I was in the market for a new mobile phone last year, after having more or less worn out my OG Droid. Seeing I use my phone a lot for mobile IT work, so a good dedicated keyboard was hugely important for me. After some research, Samsung’s Sidekick 4G (model SGH-T839) stood out head and shoulders above the crowd for it’s five row keyboard – very similar to the original HTC Dream / G1 keyboard. The hardware specs are middling, but my needs are also middling so this wasn’t a tragedy. I would have liked a larger screen and a camera flash, but unfortunately if a good keyboard is your main criteria, the field is pretty sparse. So here’s my take on the good, the bad and the ugly after using it for 9 months: Continue reading “Review: Samsung Sidekick 4G From T-Mobile” »
Solution For x11vnc Shift Key Not Working With VNC Clients
I dislike Ubuntu’s built in remote desktop service, and use x11vnc instead. Recently I was having a terrible time recently remotely accessing an Ubuntu+Gnome workstation: when I connect from a Windows machine using the TightVNC client, shift keys simply stopped working! Turns out this is common across several VNC clients (Real, Ultra, etc). Fortunately, there is an easy solution. Continue reading “Solution For x11vnc Shift Key Not Working With VNC Clients” »
GoDaddy’s Stance On SOPA Shows Off Their Ignorance In More Ways Than One!
Normally I am not a grammar nazi or troll, but given GoDaddy’s recent blog post supporting SOPA I felt that a judicious poke at their obvious ignorance was well justified. Check this out! Continue reading “GoDaddy’s Stance On SOPA Shows Off Their Ignorance In More Ways Than One!” »
Android 472% Malware Increase Scare Is Sensationalist
Today I’m seeing a huge number of articles screaming “Android Malware Surges Nearly Five-Fold Since July” (PC Magazine) and “Android malware has jumped up 472%” (Apple Insider). Well, percentages and other stats are very nice, but it’s easy to manipulate numbers like that to get scary looking figures. Always look at the hard data backing the stats to get the real story! As Benjamin Disraeli said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” As it is, the actual numbers tell a much less alarmist tale. Continue reading “Android 472% Malware Increase Scare Is Sensationalist” »
Fix VSFTPD Slow Directory Listings & Timeouts
I’ve always had trouble with vsftpd and slow directory listings or timeouts, so I’ve generally avoided it. With a little dedicated digging I finally managed to unearth how to get this working properly on a CentOS box. Continue reading “Fix VSFTPD Slow Directory Listings & Timeouts” »
Tablet Computing: Apple Only?
For those that don’t know, HP decided to ditch it’s tablet computing division last week and let the remaining Touchpad stock go at fire sale prices. This has led some to proclaim that the tablet market is Apple’s, and only Apple’s – the one true tablet! Balderdash, of course, but sensationalism sells. However, Apple does have a pretty solid hold on the tablet market that it in effect created – why shouldn’t it continue to do so? Well, there are a few reasons for it’s current lock, and unfortunately for Apple they are self limiting in exactly the same way the iPhone market dominance was and why it’s been losing ground steadily to Android in the smart phone arena. Continue reading “Tablet Computing: Apple Only?” »
Linux Tip: Permanently Disable NumPad Mouse Keys
I’ve been using Ubuntu with GNOME for my desktop Linux distro for a few years now. Every so often I found myself sometimes triggering the most annoying keybinding in the world: SHIFT + NUMLOCK. This turns on Mouse Keys in the Keyboard Preferences, rendering your numeric keypad completely useless. This is not the most obvious keybinding in the world… and if you do it by accident, you may NEVER figure out how to get it back. I’ve done it enough accidentally to go to the trouble of disabling it permanently. Continue reading “Linux Tip: Permanently Disable NumPad Mouse Keys” »
Google Music releases Linux Music Manager!
Hurrah, the Google overlords have heard my whining and deigned to answer my prayers – Google Music Manager is now available for Linux. I’m pleased that Google is considering it’s Linux user base, especially since they make one of the most popular Linux distros of all time for devices – Android 
Migrating Openfire Instant Messaging Service
Jive Software’s community software organization Ignite Realtime has some great products available. One of the best is the Openfire, a real time collaboration (instant messaging) server: it’s open source, based on the XMPP (Jabber) transport open standard for easy integration with other tools and clients, is actively developed and widely used. For companies needing an instant messaging solution it has a lot to offer and I install it for quite a few clients.
I recently needed to move an installation using MySQL running on an Ubuntu server to a new PBX in a Flash (CentOS) server. On Debian systems this is a breeze as the package is well maintained in the repositories, but on CentOS it’s a little more involved. Here’s how I did it: Continue reading “Migrating Openfire Instant Messaging Service” »
PBX In A Flash: Custom Dialplans & FreePBX
PIAF is a great collection of Asterisk tools, and I’m pretty happy with the fact that someone has collected them all for me and put them together in a decent package. However if you’re wanting to delve a little deeper and get into more complex Asterisk dial plan scripting, it can be a bit of a trial to work out exactly which config files you can safely modify without tanking your existing installation. The documentation can be hard to find and/or follow, especially since material is often ambiguous as to the version of PIAF. So I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve scraped together for those who want to start rolling up their sleeves and tackling their own scripting with Asterisk!
For the record I’m using PIAF 1.7.5.6.2 based on CentOS 5.6 (32bit), which is based on Asterisk 1.8, and my main self-study material is the incredibly well written Asterisk: The Definitive Guide (May 2011). Continue reading “PBX In A Flash: Custom Dialplans & FreePBX” »
