milos topic

Ever since I got an iPhone as a birthday present (thank you Courtney!) in July of this year I have been using Twitterrific as the Twitter app of choice. At that time, it was one of the first apps to market and it worked fairly well. Plus, it’s FREE!

However, over the past several weeks the application started crashing, being slow and at times fairly annoying to use so I started my Google search quest for a better alternative. Last night, I came across a post among my RSS feeds (a bit behind on those as you can tell) from Yoast.com (btw, a great resource for WordPress plugins and tweaks) that suggested TwitterFon as an alternative.

I gave it a try and absolutely love it! Great app, responsive, allows fast scrolling and it doesn’t freeze (unlike the above mentioned app), it allows you to see your “Friends” (time line), @ replies and direct messages. You can even search from the app as well as look up the people you are following (no need to remember their @cRaZyunIquEnaMe nomenclature). Also, FREE!

Now, if I could only find a good Plurk app…any suggestions?

While driving around over past week or so I have noticed a free (unlocked/unsecured) Wi-Fi network called “optimumwifi” pop up along Rt. 23, Rt. 46 and Rt. 3. I have noticed this in towns of Riverdale, Pompton Lakes, Wayne, Totowa, Little Falls, Clifton and Paterson in northern New Jersey. I know that someone will ask “why are you on your phone while driving,” well I’m not really as that drives me crazy, I was simply checking the whether (as seen above) or one of the “brief info” apps (i.e. Currency) I use on an iPhone.

I don’t remember hearing about this getting announced or marketed anywhere so I’m wondering if this is a test of some sorts or Optimum’s plan to deploy their network throughout the area before announcing it and possibly securing it in order to charge for usage.

What do you think, have any of you (NJ people) notice this as well?

Several people I “follow” on Twitter have recommended Intersquash as a website that can make your site iPhone friendly. The process is simple and at the end of it your site (when viewed on an iPhone) will look something like this:

As you can see, your site will get the “famous” iPhone gray look. You can even add an iPhone icon (size: 57 x 57 pixels; format: .png, .jpg) during this process.

All you have to do is provide your website’s/blog’s RSS feed, name the site, add an icon, and then add the generated JavaScript code inside the “head” tags of your site. Here’s the code generated for this blog:

I tested it, looks good, but have decided to take the code out and here’s why:

Overall it is a cool service and I’m sure will be quite useful to many people. Try it and let me know what you think. So far, I’m back to my “as is” look.

Over the past month or so I have been asked to review some 4 or 5 services/websites/products and have to say that I have enjoyed doing it. All of these have been in either their beta or pre-release stages. A couple of them are very cool ideas and hopefully they will be able to position themselves properly and gain decent market share by providing something new and original.

If you would like me to take a look at something you are working on and are planning on unleashing onto the world, let me know. All reviews are confidential unless you want me to talk about them publicly. Also, please note that the only prerequisite is that the product/service/website has already had some time spent on and is in a functional stage. I would love to help earlier in the process, but I don’t have enough time to provide free, unbiased reviews in the early repetitive stages.

My reviews come from three different perspectives (in no particular order):

I’ll take the time necessary for proper review and will provide my input as requested. Please note that since I have no direct (personal) involvement/interest in your company/idea you will get both good and bad, I will call it like I see it. Don’t take it personally.

Furthermore, if you are one of the people I have already provided input for and would like me to share that info here please let me know and I will gladly help you promote your idea (as long as I didn’t hate it).

Here’s the video I mentioned of Gary Vaynerchuk breaking it down yesterday at a Mashable sponsored event. They were outside as you can see, which wasn’t planned, but they still went ahead and made it happen. Perfect example of how to improvise, be creative and deliver.

This event was promoted through Facebook and Twitter among other services. Btw, if you don’t know who Gary is, please go to his site and read about him or watch some of his videos. He’s a rock star of social media, a vino connoisseur (Host of Wine Library TV) and a very cool guy.

If you are passionate about something and enjoy doing it, nothing around it should be difficult.

I’ve received a new Dell Latitude D630 and wanted to set it up from scratch…format, OS install, drivers, apps…all one step at a time. Well, after the OS was installed (Vista Enterprise), the machine started blue screening (BSOD) and would go into a reboot. Initially, I wasn’t able to see the BSOD error as the machine was set to restart after a failure. After correcting that, I was able to see an error message which wasn’t really that helpful other than it pointed towards a hard drive. Just to be certain, I ran all hardware tests as you can see below and they have all passed.

That told me that the hardware was fine, but that something must be misconfigured and I was right. Under BIOS Setup I have made the following two modifications (based on the HW of the laptop):

1. Under “Onboard Device” section I turned off “Flash Cache Module” which enabled me to

2. change “SATA Operation” from AHCI to ATA.

It now works like a charm!

Below is the e-mail I received yesterday from 1and1, my web hosting provider of choice. They have informed me of future hardware upgrades and downtime in their data center where my sites are located. Now this is something simple to do, yet it helps them differentiate from some of the other hosts who are not as professional and courteous.

While it is nice to see them informing people over a week in advance and scheduling the downtime during the least invasive time frame (for most at least) luckily it won’t bother me at all. Friday night, the 24th, I’ll be in New York City watching another Muay Thai fighting event so I really won’t care or even notice the downtime. By the way, I think that some of you should join me, it will be fun!

In all, I really appreciate this level of professionalism and it further contributes to my decision to select them as the hosting source for all my sites.

Dear Milos Topic,

We are pleased to inform you that we will be installing new hardware on the core switches that are used by the webserver that hosts your account. In order for these upgrades to be performed the server will be disconnected from the Internet for approximately one hour.

Due to the magnitude of the upgrades which will occur across all core switches, altering the underlying technology that our data center infrastructure is built upon, our normal redundant mechanisms can not be used. The redundant systems have to be concurrently upgraded along with the live systems.

Afterwards, you will benefit from increased router capacity across our whole network and infrastructure.

The upgrade can take up to an hour and will occur on October 24, 2008, sometime between 12 am and 6 am Central Time.

Only the following package will be affected by this upgrade:
xxxxxxxx [removed the account number]

During this upgrade, your website will not be online for approximately one hour. Writing and editing of files in your web space will not be possible.

Please be sure to make any changes to your web space before October 24, 2008. Depending on how frequently your site is updated, you may find it useful to post a notice on your website telling visitors or to inform web-based application users that your site or service will not be available during this time.

If you have any questions or concerns before or after this process, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

To find out more about our Data Center, please visit
http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/DataCenter

Sincerely,

Your 1&1 Internet Team
1&1 Internet Inc.
http://1and1.com

Being in IT I see a lot of crazy, funny and dumb technical problems caused by either the equipment itself or their users. Today we ran into a small issue with a brand new Dell Latitude D630 laptop where any URL entered in Internet Explorer (including predefined Microsoft links such as Windows Update) would cause Firefox to open.

Now, I prefer Firefox over IE anyway, but this is strange especially considering that this same image worked previously on other computers.

Emil (my coworker from the video) even found a possible solution to this weirdness, but unfortunately it didn’t work for us.

Here’s a short video of what was happening.

Note: In the video I said Tiger, but was referring to the latest OS from Apple, Leopard. Sorry, I got their cats confused.

Above is the photo I put together from their demo videos (Leopard Guided Tour and iPhone Guided Tour).
Two white guys with glasses, wearing black shirts with slightly rolled up sleeves, no watches…looking a lot like Jobs himself. On these photos we can’t see, but I bet they had jeans on as well.

Is there a reason why Steve Jobs is working on creating an “army of clones”? What do you think?