Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Very Best Thing about Unixkcd

guest@xkcd:/$ make me a sandwich

What?
Make it yourself.

guest@xkcd:/$ sudo make me a sandwich

Okay.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Google Voice is still Lacking

I’ve been a religious Google Voice user for awhile now, so it really bothers
me that it is still lacking feature wise.  Of course, I’ve been helping with some of these missing
features (re: Google Voice for Outlook) but there are still
plenty more missing as well as some minor issues I have with the service.

Multimedia
Messaging (MMS)

For some reason, Google Voice still lacks this functionality. 
It can’t be THAT difficult, can it?  I mean, the iPhone managed to add
it before Google Voice, and if you really want to compete in the mobile business, its kind of necessary to
have MMS, as SMS is pretty much irrelevant now.

Not only that, but any MMS that is sent
to a Google Voice number is just lost.  Couldn’t they at least be forwarded to my email address? 
I don’t like the fact that I could be losing incoming messages to /dev/null, and its even more annoying
having to give out two different phone numbers (one for MMS and one for SMS).

Shortcodes


It is all well and good that Google’s own shortcodes work through Google Voice, but not so
fantastic that nobody else’s does.  I don’t want to be passing around two sets of phone numbers,
and I’d love the ability to just set to spam a shortcode that is getting out of hand and won’t let me
unsubscribe (if that ever happens).  Developers pay tons of money to set up shortcodes, so why
doesn’t Google Voice support them?

API

Google Voice is a Service. 
I use it with my cell, with my home phone, and with my computer.  But in order to make desktop apps
or things like Google Voice for Outlook possible, an API is almost necessary.  I’ve managed to do
it without one, but it still pretty much sucks.

Outlook Mobile Service

Companies
charge tons of money for people to have the ability to send text messages through Microsoft Outlook. 
Adding the very simplistic SOAP server to the Google Voice backend would allow anyone with Microsoft Office
to send text messages, forward emails, and receive reminders and notifications for FREE,
something that is usually charged 10 cents or more per message
(Combine this with MMS as mentioned above, and it gets EVEN BETTER!)

Internet Fax
Service

Google Voice already has “Receive Faxes” as a
“Suggest a Feature.”  Adding this and providing users on computers a way to send faxes would
increase productivity and make the service even more useful to small companies and freelancers.


Keep in mind, these are just a few ways that Google could improve Google Voice, there are tons
more.

What do you want to see added?

Friday, March 19, 2010

Somebody loves Google Voice Outlook Mobile Service~ ♥

Barebones<br />            Networking

BareBones Networking (Picture is linked) wanted to use my Google Voice OMS Code, so I
took all day customizing the code and getting it working on his server, I’m proud to announce that he is
willing to allow public use (please be reasonable with it though, please?)  So head on over to the
BareBones Networking OMS page, type in
your GMail Login, click Setup, and follow Outlook (2007 or 2010)’s Instructions and you’ll be ready to send
Text Messages FOR FREE through Microsoft Outlook.

I’ll set
up a landing page/site soon that gives the whole setup experience a pretty web interface too (maybe with FAQ
for the technically challenged).

Enjoy =)

Dear Chrome: What the Hell is This?

style="display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto" title="" alt=""
src="http://tech.gtaero.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/image_thumb10.png" width="500" height="46" />

I love that you finally added previews for each of your tabs, that amazing Windows 7
feature that all of your competitors adopted before you…

But what the light is this? 
Why on earth are there this mini-windows, and why are the preview windows themselves so faded out? 
Not to mention it doesn’t even WORK when you have Chrome minimized…

href="http://tech.gtaero.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/image13.png"> src="http://tech.gtaero.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/image_thumb11.png" width="500" height="312" />

I love you Chrome, but you need to fix these in the next dev release.  NEED.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Sneaky Twitter, or My Imagination?

Twitter Downtime src="http://tech.gtaero.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/image11.png" width="532" height="348" /> 


Fairly surprisingly, twitter went down today (for what appeared to be no rhyme or reason), but
something much more surprising happened when it did.  A tweet I posted ( href="http://twcli.koneko-chan.net/">from my own, self-coded twitter client that has no “store
tweets until twitter is back up” system) was there on the site when it came back up (viewable in the image
above).

I’m not entirely sure if this is what I want to think it is, but could it be that
twitter has a secondary service that stores tweets that come in via the API until the system is back up, or
something?  I didn’t think the update had posted at all, as the API didn’t return any of the proper
data (nor an error).

So, is this just a coincidence, or does twitter have a system in
store to keep the stream flowing even when its not?

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

MySpace Outlook Social Connector

Its simply amazing that the MySpace Outlook Social Connector was released 8
days ago and nobody has noticed yet, except for a few people that still care about the old social network.


For me though, MySpace’s Social Connector has really highlighted at least one bug with OSC and,
well, multiple problems.

The one bug is that I can not connect to both my Linked In
account and my MySpace account at the same time.  Why?  Because I use only one email
address for both of them, and you can’t connect with the same username more than once, even if you're
connecting with separate service providers.  This obviously needs to be fixed.

As
for problems: I now have a MySpace Contacts list, which is really awesome and everything, except that it
only works with MySpace.  It only uses their MySpace email address, so if I casually email someone
that has a MySpace, I sincerely doubt it’ll show up at all in the OSC, nor will it tie their feed if I’m a
friend to them to their email because the only email that shows up in my contacts is their @myspace email. 
Quite useless, especially compared to Linked In.

What’s more bothersome is how badly this
connector was programmed.  The installer wanted to create its own directory in my start menu (I
have no clue why, you’re simply a social connector, why do you need a whole folder in my start menu? 
Wasting Space?  Uninstaller?  What the heck do you think Add or Remove programs is for??)
and when connecting to MySpace it was substantially slower than connecting to Linked In.  With
Linked In, it was almost immediately connected and downloading, but with MySpace it just took FOREVER.


Obviously though, this is a pre-release version, and hopefully they’ll iron out the problems with
both Outlook Social Connector and the MySpace Connector before Office 2010 is
released.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

How To: Fix Dell Truemobile 355 Bluetooth + EDR on Windows 7

One of the few problems that have really been giving a bad rap to Windows 7
users is the loss of proper Bluetooth Connectivity on Dell Laptops, specifically the Truemobile series. 
The cause is, unsurprisingly, a lack of Dell support – no updated drivers.  In fact, if I recall,
my Bluetooth wasn’t working properly on Windows Vista either, which the computer came pre-installed with. 
Since the problem is Dell Drivers, the solution is fairly simple:  Screw Dell, set it back to the
Windows Drivers.

Portal 2 Scans (Leak)

The article from GameInformer magazine on the upcoming Valve title “Portal 2”
have been leaked to the internet.  I’ve provided their links here for your enjoyment.


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