Technik News

Das Blog zu IT, Mobilfunk & Internet

Vodafone 3G failure in Barcelona, over 24 hours without incoming calls

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If you have a 3G/UMTS phone and you are moving around Barcelona, it is likely that since Wednesday morning you could not receive any voice calls or SMS messages. Vodafone admitted that they had a failure in some parts of the network in the city of Barcelona, but didn’t give an estimated timeline for fixing the problem. Today, at 4pm, they still do not have an estimated time to solve the problem, and I could still not receive calls. This is extremely serious, as anyone having to receive important or emergency calls will not get them, and he will not know a thing about it. Your phone shows you have coverage, and you can dial out, so you are unaware until you meet someone that yells at you because they couldn’t get in touch for hours.

Vodafone support is usually quite good, but in this case…they really blew it!

New Fon routers with LAN and USB ports, but not by Fon

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I got a tip today that Fon is looking at launching a new router with a LAN port, apart from the WAN port found in the current Fonera (they seem to privately admit not having a LAN passthrough was a rather big mistake).

With the current Fonera, you cannot access devices on the wired side of the network (such as a SAN drive or printer) from the wireless side, be it using the public or private SSID, you are effectively NATted from your own network. A LAN port would solve this the same way as it is done in higher quality devices such as the Linksys WRT54 series.

Fon Liberator?

What really surprised me was to see that these routers have already been shown by Accton, the OEM that manufactures the Fonera on their website for a few weeks. Check out these links, datasheets in PDF available, for a white-label Fonera, a Fonera with LAN passthrough, and what looks to be the Fon Liberator, having a USB port and BitTorrent client built-in! Martin Varsavsky recently put the release date of the Liberator back a few months, originally scheduled for Christmas 2006, citing technical difficulties.

Now, either Accton wants to score a goal taking advantage of the publicity offered by Fon, or Fon didn’t pay an exclusivity fee for the design of these routers, or both. One million routers by 2010 is nothing by asian manufacturer standards, but they do allow buyers to secure exclusive designs. Copies could still be found, but not as prominently and by the same manufacturer making their own.

I wasn’t sure that Accton was the designer behind the Fonera, and gave Fon the benefit of the doubt of actually having developed something themselves in the electronics field, but now it seems clear that Accton is the designer of the hardware platfom, so there wasn’t that much development by Fon after all (the firmware was created by the hackers behind DD-WRT and OpenWRT).

Technorati misses 13 hours of blogging

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It seems Alzheimer has taken over at Technorati, where after an hour or so of seeing “we have a problem, we are working furiously to have it fixed”, posts newer than 13 hours ago seem to have all gone missing. I ran a couple of searches, and they both failed to turn up results I had seen a couple of hours ago. Will the re-index the 55 million blogs all over again?

Free File Hosting – Free Online Storage

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What is file hosting, you ask? Well, it is quite an easy concept, really. File hosting is a process that allows users, such as yourself, to upload files and images online. These files and images are uploaded and then can be accessed by typing in the web address that was assigned to the files when they were uploaded. By visiting this address, these files can be seen and/or downloaded at any time and from any location.

File hosting is a fairly simply process by which a computer that is acting as a server takes in the files that are being uploaded to it and saves that information onto its hard drive. This data, once on the server, is able to be accessed like any other information on the web. The server assigns that data a web address from which it can be accessed. When a user visits that address, the data that is stored on the hard drive of the server can then be downloaded as many times as necessary from anywhere in the world.

The usefulness of such a tool is only too obvious. One is able to easily upload a picture to be able to share with their friends anywhere in the world at the click of a button. Having trouble printing a document or just need to be able to open it elsewhere and have no other way to transport it? Simple, upload the document and download it from another location with ease. File hosting allows users the ability to share and host their files with ease.

The best part about most online file hosting is that, unlike regular web hosting, it is free.

We’re go for launch!

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I haven’t blogged much the last few days, basically because I’ve been working 23 hour days, getting ready to launch Whisher (the 24th hour was spent going to get coffee). Some of you have noticed that we put a countdown clock at whisher.com, which shows the time left until we finally go live. I’ve refrained from talking too much about the project here, as in the past it has drawn some heat, apart the fact that we have been keeping it in stealth mode (or as much as possible!).

The official launch of Whisher is during DEMO 2007, the launch event for new startups, or companies that want to launch new products and services. The idea of DEMO is to give a level playing field to 60 companies to present their new products, regardless of how much money they have. Google would have exactly the same counter at the demonstrator pavillion as an angel-funded startup. No special signs or certain types of swag are allowed either. During the event, you are given a 6-minute slot on the presentation stage, where you will perform a live demonstration of your product. Again, canned demos, flash or PowerPoint slides are not allowed – it has to be live. This puts quite a bit of pressure on you, but also ensures that everything presented at DEMO is true, not a future maybe product.

So, if you come to DEMO, see you there, if not, I’ll keep you updated – also, the crew of Wireless Is Fun is doing a live coverage of the launch – thanks guys!

The end of an excellent installer

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I read with sadness that Tarma have decided to discontinue development of their QuickInstall and ExpertInstall applications. These are really excellent alternatives to heavyweights like InstallShield, which can cost thousands of dollars, and do pretty much everything you’d want out of a normal installer for your application. You can run custom actions at any point during the install, add drivers and other stuff you want to tag along your app, and more. Good luck guys, and thanks for all the fish!