The Los Angeles Times provides a great Google Maps mashup that tracks the huge fires currently raging in southern California in almost real time. What is impressive is the amount of resources committed, with one fire pulling in almost 1800 firefighters.
Archiv für 2007
Internetzugang über DSL
Ein DSL Zugang besteht aus drei grundlegenden Komponenten: DSL Anschluss, DSL Hardware und DSL Tarife. Einen DSL Anschluss bekam man bis vor einigen Jahren ausschließlich bei der Telekom oder einen ihrer DSL Reseller. Reseller heißt Wiederverkäufer, womit die Unternehmen gemeint sind, die die komplette DSL Technik der T-Com nutzen und einen Internetzugang nur unter dem eigenen Firmennamen vertreiben. DSL Kunden mussten, um die Reseller Angebote nutzen zu können, immer auch einen Telekom-Telefonanschluss haben.
Dies hat sich inzwischen geändert: Immer mehr Provider bieten einen DSL Anschluss inklusive DSL Telefonanschluss an. Der DSL Zugang läuft so völlig unabhängig vom „Rosa Riesen“ und insgesamt sind diese Komplettpakete oftmals deutlich günstiger. wer Internetanschluss und Telefonanschluss aus einer Hand bestellt nutzt einen weiteren Vorteil: Man bekommt die monatliche Abrechnung von einem Provider und spart sich sonst anfallenden Papierkram.
Ein DSL Anschluss hat immer eine bestimmte DSL Geschwindigkeit. DSL Geschwindigkeit bezeichnet die Leistungsstäke, mit der ein Internetzugang datenübertragungen durchührt. Will man beispielsweise nur Surfen und chatten ist kein DSL Anschluss mit hoher DSL Geschwindigkeit vonnöten, da die Datenrate bei diesen Anwendugen vergleichsweise niedrig ist. Anders sieht es aus, wenn mit dem DSL Zugang Multimedia-Funktionen vorgenommen werden. Um für Online-Games oder eine Übertragung live gestreamter Spielfilme eine geeignete Performance-Qualität zu erreichen bedarf es eines extrem schnellen DSL Zugang.
Bevor man sich einen DSL Anschluss zulegt sollte also auf jeden Fall eine Bestandsaufname dessen gemacht werden, was man von seinem Internetzugang erwartet. Und wenn der bestellte DSL Zugang im Nachhineien doch nicht genügend DSL Geschwindigkeit bietet lässt sich dies in der Regel schnell ausbessern; sofern man nicht bereits die höchste am Standort zu Verfügung stehende DSL Geschwindigkeit nutzt. Denn so ziemlich alle DSL Anbieter ermöglichen ein Speed-Upgrade auch nach Vertragsabschluss.
Open WebMail
Open WebMail is a webmail system based on the Neomail version 1.14 from Ernie Miller. OpenWebMail is a full-featured webmail, addressbook, calendar, and webdisk system that is designed to manage very large mail folder files in a quick and memory efficient way.
Started in 2001, it is written in Perl and available for free under an open source BSD license.
Latest Official Releass of OpenWebMail are packaged as tarballs and are available at
Bug found on the new iPod Nano
I could not resist, having video on an iPod the size of the new Nano was just too tempting…so I got one. As soon as I connected it to iTunes, it prompted me to install the software update that was made available a couple of days ago, after that it synced music & videos, and off I went.
Much to my surprise, this afternoon it started behaving erratically – whenever I pressed the fast forward or rewind buttons, the iPod would keep skipping in the same direction until either the end or the start of the song was reached respectively. One annoying thing is that the skip steps are much bigger than on the previous Nano, and so it makes the process less accurate. Combined with this bug, it’s unusable. The only way to stop it is to pause, and resume playback, and since the steps are so large, it’s a hit-and-miss proposition.
Here is a short video showing the behavior.
The E on the iPhone does not necessarily indicate EDGE coverage
It actually indicates GPRS attachment status, the capability (or lack thereof) of sending and receiving data, be it over plain old GPRS, or the faster EDGE. I was going to comment on the original Engadget blog post, but after seeing a few pages of comments already, I doubt they would have noticed it. This is where they get it wrong:
You’ll notice the iTunes WiFi Store icon, and an O2-UK network symbol up top. If you look carefully, you’ll see that the E logo for EDGE is missing: we guess that 30% network coverage on O2 don’t quite stretch inside the Apple Store.
A bit further down, they mention this again:
O2 iPhone on the left, unlocked US iPhone on the right (running on T-Mobile’s UK network). Note that the O2 iPhone doesn’t show the EDGE logo, but the unlocked phone on T-Mobile does. You can probably guess at what we’re getting at here: O2’s EDGE coverage sucks.
In this particular side-by-side photo, T-Mobile’s coverage is marginally lower than O2’s, but they should both be capable of sending GPRS traffic. Another reason they get this wrong is that the waves icon ‘overwrites’ the E symbol while the iPhone is connected to a WiFi network, so you could still have GPRS/EDGE attachment in the background, so-to-speak. In my particular case, the iPhone is happily registered on Vodafone Spain, and is attached to GPRS (no EDGE here at all), showing the E while I’m not in range of WiFi.
The iPhone also does something very clever – when you open an application that requires a data connection, it will start a GPRS attach and session, while it asks you if you want to join any of the nearby WiFi networks (if any). In case you say no, the alternative data connection is already established, cutting down on extra waiting time before you start seeing content on your screen. This may seem stupid to Europeans, by default stuck with hugely expensive pay-as-you-go data (50 Euro cents per 250kB!!), but with the original AT&T voice + data plan, it does not really matter.
O2 must be crazy
And Telefonica, who owns them, just as much. If the rumors are true, they will be surrendering around 40% of revenue (not profit, revenue) from each client using an iPhone, in exchange for an exclusive distribution deal in the UK. What is going to be the likely problem for end users here? Traditionally, when you buy a phone in Europe that is tied to a contract, you have to sign the papers before you can even smell the phone, and thus are bound by the terms. In the US, you can just buy the phone at the store, take it home, and get the contract set up with AT&T through iTunes there while sipping a coffee.
Unlocking your $400 iPhone is now possible, and so you’re no longer bound by an AT&T contract. In Europe, however, you may be able to unlock the phone just the same, but you will have to stay with the contract or pay the cancellation fee. Either way, operators stand to have better deal than AT&T.