TECH: NIKON COOLPIC P2 … don’t buy it for the wireless feature

Saturday, August 26, 2006

http://www.nikon.ca/products/coolpixp2/

I have come to the conclusion after wasting a lot of time on the “time saving” wireless network connection of the camera that: playing with it, depending upon it, or even buying the camera for it (which I did) was dumb. I bought it thru Amazon (and got screwed on the Amazon Credit Card discount, but that’s another story!) because of the positive user ratings. Now I wonder if I was scammed. The camera works, but the wireless hasn’t worked for a long time. I continue to play with it stupidly believing that as an injineer, I can make anything work. The software feels like a beta version written by amateurs. The camera sits there trying to connect and doesn’t. I’m now installing version 1.1.1 of the utilities. I think I’ll tell everyone I know about my non-wireless wireless camera. Arghhh! PS the canadian site is easier to use and faster than the us one. go figure? Double Argh!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: AMAZON the grid and storage computing vendor. They’ve executed IBM’s concept?

Friday, August 25, 2006

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/24.html#a1513

This will turn the “world” upside down.

From a strategic planning perspective, internal large IT organizations — could / might / possibly / actually — run “stuff” (i.e., testing, labs, prototyping, trials) in this “rental” space probably cheaper and faster than building our own.

We, as an “insider”, need to be better, faster, cheaper, six sigma than this “outside competition” lest our own business people do it without us.

Wow, the world just got harder!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: PRINTERANYWHERE feedback given on another site

Thursday, August 24, 2006

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/24/printeranywhere-enough-said/

I’ve been playing with it.

https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/tech-printeranywhere-shaping-up-nicely/

https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/tech-printeranywhere-looks-like-it-could-be-useful/

There’s some key issues:

(1) Who do you trust? Non-private stuff.

(2) Some cosmetic issues that they are working on (laptop resume undoes the share)

(3) And, it has some specific uses (fax elimination)
and some non-uses (if you’re on a lan already you don’t need it).

(4) Please one hting that needsfixing (I forgot to tell them) that they should show email addresses.

All in all a good things especially iof you need it.

I’m in no way connected to the offering, other than it came in handy in a pinch, so I used it. This is my way of saying thanks.

(I’d be a raving fan if it was open source!)
****

One comment says there’s no way to protect from printing junk. I think you can require your OK to use it.

***

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: PRINTERANYWHERE shaping up nicely

Thursday, August 24, 2006

This utility allows you to “share” someone else’s printer.

Doesn’t make sense (to me) if you’re on a lan with a printer. That is, if I am home and want to print on my home office’s printer from my laptop in the living room, then I can share without this utility.

BUT if I want to print on that home office printer when I am at work say so my wife can read something, then this fills the niche.

It would also seem to eliminate the dreaded fax machine. I can print on my friend’s printer in North Carolina if he wasn’t such a Luddite. Rather than try to fax something to him.

That’s not to say this isn’t without drawbacks.

Clearly, it routes thru a server outside of my control, so I wouldn’t use it for anything I wouldn’t want to see int he newspaper. But, then that describes email and the internet as well. It would seem easy to have the two stubs at each end negotiate a public private key pair allowing the architecture to stay the same but the security to be bullet proof. Then when I “fax” my order for dinner tonight, I wouldn’t have to be concerned that anyone will know what I was having.

That pki implementation would also prevent eavesdropping, and serve as a model for peer to peer encryption.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: MEEBO, and the MEEBOME widget,

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

http://www.meebo.com

This is an IM aggregator. It makes it possible to watch several IMs at the same time. That didn’t know my socks off.

Now they have a widget that you put on your web page and it allows a visitor to IM you. Hey now that’s interesting.

I put it on my personal webpage and let’s see if anyone uses it.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: 1AND1 blog option shoots me in the foot

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

This critique is obsolete. See comments below.

When the 1AND1 hosting provider offered free blogs, I tried it.

I was singularly unimpressed when it turned out to be nothing more than a free WordPess blog like this one. Why was I fooled into thinking that there be something substantive behind it? No big deal. No harm. Nothing but some wasted time and effort.

Today, blundering about with MEEBO, I realized that my web page was down.

And, know one told me. Show’s you how popular I am! Arghh!!

I used FIlezilla to ensure that all my files were in tact there. Phew, that could have made me depend on my LUGGABLE to get them all back in place. OR, my backups. But, now need to pull the fire alarm … yet.

It appears that 1AND1 redirected the webpage to the blog unbeknowst to me. Double Arghhh!

I deleted the test blog, and eventually … … after ten anxious minutes … … it refreshed everything to where it should be.

Lessons Learned: Watch for the unintended consequences.

Updated 2007-04-07

1and1 has a new blog destination from it administration page. It now gives you a blog that appears to be a hosted version of WORDPRESS. It know longer throws you to the free WORDPRESS DOT COM site. That’s both bad and good. Good in that you can use javascript if you can figure out how. Bad in that the free WORDPRESS site has lots of assumptions that you can use without knowing too much. I pinged 1and1 support and they have no doc, no faq, and no real support for what they have deployed. (Dangerous?) They said it would be out RSN (Real Soon Now)! You, and so will Christmas. Any way this critique is no longer applicable. But I’d suggest caution in proceeding with the offering.THe reward MAY be worth the risk.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “YouOS” an “interesting concept”. Not really an OS, but something else. What I don’t know?

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

http://www.youos.com

It certainly has made me think. (Always a dangerous proposition!) I may quibble about it as an OS. IMHO an OS brings bare metal to life. YouOS stands on the shoulders of whatever OS is installed on one’s hardware. Having said that, it “feels” like an OS. Maybe if I write an app, I may have another thought, or two. Certainly congrats and kudos are in order for an “interesting” implementation.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Getting organized … used the ACRONIS disk utility to create a “data” drive

Sunday, August 20, 2006

I am getting organized. I’ve created a partition for my E drive and have begun moving all MY files to that drive. If I create it, then it’ll be there. Easy to backup.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: LUGGABLE avoid winrot plan

Thursday, August 17, 2006

LUGGABLE avoid winrot plan,My tentative plan is:

1. delete all downloaded software installer distributions <== DONE

Found that LUGGABLE has THREE partitions. Who knew?
#1 FAT16 47.03M 39.66M Free
#2 NTFS the C drive 90G 23G Free
#3 FAT32 3.02G 404.4M Free

WHY?

2. copy everything from HOMEDESK to the WD500;
3. make an image of HOMEDESK on the WD500;
4. GHOST HOMEDESK to cd;
5. pray;
6. repartition HOMEDESK’s 90 into 10-25-45-10+;
7. reinstall XP into the D drive;
8. see what I have lost?;
9. live happiply ever after?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: HOMEDESK winrot correction plan

Thursday, August 17, 2006

HOMEDESK has a bad case of winrot. My tentative plan is:

1. delete all downloaded software installer distributions DONE
2. copy everything from HOMEDESK to the WD500 IN PROGRESS
3. make an image of HOMEDESK on the WD500;
4. GHOST HOMEDESK to cd;
5. pray;
6. repartition HOMEDESK’s 90 into 10-25-45-10+;
7. reinstall XP into the D drive;
8. see what I have lost?;
9. live happiply ever after?

Sounds like a plan. Comments

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Posted by reinkefj

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