greg hughes - dot net

Note: The Dyn-O-Mat web site is now a different product, so all links have been removed from this article.

Hurricanes are certainly a hot topic these days, and the destruction that they can cause we've all come to see and know. A company called Dyn-O-Mat has developed a product that absorbs water into a gel, then drops to the ground. One cool thing about their product is that when it hits salt water, it liquefies again and dissipates, supposedly harmlessly.

Apparently the company already used the formulated polymer product to take a thunderstorm off the radar back in the summer of 2001, and they hope now to use it to combat hurricanes, probably in their early stages, or to reduce the severity of an existing one.

"The way the Dyn-O-Mat team is going after the storm is by using what is called a 'Venturi Action.' The Venturi Action can be described as a pie-shaped piece that will be cut from the outer band into the eye of the storm. The intended result of this action is to allow the system to use it's own strength on itself. Essentially disrupt the cell, in hopes of significantly weakening the devastating power of the storm."

I saw the product demo'ed on a television news show this morning, and it looks very interesting. It does what they say - load a bunch of water into a bowl with a little bit of the Dyn-O-Mat product in it, and the water is instantly sucked into the gel. Someone should load a bunch of C130s or C5s up with that stuff, drop it over a section of big storm out in the middle of the ocean somewhere, and see what happens. What the heck.

Now, I don't know how I feel - ethically that is - about shutting down random storms on a whim, since they're a part of how the world works and all. But I suppose if there was a bad one that was clearly going to kill lots of people, this product could prove to be a very good thing. The hard-core Darwinians among us may disagree, but my opinion is that if it's safe and saves lives, it's worth checking out.

Dyn-O-Mat storm-fighting web page: (removed as expired)

Sounds like tomorrow will be the day DirecTV announces their own branded and created PVR/satellite receiver combo unit, thereby leaving TiVo behind as their PVR enabler. Subscribers who already own DirecTiVo devices don't need to worry (they'll keep working), and it sounds like customers of the company may still be able to order TiVo-enabled receivers if they specifically ask for them (TiVo's the only option for recording DirecTV's HD programming, although there's not a whole lot of HD channels available, even nowadays... Can someone bring back VOOM?).

From nytimes.com: "DirecTV's standard DVR, originally set to be released this past June, will be introduced in late October, and another model featuring high-definition service will be introduced in mid-2006. The standard DVR will feature up to 100 hours of recordable space, compared with TiVo's 70 hours."

DirecTV will be spending some $30 million promoting their new PVR. I hope it's better than the crippled DirecTiVo units, but I'm not holding my breath. Mostly I just want one company to give me a really good, solid reason to fire DishNetwork as my service provider.

How to do that? Well here's a start:

• Receive and record HD programming. Including locals over the satellite. Seriously. I live just outside the range where I can receive OTA locals, and you already provide the standard def signal. Help a guy out, here.
• Record by program name and subscriptions to record all episodes of a program (like the season pass). Dish promised this on the HD PVR receiver I have, then didn't deliver. Ugh.
• Longer Live-TV replay/pause buffer (I hear rumor the new DTV receiver will have this feature)
• Give me native MediaCenter PC compatibility, damn it - I'm sick and tired of these won't-work-together, closed systems. It freakin' sucks dealing with virtual brick walls between all my technology devices, and I don't like it enough to where I won't buy unless you fix this problem.

But I don't want to switch from one inadequate provider to another. You have to convince me for real this time. In this market space, the historically slow-moving development and general mediocrity of it all is rather - uhhh - underwhelming. Someone "wow" me - please...

A friend asked me the other day about credit counseling, because she's trying to get her financial life squared away after some hard times. I figured this was a good place to put down some related thoughts, even though it's not tech-related. It's an important topic for many. You have to be very careful these days what you're getting yourself into, especially now that the new federal "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act" is about to go into effect (November 17th). The act requires participating in some form of credit counseling (no one if sure what that means yet, of course) before one can declare bankruptcy. It also changes who can file which forms of bankruptcy based on median income levels, ability to pay and other factors. It's probably a good thing, but the whole credit counseling requirement is a potentially confusing and fraudulent mess.

The problem is this - While the "consumer credit counseling" industry has many worthwhile players, it is also plagued by a whole slew of useless, harmful and downright fraudulent thieves. Not all companies that offer "credit counseling" are legitimate. When it comes down to brass tacks, if you owe someone money, you owe the money. Negotiating settlements is always a possibility, but you do so at a cost, and unless an organization has a program to work with you to change your financial habits and learn how to budget, it's a big waste of time - and potentially a rip-off in the making.

Chances are very good that any company that promises to "repair" your credit score/record, when the entries that appear in your credit report are accurate and valid, is counting on the possibility that you're a sucker and is trying to take advantage of your emotional situation. Unfortunately, these rip-off businesses charge people who are already in financial straits serious amounts of money for a service and promises that they almost certainly can't deliver on. Don't do it.

Only false information can be reliably removed from a credit report, and even that often takes a bit of effort and a chunk of your time. If you want to "fix" your credit, there's one way to do it: Pay off your debts, pay the bills yourself (firms that offer to make payments for you are notorious for being late, which shows up as a black mark on your credit report), and make all of today's and tomorrow's payments early or on-time. It takes an extended period of time (like as in months or years) for a credit score to improve, and there is no overnight repair possible when you've made bad financial decisions. It sucks to hear that, but it's the truth. Most people who end up in credit hell are also the people who can't stand the thought of putting a few years of effort in to improve their situation. They want results right now, or in the very near future. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Come to grips with that fact and accept that you can start making a difference today and see some very real long-term results down the road.

Most importantly, don't fall prey to "credit repair" and "credit counseling" companies that want to take your money up front and make promises they can't deliver on. Check out any companies you think you might want to work with in depth and before you engage them. Non-profit organizations are out there to help, but unless you're careful it might be difficult to tell them apart from the sharks. Don't fall prey.

NOTE: The United States Dept. of Justice has a list of approved credit counseling agencies by state. They also have information online about choosing a credit counselor.

My broadband phone service, which is purchased through Vonage, is better than ever after they recently sent me a new Linksys terminal adapter to replace the old Motorola one. Turns out that old device was wreaking havoc on call quality and reliability (big time). It even prevented my non-voice traffic from working reliably. But with the new hardware in place, all is well.

In fact, it's so good I actually completely forgot it was VoIP service for a while. I think that's saying something, really. When you can call and download and everything just works, you know someone's done something right.

So, for now you can chalk me up as one happy guy when it comes to my phone service. And that's better than it used to be, for sure.

Yahoo! and Ipsos Insight just published a study that shows there are more than six times as many unaware RSS users as there are people who know they're using it. These are some numbers that are worth thinking about.

In the report, "RSS - Crossing into the Mainstream," here's what we find out:

• 12% of users are aware of RSS.
• 4% of users have knowingly used RSS.
• There's some interesting information hidden in the demographics of different RSS users (aware, unaware, podcast consumers, etc.).
• One figure that stands WAY out: Of "unaware" RSS users, 72% get their RSS through My Yahoo! and 41% through My MSN.
• "Aware" RSS users subscribe to an average of 6.6 feeds each. Ummmm, more proof that I'm an addict I guess???
• and lots more...

It's clear that when you have an app that by its very nature makes it easy to consume RSS content, it no longer matters to the end user that RSS is the delivery vehicle. Many of the people benefiting from RSS don't even know what RSS is. All that matters to those kinds of people is the content. And believe it or not, we're not all uber-geeks.

So, it's a very good thing^(TM) that IE7, Safari, Firefox and even the new versions of the operating systems we all use will support RSS natively (or already do). And with more browsers right around the corner, the line between app and content is getting blurrier all the time.

Read the full 12-page report here, or the one-page brief synopsis here (both links are PDF docs).

And you thought GMail was a good deal...

MailNation is offering ad-free email accounts, ONE TERABYTE in size. That's 1,000 GIGABYTES. GMail's accounts are like 1/400th the size of that. And you don't need an invitation. Uh, wow. I just signed up for mine.

Web mail, POP3, IMAP - you choose. Sign up here.

(click to enlarge)

Here's the feature list from the MailNation site:

• FREE 1000GB Email (POP3/IMAP Access)
• 10MB attachment limit!
• Address Book/Notes/Tasks Spam Preventing Features For Your Protection
• WAP Access - Mobile Device (http://www.mailnation.net:90/mail/wap)
• Auto Message Responders & Auto Forwarders
• Multiple Web-Interface Styles & Multiple Languages Supported
• Always Count On Our Highly Ranked Email System & Server Reliability
• Sophisticated Search For Email Messages
• Never Have To Delete Again (Large Email Box)
• HelpDesk Ticket System For User Help, Comments, And Updates
• All emails (outgoing/incoming) are protected by TrendMicro Server Protect and Avast! AntiVirus (Dual Protection)
• Support Hotline

(via TechBlog)

Got a Tablet PC and wondering about games on the platform? Yeah, me too. Recently I've been thinking about the Tablet PC platform in general (I have had four different models in the past few years) and what could make a difference in terms of more real reasons to need one (as opposed to want one, but hey - I suppose 'want' counts for something, too).

Some games have incidental (as opposed to direct and intentional) support for the Tablet PC, but what games are out there that are designed specifically for the Tablet? I know it's hard to design and build expensive games for an audience that won't let you recover your dev costs, but someone has to start somewhere. Microsoft should really push this envelope harder.

I did some searching around, and discovered one that I missed before. It's called Arcs of Fire - and appears to be written in C#. It's made up of a game engine, the Tablet Game SDK, and the Tablet PC SDK. Tied together, the combined platform makes for a game environment that lets you leverage all kinds of features of the Tablet PC - like pen pointing, ink and drawing, and screen rotation. On the web site, there are whitepapers, video tutorials and overviews (see the documentation section), and a whole slew of other technical information about the game.

Heck, the Arcs of Fire web site is cool in and of itself - when I go to provide my info to download the game package (which weighs in at 50MB), I am presented with text input boxes that sense my Tablet pen input device. I write in ink, and the web site code leverages the Tablet bits (the TIP, I imagine?) to convert my ink to text by default - very cool.

The site's ink-enabled forums allow you to write handwritten forum posts. It's a bit hard (read: impossible) to index those in search engines (including the forum search), but the concept and execution are quite well done. The ASP.NET source for the ink forums is also available for download.

Granted, you have to use IE to do these fancy things, but hey - someone should be able to fix that problem...

The Game

Oh, that's right - there's a game on this site... The source code for the game is available on the download page for anyone who wants to tackle that. After downloading and running the MSI installer, which includes a distribution of the required DirectX 9, you're presented with a rather nifty game. It's simple, to be sure, and it takes some getting used to. But for a tank-vs-tank battle, it's an interesting gameplay experience.

It's not much more than what you're used to in shoot-the-other-tank games with third-person, cross-section view. The difference here is that you use the pen to fire your ammo at the other side. Pressure, speed and inking gestures all make a difference in how your rounds get fired at your enemy. Background music and sounds effects make it more fun.

I'd say this is a good start to something bigger and better, for sure. I was mostly (and pleasantly) surprised to find a site and game that are geared directly at the Tablet PC user. Makes me wonder what other games would lend themselves well to Tablet PC deployment. Maybe use the pen to draw your strategy plan for the Terrans to annihilate the Zergs? Or maybe draw your next play from the virtual huddle?

Check it out at http://www.arcsoffire.com/

Choose your player name (click to enlarge)

Game screen (click to enlarge)

I subscribe to a VoIP telephone service, and I used to be a law enforcement officer, so this recent news was especially interesting to me when it was made official a little while back. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently released a decision in which the commission rules that commercial VoIP providers are subject to the same wiretap laws under CALEA as other phone providers. In other words, is a VoIP system interconnects to the switched telephone network, law enforcement can request a wiretap order from a judge with probable cause.

But in reading the order, it looks like it only applies - at least for now - to those companies that provide a mechanism to connect their VoIP services to the public switched networks. We'll see how long that lasts - the commission has promised to issue further decisions on the order in the near future. The pertinent section states:

38. As a result, certain VoIP service providers are not subject to CALEA obligations imposed in today’s Order. Specifically, today’s Order does not apply to those entities not fully interconnected with the PSTN. Because interconnecting with the PSTN can impose substantial costs, we anticipate that many of the entities that elect not to interconnect with the PSTN, and which therefore are not subject to the rules adopted in today’s Order, are small entities. Small entities that provide VoIP services therefore also have some control over whether they will be have to be CALEA compliant. Small businesses may still offer VoIP service without being subject to the rules adopted in today’s Order by electing not to provide an interconnected VoIP service.

You can read the full ruling here: FCC 05-153 (PDF file)

Ya gotta love the acronyms these days...

• CALEA = Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
• VoIP = Voice over Internet Protocol
• FCC = Federal Communications Commission

Okay, so granted, it's not the first DHTML/Javascript book, but "Foundations of Ajax" is the first (that I can find, anyhow) book extolling the virtues and details of building Ajax web applications. It's still listed as pre-order on Amazon, but on Apress you can purchase and download the eBook right now for only $20 (regular book price is $40). the PDF version is about 38 megabytes in size and 260 pages in length. The whole Ajax thing is cool in my mind, and I have been doing a lot of reading about it lately. Ever since Outlook Web Access on Exchange 2003 and then Google Maps came out, I've been pretty amazed at what you can do with this technology. Now there's lots of interesting apps that run in a web browser, a little more than thin client, but not really a fat client either.

So, go get this book and start to put that XMLHttpRequest object to work for you. Go build something usable and cool. Probably the one big thing that impressed me about this book was the fact that it pushes a test-driven/test-first approach to development (using JSUnit) and the fact that it has so many detailed, in-depth code samples and discussions. It doesn't just present code samples though. It takes you through the how's and the why's, which is cool.

What's this Ajax stuff, anyhow, you ask? From the book description:

"Google Maps, Google Suggest, Gmail, Tada List—these are all examples of highly dynamic web applications. In the past, we had an awkward choice: a thick client or a thin client. With a thick client, we got rich user experiences but had to deal with an error-prone and time-consuming deployment process. With a thin client we got ease of deployment but had to sacrifice the user experience.

"Today we have a third choice: highly dynamic web applications that are nearly as feature-rich as their thick client brethren. Using Ajax techniques, we can provide our customers the rich user experience they have come to expect while still enjoying the ease of deployment that we’ve come to expect.

"An Ajax application is very similar to the web applications we’re already familiar with. The difference is that it incorporates an “Ajax engine” that negates the start-stop nature of traditional web interaction and drives the whole process along. A quick look at an Ajax application like Google Maps will demonstrate the improvement to user experience very clearly. Gone are the constant page-refreshes and instead, you’re presented with a smooth, responsive interface that seamlessly reacts to your requests.

"Leading technology companies are adopting these techniques, and pressure is increasing for other companies to do the same in order to compete. The bar has been raised in the web application world, and what was once considered impossible is now being realized. With the help of these revolutionary Ajax techniques and this groundbreaking book as your companion, you can lead the way and get ahead of the game."

The eBook version is available to buy online now for $20.00, right here (at least at the time of this post).

The beginnings of putting some more bite behind the anti-phishing bark are in play. The Governor of California (you all know who he is) today signed a bill into law that makes phishing - the practice of using fake e-commerce web sites to try to trick people into submitting their personal information - punishable with civil penalties.

"Victims may seek to recover actual damages or $500,000 for each violation, depending upon which is greater. Phishing often involves the use of names of legitimate banks, retailers and financial institutions to convince recipients of bogus e-mail offers to respond."

This is a good thing, in theory. Federal anti-fraud investigations are driven - like it or not - by the dollar amount associated with the loss. If it's not $100,000 you can't expect a lot of federal action, which makes sense when you consider that there are limited resources ad you have to focus on the biggest crimes.

Only thing I want to know is this: How are we going to recover judgments from bad guys in Romania and other foreign countries? Fact of the matter is that most all phishers are not in the United States. That's something to think about.

Brian Jones posted an item about the announcement this weekend of the fact that Office 12 applications will all support PDF as an output format natively. This might not seem like much to some, but in reality it's a big deal:

"The PDF support will be built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Visio, and InfoPath! I love how well this new functionality will work in combination with the new Open XML formats in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. We've really heard the feedback that sharing documents across multiple platforms and long term archiving are really important. People now have a couple options here, with the existing support for HTML and RTF, and now the new support for Open XML formats and PDF!"

More here.

Earlier today, Alex Scoble wrote about an IM conversation he and I had regarding VPNs and solving the nagging issue of firewall and other network roadblocks that tend to wreak havoc for people who need to connect to a remote private network. If your VPN client forces you to use some random or uncommon port, you're bound to get frustrated when you try to connect from many business networks, not to mention when you try from the hotel on the road. Now, maybe you shouldn't be plugged into that business network, but blocked by the hotel? Come on, give me a break.

There's no one perfect solution to this problem. There are lots of ideas, though. Many companies (most or all of the big players in the space) are coming out with VPN over SSL options, which is great. But what if you have a need to run a VPN software client, and it doesn't (yet) support SSL tunnels?

Here's one way to skin that cat, a la Cisco: Use TCP 443 in the Cisco VPN client to connect via an IP Sec tunnel to your VPN endpoint. Note that you'll need to specify this in the connection settings. Typically the Cisco client uses the UDP protocol to do it's thing (click to enlarge):

But as you can see, you can also set it up to use the TCP protocol and whatever port(s) your VPN concentrator is configured allow. For example, you could choose to use TCP over port 80, or port 443, since both of those are commonly open from any network. Note that port 80 might be proxied in some cases, but that's probably not a problem with 443, so it's a good one to try (click to enlarge):

If you set up a couple or few profiles in your VPN client software sufficient to cover the bases (like, say one using UDP and one or two using common TCP ports), you'll pretty much always be able to connect from the road. Again, there's no guarantees and there's no 100% perfect solution, but this gets you better than 95% of the way there, I am confident. Just make sure your VPN host/endpoint is configured to support the ports and protocols you specify. In the past year or two, I have yet to come across a network while traveling (except for a couple of highly-secure ones at business locations, but hey...) that I could not successfully connect through with at least one of the settings I have available to me.

And while we're on the subject, there are some interesting and promising SSL options out there, with more undoubtedly coming. As far as other brands of VPN software clients, well - I've used most of them and let me tell ya, you're better off going with Cisco and looking at the PIX firewalls and the 3000-series VPN concentrators. Trust me, I've dealt with most of them, and there's a reason Cisco's such a prolific Internet company.

But tell me - what do you use and how have you solved this type of problem?

I'm gonna have to go buy me up some of these bad boys:

Yep, that's right - the Muppets have their own stamps now. Sweeeeeet...

Ever wish you could hammer on one of those celebs that you love to hate so much? Are you one of those people (like me) who gets a little excited when you hear someone yell "Body blow! Body blow!" in a crowd?

Here ya go then: CELEBRITY PUNCH OUT!

Go for it. You know you want to.

Research in Motion's Blackberry brand is (I'm saying it out loud right here) the de facto standard for business wireless email/PIM/phone communications. One of these days Microsoft's Mobile platform may overtake the Blackberry line, but hey - it hasn't happened yet, and fact is Blackberry's got the form factor down pat. Windows Mobile on a Treo? Cool, yes - but I'm not confident it will make a good RIM replacement. My Palm-based Treo that I used earlier this year got returned after about a month, and not only because of the software. The device itself was nice and all, but not very practical or friendly. I hated that keyboard.

The latest Blackberry model to hit the "coming soon" list is the 8700, which has been confirmed to exist (but not yet announced) and which is slated to hit the street later this year in a GSM/GPRS/EDGE model (you can likely expect Cingular to get it first). The specs are pretty cool and it makes me wonder what all this device will actually do (check out the list from pinstack.com):

- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
- Speaker Phone
- Bluetooth
- Memory: 16MB RAM / 64MB Flash
- Polyphonic Ring tones
- Support MP3 ring tones
- Updated Form Factor
- Full QWERTY keypad
- Dedicated Send & End Keys
- Mute Key
- On/Off Key
- 2 User-Definable Keys
- This blackberry should come with a 320x240 VGA Color LCD and should feature a 312Mhz processor

So, if it supports MP3 ring tones and has 64MB flash... maybe there's a slot on this thing we can't see in the pics that would allow a flash card of some type? MP3 player capability maybe? Hey, I can dream, right?

Is this the one that gets an Intel processor, or no?

Looking forward to this one, for sure. EDGE data service will be terrific. From the RIM quarterly call this week, I would not be too surprised if there are other interesting and new devices coming this fall and winter, too. Lots to look forward to.