Due to all sorts of circumstances it’s been over a month since my last post. Sorry about that. I thought I’d just tell you all that I’m on my way. See all you wonderful people there! :D
Category Archives: Software
Netvibes now available on your mobile
Yesterday Netvibes launched a version of their service for mobile phones available at m.netvibes.com. I’ve been playing around with it using the RIM browser and Opera Mini on a BlackBerry 8700g for a day now and the first impressions are good when using the RIM browser. The site doesn’t seem to work in Opera Mini at all, though. That surprises me. I’d like to know why.
Some widgets like Google Maps and flickr streams don’t work. I can understand that the AJAX laden Google Maps would not work on the RIM browser, but I am at a loss why RSS streams with images won’t show up.
I haven’t registered much noise on the ‘net about the launch yet. The Netvibes blog doesn’t didn’t mention it [yesterday].
Take it for a test spin on your mobile devices and let me know how you fared!
Update 1:
Samy wrote a comment to let me know that there is a separate address for the iPhone version. He also mentions that there is a list of supported widgets at m.netvibes.com/help.php. The iPhone version at iphone.netvibes.com. However the iPhone version does not work very well on the BlackBerry 8700g. Thank you, Samy!
Update 2:
When trying out the iPhone version of Netvibes I just discovered that there are some access issues. When several people behind our proxy are logged in on Netvibes at the same time, I get the start page of the other person who logged in most recently when accessing iphone.netvibes.com. That is to say I can see all the tabs of this user and all the pages they may have already accessed/loaded in that same session. Is it just me being paranoid or do you also think this is a major security issue? Perhaps we should take a look at some phone security statistics and get real. It’s good to be apprehensive, although technology is a safe way of doing things these days, it needs to be secure from hackers.
Update 3:
The Netvibes development team says in an email that they’ve fixed the proxy security issue and that they knew about it before launch. Nice that they responded that fast, but I find it a bit careless to knowingly launch new services with such issues unresolved.
Ustream.tv registration form does not play nice
I’ve been trying to register on ustream.tv since yesterday, but I keep getting an incredulous error message when entering the captcha correctly:
I’m on Win XP using Firefox 2.0.0.6. I’ve tried c leaning the cache. I’ve tried everything. It fails to accept a correct captcha on every session.
Is this happening to you too or is it just me? Am I an idiot doing something wrong? Leave me a comment and tell me how it’s working out for you!
Do you backup?
I was reading Chris Pirillo‘s latest blog entry about backup and file management this morning and it inspired me to share what I do to back up and mirror the important stuff. (Watch the show featuring Chris’ dad if you haven’t already.)
Backing up is important incase something happens to your computer or laptop. If you haven’t backed up and your laptop breaks, then you might lose all your work. While you can use this website to see product reviews that will help you pick the best laptop, nothing can replace your lost work. That is why individuals often use something Windows Backup, which is a built-in application. Using this feature, users can easily back up important data on the hard drive of their computer. However, some Windows users have encountered the error 0x800700E1 when backing up important files or data to an external drive. Note that this error code does not allow users to create a backup and requires further troubleshooting to bypass error 0x800700e1.
Anyway, let us come back to the original topic without further ado. The below-mentioned things can help you backup and mirror your important work. They can ensure that your data is never lost.
The hardware: Two cheap and identical 500 GB external USB hard drives from TrekStor. € 99,- / USD 135,- each.
The software: MirrorFolder for Windows XP from TechSoft. € 28,5 / USD 39,- per computer license. (If anyone knows of a better software solution for mirroring and for other platforms, please leave a comment!)
Important files and folders on my workstation(s) and laptop are set to be automatically mirrored on both of the external disks. Projects, music, settings, etc are all mirrored on both of the disks for redundancy. So in event that one hard drive breaks down, it doesn’t automatically translate to an entire loss of backup data.
In a similar vein, when keeping more than one backup pair of hard drives (say one pair for your work files and the other for your personal files), it can get confusing to know which external disk contains what information. Here, two-part asset tags can prove extremely helpful in discerning one pair from the other. Those interested in learning about tagging devices and equipment can go to this site for an in-depth understanding.
Another clear advantage of keeping redundant external drive backup is that I can take one of the disks with me on the move without worrying too much about data loss.
Works for me ™.
What do you do? Please share your experiences and leave a comment!
Second Life in CGN
Currently I’m I was at a SecondLife Stammtisch in Cologne at a place called ‘4 Cani‘ on Thursday the 9th of August. As I arrived late after deciding first going swimming, I missed the introduction round and I’m currently I felt a bit isolated for a while (but it didn’t take that long before the conversations started). Thus I’m I was a tad bored and thought I’d blog to look important and busy keep me occupied until contact was initiated.
Here’s a picture taken with my crap webcam:
Thanks to Christian Scholz for the invitation!