Printing from the iPad without buying a new printer

Ok, so you’ve got a snazzy new iPad, and would like to print.  Since iOS 4.2, Apple has had AirPrint, which only works with a small set of HP printers.  While yes, it’s super cool to be able to print from the iPad, how much will you really do this?  If it’s enough to warrant buying a new printer, good for you.  If you’re like me, and want to have the ability to do so, but probably will rarely do it.  Read on to find out more.

When big companies attack, stupidly.

There’s a whole big flap going on this week about VeriFone (a $4.2bn company), and their attacks against Square (a startup that’s recently received $37.5m in VC funding).  The attacks are unfounded, and quite frankly, just dumb.

The crux of VeriFone’s attacks surround the ability to develop smartphone apps.  So, a bit of background first..  Square’s business model is radically different than other credit card processing houses.  They give you a little dongle that attaches to your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.  You load a little app on the device, and you start accepting CC payments using the dongle as the card swiper.  Square takes 2.75% of the transaction.  This is radically different than others, which typically charge a base fee plus 2-4% of the total charge amount.  For most smaller users, Square is a vastly better deal than other solutions.

VeriFone, not being fond of losing business has elected to throw FUD at the competition, rather than simply compete with them.  They developed a little app of their own, called it Square and used it to demo how a malicious individual could steal credit card data from customers.  Big, fat, hairy deal, right?  Wrong.

The problem is that while yes, someone could write a rogue app and use it in this manner, they failed to mention that their own software, PaywarePC runs on PCs.  Swipe devices for PCs are typically just USB HID devices (HID == Human Interface Device) that act like a specialized keyboard.  Install a keylogger on the system and you’ll capture everything, including CVV2 data, since that has to be inputted on – you guessed it, a keyboard.

Why not start attacking any company that accepts credit cards over the phone, or over the Internet?  Your data is just as vulnerable there as well.

This is just plain and simple FUD.  Bad business.  You should be able to win business based on the merits of your products, not based on how much FUD you can throw at your competitor’s products.

More baby products you’ll never, ever need.

There’s a mind-numbingly large number of products targeted at new parents who just don’t know better.  Here’s a sampling of my favorite utterly useless baby products.

Wipe Warmer

This little gem will set you back anywhere from $15 to $40, depending on how many bells and whistles your model has.  So, what the heck is it?  Put simply, it’s a little box that’s got a low-power heating element in it and plugs into the wall.  You buy wipes, shove them in the box and as you need them, you pull them out one at a time from the top.  Wait, you what?  You mean, like the package they came in?  Exactly.  But the difference here is that little Skylar will only ever have nice, toasty-warm wipes touch her tender little tushie.

Give me a break.  The wipes touch the kid’s butt for what?  5 seconds at a time?  So, save your money, don’t buy a $30 box that duplicates the functionality of the already free package that your wipes came in.

Designer Stroller

I don’t care if you’re the wealthiest parents walking, you do not need a $700+ stroller.  Really, you don’t.  I don’t care if you’re at the height of New York society, your baby’s tender little rump won’t suffer if you just use a normal stroller.  Heck, for the first year, you don’t even need a conventional stroller at all.  Get the 30-lb rated carrier style infant seat, and a frame to drop it in, like the Snap-n-Go.  Don’t get suckered into buying the “Travel System” either.  The strollers tend to be very large and don’t fold compactly at all.  After your kid is done in the carrier, that’s when it’s time to consider upgrading to something else.  We had excellent success with a Maclaren Quest.  It was very durable, lasting through 2 kids.  Ok, through 1, and then 3/4 of the way through the second.  We weren’t exactly gentle with it, so we felt we got our money’s worth.  We got another of the same model, and eventually recouped probably 2/3 of the cost when we re-sold it.  Those go for about $200.  I’ve heard excellent things about the $99 Maclaren Volo as well.  A friend of ours has a Peg Perego, which is also very nice, though doesn’t fold up nearly as compactly as the Maclaren models do.  Why not a $20 umbrella stroller?  If you’re short, go for it.  I’m 6′ tall.  While my wife, who’s 5’5″ is completely comfortable pushing around those $20 umbrella strollers, they’re so short that I had to walk hunched over.  That alone made it worth the extra cash to me.

Britax Super-Deluxe Car Seat & Cappuccino maker.

This is really one of my pet peeves.  Let’s face it, people are gullible.  Someone didn’t install their car seat right, or their seatbelt failed and a kid got killed.  It’s a terrible shame, and it’s awful that the family had to go through that.  As part of their grief process, they convince themselves that all children need to be put in gigantic, suffocating 5-point harnesses, locked inside a Sherman tank, and made a youtube video showing their other kid in one of those seats.  Cue the herd of Internet sheeple who jump on the bandwagon, and you’ve got 5-point harness hysteria.  Do kids need to be in properly installed car seats at all times?  Yes, without question.  Do you need the $400 car seat?  Nope.  A $100 Graco seat will do just fine, thanks.  And yes, belt-positioning boosters are just fine too, for kids that are big enough for them.  The greatest irony?  In that youtube video, their younger kid that’s in the gigantic Britax seat isn’t properly restrained.  Say what?  There are twists in the harness belts.  Twists in the belt greatly increase the likelihood of the strap breaking in a collision.  Broken straps mean much greater chance of injury or death.

Shopping Cart Cover

Nothing screams, “utterly stupid waste of money” like this thing.  You’ve seen them before.  Strolling through the supermarket, here comes little Hunter and his parents, in a cart that’s lined with one of these monsters.  First thing, can you imagine how hard it is to install it, with two arms, let alone trying to do it one handed while holding a squirming child?  Get real.  But, but, but…  germs! bacteria! pestilence! plague!  Shopping carts are dirty, filthy things that will instantly give your child the Ebola virus, right?  Well, not really.  If you’re that worried about germs on a shopping cart, use an antibacterial wipe on the handle.

It’s funny, I saw one yesterday in the supermarket.  This monster was fully tricked out.  Not only did it cover the whole area that the kid sat in, it covered the handle of the cart, had a 5-point harness built in (you know, in case your baby suddenly develops the leg strength of a 5 year old and decides to launch themselves out the cart), and little tethers suitable for connecting toys to.  After all, you wouldn’t want a toy to ever get dropped on the floor (gasp!).  If you’re the overprotective, helicopter parent-in-training, this is definitely the product for you.  If you’re normal like the rest of us, skip it.

Changing Table

This one’s right up there with the shopping cart cover.  While it’s certainly got some utility, that utility is short-lived.  By the time your kid’s a year old, you’ll be on the floor changing your kid, simply because he’s too big.  We got a dresser that had enough surface area to accomodate a changing pad.  Worked just fine, and the pad was worth the $10 for convenience early on.  By a year, we were down on the floor.

Toddler Beds

Now mind you, I’m not talking about removing the front rail of a crib so that it’s like a day bed.  I’m talking about buying a bed, specifically made for a crib-sized mattress.  Our oldest was in a crib that had the rail off by the time he was a year old.  By the time he was a year and a half, he was in a regular twin bed, since we needed the crib back for the arrival of his little sister.  We had a rail on the twin bed for about 6 months, at which point, it was time to get rid of it.  For the first couple of nights we made big piles of pillows along the side of the bed in case he fell out.  Never happened.  He’s only ever fallen out of bed from fooling around, which doesn’t exactly count.  Our younger one was in a twin bed for her 2nd birthday.  Never had a rail for her in the twin, as it was a much lower bed than our son’s.

Bottom line, use your head, and don’t believe what marketing people tell you is good for you & your kids.

Samsung Fascinate – Bing?

Samsung Fascinate

People are getting all fired up and throwing great big fits over this one.

Verizon Wireless just released their Samsung Galaxy S handset, the Fascinate.  Like it’s other Galaxy S cousins, it sports a 4″ Super AMOLED screen (or was that SuperDuperAwesomeSquared?), a 5 MP camera on the back (this time with a flash, unlike some of the other Galaxy S devices), and their earth-shattering 1 Ghz Cortex A8 CPU, the cousin of the Apple A4 that lives in the latest Apple iDevices and AppleTV.

What’s the problem?  The default search on the device is Microsoft Bing.  You can’t change the “default” system search tool, i.e. what the search softkey uses.  Bad move, I think.  However, nothing is stopping you from going to the Market and downloading the Google Search app, removing the Bing widget from the home screen and dropping the Google Search widget right there in its place.

Is this a huge deal breaker?  Probably not.  The people who really care enough about this, will likely be the same people who will consider rooting their phone and installing a custom ROM.  I’m sure the Cyanogen Mod squad is hard at work on producing a CM6 release for the Fascinate.  They already have one underway for the Vibrant, the T-Mobile variant of the Galaxy S.

Image Source: Boy Genius Report

Review/Howto: CyanogenMod 6.0

I finally did it.  I rooted, and took the plunge.  This past week, Cyanogen release CM6.0, based on Android 2.2, aka Froyo.  What the heck is this rooting business about?  One of the nifty things about Android is the open source nature of the beast.  Since the source code is all out there, users are free to modify, remix & reload to their heart’s content.  Now, I’ll grant you that you’re not likely to find a lot of kernel hackers out there who really want to squeeze the last bit of performance out of their phone.  However, that’s not to say that there aren’t users who want to serve up the phone “their way,” be that simply changing the look & feel of the device, swapping out the kernel for one that underclocks the CPU to save battery, or even simply gaining more control over the device (especially true in carrier-subsidized devices).

Right now, CM6 is available for a handful of HTC devices, as well as the original Motorola Droid.  For a complete list, check the wiki to see if your phone can use CM6.  First up, you’ll need root access to your device, as you’re going to need to flash a custom recovery image onto your phone.  Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds.  Again, back to the wiki, look at the detailed directions for your device.  For some devices, like the Nexus One (what I’m using), you may want to grab the “Universal Androot” package.  It works for the N1, as well as a bunch of other devices, and is available from the developer’s site. And yes, Virginia, there is enough of the pages written in English that you’ll be able to figure it out.  If you’re a phone that’s not supported by the Universal Androot, you’re not sunk yet.  There’s either a manual process, which will be described on the wiki, linked above, OR if you have an HTC Evo, Desire, Incredible, Wildfire, Aria (aka Liberty) or Hero, you can use unrevoked.  It’s pretty painless.

My Home Screen

Warning: once you root, there may be no going back, especially if you do something like unlock the bootloader.  Officially speaking, once you unlock the bootloader (which isn’t always required), your warranty may be void.  I’m not responsible if you blow up your phone, start a small war, or your cat runs away.

Another warning: If you’re using a device that uses the HTC Sense UI, flashing CM6 will cause the UI to revert to the standard Android UI.

Got root?  Ok, now it’s onto the easy parts.  Install ROM Manager from the Android Market.  You can use the free version without any troubles.  Got that loaded?  Go ahead and flash the Clockworkmod Recovery to your phone.  ROM Manager should autodetect what type of phone you have, but it will ask for confirmation before it does anything.

Ready to roll?  Ok, grab the CM6 ROM image from a mirror.  While you’re at it, grab the latest Google Apps zip file for your phone type as well.  Stash those on your SD card.  Here we go.  First up, a full backup.  Back into ROM Manager, and “Reboot into Recovery”.  In the recovery?  Ok, now do a backup.  This is also called a “Nandroid Backup”.  What the heck is that?  Put simply, it’s a full backup of your current ROM image.  You want to do this.  REALLY.

Once you’re in the recovery menu, just do a backup.  Navigating the recovery menu uses the trackball to go up, down & select, and the power button acts as a “back button”. Your backup will take 3-5 minutes, and will require about 300-500 MB on your SD card.  Make sure you’ve got the space available!  For your reference, my Nexus One’s backup of the stock 2.2 image was 303MB.

HTC_IME Keyboard Portrait

All backed up?  Ok, let’s go.  Do a factory reset/wipe and wipe the cache as well.  Next, install a zip file from the SD card, specifically the CM6 ROM.  Repeat the steps to install the gapps image as well (if you’re planning on using the gapps, and you probably are).  All done?  Reboot.  Your phone will come up like it’s all brand new.

I’ve take some additional steps, going a bit further than just stock CM6.  I also added the HTC_IME Mod keyboard, which replaces the standard Android keyboard with the HTC Sense keyboard.  Once you get it installed, selecting it is as simple as doing a long press on a text field, and changing the input method to HTC_IME mod (assuming you’ve already turned the mod on in the system keyboard preferences!).

So back to the review.  So, was it all worth it?  I’d have to say yes.  Absolutely.  There was certain a small amount of inconvenience, associated with backup & restore of data, re-creating accounts and sync mappings, as well as the little things like prefs for ringtones, etc.  That was far and away outweighed by the good stuff I got – better performance, enhanced feature set – especially the use of ADW.Launcher by default, and the enhanced power control widget.

HTC_IME Keyboard Landscape

Ok, so now suppose you want to go back to where you started, how do you undo all of this?  Simply boot back into the recovery image, do another factory reset/wipe, wipe the cache and then restore.  Reboot, and you’re back.

Android is still in many regards somewhat of a wild west affair with regard to software updates, especially given the open source nature of the OS.  Will there be bumps along the way?  Probably.  Are you the type wants a phone that “just works” and doesn’t like to tinker?  CM6 probably isn’t for you, nor is pretty much any custom ROM.

Alex takes a trip to the Wipeout Zone, Lego style

Review: Google Nexus One

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a trial of a Google Nexus One.  This is my first Android device, and I must say, so far, I’m mighty impressed.  We’ve all been reading about Android, Google’s Linux-based mobile device OS for what seems like forever now.  In those many articles, all the promise that the platform brings to the table, with all of the open-source goodness – now that Android’s been around for a while, how does it measure up?

For those who don’t know, I was a hardcore Symbian user for years, mostly S60 devices, though I had a fleeting stint using a Nokia 9300 (my only S80 device ever).  That’s what you get when you spend the better part of 10 years working at Nokia.  Nokia has historically done a very good job of producing smartphones – it’s been their bread & butter for years.  I had a brief stint using an N97, followed by a loaner of an N97 Mini from the Womworld guys, and I was never wowed, heck, never even liked S60 v5.  For me, the last great S60 was v3.  FP1 or FP2 were both good to me.  Heck, I still have an N85 that I use for my home line.

These days, it seems like everyone’s in iLove, going absolutely gaga over the iPhone, including the latest incarnation – the iPhone 4.  Deathgrip aside, I was never a huge fan of the iPhone.  I had a 3G for a day, and returned it.  Bad battery life (like in the 3-4 hour range), and the walled garden – don’t get me started about locking out developers – I maintain that it’s bad for business in the long run.

I got my Nexus One in the AT&T variant, so it’s got quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band (850/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA support, as well as the 802.11g WLAN, Bluetooth and GPS radios.  That’s a lot of RF in a small case.  Physically speaking, the Nexus One feels great in your hand.  There’s some sort of coating on the metal parts that’s just slightly tacky, not metallic at all.  It just feels great in your hands.  The RF performance on the Nexus One is very good in my experience.  I don’t notice any lower coverage than I saw with my prior Nokia E72.  All in all, very good.

Connectivity is where Android 2.2 really shines.  On my Nexus One, I’ve got my home Google Apps account sync’d, as well as my corporate Exchange ActiveSync.  The phone keeps track of where the different bits of data came from and only tries to sync the appropriate data to the various accounts.  It’s very well thought out and I didn’t wind up with lots of data duplication.  Further, Android 2.2 implements the much sought-after mobile hotspot feature.  If you’re unfamiliar, you use your WLAN radio to setup an Access Point, then connect WLAN devices to that AP, which shares your phone’s 3G (or even EDGE) wireless data connection.  Pretty slick.

On the ActiveSync front, the client is very good, and fairly complete, though a couple of what I consider to be key features aren’t there yet.

Working	Not Working
Email, Contact & Calendar Sync with Exchange 2007	GAL lookup for contacts
GAL lookup for email recipients	GAL lookup for meeting requests
Accept, Reject, Tentative meeting request responses
Create meeting requests

Rather than the App Store, Android uses the Android Market.  Same idea, essentially, though it seems that you need to do substantially less hoop-jumping to get your app in the Market.  While yes, Apple definitely has a wide margin of available apps, I’ve yet to be disappointed when I got searching for an Android app for a specific task.  This review focuses on the device itself, not the apps, so I’m not going to go too deep there, but suffice it to say that I’m happy with the app selection.

Overall, it’s a great device, and the future for Android is indeed bright.  Go make the jump, you won’t be disappointed.

2 Wireless APs in One with VLAN trunking in OpenWRT

I had a bit of a technical challenge to solve in our house recently.  I wanted to create a guest WLAN, as well as another WLAN for Alex’s Nintendo DS.  The challenge?  The DS only does WEP.  No WPA at all.  Not being interested in giving unrestricted access to either group, particularly the latter, I decided it would be useful to deploy both SSIDs on the same AP, and try to map the different SSIDs into different VLANs.

Our firewall is a Juniper Networks SRX210, which lends itself very well to this task, as it supports ethernet switching natively.  First up was creating a couple of VLANs & RVIs on the firewall and assigning them to security zones.  These RVIs will need to have dhcp allowed on their as an inbound system service.  Next, some security policies will need to be created to allow devices in the new zones to talk out to the untrust (i.e. Internet) zone.  Next, you’ll need to configure a VLAN trunk on the port connected to the wireless AP (fe-0/0/6 in our example).  Finally, you’ll need to setup DHCP helpers for each of the RVIs to direct their DHCP requests to your DHCP server.  If you use the SRX as your DHCP server, you would instead configure a DHCP scope for these networks.  Here’s an example of what that might look like:

set vlans vlan2 vlan-id 2
set vlans vlan2 l3-interface vlan.2
set vlans vlan3 vlan-id 3
set vlans vlan3 l3-interface vlan.3

set int fe-0/0/6.0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set int fe-0/0/6.0 family ethernet-switching vlan members [ vlan2 vlan3 ]
set int vlan.2 family inet addr 192.168.2.1/24
set int vlan.3 family inet addr 192.168.3.1/24

set forwarding-options helpers bootp interface vlan.2 server 192.168.1.20
set forwarding-options helpers bootp interface vlan.3 server 192.168.1.20

set security zones security-zone guest interfaces vlan.2 host-inbound-traffic system-services dhcp
set security zones security-zone guest interfaces vlan.2 host-inbound-traffic system-services ping

set security zones security-zone dsnet interfaces vlan.3 host-inbound-traffic system-services dhcp
set security zones security-zone dsnet interfaces vlan.3 host-inbound-traffic system-services ping

But that’s only half of the battle.  We still need to setup the AP.  In our example, I used a Fonera Fon 2100.  Instructions for how to reflash it with OpenWRT can be found on their wiki.  Once you’ve got that together, you’ll need to make some mods to their stock network configuration to make it work, but it’s not so bad.  Essentially, you’ll make 2 SSIDs, and bind them to 2 VLAN-tagged sub-ints of eth0, forming 2 bridge groups.  In OpenWRT, when you create an interface of the form eth0.X, where X is in the range 1-4094, you’ve just created a tagged sub-int.

/etc/config/network:

config 'interface' 'loopback'
option 'ifname' 'lo'
option 'proto' 'static'
option 'ipaddr' '127.0.0.1'
option 'netmask' '255.0.0.0'

config 'interface' 'guest'
option 'ifname' 'eth0.2'
option 'type' 'bridge'
option 'proto' 'static'
option 'netmask' '255.255.255.0'
option 'ipaddr' '192.168.2.2'
option 'defaultroute' '0'
option 'peerdns' '0'
option 'stp' '1'

config 'interface' 'dsnet'
option 'ifname' 'eth0.3'
option 'type' 'bridge'
option 'proto' 'static'
option 'netmask' '255.255.255.0'
option 'ipaddr' '192.168.3.2'
option 'stp' '1'
option 'defaultroute' '0'
option 'peerdns' '0'


/etc/config/wireless:

config 'wifi-device' 'wifi0'
option 'type' 'atheros'
option 'channel' 'auto'
option 'disabled' '0'
option 'diversity' '0'

config 'wifi-iface'
option 'device' 'wifi0'
option 'mode' 'ap'
option 'ssid' 'dsnet'
option 'encryption' 'wep'
option 'key' 's:myWEPkey12345'
option 'macpolicy' 'allow'
list 'maclist' 'e8:4e:ce:xx:yy:zz'
option 'network' 'dsnet'

config 'wifi-iface'
option 'device' 'wifi0'
option 'ssid' 'notyourhouse'
option 'network' 'guest'
option 'mode' 'ap'
option 'encryption' 'psk2'
option 'key' 'guestWPAkey'

Now you’ve got both SSIDs up, each bound to a different VLAN, and can enforce different security policies on each!

iDon't Get It.

So, the day has finally come.  Everyone’s got iPad fever.  The intertubes are clogged with unboxing videos, reviews and twitter’s all agape with people railing on about how this new device is going to change their lives.  Ok, so this post’s title isn’t entirely accurate.  I sort of get why people want this thing..  It’s largely the same reason they want a netbook.  Small, light, does email & browsing.

But here’s what I don’t get.  Apple clearly wasn’t in a rush to get this thing out the door – rumors of an Apple tablet have been flying around ever since the Newton checked out.  It’s not like they had to push it out right now, at once.  Given those facts, why do it now, rather than let it finish cooking and release the product everyone wants?

To me, the device makes sense if you add some stuff to it.  Like for starters, a front-facing camera. This is the ideal form factor for a Skype / iChat Video device, yet it’s missing the camera.  Reading PDFs as part of iBooks should be part of the core functionality.  As near as I can tell, the way you get PDFs on the iPad is with 3rd party apps like Papers. Oh yeah, and it should cost half what it does.  I’d buy an 8GB iPad for $250.  Heck, I might even go $299.  But $499?  You’ve got to be kidding me.

Inevitably, all of these issues will be addressed, and you early adopters will pay the price, having financed iPad 2.0 and 3.0, which will integrate the features that should have been there on day 1.  I’m actually finally considering an iPhone, once I see what this year’s announcement brings.  Apple’s 4th pass at a phone might measure up.  We’ll see.

I Love the NJEA

The NJEA is a kind, wonderful organization that only has the best interests of children at heart.  No way are they some power-crazed organization bent on getting every penny they can at the expense of the taxpayer.  They’re really a good bunch of guys.  April Fool!

Wake up teachers.  The primary concern of the NJEA is that you pay your union dues.