James’ World

“A Christchurch flight-simulator maker has confirmed multiple orders for its Boeing 737-based product in the last 10 days.”

Orders for flight-simulator grow

Had a quiet weekend. Very changeable weather: generally rainy in the morning, clearing up in the afternoon, and more rain later.

Hung out Sunday afternoon at the airport, just seeing what’s new.

Dumped my flight bag out on a table and reorganized it. Replaced or recharged the batteries in my aviation radio, clock and calculator. Listened to the ATIS and tower on my radio.

Was astonished at the prices of pilot gear these days. The bag and contents I was carrying around cost me maybe $200 in the 90’s, would take $1000 to replace it all today.

Bought a 2007 FAR/AIM book at Amelia Reid aviation. Got hit on to instruct there after completing my CFI. Hey, you never know.

A few years ago I had a dedicated server with ev1servers.net. They were one of the world’s largest hosts of websites and dedicated servers.

They offered inexpensive domain registration for $6.95 and SSL certificates for $14.95, so I used those services too.

Initially the only drawbacks were that you could renew domains for only one year at a time, with no auto-renewal.

Then one day the online web interface stopped accepting new domain registrations. Pretty sad.

Today I did a live chat with one of their reps and found out what happened.

Apparently their domain registration service suffered from so much fraud that they stopped doing new registrations via the web, and only accepted new domain registrations via email from existing clients.

Ev1servers.net set up a separate company called Resellone.net with new ICANN accreditation.

So one can either limp along under the old domain registration interface, or sign a contract for each domain to move them to Resellone.net.

ev1, thePlanet and Resellone.net were bought by a new investor a year ago, GI Partners.

http://resellone.net/about/legal.aspx
(contracts to be signed)

https://resellone.net/signup/
(write old account number on form to waive setup fee)

cnet: Survey: Are domain registrars free-speech friendly?

I got cold-called on my cell phone by a rep for UltraDNS.

Apparently somebody over there gets a list of domains, looks up the DNS servers for that domain, and hands off the list to sales to present as a “free analysis” to prospects.

I work on large Internet sites with global audiences, so services like distributed DNS are potentially useful for improving lookup time and reliability, and improving flexibility of DNS updates with instant zone updates.

(BGP is normally used for geo routing.)

The managed DNS services charge per name lookup, which would add up quickly for high-traffic sites though.

There’s a few companies also offering distributed and managed DNS services:

DNSMadeEasy (Pricing)
Netriplex (Pricing)
UltraDNS (Pricing)

The new Pelican 1514 airline carry-on rollon case with divider panels caught my eye.

They claim it is the largest allowable case for use as airline carry-on baggage. Online prices range from $150 to $172, inexpensive for what you’re getting.

I guess if you can fill it up with DSLR gear, then you just own too much.

I need Yahoo Messenger on my cell phone, so I upgraded all the way from a Motorola V180 to a Blackberry 8700g that I bought on Craig’s List.

My old SIM allowed voice calls on the Blackberry, but I needed to call T-Mobile support for data. They changed my plan from Total Internet ($29.99/month) to Blackberry Data ($19.99/month), which started working in less than 2 hours.

What can I say … the 8700g has a beautiful screen (large at 320×240, bright and colorful). 4 chat clients are natively supported: AOL AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. googletalk for Blackberry is available. You can access irc with jirc.

I normally use Yahoo Messenger, and occasionally AIM.

Yahoo Messenger has been well-adapted for this phone. It is intuitive to type messages. Most icons are available from a menu, except for :-j and (*). And the large screen makes it a pleasure to read.

My only gripe is that it takes a full minute to load my buddy list of 300, and it’s a power hog. Standby time goes down from 6 days to 1 day with it loaded in the background.

The YM version from the RIM site is free to use with the monthly dataplan, but the YM from the Yahoo.com site uses SMS as the messaging gateway, so you would pay for an SMS for each line typed or received.

AIM looks just as good.

The built-in Internet browser also works ok. Preconfigured bookmarks include Accuweather, CNN, ESPN and Yahoo Search. Mini-Opera works even better and is able to render Slashdot.

The 8700g can also manage multiple email accounts and display messages (35 characters across), and has SSL support.

The big advantage of the Blackberry over WinCE phones is battery life. My Blackberry lasts 6 days in standby, while a WinCE phone is less than one.

Tip 1: To enable outbound connections on T-Mobile for ssh and Opera:
Go to “Options”, then “Advanced Options”, then “TCP”, Under APN, enter “wap.voicestream.com”, Leave “Username” and “Password” blank. (Alternate APNs are internet2.voicestream.com and blackberry.net if wap doesn’t work.)

You may also need “Options”, then “Advanced Options”, then “Applications”, choose app, “Edit Permissions”, “Connections => Expand”, “Carrier Internet => Prompt”. All the other permissions can be “Deny” for this app.

Tip 2: If you get “communication error” after attempting to signon to a chat server like AIM or YM, the official T-Mobile procedure to fix that is: “Options”, “Security”, “Firewall -> Enable -> Save”, power off, remove battery, power on, “remember and enable” all dialogs that appear, make sure the signal status says “EDGE”, sign on with your chat program.

Google Maps Mobile looks awesome on the Blackberry screen.
mino adds VoIP support.
midpssh client (4×7 font shows 80 columns, you will need to disable the Blackberry firewall.)
Opera mini browser
jmirc
wlIrc

WebMessenger Mobile for Skype
Skype on Mobile: Status Report - October 2006
gearlog.com: T-Mobile Disses Opera, Says “Get Less!”
Handango
Research In Motion use LEGO Machines to Test Blackberry
Using your Blackberry Pearl as a Bluetooth Modem with a Powerbook G4
How do I use my Blackberry Pearl as a bluetooth modem with a Mac?
Pinstack Professional Blackberry Forums
8700 As Modem (TMobile Users)
How to: Connect BlackBerry as a tethered modem with laptop to browse the Internet
IM+ for Skype on Blackberry

Much of my time on the computer these days is spent in either Skype chat/voice, Yahoo Messenger chat or irc, plus SMS. I communicate with people in different timezones, so I’ve been looking around for some way to be mobile, yet stay connected.

My current cell phone, the Motorola V180, only does AOL AIM and SMS, so is not the solution, although Yahoo! mobile web might help.

Most cell phones don’t support Skype, but Skype has been ported to x86 linux (that counts out the Zaurus) and Windows CE devices. Even when it is available on a smartphone, Skype mobile implies that a WiFi hotspot is needed.

I live in the South San Jose area, where cell phone coverage is spotty, WiFi spots are few and far between, and EGPRS laughable - which makes my T-Mobile data plan (Hotspots plus EGPRS) usually useless except in T-Mobile stores, airports, Starbuck’s or Kinko’s.

At Fry’s I looked at Sony’s Mylo communicator device, but it relies on only 802.11b hotspots to use Skype and YM, and doesn’t support 802.11g.

The new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet doesn’t have Skype support yet, but does support 802.11b and 802.11g.

Most cell phones these days support YM, AIM and ICQ, with some also supporting MSN and GoogleTalk. I tried the Blackberry 8700g, the Motorola V3 and the Samsung Trace and all were usable with YM. The Blackberry Pearl (8100) can also handle a few chat systems.

So I’ll prolly just have to settle for a new cell phone with YM in addition to AIM and SMS, and leave Skype and irc to the notebook computer for now.

Skype Forums: Most Popular Pocket PC Skype Devices
Treo 700w Review
CES 2007: The Nokia N800 Skype-enabled some time around the middle of the year
Sony VAIO® UX Series Micro PC VGN-UX280P
theKompany.com tkcPhone Voice over IP (VoIP) application for the Sharp Zaurus PDA

It’s usually funny and sometimes educational to read about failed startups, like the SpiralFrog mass exit. The business model was ad-supported free music downloads.

Favorite quote: “(SpiralFrog’s executive turmoil) suggests there are no legs to the idea of ad-supported music,” said Mayall.