Joy of Gadgets

Since I’ve joined Check Point Software, I’ve done a fair bit of traveling–moreso than I’ve done in quite some time. Since I am ending up more random places, and have had the joy of going through airport security in Tel Aviv on two occasions so far (which makes the TSA experience seem relatively painless by comparison), it has forced me to refine my travel toolbox–things that come with me on every trip I make. Lighter traveling makes for easier traveling, and the following items have earned a more or less permanent place in my travel bag.

The Apple iPhone: As much as I have liked the Nokia phones over the years, thanks to the breadth of applications on the iPhone, not to mention the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities, the iPhone has been a welcome travel companion. TripIt and iXpenseIt have become absolutely indispensable applications while traveling.

Portable iPhone Battery Charger: Written about this in the past, of course, but it bares mentioning again, especially when using the iPhone in airplane mode on a plane where they don’t provide a USB or power jack. It keeps my phone charged so that when I land, my iPhone and I are ready to go.

The Nokia E71: This comes in handy, particularly on those trips to Israel where I can’t use my iPhone as anything more than an iPod Touch thanks to AT&T’s roaming rates being so expensive. Prior to my purchasing an iPhone, the Nokia E71 was my primary phone and it is still quite capable in a pinch. It is also a failsafe in case I completely drain the battery in the iPhone

MaxRoam: One thing I have to admit missing from my days at Nokia was not having to worry about my mobile phone charges when traveling abroad. 500 – 1000 EUR phone bills were not all that uncommon for travelers abroad. Even though I was a responsible chap and asked how one might reduce that cost while abroad, I was often told “not to worry” by managers. Meanwhile, Check Point has a different opinion about these things, so I carry a MaxRoam SIM in that Nokia E71 to keep the roaming costs a bit more reasonable. That and I get a local SIM card if I’m going to be someplace more than a few days.

Skype: Assuming I have a good Internet connection, Skype is a lifesaver, especially for making reasonable calls to the US while I am abroad. Actually, the calls are included in the ~$30/year Skype North America plan, making it an excellent value.

Monster Outlets To Go: Given the relative lack of plugs I have found in hotel rooms, having a power strip with me has proven to be a wise investment. Abroad, it is even better because I can make more efficient use of the relatively scarce plug adapters. The Outlets To Go by Monster has been fantastic. It’s compact, the plug lights up when connected to power, and it’s relatively inexpensive. Can’t ask for much more than that.

iPass: As much as I’ve used (and loved) Boingo in the past, I have had numerous issues with their software on the iPhone and on the Mac. Also, I frequently find their “mobile” software doesn’t allow me to log into hotspots I use frequently. Enter iPass, who has been at this remote access game longer. They still provide dialup Internet access on the road, but also provide Internet access through a number of other mechanisms, including many of the same WiFi hotspots Boingo does. Their iPhone app works pretty well.  More options is good, and when providing reliable remote access solutions, experience counts.

A Travel Router: Because one never knows exactly what kind of broadband connectivity one will find at a hotel, and I have multiple devices that might need to use that Internet access, a travel router has a place in my bag. I can plug it into the hotel Ethernet and make it WiFi so my laptop and my mobile phones can connect to it. I currently use a first-generation WTR54GS from Linksys, which I have flashed with the flexible DD-WRT firmware.

The EVERYMAN Headset: Yes, with Skype, one needs a quality headset for an optimal experience. The EVERYMAN delivers in terms of cost and compactness in my travel bag. Yes, they gave me a review unit a few months ago, but at $23 shipped to my door, I’d happily buy another one!

An Extra Change of Clothes: One thing I learned from a professional services guy I worked with early in my career is that you never know when you will get stuck someplace on the road. Flights get canceled or severely delayed. Any number of accidents can happen involving your clothing, as well. As a result, I always–even on short trips–bring an extra change of clothes with me. I have never had to use them, thankfully, but it’s nice to know they’re there if I need them.

An Extra Bag: Yes, I actually pack an extra bag in my carryon. It’s one of those nylon “recyclable” bags you might get at a grocery store. This particular one folds up nicely with a velcro flap to keep it a nice, tidy bundle. However, if I end up picking up a few extra things on my travels, having a way to carry that stuff home is important.

It’s that time again:

FreeConferencing.com Launches: Until they do something to equalize inter-carrier compensation between most civilized parts of the United States and rural locations, services like FreeConferenceCall.com and now FreeConferencing.com will continue to exist and be profitable. By hosting these services in, say, rural Iowa, they actually make a small amount of money per minute on incoming calls. Anyway, FreeConferencing.com is a way to do a one-to-many call, complete with a web-based console to manage the call.

Vonage Trying To Act Like Mobile Phone Carriers: Vonage, the VoIP landline replacement service provider that refuses to die, is now offering a deal where you can sign up and not pay for equipment, shipping, or activation. The catch? You have to sign a two year agreement complete with early termination fees that are, according to my calculations, worse than a mobile phone contract.

iPopperz Fashion Earphones: Personally not my thing, but these are relatively inexpensive, in-ear haedphones with a number of styles, colors, and whatnot. I would consider buying the black, green, and black pair. One cool thing: they sell replacement earpads. Granted, there is a huge amount of markup there, but it’s the first time I’ve seen them available.

Bad Experience on DeFi Mobile: I briefly wrote about DeFi Mobile in October. Wasn’t sure how well the service was going to be when it went live, but someone forwarded me some correspondence to and from the company related to their experience. In short: it was bad voice quality and improper CallerID. Anyone have a good experience with DeFi Mobile?

Qwest Offering Free WiFi Nationwide: If you happen to live in an area where Qwest is your local exchange carrier and you get high speed Internet from them, now you can take it with you–sort of. Qwest has signed a deal with AT&T to provide Qwest customers free WiFi at 17,000 AT&T operated WiFi hotspots. Personally, I think it’s worth $9.95 a month for Boingo, which offers WiFi at AT&T locations and a whole bunch more!

For a while now, the family computers were connected to the Internet using a couple of WiFi routers: one was in a WDS Mesh with my router upstairs in my office. The other router was simply a client set up in Client Bridge mode. All of the routers were Linksys WRT54G(S) running DD-WRT 2.4 SP1.

When I first set this up, I spent roughly two weeks diddling with it and finally got something stable. It generally stayed that way, though periodically, I’d experience random dropouts and other weirdness. The past several days, the WDS mesh would simply fail for no reason and despite my best efforts, I could not bring it up again.

I replaced my Linksys in my office with a UTM-1 EDGE W device I picked up from the office. This is an industrial strength firewall with WiFi, anti-virus at the gateway, and a lot of other cool security features in something about the size of a typical Linksys/D-Link router. I’m sure costs more than what most people want to spend on a router, given enterprises buy hundreds of them and manage them centrally. Home users can get a lot of the same functionality in the ZoneAlarm Z100G Secure Wireless Router for $150 shipped to your door (sorry, US and Canada only).

Unfortunately, this didn’t solve my WDS problem since the EDGE gateway does WDS differently than the Linksys boxes. I set both Linksys routers downstairs into Client Bridge mode temporarily, which allowed the Internet to work, albeit a little more slowly. Unfortunately, this is still not reliable as the WiFi periodically cuts out downstairs.

Today, I trekked over to Frys Electronics and picked up some HomePlug AV gear from TRENDnet (specifically the TRENDnet Tpl-302E2K 200Mbps Powerline Av Ethernet Adapter Kit and TRENDnet Tpl-302E 200Mbps Powerline Av Ethernet Adapter B Class). D-Link, Belkin, and Netgear also make this equipment, but I opted for the TRENDnet gear for one simple reason: I could buy a single TRENDNet HomePlug AV receiver. I needed 3 of them and the price for a pair was, at minimum, $120.

Setup was pretty easy, if you follow the included QuickStart guide. The TRENDnet software tool for configuring these devices (which, unfortunately, requires Windows) was able to find all three of my devices right away. It took me almost no time to get the devices connected together and passing traffic. One of the devices is plugged in near my router upstairs, the other two are downstairs in different rooms.

There are, of course, some limitations with these devices:

• The device–which is much larger than our typical wall-wort–partially blocks the other outlet. I found it worked if I used the top outlet and had the “bottom” facing upward.
• The device absolutely must be plugged in directly to the wall for it to work (i.e. no powerstrips).
• A maximum of 16 devices is supported.
• All devices must be on the same circuit breaker. This basically means you can only use these devices within a single dwelling.

While the TRENDnet Utility shows my devices not getting anywhere near the stated 200mb/s maximum throughput–the spec says the max data throughput is actually 150mb/s–I am getting anywhere from 10mb to 30mb/s to and from my locations. It’s at least as good as the WiFi link if not better as it’s more stable. I wish the price would come down a bit, but it’s still cheaper than cutting up drywall and adding in the necessary outlets.

You might not think your television set is the best place to experience the Internet, but when you don’t have a functioning computer, it’s better than nothing. This is the situation our friends in Alabama are experiencing.

I took a look at their computer today that had been sitting for a while since it was moved. After hooking it up, I discovered it was inoperable. Won’t even POST properly. We discussed options for replacement, and while computers have gotten cheaper, they are still expensive for the average family, especially in today’s economy.

One of the main attractions for a computer is, of course the Internet. Their Wii has Internet access, why not use that as the browser? Turns out, you can and it has a supported browser powered by Opera. The Internet Chnannel, as it is called on the Wii, is a one-time charge of $5. Hey, just about anyone can afford that!

The credit card was broken out and we were off to try it. Gmail worked, and so did YouTube. Could not go quite fullscreen, but the browsing experience and video playback was pretty nice. With the purchase of a USB keyboard, they’ll have a reasonable data entry experience as well.

It’s not going to replace a computer, but it might be an interesting experiment. I wonder how well Google Docs works. Can you use it on the Internet Channel? Maybe it will be worth spending $10 to find out.

What you see here is a “makeshift” router of sorts: the combination of a simple 5-port switch and a D-Link DWL-G730AP that I had purchased a while ago. Why am I using this when I have a perfectly good Linksys router I could use that does both of these things (the router pictured here)?

Quite simple, really. The WDS mesh wasn’t terribly stable. I can get my wife’s and my WRT54GS going fairly stable with DD-WRT–and I even some higher-gain antennas to improve the connection between the two routers–but the kids WRT54G, which could only run DD-WRT micro, kept having connectivity issues with the WDS mesh.

There are about six ways from Sunday I had the WDS mesh configured. However, the WDS mesh would stop working without fail after a few days. Multiple reboots would not clear the problem. It would come back up only after changing the WDS configuration somewhat. In the last reconfiguration, I was able to successfully isolate it to this WRT54G.

I decided for the sake of argument to ditch the WRT54G and go with something simpler. I remembered that I had this D-Link DWL-G730AP in my router box. I stopped using it once I replaced it with a Linksys WTR54GS.

One particularly cool feature of this router is that, in addition to the normal WiFi router mode, it has a WiFi client mode. You configure the router to communicate with a given access point. The router takes an inbound Ethernet connection and sends it over WiFi to another access point. It WiFi-enables a device that only has an Ethernet port.

It turns out that, if you hook it up to a switch, several computers can be sent over WiFi in this manner. It’s a kind of wireless bridge in this case. A little more complex to set up, but it’s far easier to get working again if things go south: simply unplug the D-Link and plug it back in. Much better for the wife, whom sometimes has to deal with this crap when I’m out of town.

Now I think DD-WRT (micro) can also be configured in this manner as well, but I’ll save the router for someplace that actually needs it. This particular Frankenstein router I’ve created seems to be serving it’s purpose well.

One thing I did on this trip was give my boss my Verizon Wireless V620 PC-card, which allows me to get high-speed Internet access anywhere Verizon Wireless had service. A couple of problems with this arrangement: that PC-card wouldn’t work on my Mac and Verizon Wireless has only 1XRTT service in my neck of the woods. I was happy to give the card to my boss so I could get a USB EVDO card on Sprint, which I happen to know has EVDO service in my area from testing that HTC Mogul Qwest sent me to review.

I stopped at the Sprint Store on Van Ness when I was up in The City last week–San Francisco, for those of you who aren’t from the Bay Area–and picked up the Sprint AirCard 595U. It happened to be one of the more painless experiences I’ve had buying anything from a wireless carrier. The rep didn’t try and upsell me on stuff I didn’t want, he asked for the minimum amount of information, and the transaction went smoothly.

Getting the AirCard working on my Lenovo X60s laptop was a little bit of a challenge. Mostly because the X60s lacks a CD-Rom so I can load the drivers. No problem, I just pulled them off the web over WiFi.  Got them installed and was off and running fairly quickly.

One thing that annoyed me about the Sprint Connection Manager software is that it also wanted to take over managing my WiFi connections. I don’t want that. Took me a while to figure out how to disable this function in the Sprint CM software, but I finally did. It would have been nice if it asked me first before changing the settings for things like that.

The speed in Mountain View, CA where I did a lot of my testing was pretty solid. It was more consistent than my connection to either GoogleWiFi or the hotel’s WiFi network. The USB adapter is a bit bigger than my Verizon PC-card, but it still fits nicely in my bag.

Hopefully the day job will soon incorporate my Sprint account into the corporate account so I don’t have this $60/month plus taxes and BS fees to expense for the next two years.

When I pull up the GPS on the Nokia N95 while I am at home, I am constantly reminded of what irritates me about GPS and most all maps for that matter: They are never up to date enough. My first experience with GPS was when we were visiting my wife’s friends, who lived in Chattanooga, TN. This was probably four or five years ago. We flew into Nashville and drove several hours to Chattanooga. The rental car, coincidently, had the Hertz “Neverlost” system, which after the experience I had, deemed it “always lost.” After a certain point on the map, it refused to believe a certain Interstate Highway we were driving on existed, causing strange routing. We ignored it and went with the directions we had.

About a year or two ago, they started building a road that runs right along one side of my house. Kind of hard for me not to notice this. The road finally opened in November of 2006, so it’s been around 6 months or so. None of the mapping services online show this road yet. The satellite view of the area from Google does not show a completed road. Ironically, the Smart2Go map inside my Nokia N95 has the more accurate map of the area, though it only shows a partially completed road. I have to assume it would never route me over that road if I asked it to.

So as I was explaining these issues to my father-in-law, who told me with his years of Air Force Pilot experience, that it has always been a problem, it occurred to me that with the Nokia N95 and other mobile phones with GPS built in, we have an interesting opportunity here. User updated maps. Think Wikipedia, but for maps.

What if, from my mobile phone, I could somehow indicate “hey, there’s a road here.” I could tell the phone “start recording my path” and “stop here.” Fill in the path traced by my GPS data as a road, give it a name, and upload it to some central server. Someone could check it or correlate the data with other people who might upload similar corrections and either update the maps or provide some kind of “community” overlay to the official maps.

I can’t be the only person who thinks this is a good idea.

Ran across this. Oh man this looks like an interesting device.

ZTE’s Home Gateway H110 comes standard with an Ethernet and PCMCIA Card Slot for Broadband access [via EVDO/HSDPA], with multiple LAN interfaces including four (4) Ethernet, two (2) FXS, one (1) FXO and (2) USB ports. In addition the H110 supports Bluetooth, Print and File Sharing, multiple VPN/VLAN support, and offers a superior user experience with innovative QoS, and a feature rich GUI. Whether you are at home or on the road, whether it is network computing, entertainment, Internet safety, or voice communication, the H110 Home Gateway provides you the total communication solution.

This could prove to be quite an interesting device. It is a little out of my price range, but it does combine several useful features into a tiny little box, which makes it worth considering.

I wish they had this when I was getting my EVDO set up several months ago. Not because of the EVDO Rev A, which is a nice bonus, but rather an EVDO card that uses USB instead of PC-Card. Why? Because I have a MacBook (in addition to several PCs).

Of course, what irritates me is that my PC-Card is essentially a USB hub all it’s own that connects to a serial device of some sort. That’s why it is pathetically easy for me to use the card on Linux as well, but getting the PC-Card to the Mac is a bit challenging. I’ve looked up USB-to-PC-Card adapters. They are rare, and expensive.

When Alec Saunders had started things off by talking about “New Presence” and a few others chimed in, I purposefully didn’t read any of the posts. I did see the resulting email discussion, but that was it. I wanted to really think about the problem for myself before having my thoughts too polluted by reading everyone else’s thoughts.

The problem that I believe Alec and the like is trying to solve: how to manage the incoming flow of communications. I think Alec understands that this is an insanely complex problem to try and tackle. Here’s the thing: most normal people don’t have this problem. There are maybe one or two ways to get a hold of most people in real time. A land line and possibly a mobile phone. That’s it. IM isn’t on their radar, or if it is, it’s not an important enough communication mechanism that it needs to be “managed” by anything more complicated than an on/off switch. In fact, even with the phones, about the only management that needs to occur is by looking at the Caller ID and making a decision right there or, as with IM, just switching it off.

The only people that seem to have this problem are hyper-connected people. People who just have way too many ways to reach them and too many people trying to reach them. There are few people like that in the world. While I have lots of ways to reach me, I get relatively few contacts a day–certainly manageable without any complex tools.

Ignoring the fact that I find the whole concept of “presence management” a solution in search of a problem for most people, there’s the whole technical problem of trying to work within the various walled gardens. On my Mac, I am running 3 applications: Skype, Gizmo, and Adium. Adium connects me to 4 different IM networks: AOL/ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and GTalk. That’s six different walled gardens to have to work within, and that’s just IM. If you add voice and/or video, you can add SightSpeed to the mix. Then there is my land line, my mobile phone, and who knows what other VoIP numbers I have. They all have their own concept of “presence” and don’t share what they know. Furthermore, they don’t make it easy for interlopers such as iotum to come in and try and “manage” that presence.

In order to be active in any of these walled gardens, you have to have some kind of identifier. On the telephone network we call that identifier a phone number. On any of the various IM networks, it’s a nickname or email address. What it is really doesn’t matter. However, that identifier is your identity–it is that thing that uniquely identifies you on those networks. In the above example, I have at least 10 distinct identifiers. 10? That’s just insane! And that’s not even a complete list!

The problem I have isn’t a presence problem, it’s an identity problem. I have too many identities! I know a larger subset of people that have that problem rather than a “presence management” problem. And I think I have a solution: a single identity for all networks.

This, of course, will also have technical problems–similar to those you run into with managing presence across multiple walled gardens. In fact it may be worse because once there is some way to have a “global” identity, you can bet companies will be stepping all over themselves to let you have “them” manage your identity for you. Part of that identity management could easily be “presence management.” In fact, that’s almost what you want in a single identity world.

Let’s say that we have this utopia of a single identity across multiple networks and I want to communicate with Ken Camp. I can query the “identity server” and find out if he’s “available” anywhere and what methods he is available by. I can then connect to him if I desire or perhaps choose something asynchronous like email.

Because each network element must touch the identity server, the central identity server becomes a focal point in determining how you can be reached at any point in time. And then it becomes much more trivial to manage that communication more effectively with iotum or similar tools. Until we have a single identity across networks, no method of managing presence will be effective.