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Microsoft won’t make Office editing free on iOS/Android, so Google does | Ars Technica.

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In what I can only describe as the continuing downfall of Microsoft, we bring you more news from the mobile frontlines.  Microsoft has decided that in order to use the Office app on Android and iOS devices you must have an Office 365 subscription.  All I can say to this is: “Are you insane?”

People have been using Office since … well since it came out basically.  The idea that you’re going to force people to get Office 365 subscriptions (let’s not get started on the whole applications as subscriptions nonsense, because I can rave and rant about that for hours on end) is largely absurd.  That you’re requiring it to use the mobile app can only be described as moronic.

On the flip side of that coin, we now have Google and Apple, with what I will describe as a Nelson Muntz “Ha ha!”  (Image) attack on Microsoft.  QuickOffice is now a free application for iOS and Android devices.  Apple follows suit by making iWorks free with new iOS devices.  Great job guys!  This is what the open market is for.

Frankly, I am a little annoyed with how you add multiple accounts to QuickOffice on Android (tap the box where your picture would be, select  “Change Account”, sign in again, etc)and that lack of Dropbox/Box/Other File Host is very frustrating.  With those two gripes in mind, having access to any file on any of your Google Drive accounts is a great thing.  Having the ability to edit them on the fly (with minor loss of fidelity, as often happens with mobile editing of Office-created documents) is a great move.

Why Microsoft exec’s didn’t see this coming is beyond me.

Just another missed opportunity.  How unfortunate.

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Recently I decided that I wanted to have a backup camera installed in my 2008 Ford Escape.  Much to my disappointment, there wasn’t a factory solution readily available and the other solutions were kind of expensive, so I largely mothballed it in favor of other projects.  Then Dan came along and asked why we hadn’t done the project yet (in late June or early July) and insisted on getting it done, including going as far as to get me a gift card to Amazon to buy the parts (insert Good Guy Dan picture if I had one handy… Oh wait, I do: Linky).

So we purchased the following bits:

Actual Backup Camera – Chillin Special Ford Escape

Rearview Mirror with Integrated Monitor

3 Position Switch

12VDC Relay

Assorted Wiring

Power Taps

Connectors (Insulated Push-On Connectors, Ring Terminals)

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We roughed out this basic wiring diagram:

Rough Wiring Diagram

The long and short of it is:

If the switch is set to position 1:

  1. Power from the Cigarette Lighter adapter provides power to the relays all the time. The power doesn’t flow through the relay until the car is turned on though!
  2. The relay powers: My GPS and another relay (only when the car is turned on though).  The 2nd relay doesn’t let power flow through it until my car is set to reverse! 😀
  3. The camera and monitor turn on and present me with the video from the backup camera mounted on the rear of my car.

If the switch is set to position 2:

  1. Power from the Cigarette Lighter adapter again provides power to the relays all the time. The power doesn’t flow through the relay until the car is turned on though all the same!
  2. That relay still powers the GPS and another relay.  The 2nd relay now receives power from another source, triggering it to be active again (instead of only when I’m in reverse, just in case I need it).
  3. The camera and monitor turn on and present me with the video from the backup camera mounted on the rear of my car.

So here’s what we’re all waiting for, the pictures!

Thanks very much to Dan for the hard part (the wiring was confusing the hell out of me).  Now all that remains is to clean the fingerprints off the trim and the fabric lining of my roof. 😛

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Confirmed: ChromeCast will be able to play local content, go ahead and order yours | Muktware.

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So…. Google changed the SDK either:

a) Knowing it would break Local Content Streaming

b) Not knowing it would break Local Content Streaming

I am not sure which is a scarier implication: Google knowing it’s code well enough to willingly break a key feature for a device or Google not knowing it’s code well enough to know it would break a key feature.  Let’s face it though: People don’t care about where they get the content, they just want the content.  If they can’t procure it legally due to a provider being an ass (seriously, I will gladly subscribe to Hulu or Netflix if I can get shows the day the come out and without ads) then people will pirate it and watch it locally.

Good grief, this is day 1 stuff people.

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Aside: “Yes, yes, we’ll let you watch content you have on your drives and networks, just give us money now and we’ll be sure to get that feature out for release.” Yeahuh, I’ve heard lines like that before.

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In the process of stalking around the mall aimlessly yesterday, I found myself roaming into a nearby Radio Shack. A $99.99 deal on a HTC One caught my eye. It was gorgeous. The only one I had seen before was the all-black model, but this was brushed aluminum / white and silvered bezel. It’s truly slick. I was disappointed when I asked the store rep if they had a demo model I could try out. I’m not in the habit of buying technology without being able to test it out. They, sadly, did not have a test model, so I went on my way.

HTC One, Silver

HTC One, Silver

Not but 10 minutes later, I stumbled into the Best Buy Mobile store that was also in the mall. Praise be! They had a floor model from Sprint in the same color scheme. I spent fully 30 minutes just sitting there and playing around with it. I -love- toys. I then spent another 30 minutes reading reviews and comparisons to the Samsung GS4.

The GS4 wins in a few areas but they were largely irrelevant to me. The only thing that stood out was the 200mhz difference in the clock speed. Honestly in my short time playing with the two models I didn’t see much of a difference.

The HTC One has a few things that have caught my eye: namely the 32gb of built in storage and the slightly higher PPI on the display. The aesthetics were also working in it’s favor in my book. I’m also glad to have a NFC capable device finally. The last thing is the very cool ‘live’ tiles for the homescreen that show relevant information from the news, social media, and your added calendars.

Live Tile Demo

Live Tile Demo

I have always been impressed with HTC phones. The 0G Evo I bought almost 3 years ago still works great, if you put a custom rom on it. The HTC One is a phone I don’t see a need to put a new rom on it. I’ve only rooted it, so I can restore my backed up apps like FuelLog and QuickOffice.

Performance wise: I get about .6meg down and 1meg up on 3G, a far cry superior to the .194meg down and .414 meg up on my 0G Evo. I’m looking forward to when Sprint rolls out LTE in the area.

For $186 total (including a case, Zagg Screen Protector, and $36 activation fee) I am very pleased with the purchase.  YAY NEW TOYS!

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Updated: GlassUp raised $100K on Indiegogo — but PayPal is refusing to pay up | VentureBeat.

New Info as of 9:00pm EST (Thanks Christopher Paine): TechCrunch Article

Original Post:

So yeah.  This is EXACTLY why I refuse to use Paypal for anything anymore.

They’re a backasswards company with no respect for customers.  Now, I’m not saying they’re in the wrong (as per their own policy, they’re following it to the letter, which is fine), but their policy is just fucking stupid.

And how about that as adding insult to injury, “Oh ok, here’s your account back, but it’s limited, so you can still get money given to you but you can’t withdraw it at all.  Fuck you.”.

Seriously people.  Fuck Paypal.  I know they’re practically the only game in town, but Amazon Payments and Google Wallet surely is preferable at this point.

I mean god damn.

Addendum:

Chris says I owe PayPal a little credit.  I don’t believe I do.  Their past record stands as a massive monument of how to fuck with the consumer.  It is apparent that had they not garnered any attention from the Internet as a whole, they’d probably still have this project’s money locked away in some coffer collecting interest for them.

I reiterate: Fuck PayPal.  They don’t care about you, your business, nor your brand.  They only want your money.

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Scientists create glow-in-the-dark bunnies.

So, yeah.  They’re adorable as hell, to be sure.

I have two things to say:

  1. (Lame and Punny) I, for one, welcome our new glow-in-the-dark, hopping, loves-to-eat-carrots (not yet quite zombied) bunny overlords.
  2. (Serious) At what point does genetic modification yield a new organism altogether?  Are these really bunnies?  They’re injected with jellyfish DNA.  Is it a bunny/jellyfish hybrid?

To quote Jurassic Park’s Ian Malcolm (<3 Jeff Goldblum) “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I am a scientist at heart, but we must closely examine the possible repercussions of futzing around with the very essence of an organism.  To not do so is borderline insane and -definitely- dangerous.

Food for thought.

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So, we’re looking to change over to Web Help Desk at work and we got a very handy OVA file for VMWare and got it up and running.

Let me start by saying: Web Help Desk is pretty slick.  Very full-featured, seems to be extensible, mobile friendly, email for creation/comment/take tickets.

I was initially looking at RT and even ZenDesk, but we went with Web Help Desk at the end of the day.

However, there is only part we got stuck at, and I’m still waiting to hear back from their support department: getting our certificate added to the web server to make it a SSL site.

For the life of them, they couldn’t figure out or find documentation on how to convert our wildcard PFX/PKC12 certificate over to the Tomcat (JKS) keystore.  As I recall they said “Getting this done in Windows is very easy, but most people who do choose the Linux version already know how to do this.”  Well isn’t that marvelous.  We don’t.  Do you want us to buy your product or not?  We’re still waiting to hear back, but we figured it out.  Here’s the guide for you, just in case.

Reposted from JAMF Nation

  1. Get your certificate onto your server, into a temp folder (i used /tmp).
  2. Find where your KeyTool program is located (i used ‘ find / -name “keytool” ‘).  KeyTool is installed as a part of the Java SDK.
  3. Run your keytool with the following arguments:

    keytool -v -list -storetype pkcs12
    -keystore yourkeyfilename.extension

  4. Make note of the alias for the certificate (for me I think it was apache, but I’m not 100% certain after the fact).
  5. Now we need to use the keytool to actually do the conversion.

    keytool -importkeystore -srckeystore yourkeyfilename.extension
    -srcstoretype pkcs12 -srcalias thealias -destkeystore newkeystorefile.jks
    -deststoretype jks -deststorepass apassword -destalias tomcat

  6. Now place the certificate wherever you need it and you’re good to go!

Notes: You don’t need to supply a password.  I didn’t.  The destalias can be required to be something by whatever program you’re plugging into.  For me it was tomcat.  srcalias is the alias from step 4.

Thanks to Nick Koval (nkoval) for the fix.

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Norton Mobile Insight Discovers Facebook Privacy Leak | Symantec Connect Community.

Well boy, that doesn’t at all sound intentional.

A company dedicated to getting to know every piece of information about you is taking your phone number without so much as a mention?

Doesn’t the Facebook app basically read your phone status anyways?  It doesn’t say they will send it to anyone, which is what the hubbub is about.

I’m not at all surprised by this.

Disappointed, yes.

Surprised, no.

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Work at the office during the summer is always an interesting experience.

Today we took 4 deliveries of Desktops, 158 computers spanning 474 pieces.  I will be posting pictures of that today.  We get to spend the summer unboxing, imaging, and setting up those computers.  It’s a fast-paced, frantic process.  We took delivery of  another 144 on Tuesday.  And that’s not even all of them.  We received a few orders of Samsung Chromebooks during May and June.  I think we got over 200 of those too.

We also want to re-image one of the other buildings, but that’s put on the back burner.

If you’re interested, we’re also going to be selling the old computers (Dell Optiplex 960 Desktops, Dell E6400 Laptops).  I’ll be posting the GovDeals links when we’ve posted them.

Here’s the generic link for any and all auctions we post: GovDeals.

Read more for pictures of the new computers and Chromebooks.

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