Rob's Rants

For several years Symantec’s Norton products have made my life a living hell. Three years ago I bought my 70 year-old mother a Dell computer to replace her nearly 10 year-old Gateway that was finally too old to run Windows XP. (It actually lives on running Debian Linux in my basement.) The system arrived with the full complement of Dell bloatware, most of which I spent a couple of hours uninstalling. But since she has DSL service, I figured she should have some sort of virus protection, so I left the copy of Norton 360 installed.

Since that fateful moment, every single problem I’ve had to troubleshoot on her computer has been the result of Norton. This is not an exaggeration. My mother lives an hour away from me, so an onsite troubleshooting session is a minimum of two hours of commuting hassle. And Norton has required at least four onsite visits as well as several remote troubleshooting sessions (thank you Team Viewer and the free for personal use policy). The bulk of the problems have come after automatic updates and upgrades. Usually what happens is that the update wouldn’t successfully complete and there would be a constant security warning box that freaked my mother out until I could download an updated version and install it. Other times the problems came at the annual subscription renewal time where my mother could never get the system to take her order and the subscription would run out and the product would flash all kinds of warnings.

But the final straw happened about three weeks ago when another upgrade failed to completely install, and it caused a constant BSOD, which meant I couldn’t remotely troubleshoot it either. So into the car I went, fighting Boston traffic the whole way. Using the Windows Task Manager I confirmed that a Norton process was running when the BSOD happened . So, after the third reboot, I managed to start the task manager fast enough to get in and kill both Norton processes and then verified that the computer would actually stay running, which it did. So I started uninstalling Norton, but as anyone who had tried knows, Norton can’t be uninstalled easily. Using the uninstall option in the Norton program group left enough crap on the system that the upgrade process actually started itself and the incomplete update warning box popped up – after the program was supposed to uninstalled! So I had to download a special uninstall program from the Symantec website, because, well, because why the hell should the uninstall option actually uninstall the program? Fucking hell, Symantec, how do you assholes live with yourselves?

So I am officially done with Symantec – I’ve moved into active boycott mode. I have run Kaspersky antivirus on my own systems since it was a freeware program for Linux and I have had only one technical problem in all those years due to a bad upgrade that they posted which caused a major Windows security conflict. But they published a patch within a few hours. So my mom is now running Kaspersky too.

And I am D-O-N-E done with Symantec and Norton products.

Over the holiday weekend my Dash 3G simply stopped connecting to the network. No data, no phone, no bars, no nothing. Don’t know exactly when it happened, but when I picked up my phone to go to work on Tuesday morning, I had nada for signal strength. And no matter how I tried to reboot, pull the battery, pull and reinstall the SIM, nothing helped. I began to suspect there was a widespread outage in the Northeast, but nope … it was just me.

I called T-Mobile to check and the phone tech was helpful. I was pleasantly surprised at their ability to troubleshoot a Windows Mobile phone. We tried to reset the network settings, but nothing helped. The phone tech was the one who suggested that perhaps the SIM had failed. This had never happened to me before – a bad SIM? A SIM failing for no apparent reason? I mean, it’s not like I remove it from my phone. I hadn’t opened the back in months – how the hell could it just fail?

I didn’t believe it. I searched the web and one of the first hits to come up was a thread on XDA-Developers by a couple of people running the same 3VOlution modified ROM that I am … uh-oh. Maybe a ROM problem? But the ROM shouldn’t affect the radio I reasoned – those are separate programs. But you never know … So like an idiot I hard-reset my phone and wiped everything to go back to a fresh ROM installation. It didn’t help.

When my wife returned home that night I finally got to test the SIM theory. Sure enough, my SIM was bad. If I swapped my wife’s SIM for mine (she has a Dash 3G also) she had no bars and my phone was fine. So I put them back and resigned myself to getting a new SIM first thing this morning.

When I got off the train I dropped into the T-Mobile store on Lincoln Street on Boston (near South Station). I walked in and someone asked if they could help. I told them I needed a new SIM. He asked if I was sure, I said yes, and he asked for my phone number and ID. Then he took one out from behind the counter, put the number into the computer, and told me I was good to go. Total time took less than 2 minutes from when I walked in the door. And there was no charge. I plugged it in while in the store and sure enough, my signal came right back.

After spending a couple of hours rebuilding my phone (because I had reset it like an idiot) I did notice one improvement. It seems that I now get a better signal in many places than I did. I’m not saying that I get a dramatic improvement in strength, just that I am able to hold a 3G signal in places where I used to drop to EDGE speeds. On my train ride home (thered to my MacBook where I am writing this) I’d say I’m seeing a 30% improvement. I drop out of 3G coverage less than I did. Who knew that the SIM itself could have such an effect on signal.

Anyway, T-Mobile Customer Service was very good to me again, reminding me why I stay with them as a carrier. And I’m glad my Dash is working again, even if I did have dreams of getting a new My Touch or HD2 if it was my phone that was dead. But I’m happy I saved the money.

Thanks T-Mobile.

And I mean that in a good way.

One of the most often overlooked tax rules, at least among technology workers, is that personal use of a work-provided cellphone is a taxable benefit and you’re supposed to pay the Gov’t if you do this. The problem is, almost everyone who has ever been issued a cellphone for work uses it for personal use and no one ever tracks it and pays the tax.

Although the IRS has recently (January 2010) indicated that they would hold off on enforcing their position outlined above, instead waiting for Congress to pass legislation clarifying the issue (see this FierceWireless article), waiting for Congress to actually do something could take the better part of a lifetime. So, whether or not you think the benefit should be taxable, it is. That’s the way the law is written. It essentially says that personal use of a work-provided cellphone is a taxable “fringe benefit,” and just like the use of a company car, it should be tracked and reported. But the paperwork to account of all the simple 30 second personal calls one makes is so ridiculously burdensome that no one does it.

And this is where I think Google Voice can help. Simply put, you can avoid using your work cellphone for personal calls if people call a Google Voice number that also reaches your desk phone. Or, if your work plan can designate some free numbers (Inner Circle, MyFaves, etc.), and your Google Voice number was one of them, then you could probably show that you weren’t consuming any chargeable minutes taking personal calls and will owe nothing. As the Wall Street Journal says in the article linked above, one of the IRS’ suggested rules says:

The IRS, in a notice issued this week, said employees could avoid tax liability if they showed proof they used personal cellphones for nonbusiness calls during work hours. The agency also could decide on a set number of phone minutes as “minimal personal use” that would be untaxed.

I would hope that showing that you used your own personal GV number would also count, if you could show that the company paid nothing for those minutes.

Anyway, I think it’s important that I point out the following warning. In big red letters.

I am not an accountant. I haven’t consulted with an accountant to write this. I may have no idea what I’m talking about. I could just be a babbling idiot. This is just an idea, not advice.

Or, as the Refreshments say in the song Nada:

There ain’t no moral to this story at all.
Anything I tell you very well could be a lie.
I’ve been away from the living, I don’t need to be forgiven,
I’m just waiting for that cold black soul of mine,
To come alive.

Good luck with your taxes.

The other day it was announced all over the web that Google Voice was finally available again for the iPhone, only as a web app instead of a true app. Google created a web page at http://m.google.com/voice rather than trying to get another app approved n the App Store. I checked it out on my iPhone (yes, I have one too — for work) and it is a great app. Although it doesn’t integrate fully with the iPhone contacts and dialer, it does present a decent dialer of its own and works very quickly and cleanly, initiating calls via the web and calling the handset back to complete the call.

Google says on the mobile web page that the m.google.com/voice page works for the iphone and for BlackBerries; the page identifies the phone type when you get to the page and directs you appropriately. So I wondered what would happen if I went there with a Windows Mobile browser like Opera.

Google Voice Mobile Screen

The result is a useful if ugly web page. The interface is limited to simple links, but all the necessary functionality is available. You can initiate a call by simply adding the number or selecting something from your Google contacts (it doesn’t integrate with your phone contacts). You can also see and manage any voicemail messages that you have.

By assigning Opera to a speed dial key on the phone and then assigning the Google page to a numbered bookmark, the page is only three clicks from any page on the phone. It isn’t quite iPhone convenient, but it works.

The downside to this implementation is that it’s dependent on a data connection, so you can’t use it where you have phone only service. This probably isn’t an issue for Verizon customers, but us T-Mobile and AT&T folks need to worry about these things.

Google Voice Mobile Connect Screen

Initiating a quick call is pretty simple and it does integrate with your contacts. It uses the callback method, so once you input a number or select a contact to call, you are presented with a list of your registered phones and the option to select the one to connect with the call. The iPhone app recognizes that it’s your iPhone, and once set up will always ring back to that number.

Please note that I have captured these screens from my Dash 3G with its tiny QVGA screen. I’m willing to bet that this app will look and work better on a larger touchscreen device. But at least those of us with non-touchscreen Windows Mobile smartphones finally have a workable Google Voice method besides GVoice Dialer. At the very least, it will give me another option to overcome the problems I’ve been having with GVoice Dialer connecting, particularly in noisy environments.

It finally happened to me. My Twitter identity caught up with me and my professional life.

As part of my day job, I was asked to write a post for my company’s website. And, within the community of professionals in my field, the post got some traction and rapidly appeared on Twitter. Of course it wasn’t long before someone figured out my Twitter username, since it was my real name and started following me. Within hours, everyone from my boss’ boss’ boss to influential industry figures were following me, and presumably weren’t interested in my great posts about spare ribs and pulled pork.

So I faced the dilemma … do I keep a single Twitter account for personal and work use, or should I create a second online persona and divide my personal from my professional life? I follow people who have done it both ways. In some ways, it’s kind of nice to get a glimpse into the private life of someone you follow for professional reasons. But there’s a difference between someone following me for work getting a glimpse into my affinity for music, and someone expecting an occasional opinion on industry events but getting 8 tweets a month about bar-b-que and me hacking my cellphone.

So I ultimately ended up creating a new Twitter user name for my own personal use, and I will be transitioning my original name to my professional persona. The change has already been made on this site — my new “Mass_BBQ” name is linked to the Twitter display in the sidebar.

The good news is that many people are in this same situation. So most Twitter clients, including TweetDeck and PocketTweet which I use, can display and post to multiple accounts at once. So keep an eye for my posts on a new account.

I’ve written about GVoiceDialer before, and in spite of some problems, I’ve continued to use it, since it’s really the only Google Voice client available for non-touchscreen Windows Mobile phones.

However, I was growing increasingly frustrated with it because it would frequently fail to complete my calls. Usually the Google computerized voice would indicate that invalid keys had been pressed or some other error would occur. It was very unreliable. Well it finally occurred to me the other day what was happening. Most of the time when I had trouble, I was either outside in Boston, or on a train. When it worked, I was either at home or in my office. So I attributed the issue to signal strength. Maybe I wasn’t getting more than 1 bar when outside and the keys weren’t registering correctly.

In reality — it is the background noise! My house and office are quiet. Other locations where I typically use it aren’t . And I discovered that the background noise often prevents the Google system from recognizing the DTMF tones correctly. So the trick is to mute your phone as soon as GVoiceDialer starts the call and unmute once you hear the “this is a free call” announcement from Google. Since I’ve started this trick, GVoiceDialer has proven very reliable, regardless of where I use it.

This should be a feature built into the next version (assuming there is a next version). Muting of the phone’s mic when dialing.

But for now, it works much better if I remember to mute the phone.

Over the last nine or ten months I have tweaked, upgraded, and generally overhauled my T-Mobile Dash 3G smartphone. I’ve learned quite a bit along the way. And after my most recent upgrades I think I finally have a really solid phone that I love. So if you’ve recently picked up a Dash, or are thinking about it, here’s all the information I have in one place.

The Basics

To turn your new phone into a lean, mean, communications machine, I recommend ditching the Windows Mobile 6.1 that comes on the phone and upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5. Since neither T-Mobile or HTC has released an official 6.5 upgrade yet, you’re best bet is a custom “cooked” ROM. I use the latest version of ookba’s “3Volution” ROM. In the interest of full disclosure, modifying your phone with custom software will invalidate any warranty on the device, and most probably violates several copyrights. However, in defense of this practice, it has been well established that Microsoft is aware of, and its employees contributors to, the XDA-Developers community among others. And with all the resources at its disposal, Microsoft has not attempted to shut down the practice. So if you choose to do this, do so with an understanding of what you’re doing. (See sidebar for more info.)

To install it, follow these steps:

1. Install a \”hard SPL\” security fix, which allows non-official ROMs to be installed.
2. Install the latest version of ookba\’s ROM.

I’ve written a little about the upgraded ROM here and here.

Upgrade the Radio

Although I’m not sure upgrading the radio made a really dramatic improvement, it does seem to have helped a little. It certainly hasn’t hurt.

Install Some Useful Applications

I’ve made a couple of lists of useful software that I’ve installed. The main list is here and the second list is here.

Learn

There are many resources on the web for Dash 3G owners. Here are some good ones:

• XDA-Developers is the premiere forum for detailed inf0rmation about all HTC phones. The Maple forum is at: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=499
• The official T-Mobile upgrade information is: http://www.t-mobile.com/WMupgrade/
• The official HTC info is: http://www.htc.com/www/product/snap/overview.html and the HTC upgrade info is: http://www.htc.com/www/supportdownloadlist.aspx?p_id=262&act=sd&cat=all

The other day I flashed my phone to the latest version of the 3Volution ROM which Ookba had released on XDA-Developers. It’s been three days now and I’m very happy with it. It’s stable and fast and, so far, everything woks as expected. Even the Skyfire ALT key bug has been fixed.

There was really only one last thing to tackle on this device: the cellular radio itself. In a cellphone, there are really two sets of code that make things work, The Phone’s Operating System (OS) and the radio software. The OS controls all of the functions that you can see, while the radio software controls the way the phone communicates with the network. The OS and the radio can be installed separately.

Users on various message boards have reported that their phones seem to drop their 3G data connection back to EDGE speeds whenever they end a phone call. And a few people have complained that their ability to capture a 3G signal in the first place is suspect. Some people hope that an upgraded radio software package from the manufacturer will address some of these issues. In fact, it probably won’t, since connection speed decisions are made by the network and not the phone, but at any rate I figure that if HTC released a newer version of the radio software, there must be some improvement in it….

My Dash 3G originally shipped with radio version 3.44.25.30 (check yours by going to START/SETTINGS/ABOUT). The manufacturer (HTC) released a Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade separately from the T-Mobile upgrade, and the HTC version had some updated radio code in it. Ookba managed to extract this package and build it into a stand-alone update, with version 3.47.25.29 in it. And that’s what I installed.

The Verdict

Well … the flash worked perfectly and everything installed in about a minute of work. Did it change the way my phone behaves? Not that much that I can see. It certainly doesn’t seem to have hurt anything, but there is no dramatic improvement either. I think that I am able to get better signal on my normal commute, but this could also very well be the result of T-Mobile’s ongoing network upgrades too. I don’t get any faster speeds when my laptop is tethered. I’m not sure yet whether actual phone performance is enhanced (I haven’t made enough calls).

So my recommendation is this: if you are comfortable flashing your phone, go for it. You might see some marginal improvements. But if flashing makes you nervous, then there’s no reason to suffer through this – the improvements aren’t dramatic.

Posted via web from robhavasy’s posterous