Category: Technology

I just want to let everyone know that you won’t find us on Skype any more. Why? Well, it isn’t free software (as in freedom) for one. There is also no way to ensure that it has no back doors. It also doesn’t use open standards for communication. How can you contact us? Well, we have a Gizmo accout. But, I don’t use the Gizmo client (it isn’t free either). I downloaded Wengo Phone (it is GPLd) and use it to use Gizmo VoIP service. If you were using a real VoIP solution, you could call us directly by simply knowing our SIP URI. However, Skype doesn’t allow that.

• You could talk to Skype about entering into a Voip Peering arrangement and allow you to call SIP numbers.
• If you want to call via telephone, call one of these numbers then dial *747 + our Gizmo number.
• Go to the gizmo homepage and sign up for an account. Also download zphone from Phil Zimmerman. It will encrypt your voice over the internet.
• If you care about using free software (instead of closed software that can contain who knows what), download one of many applications that support SIP. I’m using WengoPhone right now. Don’t like the interface? Choose another. See why open standards are important?!

[Update 08-15-2008 09:09:41]  I discuss changes to my communication apps here .  I started having problems using Wengo Phone so I switched back to the Gizmo Client and Pidgin.  I also wanted to continue using the Pidgin Encryption plugin.

My friend was having problems with his HP dv9500 laptop last week and asked me for help.  At first, he just wanted to back everything up and redo it; however, by the time we got together, the computer wouldn’t even boot.  Of course, he didn’t have a good backup already, so we tried to make one.

 I also didn’t bring every single disc I own with me here, so I was missing some.  The only thing I had was a Ubuntu live cd.  Well, that didn’t really help (I couldn’t see the hard drive when I booted it).  I really needed a vista install cd (goofy HP doesn’t think you’ll ever need one) and was just stuck with the recovery partition.

 When I booted into recovery mode, I had an option to back the computer up, so I started it (while I was trying to download a vista cd from MSDN).  It was going to take all night so I let them both run.

The next morning, I woke up and the download failed, but the backup looked complete.  However, when I tried to verify the backup, I couldn’t see any of it.

Well, I had heard about bartpe so i decided to download it and see what would work there.  Well, the first disk I made was a frizbe.  The second didn’t have drivers for the HD controller on it.  It also didn’t have NIC drivers.  So, I ended up getting NIC drivers from here and HDD Controller drivers from here (yes, I just used the whole kit-n-kaboodle).  You also need this.  I found this out in this post.  And read this post to find out how to integrate the NIC drivers.  One wierd thing that happened to me was the filder driverpacks.net didn’t get put under my plugins directory like they claimed.  it was in my BARTPE directory.  All I did was jut copy it into the plugins folder where they said it should be.  Don’t ask me why BARTPE doesn’t include these drivers (or better yet, HP not design their systems to need a goofy driver to see the HDD.  That is nuts!)

Well, I tried using the graphical tool to copy files only to have the computer BSOD on me.  ARG.  I’m currently runnign XCOPY to copy the entire HDD to his external HDD.  it doesn’t provide a good logging mechanism so I’m logging everything using the following command:

xcopy <src> <dest> /evcifrhy > <logfile> 2>&1

if you want to find out the switches, just go read this page.  The 2>&1 redirects error output to the same file otherwise it will just display on the screen and not be useful at all (why is that MS?  Why not send the errors to std out do we don’t have to do anything special to get a list of errored files??)

Once that finsihes, my plan is to run the restore on the computer.  Then run this tool to take all of the junk off of it.  ARG!  Why do they do this!?!?!

I expect another 1-2 hrs for the copy to finish then about 1-2 hrs for the restore.  Hopefully I’ll be ready to let the app run over night to take all the junk off the computer and get him his computer back tomorrow.

[Update 07-27-2008 17:29:00] I forgot to mention that I had some issues making my BartPE disk.  When I copied my OEMXP disk to my computer, MFC42.dl_ wouldn’t copy over.  ARG!  i ended up and just snagged it out of the sp2 extraction I did.  Oh, that was another story.  I had to search where to find the xp sp.  I finally downloaded this one from MSFT.  Then, I had to look up how to slipstream sp2 into my cd (I got the ntdll wrong version error).  Only after that did Imake a CD and have to figure out I needed more drivers.

[Update 07-27-2008 18:02:50] xcopy crashed with an out of memory error.  I did some looking and decided I needed to add some excludes to my xcopy command.  I’m excluding the windows directory, the system volume directory, .sys files, the recycle bin ($RECYCLE.BIN), an avg folder ($AVG.VAULT$), and any temp folders.

[Update 07-27-2008 18:10:38] Don’t forget that the exclude flag for xcopy takes a filename.  ARG.  I also added some things to the list:  .exe, .dll (no need to copy those), and I excluded some more directories \boot\, \hp\, \intel\, \msocache\, \swsetup\, \mcpi\, and \opdi\

It is worthless to pull information off the internet once it is there. A much better idea is to prevent it in the first place:

http://justin.madirish.net/node/199

I’ve been following this story and went to the Matasano website shortly after the story was published. it wasn’t there for more than 30 min (perhaps a few hours) but the information was out. Even though they have removed it from their website, everyone knows. It is worthless to spend even 30 seconds searching your website(s) for information from the past to remove when something changes. Everyone already knows.

I saw this Tux bath mat the other day while I was walking around town.

So…how about it? What kind are you? Want to help me figure out what I am? Leave a comment.

In an update to this post about overseas communication I made a comment about truphone and not being able to get it to work. I originally thought the problem was my phone (the firmware is 2 versions behind and the updates fix some problems with WiFi…but I can’t update it because the Nokia Updater app isn’t vista compatable yet) but it is fixed. How?

Well, I saw that Truphone came out with version 4 so I installed it. Well, lo and behold, it connected and worked. So, I’m back to it being my preferred VoIP client on my phone. Why? Well, it stayed connected all night and the gizmo settings for my phone disconnect every once and a while. I’ll continue testing it and post updates as I find things out and make up my mind.

When we started thinking about going overseas, a big challenge we had was communication: we needed a way to communicate. Most of the people I knew overseas used Skype. Some people were able to just pick up the phone and call the US for fairly cheap (like I was in Thailand). Some people had vonage phones. I didn’t know too much, but I knew I wanted to be able to pick up a phone and call the US. And I didn’t want to spend a bunch.

That, in my mind, rulled out Skype. I didn’t want to have to sit at a computer to talk to people. I know, I could buy skype wifi phones, but I didn’t want to shell out that much money for a device that only worked with one thing. That kinda sorta left us only with Vonage. We signed up and got a vonage phone. We pay for the $30 unlimited/month deal and get to have unlimited calls to anywhere in the US as well as several european countries.

In the meantime, I heard about Truphone. After looking into it, I thought that it was cool…I could, with the right phone, have a VoIP phone on my cell phone. I ended up and bought a Nokia e 65 and set up Truphone. Everything seemed to work wonderfully in the US. However, when we got overseas, we ended up and ran though two NAT hops and truphone didn’t want to work. Bummer, but I really like my phone so I keep it.

I also start looking at Vonage. Vonage is VoIP, right? I wondered if I could just hook that account into my phone. Well, it turns out that Vonage uses sip…sort of. But they won’t give you the information you need to bring your own device and have it work. BUMMER!

Over the past several weeks, I have tried out three of four different apps. I started with fring. It would let me have a skype client thing on my phone. Well, that was pretty cool, but I didn’t want to have to have all of my friends readd yet something else to their skype lists. But, it also let me use SIP. Pretty neat….I went looking at some of the options.

I stumble on the GizmoProject (fring has them listed at the top of the SIP list. I started looking at the top and went down.). This is interesting, I think. I sign up for an account and start playing around with it. Turns out it is pretty cool. And, they have an app that will integrate the phone with Gizmo just like truphone did. The only bad part is I don’t have a real inbound phone number. Or do I?

I also happen to have a Grand Central account that I got (thanks Mike!) just to play around with. I never did too much with it before I left the US, but I wonder if I can use that number to send calls via sip. Well, it turns out that Grand Central will indeed forward calls to my gizmo number! So, I now have a way that people can call me by dialing a US phone number and have it ring my cell phone. Well, as long as I have internet access that is.

So, what do I wish I had known before? Well, Vonage service seems a tad pricey. But, it is unlimited…that is a plus. It doesn’t matter who we call in the US (or several European countries) but it is free. But not very portable (no, I’m not going to pay them more for a softphone/USB stick phone account). What happens when/if we travel?

Let me say right off that the IDEAL solution would be if my employer would offer some sort of SIP PBX that I could hook into. Take some of the inbound DIDs and give those of us overseas a number in the US people could call. We could then bring our own SIP device and have what I have right now. Then, they could give us the ability to make outbound local calls (doesn’t cost them extra). With that, we could use any of the various calling cards to call people. And if security is an issue, why not just encrypt the SIP traffic ? Actually, that sounds like a rather cool idea. Then calls from the home office overseas wouldn’t cost squat and everything would be secure.

Anyway, back to reality. Are we going to dump vonage? Probably not. However, I would have probably just gone with Gizmo and my phone had I known about it before we signed up for vonage. We’d probably end up and spend less per month on phone calls and the solution would be very portable. AND, it would still work in the US when we returned (and there, I could have an unlimited data plan too boot).

[Update 06-04-2008 08:09:56] Truphone v. 4 seems to have fixed the connection problems I was having.  It is back to my preferred VoIP solution on my phone now.  I’ll continue to test and let you know what happens. For more information, read this post .

[Update 2012-12-26 06:50:05] Removed a link to http://www.mobilevoipforum.org/showthread.php?t=1895.  It was dead.

God is awesome! Technology makes life easier! We brought several pieces of Technology with us to help us stay in touch with everyone back in the United States.

One of these things is our Vonage phone (if you want to call us in Serbia, simply dial 1.304.521.2416 and you’ll ring our phone way around the world all for the cost of a local phone call. Don’t want to pay the long distance, go to our Vonage Page and enter your phone number. Your phone will ring, then ours will ring.).

The second thing we brought was a computer with Skype. We can video conference anyone any where in the world. Last night, we spent some time on skype with some people. It was great. Below are some pictures:

I ordered a Nokia e65 from Amazon that I just got last night. I think the phone is awesome. I know it is a bit old, but I liked the price for the features. If you wonder what it looks like, here is a picture I found on flickr:

I ordered it for several reasons:
1) The phone wll work wherever we go in the world (it is a quad band gsm phone)
2) I found this program called truphone that will, once installed, let me make VoIP calls on the phone. While we are already paying for vonage, this will be nice when/if we travel.
3) It has a camera and mp3 player built in. I used to never want a phone to be more than a phone, but flickr provides some interesting features that I figure will make it neat to live-blog some things (provided I have the service).

[Update 2011-01-16 21:49:14] I’ve sold my e65 and bought a Google Nexus S. Oh, I also know the image doesn’t work; however, I decided not to change it just because….