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So recently I switch from Rogers to Fido using my unlocked Blackberry 8120 I figured the switch would be simple, just get a new sim card, wait for my number to port over and I’d be back in business.  What started as a simple task quickly exploded into several issues here and there.

First off, I was charged an activation fee that I had been told would be waived (my mistake for not reading the fine print and not questioning the sales person).  That issue was quickly solved by Fido who graciously offered me services worth the value of the activation fee in return for me paying the fee.  +1 to Fido.

Next, I setup all my e-mails onto the Fido Blackberry Internet Service to make sure I would keep receiving e-mails.  Worked pretty well, and I didn’t notice a delay any different than when I had been on Rogers.  That was until a few days after using the service, I noticed I would get several e-mails all at the same time.  This mixed in with intermittent issues with blackberry messenger not allowing me to send messages, I figured something was busted on Fido’s servers.  Sure enough, a phone call later determined they were doing software updates and were having issues.  I waited a few days, but the issue remained, so I did all the normal steps, removed the battery, sent new service books, even called Fido and they reset my network settings.  But nothing seemed to fix the issue.  So, I got down to it, and erased my phone.  Now my empty phone was receiving calls and sms messages just fine, but when I tried to send my service books, still not receiving any e-mails.  So I started looking through the settings.  Sure enough, in the mobile network settings, I noticed that for some reason the Fido SIM card had set the data service option to off when roaming.  Now since Fido shares Roger’s network, I can only assume that the phone was considering itself to be roaming, because as soon as I turned data services to the normal on position.  BAM all my e-mails came flooding in.  Blows me away that something so simple can fix an issue that causes so much stress.

Now to restore my phone back to normal….. this should be fun =)

Can’t wait to get my hands on a new iPhone soon!

So I recently stayed at a Hilton hotel here in Niagara Falls and was quite upset to find out that the WiFi was an extra cost ontop of the already steep room fees. Now normally I would fall back onto tethering with my Blackberry but the speed was abysmal, less than 5kb/s!! So with my slow tethered internet connection I was able to find this article from another blog that explained how to get around hotels wifi charges!  Checkout this article here: http://vinhboy.com/blog/2009/10/05/how-to-hack-the-hilton-hotel-wifi/

I tested it out using firefox and a plugin called firebug that allows you to modify code on a website.  Apparently at the Hilton and Days Inn the geniuses that programmed the websites wireless authentication system coded the price directly into the html code!  Its quite simple, you just locate the price section shown in the below picture and change it to 0.  I tried it out expecting to see a charge on my bill when I checked out, but sure enough.  There was none!

Try it yourself and let me know how it went!

Wow so today is such an exciting day, WIND Mobile just launched their new network and from the looks of things its even better than I was expecting!  They really did listen to myself and the thousands of other users that took the time to “join the conversation” on the wireless industry in Canada.  WIND has put together an extremely aggressive bundle of rate plans and add-ons that severely undercut the offerings of the current 3 Canadian telecom giants, Bell, Rogers and Telus.  Wind managed to completely up the ante on the Canadian wireless industry and is even more competitive than the discount brands offered by the big 3.  Everything about their unlimited plan concept to even their over-age rates and add-on costs are beyond revolutionary for the Canadian wireless industry.  Their overage charges and add-ons are 1/2 what their competitors charge, if not more than 50% less.

I can’t wait to see them expand into my area so I can test them out, looking at their business model, its very similar to other very successful companies focus on its customers.  In today’s marketplace it is essential for companies to focus on their customers to retain them in the long-term.  Historically, the wireless industry, has relied on its 3 year contracts to retain customers, however I and many others I know have had at one point or another been a customer to at least two of the companies.  Considering how WIND has created all its plans and services based on the requests and frustrations brought out by Canadian consumers this company really DOES care about what WE want. I see very good things in this companies future and cannot wait to watch them expand and prove to Canada that wireless service does not have to be expensive.

Anyways, here are the plans available from WIND Mobile!

$15 per month “Chat” Plan

• Unlimited incoming text
• Call Control (Caller ID, missed-call alerts, call forward, call conferencing, call waiting, call hold)
• Unlimited WIND to WIND calling when in any WIND HOME Zone
• Unlimited incoming WIND calls when in any WIND HOME Zone
• 100 province-wide minutes when in any WIND HOME Zone
• 50 Canada/U.S. outgoing text

$35 per month “Always Talk” Plan

• Unlimited incoming text
• Call Control (caller ID, missed call alerts, call forward, call conferencing, call waiting, call hold)
• Unlimited WIND to WIND calling when in any WIND HOME Zone
• Unlimited incoming calls
• Unlimited province-wide calling when in any WIND HOME Zone
• 50 Canada/US outgoing text from any WIND HOME Zone

$45 per month “Always Shout” Plan

• Unlimited incoming texts
• Call Control (caller ID, missed call alerts, call forward, call conferencing, call waiting, call hold)
• Unlimited WIND to WIND calling when in any WIND HOME Zone
• Unlimited incoming calls
• Unlimited Canada-wide calling when in any WIND HOME Zone
• Unlimited outgoing text to Canada/U.S. when in a WIND HOME Zone
• Voicemail

Add-ons

Voicemail $5
- Unlimited voicemail messaging, which includes free airtime to call your voicemail so you don’t waste your minutes to check your voicemail

Canada/US Unlimited Texting $5

US Unlimited Long Distance $10
- Only available to Always Talk and Always Shout plans

Social Blackberry $10
- Unlimited Facebook, MySpace, Blackberry MEssenger, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and AIM

Infinite Blackberry $35
- Unlimited data and BIS (Including tethering)

Infinite Mobile $35
-  Unlimited data for other data devices

Overage Charges:

Extra Home Zone Minute $0.10 /min
- Only applies to the $15 Chat plan as the others are unlimited minutes)

Canada/US Text $0.10 /txt

Away Minute in Canada $0.25 /min
- when calling outside a WIND home zone)

Away Text $0.15 /txt
- when sending a text message to someone in the US and Canada while outside a WIND home zone

Away Data $0.10 /25kb

Canada/US Long Distance Minutes $0.15 /min

http://www.windmobile.ca/

So Google as finally finished porting google Chrome its Internet Browser over to Mac and Linux.  I tested it out and got some screenshots and a video to share!!

Setup and Install was simple and easy:

Google Chrome is nice, but its simple basic design also comes with a bunch of features left out.  RSS support does not exist, if you try to view an RSS feed, it will either prompt you to open safari or firefox, or display incoherent garbled text.  It has the same multimedia support as Safari does and loads just as fast…. I don’t see myself switching to Chrome anytime soon, its lack of updates, beta testing stage and lack of support make me feel confident that Safari is still my best choice!  I like knowing that if I have issues with Safari, I’m a phone call away from fixing it!

Anyways, enjoy the video

So, ever since I’ve been using Macs, I’ve loved the simple ability to be able to put a word document ontop of a safari window and be able to keep the focus on the word document, but be able to scroll the safari window in the background down.  It really helps when writing a paper and being able to read a web page while still being able to write in the word document.  However, Windows lacks this basic function that I find so helpful.  I did however find a great little program that adds this function to Windows!!!

Checkout KatMouse

So, since I got a dataplan with my blackberry and realized I could use its data plan to tether my macbook I have wanted to figure out how to tether wirelessly using bluetooth.  This lets me avoid using cords, and keeps the phone in my pocket when wanting to use its internet connection.  I found several websites that really helped me get this working, but all these sites had been targetted towards Tiger and Leopard users.  Some of the steps have changed since the Snow Leopard operating system runs and has different screens compared to its predecessors.  These sites really helped me get this figured out and port it over to Snow Leopard, askdavetaylor.com, fibble.org, and a great post on blackberryforums.com.  So without further ado, here we go!

Step 1:

Before you begin doing anything, start by copying the blackberry 8100 script into /Library/Modem Scripts/.  (Easy way to do this, is from Finder click the menu Go, then Go To Folder, and then copy/paste this into the text box /Library/Modem Scripts/ and hit go).

Download the script here: click here (You should Save-As to your Desktop… and if the file gets .txt added to the end just rename it so its labelled Blackberry 8100)

Step 2

Pair your blackberry to your mac

1. Open System Preferences

2. Go to Bluetooth

3. Click the + on the bottom left

4. Make your Blackberry is discoverable

a. Go to Setup Bluetooth from the main menu on your blackberry

b. Choose Allow Another Device to Find Me

c. Click Ok, and it should say Waiting for a Connection

5. Your Mac will recognize the blackberry

6. Click Continue

7. Enter the number displayed on your mac into your blackberry

8. When everything is successful, it will show these screens, just continue till the Bluetooth Setup Assistant closes (Don’t worry about the message… we will get it configured manually)

9. Now it should show your Blackberry as a device in your Bluetooth System Preferences page

10. Click Show All and then go to Network

11. Click the + on the bottom left and select Bluetooth DUN and label it watever you wish.

12. Click Advanced and setup your modem settings as shown in this picture

13. Now enter your phone companies wireless information.  For Rogers, the information is shown bellow, this will change based on your wireless company.

Telephone number: internet.com
Username: wapuser1
Password: wap

14. Now click apply, and then connect.

15. If all goes well, it should show a window such as this:

Hey guys,

Since I started using Windows 7 and wiped XP off my media server, I’ve been wanting to figure out how to setup terminal services again so I can have multiple people logged into and using the computer at the same time.  This is very handy for a system that acts as a media center, it can allow remote desktop sessions to be run off of it while it is playing a movie on the home theatre system.  Or in my case, have someone using the media server to check e-mail and browse etc, while also allowing me to remote access my account and do any maintence work I need to on the ftp, http, torrent server etc.

Well after some googling and checkout out a bunch of different things, I’ve manage to get it working flawlessly on Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit (32 bit works fine too!).  I found the answer here: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/79427.aspx?PageIndex=1.

Its pretty easy to use, I didn’t create the hack nor do I warrant what it does (although I have tried it and havn’t had issues, and know that it is virus-free) If you’d like to read more about it, click here for the read-me file that comes with it from the author.

How To Use:

1. Read This

2. Download this file: Click here

3. Run the file install.cmd

This worked great for me, I can now login to the same system multiple times, even with an account that is already logged into the console.

I think this is a great tool, tell me what you guys use it for.

Introduction

I use Abyss on my home windows computer to host basic webpages which includes an indexing file that I’ve come to love made by http://www.celerondude.com/.  However I have always hated Apache and IIS as they are just a pain to get running, and for my purposes I wanted something that was easy, lightweight, and simple to setup and manage.  Abyss has a built-in GUI that allows you to edit the setup and configuration of the server with ease.  Here are the instructions I have use to setup Abyss to recognize php files.

Get Ready to Setup Abyss:

Download these files to get started:
Abyss: http://www.aprelium.com/abyssws/download.php

I am hosting the php installer that I use because I have always had great success using this version, however you can install the newer version from here: http://windows.php.net/download/

Preconfigured PHP Files for Abyss: http://www.tekblog.ca/downloads/website_files/php522.exe

Step by Step Setup:

1. Download Abyss server (link above), and install with default settings (If installed on Windows, I would suggest installing it as a windows service). Download and install the preconfigured PHP version for Abyss (links above)
2. Enter this URL in your browser: http://127.0.0.1:9999/console/language
3. Choose your preferred language
4. Enter the username and password you would like to use to secure the server.
5. It will then ask your user name and password again, type this and press OK. You will see the following screen:

6. Click the “Configure” buttom. You will find the following screen:

7. Click on “Scripting Parameters”.
8. You will find the following Interpreters table, click “Add”:

9. Set the Interface drop down to: FastCGI (Local – Pipes).
10. In interpreter field set the path: C:\Program Files\PHP5\php-cgi.exe if you have installed PHP in C:\ Program Files
11. Set Type drop down to PHP Style.
12. Make sure “Use the associated extensions to automatically update the Script Paths” is checked.
13. Click “Add” in Associated Extensions table:
14. Type php in the extension field and pesss OK. Press OK.

15. Click on “Index Files”

16. Click “Add”
17. Type in index.php and then click ok twice
18. Click on “Restart” to restart the server so that configuration changes can take effect.
19. If you have installed Abyss Server in C:\Program Files, we will have to put your web files inside C:\Program Files\Abyss Web Server\htdocs to make it work.
20. If you would like to change the location of the website files you can change it within the “General” section of the configuation page here:
21. Your server address will be http://localhost/
22. If you ever want to change the settings of your server, it can be accessed here: http://127.0.0.1:9999/

NOTE: These steps very a little bit different for Abyss version X2, however they generally are the same, just omit step 9.