Well I finally gave up on my Treo. 1) It was dying a terrible battery death 2) The hinge broke AGAIN 3) I work for AT&T and people look at me funny with my Sprint Treo. I switched to Cingular and got the new 8125 phone (a.k.a. HTC Wizard). It’s really awesome. I’m creating an article with all my Cingular 8125 notes with my software finds, and migration from Palm.
The story gets better on internet filters. Of course only after I write a 20 page HOW-TO guide on the SurfPass filter from cogilab do they yank it from the free-for-home-use market. Turns out everyone was downloading the free version and they weren’t making money.
The good news is an easier more powerful filtering software has come out called K9. Much better at false hits, easy to install, use, etc. Step on over to http://www.k9webprotection.com and try it out.
If you are looking for a free, effective, internet filter that can do both blacklists (banned site lists) and content filtering (looking for text in packets) I think I’ve found one that works well. You can even whitelist/blacklist your own. For example I whitelist slashdot.org (sometimes the comment pages are raw, but I don’t care). I blacklist images.google.com. Free blacklist updates, free for home use. Unlike ContentProtect (what I was using) it doesn’t hog any machine resources. Works “behind the scenes” quite well.
http://www.cogilab.com/us/homeedition/index.htm
I’ll try to put an install HOW-TO up soon.
A few things I don’t like about it are:
1) It kills the browser process after a violation. There are reasons to do this, you can change this behavior.
2) No override. You can go whitelist a site but there is no way to put in an override password when a violation is found
3) No ability to email the logs, etc. I think you can administer remotely though.
4) I think I had to login as admin and change the unlimited profile to include content filtering (blacklists was default)
Well everyone in the industry said they couldn’t keep that price of $4.99 with portable support. I just got an email from Yahoo saying (after I just BOUGHT a compatible portable player) that the $4.99 no longer includes portable support for music. That is another $5! What a rip off. I was able to lock in the current price for one year. If someone else has a cheaper price after that I’ll switch.
My new SanDisk Sansa M240… was purchased today at Best Buy, with instant rebate it came to $89.95!! That is for the 1GB version and does MP3, WMA (DRM and subscription). It worked in seconds with Yahoo music like my other two tries. First I tried the IRiver T30, I’m a loyal customer after all. It had issues with Yahoo (I think my fault), no FM, and when I flashed it the USB connection didn’t recognzie it as a MTP compatible player. I gave support a couple of days, after NO response it went back to Best Buy. I’m not a loyal customer anymore. I did some research and really liked the Samsung YP-MT6Z. Too pricey for what it was but I got it. Didn’t read the fine print on this Microsoft “Plays for Sure” logo. That just means it does Microsoft DRM, not subscription based MS DRM. Ugh. After playing with it for 5 minutes packed it up to go back to Target. They refunded even my shipping which was odd. I don’t think the online side and the retail store understand what each other is doing. I go online and find out for flash players that take normal batteries there isn’t a lot of choices. The T10 and T30 IRiver and the Sandisk Sansa. Then I get the paper this morning and it is only $90! Wow. So here is my pro/con list.
Pros
Cons
If you want flash, good price, playlists, subscription support go to Best Buy fast!
Well I DID recommend content watch when they cost $20/yr for 3 computers. Now they want $40 per computer per user. Hmmm…. a 600% increase? Time for a new solution maybe. I think my price will remain in force but I can’t sign up new folks with it. I’ll have to give this one a shot at home and try it out Naomi. I wish someone would find an easy way to port at least part of Dan’s Guardian but it remains a linux only solution. I suppose I could create some miniATX boxes running this and sell them to folks that need them, but would have to auto update, etc. I’d need an image of it… Ugh…. Come on Content Protect!!! 600%????
Caribou Coffee is doing an IPO. Great for them. Somebody needs to give *$’s a run for their money – well sort of. Starbucks (*$) opened more stores last year than Caribou has total. I’ve never been to one, but there is one in the town I grew up in, so I’ll have to visit sometime.
The only stores around me are Starbucks. Closest local shop is 15 minutes away. 🙁
Wow… Over 1 million tunes for $60/year. I’d say $5/mo (like the Yahoo ad does) but that would be a lie. If you want to pay by the month it is $6.99. Still a deal. Less than half of what the cost of a similar offering from Rhapsody (Rhapsody to-go is 14.99/mo). Downside is of course they are DRM enabled Windows Media files. You can use them from 3 computers however, and unforunately I don’t have a lack of windoze computers around the house. You are “renting” a music collection and you know what? I’m fine with that. The albums I love I’ll probably still buy. Today I buy quite a few albums that I don’t care for except a song or two. I can buy just those songs on Yahoo for 79 cents now (If I still like them after hearing them 20 times). You can also take the music to a DRM enabled MP3 player.
For $5/mo it is worth it to listen to just about any music you want. The WMA files can be downloaded to your hard drive for offline use but they will expire I guess if you don’t connect or cancel the subscription. The software is pretty buggy. It logs me off periodically and then after I log in it doesn’t let me stream music – restarting the program fixes it. It is very web centric and is pretty slow right now. How would you like to size that application deployment?
Ok, so when can I do this with movie and TV shows Yahoo?
Finally had a few moments to upgrade WordPress to a version that can
handle bulk spam… So everything is now working again.
You really should be able to blog from anywhere – Right?