On Wednesday, I visited the Panera in Levittown, PA to sip a diet soda and use their WiFi. This is supposed to be an amenity for customers. I had never taken advantage of it before.

I saw a Twitter post (aka "tweet") from someone I am following in my Twitterific window, and I wanted to know what they were talking about. I clicked on the URL that was embedded in the tweet and saw this {see the first screenshot}:

SonicWall CFS Blocking TinyURL.com:
This makes Twitter almost unusable, in my
opinion. [ Screenshot: Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

For the record, the URL depicted resolves to a YouTube copy of a Cheetos commericial. I didn't find that out until I got home and had time to look, probably 12 hours after the situation I'm describing.

At the time I thought, "There's pretty much no way I am going to remember this later today. I'll have to reread all the tweets on my 'with friends' timeline and hope that I remember this specific one." I was sure I wouldn't remember because I had a meeting with a potential client in Center City Philadelphia scheduled for around lunchtime, and those types of meetings have a tendency to clear my head of previous ancillary thoughts.

Twitter is basically unusable in this environment from a followers perspective if SonicWall decides it's not going to allow requests for any URL issued by TinyURL.com.

I considered my options and none of them looked good. I guess I could have written the tweet down and some information about the context if that was important, but I didn't think of that.

Submitting a URL Rating Request:
"... It's unfair to assume that tinyurl used in this
context is a means of obfuscation." [ Screenshot:
Dave Aiello on Flickr ]

I decided to take SonicWall's advice and submit a URL Rating Review request. In the HTML form shown in the second screenshot, I made the case that access to TinyURL should be allowed. My complete statement is as follows:

"URLs in the tinyurl.com domain are utilized by services such as twitter.com in order to minimize the total length of messages transmitted on their service. There is no way to determine what the content or nature of the ultimate destination site is. It's unfair to assume that tinyurl.com used in this context is a means of obfuscation."

I went about my business of researching my potential client and forgot about the situation until I got home. Now that a few more hours have passed, I have a couple of questions:

1. How many other actively-managed content filtering systems ban TinyURL just because it can be used to mask nasty things?
2. How does this affect penetration of Twitter into Corporate America and institutions such as schools?
3. What happens in more restrictive countries such as China? Do they ban services like TinyURL because of its potential to undermine the authority of official sources of information?

I guess it takes an experience like this for me to realize how fragile freedom of access to services on the Internet is. What I'm illustrating here is clearly a side-effect of an overly restrictive policy, but you can see the potential for this access hurdle to exist in its present form indefinitely.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On our trip to Buffalo this weekend, Kathleen, Jimmy, and I stayed in two Marriott properties that had public WiFi networks. The thing I didn't like about them is that they are wide open networks which means anyone can join and do pretty much anything they want locally.

I have my MacBook Pro setup the way I want to use it when I am on my home office network. This means that I have iPhoto and iTunes sharing enabled, and a public folder available so that my wife can grab files from me or give me files without my intervention. I don't want these services to be advertised an available when I'm on a foreign WiFi network.

I turned off iPhoto and iTunes sharing manually when I went on line at the hotels. This only took a minute or two, but I don't want to have to remember to do it or to think about it. I'm almost positive that I'll forget to turn these services back on in many cases when I get home.

In order to batten down the hatches on my Mac, I need a couple of discrete pieces of software:

• Software to make my Mac "context-aware". The leading choices seem to be Marco Polo and Home Zone. My personal preference is for Marco Polo at the moment.
• Rules to identify when my Mac is at home and when it isn't at home. The easiest way to do this is to detect the MAC address of our Airport Extreme base station.
• Scripts to turn on and off the iTunes, iPhoto, and networking services, based on the context. I probably also want to step up the aggressiveness of the software firewall running on my Mac.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Big hockey weekend: This weekend the USA Hockey Women's Nationals are taking place in West Chester, PA, the USA Hockey Tier III Junior Nationals are in Marlboro, MA, and the NCAA D-I Men's Hockey Regional Tournaments are on in four cities around the country. More hockey tournament info on rinkatlas.com/blog.
• Yes, Running Can Make You High - New York Times in The New York Times: "Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner’s body pumps out, the greater the effect." [ via Lifehacker ]
• New Jersey Apple Store ready to open on TUAW: "Doesn't 'Cherry Hill' sound lovely? It will sound even sweeter for Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based Apple fans this weekend when a new Apple Store opens {at Cherry Hill Mall}, next to A|X Armani Exchange and M•A•C Cosmetics (that's right, a Mac store next to a MAC store). The doors will open at 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 29th." Cherry Hill will probably be lovely again, as soon as they finish building the Nordstrom's.
• Wi-Fi Networking News: Sebastopol, Calif., Looks Gift Wi-Fi in Mouth, Declares Harm on Wi-Fi Net News: "The northern peninsula town of Sebastopol gave up free Wi-Fi in favor of fear mongering...."
• Are CIOs Losing Influence? on The Wall Street Journal Biz Tech Blog: "...And in a sign that CIOs may know that fighting the influx of consumer technology into the workplace is futile, only 36% of CIOs say the computing environment they offer employees at work is better than the ones workers have at home." [ Thanks Martin O'Donnell ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Stuff We Like: The Dave Laptop Stand on Lifehacker: "The Dave (oh Ikea, you and your names!) features adjustable height and angle, and can double as a TV tray or simple end table when you're not computing. If you've been looking for a better way to surf the internet from the comfort of your couch, the $25 Dave might be just the ticket."
• Optimizing File Sharing on Your Home Wi-Fi Network on Web Worker Daily: "A lot of people who have successfully put in a Wi-Fi network neglect to optimize the way files are shared between computers in a home or workgroup. You can choose ways to organize shared files, and ensure that files are shared securely or not visible to other users on your Wi-Fi network very easily...." Good instructions on how to do this whether you have Windows or Macs
• StrechCordz Short Resistance Training Belt on Cool Tools: "The StrechCordz resistance training belt makes expensive, complex, "endless" pools obsolete. At one end of a 4-foot, black rubber tube is a nylon belt with a simple plastic snap-clip that slips around my waist. On the other end is a loop I attach to the deep-end ladder of our modest home pool. That's it... just tether up and start swimming. Swim as hard and fast as you like yet stay in place."
• Cycling Photography Tips: Shooting Head On on Spare Cycles: "Shooting head on is both difficult and easy: difficult in that the rider is moving at you very fast so your margin for error is very little, but easy in that you don't have to move your camera very much at all."
• Easter's early this year. Deal with it. on God Plays Dice: "...the cycle of Easter dates repeat themselves every 5,700,000 years. The cycle of epacts (which encode the date of the full moon) in the Julian calendar repeat every nineteen years. There are two corrections made to the epact, each of which depend only on the century; one repeats (modulo 30, which is what matters) every 120 centuries, the other every 375 centuries, so the air of them repeat every 300,000 years. The days of the week are on a 400-year cycle, which doesn't matter because that's a factor of 300,000. So the Easter cycle has length the least common multiple of 19 and 300,000, which is 5,700,000." [ via Slashdot ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Top 7 Web Applications for Sending Large Files on Geekpreneur: "If you’ve ever had to send a large file to someone, you know the hardships that arise. Email services keep strict limits on attachment sizes. What’s more is that it’s often hard to send more than one attachment at a time. This kind of disservice has made email quite unpopular for sharing files- and thus, we have entered the age of hybrid email. The premise is simple: cut out the bulk, and just give us an easy way to send files over the internet!"

• Torvalds: Leopard file system "utter crap" on MacNN: "Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently blasted Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for having a file system that is 'complete and utter crap' at a Linux conference in Melbourne."

  The Leopard file system, technically known as HFS+, has been around in some form since the last time I was a Mac developer-- 1992. Of course Apple would like to move to something more robust. They've been building up to switch to ZFS, or some other sophisticated file system, for some time now.



• Turn Your Nokia Phone into a Wi-Fi Hotspot with JoikuSpot on Lifehacker: Who needs tethering when you can make your Series 60 phone into an ad hoc WiFi base station for your laptop? Wow.


• How to record a kickass podcast between two macs — and cheap! on A Whole Lotta Nothing: "A lot of people ask me how I do the MetaFilter Podcast.... I know they ... mean... 'what software and hardware does it take to make a decent sounding podcast?' After almost a year of regular podcasts and trying out different software and equipment, I’ve gotten the workflow down cold and I wanted to share the my way of making a good sounding podcast on the cheap. This works perfectly well for me being in Oregon and talking to my friend Jessamyn in Vermont over Skype, recording at both ends, then tossing it all into Garageband to complete the podcast." [ via 43Folders ]


• Nike SPARQ Parachute Makes You Run Faster, Eventually on Gizmodo: "The Nike SPARQ Parachute is designed to create drag 'to force athletes to push themselves harder to achieve speed' and look like a moron in Central Park." Can I use this thing on the ice sometime?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• RPI Plays Princeton tonight in the 31st Annual Big Red Freakout. RPI needs the win. In other news, the White beat the Red in the Alumni Game 9-8.
• Kipkay's Video Tips & Tricks on Instructables: "Here are 5 easy and cheap tricks for anyone who uses a camcorder. Total cost for all 5 is under $10!" [ via Lifehacker ]
• New Devices and Applications on the Wi-Fi Front on Web Worker Daily: "While many Mac-based users already have next-generation, draft 802.11n Wi-Fi technology in their homes (because they use Apple’s Airport Extreme routers) lots of other folks still use slower 802.11g Wi-Fi. This year is when official certification of 802.11n Wi-Fi is supposed to arrive, and the month of January brought some product announcements that point to what the widespread arrival of 802.11n technology might mean...."
• Review of the Nike Amp+ iPod Control Watch: "... the Amp+ isn't designed to be an all-around running or fitness watch. It's specifically designed for runners who already have the Nike + iPod kit. Similar to the Timex iControl we recently reviewed, the Nike Amp+ is a remote control for your iPod Nano, however unlike the Timex, the Nike Amp+ uses the existing Nike + iPod gadget that plugs into your iPod, so you're actually adding the iPod remote control to the Nike iPod system." [ via TUAW ]
• Crazy Apple Rumors on Hiatus on TUAW: CrazyAppleRumors.com is a site I just found out about recently. It's articles are what you might read in The Onion if they covered Apple more aggressively. Sorry to see it go dark.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I expected to be wowed by Steve Jobs' 2008 MacWorld Expo Keynote a lot more than I actually was. However, I was doing other things while the event was going on (real work), and the products that I was most interested in (mainstream Mac laptops) didn't get addressed in this keynote at all.

Bummer for me. I could have bought my MacBook Pro two weeks ago if I had known that the Penryn upgrade wasn't immediately forthcoming.

Here are my comments on the other aspects of the keynote:

• iTunes Movie Rentals / AppleTV Take 2: Clearly the announcement with the most business disruption potential. I agree with one of the commentators on MacBreak Weekly who suggested that Apple is making a play to be the digital media hub in the house, usurping services like Netflix, as well as Television services providers such as Comcast and Verizon FiOS.
• MacBook Air: This is a machine aimed at people who travel a lot or who want a portable machine that is a shadow of their desktop Mac. I could see some very well off Mac users owning the big iMac and a MacBook Air. The MacBook Air is incredibly thin. It's hard to believe a machine with a laptop-like display and keyboard could be any thinner than this and still be usable.

• Time Capsule: This is an interesting extension to the AirPort wireless base station line. Time Capsule is an AirPort Extreme with a 500G or 1T hard disk in it, functioning as Network Attached Storage (NAS).

  My first reaction was, "Bummer. Kathleen just bought me the AirPort Extreme." But then I realized that I would prefer NAS that used RAID 1 or RAID 5 storage anyway. It also costs more than we want to spend on network appliances at this point.



• iPhone 1.1.3 Update: There's some good stuff here. I loaded it on my iPhone already. The cell tower triangulation in the Maps application works pretty well. That feature makes the iPhone version of RinkAtlas viable. Expect an announcement from me on that front soon.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

At The Home Office, the week of gadget craziness continued. On Sunday night my son Jimmy wanted to watch Teletubbies on FiOS Video On Demand before he went to bed. (Kathleen suggested it and Jimmy got excited about the idea, so that was the plan.) Anyway, we brought up the FiOS VOD subsystem on the television in the living room, and a message says that On Demand isn't available at this time. Try back in a few minutes.

Kathleen said that this happened a couple of days ago, and I should put a call in this time. I called Verizon and was walked completely through a testing process and a set top box reboot by an automated voice response system. It said that my set top box would reacquire the program guide and all would be well again in a few minutes. But, if for any reason the problem wasn't resolved, my call and the details of what was done would be noted in my account to expedite the process of speaking with a live support person.

"This is progress," I said to Kathleen.

Thirty minutes later, the program guide and our DVR functions hadn't reappeared. Jimmy was watching a DVD instead. Kathleen wanted me to call Verizon back and get the problem straightened out.

When I made the call, the computer estimated that I would be on hold for 41 minutes. The alternative offered was for the system to call me back in 41 minutes when a support person became available. That would have been too late for me, so I hung up.

The set top box didn't reacquire the guide all day on Monday, so I called support at about 9:00pm. The wait was much more reasonable. It turned out to be under five minutes, although the computer's initial estimate was longer.

I went through a guided reboot of my router and my set top box. Eventually the set top box reacquired the guide, so I ended up being happy that the problem was solved.

A new problem developed with our Local Area Network. Apparently the process Verizon used to reset my router and set top box blew away my router's configuration, including its password. I had to troubleshoot my LAN to determine that the LAN's IP address range changed, then I realized that the password on my router changed. Eventually I realized that the router had just been reset to the default settings. So I reconfigured it to the way the network was before the problems occurred, and now I hope that everything is working once again. (I know that the Internet is working, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this article right now.)

The lessons I learned from this process are:

• Don't use FiOS' automated voice response system to troubleshoot your TV while someone is watching it. You will probably temporarily lose additional services for at least as long as an automated system test takes.
• Document your LAN configuration in case Verizon decides to reset your router to its initial state.
• Keep that LAN configuration at your fingertips when calling Verizon FiOS support even if the call is about TV or telephone.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen gave me an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station for Christmas. I installed and configured it tonight while we were watching ER on our DVR.

I was impressed with the improvement in the performance of our wireless network that immediately occurred when the AirPort Extreme started working. Configuration of the AirPort Extreme was by far the easiest of any wireless network base station I've ever installed.

I got the impression from articles I read on the Internet that it would be complicated to bridge the FiOS router (an Actiontec MI424WR) with the AirPort Extreme, but it was as simple as:

1. plugging the AirPort Extreme into the FiOS router using a Category 5 cable,
2. letting the FiOS router assign the AirPort Extreme an IP address using DHCP,
3. logging into the FiOS router and shutting off the integrated wireless base station on it.

(Note that I had earlier determined that the Actiontec MI424WR had to stay on the network because it serves as a bridge between coaxial cable and Category 5 cabling in our FiOS installation, and it also acts as a receiver for FiOS TV guide information and FiOS Video On Demand. Therefore, I never attempted to attempt to fully replace the router Verizon gave us, just to beef up the wireless network we're running here in The Home Office.)

I didn't spend much time using Kathleen's MacBook with the new router, but I'm sure they will perform better together than the MacBook did with the wireless network provided by the Actiontec router itself.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

• Bills return to Buffalo by bus after loss in Cleveland, The Associated Press on ESPN.com: "Mother Nature sure had it in for the Buffalo Bills this weekend."

  "Bad enough that a blizzard contributed to Buffalo's loss at Cleveland on Sunday, ending the team's playoff chances. Then, following an unscheduled overnight stay because of bad weather, the Bills were forced to bus home Monday after their charter plane got stuck in mud off a runway in Cleveland...." [ Thanks Julie Howson ]



• Who's #1? on ESPN.com: ESPN Classic's "Who's Number One" show will be running down the most important technological advances in sports on ESPN Classic, 10:00pm ET, Dec. 19, 2007. This is definitely something I'll have to TiVo if I can't watch it live.


• Why Wireless Isn't Wide Open on BusinessWeek.com: "Even as the wireless industry chants a new gospel about opening mobile-phone networks to outside devices and applications, some of the biggest U.S. carriers are quietly blocking new services that would compete with their own...." [ via Andy Abramson on VoIP Watch ]


• Canadian surprised by $85,000 cell bill on SeattleTimes.NWsource.com: "Piotr Staniaszek normally pays $147 a month for his cell phone. So he was more than a little surprised to learn his November bill had ballooned to $59,000. And then it got worse. When he called to inquire about the high figure, he was told that his bill this month was $83,000." [ Thanks Martin O'Donnell ]



• Verizon FiOS with only a Apple Airport Extreme {sic} on Elecktronkind.org: Excellent article on the things you need to do to replace the ActionTec router that Verizon provides to most FiOS users with an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. Something we hope to do in The Home Office in Newtown sometime after Christmas.

  One key fact to note from this article: You do need to keep the ActionTec router on the network if you have Verizon's digital cable service that's delivered over FiOS. Hopefully we can turn off the wireless capability of the ActionTec and put the AirPort Extreme Base Station behind it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of friends of mine asked me to what I thought of the Amazon Kindle at lunch before Thanksgiving. I said that I was aware of it, that reviews and comments from blogs that I read had been more negative than positive, but I would keep my eye out for interesting articles and blog postings. Here are a few of the things I've found:

• Kindle can light up your life by Andy Ihnatko in The Chicago Sun Times: Andy points out that the secret sauce of the Kindle is that EVDO access via Sprint is free and the Kindle has a serviceable web browser. As such he thinks it's worth the $400 cost without regard for its usability as an e-book reader.
• Amazon Kindle: the Web makes Amazon go bad crazy by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing: Cory Doctorow hates Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Keep that in mind when you read his comments: "Mark Pilgrim has a great, incisive post about the Amazon Kindle e-reader that sums up almost all of the reasons I won't be buying it -- it spies on you, it has DRM (which means that it has to be designed to prevent you from modding it, lest you mod it to remove the DRM), it prevents you from selling or lending your books, and the terms of service are nearly as abusive as the Amazon Unbox terms (and worse than the thoroughly dumb-ass Amazon MP3 terms)...."

These comments are pretty much polar opposites of each other, with every other review falling somewhere in between.

My friends also suggested that I discuss another e-book reader called the Iliad from iRex Technologies. More on that product later.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back on January 10, I asked Is OS X the Key Component of the Apple iPhone? The first point I made in that article was about multitasking:

Elegantly-implemented multitasking on a handheld device: Windows Mobile handhelds have this capability already, but none devices I've seen have a UI that comes close to what Jobs demonstrated. Treo handhelds from Palm running the PalmOS don't do multitasking at all. It isn't clear to me whether RIM or Nokia have true multitasking OSes on their smartphones, and I've used both quite extensively.

I'm pointing this out for two reasons:

1. I've got an iPhone, and I'm more impressed with the multitasking capabilities of the iPhone after actually using it.
2. Marc Hedlund from O'Reilly Radar brought up multitasking on the iPhone last week as a "new-ish" thought about the iPhone. I'm not sure it qualifies as a newish thought anymore.

I think Hedlund's article is very insightful for some of the other points he makes. He compares the iPhone to several of the Treo's best features, and tells why the iPhone comes out pretty favorably. He's saying a lot of things that I haven't had time to say, probably better than I would have said them.

The only thing he doesn't mention that I think is a significant advantage to using an iPhone instead of a Treo is the $20+ discount you get on "unlimited" wireless data plans that AT&T gave me when I switched from my Treo 650 to the iPhone. I kid you not.

I think AT&T offers less expensive data plans for the iPhone because they realize that the iPhone will be in the hands of more individuals who pay their own mobile phone bills. These people will have a harder time expensing the monthly wireless bill than the average Treo or Blackberry user. That's my theory anyway.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was possible to buy either iPhone model last night in Central New Jersey.

My iPhone moments after I purchased it at the
Freehold, NJ Apple Store on June 29. See more
photos of my iPhone in my Flickr photostream.

I bought mine at the Apple Store at the Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold, NJ about 7:45pm. The Apple Store appeared to have plenty of stock at that time. That didn't surprise me because I had read that the 140+ Apple Stores around the country would be staying open until midnight. Why would Apple bother doing that if they thought that they would sell out at most of their locations?

First Stop: A Sold Out AT&T Store

Before I went to the Apple in Freehold, I drove to the AT&T Store in West Windsor, NJ. This is a small store that I thought might not attract a huge line. I have no idea how many people were in line before 6:00pm, but when I arrived there at approximately 6:25, the store was already sold out.

What blew my mind was the number of people who stayed in line after the store manager announced that they were sold out. (I had just arrived when he made this announcement.) He told the people in line that they were welcome to stay and his staff would take orders from them. Many of the people were staying in their place in the line when I hit the road for Freehold.

Continue reading "I Got My iPhone Yesterday, Maybe It Will Work Today" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Let's face a few of facts:

1. A lot of media outlets are going to publish articles designed to provoke FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in the hearts of iPhone fans.
2. This is going to continue and grow in intensity up to and beyond June 29.
3. The motives for publishing this type of article are not all evil.

A great example of an article that spreads FUD but isn't entirely evil is the article called Companies Hang Up on Apple's iPhone published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. This article claims that Apple is working to integrate the the iPhone into corporate email systems because IT management says that the iPhone isn't compatible with corporate email systems.

The truth of the matter is a bit different.

The Journal article pretty much says that the corporate email systems they are talking about are based on Microsoft Exchange. Exchange has the ability to support both IMAP and POP3 protocols, but support for these protocols was turned off by default in Windows 2003. Since a lot of people in corporate IT departments know little about non-Microsoft-centric infrastructures, many of them probably concluded that IMAP and POP3 are inherent security risks.

I sincerely doubt that Apple will make any attempt to integrate the iPhone by adding support for Good, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or any other middleware that's been blessed by the CIOs of major companies. This is because the iPhone is aimed at individuals, not corporate users. Making the iPhone acceptable to many corporate IT groups would require too much variation in terms of the hardware configuration and the software feature set.

John Gruber from Daring Fireball wrote a great piece that makes many of these same points. His coverage on that website of the reaction to this Wall Street Journal article is well worth reading.

When you read articles like this one that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, consider the writer's perspective. The writers of this article are general business reporters that sometimes cover the technology industry. This article wasn't written by someone at the WSJ like Walter Mossberg who has a complete picture of technology products and how to use them productively. General business writers don't write about how to solve problems, they point out potential problems.

There are still a lot of questions about the iPhone's real world capabilities. The ability to seemlessly integrate with Microsoft Exchange isn't one of them. If all the other usability and performance issues that may limit the iPhone's usefulness turn out to be non-issues, working around the limitations of Exchange will be well documented because thousands of iPhone owners will develop workarounds for every conceivable Exchange configuration. [ Paid subscription required to read most articles in The Wall Street Journal. ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

WebWorkerDaily.com provides a great list of franchised businesses in the USA that provide reliable WiFi at all of their locations. According to the author, Judi Sohn, "Admittedly, these are franchises with locations in the Northeast United States." She goes on to describe the ambiance of the Panera bakery on Nassau Street in Princeton, so she must live and work around here.

Other businesses she points to as having reliable WiFi in some or all locations are Starbucks (obviously), Borders, Barnes & Noble, McDonalds, and Cosi. Note that she is not talking purely about places with free WiFi. In fact, most of these establishments charge for WiFi access in some fashion.

There's good reader comment here about other businesses where free agents and other business travelers can get online around the USA and the world.

Update: Andy Abramson expands on the information provided by Judi Sohn by telling which providers have good throughput in addition to basic WiFi access. Throughput is the name of the game. Who cares if you can get on a network if the responsiveness of the Internet is lousy from that network?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Nokia N93 produces DVD-quality video, has a
terrific MP3 player, and includes wireless
broadband and WiFi capability. It's great for people
who want a phone that can be used in relatively
serious video production. [ Photo: Dave Aiello ]
[ Check out my Nokia N93 photo set on Flickr. ]

A friend who works with Nokia chose me to be in the Nokia N-Series blogger program and has been sending me high end phones of all shapes and sizes for several months. The latest phone I've received is the Nokia N93, which I like to think of as the Swiss Army Knife of GSM / UMTS Multimedia Phones.

The N93 folds and unfolds in many different ways. Depending on which way you choose to hold it, it can be a video camera, a still image digital camera, an MP3 player, a wireless Internet access device, and a video phone. And I forgot to mention-- it can also be a plain old voice-oriented mobile phone.

The N93 has every feature I can think of for a state-of-the-art multimedia device:

• DVD-quality video with a 30 frame per second recording rate.
• 3.2-Megapixel primary camera with a 3x optical zoom and a Carl Zeiss glass lens. (0.3-Megapixel secondary camera for video calls.)
• 2.4-inch high definition color display.
• Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 video editing software.

On top of all of that it's a mobile phone with Bluetooth and WiFi. About all its missing is a full alphanumeric keyboard.

There are way too many features and dimensions to the Nokia N93 to cover in one article. I'm planning to do a small series of articles that will appear here on Operation Gadget, including as many samples of photos and videos as I think are necessary to demonstrate the features of this incredible device.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N93, N-Series, Adobe Premier Elements, UMTS, Bluetooth, WiFi, multimedia handsets, mobile phones

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday Martin O'Donnell sent me an article that reported wireless broadband services offered by Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint Nextel are being adopted by some road warriors, but that adoption has been mainly limited to outside sales people, building contractors, insurance claims adjustors, and first responders.

There are a lot of other businesses where 3G data services for laptop users ought to be taking off but currently aren't. For instance, wireless broadband would be a great solution for journalists covering sports events like pro cycling. Cingular HSDPA wasn't deployed during the 2005 Tour de Georgia which I covered in person, but a service like that would have been really useful because I could have easily worked from my hotel room and restaurants when I was not in the media center. I would say that if I were to attend the race next year, a broadband wireless card would be a must.

If I had a job with a long mass transit commute, as I did prior to 9/11, I think high speed mobile data would be worth the estimated $60 per month expense. If I worked in Manhattan and had to commute via New Jersey Transit's Northeast Corridor Service, think of how much work I could do on Operation Gadget while sitting on the train?

I'd also be interested in broadband wireless service if I were a field engineer for a software or networking company. Why waste time at the beginning of a client visit acquiring WiFi or a hard Ethernet connection when you can just open up your notebook and be on-line. (Maybe you need corporate Intranet access, so that might be a reason.)

Beyond the estimated $60 per month cost, there are some surprising issues with buying wireless broadband service. It's really hard to find wireless broadband network cards on Amazon.com. These are still niche products, so maybe this is to be expected. However, it's even difficult to determine which notebook computers in Amazon.com's store have mobile broadband capabilities built-in.

For all the talk of Dell's commitment to wireless broadband, there still isn't a lot of clear information on the subject on their website. I had to delve deep into the options when specing out a notebook for purchase before I saw the words HSDPA and EV-DO for the first time.

Cingular, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint Nextel each have mobile broadband cards available on their websites, but again, they aren't very prominently featured.

So I guess my question is, how committed are the carriers to pushing this technology to the masses if they don't make a large marketing commitment to it?

Technorati Tags: mobile broadband, Cingular, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, HSDPA, EV-DO.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A page one article in today's Wall Street Journal discusses the technological threats that are developing to the television industry's business model. One example given in the article is that Major League Baseball's MLB.tv video streaming service collected $265 million from 1.3 million subscribers last year, but still blocked subscribers from watching coverage of their own local teams over the Internet. The reason they did this is because any decrease in the likely audience for a game broadcast over a local cable or over-the-air channel reduces the amount that these affiliates are willing to pay for transmission rights.

The article goes on to point out that The Slingbox (a device that allows you to stream content from your television to your PC and other devices via the Internet) and the Video iPod are considered important new threats to the television industry's business model because of the ability they give owners to place-shift their viewing. Place-shifting is potentially a bigger threat to the television industry than time-shifting because place-shifting seems to reduce the viewer's reliance on a local television station. So, if you choose to buy episodes of Lost from the iTunes Music Store, the local ABC affiliate in your city would probably say that you've decreased the value of that episode to them and their local advertisers.

A lot of people think of themselves as the broadcaster's customer when they watch a television program, but this isn't the case. Access to viewers is a service that broadcasters deliver to their advertising customers.

A year and a half ago, Operation Gadget reported on the battle between the National Football League and TiVo over TiVo-to-Go. Back then, TiVo-to-Go was considered a potential piracy threat because the service was designed to allow up to 10 "affiliated devices" to receive stored content from the TiVo DVR. The thought was that the affiliated devices might not all be owned by people in the same family.

That debate took place before Apple shipped iPods with the ability to play back good-quality video. Now that the TV industry is sensitized to the notion of place-shifting, the loss of program value to the local affiliate would probably considered a bigger issue. [ Subscription required to read many articles in The Wall Street Journal. ]

Technorati Tags: Slingbox, MLB.tv, Lost, Video iPod, iTunes Music Store, TiVo

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cingular BroadbandConnect HSDPA
3G Service is rolling out in 16 U.S. metro
areas. [ Image: Cingular Wireless ]

Cingular Wireless announced yesterday that it launched BroadbandConnect, a third-generation high speed wireless data network using HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology. According to the Cingular 3G Network Press Release:

Cingular BroadbandConnect is a super-charged enhancement to the company’s nationwide EDGE network, the nation’s largest wireless high-speed data network. When coupled with a compatible device and service plan, the service provides average mobile data connections between 400-700Kbps (kilobits per second) on the downlink and bursts to more than a megabit per second.

Cingular is offering unlimited 3G data service for $59.99 per month with a qualifying voice plan.

BroadbandConnect is deployed initially in the following metropolitan areas:

• Austin
• Baltimore
• Boston
• Chicago
• Dallas
• Houston
• Las Vegas
• Phoenix
• Portland, OR
• Salt Lake City
• San Diego
• San Francisco / San Jose
• Seattle / Tacoma
• Washington D.C.

Unfortunately New York and Philadelphia didn't make it in the first round, so I won't be able to use my Nokia N90 to test it immediately.

Technorati Tags: Cingular, Broadband Connect, 3G, HSDPA, Nokia N90

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I4U.com reported yesterday that Vodaphone is offering a global mobile TV service including content from HBO and Eurosport. Vodaphone's press release specifies the following programming:

• "Sex and the City" and "Six Feet Under" from HBO
• Eurosport
• MTV
• Specially edited for mobile, Seasons 1-4 of "24", featuring Kiefer Sutherland, from Twentieth Century Fox Television
• UEFA Champions League (European soccer)
• Discovery

I recently received a Nokia N90 mobile phone for review purposes. It supports 3G mobile service, to which I don't have access because Cingular has not yet rolled out 3G in my area. If I had 3G service, I'd love to try what Vodaphone is offering and I think the N90 would be a great device on which to try it.

Technorati Tags: Vodaphone, Vodaphone Live!, 3G, Sex and The City, Six Feet Under, HBO, Eurosport, MTV, 24, UEFA Champions League, Discovery Channel

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Thanksgiving, my cousin Brian Lynch and I exchanged emails about our dilemma as owners of DirecTV Series 2 digital video recorders. Brian said:

My DirecTV Tivo has two USB ports in the back. The instruction book says the ports are for "future use". Do you think I can hook a USB cable from the Tivo to my computer and get movies & shows from Tivo to my computer? My laptop has a DVD burner... So that would be valuable to me.

He and I are in similar situations because I have a Philips DSR708 which was sold to me by DirecTV in July 2005. My response was:

... it's unlikely that {the USB} ports will ever work unless you hack the OS. DirecTV forked the OS before TiVo rolled out many Series 2 features.

I looked into this back in July when we moved to Newtown. Someone has done an unofficial kit to upgrade the DirecTiVo to Series 2 features, but I wasn't interested in doing that level of modifications at the time. We could look at it again now that DirecTV has {stopped selling} TiVo-based units.

I went back and reviewed the information available on the Internet, and found that PTVupgrade.com offers some upgrade kits that enable many Series 2 features. These upgrades are about as plug and play as you can get. You simply open up the enclosure following the instructions, install the replacement hard drive, reassemble the enclosure, attach a compatible wireless network adapter, and restart the DirecTiVo.

Matt Haughey of PVRblog reviewed the PTVnet DirecTiVo drive upgrades back in February 2005, and he was impressed. He includes screenshots of most of the new features that are enabled by the upgrade.

As good as this upgrade looks, it still voids your DVR's manufacturer's warranty, so make sure you understand that you are taking a risk before ordering an upgrade.

Technorati Tags: DirecTV, TiVo, TiVo Series 2, TiVo upgrade

Continue reading "DirecTiVo Owners Have a Pretty Simple Upgrade Option to Get Series 2 Features" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikon has released two digital cameras with built-in WiFi capability. The Coolpix P2 is silver and has a 5.1-megapixel image sensor and a 3.5x optical zoom lens. The Coolpix P1 is black and has an 8-megapixel image sensor and a 3.5x optical zoom lens. Both cameras have nice-looking 2.5-inch LCD displays.

Wilson Rothman of Time Magazine featured the Coolpix P2 as the Time.com Gadget of the Week back in September. He felt that the camera was a little less capable than it should have been, because its WiFi reception wasn't as strong as two laptop computers that he was using in the same part of his house.

He considers this is a problem because he wants to use the WiFi capability to transfer photos to a computer while he continues shooting. I believe that the WiFi capability is actually intended to be used to wirelessly upload your photos to a PC after the photo shooting session is over. Therefore, WiFi would only be used for short periods of time, and somewhat weaker reception could be tolerated because the camera would be close proximity to a PC and a WiFi access point.

Wireless photo upload with WiFi makes a lot more sense than Bluetooth when you think about it. I transfer a lot of data with Bluetooth when I sync my Treo 650 to my Blogging Workstation. I can't imagine trying to transfer a 256-Megabyte SD card full of photos using Bluetooth. Bluetooth just doesn't have the bandwidth to make big data transfers quickly.

I think wireless photo uploading will make sense to a lot of people, and the Coolpix P1 and P2 can deliver on that expectation. I don't think the functionality is there to upload photos directly from the camera to Flickr, muchless to do moblogging or photo journalism from the local Starbucks.

Technorati Tags: Nikon Coolpix P2, Nikon Coolpix P1, WiFi, Bluetooth

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While I've been grinding away on my consulting projects, Palm has apparently put the final touches on a Windows Mobile-based Treo that will support Verizon Wireless's implementation of EV-DO.

The first solid indication of an announcement was Engadget's first look at the Palm Treo 700w, published on Thursday. This was followed an announcement from Palm investor relations that Palm, Microsoft, and Verizon Wireless would make a joint announcement on Monday, September 26 at 12:00 noon EDT. This press release came out at 4:05pm on Friday, minutes after the close of the regular trading on the NASDAQ.

Palm's advisory was followed by an article in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Palm is set to use Microsoft code on Treo Phones. In my opinion there's a big difference between speculation about a Windows Mobile-based Treo by gadget-related blogs is less significant than a news article in publications like the Wall Street Journal [ Subscription required. ].

I'm very optimistic about the market prospects for a Windows Mobile-based Treo. I think that Palm would not be releasing it if it didn't meet their high user-experience standards. The Windows Mobile platform has been in desperate need of a manufacturer like Palm who are committed to adding value instead of just rolling out a compatible handset.

As for the future of Treo's based on the PalmOS, we'll have to wait and see. I don't think that Palm will ever integrate Treo functionality into the PalmOS Cobalt operating system, but subsequent PalmOS implementations based on Linux resulting from PalmSource's acquisition of China MobileSoft may be more to their liking. My experience with the Treo 650 is that there are times when it's really obvious that the phone could use an operating system capable of multi-tasking, and PalmOS based on a Linux kernel may be a good solution.

Technorati Tags: Treo 700w, Treo 650, Windows Mobile

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Velo'v Grand Lyon is a bike rental network in Lyon, France. Wired News published a great little article about the system works and how technology is being used to try to ensure that it stays solvent.

To use Velo'v in Lyon, you have to make a €150 deposit via check or credit card. This allows you to go to one of the stations and borrow a bike. If you don't return the bike to a station within 24 hours, the deposit is forfeited. The bikes themselves are loaded with sensors that help make the system as automatic as possible.

The owners of this system are JCDecaux, a French company that is primarily in the advertising business in the USA. They are most prominent in a business they refer to as Street Furniture: everything from signs on city streets displaying information to bus shelters.

I have no illusions of this type of bike rental system working in most cities in the United States, but the design of this system seems unique and is certainly worth reading about. [ via Engadget ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)