A friend of mine started a business selling Cupcake Towers. Worth checking out if you do any type of entertaining.
Ooma Telo
Ooma has released their next generation hardware. They have also raised some of the prices, but it still looks more cost effective than Vonage.
Sharks with Lasers
In a recent Slashdot poll, users were asked which what breakthrough was the most likely from the following list:
- Time Travel
- Human-Level AI
- Immortality
- World Peace
- Sharks with Lasers
Most people said that World Peace didn’t stand a chance prompting this comment:
It is deeply depressing that from amongst a list of alternatives whose achievements are up there in the realms of magic/fantasy, the one thing that humans are capable of right now is seen in the poll results as by far the least possible.
I thought this was thought provoking, but what what really caught my eye was the first response:
Sharks with Lasers are achievable right now.
Let us never forget that no matter what great advances are on the future horizon, we could put lasers on sharks today.
Problem with Belkin Flip
I have the DVI version of the Belkin Flip (F1DG102D). It allows me to use my MacBook Pro and Linux desktop on the same monitor, mouse and keyboard. After a recent move I noticed that switching to Ubuntu would take 20 to 30 seconds to activate the keyboard and mouse. It had worked before with a delay of only a few seconds.
After talking with Belkin tech support and getting no where I did some experimenting. It turns out that when I have more than one USB device plugged into the KVM’s input the delay occurs. I had my mouse and keyboard plugged into one USB port and my monitor USB hub plugged into the other. By disconnecting the monitor’s USB cord the problem went away.
Since the problem only happened with Linux and not OS X, my guess is that the operating system was trying to find the keyboard and mouse and somehow having the hub plugged in made the process take longer.
Problems using Google Voice Mobile
Google Voice Mobile is a welcome addition. It gives you many of the capabilities of GVDialer for free. You can place outgoing calls from your Blackberry using your Google Voice number receive and send SMS messages and listen/read voicemail.
Some people are having trouble placing outbound calls. Most of these issues are caused because people don’t understand what the application is trying to do. When you place an outbound call using Google Voice Mobile the application tells your phone to dial a special access number. For most people that number is 347-234-5001. This number rings into a computer at Google. When the computer answers it looks at the caller ID information to determine who you are. It then turns around and dials out to connect you to the number you typed in the Blackberry application.
Obviously if your phone does not send caller ID information to Google’s computer it doesn’t know who you are and it simply hangs up. So if you have some type of privacy setting turned on to block your caller ID the application won’t work. The GVDialer application doesn’t run into this problem because it dials directly into your Google voice number, selects a few menu options and then dials the number you wish to connect to.
Another problem occurs if your mobile number is associated with more than one Google Voice account. If that is the case Google’s computer reads the incoming caller ID and can’t figure out which Google voice account you are associated with. Instead of giving a meaningful error it simply hangs up on you.