Tony Sutton’s Blog!

I’ve been using Navizon for a while - it’s a pretty good program where it display your location on a map and help you find stuff around you. However it’s pretty new, so they are lacking data.

And that’s where I come into this - using my phone (MDA Vario III), I install the Navizon software on my phone and loaded it up. It hooked up my WiFi and GPS. And it collect all mobile phone’s cells and WiFi point (secure or unsecure) and when I’m done with it, I upload the data to Navizon server.

They will generate a map of where the mobile mast are and any nearest available WiFi point. This will be useful for other people who doesn’t have GPS but using GPRS to search for the nearest stuff (i.e. pub)

Copied & pasted from their website - “Navizon is a software-only wireless positioning system that triangulates signals broadcasted from Wi-Fi access points and Cellular towers to help the users find their way in most major metropolitan areas worldwide.”

And this is why I’m posting in here… got a mobile phone? Have access to WiFi (i.e. built in on your phone)? And have access to GPS (built in on your phone or bluetooth GPS) ? And do you want to earn some rewards?

If so, you can help! Sign up here, download the software (link here), making sure you download the correct phone software and away you go.

See here for a screenshot of the data I’ve collected. Green point is unsecured WiFi point, red is secured WiFi point and blue is mobile phone mast.

Pretty niffy, eh?

My 4-5 years old digital camera, a Canon IXUS 500 has died a painful death. So I am looking around for a new digital camera.

It needs to be similar specs as above but with better features. Recently I saw on TV ads of this new camera:

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/compact/dmc-fx33eb-s/index.htm

Has anyone got one? Is it a good camera? Or should I be looking at other models?

Budget is about £200 to £250 or so.

Thanks.

My Robot Hoover - M-288 has started to act funny and kept displaying the three green lights on the S, M and L buttons. I thought it was dead because when I switch it on and pressed the “M” button, it would start up, move a little bit and stopped with these green lights displaying.

I looked up the manual to see what the 3 green lights meant and it turned out that it wasn’t serious as I thought.It means something is blocking in the brush area. Phew.

Took the brush apart, found a bi piece in it, cleaned & removed the hair and crap from the brush, put them back together and started it.

And it worked fine!

One thing to remember, when you remove the bin, ensure you check the filter as mine was pretty full up! Haven’t empted it since I got it… naughty of me.

Eastender tonight… should be explosive fun!

LogMeIn + PDA with Internet access = Geek dream

http://www.logmein.com

That allows me to “log on” to my home computer from my phone from anywhere as long as your phone has Internet access.

The speed is reasonable with GPRS, but I am sure it will be much better with 3G!

The freeware version is basic but it’s good enough for me anyway. There are few times where I need to access something but is not able to go home to get it. And this is where LogMeIn comes in.

Load up the software (via web browser on phone), log on, start remote desktop, get the file I need and either email it to my phone or copy it over. Success!

Been a while since I did a proper post! No excuse, just didn’t have very much to say as I have been focusing on money saving (paying off some stuff) and planning the next step of house improvements. Plus work has taken up my time too.

And of course, playing with my new phone - MDA Vario III - the inbuilt GPS is sooo useful! Just load up Google Maps Mobile, enable Tracking and it pinpoint where I am standing.

I also ordered & received the new 6GB MicroSDHC card for this phone, it’s so tiny! Almost smaller than the 5p coin - amazing technology. With that, I have been busy with installing various software & games on it.

I may go into more dept on this later on. But for now, other news.

Remember the time change this Sunday! I hear you boo, I agree. Interesting read regarding car drivers and how it will cause more accidents from the time change

http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=17058

Don’t let this happen to you.

Tonight, Halloween fancy dress at the Deaf Club, with a twist - pirate fancy dress! Should be a good night.

Not sure of our plans for tomorrow, more likely to be house improvements related.

Oh, can anyone recommend me a good, soft touch keyboard for me? I type softly and this crap keyboard doesn’t pick up my key presses, so it’s annoying to go back and edit the words I mistyped. Not too expensive, but a good keyboard would be good…

Breakfast time.

Here’s my quick review of the Robot Vacuum Cleaner model SU210 (or known as M-288)

I purchased this beast when I saw the ebuyer’s e-mail which has the great price and having seeing one at work where it was used for hoovering the floor in the server room, I thought it would be good to buy it as it was just after my birthday.

Picked 5 days delivery as it was offering free delivery, however it arrived within 2 working days which was good!

First charge was about 6 to 7 hours to fully charged. Our living room is about medium sized, so I pressed the “M” button. And it started.

It started with going round on the spot, expanding to reach other area, then turned round and making a long run to “find out” how big the room is and is mapping out the area. It even remembers where the corners were as it avoids it, obviously after mapping the area!

It comes with a laser stand where you can tell it not to go to specific area, i.e. on the top of the stairs to stop it falling off the stairs.

The “M” hoovered takes about 40 minutes according to the manual and from what I can se, it has done the job pretty well where it has hoovered most of the area that I would usually do with our hoover.

For the price, it does well with its job & purpose, handy when you need to do things around the house and leave the Robot Vacuum do their job!

Few photos of the hoover can be found in my Gallery - Intelligent Floor Vac M-288 with a video (hopefully) coming up.

Hope this is short enough for you!

Just received an email from ebuyer, informing me that the Robot Vacuum Cleaner has been dispatched! So it should mean I should get it by tomorrow if all goes well with ShittyLink.

I’ll give it a short review when I get it.

In other news, anyone here use Facebook? I remember about 2 or 3 weeks ago, where very few of people I know use it. Then all of sudden, there was a big increase numbers of people signing up to it and adding me. It’s starting to look like Facebook is popular.

So popular, Facebook is going to add adverts! :/ Hopefully it won’t be into-your-face advert…

Work is okay, but we are starting to rush to get most of the stuff done, ready for the start of the term. I am sooo loooking forward to take a week off from work (if I can!) and go somewhere nice, if we can find somewhere to go, that’s it…

Over & out.

From the news, quoted:

Sharp hopes to have LCD HDTVs on the market by 2010 that are only 20mm thick

The world of HDTVs and super models has something in common; everyone wants to be the skinniest. Just when we thought a bit over three inches for an LCD HDTV was svelte, Sharp looks to change our minds with its latest design.

News Link

Looks pretty good… but I wonder how much it will cost when it’s released?

Wireless Digital Photo Frame

With that, you can connect to your Flickr account to download the photos to your photo frame. Or from memory cards.

Looks cool. Shame about the price… but I’m sure it won’t put off gadget lovers.

Now that Microsoft publicly announced about the bits that will come with Windows Vista Ultimate Extras, I can now talk about it.

So far, the public information are:

* DreamScene
* BitLocker and EFS Enhancements
* Hold ‘Em Poker Game

The thing I am looking forward to is the Windows DreamScene - will be doing a quick review on it shortly once I have access to it.

I’ve played Hold ‘Em Poker Game and while I have no previous knowledge of playing Poker, I learnt a bit and was happy playing it till I lost a lot of virtual money.

BitLocker and EFS Enhancements are something that I need to get my head round to as it’s something that I have not tried. But it should be good as it will secure your hard drive and keeping it safe from others whomtries to gain access to the data.

More later…

It’s like going back to the old days when the CD writer firstly came out.

My first CD writer was an HP CD writer with the amazing 2x speed write and it cost me £250.

Then my DVD writer at £120.

And now, the brand new Blu-Ray Writer at 4x speed for an amazing price of £465!!

See here - http://svp.co.uk/products-solo.php?pid=1961 - LG GBWH10N 4x Blu-Ray Writer

Anyone going to buy it?

Our garage has a room where I can use my computer in there. But the biggest problem I faced with was no internet/network access as the garage is not attached to the house. With the scary thoughts of having to wire up a very long network cable from the house to the garage including drilling, I decided there must be a easier way to do this.

Then it dawned on me - I remember seeing on the news about “Broadband Over Power” - if it can be done, then there must be someone out there who created a Network Over Power. And there’s one!

The company who made the HomePlug technology, InTellon, did this and made Network Over Power possible. Then soon enough, most networking companies have the technology.

In the case for me, I purchased the Netgear HDXB101 Starter Kit, which comes with two Netgear HDX101 devices, a CD-ROM with the software to change the Network ID. This can give you up to 200Mbps of network connection which is fast enough for me.

I have taken some photos of the Netgear HDXB101 in action, including the configuration page so you can see what it looks like.

And now my feedback on this - I’ve found it very good. The connection speed I am getting in the garage ranges between 90Mbps to 130Mbps, depending on how much interference ad it’s good enough for me.

So if you want to do a quick job of setting up a network without the hassle of laying out cables and drilling holes, this is the best way to do this!

As of Oct 2006, this cost me £135 inc VAT, however the price will drop as time passes by.

Hs anyone used this and what are your thoughts about this?

This is actually clever!

http://www.sawstop.com

I wonder how much it costs…

This is so amazing…

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-579612042933384370&pl=true

Right, that’s sorted - one Draytek Vigor 2800 ADSL modem/router ordered and should arrive next day (tomorrow).

I’ve downloaded the manuals PDFs from their super slow FTP server and there are loads to read for setting it up and getting it to work. It’s worth it and I am looking forward to it. Yeah, maybe it’s the Geek™ thing, but hey.

And it’s like having my early xmas pressie!

Right, it’s time to pick up the missus from work then we’re off for dinner, if we can find somewhere that are not fully booked!