With only one day to go it looks like I will squeeze in under the 250GB Comcast bandwidth cap. After that I become an “excessive use” abuser…nice huh? At my company we call the people who most frequently enjoy our products “our most valued customers”.
So I thought by now there would be a flood of blog posts on the Interwebz by those who already have a Google Voice account making my measly post mute, but I haven’t really seen that many so here’s my .02. I received my Google Voice invite on Friday evening June 26 and immediately signed up. Now that I have been using it for the better part of a week it has already started to feel like one of the applications you-don’t-know-how-you-ever-lived-without. You can read all about Google Voice here so I won’t waste your time spelling out every feature but only mention the ones I have come to appreciate the most. The first is that you have four chooses when a call is coming in; you can of course, press 1, to answer it; press 2 to have the incoming caller go directly to voice mail; press 3 to listen-in live while the voice mail is being recorded, or press 4 to record the conversation. Pressing 4 makes the announcement “Recording” so the caller knows they are being recorded. Somewhat surprising I have also enjoyed the voice-to-text feature that I expected would be klugey at best but has in-fact been very useful and the conversion of speech to text surprisingly actuate. Also nice is receiving that text as a SMS message on my cell phone. One thing did catch me off guard and I have not yet found a way to change it is…When someone calls you for the first time Google Voice sees the incoming caller ID as a new caller and asks the person to record their name so when your phone rings you hear that person’s name recorded in their own voice…fine; except when, a business, which may have hundreds of lines all sharing one out-going caller ID. So now when I receive a call from XYZ business it always announced to me as the name of the first person who called me from that number. There are certain numbers that I would like Google voice to ask the caller each time to record their name so that I know whether I want to press 1 thru 4. I might even want to do this when several people in a household share one phone, because there are some people I want to answer the phone for and others I don’t. Anyway I betcha Google will fix that issue pretty quickly, but hey for free I’m not complaining, and unlike Gmail it’s not in Beta
I have be an advocate of Gmail and cloud computing for quite awhile but this appearing on my screen this morning gave me quite a start! My Gmail Account had been locked down for unusual activity? I can assure you I did nothing unusual! Now I know Gmail is still in beta (has any other Google project had a longer time in beta?), but even so I, like many others, I have come to rely on Gmail web mail as my main email client. I may now need to rethink that! I still don’t know what made this appear and after attempting to login again I was thankfully able to get right back in…whew, dodged-a-bullet! Was it a glitch? a bug? I’m not sure, it was just scary!
Gmail Lock Down
Just a quick blog post to congratulate Sansa for recognizing the fact that some people prefer the OGG file format. I first heard about the Sansa Clip while reading Pat Davila’s blog. He mentioned that the 1GB model is available at Walmart for $30 ($29.88 to be exact). The Sansa Clip web site confirms that it supports OGG and FLAC formats but there is no indication on the packaging itself. When I got the new Sansa Clip home I snapped a few pictures, attached it to my System76 Pangolin laptop running Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10 64-bit. Immediately the Sansa Clip came alive and an icon for the player appeared on my desktop. I found I was easily able to copy the latest Linux Cranks oggcast to the device and within seconds I was enjoying my new player. The player says that it can last up to 15 hours on a single charge, if that is true then that is amazing and I will definitely be putting it through its paces. The only initial negative is that the player does not display the total duration of the file, it only shows the time the file has been playing. (UPDATE: To see the length of an audio file just start the file playing and then press and hold the rewind button, this will cause the ending time to be revealed, afterward just restart the file.) This player will not totally replace my Palm Zire 31 with The Core Pocket Media Player 0.72RC1 (for Palm OS). My Plam Zire 31 has an external speaker which comes in very handy in the shower. So now I have 2 players and the Sansa Clip is going to be the cat’s meow for morning walks and chores around the house.
magicJack is a $39.95 USB dongle for XP and Vista that allows you to make phone calls from your computer on a normal telephone handset, (I will be testing it on Linux/wine soon, so stay tuned).
I first heard about magicJack on Geek News Central.
As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted one! I ordered my 30-day free trial magicJack online on 1/30/08 and received it two days later on 2/1/08.
Installing magicJack was a breeze, I just stuck it in my XP Pro SP2 PC and in just a few minutes I was making and receiving phone calls. When you use magicJack for the first time it will walk you through a registration process where you accept the Terms of Service and Software License Agreement and input your name and address, this information is used for the Emergency 911 system, so you will probably want to use an actual address. You will get a phone number based on the geographic area you give in your address. I was able to select from a surprisingly wide range of area codes and exchanges. I ended selecting a number close to where I live but I wasn’t forced to.
The magicJack has a label on the back warning not to use it in a USB hub but to plug it directly into the computer’s onboard USB jack. It comes with a USB extension cable, so clearance wasn’t a problem.
The magicJack software automatically opens when you insert it into the USB port and it automatically closes when you remove it.
Some of the features that are included are VoiceMail, Call Forwarding, Call Waiting, Contact Manager, Call Log, and Redial. You can manage many of your magicJack features by logging in online at your my.magicJack.com.
I’m looking forward to using my magicJack extensively. If it works out for me I may be buying several of these. At $39.95 they also make great gifts!
This morning I received the following email from OLPC. I’m just taking a “wait and see” attitude at this point.
Dear Donor,
Please accept my apologies for the delay in receiving your XO laptop. Give One Get One was such a phenomenal success that we over-taxed our order processing and payment systems. Demand exceeded supply.
Additional XO laptops are being built now and will be delivered in 45 to 60 days. If you wish to reconsider your contribution in the face of this delay, we will issue a refund to you. We have set up a dedicated phone line for these requests. The number is 1-800-883-8102.
In the meanwhile, please know that laptops are in the process of going to Mongolia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Rwanda and
Haiti as part of the “give one” side of the equation. Fortunately, OLPC’s mission of getting laptops to the children in these countries has not been delayed. In
Mongolia , the children are already enjoying themselves and learning new things with their XO laptops. Please see: http://wiki.laptop.org/go
Eliminating poverty through learning is gaining wider acceptance thanks to support like yours.
Sincerely,
Nicholas
Negroponte
Chairman
OLPC Foundation
I thought I would drop in on the OLPC status site to see if there has been any update on the expected delivery of my donation. This is what I saw when I entered my order info:
Your donation is ready to be shipped
and is in our shipping queue. Unfortunately, we are awaiting new laptop
inventory to fulfill your donation. We expect additional inventory to
reach our warehouse from the last week in February through the end of
March, and we intend to ship all remaining laptops to donors at that
time. We will keep you posted as shipments are scheduled, and will send
you an email when your laptop ships, with your tracking number.
I think this may take awhile…
Well I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and blog about my
“ One Laptop Per Child” experience
so far. I guess from what I’ve heard and read that I am one of the lucky
ones. I placed my “Give One, Get One” donation on
12/29/2007. I paid via PayPal. This morning on the Geek News Central podcast I heard Todd Cochrane mention several PC
World stories that shared some woes of those whose orders were late,
missing, boched, or worse.
On 1/21/08 I received an email from OLPC with the following text.
“Dear Donor,
We are contacting you in
regards to your Give One Get One donation and the shipment of your laptop. Your
donation is in the queue for laptop shipment.
Please expect to receive
another update from us by Wednesday, 1/23, with information on when you can
expect to receive your laptop.
We appreciate your
generosity and patience.
Sincerely,
OLPC Donor Services“
and then on 1/24/08 I received the following
“Dear Donor,
We wrote you several days
ago to let you know that your donation is in our shipping queue for the
shipment of your XO laptop.
We are awaiting the arrival
of new inventory so that we may ship your laptop to you. We will send you
another update in the next few days when we have specific shipping information.
We appreciate your
generosity and patience.
Sincerely,
OLPC Donor Services“
After reading the second
PC World article I decided to head over to the OLPC donor site
and check on the status of my order. Not surprising I had the same
result, after inputting my email address and order reference number it just
gave me a generic response that said
“We are working hard to ship all XO Laptops. If you are unable to track
your laptop or have not received it, please contact OLPC Donor Services by
calling 1-800-201-7144 for assistance”
So I called the number.
I was prepared to spend an hour on hold but
surprisingly I was only on hold about 15 minutes. I got a very helped gentleman
that confirmed that they did have my shipping address information
correct. He also told me that my laptop was at “status three”, whatever
that means, and that it should ship shortly.
Even with all the difficulties OLPC is having I pray that in the end the world
really will be a better place for all they’ve done.
It took me way longer then it should have but I finally got my Dell PowerEdge 4400 with PERC 2/DC RAID Controller working. After trying Debian 4.0, Fedora 7, and CentOS v5.0 I was finally able to find a distro that _noticed_ my RAID controller; Ubuntu v7.04 Server. It installed without a hitch but coming up after its first reboot was a different story. After a long pause while booting it finally threw a “i20:iop0: could not activate controller” error. After some googling I found this posting on the Ubuntu forums. The “CTRL-M I20 to Mass Storage” fix work beautifully. I now have a another working server to play with…JOY!!!
