Free Mobile App Stops Texting While Driving – DriveSafe.ly

Posted in blackberry on November 4, 2009 by quefyx

DriveSafe-MainI came across this application the other day for my Blackberry. DriveSafe.ly is…

“…a mobile application that reads text (SMS) messages and emails aloud in real time and automatically responds without drivers touching the mobile phone. DriveSafe.ly is the solution to texting while driving.”

It does exactly what it says with an amazing sound quality. You will probably need a data plan for it to work as it goes out to the Internet to pull the spoken words and streams it to your phone. The free version gives you one female voice and has a limit of 25 spoken words. You can choose to upgrade to the Pro version and purchase a confirmation code from them. It gives you an additional 2 premium voices – Male & Female – and you can set the maximum spoken words to 500.

I also installed it on my HTC Magic running Android v1.6. Unfortunately it is still in development so it can only read TXT messages at the moment. They are also working on other platforms like Windows Mobile and iPhone. Support is responsive. I highly recommend it especially with laws being passed with regards to using your phone while driving.

Hit up the link to download a FREE copy for your Blackberry or Android phone.

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Addendum to Installing Ubuntu Jaunty on Eee PC 1008HA

Posted in asus, eee pc, jaunty, linux, netbook, ubuntu on August 25, 2009 by quefyx

Awhile back I posted some info on my experience installing Ubuntu Jaunty on my Eee PC 1008HA netbook along with instructions on getting the wireless card working. Here is the original post for those wondering:

Installing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on Asus Eee PC 1008HA

You can now get the Ethernet port working as well. Here are the instructions again, summarized. This assumes that you already have a working Wifi connection. If you don’t, please skip this step and go directly to the steps for downloading the Linux drivers for the adaptor. All the commands below should be executed from Terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

If there are any applications that needs to be upgrade, please install them and reboot the netbook. When it comes back up, continue with the following commands:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

We now need to download the Linux drivers for the model of the network adaptor that is on the netbook AR81Family-linux-v1.0.0.10.tar.gz (http://partner.atheros.com/Download.aspx?id=103). If you don’t have any working network connection on the netboot, then you might want to download the file from another computer and transfer it over with a USB memory stick. The following commands will unzip the file, make the module from source and install it on the netbook. Make sure you change your working directory to where you have downloaded/copied the file:

gunzip AR81Family-linux-v1.0.0.10.tar.gz

tar xvf AR81Family-linux-v1.0.0.10.tar

cd src

make

sudo make install

sudo insmod atl1e.ko

…wait a few seconds and voila! You now have a working wifi and ethernet port. Please note that anytime you upgrade your linux kernel, you will need to recompile the module source and install as above. I’d recommend you keep the original source files for this module on your laptop in case you need to recompile again.

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Setting up Confluence 3 with MySQL on Ubuntu Linux Server

Posted in confluence, linux, mysql, ubuntu on June 4, 2009 by quefyx

I recently had to set up Confluence 3.0 for work on a Ubuntu Server. The database of choice for our environment was MySQL 5.x. Below are the steps I took to get everything setup and configured. Before you begin, make sure you have the Java Development Kit (JDK 1.5 or later) installed and MySQL 5.x.

Download the latest Confluence 3.0 TAR.GZ Archive from here.

Go to where you’ve downloaded the archive and extact it. In my case, I’ve downloaded it to where I have all my apps installed to which is /opt:

tar zxvf confluence-<archive-version>.tar.gz

A new folder will appear with the same name as the original tar.gz file. Rename the folder to ‘confluence’:

mv confluence-<archive-version> confluence

Change into /opt/confluence:

cd /opt/confluence

There are a couple of files I modified in order to suit the needs of my environment. Confluence 3.0 will be the only service running on this Ubuntu Server, so I will change the Web port to 80. It defaults to 8080 if you don’t modify anything. The file to modify is located in conf/server.xml.

Find the line section:

<Connector className=”org.apache.coyote.tomcat4.CoyoteConnector” port=”8080″ inProcessors=”5″

change port to:

<Connector className=”org.apache.coyote.tomcat4.CoyoteConnector” port=”80″ minProcessors=”5″

Next I will change the home folder for my Confluence installation. The file to modify is located in confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties. Locate the section for Unix users and set your home directory for confluence:

confluence.home=/opt/confluence

Now we need to configure MySQL 5.x. Note that you will need the MySQL Connector/J driver, version 5.1 or newer. You want the JDBC Drive for MySQL (Connector/J). There’s a JAR file located within the archive from the download. It needs to be placed into /opt/confluence/lib. Connect to MySQL as root:

mysql -uroot -p

Create the Confluence database with UTF8 support:

CREATE DATABASE conf3 CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

Create Confluence user with rights to the database:

GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,ALTER,INDEX on conf3.* TO ‘confluenceuser’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;

Commit the changes and quit:

flush privileges;

quit

Confluence is now ready to be started and MySQL has been prepped to be used as the Database host. We can now startup the Confluence service:

/opt/confluence/bin/startup.sh

You can connect to Confluence from your web browser at http://locahost or http://<hostname>

Follow through the setup wizard to request your evaluation license. During the setup, be sure to choose ‘Custom Installation” and “External Database” for the options. Note to select MySQL for your External Database and in the next screen, click on “Direct JDBC” button.

Append “&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf8” to the connection string (without the quotes). Fill in the logon details for the username and password that was created earlier and click Next. the rest is pretty self-explanatory :)

That’s it! Enjoy your new Confluence 3.0 installation.

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Dropbox – secure backup, sync and sharing made easy

Posted in dropbox, online storage on May 27, 2009 by quefyx

dropboxNow that I’m using my Netbook more and more, I’ve been keeping my files sync with Dropbox. It basically syncs your files online and across different computers running different platforms.

I have 3 to 4 systems that I use at work, home and on the road. With Dropbox I don’t have to worry about carrying a USB stick or copying the files manually to each system and worrying about them being outdated. You just sign up and install a client on each of the systems you want your files sync on. To sign up is free and they give you 2GB of free online storage. There’s an option to upgrade to larger storage for a fee; 50GB or more. If you refer people, you can receive additional free storage at increments of 250MB up to a maximum of 3GB additional space.

Let me know before you sign up so I can send you an invite to get my additional free space! :)

Check out their screencast for more info.

Dropbox – Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy

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Eeebuntu 3.0 Base – First Impression

Posted in eee pc, eeebuntu, jaunty, linux, netbook, ubuntu on May 27, 2009 by quefyx

eeebuntu_3

I decided to give another Linux distribution a try on my Eee PC and went with Eeebuntu 3.0, which is based on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. Eeebuntu is customized Ubuntu for Netbooks, specifically the Eee PC range from Asus. There have been reports of it working well with the Eee Box, Acer Aspire One, Samsung NC10 and possible a few more other ones.

As for Eeebuntu 3.0, it is currently only available in the Base version and the Standard and Netbook Remix (NBR) version set to be available at the end of the month. As taken from their website:

Eeebuntu Base is the smallest, lightest and most stripped down of the three ISO’s. Apart from Gnome and its usual configuration applications, Firefox, restricted extras and the Eeeconfigure application, there’s little else, which means it’s up to you to add as few or as many as you need. To date, over 33,000 pro users have installed it onto their machines.

Some of the other things that have been removed to save space are: Compiz, additional language packs (you can install your own later), all office, media and internet applications and their support files (apart from Firefox and Remote Desktop tools), and Java.

Ideal to save space on the SSD and for those who know exactly what they need in their install, Eeebuntu Base gives you just enough without loading you down with unnecessary applications.

The installation went quite smoothly with wireless working right from the start. Logon screen and GUI is nice to look at. Fonts and icons have been shrunken down to fit smaller screens. It appears to have a customized Linux kernel specifically for the Netbook as battery life seems to hold on longer than usual and I’m able to see more wireless AP’s than I normally did before in my area.

Overall, I highly recommend Eeebuntu 3.0 for anyone with the Eee PC. However, I would suggest you wait until the Standard becomes available so that you don’t have to go out and install all the other applications yourself.

Eeebuntu Official Site

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Upgrading Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) to 9.10 (Karmic) on Eee PC Seashell

Posted in eee pc, karmic, linux, ubuntu on May 26, 2009 by quefyx

karmicAfter having Ubuntu 9.04 on my Eee PC for less than 24 hours, I decided to take the plunge and update it to the latest alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10 codename Karmic Koala. I was pleasantly surprised that the Seashell appears to be snappier with this new alpha release. It has the new Linux Kernel v2.6.30-6 and appears to support the wireless card on the new Seashell 1008HA. This is fantastic! I was worried that my wireless woud be broken as I saw it removed the linux-backports-modules-jaunty that I had previously installed to get the wireless working. If you want to try it out yourself after following my installation for Jaunty on the Eee PC, these were the steps I took to upgrade my kernel:

Make sure the APT repository is updated:

sudo apt-get update

Make sure Update Manager is installed and up to date (which it should be):

sudo apt-get install update-manager

Now run the Update Manager from Terminal:

sudo update-manager -d

You will see an option “New distribution release ‘9.10′ is available”. Click the Upgrade button to upgrade and follow the prompts to upgrade your distribution.

Here’s a link with more info on the alpha release: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha1

Good luck!

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Installing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on Asus Eee PC 1008HA

Posted in asus, eee pc, jaunty, linux, netbook, ubuntu on May 23, 2009 by quefyx

1008haNOTE: See Addendum to Installing Ubuntu Jaunty on Eee PC 1008HA for updated instructions.

I just picked up one of the new Eee PC from Asus called the Seashell yesterday and I absolutely love it! I guess it’s classified as a Netbook. It’s much improved from the original 701 4GB model that I got over a year ago. Just for curiosity sake, I tried it with the pre-installed Windows XP Home Edition for a day. I was quite impressed with the brightness and clarity of the screen. It has had some good reviews on the web. I just had to see it for myself. Here are some quick specs as taken from their website:

  • Genuine Windows XP Home
  • Elegantly Beautiful Seashell-inspired Design
  • Ultra slim at 1″ and lightwieght at a mere 1.1kg
  • Capacious Hybrid Storage Comprising 160GB HDD and 10GB complimentary online Eee Storage
  • Easy Mobile Connectivity with built-in 802.11n and Bluetooth v2.1
  • 6 hours unplugged computing with Super Hybrid Engine

Anyway, after using it for a day with Windows XP, I decided to wipe it clean and install my favourite Linux distribution on it – Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04. Installation went smoothly with one exception of the wireless network card not working (and possibly the wired Ethernet card too; I didn’t try it because I only use wireless at home). To get the wireless to work, you need to install the compat-wireless package from Ubuntu’s repository. How am I going to install this package if the wireless and wired Ethernet is not working? Fortunately for me, I had another USB wireless card which works out of the box on Jaunty without requiring addition setup. I popped that into one of the USB ports on the Seashell and connected to my AP at home and updated my new install first from the Terminal:

sudo apt-get update

then:

sudo apt-get upgrade

Rebooted the Seashell when the upgrade was completed and then again from the Terminal:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

then:

sudo apt-get reboot

Unplugged the USB wireless card that I was using temporarily while the Seashell rebooted. When the system came back up and after I logged on, my wireless card worked.

I’m now enjoying my new Netbook!

Eee PC 1008HA (Seashell)

UPDATE: I’ve attached a screenshot of my Desktop on the Eee PC for those curious :) Enjoy!

jaunty_1008ha

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PGP for BlackBerry – Atomichelix PGP

Posted in blackberry, pgp on May 6, 2009 by quefyx

atomichelixpgpPGP encryption has been available for BES users for some time now, but not many are available for BIS users. In searching for such a product, I came across Atomichelix. It provides PGP email encryption between units. Encryption/Decryption of emails is done durectly from the unit so there’s no interception of your private keys. It works quite well on the BlackBerry Bold and Curve 8900 (which I’m currently using now). It also allows you to leave your PGP emails on your device encrypted or decrypted. They have a 14 day evaluation so check out the link for more info if this is something you’re looking for.

Atomichelix PGP for BlackBerry

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Synchronizing Google Contacts with Nokia N-Series or E-Series (Symbian S60 3rd Edition)

Posted in gmail, google, nokia on April 30, 2009 by quefyx

nokia_syncI recently sold both of my BlackBerry devices and went back to one of my Nokia E-Series phone – Nokia E51. Like many, I use Gmail for emails and that’s also where my contacts and calendars are kept. With the BlackBerry devices, I was using Google Sync to handle keeping both of them synchronized. Now that I’ve switched back to the Nokia, I had to find another native solution. Fortunately, Google already had a solution to keep your contacts sychronized, but not the calendar. Follow the link below to get the contacts set up.

Device Set Up Instructions: Nokia N-Series or E-Series (Symbian S60 3rd Edition)

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Microsoft Office 2007 hangs during meeting requests with multiple recipients

Posted in office, office 2007 on April 30, 2009 by quefyx

Many people, including myself, have been experiencing Outlook 2007 hanging during a meeting request. I currently have my calendar set up to publish the free/busy to a URL or network share and when I enter multiple recipients in the meeting/appointment request, it hangs – frequently. Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 for Office 2007. I would recommend those experiencing the same issues to download and apply this service pack. It resolved my issue completely.

The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2

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