I added phone service from Charter the other day and it works just fine (saved us $70 bill every month from AT&T). I started having issues with our connectivity every time the phone rang however. I placed a service call and while I was on with them I ran a Speed Test to see if i lost all connectivity. However to my surprise everything was just fine. With a little nudge in the right direction from the tech about cordless phone interference. I started digging more.I got the specs on my D-Link Router and it was running @ 2.4 to 2.483 GHz. My primary set of phones is 5.8 GHz but low and behold the office phone was a 2.4 GHz model. For some reason it started causing interference randomly.
I would say I was pissed but since it involved a trip to BestBuy & ultimately CircuitCity I was ok with it.
Interestingly enough this is a much larger issue and the FCC has now dedicated a slice of spectrum to cordless phones based on a current European standard. DECT 6.0 is a newer standard that cordless phones are now running on. As you can see by the graphic below your network connections (via WiFi only) can be interfered with by 5.8 and 2.4 GHz cordless phones.
By the way I bought a GE only because it had a dedicated GOOG-411 button. Directory assistance beware, your business model is being hacked and turned upside down.
Oh yeah it turns out that my getting Charter phone service had nothing to do with the phone interfering. It was just a coincidence.
I updated my blog install to WordPress version 2.5 and it definitely feels nicer. As I was looking through some of the features I noticed a snippet on a plugin that generates a mobile site for almost any PDA, Smartphone etc. One of my biggest pet peeves is trying to view websites on my Windows Mobile device. It’s not because more sites don’t offer a mobile version but more about Microsoft not delivering a very good mobile browser experience.
Since I have been working on mobile project lately I wanted to see how well the plugin worked. When you install it there is a php file that gets added to the plugins directory and then a theme to the themes directory. The site will do a browser detect and when it sees a mobile browser it will dynamically use the slimmed down theme. The theme is all text and link based so there are no graphics in the template. However graphics are supported in the post which is perfect. This streamlines the download on the phone.
I am working on a project for the Las Vegas Monorail that has been one of the most fun, and rewarding, in my career.
We started working with the LVMC in late 2006, with a website redesign and a very basic purchase of tickets online. The delivery was all off line via snail mail however. Our contacts were new to the Monorail as they had just undergone a corporate purge from the top down. They had inherited a project that a 3rd party had been working on to bring mobile barcodes to the Monorail for their tickets. To make a really long story short the 3rd party was not equipped to implement such a project and ended up burning up a year and a half of time trying. We had been helping them with the integration to the LVMC’s current online purchase process and had formed a great relationship with the company that licensed the barcode technology to the 3rd party in the first place (Swiftpass UK). Swiftpass revoked their license due to non-performance and myself/Twelve Horses picked up where they left off.
In the meantime while all of this was going on we had been listening to the LVMC and their website needs as well as some of their pain regarding sales, specifically corporate sales. They had formed a corporate sales team and were going to be approaching all of the large trade shows and conventions as well as the hotel properties asking them to offer LVMC tickets. After talking to them a little while about how they planned on accomplishing, and more importantly supporting and scaling this it was evident the TH team could help. Since we had developed the purchasing front end, integrated with the credit card processor and with Swiftpass for the barcodes we were uniquely positioned to develop a ticketing platform that could transact tickets based on the varied targets the LVMC was pursuing.
Our platform uses a re-branded interface for the companies that did not have the time, effort or expertise to do a full scale implementation. This was the same process the LVMC used to transact tickets however we allowed for text and graphics to be completely changed and branded for whomever the partner was. Additionally for the large and sophisticated partners we developed an API interface allowing them to integrate LVMC ticket sales right into their established shopping cart, folio or purchasing engine.
Currently this system is powering the ticket sales for the likes of CES, ASTA and all the major trade shows that come to Vegas. In April we will be launching the next major phase to this and delivering a 2D Barcode directly to the purchasers mobile phone. they can then use that phone at a special eTicket kiosk to print their LVMC Ticket.
In the time we lost other industries have introduced mobile based tickets such as the Pirates baseball stadium, Continental Airlines and a Ski Resort in Bend, Oregon. unfortunately it will not be the first to market implementation we had hoped for however it will be the first to integrate with a Magnetic Stripe ticket so often used by Transit Authorities.
We continue to build upon the features and extend the systems capabilities. We are in the planning phases to provide the hardware & desktop applications for extend the system to their customer service booths. Additionally an integrate with their other systems so we can aggregate their revenues from their other system (Scheidt & Bachmann) and give the LVMC real-time tracking & reporting of their revenues.
So thank you to Twelve Horses for the Chrome bag and iPod Touch. I had been wanting one because my iPod Video’s battery was about shot and I couldn’t use the iPhone we got earlier in the year because I’m on Sprint and the Windows Mobile platform for work. Below I have written some pro’s and cons based on more of the nuances rather than the glaringly obvious.
Pros
Connectedness is fast through 802.11 b/g network. I have a home network running on N and it makes the download seem really fast. A couple of reasons for this is that from a mobile devise everyone is used to slower speeds because manufacturers put slower more efficient chips in to save on battery life. Second I am used to my Sprint phones connection that is 115k. I can’t go anywhere and use my iPod but with the proliferation of free WiFi I think I can cope.
Multiple clocks can be configured and displayed on the same screen. This may seem trivial but it’s nice for my business needs. I have a clock for London where we are collaborating on a large project with SwiftPass UK, Indianapolis where I have extended family, Houston where my sister and parents live and San Fransisco only because Reno is not in the list.
An iTunes Store functionality is on here as well. With faster connection speeds they have been able to provide the purchase and download of songs directly from the iPod (something that should be on the AppleTV). There is now video support of any kind but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Music Videos become available. When you connect your iPod back up to your computer it adds a palylist under the STORE named "Purchased on TJ’s iPod". It then copies over to your normal iTunes library but also stays available within this playlist.
The browsing experience is probably the best feature. On the iPhone the slow connection makes it agonizing at times and my Windows Smartphone is so watered down. With the Touch it’s fast and very full featured. Support for viewing Flash content is not there but javascript and light weight features are.
Now I know I am not the average Twitter user but I just have to talk about my experiences with my Twitter followings and what I call "Status" posts. There are people out there (You know who you are) that think any menial Twitter about your lunch, pet interactions or hygienic activities is important. I say lets push the tech to be meaningful and contribute to others in a better way. My choice (which is not the only or right one) is to take a page from the Reverend Run and write some more inspirational snippets, sales tips and other knowledge that I hope is meaningful and enriches people.
From a colleague of mine, @mwolfy "Twitter is for bashing friends". I know the entertainment value is there and I definitely do my share of status posting, but lets interject it with some knowledge too. You can take a look at what I am referring to and how I choose to use Twitter within my sidebar or by going to my Twitter Page.
So Kenzer (my social tech thermometer) turned me on to Utterz.com. This is a pretty cool service that at first glance is cool but not super functional. Basically you can call into a number (712-432-6666), talk and the audio gets posted to Utterz. Of course there are widgets, flash and links that can be posted/integrated into any site for content distribution (see my right hand sidebar). That alone only makes it slightly cool, but not powerful. However there are a few other options that i found out about after reading a little more.
You can also send an email with text a picture or video attached and it will post just as well. This is powerful not from your computer email but from your mobile phone. You have to be able to send an email from your phone (if you can’t get with the times). Simply shoot the picture or video and email it to go@utterz.com. The Subject line becomes the title and the body of the message is transfered over too. When you hit play an automated voice reads the body of the message. You can use a widget for the sidebars or auto post to your blog through a simple authentication process. Just give it your username, password and the url of your Blooger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, TypePad, Twitter or WordPress site and your golden. Pretty cool.
Now for the not so cool. The widgets or embeds are all flash driven and thus not searchable/indexable for SEO/SEM purposes. There is no text message version for the people who don’t have email setup on their phones. Also the search to find other utterz users is not as effective as you would want.
Overall though a great service and i can’t wait for some community adoption to solve some of the shortfalls.
So for my job I was working with Josh Kenzer on the plugins we have found and what would bring our clients the most value for their WordPress install. I have included a list of the ones we came up with along with a short description of why it’s cool and a link to an example or screen shot. Some were listed in a post last week but I think they definitely warranted an update/explanation.
Crossroads – Same thing as the above plugin except for your Flickr photos. Example of 3-4 Sets being pulled in. Also uses the the WP Lightbox plugin below to do some pretty cool transitions.
FCK Editor - I know HTML pretty well but this WYSIWYG makes it super easy. Very much like word and doesn’t take much to train someone how to use.
Google XML Sitemaps – Great plugin that will build XML sitemap for your blog and send it to Google, Yahoo & Ask.com. Tons of specialized configurations for even the pickiest expert.
TubePress – This plugin lets you display videos or playlists on any page or sidebar. Here is an example of a playlist being pulled in. uses WP Lightbox to produce some cool transitions.
TwitterTools – This one is a little cooler than I first thought. it is widget ready so it can be placed just about anywhere within a compatible theme. There are some great configurations that let you create a post or daily digest from your tweets, tie the tweets to a category, place your tweets in the sidebar and configure the number of tweets for display. It also gives you the ability to write a tweet from within WordPress (character count and all). For an example just check out my right hand sidebar. Configured to show the last 3 posts within this widget.
WordPress Reports – Lets you tap into your Google Analytics and Feedburner accounts and view a stats dashboard from within WordPress. it’s super simple to get this up and running. Setup a Google analytics or Feedburner account and just give WordPress your user and pass for Google and the url of your rss feed for Feedburner. A nifty little feature for Google is that with a few check boxes this app will install the google tracking code, track outbound links and will exclude your traffic as long as your logged in as an admin.
WP lightbox 2 The YouTube and Flickr plugins use another plugin that does the pop-up and transitions
So the biggest gripe I have had with YouTube is the slow & cumbersome uploader. They have released the Multi-Video Uploader now and it is a first step in the right direction. A small install is required and only for Windows, sorry Mac users. It gives you the capability to select multiple videos at a time, give them a Title, Description and Tags. Also the 1GB file size is a huge improvement over the previous and 100 meg size limit.
I will have to say its more like a que than a multi-file uploader. Only one file uploads at a time and its still a bit slow, but it definitely helps when you want to upload a handful of videos from one screen. Place as many videos as you want in the uploader click a button and come back later to find all of your videos uploaded. No more babysitting the uploader to do one video at a time.
So it was Blog update night (and morning). I went in to update a theme and ended up compiling my blogroll, updating several plugins and changing my Twitter widget from a Flash based on to an HTML and Javascript version for improved search and find-ability. I did give myself a scare when i updated my Akismet plug-in because I just overwrote the current plugin folder. Not so good an idea. It totally broke the backend and front end with a PHP error. Noooooooo. Easily enough fixed though. I edited the Akismet.php file and hard coded my wordpress API key. Crisis averted.
I had someone ask me about a plugin I used so I’ll take the liberty and list all of them and give some credit to some great developers.
So I have been using Picnik.com for a while to correct some of the photos I post to Flickr.com, because it has a direct integration. The only issue I had in the past is that it could take a while to download and upload photos. I think a few things happened in the past month that makes this much less painful now. One I upgraded our Internet connection from 3meg to 5meg, VROOM, VROOM. Also Picnik officially lost it’s BETA status and I think they rolled a number of speed optimized features and possibly added some more hardware and infrastructure themselves. Either way it’s working great.
Entries (RSS)