rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for Miscellaneous
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 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
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
March 12, 2010 at 9:29 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I am extremely annoyed with Windows Virtual PC.
It is markedly slower than Virtual PC 2007. And startup times are six to ten times worse. Same host, same VHD. Painfully slow.
I have witnessed this on three different host machines. I’ve seen other complaints of this online, but all of the suggestions of help completely miss the point.
There are some threads that suggest that it is caused by aggressive CPU throttling. In a comment on a post, Virtual PC guy suggested that installing SETI@Home might solve the problem. Seriously?
Virtual PC 2007 didn’t suffer from this problem, so I’m not going to bother with that. It would be great if I could find confirmation that either:
- Microsoft decided that Windows Virtual PC needn’t support laptops.
- There is a new bug or major flaw in Windows Virtual PC that is going to be fixed.
I have rolled back to Virtual PC 2007. I shouldn’t really care, except that I prefer the integration in Windows Virtual PC. I suppose I should move onto VMWare, but I really don’t want to hassle with this anymore. It works well enough for now.
Microsoft, are you acknowledging the problem? Perhaps you can blame it on the laptop vendors, but the customer experience is just terrible.
BTW: I recorded a video of starting a Windows 7 guest using Windows Virtual PC, but a 3 minute video of a crawling progress bar seemed intolerable.
Tags: Virtual PC, Windows, Windows7
February 3, 2010 at 2:55 pm · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
All this talk about Flash on the iPhone/iPad . . . Why does Apple freeze out Flash? Here’s why:
- 1% battery life. If Apple is willing to cripple the phone with no background applications to save battery, then I can believe that disallowing Flash supports this same cause.
- 1% of this is that Flash is “lame” or proprietary or any of that nonsense.
- 98% of this about the App store. Apps delivered through the browser can’t be monetized (and to a lesser extent controlled) through the App store. If Flash was enabled on the iPhone anybody could write apps for the iPhone without Apple’s permission.
That’s it.
The iPhone is as open as is useful to Apple. I’ll bet that if they could get away with shutting off Javascript on the iPhone they would do that too. Of course, that would also cause an enormous uproar, so they won’t. Javascript in the browser is the leak in the App store. Their only defense is to make their browser lame (or be slow to adopt new standards).
One thing that backs up my point about the App store is that neither the Flash nor Silverlight runtime is actually banned from the iPhone. You just have to build it into an iPhone application for the App store and you are in business. Miguel de Icaza and his excellent team proved that last year (with Mono anyway) as has Adobe with Flash.
What do I think about this? I find it irksome to say the least, but I didn’t buy the iPhone thinking it was anything but a closed platform, controlled by someone who thinks they know best. I’m OK with that for now – the phone works pretty well. Eventually something will work just as well without the restrictions.
And then I’ll jump ship.
November 18, 2009 at 4:05 pm · Filed under .NET, Attention, Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
Lots of great new stuff in today’s beta. A few things that stand out:
- Hosting HTML
- Context menus
- WCF and REST enhancements
- Support for RIA Services
- Drag & Drop
- Running out of sandbox for trusted apps
- Sharing components between .NET 4 and SL 4
Lot of other things too. I’m excited to start using this. Also a shout out to Tim Heuer – he has helped me on a few things before and I got a chance to meet him today.
Those of you following NewsGang will know why I am very excited about these Silverlight developments.
Tags: .NET4.0, NewsGang, PDC09, PDC2009, Silverlight
November 18, 2009 at 11:27 am · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
Sinofsky talked about the new features of Windows 7 and some of the new hardware. I didn’t think it belonged in the keynote, because there weren’t any announcements.
He did announce they are giving away laptops to all attendees, though, so I suppose it was worth it. 
Tags: PDC09, PDC2009, Windows7
November 10, 2009 at 10:37 am · Filed under .NET, Miscellaneous
I’m going to PDC 2009 November 17th – 19th.
Aside from releasing Azure, I expect it will be mostly about VS 2010. I’m sure there will be a “reveal” or two to get excited about too. At least I hope so.
The best part of conferences is meeting new people and catching up with friends and colleagues.
If you are going too and want to meet up, let me know.
email me: robert at rwandering dot net.
Tags: Microsoft, PDC, PDC09
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