Microsoft Zune Locked up - Google Trends!

One thing I like seeing on my iGoogle home page  is the Google trends information.  You can see what people are looking for right now.  And today something very interesting appeared.  Suddenly everyone is searching for the term ‘zune locked up’

According to the Huffington Post, zunes everywhere are failing en masse.  A massive problem for the people who couldn’t afford to buy a real iPod, or perhaps a big hoax?  Who knows?

Seedbox.br

Well I signed up for seedbox.fr on thursday. It is sunday night and I still don’t have an account. The email which they had (and answered all my presales questions right away) has not responded once. Scam or not?

Update: account finally came through a week later. Some response - any response would have been good.

The service works well. Good transfer speeds, but fluctuates wildly. Some private trackers show they cannot connect properly and that nat is not configured properly.

The web interface is usually slow, but at times extremely slow. Typical is a one to two minute wait between clicks. Not the type if thing to log in and out of rapidly.

But the price is cheap. Then again you get what you pay for.

Another page on why to jailbreak your iPhone 3G

Ya… there are so many of these post out there.  You’re probably tired of reading them.  I know I am.  Yet  I’ve had the 3G since July (4 months) and decided I would give the jailbreak a shot.  Here are some of the reasons why I would say  ‘do it.’

• Intelliscreen:  Great app.  My phone is asleep.  I press the button and the screen that normally shows the battery power or SMS now shows me my email, SMS, weather, and calendar.  Admittedly, this was a big selling feature for me to jailbreak.  I was irritated hearing the email beep, unlocking the phone, going into the mail and seeing my latest AirMiles e-newsletter.  Now I glance at the screen. Done.

2) Backgrounder.  OK. This is cool.  For an IM program or a program that normally sits in the front and does nothing (I love GPS tracker on long trips).  Have the program run in the background.  Very cool, but not foolproof.

3) Blacklist.  I don’t know about you, but some people I would sooner not hear from (collection agencies, families, work calling asking “Why aren’t you here today”, etc.)  Blacklist stops the phone from ringing if certain numbers call.  Wonderful.

4) VOIP over 3G.  My provider gives me free incoming calls ‘in my local area.’  However, their customer reps can’t tell me where that ‘local area’ is.  Their billing system seems to have no problem. Now I have Skype and my Gizmo account setup using a cracked version of Fring for 3G.  VOIP calls away!

5) Tethering.  Admittedly, with the phone I can check most of the stuff I need to.  But there are times when I would like to see it on the big screen, or open an emailed file in a program other than the supported ones.  The ability to hop online using my iPhone 3G as a modem is handy.  I don’t do it much.

6) Springboard / Winterboard.  This isn’t a dealbreaker, but the ability to change themes is kind of nice.  It’s something I never do on my computer, but I do like doing on the phone.

7) Terminal.  Yes, I am a geek thank you. Copy things to / from the phone

Cycorder.  Turns the camera into a video camera.  Now with audio.  How much was that?  Oh, it is free.

9) Cracked apps.  What’s that? Apps that you have to buy from the app store can be loaded on free? Maybe I should have looked into this before buying all the apps I have!  Now I know this isn’t right. We do need to support these developers.  But there are so many I would have liked to try before I bought.  Some of the apps aren’t even worth the 99¢ they charge!

10) Searcher: Another free app.  Type in a term and it searches your address book, safari, calendar, SMS, notes.

11) Attachments from a URL?   So I’m standing in the elevator with Steven Spielberg.  I pitch my script to him. He likes.  I go to email him my script… oh wait, can’t.  But drop in a free addition and put a link to your script and it pulls it from the link and attaches it to the email.  Steven gets off the elevator and my script is waiting in his inbox.  Even if you aren’t on the elevator with Spielberg, the ability to send PDFs (sales catalog, articles, etc.) can be pretty handy.

Downsides…

•  It’s a little slower.  I can see why Apple doesn’t let applications run in the background.  It simply can’t do it effectively all the time.  Booting up (is it slower too?).

• It can be buggy.  Mind you, I found my regular iPhone buggy too.

• It’s not for everyone.  If you are a geek and you don’t mind doing the SSH stuff from time to time, OK.  Otherwise, it may not be for you.

———

Will I keep the jailbreak? Not sure if I will keep it longterm, but so far I have to say I enjoy it.

Bell Canada’s Traffic Shaping on the reseller DSL Lines…

Bell Canada Traffic shaping DSL Lines

I’m not a Bell customer, yet I’m still being shaped.

Mississauga’s best roti 2: ray’s roti on mavis at dundas

The next stop in my search was what I found in an online search. Ray’s roti on 819 westlock near mavis and dundas. I pulled out front of what looked like a bar. I asked when I went in if it was ray’s roti. Yes- a bar and roti shop. But mainly a bar.

I ordered my standard curry chicken roti- hot.

To be honest, it seemed like of a rough place, so I ordered it to go. I sat there with the beer drinkers and the mainly middle aged white trash crowd while I waited.

Since roti wasn’t their main thing, I wasn’t expecting greatness, but was willing to keep an open mind. It was 6:45 on a Friday night.

Roti was $6.50 plus tax. Decent size. Good moisture. Gravy a little runny. Lots of potato, not as much chicken. It was hot and spicy.

Overall I’d say good if you are iin the area. But the shortage of chicken was a bit of a problem for me. The roti bread itself was a little tough as well.

I’d give it a 7 out of 10.

This was my second time here. My first time was around was around 11:30 am. Lots of drinkers then too.

In search of Mississauga’s best Roti… Bara’s Roti.

I visited Bara’s Roti on Dundas Street East in Mississauga today. The little plaza was quite crowded with cars and difficult to get into.

I went into Bara’s roti and ordered a hot curry chicken roti. $7 + tax. Good deal.

The first thing I noticed was the size. It was one big roti. Good value for the money. The roti was generally spicy and tasted good. The meat was generally dark meat in this roti.
The hot sauce was added afterwards and not very evenly distributed.

But the flavour was good. I would repeat. I pretty much could have cut it in half and eaten more later. I even had to take a break midway through this roti.

I went back a second time this week. The roti dough was a little greasy. Lots of corn meal( I guess) in the roti. Generally very good. Again I could only eat about two thirds and was full. Good stuff overall. However I did order hot- and it wasn’t hot.

8 out of 10

The quest for the best Roti in Mississauga will continue.

Roomba repaired!

Roomba has been repaired under warranty. It is back in action and works great!

Roomba - 6 months in…

Wow… less and less impressed as time goes by.

Roomba has been broken for two months. It worked for three months before it broke and still no parts for it.

One more month goes by without a repair and I’ll have had a broken unit just as a long as a functional one.

Roomba 560 - 5 months in…

Well… my initial reviews were enthusiastic. However, April 25th (just over a month ago) Roomba broke. I phoned their customer support - and I must say it was the best customer support call I’d ever had. Bottom line was it needed a replacement part, which would be covered under warranty.

However, It’s been over a month and the part hasn’t arrived. Irobot.com told me was out of stock at the time - and a followup email today confirmed it is still out of stock and they do not know when it is coming in. So, this has soured my experience a little.

It’s quite obvious how clean Roomba kept my place being without it.

Rogers High Speed Internet - monthly limits suck.

For those of you unfortunate enough to get your Internet through Rogers…

Now that Rogers has changed the amount of Bandwidth you get and the charges associated with them be warned…

If you were to download at the full speed of the line, how many hours would you be able to do so before Rogers started charging you extra fees?

As you can see, most of Rogers MONTHLY plans can easily be run out within a day of downloading (this assumes no uploading bandwidth, which is of course needed during downloads)

Most shocking of all, the ultra-light plan has a $5 per gig charge when you run over that huge 2 GB monthly limit.

Why are we getting the shaft in Canada for our internet speeds and pricing.

Take a look at this article regarding Internet over the power lines in Indonesia.

224Mbps for $1.58 per month. (That’s right… more than 10 times the speed of Rogers fastest connection for 2% of Rogers price)

Anyone want to invest in a Canadian startup of this to flatten our ISPs here?

With the photos and videos and remote backups today - we need more realistic plans to reflect today’s demands.