An Equitable Mortgage

I'm a "systems guy." I look at cause and effect. Unintended consequences.  Processes.
We hear in the news crazy stories of about foreclosures where the entity holding the paper cannot be identified. A huge part of the "mortgage crisis" came from lenders writing mortgages that were just bad. The market was in a frenzy and the political environment encouraged home ownership.

At the height of the lending frenzy, I was approached multiple times per week by the shadiest sorts of agents who were willing to put me in a house. I've been dealing with tax issues for over a decade and could not guarantee that I could make payments. I was assured that that would not be a problem. Because I earned a good amount of money, anything was possible.
Never mind that I run my own business and my actual profit is a tiny fraction of my "earnings."
Never mind my credit was in the toilet.
I would have to fight off these opportunistic sales weasels and say "no" to these insane offers.

I can totally understand how someone less informed would jump at the offer to get into a house and start rebuilding credit.

But enough of the history, on to my proposal:
Mortgage contracts have two parties. But only one seems to have any power. The homeowner cannot arbitrarily transfer the loan or deed without permission of the bank. So why can the bank?
Let's keep the imbalance caused by the money, but require written permission by both parties to modify or transfer the loan.

SwitchEasy Trim

I'm a big fan of SwitchEasy. In a sea of generic silicone phone cases, it's nice to see a company think outside the box. For previous iPhones, the Color and Rebel were some of my favorite cases. With my upgrade to the iPhone 4S last week, I ordered some of the iPhone 4 cases to try them out.

That all-glass iPhone is darned slippery. Had a few close calls in the days I waited for my new cases to arrive.

First up, the Trim.
I chose this because I like the engineering: The ribbed plastic band should provide good "crushability" to protect the corners of the phone. The rigid polycarbonate back should help protect the rear glass and act as a stretcher to keep everything tight. You can still see the Apple logo.
The case is available in 7 colors.

TRIM package contents

In the package we get the usual SwitchEasy overkill:

• The case
• Two (black and white) dock adapters
• Two sets of seals (dock connector, and headphone)
• Plastic card for applying screen protector
• Two screen protectors
• Cleaning cloth
• Viewing stand
• Instructions

Another view.

Package Contents After Opening Some Stuff

The case is very snug and requires some muscle to get it on. Once it is on, it is snug and secure. The molding is clean. The fit is precise. The seals fit well.

We've barely dropped below freezing, so I can't report on its cold weather performance.

I unfortunately got to test the protection a couple days ago, when the phone was knocked off a kitchen counter. Landed squarely on the corner - the best way to shatter your phone. The phone literally bounced.

Here's a view of the case in place:

Case Installation Testing

Lon v.s. the IPhone 4S

I've been packing an iPhone 3G since it was introduced.
At the time, it was new and cool.
Native apps, faster data network, and microphone inputs. It was an amazing phone and portable computer.

Then came iOS4.

Apple's apps, like Maps, became useless. The phone became so slow that was not able to perform most tasks.
Since I pretty do everything on the web, I was still able to use the phone.

But last week I updated to the iPhone 4S and everything is great.
Well... Mostly Great.

First off: the 4S is fast. Obviously faster than the 3G, but also appears to generally be faster than the dual-core Android phones I played with.
HSPA+ is actually faster than stock 3G. It's not 4G, but it is noticeably faster for web surfing and maps.
Colloquy benefits from the additional speed and irc is very pleasant on the new phone.

The display is crisp and very readable.

Multi-tasking actually works. I can be streaming TWiT or Frogpants and still participate in the chat room.

I don't use iCloud. I use Google as my "cloud" service.
I don't use Mail. I access my mail using the GMail mobile web interface.

And now to the stupid problems:
Siri.
Siri works. Really.
"Remind me to leave at 3:00"
Poof! Reminder set.
But...
If the Reminders app isn't running, the alert doesn't happen.
Almost missed the bus today because of that.
Siri really should turn on the Reminders app if it's requested to set a Reminder.

Phone.
Yes, the Phone app.
The Phone app does cool audio processing like monitoring a second microphone to cancel background noise on your call.
But if you plug in headphones, it gets all confused.
It starts to amplify the background noise until it drowns out the call and eventually starts a feedback look which makes conversation impossible.
Lots of discussion on the Apple support forums, but no acknowledgement of the problem from Apple.

Wisestamp revisted

The last time I wrote about WiseStamp was about two years ago.
At the time I was thrilled with the service.
To recap:

• Rich HTML email signatures in gMail
• Ability to bring RSS feeds
• Firefox extension

That original service worked great for me. But WiseStamp has not stood still in the last couple years.
It's now available for Chrome as well as Firefox. I use both browsers on a regular basis, so this is great for me.

They've added support for all the popular online mail systems including gMail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and AOL.

 The editor just gets better and better:






















Cleaned up menus and predefined templates.

The RSS feed feature is now a whole "App" system where you can add lots of different content blocks that show your latest post to Twitter, WordPress, eBay, or many other services.

I work with a PR firm that wanted to centrally manage all their employee's email signatures. It was one of their man concerns about moving to Google Mail.
Wisestamp solves that problem with their  Enterprise product.

So Wisestamp is perfect, right?
Well, almost....
Nearly every screen has an Upgrade button.
They really want you pay for the service. Which is perfectly understandable.
But what is not understandable is the pricing.
They still have a free version. That's what I'm using.

Next step up is $4/month. And they go up to $25/month.
First: That is WAY too expensive for such a service. Most people use free web mail. I pay $50/year for my Google account. I'm not going to another $48/year for better signatures. And I'm certainly not going to pay $96/year. (The "most popular" option.)

I put Wisestamp in the same category as Xmarks, LastPasss, Bit.ly,  and KeePass. Upgraded versions of features you already have.

I'm not willing to pay a lot for these, since I already have those features. The going market price seems to be $0-$1/month.
I'd like to see a version with everything but the enterprise features for $10/year.

Oh. And I must say the presentation of the pricing feels a bit sleasy. "Only $6/month. *Billed Annually)"
So why not just say what the actual price is?

The bottom line:
Product is still great, and constantly getting better.
Business doesn't seem to understand the market and I'm concerned for their long-term prospects.

National Blog Posting Month

There's a slew of "National Thing Verbing Month" initiatives out there in November.

NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month
NaPodPoMo - National Podcast Post Month
NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month



I won't be participating in the Novel Writing month this year, but I will blog every day. I''m going to try to figure out the role of blogging in a world with with all these social media platforms.

So let's set the table: Why still blog?

• It's mine. I'm responsible for the domain and hosting. It's my brand.
• In-depth. There's basically no limit to how long an article can be.
• Profit! A widely read blog can actually make money from advertising

Why use other platforms?

• Easy. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are very easy to use. Even when mobile.
• Engagement. Because those social platforms manage audience, reader response it generally much higher than with a traditional blog. For my group, Google+ is terrific place for extended discussions.
• Part of something bigger.  My posts can appear alongside articles by great and interesting writers.
• Visibility. My articles are much more likely to be read on Google+ than my own site.

Why "Throttling" Won't Help Network Congestion

"AT&T Logo" by girardi

You'd better be sitting down for this: The telcos are screwing us again in the name of helping the consumer.
I know. Hardly seems possible...

Verizon started reducing available bandwidth to customers around the time they got the iPhone, and now AT&T has announced that users with Unlimited plans will also have their bandwidth reduced

".. once their usage in a billing cycle reaches the level that puts them among the top 5 percent of heaviest data users."

The reason both companies give for doing this is to "address network congestion."

Where do I even start?

Bait & Switch:
I don't care what the contract says. Unlimited is Unlimited. Not "Unlimited*"
This is straight up consumer fraud.
If the telcos weren't burying our elected officials in lobbyists, we'd see a huge regulatory backlash over these anti-consumer practices.

Measurement Period:
The determination of who is in the top 5 percent happens over the course of a billing cycle.
Everyone's got a different billing date. Sure, I can be a top user during my billing period that starts on the 1st, but you could be a top user during your billing period that starts on the 2nd.  If they count it that way, then more than the top 5 percent will be marked for throttling. The top 5 percent in about 30 different billing cycles will be affected. So the actual number will be more than 5%. Assuming pretty even distributions, probably only slightly more, but it's still more.

But it's actually more confusing than that:

"These customers can still use unlimited data and their speeds will be restored with the start of the next billing cycle.  Before you are affected, we will provide multiple notices, including a grace period."

But let's skip that and assume they really determine who the top users are on a monthly basis.
If I somehow got a good signal and was able to burn up a ton of bandwidth at the beginning of my cycle, I will get a grace period. During which I'm contributing to network congestion. And I get to go back to my full speed on my billing date. Clogging up the airwaves again.
This only relieves network congestion created by me near the end of my billing cycle. Most of the time it has no effect at all.

Data Volume ≠ Bandwidth ≠ Congestion:
Wireless customers connect through local Cell Sites. I can't find hard numbers but the big carriers operate at least tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of Cell Sites.
Leasing a site, setting up a tower, and connecting it to the Internet is an expensive proposition.
So the carriers don't (or in some cases, can't) add more sites to service an area even when there is overwhelming demand.

But a single person connected wirelessly to the Internet is basically only connecting to one Cell Site at a time. Even if that one person has a device that can connect fast enough to cause network congestion, they can effect people sharing that same Cell Site at the same time.

If I use a fast 4G connection, but only use it during off-peak time, I could use a ton of total bandwidth in a month, but have no adverse impact on the network.
There's much more congestion caused by a lot of people using a little bandwidth at the same time. That's why you can't connect at conferences and events.

Why?
As people get and use smart phones, they use more and more wireless bandwidth.  This puts a load on the existing wireless infrastructure during peak times. The solution is for the telcos to put up more sites.
But sites are expensive. In some places there simply aren't locations available for lease. The wireless carriers don't want to spend money upgrading their 3G networks when they've already started work on the 4G networks. Unfortunately, most growth in bandwidth demand is currently happening on the 3G networks.

I suspect that we will see limited improvements even when we get effective 4G wireless, because the current "backhaul" (the connection from the Site to the Internet) for most sites was designed for 3G bandwidth.

So the wireless carriers are experiencing increased demand, but don't want to spend money to expand the network.
Perhaps these new policies are simply a way to discourage a segment of users from using the network at all by making it unpleasant.
They certainly aren't there to help with network congestion.

Ubuntu Natty Narwhale: First Look as an HTPC

I've got a shiny new 2TB drive for my home theater PC (HTPC)!

Let's replace a drive and take this opportunity to install the latest Ubuntu

The construction of the HTPC was covered in previous posts.

Short form: ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO hooked up to the stereo via optical cable, and video via VGA.

I created a USB thumb drive installer on the Mac, but I couldn't get my PC to boot from the thumb drive. BIOS recocognized the drive, but it just didn't work.
So back to the tried-and-true CD installer.

Installer - Gorgeous!

Issue #1: Bootloader
First issue came when selecting the installation drive.

1. I put in a brand-new blank drive.
2. Selected that for install
3. After rebooting, the system hung. No bootloader was installed.

The second time I went through the installation process, I chose the Do Something Else option. On this screen, you can select where to install the bootloader. Select the recently blank drive and then go Back to the previous screen. Now you can do the big Install and Replace and it will also put the bootloader on that drive.

Solution: Do the dance described above if you are installing a new drive on a multi-drive system.

Issue #2: Network Configuration
The installer never asked for network information during install.
My home media network uses manual addresses, so remote sources weren't installed.

The new Ubuntu user experience is beautiful. I was completely lost however when looking for system settings. Turns out those are under the "power" button. With that piece of information, I was able to get the network working, install my other apps, and get everything updated.

Ubuntu 10 always had issues with unaccelerated video on my system, but 11 worked great out of the box. Smooth, fast, gorgeous.

Solution: Set up network after install complete, then run updates.


Issue #3: VNC
Ubuntu 10's VNC server only worked with unaccelerated video (which I never ran because of other issues), so I would run other VNC services. But VNC was never really stable.
I use my iPhone as a remote for my "TV" using HippoRemote which communicates over VNC. This works GREAT with the default Natty install.
Attempting to use my favorite desktop VNC client, JollyFastVNC, yielded black screens.
Turning off "Tight" encoding let me see the screen, but it did not update.

Possible solution found:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1383356&page=2

1.  Open the Terminal app or press ALT+F2, then run/type: gconf-editor
2.  Go to /desktop/gnome/remote_access and enable "disable_xdamage"

Solution:  enable "disable_xdamage" in gnome/remote_access config


Issue #4: Audio
As with my experience with Karmic, there was no audio.
Pulling up aslamixer did not solve the problem this time.
Selecting the digital output from the analog list in the hardware options in the Sound control panel finally produced audio.

Solution: Select correct output hardware. Doh!


Issue #5: ssh
Attempting to shell into the machine failed.
Apparently, no ssh server installed by default on Natty.
Really?

Solution: install openssh-server


Issue #6: XBMC
XBMC was not preinstalled, and doesn't appear to be in the default repositories.
At this time, there is not an official Natty release.
However, the Maverick sources seem to work

Solution: add http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-svn/ppa/ubuntu/dists/maverick/ to your repository list


Issue #7: Crash Recovery:
Sometimes thing will go wrong. I had a "Force Quit" button in my previous installation.
Found an excellent post on how to create a Force Quit for Natty.

Solution: Follow the instructions to put a Force Quit Icon in your Launcher.


Final Installations:
Installing VLC, gPodder, and Transmission from the regular sources completed my HTPC.
The Unity-powered desktop is much faster and the Launcher works well on a TV screen.

Conclusions:
It's probably too soon to upgrade Ubuntu for Home Theater PCs. Wait until XBMC or Myth have official releases.