Projects Possible

I have moved my cell service to Sprint… there will be another review of what an absolutely AWFUL transition that was… This review will focus on my new phone - The Mogul.

This device is made by HTC and I must say that when I was with my prior cell provider I had a very early version of this phone.  Perhaps this review may be tainted with just a little bit of familiarity bias.

I use my cellular phone for work.  In fact I rarely carry it unless I travel for work.  When I am using it there are two primary modes of operation.  As a phone for communicating with customers and employees, and to help me manage my email mess.  (I get a couple hundred pieces of email daily.)

Setup for me was pretty straight forward.  As I said I was already familiar with the basic operations of Windows Mobile 6 and the interface of contacts and email.  I had the phone fully synchronized with our corporate Exchange (Webmail) server in a matter of minutes.  (before I left the mall)

Active Sync is not my favorite application in the world but one that is a necessity if you want to send data to the phone.  In my XP environment I have had difficulties getting Active Synch to recognize when the phone is connected and IF the phone is connected when I boot it will sometimes keep my PC from booting.  Since I don’t actually use it to sync my email, calendar or contacts I hardly ever have it connected but of course I do use it to send music to the device, programs, etc.

The Mogul seems to be much more stable than my 8125 was.  I have been using it for a few weeks now and I have never had to force a reboot.  (Power Off)  I also find that it moves between applications much quicker.   

I find the buttons and roller knob to be positioned well although I would have preferred the buttons on the keyboard that perform the menu actions to be positioned below the text on the screen instead of at each end of the keyboard. 

Speaking of the slideout keyboard this is the PRIMARY reason I ended up with this phone.  When I first moved over to Sprint I tried the “Touch”.  This phone is also by HTC but it did not have a keyboard at all and I found it very difficult for me to use the phone to type email on the touch sensitive screen.  I then moved to the Motorola Q and found that the keys were a bit too small and I was spending more time correcting spelling errors than actually composing the email.  The buttons on this keyboard are a bit larger allowing my thumbs to perform the typing.  Again maybe it is a familiarity thing but I really struggled with the other two choices.

Couple of things I am concerned about…  First the sliding screen to reveal the keyboard seems already to be getting a bit weak and it appears that from just normal wear and tear in the case, etc.. that it is slightly askew when it is closed.  I decided to carry the phone “insurance” due to this sliding screen and prior experience.   I’m also a bit concerned about the coverage and while I understand this has a lot to do with the service provider - Sprint - but both the Touch and the Q that I had prior to my Mogul were able to get cellular coverage in my home.   My Mogul is unable to get coverage. 

Overall, I am quite happy with this phone and I would put it on my recommend list.  You have touch screen capability as well as a decent sized keyboard… it is “zippy”, it takes advantage of many (not all) of the Sprint features like Sprint Navigation and Phone as Modem (If you want Sprint TV you will have to use a different device). 

It was pointed out to me by a reader via email that I haven’t really kept you all in the loop with my Xobni saga… So this brief post will hopefully get you all up to speed and give you some insight of what I am working through and still hope to get resolved.

Unfortunately, I still have Xobni uninstalled.  There are two primary hurdles that still present themselves which I am currently unable to get past on my primary work machine.

First, I periodically use a Satellite connection through a VPN to connect to our corporate email Exchange server.  When I operate in that environment with Xobni installed, my Outlook become unbearably slow.  What is unbearably slow… well let’s just say that I could type a complete sentence pick up the phone, look up a phone number and dial that number and when I look at the screen the sentence will not be visible in its entirety.  (In all fairness to what I consider to be a great application this slowdown does not seem to exist on my high speed (DSL) connection when connected through our VPN.)  Since I spend about 40-50% of my time in that satellite environment I can’t deal with the extreme slowness.

Second, is that I still have the issue of improper shutdown of Outlook.  This causes corruption in my mailstores which take absolutely forever to rebuild when I restart Outlook.  Things that I have tried to do to resolve this problem…

Archive messages - I have nearly 100,000 messages and I have now broken them all into separate mailstores by year to get their file sizes down.

Upgrade to Outlook 2007 - Recently I made a change to Outlook 2007 thinking perhaps there may have been an issue with 2003 an the interaction with other applications.  (I had another selfish reason - I wanted the ClearContext beta and right now it only runs on 2007)

Rebuild the mailstores with ScanPST - I have rebuilt each and every one of the mailstores (archives included) thinking that any errors that would be found and corrected may ultimately resolve the shutdown problem.

Uninstalled other Outlook applications - This would include my most favorite application of all ClearContext.  The problem doesn’t seem to be tied to addons because I had the same result.

In fairness again, you should know that I have a second machine that I use for personal mail and it does not have this Second problem.  I don’t carry this machine up to the lake house so I have no idea if it has the first.

I have been in email contact with the Xobni support department on these issues and have tried multiple things believing that there may be a solution in place.   Support for the most part is quite responsive unfortunately they just can’t seem to figure out how to resolve these two showstopper issues for me.

So the bottom line for me is to periodically install the app and see if I am able to close down Outlook without either a C Runtime error or an Outlook error indicating that things didn’t close properly.  Once I consistently get shutdown happening then I will try it on the Satellite connection.

On a side note, even though I have these two problems I would encourage you to try Xobni if you haven’t.  The search capability is absolutely incredible, and the contact information and management is what Outlook should have done!

They just entered into open (non-invite) beta so the application is available to all.  (Make sure that if you experience either of my two problems that you let their support department know about it!!!)  You can see their press release here or better yet just go to the Xboni website and download it.

In the past month I have had two full weekends that the blog has been inaccessible due to problems at my webhost - Flexihostings.   I was left no alternative, after another full day today where they could not resolve the problem, but to change webhosts.

This evening I moved the entire blog, all images, databases, etc… so if in your reading you happen across something that doesn’t look quite right please let me know as soon as possible and I will be sure to get it corrected.   (You can just leave a comment on this post.)

To my readers,  I apologize for the inconvenience that you may have experienced.  If you tried to submit posts for the carnival please try again.  You will have until the end of the month for your submissions.  I hope that this move to the new host will produce an environment that will be a bit more stable but will also give me access to a tech support team that I am confident will be able to resolve issues in a timely manner.

Now about the retraction…  On January 8th I posted an article about choosing a webhost and I refer to my webhost of about 5+ years.  The interesting thing about this article is that it doesn’t mention the reason that I had to change hosts… Reliability.   It is incredibly important that when you consider a webhost that you absolutely choose a host that has a proven track record of reliability.  You might also want to take a look at what their definition of UPTIME is and what kind of a guarantee they offer. 

The other area that I have had to reconsider in that original article is the section on Customer Support.   Originally, I thought that email support was good enough.   This is definitely something to reconsider.  In my exchange with tech support starting this past Friday I’m still not sure that they understand what the problem is, or why their attempted resolutions are not working.  (My gut feel is there is a symbolic link somewhere that has pieces of my account pointing to one server and other pieces pointing to a different server in which Apache was compiled without MOD_REWRITE.)   Being able to get in touch with a support person 24/7 is important and still not having a resolution after 3 days is just not acceptable in my opinion.

So the retraction is that I would no longer recommend Flexihostings as a webhost based on recent experiences with Reliability and Customer Support.  Perhaps after I’ve been with my new webhost for awhile I will offer a review and opinion on them.  In the meantime choose carefully and make sure you know what is important to you and your operating environment.

The subject of death and dying is not a very pleasant subject to talk about.  In the “Bucket List” our lead characters, played by Nicholson as the wealthy billionaire and Freeman as a family man and mechanic, face death head on when both are diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Through the course of the movie, these hospital roommates, become friends.  Friends that learn they must face the fact that they are dying and perhaps some not so “joyful” other things in their lives.  

The concept of the “bucket list” - the list of all the things you want to do before you “kick the bucket” -  is one that Carter (Freeman) shares with Cole (Nicholson) as a college philosophy professor’s exercise to his students.  I seem to recall a similar exercise and my results were actually pretty similar to what Carter remembers.   Money, family, happiness… they are all things that as a college freshman I thought were a long time in coming.  Now on the right side of middle age, my college bucket list is important and certainly has relevance to what and who I am today but I think with life experience there are a lot of other things I think I would add to that list.  Cole and Carter create the list and head off on this world adventure to see and do all the things they wish they could have in their life.  

There is an interesting side plot that I think the movie really glossed over rather poorly.   Carter is a married man and when he finds out he is terminal he makes a choice to spend a portion of his remaining days away from his wife and family doing the things that he wants to do.  I find the way the movie handled this to be very “light” as opposed to how it might play out in real life.

The power of the movie for me was not in the humor, or the very poorly done visits to some of the wonders of the world.  (You would think the digital additions of the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, or the African Safari would have been better done.)  The power lies in the message.  If you know that you only have a specific amount of time to live what are the things that you would do in your life… what would be your “bucket list”?   Do you have relationships that need mending?  Places to see?  Experiences that you would like to capture?  Are there mistakes you made that need to be corrected?  When the eulogy is given…what’s going to be said?

While I wouldn’t call the movie “life changing” it is definitely one that I am not disappointed that I shelled out the bucks to view and I will purchase it when it comes out on DVD.  Definitely a thumbs up and a movie that I would wholeheartedly recommend.  

And I can’t help but ask… What’s on your “bucket list”?

I’ll start…   I want to learn to play the piano! 

Maybe we should all start Living Like We Were Dying?    Loading...  

As many of you are aware or you can see from my scrolling pictures, my wife an I own lakefront property.  When the property was subdivided by the builder he created a Homeowners Association to manage the common elements of the property including the road, the water system, and the sewer system.  As the secretary on the HOA board I’m always looking around for ways to help our small association of 12 members manage not only the invoices and receipts but also to distribute information like emergency contacts and meeting minutes to a geographically diverse group of owners. 

Today I test drove an online real estate software product called Buildium.  These are my findings.

Buildium on their home page indicate they are #1 in online property management.  With our small association I wasn’t too sure that an online solution could provide what we needed without becoming so overwhelming that it was more trouble to use than it was worth.  Pricing was also a consideration because we really are a very small association.

When you first go to the buildium.com website you will notice that they actually have 2 versions of the software.  One suited for property managers and the other for homeowner’s associations.  Reading through the website information they certainly seemed to be quite feature rich and included features like: financial reporting including budges, the ability to send announcements to homeowners, a homeowner interface where they could create tasks, pay their fees and interact, and the ability to share documents like my meeting minutes.  I decided to create a trial account and see just how much work it was going to be. 

When you setup your trial account you basically fill in a form asking for some pertinent details and an email is sent to you immediately.  Within a matter of minutes I had an online “site” ready to play in.

At first I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of information that was presented on the dashboard but I quickly learned that Buildium was trying to give me the information necessary to setup that particular portion.  I could click on a link and all of the help information including links to tutorials were no longer displayed when I clicked on the individual  tabbed sections. 
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I’ve been hosting my own websites for a number of years and I’ve tried a good many webhosts including 1and1.com, westhost.com and hostgator.com and I can honestly say that of all of them that I’ve tried, the best (based on my needs) for the price has been from flexihostings.net. [RETRACTION HERE - I NO LONGER RECOMMEND THEM!] I’m sure your mileage will vary and you probably have raving reviews (or perhaps horror stories) about your host as well.

Keep in mind that your requirements will vary based entirely on how you intend to use your webspace.   If you want it to simply host auction images then you would probably care less whether you could Add-On domains or access a mySQL database.  Your concern would be with ftp access and space…lots of space.  To run my blog I need to have mySQL, I need FTP, I want the ability to add domains, and unlimited email would be nice, etc..  Defining what you want to do and what is needed is really the first step in making your determination about the host you should choose.

Listed below are some of the reasons and features that I have chosen Flexihostings for what is going on something like 5 years now:

1. Customer Support - I’m not one that needs immediate gratification but if my site is down I need quick response.  At Flexihostings all support is email based.  They do however have an emergency pager option that somehow must get escalated to a different group.  When I have used that option for an inaccessible website things were corrected relatively quickly.   I don’t need a lot of hand holding when it comes to setting up databases and scripts so email support was good enough for me and since they are responsive and resolve my problems quickly I can’t complain.
2. Bandwidth - This is the amount of data that you expect to exchange.  It is usually includes not only what people view or take, (download) but also what you publish.  The more the better.   If unlimited is an option you should also probably get a clear definition of what unlimited means.  At Flexihostings I get 2000GB per month.   They happen to define it as premium.  I’m not sure what that means but let’s look at #3 for perhaps a definition.
3. Relative Speed and Response Times - What does that mean?   Well in the case of shared web host space you and any number of other customers are sharing the same server.  Depending on how much memory, processors, etc. are installed on those machines as it relates to the customers and the customer activity you could experience slow downs.   If customer XYZ is utilizing all of the resources then you will have to wait until he is done.   The same could be said for bandwidth.  If the Internet is like an 10 lane interstate highway and all you have coming to your server is a gravel road you can expect to have slow downs. 
4. Addon and Subdomains -  Most of the webhosts out there will help you get your own domain name and in most cases most of them will give you unlimited subdomains.  Subdomains would be domains like myspace.projectspossible.com or yourspace.projectspossible.com.  They have your actual domain name you are just indicating a different area of your domain.  An Addon domain however is an entirely different domain that is controlled under the same account.  So I have 1 account with Flexihostings but I get to have 10 additional domains or Addons on that account basically letting me manage 10 different domains.  For example http://www.masella.us is a domain that I have added on to my account.  It will point you to Projects Possible but it is an entirely different domain and I could put different content there if I wanted to.  Most of the time the Subdomains and Addon domains require that you use the domain name servers of your WebHost.
5. mySql, PHP, Cgi - These terms get back to what you want to run.  If you are going to need to run applications that require database access using PHP then you need to make sure that your WebHost will support them.  You should also check to make sure that the versions that you need are supported.  PHP 5 has been out for quite awhile and there are still many WebHosts using 4.X.  If your application needs 5 it will not run on that webhost.
6. Support Applications - Depending on how much help you need there are support applications that a WebHost will install that will help you setup some pre-defined applications.  For instance cPanel is a dashboard program that a lot of them will use that helps you manage your account.  From the cPanel you can add email addresses, subdomains, manage files, etc..  Fantastico is an application that simply installs other applications into your account.  If you want to run WordPress for example Fantastico can install it for you.
7. Space - How much do you get to store your “stuff”?  Depending on what you want to do space can become a critical factor.  Images and Video can take up large amounts of space.   Most webhosts will let you buy more but it just adds to your monthly fees.  Get an account that is going to offer you the space that you need with room to grow.  My account at Flexihostings gives me 150,000 MB.  More than adequate for what I am needing.
8. Price - Finally, it gets down to price. This is always an important consideration and with so many webhosts out there you have to weigh what you are getting against the price that they want to charge.   Make sure when you do your comparisons on price that you take into account all of the special deals as well as individual features.   When I just processed my renewal, Flexihostings was giving EXISTING customers a double offer.  If you renewed for 2 years you recieved 2 additional years for free.  In doing the math, this brought my price down to somewhere in the neighborhood of about $5.00 per month.

There are a ton of webhosts serving Internet users these days.  Some are fly by night, others well established.  What you need should be your utmost concern.  Make sure you ask their sales teams the clarification questions that you need answered and don’t be afraid to tell them what you want, you might be surprised that they will give it to you for little or no additional monthly fees.

Happy Hunting… If you’ve had good experiences (or bad) with your WebHost feel free to comment below.  My examples are from my host but there are plenty of others out there.

On the Deep Lake page I have installed an Mcam 100 Motion Digital Web Camera.  Created by a Korean company,  this camera features 180 degree Pan and 100 degree tilt controlled remotely via the Internet.  It really allows me to enjoy my lake view when I am away traveling for business or when I’m at our other residence. 

Initially, installation was a bit troublesome for me…  The camera that I purchased had a lower version of software included in the box and I could not get it to function over the Internet.   I quickly contacted tech support and within just a few hours I had upgraded to version 3 of the software and things began to work as I had hoped and planned.

The version of the camera that I have does require not only a USB connection but also a serial connection to your PC.  There are versions of the camera that function solely on a USB connection.  They also offer as an accessory an extension cables that allows you to extend the standard 9 foot cable for those difficult and hard to reach camera placements.  For now, I just installed it in my office window.  I didn’t need the extension.

If you have an Internet connection that uses a router you will need to “open” the necessary port to allow for the UDP traffic from the Internet to reach the PC where the camera was attached.  A typical installation would be to open the port that is 7000 + the last octet of the PC’s IP address.  (DHCP could be problematic because you would not know which IP address to redirect the traffic to.)  In my setup I just changed the PC to have a static IP of 10.1.1.99 and then I opened port 7099 to forward to that IP address. 

A quick installation would include:

1. Create an account at the mcam website.  (This is used to direct people to your camera) 
2. Configure your PC’s IP address and your router’s port forwarding to that IP.
3. Install the software (version 3) - It is going to ask you for your mcam login information.
4. Attach the camera and allow the drivers to be found by Windows,  then perform a reboot.
5. Configure the camera as you would like in the server software.  You can include time, some camera setup options, etc.
6. Link to the camera from your web page (if you want others to see it) or simply save the address as a bookmark for your own private use.

So far I am quite happy with the installation…  If you would like to try it out, there is a demonstration camera on their website.   You can also find additional tech information here.  If you have an interest in Deep Lake and would like to be able to control the camera up there leave me a comment on the Deep Lake page.

We went and saw this movie the night it was released and I can honestly say that for a sequel they did a pretty good job.  I found it just as entertaining as the first movie and it kept my attention for the full 2 hours.  The plot was a bit predictable and seemed a bit forced so they could create the “feel good” love stories (yes plural) in and amongst the treasure hunt.

Not knowing much about the detailed history of the time, the story is certainly plausible but in this day and age I’d also have to throw in “not likely”.  This is a movie after all, fiction, designed for entertainment.  Far fetched at times, but yes…entertaining.

So…I’m giving it a thumbs up, 4.5 out of 5 rating.  If you like Nicholas Cage, like some adventure, like a sappy bit of romance then this one should be added to your must see list.

I’m predicting a National Treasure III… Maybe we will be able to find out what is on page 47.