Joost…. neXt Gen IPTv

Joost previously known as The Venice Project is an IPTV startup… From these screen shots it looks like it’s pretty happening… Of course more content is needed (perhaps a synergy between Joost and Jaman will provide with a superior product).

Now if you want an invite shoot me an e-mail, comment, or shout (with your name and e-mail) and I’ll send one out to you…. Remember the invites are on first come first serve basis! Good Luck!

Oh by the way, please make sure you have broadband internet before requesting an invite, because if you’re connecting with anything less it’ll be a tragedy to waste an invitation.

*Update* Sorry visitors…. I’m all out of invites. The minute Joost will send me some more I’ll e-mail’em out to you. I’ll re-iterate what I said before, and that was I need a First Name, Last Name, and an e-mail address to send you an invite. SO if you don’t feel comfortable putting that stuff down in the comments section then use the contact form and shoot me an e-mail.

WM6 + Voice Command Conundrum

Well a few weeks ago the tinkering within me to play with WM6 took over and commanded that I revert back to Windows Mobile 6 (a.k.a. Crossbow) and in doing so I have had the opportunity to do some pretty interesting things.  Recently, however, the most interesting/alarming thing I did was use my phone despite the password lock.

Now those of you who are familiar with the Windows Mobile platform you know that you can go to Start—Settings—Lock and input either a simple password or a complex password to lock your device after X minutes.

So as my phone sat next to me and the password lock screen came on, I just wanted to know what my battery status was but was feeling a little lazy to actually input my password just to read my battery status.  So I said, let me just try using the voice command function to check my battery status. So I push the button it beeps (letting me know it is ready for my command) and I say, “What is my battery status?” and it replies, “The battery level is 85% and charging.” I was impressed, so I thought….”hmm… let me try calling someone.”  So I pushed the button again and said, “Call Voicemail,” immediately I heard the dialing noise and was connected to my voice mail asking me to key in my code. So I thought…this can get interesting.  Next I thought could I run an application? So I pushed the button again and this time said, “Start PowerPoint” and what do you know the password lock screen was sent to the background and PowerPoint came to the foreground. At which point I was now able to tap on the Start Menu and go to Programs or even Settings and fiddle around until my hearts content.

So now I’m thinking, well this is Windows Mobile 6 and since it’s technically not final it just might a bug that Microsoft will work out once it is released, but then I started thinking, what if it isn’t a bug in Windows Mobile 6… What if it is a bug in the Voice Command software?

Now the most secure thing Microsoft could do is when the password lock screen comes on disable all buttons except the Accept Call, End Call, and Power Buttons, or disable voice command from being called when the screen lock is on.  But in both cases I thought Microsoft might not want to shoot themselves in the foot too quick.  I thought how can this possible vulnerability be turned into something that would help Microsoft…simple only allow specific functions of voice command to work in the even the password lock screen is activated. Specific commands that should be allowed would be to call, or request the status of your battery level, or signal strength.

Well that’s enough for now, I hope this will be corrected or I don’t think too many corporate/business users would like to have voice command on their units since it allows them to by pass the password functionality giving a potential malicious user access to all the devices data.

Just imagine this video but instead of the device wiping itself or the finder/theif being deterd by the password lock screen imagine them saying “Call Voicemail” (and for those who don’t have password security enforced on their voicemail) being able to listen to one’s voicemails, or even saying “Show Contacts” or “Start Notes” or…. well you get the idea.

If video goes off line for some reason, you can download it from here:

Download: Final-MobilityV7-300K.zip – you might need VLC Player to view this.
*UPDATE*

Well as it turns out it was just a fluke that this happened. I continued to tinker with my device (trying to get the T-Mobile Mail Trigger Settings to work without the annoying prompt) and a few soft-resets later the device no longer responds to the Voice Command application launches. It will now function like it should, meaning that you can check battery status, signal strength, and call your contacts. You can still launch applications; however, they will NOT come to the foreground replacing the password lock screen.

And just in case you were wondering about the T-Mobile Mail Triggers, yes I did get it to work.

Expose on Windows

My Expose is an application for Windows Vista that will allow your windows to be tiled similar to Apple’s OS X  interface.

To get started make sure you are capable of using the Aero Theme, then simply get the following files:

• My Expose Application
  
• Visual C++ 2005 Redist package

Download Files Directly:

vcredist_x86.exe
MyExposeNovember2006CTP.zip

How much power really…

So I’ve been running my own servers for various things for awhile, and I always wanted to know how much power something like that would be drawing out of my pocket for some time.  So recently while cleaning up my bookmarks, I came across this website: How much electricity do computers use?  Using the formula there I decided to do my own calculations and to help you guys out here’s how you can calculate how much of a hole your computer puts in your wallet.

Watts x Usage Hours
1000
Now that you have that number multiply it by the amount you get charged for electricity per kWh. To find this simply grab your power bill and divide the daily use in dollars by the daily use in kWh.

Here’s an example of my own:

Dell Dimension E510 – (106.28 – 164.68)

Lower Estimate

106.28 * 8760 =  931,012.8
(8760 is how many hours there are in a year, because my E510 is on 24/7)

931,012.8/1000 =  931.0128kWh
(You divide by 1000 to go from watts to kilowatts)

931.0128 * .23 =  $214.132944/year

214.132944/12 = $17.844412/month

Upper Estimate

 164.68 * 8760 = 1,442,596.80

 1,442,596.80/1000 = 1,442.5968 kWh

 1,442.5968 * .23 = $331.797264/year

331.797264/12 =  $27.649772/month

Now keep in mind when you calculate how much your electric company charges you, this is the average for the billing cycle. Out here in California (at least in Los Angeles) depending on how much power you use is how much you get charged. There is a structured power scheme something like this:

1-00 = $0.10
100-200 = $0.15
200+ = $0.20

Those numbers I have made up, if you look at your power bill you will see what I’m talking about more clearly….

Office 2007 on a Thinkpad? UltraNav Support for Scrolling Fix

Like me if you have an IBM Thinkpad machine and you’ve updated to Microsoft Office 2007 the you’ll be pretty flustered when you can’t use your UltraNav scroller button (which I think is the greatest invention since sliced bread). So to fix it so you can simply do the following:

1. Navigate to %ProgramFiles%\Synaptics\SynTP
2. Locate the file called tp4table.dat
3. Open it with it Notepad and add the following lines:

'Office 2007 Scroll Fix
*,*,WINWORD.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,MSPUB.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,POWERPNT.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,OUTLOOK.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,ONENOTE.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,INFOPATH.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,GROOVE.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,EXCEL.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9
*,*,MSACCESS.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9

4. Now open the Media folder and repeat the above steps for TP4SCROL.dat and TP4TABLE.dat
5. Now restart you computer and off you go back to the wonderful world of scrolling with the UltraNav Scroller

Just as a pointer, this is a dirty quick fix just until a new driver release is formulated so I reccomend you simply not just copy and paste this, but only use the lines you need. For example if you only have Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and OneNote then only use the lines that have those application names (WINWORD.exe, EXCEL.exe, OUTLOOK.exe, and ONENOTE.exe).

That’s all…. enjoy

Bonus: If you’re using iTunes and you can’t scroll in iTunes, then simply add the following to the same three files mentioned above:


'iTunes Scroll Fix
*,*,itunes.exe,*,*,*,WheelStd,0,9

Skype Gives 24 AnyMinutes

In a new “limited time” special promotion Skype is giving away 24 minutes to use any which way you want… So if you got Skype claim your 24 minutes before they’re gone…

http://www.skype.com/campaigns/chinesenewyear/

fGallery Issues? WP-Forum Issues?

Well some of you who have new blogs using Wordpress 2.1+ might have run into a small little problem when trying to use Fredrik’s cool plug-ins. So here’s something you can do if you get that stupid error

*dbname*.wp_fim_cat’ doesn’t exist

fGallery Fix

WPForum Fix

Just download the one you need and run the SQL query from in phpmyadmin.

To give you some background on what’s going on here’s my take on it… basically the tables needed to store the data for the plug-ins isn’t being created. So to make it work, simply create the table manually.

That’s all hope you can enjoy using his plug-ins like how I have been!

*UPDATE*

Some people have had some other issues with their install after applying the needed SQL queries, so here’s some instructions on how to fix it.

Option 1

1. Create a second install of wordpress on a sub-domain
2. Make sure to install worpdress 2.0 NOT 2.1
3. Once WP2.0 is installed proceed to install WP Froums
4. Once WP Forums is installed copy over the directory to your existing WP-Forums install.

Option 2

1. Create a second install of wordpress on a sub-domain
2. Make sure to install wordpress 2.0 NOT 2.1
3. Migrate your existing site (file uploads, themes, plug-ins (exclusive of WPForum files), and SQL tables (exclusive of WPForum tables) ONLY)
4. Install WP-Forums
5. Then run the WP 2.1 Upgrade
6. Re-migrate your entire site this time inclusive of the WP files

Though Option 2 is a bit more lengthy I prefer it…

***UPDATE 2****

Thanks to Tomsn who has come up with a simple fix to this. Now it’s not completley ready; however, it will get rid of the nasty errors.
How to fix you ask? Well again two options:

Option 1 (use this if you have not installed WP-Forums)

1. Download WPForum Fix
2. Download Patched WP Forum 1.74
3. Install Patch WP Forum 1.74
4. Run the WP Forum Fix SQL Query from phpmyadmin

Option 2 (use this if you have installed WP-Forums already)

1. Download  WP Forum SQL Patch
2. Download WP Forum Patched File
3. Unzip the forum-function.php, and replace the existing forum-function.php with this one.

Now there is remains one issue still that will hopefully be fixed soon which is after applying this patch on some databases if a user posts a posts it’ll automatically become a sticky. I myself have not looked into this so I don’t even know where to begin. If you do experience this, please voice them in the forum.

Web 2.0 in 5… The Machine Explained

Who says procrastination doesn’t bring gifts…. Came across this awesome video…

[youtube]6gmP4nk0EOE[/youtube]

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