This is where you say something clever
And now this, from Gizmodo:
Seems like we were just talking about the Blackberry 8703e rolling out RIM’s door, and now here’s a picture and a partial spec list of the Blackberry 8800. Unlike its CDMA-only 8703e brandmate, this one will support GSM/GPRS, EDGE, and—wait for it—WiFi.
Technorati Tags: smartphones, wifi
Last weekend I went to put away all the CDs that have piled up on various surfaces around the house, and realized that things had gotten completely out of hand and that it was (long past) time to do something about it.
I have a lot of CDs – somewhere around a thousand, and I can no longer fit them all into the cabinet where I’ve been keeping them for the past ten years, filed alphabetically by artist in jewel boxes. Michele’s been wondering for years about when we could do something about the physical clutter of the ever-mounting CD collection, and after spending a lot of time looking in vain for affordable CD storage cabinets that can handle that size of collection somewhat gracefully, the technology solution seemed cheaper and better.
So I went out to the University Bookstore and picked up a Mac Mini, a LaCie 500 gigabyte external drive, and a 15.4 inch widescreen monitor from Fry’s new online store – the monitor was $89, which I thought was great, but now I see it’s come down to $69 in the last week! I had an Apple keyboard around, and I added a wireless Mighty Mouse, and set up the whole shebang on top of the cabinet with the CDs and plugged the headphone output into the stereo.
I realized last night that I now have over a terabyte of data storage capacity in my house – it wasn’t that long ago that a terabyte represented the total capacity of the commercial data center the company I worked for had (okay – maybe it was that long ago – around the late ’80s).
I moved the 30 gigabytes of music I already had in my iTunes library on the family room computer, and started ripping CDs that I hadn’t yet encoded, starting with the ones that I couldn’t fit in the cabinet. My goal is to spend time working through the collection until the CDs can safely be put under the house. It’ll be interesting see how it goes and how long it takes to get there.
Technorati Tags: music
Last weekend I went to put away all the CDs that have piled up on various surfaces around the house, and realized that things had gotten completely out of hand and that it was (long past) time to do something about it.
I have a lot of CDs – somewhere around a thousand, and I can no longer fit them all into the cabinet where I’ve been keeping them for the past ten years, filed alphabetically by artist in jewel boxes. Michele’s been wondering for years about when we could do something about the physical clutter of the ever-mounting CD collection, and after spending a lot of time looking in vain for affordable CD storage cabinets that can handle that size of collection somewhat gracefully, the technology solution seemed cheaper and better.
So I went out to the University Bookstore and picked up a Mac Mini, a LaCie 500 gigabyte external drive, and a 15.4 inch widescreen monitor from Fry’s new online store – the monitor was $89, which I thought was great, but now I see it’s come down to $69 in the last week! I had an Apple keyboard around, and I added a wireless Mighty Mouse, and set up the whole shebang on top of the cabinet with the CDs and plugged the headphone output into the stereo.
I realized last night that I now have over a terabyte of data storage capacity in my house – it wasn’t that long ago that a terabyte represented the total capacity of the commercial data center the company I worked for had (okay – maybe it was that long ago – around the late ’80s).
I moved the 30 gigabytes of music I already had in my iTunes library on the family room computer, and started ripping CDs that I hadn’t yet encoded, starting with the ones that I couldn’t fit in the cabinet. My goal is to spend time working through the collection until the CDs can safely be put under the house. It’ll be interesting see how it goes and how long it takes to get there.
Technorati Tags: music
I spend the other afternoon sitting in a conference room with good 802.11 (a,b, and g) but no cell reception looking at my Nokia E62 getting no updates, I again wondered at the way the cellular carriers are missing the connectivity point.
Stowe Boyd points out this article in the International Business Times predicting that Apple will release two phone models in the first part of 2007:
“Based upon our recent checks, we expect Apple to unveil two models of its widely anticipated cell phones in early [Calendar Year] ‘07,” said Jesse Tortora, research analyst at Prudential Equities.
“We have learned that one model will be a smart phone, including integrated keyboard, video and music capability, while the other model will be a slimmer phone with music capability. At least one of the models will include WiFi.”
It would be just like Apple to move the state of this art ahead while the phone companies waste a good opportunity yet again.
Technorati Tags: apple, broadband, e62, Nokia, smartphones
Today I finally managed to get the calendar on my E62 to sync with our Oracle Calendar installation. Despite the fact that we have SSL-enabled authentication for our SyncML server, I couldn’t get that to work, so I’m sadly authenticating insecurely to the calendar (luckily it’s a separate password from everything else).
Here’s how I did it:
Interestingly enough, on the E62 the Sync application is in the Office folder. Within Sync I set up a new Sync Profile, called Oracle cal.
Under Applications in that profile, I defined Calendar settings to:
- Include in sync: Yes
- Remote database: ./Calendar/Events
- Synchronization type: Normal
I defined Connection Settings as:
- Server version: 1.1
- Data bearer: Internet
- Access Point: Always ask
- Host address: http://ctime-as.cac.washington.edu/ocst-bin/ocas.fcgi
- Port: 80
- User name: my Oracle Cal user name
- Password: my Oracle Cal password
- Allow sync requests: Yes
- Accept all sync reqs: Yes
- Network authentic: No
Your mileage may vary.
you can safely ignore this post…
One of the first things I wanted to do with the Nokia E62 was to transfer my contacts list from my old phone. I keep that contacts list synchronized with my Macs via iSync and .Mac, so I figured it would be a simple matter of paring up my desktop Mac with the E62 using Bluetooth and then running iSync.
Unfortunately, iSync doesn’t yet know about the E62 as a device – I will comment that the architecture of having to have the iSync application know about each specific device, rather than classes of device using the same software, seems broken to me from the get-go.
I did manage to transfer the contacts directly from my old Nokia phone over Bluetooth using the Sync program on the E62, which solved my initial problem, but not the ongoing one of keeping contacts in sync between the E62 and my computers.
Some searching turned up a German website called Mactomster that has an iSync Plugin
that supposedly defines the E61 and E62 devices to iSync. I tried installing it, iSync still didn’t recognize my device.
Some further searching turned up a posting on macosxhints by a fellow calling himself (or herself) Serbian about how to get iSync to work with an E61 – it involves editing the plist file for iSync mobile devices to put in some XML for this device. Once I found the plist file and modified Serbian’s xml to refer to the E62 instead of the E62, it seemed to work fine. I used the terminal and pico to edit the file.
The MetaClasses.plist file is in the directory:
/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/
PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources
Make sure you make a backup copy of the file before you edit it. 
Below is the text I entered – I put it in at the end of the section where Nokia devices are defined – I don’t think it really matters where it goes. The XML fragment is also here as a text file.
The Mactomster isync plugin installation must have installed the Nokia E61 icon in the right place as it came up when I fired up iSync. The E61 looks just like the E62, so I didn’t bother trying to find an E62 icon.
Your mileage may vary.
<key>com.nokia.E62</key> <dict> <key>Identification</key> <dict> <key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key> <string>Nokia+Nokia E62</string> <key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key> <string>Nokia+Nokia E62</string> </dict> <key>InheritsFrom</key> <array> <string>family.com.nokia.serie60v2.3< string> </array> <key>Services</key> <array> <dict> <key>ServiceName</key> <string>com.apple.model</string> <key>ServiceProperties</key> <dict> <key>ModelIcon</key> <string>NOKe61.tiff</string> <key>ModelName</key> <string>E62</string> </dict> </dict> </array> </dict>
The Nokia E62 works with UW IMAP and SMTP email.
You can subscribe to IMAP folders, which in this case appears to mean that new messages that arrive in those folders will be shown in the mail index and you can then look at the messages in subscribed folders.
Here are the settings I used:
Connection Settings:
Incoming Email:
User name: My UW NetID
Password: My UW NetID password
Incoming mail serv: oren.deskmail.washington.edu
Access point in use: Always ask
Mailbox name: uw
Mailbox type: IMAP4
Security (ports): SSL/TLS
Port: Default
Outgoing Email:
My e-mail address: My UW email address
User name: My UW NetID
Password: My UW NetID password
Outgoing Mail serv.: smtp.washington.edu
Access point in use: Always ask
Security (ports): SSL/TLS
Port: 587
I just got a brand new Nokia E62 smartphone from Cingular. It’s been a while since I had a full-featured smartphone – my last one was a Kyocera 6035 back in 2001.
I’ll be writing about my exploration of this new generation device as I go, but first I already have a major complaint for Cingular -
WHERE’S THE DANG WI-FI?
I can swear that when I looked at Nokia’s site for information on the E62 originally a couple of weeks ago it said that the E62 was equipped with WiFi (or WLAN, as Nokia calls it), as is the E61 that is sold in other (non-US) markets. But the phone doesn’t, in fact, have WiFi, and it’s been widely reported that the main difference between the E61 and the E62 is the neutering of the connectivity options.
I can only assume that Cingular and perhaps other carriers asked for removal of the ability to use high-speed connectivity that’s not carrier-provided. This only points out once again how totally broken the US model of leaving control of the wireless market in the hands of the carriers is. The internet service providers don’t dictate what features my computers have – thank goodness! And I don’t buy my cars from the people who build the roads. So why should AT&T and the behemoths that the Baby Bells have become decide what phones I can use on their networks, and drive the (lack of) technological development in those devices?
In this respect the US lags far behind other parts of the world (like Europe, Japan and India) in the technology we use for wireless communication.
Other initial reactions to the E62 – the screen is bright and resolution is good, and the navigation controls seem easy to use. One problem I’ve noticed is that when I hold it up to my ear to talk on the phone, the screen rubs on the side of my face and gets smudged – it came with a wired headset, but I think I’ll get a bluetooth headset for it.
The speakerphone is loud and has good fidelity, which is great.
The E62 is a little big and heavy (though nowhere near the brick that the Kyocera was), so I’m not sure how to carry it if I’m not wearing a jacket with big pockets.
Technorati Tags: Nokia, e62, smartphones, wifi
I finished off my time in Dallas with an appearance on a panel titled Leveraging Your Existing Campus Systems to Access Partner Resources: Federated Identity Management and Tales of Campus Participation (whew – now there’s a mouthful). The topic of the panel is how the InCommon federation is making it easier for universities and vendors of web-based services to work together to get to single-sign-on types of authentication and to arrange for the exchange of information in those contexts.
The panel was chaired by the always delightful Tracy Mitrano and panelists included representatives from Penn State, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and me.
I haven’t been involved directly with our work in leveraging Shibboleth authentication software or our participation in InCommon, but I was well coached by Bob Morgan and Nathan Dors, who have been doing a lot of heavy lifting on these efforts.
We’ve used InCommon to ease the deployment of Cdigix’s CTrax music download service (replacing Napster at the UW this year); to authenticate UW users to Washington State’s Combined Fund Drive (a charitable giving program that uses a web service called CreateHope to power its online presence) and to hook the Chemistry Department up with WebAssign, a service they use for managing homework for some courses.
Other universities have used InCommon for other vendors, and one of the lessons here is that when dealing with vendors the work that’s done by an initial institution working with a vendor can make it much easier for other universities to work with that vendor if they’re all working within the federation.
I was surprised to see that all the examples we saw were about universities working with vendors, and that none of them were about universities working with each other on collaborative efforts. Maybe we’ll see more of that in the future.
Technorati Tags: authentication, Educause06, federated-identity, federation, identity, shibboleth
