Android NFC + Paywave in Australia = Suck

Just picked up a Samsung 9305 and am raging that Google Wallet isn't officially available in Australia for Android (where there's a will however...).

For those of you that don't know, Google Wallet allows you to process online transaction (who cares - I've got paypal and a credit card) but also let's you bind a Credit Card to your Google Account as well as to an NFC chip on your Smart Phone (such that you can use your smart phone at POS terminals that support Paywave).

In theory everything that uses NFC should be able to be associated with an account and an NFC chip ID.

Unfortunately, it appears that this is too hard to implement in Australia right now, most like due to Australian Government finance laws.

Come on Google. If anyone can make this happen, it's you.

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Also, on a side note, have the day off and am watching Crank.

If this isn't the best movie ever, I don't know what is.

Cisco Voice - Lots of extra work. Zero advantage.

Aaargh...

After working with Digium Switchvox products for the last 18 months I'm now back in Cisco land supporting both Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) for enterprise users and Cisco Call Manager Express (CME) for branch users (this particular organisation hasn't centralised everything yet).

Having worked with a variety of voice platforms over the years I was shocked to find that everyone "just accepts" how convoluted and inefficient the Cisco voice platform is to manage.

In this article I'll do a quick feature comparison of Cisco CME, UCM and Digium Switchvox as well as publish the time taken and resources required to implement a solution and complete day to day tasks (in my lab environment).

Additionally, I'll be covering how to setup UCM for a multi-domain deployment (just in case you're in the same scenario I'm in)...

Happy to wave the Cisco flag for routers and switches.

Don't know if their voice platform measure up though...

Cisco UCM ESX 5.1 VM

Just a quick one...

If you're playing around with Cisco UCM and want to spin it up in VMWare there's one important thing to be aware of.

Make sure you set the SCSI adapter type to LSI Logic SAS Controller or the installer will barf error messages re server hardware compatibility.

Sigh - don't really enjoy working on UCM.

Have played with quite a few voice servers and this one takes the cake for most illogical and all-over-the-place menu system I've used.

The whole having a separate product for voicemail and IVR seems a bit late 80's as well...

At least it seems pretty stable and doesn't start having random issues like other PABX's.

Or maybe I haven't been using it long enough...

Raspbmc - Making WiFi Work

Wireless - a minor PITA to get working

Ok - I Had the adapter plugged in, powered the unit on and noticed that the adapter light wasn't doing anything.

FYI - this is the adapter I'm using.

Unplugged and re-plugged the adapter with the unit powered on and was greeted with the message indicating detection of the adapter:

Pulse-Eight CEC Adapter

That's good - but it's still not joining the wifi network.

Maybe I ballsed up my psk (which is pretty cryptic).

As the PSK is hashed out as you type it, thought I'd just tackle it through SSH through a wired connection.

So I had a quick look around and most info was pointing me to edit /etc/wpa.conf

Only problem was, that file didn't exist.

Ran a quick GREP to hind my SSID which I'd saved through the RaspBMC interface and found it (and my psk) in the following file:

/home/pi/.xbmc/userdata/addon_data/script.raspbmc.settings/settings.xml

So now I've copied and pasted my PSK but still no dice.

Now I started to think the raspbmc GUI might not quite be telling the truth about what's going on - being that it was displaying the ethernet adapters MAC address where it should be showing me the wifi adapter's...

At this point I thought - hmmm - let's just forget XBMC and attack it as just a linux box.

I then performed the following steps as per the main post and a comment over at anup narkhede's blog (thanks anup).

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

allow-hotplug wlan0

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

wpa-psk wifi_password_noquotemarks

wpa-ssid ssid_noquotemarks

wpa-conf /etc/wpa.conf

* exit and save

sudo nano /etc/wpa.conf

network={

ssid="YOUR_SSID"

proto=RSN

key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

pairwise=CCMP TKIP

group=CCMP TKIP

psk="YOUR_PASSWORD"

}

Now - disconnect your wired LAN connection and reboot.

You'll probably notice the light pattern of your wireless adapter is a little more random now - that's a good thing :)

I looked in RaspBMCs network settings area and nothing had changed.

I then however looked at the connected devices on my wireless AP and saw that my raspbmc device had got a lease and I could now ping it :)

Fired up a video and all good.

W00t.

To hold you until the review is up...