The Cross Roads of Technology

As you know my site is High Tech on a budget but there are those very few times when something comes along that is truely at the cross roads of technology. This phone is a combination of revolutionary functionality (Google Droid OS) and superior network performance (Verizon 3G Wireless) packaged in a device with world class specifications.

The fact is that a device with this level of power and performance is a absolute steal at $200.
All the commercials and the reviews tell you all you need to know. But if that isn't good enough I bought this phone and have been nothing but amazed by every aspect. I was impressed with the iphone but not even the Droid could get me to use AT&T. I personally wouldn't buy the iphone because of how its functionality is locked down by Apple but if it were hosted by Verizon I wouldn't consider it a bad decision.

Everyone I've handed my Droid phone to has said 2 things:
1.) "It feels like I know how to use it right away."
2.) "I want this phone."


http://www.ismashphone.com/2009/11/the-motorola-droid-review-mix.html

Motorola Droid Specs:

- Carrier: Verizon <- simply the best
- Available: Now
- Networks: CDMA dual band (800/1900 MHz); CDMA2000 1xRTT/1xEV-DO rev.0/1xEV-DO rev.A
- Display: 3.7-inch screen with 854×480 (16:9 widescreen) capacitive touchscreen
- Camera: 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash and video recording
- Operating system: Google Android 2.0 OS
- Input: QWERTY keyboard, touchscreen
- CPU: 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 Processor <- fastest on the market
- Memory: 256 MB RAM / 512 MB ROM
- Memory card: microSD/microSDHC <- comes with 16GB
- Connectivity: GPS, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm HeadPhone Jack
- Misc: AMR-NB/WB, MP3, PCM / WAV, AAC, AAC +, eAAC +, WMA
- Media: MPEG-4, H263, H264, WMV
- Form factor:
- Battery: 1400mAh Li-ion
- Talk Time: 420 minutes
- Standby Time: 450 hours
- Dimensions: 60.00 x 115.80 x 13.70 mm
- Weight: 169g

The only virus and anti malware solution

Stop paying protection money to those anti virus thugs. Microsoft has finally decided to do the right thing and get these bullies off the streets and out of our wallets. More importantly off our machines. Anti-virus programs have had a long history of loading down our machines with bloatware and providing consumers with a false sense of security. I would have more respect for these companies if they spent some time educating PC users while stealing their money.


http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Microsoft security essentials is free.

About Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

Competition isn't always a good thing.

You don't want to compete with your neighbors over wireless spectrum. Sometimes there is noise being generated by outside sources. Maybe you just want to position that wireless router just right. Here are your free tools to to give you insight to that invisible world of 802.11.


http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider
inSSIDer is an award-winning free Wi-Fi network scanner for Windows Vista and Windows XP. Because NetStumbler doesn't work well with Vista and 64-bit XP, we built an open-source Wi-Fi network scanner designed for the current generation of Windows operating systems. inSSIDer was discussed by Lifehacker and Tekzilla!

These are my 2 wireless routers.


Here I am with my neighbors. I actually have my signal strength turn down to limit the range my networks can be picked up. You can see the fluctuations in my neighbors signals since they are transmitting a much greater distance.


Here is a capture of MeteGeeks chanelizer lite
http://www.metageek.net/products/chan-lite

We realize these don't look like inSSIDer reviews, but we've clipped them and you should be able to jump straight to it when you click play. Enjoy!

Not Just Virtually Free

http://www.virtualbox.org/


When we think virtualization we think VMware or Microsoft virtual machine. This stuff is never easy and never seems to work out the way you want it. Here is a simpler, easy, and best of all, free solution. This supports most operating systems inside and out and can handle 64bit as well.

I'm still a big fan of Mojo Pak but XP is phasing out quickly.


What they say on their web page:

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

Some of the features of VirtualBox are:

• Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

• Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

• Guest Additions for Windows, Linux and Solaris. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows, Linux and Solaris virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window). There are also guest additions for OS/2 with somewhat reduced functionality.

• Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.

A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):

• Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.

• Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.

• USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.

SMS - MMS from your phone to email and back

SMS gateways are the key to allowing you to use your text messaging functions to send and receive emails and media between phones text messaging and any email service.

Here is a list of address for the Cell providers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway

To send a message from email use use the phone number plus the address listed in the link for that persons cell provider.

The send a message from the phone you simply put the persons email address where the phone number might go.

We can build it better, faster, stronger for under 6 million dollars

What we are building here is the drive layout for a PC containing 2 equal speed equal size hard drives.

We want speed for applications that need it such as gaming and video encoding as well as web cache. We want to secure our data on a partition other than the partition holding the main OS. This space will also be used to load applications that may contain user data and settings that we might want to preserve in the event we have to blow away the OS partition. Finally we need raw storage for video mostly that is not on a raid in the event we need to recover it. We could create a raid array for recovery purposes but it has always been my opinion that home or novice users need to maintain good backups as opposed to trying to recover data from a failed hard drive in a Raid 5 array.

The partitions needed will be from each drive in Gigabytes:

100
100
5
(final partition containing the remaining space)

You will have 100 on one drive for the OS. You do it this way because we are creating the Raid arrays using Microsoft Disk Management.

Then 2 100gig partitions will be used to create a Gaming or High speed stripped partition. If you want a bigger gaming array you can allocate more space or simply add another array later with the left over space being used for mass storage.

The 10gig array will be used for internet cache and for a very fast page file for both speed and privacy. It is very easy to wipe a small partition that might contain personal data that could be used to steal your identity or create profiles on your surfing habits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID














Click on the image below for more details:

Send and receive text SMS messages from the PC for free.

Google has a option in gmail where you can put a phone number into your chat box and send a text message to any phone in the US.

This is how you get it set up:

In GMAIL click:
Settings,
then Labs,
then scroll down to SMS chat which is fairly far down the list.
Select enable
Then back to the top to save settings.

Now you can simply type a phone number in the chat contact box. It will offer to save the number with a name associated.

Then simply type a message and wait for a reply.

These messages are not free to the person receiving the message.