rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
August 30, 2010 at 3:56 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I use Google Voice for incoming / outgoing calls all day. Certainly I’ve had a few problems in the past, but it has worked flawlessly for me in the last several weeks – certainly since the GMail / Google Voice integration.
Mike Arrington says Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now:
About 30% of my inbound calls have the caller muted – they can hear me but I can’t hear them. And outbound calls are worse. In the last 24 hours at least 75% of them failed completely. Either it never starts ringing, or it rings a couple of times and then dies. In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too. As did a second attempt.
He goes on to say that sources tell him there won’t be a quick fix to the problem. Like I said, I’m not having any of these problems, but Google has sold me on the value of such a service – I would even pay for it!
So if this becomes a problem, I’ll probably jump over to Ribbit. They actually are a telephone company.
Tags: Google, GV, Ribbit
August 27, 2010 at 8:57 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Over the last couple of months I have started to rely on Google Voice (GV) and have been eagerly awaiting the integration of VOIP with Google Voice. My current solution of using GV with Skype is almost perfect, but I am hoping that Google VOIP can eliminate the pesky “where’s my voicemail” problem with Skype.
Anyway, this new Google feature was enabled on my account yesterday. While it holds some promise for me once GV is moved into GAFD, it has too many caveats today. Why?
Because the in-browser VOIP phone is a flawed premise for receiving calls:
- Hunting for the incoming call dialog within a browser tab is a terrible user experience. Perhaps they can fix this through an extension that allows a non-modal, “always on top” popup for notification of incoming calls.
- What if your browser stops working, is restarted, etc? You don’t get your phone call. Of course, you can say the same thing for the Skype client (i.e., if it isn’t running you don’t get your call), but I restart my browsers several times a day. And browsers crash a lot more than Skype (or Google Talk), for that matter.
Google really should resuscitate the Google Talk client – or the Google Voice Desktop App – and enable the same functionality there. In fact, I’ll go further and say that they will have to release a native Windows client if they want enterprise adoption of GV / VOIP.
Granted, the in-browser premise is great for the casual user, making outgoing calls, or as a backup when away from your actual work environment, but it just doesn’t work as a Skype replacement.
Does anyone know if the the GV Desktop App is actually dead? The last reference I find to it is the Arrington post: Google Voice Desktop App Launch Delayed, May Be Scrapped.
Tags: GAFD, GMail, GV, skype, voip
August 21, 2010 at 5:31 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing, Web 2.0
PDC10 is coming up in late October. I signed up for it knowing it was Azure-centric, but I am glad to see that there is also a .NET track. I hope this will include non-Azure server side technologies (e.g., EF, AppFabric for Windows Server and the like). Of course these other pieces all have their place (or counterparts) in Azure, but I don’t think I’ll be using Azure directly over the next year.
PDC’s are quite valuable to attend (access to Microsoft product teams, exposure to their roadmap, opportunity for light-bulb” moments, etc). That said, I may decide not to go after the session list is released – a simple balancing of priorities.
Anyway, I’ll likely keep my registration – I would actually love it if Microsoft could change my plans about Azure this October.
Are you going? Or not? If so, please share your reasons.
Tags: .NET, Microsoft, PDC, PDC10
August 10, 2010 at 9:32 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
I finally jailbroke my iPhone.
I was never particularly interested in doing it. Even though I have been frustrated with the unnecessary limitations of the iPhone imposed by Apple/Jobs. I know this surprises people who know me – they’ve told me so. Why haven’t I? Because over time I have transformed form a gadget-happy tinkerer to someone who just wants these tools to work.
This is in-part due to my experiences with a particular kind of tool: the smart phone. On Windows Mobile and BB smart phones, I would try 3rd-party software and then quickly delete after crashes and negative battery performance. I’ve had few similar experiences like that with the iPhone. The 3rd-party tools add significant utility to the phone but generally don’t break it. This change in my thinking isn’t just for phones: I’m shipping back my PopBox today. Lots of promise, but it just doesn’t work for me with my video formats, and my NAS.
But I digress.
There are a few things that have bothered me about the iPhone. None of these are hardware problems, just things I think it should be possible to do with a non-jailbroken phone:
- I don’t want to unlock my phone to see if I have any email.
- I want notification profile support like on the Blackberry. I loved the feature where you can put your phone into the silent profile and have exceptions. Travelling and don’t want your phone to wake you up, but want to accept calls from your family in case of emergency? No problem.
- I don’t want to navigate around to change a simple setting (like turning off Bluetooth or WiFi).
- I want to use a Google Voice native app. The mobile Web app is quite good, but it takes too many steps to make a call – and too much time waiting for the page to load.
Long story short, I now can do all of these things and I am much happier about my phone.
The full story, though is that I jailbroke before a week of vacation during which I had no way of restoring my phone. As a result, I kind of screwed it up and didn’t feel like risking uninstalling some apps without a failsafe. I got home and fixed it (without the failsafe). All good, but it does leave me feeling that jailbreaking really isn’t for everyone. As easy as the jailbreakme.com site is, it certainly makes the phone more complex. I’m OK with the increased complexity – I’m still a gadget-happy tinkerer deep down – but I couldn’t imagine a non-techie dealing with it.
Tags: iPhone
July 15, 2010 at 5:27 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Plenty of people are guessing how tomorrow’s Apple iPhone 4 event will go. I’m pretty cynical about what Apple thinks of us customers, so here are my 2 cents:
- The entire event we will be about how users are wrong – that is, there is no problem if you just hold the phone correctly.
- A dizzying array of evidence will be presented concluding that the iPhone 4 has the best antenna of anything ever. And that users are wrong.
- There will be a direct attack on Consumer Reports for their apparent flip-flop and the validity of their tests will be questioned. After all, the Consumer Reports testers are users and, well users are wrong.
- Apple will provide a free bumper to those who request one, but it will be clear that only quitters and the non-worthy actually need one.
- No recall will be issued; however, a design change is certainly in the works and that won’t be mentioned at all.
I can sum this up as follows:
The Apple response will be that there is no actual problem aside from user error. Or as I’ve said to a few people, the real problem is that some iPhone users have left hands and they insist on using them.
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone4, Mobile
July 6, 2010 at 10:41 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing
We recently released the Digipede Network 2.4. Among other things, this release provides support for hosting .NET 4 applications, some new features to improve management and control, and enhanced server-side performance. The entire list and downloads are available on the community site. You can read more about it on the Interwebs:
Those paying close attention might ask "what happened to 2.3?" The answer is Digipede trivia.
- Part of a failed experimental branch? No.
- Is 2.4 actually numbered 2.3.1 under the covers? No. (A minor dig at Windows 6 R2).
The actual reason dates back to the days when .NET 2 was released. Back then, we were ready to release Digipede Network 1.1 with .NET 2 support. To avoid naming confusion with .NET 1.1, we decided to skip the “.1” and went straight to “.2”. Was it in fact less confusing? Probably not materialy.
So, why no 2.3? It is an ever so slight (and obscure) homage to those early days: for .NET 4 we decided to release something that ends in “.4”.
Like I said: trivia.
Tags: .NET4.0, Digipede, grid
May 17, 2010 at 10:11 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
I have been critical of poor performance in Windows Virtual PC (most recently, here). I still can’t explain the performance problems I have seen, but Windows Virtual PC’s improved USB support saved the day.
I was helping my Dad with a piece of hardware that just doesn’t work with Windows 7. The manufacturer’s instructions say that it will work if you turn of UAC, but it doesn’t. I had just about given up, and then remembered that Virtual PC is supposed to have better USB support. I really didn’t believe it would work, but had nothing to lose. After much downloading, installing, a little rebooting, and more installing, I was able to attach this USB device to an XP Mode VM. The corresponding software also launches correctly on the Windows 7 x64 desktop.
It even performs well. All cool.
The only annoying part of it is that I can’t figure out how to stop the running VM instance without opening the VM and then closing it. The VM gets started automatically when running the XP Mode application, but there is no simple way to stop it. I suppose that XP mode is designed for people who run it all the time, but really, no clean way to stop it?
Tags: Virtual PC, Windows7, XP Mode
April 26, 2010 at 7:35 pm · Filed under .NET
CA2204: Literals should be spelled correctly (docs here).
I agree, but it doesn’t work.
At least not with compound words. If you are authoring a reusable class library, you are bound to have compound words in literal strings. Do yourself a favor and turn off the warning.
I had to search around to get this acknowledged, and finally found it on Microsoft Connect here.
Tags: .NET, Code_Analysis, FxCop, VS2010
March 19, 2010 at 9:22 pm · Filed under .NET
I was looking at the solution for a Windows Server AppFabric class (from this Microsoft download) and found a funny namespace used for the WCF contracts:
http://www.demo.com/fourthcoffee/entities/1
First thought, isn’t the demo.com domain owned by the DEMO conference?
Uh, yup.
Not a good idea to use a “random” URI for namespaces.
The content for the class looks pretty good, but I’m surprised that neither Ron Jacobs nor Zoiner Tejada caught the problem namespace.
Tags: AppFabric, DEMO, tempuri
March 18, 2010 at 12:09 pm · Filed under .NET
I’ve been looking a bit at .NET 4 Workflow Services as a part of AppFabric. I’m surprised to find no way to build these services from existing message contracts. I can understand imposing limitations on doing so – even that there might be no reasonable tool support – but this is a real stumbling block.
Certainly contract-first is not the only way to build services, but it is if you are implementing a published standard. Maybe there is some way to tinker around with the output of the tools sets to make a Workflow Service compatible with some existing WSDL, but would it be worth it?
One answer might be to put a pure WCF facade over the Workflow Services. Kind of a headache, but maybe workable.
This makes me think that .NET 4 Workflow Services are really targeted to be internal to the enterprise or at least where contract definition is flexible and controlled by one entity.
This follows a standard Microsoft pattern: help the enterprise dev in V1 and then expand from there. This strategy makes sense, I just want it all in VS 2010, not in V.next.
Tags: .NET4.0, AppFabric, VS2010, WCF, WF
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