Flying high with Wi-Fi - got power?

Okay so in spite of the obvious danger from IP activated bombs the airlines still think they want to put Wi-Fi on planes. Fair enough - soon we'll all be flying on a wing and a prayer as the saying goes
, and nothing fails like prayer as the other saying goes. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Anyway...

The bigger, more clear and present danger is that of impending power loss - that of laptop users. Just what are the cabin crew going to do when Dick Executive (aka. Executive Dick) flattens his battery in aisle 69DD after watching too much executive p0rn (Debbie Does Debt Equity and Leveraged Big Tits Buy Outs) and now insists he has to have more power to draft some pesky executive signing statements? Tempers will fray, batteries will be thrown and sooner or later airlines will get it - Wi-Fi without power to every seat will spell trouble.

But that's a huge drop of power isn't it? 30W or more times 300 people - 10kW of extra power to deliver. I guess compared to keeping a plane in the air it is probably not much but they better be ready for it! Or are they planning some Sky Mall scoop selling ready charged batteries straight from the drinks cart for $200 a pop? I can hear it now, "Gin and Battery Tonic sir?" . "American Express, that'll do nicely. And would you like a privacy screen and napkin to go with that?"

Oh sweet joy, can in flight cellphones be far behind?

And then they haven't considered all the fist fights that will break out as more and more people in cattle class try to bust out their 17 inch lappies on the drink tray and the "Born to recline" dude in front does just that... Can anyone say "snap, crackle and pop" ??? I mean it has happened to me on more than one occasion and I have a mere 12 inch screen. Fortunately lightening fast reactions have saved me on every occasion. Others wont be so lucky and the results wont be pretty. Lets just say that SkyMall will soon be offering "dial-a-damage-attorney" service too.

The solution to this problem (like in-seat power for all) is clearly built in large screens in every seat back along with a USB hub and pull out keyboard plus mouse. It should only cost $100 per seat, a triffling amount compared to what they make from each seat per year but mark my words, it'll be a loooooooong time coming and if you're ever in a crash - happy landings in the LCD.

Sounds too negative? Oh well, I don't call this "The Long Dark Tech-time of the Soul" for nothing!

Network Solutions never fails to disappoint

Some companies have taken up the "do no evil" or "we're not evil" tag, but it seems like Network Solutions must have taken up the alternative "do no good" tag. It seems they just never fail to disappoint with examples of how they are surreptitiously subverting their job as domain register and guardian of the .com TLD to rip off consumers. Last time it was their obnoxious scheme to redirect all mistyped domain names to one of their own web search pages, against all the standards defined by Internet RFCs (that specify the exact rules of how the Internet works thus allowing the fantastic interoperability we see now).

This time they are now doing what is apparently called domain "front-running" by automatically reserving any unregistered domain that you search for from the Network Solutions website. This prevents you registering that domain from any other registrar - which you'll probably want to do because Network Solutions still charges the usery rate for $34.95 a year where almost everyone else is charing $10 a year or less. So you might go to Network Solutions to do a domain search - they are right there at the top of the list on Google when you search for "domain search", find an unregistered domain you like, go to register it and realize just how much they are charging, then go elsewhere and darn, if it isn't already listed as registered to Network Solutions.

Now Network Solutions will say they are doing it to protect you and they will release the domain for registration elsewhere after 4 days - but now the domain is listed as registered so any other cybersquatter will know someone was looking for it and can jump on it when the registration expires - just as you want to do. The upshot is you are sorely tempted to pay those sky-high Network Solutions registration fees just to ensure you get the domain. But according to the eWeek article it is not clear if they do actually release the domain after four days - they clearly show a domain registered for a year following a search they claim they did months ago.

Their explanation as eWeek puts its - they are "front-running" to protect you from those evil "front-runners". Gee thanks Network Solutions, if this is such a good thing why didn't you advertise that policy in black and white right by the search button - along with your overpriced registration fees? In fact I just went to check their website and there is nothing on the front page, or the domain registration page saying anything about this "front-running for your benefit" policy, and they don't even tell you the price until more than a half-dozen clicks into the ordering process - after they first try an sell you any number of other non-essential things like private domain registration, hosting and other add ons. Granted other registrars try this upsell thing, but they do that after they have told you the basic domain registration cost.

So if you're looking to do domain name search I suggest you steer well clear of Network Solutions - there are dozens of other places to search and register domains like dnsstuff.com, godaddy.com (irritating website but up front pricing and cheap), DreamHost.com and the original and simplest internic.net (they oversea Internet naming and registrars).

XP Unlimited still going strong

A year ago I blogged about a product I'd found called XP Unlimited that let you get true multiuser access to a single Windows XP (Pro) machine via remote desktop. That post is the #1 most visited post on my blog - it is listed on the first page of Google results for "XP Unlimited" and has had almost 1,500 page views in the last year. So I thought I'd post an update on XP Unlimited...

I'm here to report that XP Unlimited the product is still going strong, I still think it rocks, I still use it myself on my home computer network, and I since have got several small businesses that I do IT support for to use it after showing them the product and setting them up with a VPN and the free 3-user evaluation version.

One of those businesses is a food import company that has three local users who travel quite a bit and then two remote users on different parts of the country. They use a local Access database extensively to manage their client accounts and orders but having no web access to that data proved a big problem for them. Facing an expensive rewrite of the application as a web based tool, or switching over to an expensive proprietary solution that may not ideally fit their needs (like SugarCRM or Salesforce.com) they were stuck. I'd already set up a VPN for them that let them access critical files, but the database just wouldn't work over a Windows remote file system, it would takes literally minutes to switch from screen to screen.

So I set them up with an XP Unlimited eval license running on their central "server" which wasn't a server at all, just a desktop that hosted their database files locally, had MS Access on it and had a gigabyte of memory (which was a lot at the time they bought it three years ago). Now they could have their users connect to their VPN (we used OpenVPN because it was SSL based and hence would always be able to pass through WiFi hot spot networks) and then connect to their central server via Remote Desktop. Once logged into the server they could run their database application and because Remote Desktop optimizes screen output for the bandwidth available it was very effective. Also database apps, including theirs are typically not graphical intensive and use a lot of text and solid blocks of color, all of which are transfered very efficiently with Remote Desktop. The result was basically a miracle for the company - even when overseas in the UK where roundtrip ping times are 150ms or more it worked like a charm and they were very happy and they purchased a five user license for the product.

Some additional advantages of the XP Unlimited based solution was that it required the minimum of configuration on remote machines - all they had to do was install the OpenVPN software along with a key for that machine and pull up Remote Desktop which is included on all XP machines - even XP Home. Previously when trying to give them access to files on the server I had to get them to set up a proper user name, configure file sharing and set a password that matched a user name and password on the central server - all a big pain, especially if they had a password they didn't want to change or reveal to me. With XP Unlimited I just created a local user on the server machine, set a default password with an appropriate policy and let them have at it - they could change it to whatever they wanted. And I could easily decide what groups to put them in to restrict access to other machines on the central office network.

The only disadvantage was this was all a bit too high tech for some users - the idea of remotely logging into a machine can be confusing for those that have never seen it, and really hard to explain in words. A work around for users that only need the company database is I could get XP Unlimited to only allow access to the database, and start it when they logged in, so basically they could click a remote desktop icon on their laptop (or whatever), enter a username and password and they would see a new window containing only the database app. To them it looked just like any other application and it was much less confusing. Ultimately I stopped setting up accounts like this because most users also needed access to some shared files which was slow over the VPN and Windows remote filesystem. It was basically so much faster for them to use remote desktop to browse for the file on the server, open it in Word or whatever on the server and view it all remotely - hence all the company's remote users now log in and see a full Windows desktop afterwards. An additional benefit of this is the work they do there is always backed up and instantly available to others, plus if their VPN or network connection drops they can just log back in again later and their desktop is still there exactly as they left it - brilliant.

Lastly the central "server machine" that is really a pretty lowly P4 machine regularly handles four concurrent user session and the one local user reports no significant impact on her work so they haven't had to invest a penny on new hardware to support these remote users - and more importantly didn't have to do that costly re-write of their database app which would probably have cost them thousands in contract time.

The only disadvantage of XP Unlimited I can see is that with the plummeting value of the US Dollar vs the Euro (and most other currencies) XP Unlimited is quite a bit more expensive that when I first looked at it in early 2007. The most basic five user license will cost you € 112 which is currently around $164 (not including credit card currency exchange fees). But I think that is still a good price, especially compared to the cost of Windows Small Business Server ($500 plus per client/user fees) and XP Unlimited is really a very good and cost effective solution for small businesses that don't already have a Windows Server based solution.

I personally think XP Unlimited should have a full supported home user version with 3 user licence in the $20 to $50 range, although arguably from the terms of use you can use their demo version for non-commercial use at no charge so this is not necessary, but many businesses just don't like using demo versions (like betas!) and need to have somewhere to go for support.

For home and small biz users I think they could bundle the product with some easy to use remote acess VPN technology like Hamachi and add a lot of value and get more paying customers using it. Selling to smaller scale users like consumers and small businesses makes sense to me as so many of the larger potential customers that might buy their "enterprise" products will already be using Windows Server with corporate VPN setups (or just the SSL secured Remote Desktop) and have no real need for XP Unlimited. With the sharp increase of always on home computers and small business "servers" there is an increasing need for users to be able to do remote management and access of their machines easily from wherever they are, only pricing and better marketing lay between them and a lot of eager customers!

Of course at any time Microsoft could catch a clue and enable multi-user simultaneous desktop access for home users of XP and Vista but that doesn't seem to be likely any time soon because there are just too many small businesses using those products that might otherwise have to move to Windows SBS. With such a feature they could just use a cheap $200 Linux machine with a terminal server client and get all the benefits of an XP and Office machine without the additional cost!

In the mean time I continue to recommend XP Unlimited whole heartedly, so why not just download a demo copy and give it a try!

New DreamHost discount coupons - share and enjoy

I've been using DreamHost web hosting for several years now and have been very happy. Sure there have been a few glitches but they get better all the time and offer silly amounts of bandwidth (5,000GBytes/month), storage (500GB) and yes, hosting of an unlimited number of domains per account. They also have a good referral system that means with just a little work you can probably get most of your hosting almost free (like me).

If you'd like to check out DreamHost click here to learn about them - plus you can use the special Long Dark Tech Time discount codes when you sign up:

• TECHTIME - gives you $50 off the first year of charges,
• TECHTIME20IP - gives you $20 off the first years charges plus a free unique IP for life (good for anonymous FTP, SSL and other things), and
• TECHTIME30DOMAIN - gives you $30 off the first year of charges plus a free domain registration for life.

So have at it - and if you don't like them they have a 97 day no questions asked full refund policy.

One other thing I love about DreamHost - if you're a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization they will give you completely free hosting forever - and not just the lowest plan, but the top of the line plan with all the options which is a really nice thing for non-profits. Sure they get a tax write off for doing that, but I've yet to find any other hosting company that has such an offer.

If you have any questions about DreamHost just ask them as a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.

www.DreamHost.com

How to copy and paste between Google's "My map" mashups

I've recently been having a lot of fun with Google's My Map DIY mashups. They really have made it dead simple to create your very own mashup, and even easier to embed them into your website. Honestly they are lot of fun and never fail to impress your average web user, I've lost track of the number of times people asked me how I did it. Compared to the old "edit in Google Earth", export, save to your website and hack up your own Javascript its a doddle!

However a couple of esential features are still missing from "My Maps" - the ability to copy a map, and the ability to import one map into another - essentially a "copy and paste" of information. This was bugging me because I have a bunch of maps of the district where I live and I was getting tired of trying to reproduce the non-trivial boundary of that district. Plus within it there are a couple of designated historic districts that I would also like to show in several places, again they have non-trivial boundaries.

Fortunately today I figured out how to do this and although not completely straight forward it is relatively easy. So here goes:

To copy a map go to your My Maps tab, select the map and locate the "View in GoogleEarth" link at the top right of the map, this is visible in both viewing and edit mode - and is available to anyone who has access to the map, not just collaborators. When you click on the link you should get the option to open it in GoogleEarth or save it (unless you don't have GE installed, in which case you'll probably be asked to save it or locate an app to open it with). Save it to a file - the extension should be ".kml"

Congratulations you have just exported your map to an XML format that can be re-imported to both Google Maps and Google Earth. And if you want you can open it with a text editor and modify the text, placemark names etc. manually.

To complete the copying of the map simply create a new map in Google Maps and then select the "Import" link. You will then get a popup asking you to either find the file on your hard-drive or to enter a URL to read a kml file from. It turns out that the hard-drive option doesn't work at the moment, or at least works only intermittently. I wasn't able to make it work at all. The workaround is to copy the kml file to a webserver somewhere that you have access to and then enter that URL when you attempt the import. If you still get an error then your webserver is probably not sending the correct MIMETYPE information for the file - this identifies its data type to the Google import code. Fortunately my hosting company already has the correct mimetype information on their servers, but you may not be so lucky. In which case visit this Google page for information on how to fix that. You may also have to consult your hosting company (if you are not self-hosted) to ask them how to add the mimetypes specified by Google.

So, once you have imported your content you should have a clone of the original map - which unfortunately exposes another bug which is when you import .kml file it also imports the map name from the .kml file and removes any map description you have already entered. So now click "Save" to save the map and you will see you have two maps with identical names. You will have to go and re-edit one of them to set the new name and decription.

To paste content from map to another e.g. Map A to Map B it is basically the same process except you copy the first map A to "Copy of Map A", then edit the copy to remove any unwanted content, then export "Copy of Map A", select "Map B", edit it and then select the import link. Enter the URL you saved "Copy of Map A" as and make sure you do not to click the "overwrite" option or you will erase all your "Map B" contents! Once again you will hit the bug that Map B will change its name and lose its description - even though it looks like it is okay before you hit "Save". So if you have any non-trivial description text first copy that text to somewhere (via Ctrl-C to the paste buffer, or to another file), then hit "Save". Google Maps will now list two maps called "Copy of Map A" - select the one that contains all the content you need, edit it and change the map name and insert the original description. Click "Save" and you are done!

While using the My Maps feature of Google Maps you will probably spot that you can display several maps overlaid on top of each other - just check the left hand box beside each one. But when you select view in Google Earth or "Link to this page" you will only get data or a view of a single map - the one that is currently highlighted in the map list on the left side. This is a shame but you can instead use the copy-paste method I described to merge several maps into one uber-map and link to that or export all the data for users to see in Google Earth. Hopefully Google will eventually update their mashups to include these features.

There may be a way to get around the overwriting of the map name and description by editing the .kml file before importing. Another solution may be to import the kml file into Google Earth and export it as a kmz file - I haven't tried this yet but will post update if I do. However the workaround for this bug isn't that hard just so long as you remember to make a copy of the map description that you are importing into. If in doubt use the "Copy map" procedure to make a backup copy first before you start importing stuff!

Napster jacks up subscription prices

As if by magic just after posting about how good Napster was at only $10 a month they sent me an email announcing they are putting their subscription rate up from $9.95 to $12.95 a month at the end of January. Grrrrr! There is no comment about the mobile device support option which is usually $5 a month extra, but that could be because I don't have it as an option.

You can lock in another year at the old rate with a code (see below) but what happens if they got bust before the end of the year? Last I heard they weren't exactly doing well financially - at least not making a healthy profit. I'm pretty sure, in the event one of the other subscription services would probably snap them up for a customer base and honor current subscriptions - but I'm not sure I want to take that chance.

Anyway, here is the email they are sending out to current members...

Dear Member,

We wanted to let you know about an important pricing change to your Napster membership.

For the first time in over four years, we are increasing the Napster monthly subscription fee from $9.95 to $12.95. This change will take place beginning on January 30, 2008. As a valued member, we would like to extend a special offer to keep your existing monthly rate.

If you switch to an annual subscription now, you can lock in your existing rate of $9.95 per month. With this special offer, you will be billed $119.40 – a $36 savings over the new monthly rate – for a full year of Napster.

To take advantage of this special offer, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to home.napster.com
2. Sign in to your Napster account using the "Sign In" link in the top menu bar
3. Click on "My Account" in the top menu bar, then click on the "Napster Cards and Codes" area
4. Enter promo code NAPSYEAR8 and click on the "Submit" button
5. Confirm your account information and click on the "Submit" button

Now you can continue enjoying the world's largest online music catalog of over 5 million songs and all the great benefits of your Napster subscription at the same great price. Plus, every week we're adding new music, playlists, videos, radio stations, and continually adding new features and enhancements to make Napster even better.

We value you as a customer and thank you for your ongoing support. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us by going to www.napster.com/support.

Sincerely,

The Napster Team

Update: I went to Digg and found someone had also just posted about this along with some background information on Napster - at current burn rate they only have 18 months left and their CEO just resigned. See Napster Raising Prices. Is it Going Out of Business?

Update 2: As of their November 1st press release Napster state they have 750,000 subscribers - lets see what the February 1st release says. My guess is revenue will be up because of people doing the one year buy in and that will look good for their cash flow too, but at the expense of revenue in future quarters. It will also be at the expense of subscribers since clearly a lot of people are calling up to cancel. My guess is they will lose at least 10% which I suppose they are guessing will be more than compensated for by the 30% price hike.

So it will be extremely interesting to see what happens with their subscriber numbers in the next two reports - the February one may not reflect changes from this month depending on their reporting "tactics" (they might report the max during the quarter or something like that). But by the May report we'll definitely know if their strategy worked or backfired badly. It could also be that they are trying to pump up this next earnings release to boost their stock price and make them look like a better target for acquisition.