Category: Mobile

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Watch Your Home Team with Slingbox

Slingbox is a device that hooks up to your cable, tuner, or DVR. You connect to it remotely using the SlingPlayer software to watch TV from wherever you are on the Internet. It costs $150 to $240 depending on the version you want.

Because it is a one-to-one connection and not a broadcast, it isn’t illegal. So if you want to watch your home TV while you’re on the road, or if you want to watch the football team that isn’t shown where you live, Slingbox is a great solution.

The quality isn’t perfect. It depends on the upload bandwidth at the Internet connection where the Slingbox is located. Sports programs unfortunately will suffer the most from the video compression because they have a lot of action. Sometimes you just need to listen to the announcers to figure out what really happened.

If football is very important to you, then consider purchasing DirecTV and then adding the Sunday Ticket for $300. But if you can handle the reduced video quality, Slingbox is a great solution.

UPDATE: Slingbox just released the Slingbox Pro-HD, their new top-of-the line version. This box can now send high definition video over a local network.

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Encryption on USB Flash Drives

USB Flash Memory Drives have become the replacement of the floppy disk.  You can get a 16GB flash drive for around $50 so they offer a great backup and travel option.  But what if you have your important data on it and you lose it?  Then whoever finds it will have easy access to all your data.  That’s why encrypting your data on a flash drive is so important.

Mac OS X Disk Utility

Some operating systems like Mac OS X have built in features to create encrypted volumes.  This can be done through disk utility.  You create a file of whatever size you want and that becomes a new mountable volume once you double click it and enter your password.  Without the password, you just see a single file that you can do nothing with.  This is a great option for Mac OS X but then if you find you need to access your files on Windows or Linux, you are out of luck.

TrueCrypt

The best multi-OS solution is TrueCrypt.  You can download versions of TrueCrypt for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.  You should then copy each of these versions to your flash drive.  Then you can run the appropriate version on whatever OS you are on.  With TrueCrypt, you can create an encrypted file of whatever size you want. Within the program, you can then select the file to mount it as an accessible drive.  In Windows, that means you’ll assign it to a drive letter.  On Mac or Linux, you should see the volume appear on your desktop.  Then use it like you would any other volume.  When you are done, you can unmount it and remove the flash drive.  

It does take these few extra steps of mounting your volume to get to your data but it is well worth the ability to access your encrypted data from any OS.  If your data is at all sensitive, you should definitely consider using TrueCrypt.

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Find WiFi networks with iStumbler for Mac OS X

iStumbler allows you to find and determine the strength of WiFi networks. It works only with Macs.

iStumbler is useful when you need access to the internet and need free WiFi. iStumbler will tell you if the network is secure or open. Although connecting to an open WiFi point is of questionable legality, there are some networks from coffee shops and other locations that welcome you.

iStumbler is also useful in setting up wireless networks to see where best to place your access point.

While you can just use the built-in AirPort connection information, iStumbler provides you the signal strength information that might help you.

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Boost Your Cell Phone Coverage

Cell Phone Boost That Works

You might have seen stickers that you put on the back of your phone. They supposedly improve coverage, but they work just about as well as hope. This is better than that. It’s the zBoost Cell Phone Signal Booster.

The zBoost Signal Booster is equipment that you need to install at your home or office (now there is a car model too).  It consists of two parts:

  • Antenna to pick up the signal. It is in 16 inch by 1 inch PVC pipe
  • Booster that you place where you need the signal to go. It is about the size of a router or cable modem.

The antenna and booster are connected by a coaxial cable. There are different zBoost models costing $215-$310 depending on the cell carriers you need boosted. Be sure to get the right model for your needs.

If you read the reviews on Amazon, you will see that most people either love it or hate it. This is based on the individual situation in a particular location. You need to have coverage somewhere so that you have a signal to boost. The ideal location is typically on a roof or a window. Then you put the booster where you need coverage, which is recommended to be at least 25 feet away from the antenna in order to reduce interference.

My Experience

I just installed the zBoost for someone in Arlington, Virginia. It was the dual-band 800 and 1900 MHz XY510 model because they have iPhone 3G’s, which use both bands depending on if they are on AT&T’s Edge or 3G network. Their living room went from no coverage to 5 bars. Be sure to follow the instructions closely and experiment with placement. In my case, changes of 1 foot for the receiving antenna made a difference of 3 bars.

If your home or office has poor cell phone coverage, this could be well worth the investment.

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My MobileMe Experience

Oh My, MobileMe

You’ve probably already heard of the disastrous launch of Apple’s MobileMe service. Apple has taken a lot of heat for this and heads have rolled over at Apple HQ for it. There are still some remaining issues to be fixed but for the most part Apple has gotten MobileMe working. I’m currently using a free MobileMe trial to evaluate it to see if it will meet my needs. The biggest of my needs is getting all of my emails from several accounts on my iPhone as quickly as possible.

Push Email

If you use a standard POP or IMAP email account, you are limited to a 15 minute check frequency in the iPhone Mail application. In addition to that limitation, if you set up multiple accounts, it will drain your battery all the quicker. My solution was to set up just one account on the phone and have all the email accounts I want to get mail from forwarded to that one. MobileMe is the perfect choice because it offers push email. Instead of that 15+ minute wait for new mail notification, push means you get near instant notification of a new message. In my experience, near instant means about 10 seconds or less.

When MobileMe launched, it was simply unreliable. Some of my messages would arrive instantly, others would never notify me without opening the Mail app. Besides a couple of bad days this month, things have worked far more reliably lately although I still manually check the mail if I haven’t gotten any notifications in a while. Once I had my MobileMe account set up on the iPhone, I still had to get all my email accounts forwarding to my username@me.com email address.

VersaForward to Forward Email

I use Email Forwarding by VersaForward Service to get all my mail to my me.com address. You can set up all of your email accounts to forward to the email address you check on your iPhone. This is a service with a fee paid monthly or every 6 months. To get a discount, use the promotional code TECHDC when signing up for a free trial. That will give you 50% off the first 3 months. Alternatively, you can run home desktop versions of VersaForward either with the entry-level VersaForward Personal or the more powerful VersaForward Professional.

Once you’ve got your email forwarding set up, you can get all of your email messages on your iPhone in a timely and reliable fashion.

Other MobileMe Features

MobileMe does cost $99/year although it offers more than just an email address. Push contacts and calendar updates help keep your iPhone, Desktop, and laptop all up to date with your latest changes. The MobileMe Gallery is a very elegant photo sharing system which creates a website with your photos to share with others as you want to.

Besides mail, my favorite MobileMe feature is iDisk. You can basically consider this a hard drive that you have access to on your computer but the data is stored on the internet. It is the simplicity of iDisk on your computer that makes this so useful. It appears like an external hard drive would. Drag files to it like normal. You can log in to me.com to access the files on the iDisk so it is a great place to keep important files that you might need remote access to. You have a total of 20GB of storage on MobileMe. You can allocate this between email and data storage. The iDisk can work with Macs and Windows as well.

Give Me a Chance

MobileMe got off to a slow start but now that it is finally working, you can see the advantages that it offers. For me, the push email is the #1 selling point. As long as it continues to work, I expect to become a paying customer. The free trial lasts 60 days so you can try it yourself to see how you like it.