Flip Ultra Mino HD.
Sep 2 at 5:05am by ObverseView
This little baby is my new toy: the Flip Ultra Mino HD recorder. It is a great little toy… but I had to buy a whole new pc to get the video processed for sharing. My 7 year old systems just can’t do the work. I wonder why!
Wifi Android plus Apple Ipad – best of both worlds?
Sep 2 at 1:01am by ObverseView
As luck would have it, I have managed to drop my Nokia Cellphone, and I think it may have broken the screen. Still not sure what happened, though. But apparently, it’s not the only phone that this has occurred.
Anyway, it was repaired and returned to me, I found that in the week when it was away… I started hankering after one of those Samsung AMOLED 4″ screen phones with Wifi-Tethering or even an HTC model.
I don’t particularly care for a small iphone, but … with wifi, you can simultaneously connect an Ipad with wifi, an E-reader (like Kindle), a decent Netbook, and a skype phone unit all via your wireless unit.
What a way to avoid paying hotel broadband surcharges!
Needing office furniture suggestions!
Jun 10 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
We finally got rid of the old copier at school! Phew! We found we had a whole extra space for office furniture, but it’s difficult to decide what kind of furniture should go in that space.
We really need a decent color printer/scanner with a usable copier function for low volume prints, but the unit we’re looking at is a Brother A3 printer and the footprint is humungous. A regular table doesn’t seem to be ideal, but the typical office furniture in Taiwan is large metal units that are hugely unattractive!
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So what does ABS stand for?
May 26 at 11:11am by ObverseView
I always thought that ABS stood for Anti-Braking System in cars. Apparently, though ab workout doesn’t mean that you practice your driving, you’ve got to drive those muscles bigger by getting special workouts for those areas of your body!
Are you kidding? Who has the time to do all that? It does seem that there are quite a lot of people who are interested in scissor kicks, crunches, and much more!
After visiting the site, I realized that the site owner needs a little help with his site design. There are weird gaps between the graphics, the actual link doesn’t work, and page links that just don’t work. Seriously? Are you trying to drive your visitors away!
If you’re going to do AM, do a decent job!
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Would you buy an ESP – extended service plan?
May 19 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
If you’ve ever bought anything expensive, you’ll likely have been asked if you want some kind of extended service plan for that item.
For the most part, the stores have a good reason to sell the plan: it’s mostly additional profit for them, since the phone is already under warranty for the first year anyway. Additional warranties may cover devices for an extended period upto five years.
But for many companies, the profit margin from the warranties really add to the bottom line, because they are earning a commission (40 to 80%) on the insurance policy (that’s what it is, in effect) upfront that could equal the entire profit of the product sold, and then some. The money is upfront.
And the insurance is handed off to some other company. Seriously, I can’t think of a larger waste of money than to buy insurance for a phone or camera that may not even be used for more than 12-18 months!
But for some items, it may be worth it if you are using an expensive product that is difficult to repair or replace. However, do your research properly, and check out what you’re covered for: terms like ‘accidental damage’ may not mean exactly what you think it should.
I mean: I didn’t deliberately spill that cup of coffee on my new Asus Eee PC… it just toppled over! However, you also will find positive stories that attest to extended service plans. Do your own research!
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Will telepresence bots trip on the rug?
May 17 at 8:08am by ObverseView
With telepresence bots making remote working at your office, a real possibility and the possibilities suggested by movies like Surrogates:
Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop played by Bruce Willis is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates
But the real question is: what happens when the Anybots encounter obstacles like stairs, outdoor rugs, furniture, potholes, and the entire range of objects in our lives?
That would be funny.
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Apple iPhone Fans: Totally Churlish
May 11 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
This endless tirade between Windows fans and Apple Lovers drives me totally nuts. Yet, both sides continue the argy bargy and neither seems to make any real headway.
The whole scenario is being repeated in the mobile world where Apple is making something of its late arrival in mobile technology with its iPhone. Yet not a single point that I wrote about in 2009 has changed: it’s still hobbled, unopenable, tied to particular vendors, comes without expansion slots, poor pricing, and under even closer scrutiny by Apple (who by the way it seems can control not just what you have on your phone with forced updates, but also seem to be able to shut down phones that have been stolen).
But what disturbs me more is the different visions that both Google and Apple purvey. It seems that Google wants to increase the speed of change in mobile technology, offers free tools, encourages development and offers Android on many different types of phones; while Apple just wants to restrict the range of devices (about four or six models), the software that can be loaded, the updating of its OS, carefully controls what apps are approved and what aren’t.
In there, I’m afraid most of the iPhone fans are missing the BIG picture: the big picture is that Android is setting out to create a microcosm of smartphones with a large variety, differing functionality, a range of pricing, etc., whereas Apple is selling one pretty much selling one size fits all.
In the short run, Apple will do really well, even though it is still playing catch up on its development with serious ommissions on its software; but that is something most Nokia users know already.
In the long run, a range of devices on a variety of systems with a variety of software will be a healthier, and stronger economic model for both developers, vendors and users. It’s unlikely that Apple will be able to produce more than a few versions of its hardware at a single time; yet, Android competitors will evolve faster… and are already doing so.
While I wouldn’t sell Apple stock short just yet, it is interesting to see it it will be a rerun of how Windows eventually helped manufacturers produce an array of IBM-compatible systems that loaded Windows, were affordable, reliable and ultimately knocked Apple systems into an also ran in the PC market.
Oh, and BTW, I can still swap out my Nokia battery, restart the phone, and continue using the Nokia… with my iPhone I would have to recharge the whole phone unit on its cradle! I’d like to see ANY iphone user do that trick!
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Long Task: Choosing your hosting
Apr 25 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
Choose it carefully! I just finished a large task of moving a blog from one server to another, and there were so many problems that it made me a little ‘nuts’.
The blog itself was a pretty big blog with over 500 posts, and dozens (hundreds?) of images in the files. But the hosting company that I was removing it from did some very dubious things:
- had a large db size that meant normal uploading the mysql db was impossible,
- they wouldn’t let me download the files properly at all and kept truncating our downloads for some reason or other,
- wouldn’t accept Cobian connections properly despite ‘supporting it’,
- provided no unified backup at all of the entire site,
- didn’t even backup the site properly for a year (I suspect),
thus making the whole process difficult extremely so.
What’s worse, they upgraded my account without first checking that that was okay, and expect to deduct the charges from my credit card. Of course, I’ll pay. But the first month only.
And the hosting company that first tried to lock in and overcharge their customers: MediaTemple.
Several other companies I worked with in the past: Hostmonster, Dreamhost, and Bluehost all made it easy to come and go, and have earned my respect for their prompt service, full backup, and ease of use. I will recommend them for these reasons.
Perhaps MediaTemple feels it’s unnecessary to provide backups because of their site stability but other users found reason to fault their service, esp. its reliability. Mmm.
I just feel that if I treated all my customers like that I wouldn’t have any left…!
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Iphone 4: Someone found one!
Apr 21 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
Adesblog was recently talking about Gizmodo’s scandal that involved them ‘buying’ a missing iphone. I’m in the market for an iPhone because I’m basically wanting to run many of the apps, including a blogging app, Bloomberg app, and quite a few others. They’re just not available on the Nokia or even the Android.
But I’ve got real reservations about the iPhone: the lack of a replaceable battery and the inability to run several apps at one time. But perhaps iPhone OS 4.0 will address the latter problem. The new iPhone seems to have a larger battery, too (about 16% bigger) which should mean longer usage times. Now my only concern: tethering … can you tether an iPhone with your mobile broadband connection? Or should I just buy an iPad?
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Problems with Hosting
Apr 21 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
Anyone who knows my blog will remember that I’ve had various hosting companies over the years. Dreamhost, BlueFur, BlueHost, Hostmonster, MediaTemple, and SBI (which isn’t really a hosting company per se).
So I think I can see the problems when it comes to choosing budget hosting. In reality, budget hosting is exactly what you read on the can: budget. If you are looking to host a hobby site, run a small online community, put up your photos or a family type blog, it will be fine.
The problems come when your blog or site becomes overly popular. Perhaps the fame is expected; or not. Whatever happens, if your blog does get Dugg, many cheap hosting companies will either turn off your site or simply throttle your site. In fairness, this response is reasonable since a hosting server at one of these companies will host dozens if not hundreds of accounts on a server (the contention rate!).
This is bad news for you, if you are expecting your site to be available, and spent time/energy and money preparing for this very day, only to find that there’s a server 500, or a note from the hosting company. But really for $2.95 pm … what did you expect?
As Caroline Middlebrook found out (and one of the reasons I switched my site away), the hosting companies can be rather strict with sites that have ‘issues’ regardless of whether it’s their fault or not. So, I recommend some very simple principles for hosting on a budget:
1. Always buy your domains in a separate domain registrar from your hosting
If you buy your domain and hosting together, and many newbies do, this is a recipe for disaster with unreputable companies. Why? Because the company can simply refuse to transfer your domain to another hosting company if you don’t agree to upgrade the hosting plan or pay the additional charges.
2. Always keep a backup of your site that is recent
See reason #1. You don’t want to be hostage to your hosting company. Ever. Many webmasters have been there; and found out that even though you may be in the right, you still don’t get your site back.
3. Try not to put ALL your eggs in one basket
If you have several hosting plans, then you can spread your sites between them. It may cost a little more in the short term, but if the sh*t hits the fan, at least you can switch your problem sites quickly. I’ve noticed that DNS resolutions do seem to take effect within a few hours now, so having an emergency space at the ready can mean your site is back quickly.
Of course, if you are running sites that are ESSENTIAL or that can’t fail, you should be looking at choosing more robust hosting arrangements than just budget hosting will ever offer. Try going up a couple of price bands!
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