Hello.

It’s been awhile.

This weekend I spent some time installing iPhone OS 4.  Too impatient to wait for the actual release this summer, I decided to go off the beaten path.  To descend in the vagaries of legal gray areas.  To sell out.

To help you wayfaring strangers accomplish the same,  I am documenting the process.

Step 1:  Get your UDID added to a developer account.

Best way:  Sign up for a developer account and wait for approval.
Fast way:  Find someone willing to add yours to their account.  I chose this method.

There are several ways to find someone.  I ended up paying someone $8.  I found their e-mail address on a popular sharing site with several confirmations of successful transactions.  If driving into the ghetto of the Internet to make a deal on the corner is too scary, there are several users on hackint0sh.org giving them away or selling them.  Probably a safer source of information.

Why do you have to do this?  Your iPhone activates itself on first launch after any restore.  If it doesn’t have your devices Unique Device ID registered, it won’t activate.  You can’t use your phone.

Step 2:  Download iPhone OS4 build.

Best way:  Sign up for a developer account.
Fast way:  Use torrents or other file sharing sites.

I chose the latter option, of course.

The most important thing to  be aware of here is corrupt builds.  I’m not talking about hijacked builds with viruses (though those are possible),  I’m speaking of builds that for whatever aren’t bit for bit identical to the version Apples is distributing.  To arm against this, run whatever file you download through and MD5 checksum utility.  The authentic checksum for the 3GS version is: b7f4501ef6122da7addab344ae5ba58a.

I found several that did not have this checksum.

I ended up using this link to download the file.  It was in 3 parts, but the assembled version had the correct checksum.

http://forum.megasharesvn.com/showthread.php?s=0f2d2b8d7d3d270c5c29e00408596cc0&p=443827#post443827

Also, the MegaUpload links were the fastest.

He recommends using Split&Concat to assemble the parts.  Since I was not on a Mac, I ended up using a tool called NewzToolz.  Horrible name but it did the job.

Step 3: Find a Mac with the latest version of iTunes.

You might foolishly believe that iTunes has a Windows version and that this version would work, but you would be wrong.  What it will do is brick your phone forcing you to restore back to 3.1.3.  The same thing will happen if you use a version of iTunes other than 9.1.

Once you have said Mac and said updated iTunes,  simply Option + Click the Restore button in iTunes and navigate to the ipsw file you downloaded in step 2.

Step 4: Watch it restore, thanking your lucky stars I wrote this guide so you didn’t have to spend 8 hours tinkering.

Seriously, it took me trial and error all day.  It was annoying.  My friends made fun of me.

First impressions.

My very first impression was that this build is a little laggy.  Not unusable.  Not worse than your typical Windows Mobile phone.  The animations and transitions just aren’t quite as buttery smooth as we’re all accustomed to.

I’ve been told this is par for the course in Apple betas.

Other than that, it’s pretty stable.  I have had a few random bugs that I have never seen in 3.x, but nothing too terrible.  The new features are nice.  Here are a few of my favorites:

1. New spell correction.
   
   It’s undeniably awesome.   Words that have spell correction options have a wavy red line beneath them a la Microsoft Office.
2. Multiple Exchange accounts.  I now have both Gmail and my work e-mail account being pushed.
3. Similar to above, the unified inbox enhances the experience.
4. Google suggest in the search box in Safari.
5. Slightly redesigned album view in iPod app with new shuffle button. (I think it’s new)

Those are the things I like most.  I like the multitasking pane, but I can’t really test background applications as there aren’t any at the moment.  It seems to speed up my multitasking in the ease of switching applications arena, but that’s about it.

Annoyances at this point are mainly the occasional instability, laggy animations,  the fact that AT&T hotspot no longer recognize I’m using an iPhone and pass me through without hitting the login page, etc. Nothing huge.

I haven’t really used the game center yet. No thoughts on it.  Nor have I used iBooks.

Anyway, feel free to ask questions.  I might answer them if I feel nice.

My work laptop is a Lenovo T500 equipped with a fingerprint reader.

When I originally installed Windows 7, I downloaded and installed the drivers for the fingerprint reader from Lenovo’s website.   I didn’t realize at the time I was by passing built in Windows functionality.

Don’t get me wrong, the Lenovo software is very functional…never really had any issues, but I prefer Windows native software 90% of the time.

So this morning I set out to fix this.  I first uninstalled the Lenovo fingerprint reader software.   After a reboot I checked “Biometric Devices” under Control Panel and was disappointed to see a message telling me I didn’t have any compatible fingerprint reader devices.   This made little sense as Device Manager clearly showed my Authentec AES2810 and it was properly categorized as a biometric device.

After searching online, I decided to delete the existing driver and let Windows reinstall it.  Doing so was successful.  After reinstalling, the device was listed in Control Panel as expected.  Enrolling fingers launched custom Authentec software (TrueSuite).  I enrolled a few fingers and locked my screen to test it out.

I ran into one problem. “Fingerprint reader is not enabled for domain accounts on this machine.”

A quick Google search revealed this article.   It’s a simple checkbox in Control Panel.

So it’s all working now.  The native reader is a little snappier than the non-native and just barely more consistent with Windows 7 styling.  Other than that, there is probably no real advantage.  Your mileage may vary, of course.

If you have Office 2007 or prior products installed and you try to install Office 2010, you receive a fun error message warning you that this is not possible and that you must uninstall all Office 2007 products before proceeding.  Fortunately, there is a bit of a work around.

While you do have to uninstall all Office 2007 products to proceed with the installation, you can selectively reinstall them afterwards. I did this for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, as we are not ready to migrate our forms to 2010.

There is one limitation: You can’t install Outlook 2010 next to Outlook 2007. It will simply not work. Only one version of Outlook can be installed and Office 2010 will make Outlook 2010 that version.

I finally made the jump to the heavy weight champion of the smart phone world, the iPhone.  After admiring the device mostly from afar for years, I was slightly concerned that in the end the phone would be unable to live up to the hype.  So far, that has not been the case. In no particular order, here are a few thoughts from my first few days using the phone.  I will be focusing mostly on what I did not expect.

1. It was easier to setup Microsoft Exchange on the iPhone than it is on Windows Mobile.

Which is just pathetic, Microsoft. For some reason, I imagined that setting up exchange was going to be a pain as many 3rd party implementations are, but the process was an absolute breeze. It just worked.

2.  I multi-task better on the iPhone than Windows Mobile.

The iPhone may restrict you to one application at a time, but the fact that virtually all applications open again to the same place you left them mostly hides this.  I have no problems going from app to app…I’m accomplishing more and the fact that the programs are not simultaneously running is insignificant.

3. The battery life is excellent.

If there is a technical spec that seems to be erroneous or blatantly dishonest, it is usually battery life.  I have found the iPhone, specs aside, easily makes it through a whole day of moderate usage.  Considering my HTC Touch Pro could barley make it past 1PM, this is a huge improvement.   I suspect that my overall battery life will decrease by 20% as I use the phone more, but so far…I’m very pleased.

4. Edge is slow, but not that slow.

I can tell I’m not on 3G, but the fact that the actual software is so responsive and quick decreases the effect of the smaller bandwidth.  Plus, the iPhone makes connecting to Wifi natural and effortless, so most of the time I do not have to rely on AT&T for my data at all.  Safari is a speed champ. After using Pocket Internet Explorer and Opera for years, I will gladly give up a little bandwidth.

5.  Typing is really easy, actually.

In the past I have veered away from touch screen only phones because of a lingering suspicion that this would be a more frustrating, more inaccurate way to type. Using HTC’s touch keyboard relieved some of my fears, but in no way did I expect to be this accurate this quickly on the iPhone’s touch keyboard.  The larger screen real estate and extremely accurate auto correction make me much faster than I was on the physical slide out keyboard on the Touch Pro.   That’s pretty cool!

6. Voice quality is fantastic.

Compared to my last two phones, the voice quality on the iPhone is superb.  Even with AT&Ts spotty coverage, I’ve yet to drop a call. (Though I haven’t made many either.)

So there’s six things that I love, how about dislikes? There’s only a few.

1. Apple’s application reviews.
   While there are many apps for the iPhone that have no Windows counter part, there are also some fairly basic ones that are unavailable for the iPhone solely because Apple won’t approve them.  LAME.
2. Noise alerts for new e-mails in subfolders other than my inbox.
   I can’t seem to turn them off.
3. Vibration is a bit difficult to feel in my pocket.
   Though I think it will improve as I get used to the phone.
4. AT&T’s coverage is truly awful.
   Worst I’ve seen in Lynchburg, VA by far.  There are several places in town where I can barely get 1 bar of coverage.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Overall I love it. I will definitely stick with this phone (and its future updates) if my experience continues to be this positive.

I’ve had Google Wave for a few weeks now.  Thanks to invites, the majority of people I contact regularly now have Wave as well.

And, it’s pretty cool without a doubt.  There are a lot of good ideas and useful scenarios, bugs aside.

This being said, I can’t help but ask the question: What if someone else invented Google Wave?

I can’t help but think that Google Wave’s reputation as “revolutionary” is largely due to the word Google. Nothing Google Wave does is particularly revolutionary by itself. All of the technologies they have implemented are in wide usage around the Internet. It isn’t an idea that, if put before a group of web developers, they would respond “It can’t be done.” (but, of course, it is worth noting that until this point it hadn’t been done)

I suspect that if another, smaller entity put together a product like this it would not be taken seriously on its own merits.  The fact is, if anyone at all has a chance at “reinventing e-mail”, it’s Google.  I also suspect that the gradual roll out is in part an effort to drum up excitement that is only possible when there is an air of exclusivity. Where users not only have access, but they are granted the lofty notions of privilege.

The potential effectiveness of Google Wave as a sequel to e-mail are far from being realized at the moment. There are so few ways to interact with wave outside of a browser (if you don’t have an iPhone or Android phone) and while the protocol and API are at least partially available, the time when large providers put their weight behind it is a long way off, if it ever happens.

My intent is not to take away from what Google has accomplished. Certainly these features, in this configuration are novel, but perhaps their true novelty and usefulness are being overstated because we are predisposed to love what Google does?

Anyway, that’s my two cents.

Today boredom and curiousity compelled me to try out Office 2010.  It’s really slick. I like it a lot.

However, for my own reasons I found it desirable to uninstall.  I did this and was troubled to receive the following error message:

This product installation has been corrupted.  Please reinstall from original CD or source.

That’s paraphrased from memory.  A quick Google search revealed a very simply solution from technet user Vikas Narula:

The Problem is a missing file in the installation folder of office 2010. Office 2010 has an Setup Controller directory and uses the directory to check the installed components. please check the directory  “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE14\Office Setup Controller\Groove.en-us\”. if you have no “Setup.xml” file there please copy the file from the “Groove.en-us” directory of the source files to this directory and test the uninstallation again.

I followed this advice and the uninstaller worked as expected. If you don’t have the file, you can download it here: setup.xml

Just learned via twitter (thanks @danportnoy) that Facebook has adopted @Mentions.  That’s pretty cool.

The way this works is very simple. While updating your status pressing the @ key reveals a list of users that narrows down as you type, similar to other name lists. This effectively links to the user profile from your status and includes your status on their wall.

However, my most desired use of this system is apparently still impossible.  I use a Facebook application called Selective Twitter Status to update my Facebook with my tweets when they include the hashtag #fb. It works well and prevents me from bombarding Facebook with my random thoughts.

For the sake of consistency, and out of habit, I also use the same username on both Facebook and Twitter.  I have many friends that do the same. The connection should seem obivous.  It would be fantastic if I could update twitter, include hashtag #fb, and the resulting Facebook post automatically link to mentioned usernames it finds.

Unfortunately I tested this just now and it does not work.

So Facebook, the ball is in your court.  Let’s make this happen.

Microsoft has released a release candidate of Windows XP Mode, their Virtual PC based solution to provide nearly 100% compatibility with XP.  Sounds pretty good, right?

Well yes, it does.

This technology is especially promising to me at work.  We have several tools that proved nigh impossible to run in Vista such that we have continued to use XP on many of our machines.  Last week, I installed Windows 7 with the hopes the XP mode could iron some of these issues out.

The good news is that I haven’t found any mission critical applications that require it.  The bad news is XP mode has some glaring limitations, at least the small-business single install license seems to.

First of all, installing Windows XP Mode on a multi-user machine does not work like one might expect. It seems only to be available for the user who installed it.  For my application, this is not very useful.  We have 4 shifts that use this machine 24/7/365.  If XP mode offers us anything at all, it will only be able to do so if all users have the same access.  I believe it may be possible to do this if seperate VMs are employed but this is also very inefficient as that would require 4 VMs, 4 installations of miscellanious XP tools, etc.  Not very useful.  For this reason, I have not attempted this method yet.

Secondly, the installed VM is a completely separate PC on the network. It does not piggy back the host operating system’s domain credentials.  It is possible to join the underlying VM  to the domain but there again, this is no help in a multi-user environment.  This also creates additional computer objects in active directory.

Both of these limitations are very disappointing.  Fortunately, for what it does, it does it well. Applications are very responsive and behave as expected.

Startup times are sluggish but can you really expect anything different?

Microsoft is releasing an enterprise version of XP mode that may address some of these issues. We’ll have to see.

I’ve had my Windows Media Center for over 2 years now.  It’s running modest hardware and currently sports Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit.  Around the time I built it, there were many rumors about a project called OCUR from ATI and Microsoft.  OCUR would finally bring premium cable content (including HD) to Windows Media Center.  At the time this seemed like a likely direction for my media center, but it soon became clear this would not be possible.

The powers that be had decided only OEMs were qualified to build OCUR compatible machines.  They locked down the tuner to specific hardware that DIY hobbiest don’t have access to.

Not being willing to throw away at least 1500 dollars worth of effort in my current media center, I contented myself with good old fashioned ATSC OTA HD.  I did not completely leave the fight however.  I sent multiple e-mails to executives in the CableLabs consortium asking they reconsider their stance.  I pointed out that piracy was not something to be avoided as it already had an unrestrained existence *cough* bittorrent *cough*.

I got a few replies ranging from clear misunderstanding to a genuine desire to help, but no ability to influence the outcome.

As of yesterday, this is all changing. Microsoft announced at CEDIA that CableCard tuners will no longer be bound to OEM machines, opening up the market for all of us hobbyists.  This comes at least 6 months after dedicated experts found a very easy work around, but official endorsement is never a bad thing.   It is difficult justifying large expenditures that depend on a hack.

So now I have an option: buy a couple of CableCard tuners and further indebt myself to Comcast or continue using my OTA goodness.  I am leaning towards the latter for a few reasons.

1. Comcast is the worst. They charge too much. They have few interesting HD channels in my area (other than movie channels).  Their HD quality is tortured with compression.  I am disinclined to do anything that would make me even more dependent on them.
2. I don’t watch that much TV.  Most of the shows I enjoy are on the “alphabet” networks.  For the other shows (Psych, Dexter, Flight of the Conchords, MythBusters) there are legal and illegal ways to get them very easily that don’t require selling my soul to Satan (Comcast)
3. CableCard tuners aren’t extremely cheap. I estimate it would cost me 300 dollars for 2 tuners (maybe less but I expect the price will jump as demand is surely skyrocketing right now)

I am mulling my options.  We’ll see.

But, this is further proof that the consumer always wins eventually.  We wanted to watch TV online, they started posting shows online.  We wanted per song downloads of music, iTunes gave it to us followed by many others.  We wanted our music with DRM, that is becoming more and more available as well.

The consumer gets what the consumer wants, within reason.  If there are delays it is only because the market is often behind the curve. Business models take time to adjust.

That’s my two cents.

I spent sometime resurrecting my beloved media center from the neglect it suffered this summer.  True to my eclectic way of going through hobbies like a womanizer goes through women, I had nearly talked myself out of doing anything further with the machine.  I even contemplated completely abandoning it.

Fortunately, shorter days and cooler (albeit slight) weather has returned me to my senses.  All of those televisions shows I bid adieu to in May are drawing nigh.  I can see the silhouette of season premieres appearing on the horizon, galloping like wild horses.

With this new sense of urgency I decided the best approach would be to simply backup everything and start fresh.  I used the Windows Easy File and Settings Transfer utility for the first time. It smoothly backed up everything to one gigantic, 175 GB file on my external hard drive.  As my media center has been mostly non-functional for months I decided it would also be a good idea to skip backing up all of those shows I recorded last Winter/Spring and will never watch again.

Faced with the decision of whether or not to install the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows 7 I made the decision to give 64 bit a chance.  I have never done this before due to my fear that plugin and driver support for x64 will be weaker.  The thirst for a new experience helped me over this hurdle however.

All of this being said, the installation and setup were completely without hitch.  I did not find any plugins or drivers lacking x64 support.  Except, that is, FrontView.

FrontView is notoriously out of date, the last update being released 11/20/2006.  In fact, before I even installed Windows I did some preliminary research as to whether or not it would work.  I found no report concerning Windows 7, but I did find one report that it did not work with Vista 64 bit.  As alternatives exist I decided to proceed.

To my surprise, FrontView did install and connecting to my LCD required no effort on my part. It simply does not track media center’s session data.  It simply displays the default text/time.  A few hours of troubleshooting proved fruitless. As it stands I have posted on TheGreenButton in hopes that someone else has already tried this and succeeded.

Sadly, not only have FrontView’s developers refused to release updates they also ignore support requests. Something I figured out a few e-mails ago.  It would not be an issue if I hadn’t already paid for the pro version of their software.

I do not understand why some invest hundreds of hours into developing a product only to abandon it once a user base forms.

I can appreciate the time and effort required by even small projects, but developers have some responsibility to their projects, especially if they continue to sell them and advertise their support of them.