| Oh yeah, this tool is awesome. It works wonders for connecting drives to your computers USB port, it even provides power to them as well separate from the USB connection, so you don’t have to worry about it. All in all this is a great too, and it works even better than I expected. It’s been so useful to me I thought I would be remiss if I didn’t share it with everyone else. I got mine from Amazon, check it out … |
Category Archives: Tech News
Great Deals On Software Every Day
There is a website out there that I ran across a while back, and I just have to share it with you. Now, I am sure that some of you folks know about this site already, but just in case someone stops by that hasn’t seen this before, you really ought to check it out. It’s a website called ‘Bits du Jour’ which means ‘Bit of the Day’ to the rest of us. What this really means or represents to the visitors of this site is daily deals and discounts of software products. Each day they post a sale or maybe better called a deal on a particular software package for 24 hours, and let me tell you, some of these deals are quite good. It’s not uncommon to see 50% off or more on some really nice software. I know that I have picked up several things that either I didn’t know about or probably wouldn’t have shelled out for until I saw them on this site and at a nice discounted price. You ought to check it out, and do so quite often so you don’t miss anything. One nice feature that they have is that they have a list of what is coming in the future, so you can see if there is anything that you want to look out for. In addition, you can mark items that you want to be notified about when they come up for sale so you can make sure you don’t miss any. That’s pretty cool. OK, enough banter from me, go check out the site now!
*Note: No compensation or consideration of any kind was received by Solarum for this post/review.
Links referenced in this article:
HP gets tone on 3Com
I don’t know about any of you, but more than network cards, I cut my networking teeth on 3Com gear. Routers, switches, hubs and more, in fact, I still have a 10baseT FMSII hub around here somewhere. I know, I know, stop laughing, it’s a keepsake more than anything. I start this pedantic rant down memory lane because it appears that HP (Hewlett-Packard) is going to snap up 3Com in a deal worth almost $3 billion. Wow, that’s a lot of coins in the couch cushions! I hope they don’t destroy 3Com like they did Compaq after Compaq destroyed DEC (Digital Equipment Corp). I am still a fan of 3Com gear, especially when they kept U.S. Robotics (who made the best modem in the world as far as I can tell) mostly whole after the two merged. I thought this was an interesting tidbit, so I wanted to share it with everyone.
Facebook for iPhone developer quits project
This is an interested tidbit of information, at least it is to me. I read the article linked below that talks about the developer that brought you the Facebook app for the iPhone, Joe Hewitt, deciding to hang it up after he had basically had it with Apple and their tyrannical approval processes for their iPhone app store. It’s an interesting read, check it out. It kind of surprised me though, since Apple seems to (me anyway) present this image of being the cool, somewhat aloof non-company company, whereas here it seems like they are acting just like Microsoft or something. I guess big companies are still big companies, and most of them just can’t get away from whatever it is that makes them a**holes. Maybe I should start a list of companies that I have dealt with that are good folk to work with, that care and help a guy out, and then those that are jerks. Hmmmm.
Windows XP to Windows 7 Upgrade
OK folks, here is a tidbit for you, if anyone has been checking out Windows 7 and thought that an upgrade might be in their future, well they would have been dismayed to find out that there is no direct upgrade path from XP to 7. That means you can’t insert you good ol’ Windows 7 disk and upgrade your XP machine. The only upgrade path is from Vista to 7. At least that is the story from Microsoft. I have read a few people who have posted hacks and workarounds, but I haven’t tried any, maybe they work maybe not but it seems like a lot of trouble nonetheless. So, what’s the point of this post? Glad you asked! A colleague passed on this link to a tool that is supposed to support the allusive in place upgrade of Windows XP to Windows 7. Now, I haven’t tested it yet since it’s a commercial app, but I am going to see if I can get a demo in order to do a proper review. If anyone has tried it, or does try it please drop a line and let me know how it works out for you. Enjoy!
Verizon Cripples Users Email
Guess what kiddies, in troubleshooting an email connection for a customer that was unable to send any email through one of my servers, I found the problem was not quite what I expected. The good news is that the problem wasn’t my mail server, or even on my end at all for that matter. After some testing and digging I found that the problem is that Verizon has now blocked ALL out bound port 25 traffic. Period. As you know, port 25 is the standard RFC compliant port for SMTP communication, and Verizon has blocked all port 25 traffic as a means to fight SPAM. Uh-huh. Sure.
This means that you cannot use any other email provider for sending mail unless they support a non-standard port for their SMTP service, or you are using webmail exclusively. This, to me, is wrong on so many levels. First off, it’s not helping in the SPAM wars as far as I can tell. I am told the same thing by some Verizon customers I surveyed. Second, it’s just wrong to cut out basically all other mail providers like that. This is yet another example of how stupid Verizon is, and how they cannot manage their service at all.
I have done business with many, many telco’s over the years, and Verizon tops the list by a mile of the worst service providers to deal with. Some of the most incompetent people, bone headed mistakes and plain batshiat crazy experiences have all been at the hands of Verizon. I hope this is just the first of many nails in their coffin.
One last thing, conveniently enough, the only way around this is to upgrade to FIOS (or other non-specified broadband service) and pay extra for a static IP address. How nice. Read more here.