solid peace of mind when I’ve loaned it to family members on their trips as well.

You can map in realtime whoever is holding the unit, send measured “pings” from the device to pre-selected people to let them know you’re OK (and to leave a trail of breadcrumbs as to where you’ve been off exploring), directly notify your own private pre-selected list of people that you need help or even summon professional emergency rescue services from the unit in case you’re seriously FUBAR.

Its tough, too. It works just fine in temperatures ranging from -45C to 85C (-40F to 185F), and altitudes of -91m to +6,492m (-300ft to +21,300ft). It works perfeectly in other countries (which I can confirm!), and it gets signal just about everywhere in the world because it’s satellite based.

Check out the coverage map…

Spot Personal Tracker Coverage

Spot Personal Tracker Coverage

Aside from the very northern tip of Russia, some of lower Africa and most of Antarctica, you’re covered!

Spot Series 2

But recently, SPOT announced a recall on their 2nd series Satellite GPS Messenger devices. The new ones are smaller, have better button placement, and are aesthetically prettier, but they haven’t been out and “field tested” like the first generation devices have.

From the recall website, it says “Spot LLC is dedicated to providing the highest quality and best performance products to our customers, therefore, Spot LLC will be conducting a voluntary return on any new model SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger™ (SPOT 2) purchased since October 1, 2009. During recent testing, we discovered that some of the new SPOT 2 devices might not meet battery and messaging operating specifications.”

Considering what this gadget is designed for, I think any failure, no matter how small or trivial, is a critical failure. They’re doing the right thing by pulling them back for replacement.

The recall is in full effect now. To find out if your Spot-2 unit is one of the recalled units, login to your account at https://login.findmespot.com and click on the My GPS Locations tab. A message will display indicating if you have an affected SPOT-2 unit.

Replacement units should be available “early 2010”, plus you’ll get 1 extra month of your current SPOT service plan and associated services as part of the recall.

Here’s the link to the SPOT-2 recall notice.

WordPress for the iPhone, “500” errors, .htaccess, and 1&1 hosting

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Thanks to Jeremy Snyder’s website, I finally got WordPress for the iPhone up and running.

1&1 hosting needed…

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

…added to my .htaccess file.

So now this blog is (finally) fully mobile!

Here’s the link to the repair article on snydersoft.com.

A 5 gigabyte bandwidth limit? Completely unrealistic.

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This post is for the wireless division at Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Specifically, those people in the wireless division who came up with the idea to limit online use to 5gb before charging “extra” for “excessive use”.

I don’t think they’ve used the internet in a long while.

The first thing I’ll start with is system updates. This isn’t an extravagance of any sort. You must update your system to keep your computer safe and secure from new problems and exploits that appear online. I’ll start off with a basic install of Snow Leopard on the Mac as an example.

The current updates for a fresh install of Snow Leopard with iWork and iLife installed are 1.04 GB. This is to update iMovie, iPhoto, Mac OS X, iTunes, iWork, Remote Desktop Client, Xcode and a HP printer. A secondary update of Java, Safari and AirPort Client after the initial upgrade is just 125.7 mb (which using convertunits is .12 gb). Even if we assume only one single system update like this per month, we’ve already blown 1.16 gb out of our 5 gb monthly limit.

Now let’s download some free media. Not much… just what’s available in the “free” section on itunes every week. At this time, there’s a free copy of the TV series “The Cleveland Show” and “Phineas and Ferb” and the free music is from The Bravery, Augusten Burroughs, Zeri, Joe and David Archuleta. The total for two TV shows and five music files is 236.4 mb. Assuming the selections are consistently this size per week, 236.4 mb times four weeks is 945.6 mb, which converts to another .92 gb per month.

.92 gb plus 1.16 gb makes our current total 2.08 gb used.

Now let’s talk about YouTube. You tube videos are fun to watch, and everyone has been on the site a few times a week. So let’s ballpark only three videos per day and we only visit YouTube 5 days out of the week. That’s a perfectly reasonable 15 videos per week. Assuming the videos are around five minutes a piece and are watched in HD, that’s a ballpark of 22.9 MB per video. 22.9 times 15 is 343.5 mb per week. 343.5 mb times four weeks is 1,374 mb, which converts to 1.34 gb.

1.34 gb added to 2.08 gb takes us to 3.42 gb used so far.  Only 1.58 gb remains.

Attachments in email is next up on the list. I’m talking about powerpoint files and slides that are 2 to 5 mb that you need to send to business partners or just friends you would like to see a presentation. Lets say you only send two attachments a day four days out of the week. And that each attachment is 5mb. 8 attachments per week times 5 MB a piece is 40 mb. 40 mb per week times four weeks is 160 mb, which converts to .16 gb.

Add .16 gb to 3.42 gb and we’re at 3.58 gb used.

And finally let’s look at movie previews. Looking at a movie preview in quicktime at 720p (midrange high def) is around 100 mb each. There were around 60 movie previews in November alone on the Apple Movie Preview site, but let’s say I only viewed 1/3 of them: 20 movie previews per month at 100 mb. Thats 2,000 mb which converts to 1.95gb.

1.95gb + 3.58gb = 5.53 gb

And that’s how you can go right through a 5 gb limit.

This isn’t taking into account any antivirus updates, downloading any torrents or posting any twitter, facebook or personal blog entries. This doesn’t take into account reading through and downloading images from any photo-intensive websites or uploading your own videos to YouTube. This doesn’t take into account watching full streaming videos from Netflix or playing online with your Xbox, Wii or PS3.

And this ballpark calculation doesn’t even touch on downloading music or movies that has been purchased from Amazon or iTunes or updating the other applications that are installed on the computer.

Using Email, YouTube, watching movie previews, updating your system software and getting free and legal music may sound like a lot of bandwidth to those companies that grew up in the punchcard era,  but people do a lot more than just send email and SMS texts nowadays.

It’s not constant 24 hour use that chews through 5gb of data. It’s just simple, modern use of the internet.

The problem is that the only way I see this outdated 5 gb cap changing is if one of the big wireless companies realizes there is a big market if they move their baseline upward, and takes a bold move to expand their 5 gb cap to at least 10 gb or more.

Barring that, it’s going to take a company with some very serious capital to push the existing wireless companies aside to start a new high-cap wireless service. That’s pretty much going to have to be Telmex or Google at this point.

In the meantime, the only other option is to hunt down a free wi-fi spot and pull up a chair.

Oh, and before I forget, here’s the current list of updates required for a clean Windows 7 install with Office 2007 also installed. I’m in the process of calculating exactly how big the total download update is, but I’m pretty sure it’s a little less than the 1.04 GB of mac updates but much more than 500 mb.

——————-

Definition Update for Microsoft Security Essentials – KB972696 (Definition 1.71.735.0)
The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2)
Update for Microsoft Search Enhancement Pack
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969679)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB969682)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969613)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Visio Viewer 2007 (KB973709)
Security Update for Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 (KB957789)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB972581)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB969559)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB974234)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB969604)
Update for Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 Help (KB963670)
Windows Live Essentials
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB954326)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB956358)
Microsoft Silverlight (KB974331)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB951944)
Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Help (KB963669)
Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Help for Common Features (KB963673)
Spanish Language Pack – Windows 7 (KB972813)
Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 Help (KB963665)
Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 (KB951550)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB959997)
Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (KB951338)
Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB967642)
Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Help (KB963678)
2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Security Update for Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 (KB950130)
Security Update for 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB960003)
Office Live add-in 1.4
Update for Microsoft Script Editor Help (KB963671)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB936514)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB956828)
Definition Update for Microsoft Security Essentials – KB972696 (Definition 1.69.725.0)
Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 (KB976749)
Update for Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility View List for Windows 7 (KB975364)
Security Update for Windows 7 (KB975467)
Update for Windows 7 (KB974332)
Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – October 2009 (KB890830)
Security Update for Windows 7 (KB974571)
Definition Update for Windows Defender – KB915597 (Definition 1.69.725.0)
Update for Windows 7 (KB974431)
Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 (KB974455)
Security Update for ActiveX Killbits for Windows 7 (KB973525)
Security Update for Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package (KB973923)
Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 (KB976325)
Update for Windows 7 (KB976098)
Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – December 2009 (KB890830)
Office Genuine Advantage Notifications (KB949810)
Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB973593)
Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB973704)
Update for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 (KB976416)
Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB974561)

Dragon Mobile Voice iPhone application privacy issue

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There’s a semi-new application out for the iPhone called Dragon Dictation. Made by Nuance Communications, it is “an easy to use voice recognition application powered by Dragon Naturally Speaking that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages” on your iPhone. You can also “update your facebook status, send notes and reminders to yourself, or Tweet to the world… all using your voice.”

This application is built and backed by a Nuance Communications, a fairly big mainstream company. And Dragon Naturally Speaking’s reputation is pretty legendary in the speech-to-dictation arena.

There’s just one big thing you need to know.

If you download and use Dragon Dictation for the iPhone, you’re legally handing a copy of every name in your address book to Nuance Communications.

In the privacy statement on the bottom of the iTunes download page, their statement says “in order to improve recognition accuracy, Dragon Dictation will only upload names from your address book… no emails, addresses, phone numbers or other personal information are uploaded. This information is not used for any purpose than improving the usability of the application. All data is stored in secure data centers according to stringent privacy and security standards.”

Only? Dragon Dictation will only take a copy of every single name I have in my address book?

What in the name of Stephen F Austin do the names of everyone I know have to do with speech recognition? Their reason given that they need it “in order to improve recognition accuracy” doesn’t ring true with me at all. There’s nothing in their EULA or website about phonetically parsing the names in an address book and re-downloading it to an iPhone when they’re done. So aside from doing that, what can they possibly need a list of everyone in an iPhone address book for?

The worst part in this case is that it’s free. Everyone is going to be clicking to download this application before reading the EULA and privacy statement at the bottom of the page.

You can read their full privacy policy here and you can download the application from the Dragon Mobile Apps website here. Or if you have iTunes, you can click here to jump directly to their download page in iTunes.

The Windows XP and 2000 party is over on July 13, 2010

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In the ongoing “upgrade or die” world of publishing software, Microsoft announced that Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Client, and Windows XP with Service Pack 2 support is going to end on July 13, 2010.

What does this mean for everyone still on Windows 2000 and XP Service Pack 2? Pretty much after July 13, 2010 there will no longer be any updates for problems that anyone finds with those systems. There will no longer be any support from Microsoft even if you call them and ask for it (…well, mostly. There will be some limited exceptions to this). And, most important of all, other software publishers will start to end their support for anything they have for Windows 2000 since Microsoft is officially turning off all the lights on the 2000 party.

If you are running XP, all you need to do is go online let software update upgrade your copy of XP to Service Pack 3. Microsoft will still support XP with service pack 3 until 2014!

You don’t have to upgrade to Windows 7 or their 2008 Server despite all the innuendo in Microsoft’s statements. Just be certain you have a backup of your current system in early July 2010. That way if something goes horribly wrong, you can restore that machine to the last “updated” copy without needing to search for any downloads that may no longer be online. You can use DriveImageXML to back up your drive, and best of all, it is free software! Lifehacker has a great writeup on how to use DriveImageXML, too.

Six free applications for the Mac from MacHeist!

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Effective immediately, Macheist is giving away 6 Macintosh applications absolutely free until 10 PM central time today only!

Just go to MacHeist here and click on the FREE icon. You’ll get Shove Box, Write Room, Twitterific, Tiny Grab, Hordes of Orcs and Mariner Write. All 100% free.

After answering a 4 question pop up window, you’ll get each application with a serial number registered to your name and email address. That’s not bad! Especially since all the apps together add up to around $154.

Shove Box is a menubar based organizer, designed to catch all the clips and texts that you would usually toss around in dozens of individual files.

Write Room is an awesome focus-based writing app. Your screen goes completely dark and you type in solid green. Once you get started writing in this app, it’s hard to stop.

Twitterific is a standalone app for checking and sending your tweets on Twitter. That’s better than having to keep a webpage open!

Tiny Grab instantly sends any screenshots you take from your mac to TinyShare for immediate web posting. That’s very handy for training and coaching seminars!

Hordes of Orcs is a tower defense kind of game where you have to stop a relentless horde of Orcs from taking over. Entertaining game!

Mariner Write is a good, fast and light word processor. Better than the built in Text Edit, and now, far better pricing than Word!

Grab ’em while they’re still out there!

iMobsters, WorldWar, Racing Live, Kingdoms, Ninjas Live, Zombies, Rockstars, or Vampires games steal your iPhone information

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Do you play iMobsters, WorldWar, Racing Live, Kingdoms, Ninjas Live, Zombies, Rockstars, or Vampires on your iPhone? Chances are your phone number and personal contact information has been stolen by the game company that made all those games, Storm8.

In a lawsuit filed recently, Storm8 has been accused of writing the games… “in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game.”

Storm8 makes these games and hands out a “free” crippled version of the games as well as a paid “full featured” version. You pretty much level up in any of their games by slaving away at it throughout the day doing menial tasks or pay real cash to buy things to get ahead in the game.

The article on BoingBoing also says “The number farming was not disclosed to players until an acknowledgment in August that described it as a “bug.” The lawsuit claims that only “very specific and specialized software code” could do so, however, and seeks injunctive relief and damages.”

A bug? A bug crashes your game. Causes little discolored artifacts to appear on screen. A bug might even suddenly close the app and send you back to the iPhone home screen. But to grab your specific information? To go that protected area of the iPhone consistently by mistake? No. I’m not buying it.

So why does a game company want your wireless phone number and your contact information? And especially without your permission?

Here’s the main article from BoingBoing here.

a followup on the CONSUMERIST website here.

and a link to a PDF file of the lawsuit here.

BoingBoing says Storm8 “hasn’t returned inquiries” since this story broke a few days ago.

So if you have any of these games on your iPhone, delete them now. You never know what other information their “bug” has been looking at.

AT&T now whining that Verizon plays too rough!

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Why AT&T sucks - Exhibit #4328

Why AT&T sucks - Exhibit #4328

AT&T, the juggernaut with such dainty feet of clay, just filed a lawsuit against Verizon. For having the nerve to show their craptacular coverage map in comparison to theirs. On the article on Engadget, “AT&T thinks Verizon is trying to fool viewers into thinking that they can’t use any AT&T phone services outside of 3G coverage areas by showing two essentially different maps. Since Verizon’s entire network is 3G, the gaps in the red map are actual service gaps — but Verizon doesn’t show that the gaps on the AT&T map might be covered by AT&T’s huge 2G network.”

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Whoo!! That was a good one!

AT&T is not arguing the fact that their 3g service isn’t even in the same ballpark as Verizon’s network. Just that you “might” be able to downshift to 2g, and you “might” still be able to make phone calls outside their mapped area. And that Verizon “might” be confusing some people about that very important piece of trivia.

Way to solve the wrong problem, AT&T!

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I know firsthand that AT&T’s cellular service sucks. All the calls I make or receive on my iPhone drop 3/4 of the time. No warning, no nothing. Just three beeps and it’s gone. In addition, I’ll have my phone right next to me at home or at work, and suddenly five missed calls show up – no ringing incoming call notification at all. SMS messages sometimes don’t show up until after a reboot. And when AT&T’s rotten service does work, about 1/4 of the time I get a choppy connection with the other person dropping in and out of the call or otherwise sounding like a robot with a broken voicebox.

My wife and I got an iPhone the same day. We both have the same problems. We’ve switched SIM cards. Updated to the latest and greatest OS. Even tested the phones in other cities we traveled to across the US. It’s the same horrendous service everywhere we go.

If Verizon wants to fight AT&T on this, I think the best way to do it would be to just show how people with an iPhone have been putting up with the trash AT&T calls a cellular network. Show in a court how the AT&T signal drops. Put a video up of how the iPhone will constantly fail when simply driving across any major city. Heck, put up the quote from AT&T CEO John Donovan himself that AT&T can’t handle all the iPhone traffic! (Related links Here and Here and Here too.) And then directly compare AT&T’s service with any of their own plans.

The truth hurts! Use it!

As of today, I’ve successfully managed to keep over 20 people (and their families) away from AT&T this year. And as soon as my contract is up with AT&T early next year, I’m jumping to Verizon. To the new Andriod to be exact. Check it out here if you haven’t seen the droid site yet. It kicks AT&T’s sorry butt all over the place.

Why stay with a company that promises they will get better any minute now? I’m paying for good service right now. If it wasn’t for this contract, I would have dropped this pile of junk within two months of owning it.

And Apple? If you want to save the iPhone? And those million billion apps you have out there? Drop AT&T. You’re going to get killed by association.

Jailbroken iphone ransom drama

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A short while ago, some idiot had the brilliant idea to SSH into jailbroken iphones in his area and install some “ransomware” on every iphone system he could. The ransomware, according to tech site Neowin, said “You iPhone’s been hacked because it’s really insecure! Please visit [LINK REMOVED] and secure your iPhone right now! Right now, I can access all your files.”

This mensa candidate not only gave his website address, he actually had the stones to ask for a reward of €5 to be sent to a PayPal address.

Needless to say, he got caught. Now he’s posted removal instructions on how to get rid of his ransomware so people won’t beat him so bad when they catch him on the street.

Even though the hacker was Dutch and this happened over in the Netherlands, the process he followed can easily be duplicated over here.

So if you have jailbroken your iphone, and you haven’t changed your root password, here’s the easy way to do it…

Step one: Install “mobile terminal” from Cydia (if you don’t have it already)

Step two: Run mobile terminal. Type “su root” (without quotes). The default password on all iphones is “alpine”, so you will need to type in “alpine” (without quotes) when it asks you for the initial password.

Step three (optional): Type “cd” (without quotes) to shorten the prompt

Step four: type “passwd” (without quotes) and press ENTER. Now type in your new password of choice. You will be prompted twice for this password as confirmation.

Step five: now type “passwd mobile” (without quotes) and press ENTER. Now type in your new mobile password of choice. You will be prompted twice for this password as confirmation.

That’s it. EXIT and quit mobile terminal.

If you haven’t jailbroken your iphone, or have no idea when I’m talking about, don’t worry. This issue only affects jailbroken iphones.