Testing Flock! YANB

Posted on October 21, 2005 by Poohbah

Just what we need, YANB (Yet Another Browser) and YANMB (Yet Another Mozilla Branch)

As the flock site said, it’s not for the faint of heart.

It’s from the Firefox base, but it’s like Firefox with goodies. Firefox with integrated tools for uploading photos, blogging and all kinds of other stuff. So far so good.

This post alone was slammed into datapoohbah.com by the built in blogging thing-a-ma-bob. Assuming of course that when I push the publish button that it works.

[Note: it worked but the stuff that got put up was nasty looking and I had to change it, but hey it's beta software]

Microsoft to Storm Linux Strongholds? rolf, No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

Posted on October 20, 2005 by Poohbah

Microsoft to Storm Linux Strongholds? rolf

This was posted on slashdot in reference to Mr. Balmers recent talk on how M$ will storm the Unix/Linux strongholds, I take no credit for this.

TimeWarp to MontyPython and the Holy Grail…

Gates: Hallo! Hallo!
Mandriva: ‘Allo! Who is it?
G: It is King Bill, and these are the Programers of the Square Table. Who’s castle is this?
M: This is the castle of my master, Guy de Linus!
G: Go and tell your master that I have charged myself with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night he can join us in our quest for the Holy OS.
M: Well, I’ll ask him, but I don’t think he’ll be very keen… Uh, he’s already got one, you see?
G: What?
Balmer: He says they’ve already got one!
G: Are you sure he’s got one?
M: Oh, yes, it’s very nice-a (I told him we already got one)
G: Well, um, can we come up and have a look?
M: Of course not! You are Windows types-a!
G: Well, what are you then?
M: I’m Linux! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king!
B: What are you doing in our computers?
M: Mind your own business!
G: If you will not show us the OS, we shall take your castle by force!
M: You don’t frighten us, Windows pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Bill-king, you and all your silly Windows kaniggets. Thppppt!
B: What a strange person.
G: Now look here, my good man!
M: I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough water! I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
B: Is there someone else up there we could talk to?
M: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

The End Is Near! Want Proof?

Posted on October 19, 2005 by Poohbah

drachenfels reminds us that when ever you’re bored you can always have fun with chruch signs.

It’s a good day to be a Verizon/Motorola v710 Owner!

Posted on October 12, 2005 by Poohbah

It’s a good day to be a Verizon/Motorola v710 Owner!

Today I got my class-action lawsuit settlement. Man Verizon bent over and took it like a like they should. Don’t mess with standards folks, that’s the message. Don’t take away from us that what hath been given to us by the great technologist of our time.

When great technology is adopted, not quashed great things happen!

If you don’t know the gist of this, the v710 was/is a superb phone.

One of the best Moto has ever released (pre-Razor of course). It has outstanding voice independent voice recognition, a camera that isn’t too shabby and really decent Bluetooth.

The problem is, Verizon crippled the Bluetooth in these devices to limit the file exchange protocols inherent withing Bluetooth. Thusly forcing end users to send photos and ring tones through Verizons services instead of loading them and getting them off the device via normal everyday Bluetooth enabled devices.

Verizon clearly advertised the phone as fully Bluetooth enabled, which it was not.

I’m so happy with this… I’ve been a Verizon customer now for 6 or 7 years. I ALWAYS pay the extra $50 to keep a (ONE) year deal with them because every year they screw something up and piss me off. You can’t sneeze in their store without them attempting to extend your contract.

Keeping your contract to a one year deal means you get to purchase new equipment every year (instead of two). I want this option. Technology changes too quickly, as to carriers.

They want to lock you in for two or more years. That’s their gig. My gig is to reduce my exposure, and to me that’s worth $50.00

S0 with this fancy new letter in hand I have the following options:

Users who bought a Motorola V710 have a few options before December 9, 2005:

1. Keep the V710 and receive a $25 credit from Verizon.
2. Return the V710 (including all accessories) for a full refund but keep their service.
3. Return the V710 for a refund and break the service agreement without a termination charge.
4. Ignore everything.

Yeah, like I’m going to choose numbers 1 or 4.

I bought my v710 at full retail ($400 bones) when it first came out. I’m still using it. It’s a great phone, but it’s time to upgrade, and it looks like I get to do so at Verizon’s expense.

Wh00t!

I only hope Verizon learned their lesson.

Directory Express

Posted on October 8, 2005 by CmdrChalupa

Directory Express

Future home of Directory Express the: Ubber directory services for Cisco VOIP phones.

Featuring:

Full Active Directory Integration with Filtering (you no longer have to scroll through admin and service accounts , etc
Search by Name
Search by Department
List Department
and much more.
Complete Intranet Directory companion Portal is included as well!

Update 11/18/2005 Screenshots!

Much progress has been made on the web portal but more testing needs to be done. New features are being added and old features need a little refinement. Directory Express is working as a beta in our corporate environment and we found a couple of issues and some new features.

In order to whet the appetites, let’s show a little screens of what we have so far…

The admin page. Setup the Active Directory integration from here, plus locations of your pictures. DE phone numbers, titles, can be updated on the fly. Click which fields are user editable if the user logs on. (using their AD logon of course).

What a user first sees on the web portal. Choose printable or nonprintable options, logon, or click on the tab to search the directory.

By alphabet…

By Name…

Or by department. Directory Express does a dynamic search through the Active Directory accounts and lists all departments listed in user’s department attribute. We only do this once at the beginning of the page load so it’s fast.

UPDATE 12/19/2005

Directory Express is almost there. I’ve stopped adding features and am cleaning the code. Here are some more screenshots of the phone itself. These pics were taken of the desktop Cisco ip communicator. It’s basically a 7970 color screen.

Here is the Main Menu showing that in addition to the ordinary directory options you can search by name, initials or Department.

Searching by name lets you specify a first or last name by text.

Searching by initials mean punch in the first initial and last initial by number. if you want to find the number of John Smith you would punch in 57 and submit. This kind of search is wicked fast with the least number of button pushes and in small organizations gets you to the right person quickly.

Searching by department rips through the Active Directory to find all departments listed, so this is a dynamic list of entries in the users AD department field. Choose one to see the list.