Posts

Posted on

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.

Posted on

iMac 24″ Opened and Upgraded

A Fairfax, Virginia customer recently had an iMac 24″ Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz (the two year old white acrylic plastic model) that had a malfunctioning video card (random lines, ghost windows, static). Otherwise it worked great, so we decided to fix it.

Bad Video Card

Because the iMac was not under AppleCare warranty, we decided not to have Apple fix it for what would probably be $700-$1000.

I ordered a new NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT video card. The GeForce video card for this iMac has a special MXM PCI Express connector. So you can’t just pick up any GeForce 7600 GT or 7300 GT. Only WeLoveMacs.com appears to sell the correct video card.

Screws Galore

The iMac has lots of philips and hex screws of different sizes. I used these baggies and labels so that I could reassemble the iMac. I do the same thing when taking apart a laptop.

Hard Drive Upgrade

While I had the iMac opened, we upgraded from a 500GB to a 1TB hard drive. This required prying off the hard drive’s heat sensor and reapplying it to the new drive with rubber cement.

Not an Easy Job

The video card unfortunately is underneath the motherboard, which Apple refers to as the “logic board”. It is much easier to bring an iMac or MacBook to Apple for repair than attempting it yourself. Even if you are somewhat skilled, the process takes hours. But if you have an out-of-warranty computer, this could save you some money.

Because there are no other photos of the internals of this iMac online, I’m posting a bunch here:

Posted on

Mosso Cloud Computing

Mosso is a very ambitious web hosting solution designed to be infinitely scalable. It accomplishes this by clustering together as many servers as they need to handle their load.  For just $100/month, you get 50GB of storage and 500GB of bandwidth for as many sites as you want.  You can use some of the most popular web development technologies such as PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, .NET, ASP, MySQL, and MS SQL 2005.  Because this is a clustered environment, you lose a few of the pleasantries that a dedicated server gives you such as shell access and root access to the server allowing you to run any processes.  On the other hand, you gain scalability and you don’t have to worry about managing your server.  If Mosso goes down, everyone notices so they address it as soon as possible.  The biggest problem is that it does seem to go down.

Mosso appears to be targeting less mission critical websites such as blogs that can afford to have a little downtime every now and then.  It is slower as far as web pages loading than using a dedicated server but on the other hand, if you grow in visitors, the speed will be the same whereas on a dedicated server, with increased visitors, your server may become overwhelmed.  For non-essential websites, Mosso appears to be a very nice hosting choice.

The most impressive aspect of Mosso is all the technologies they try to support.  Google has a very similar service called Google App Engine.  It only supports python though so it is very limited.  It can’t even support SSL certificates like Mosso can.  Amazon also has a cloud solution called EC2 but it is really only for tech experts.  It does not scale automatically by default like Mosso.  Instead, you have to turn on more servers as you need them.  You can program your Amazon servers to do this themselves but that’s part of why this is expert only.

It looks like we’re headed towards more scalable hosting solutions for the future.  Managing your own dedicated server is both difficult and time consuming. Mosso needs to work on their reliability and uptime but I think they are a company to watch since they seem further ahead than others when it comes to cloud computing.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Problems for Pandora and other US Web Radio Stations

Pandora is a web site that provides streaming music to your computer, your iPhone, and other devices. It creates customized stations based on music you like and if you give a song a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”. You can click on a song you like to go to Amazon or iTunes in order to purchase it. It’s great for finding new music and it used to be a good business.

But the record companies are afraid of streaming radio stations. They brought the issue to the Copyright Royalty Board, which decided last year to raise the cost to play a song over the Internet from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2006 to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2010. Pandora only makes revenue on ads on its website, so this will be quite a bite into profits.

The Washington Post recently talked with Pandora.

“We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. “This is like a last stand for webcasting.”…

“We’re losing money as it is… The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we’re doing is wasting money.”

The problem is in Washington with the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision. First, if the music industry understood what was in their best interests, they would encourage the promotion of their music. Second, these rules only apply to the US. So I can still listen to streaming radio coming from Canada or anywhere else. Only US-based sites are punished. Third, no fees are charged to traditional over-the-air radio stations to play music.

Rep. Howard L. Berman of California is trying to negotiate a deal between web radio companies and SoundExchange, which represents the record companies. Hopefully he can encourage a more reasonable approach to music over the Internet.