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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
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).
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...
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...
Monday, April 8, 2013
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...
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...
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
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...
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Dell XPS 13 1080p
Ok - I'm gonna make this easy.
For those of you in the market for a new laptop, LOOK AT THE DELL XPS 13 1080P.
I've got the non 1080p version and it's the lightest laptop with the best keyboard in this class I've ever used.
Period.
My only not-really-a-complaint is the screen - and it's not a major one - as in it doesn't bother me at all to use the 1366 * 768.
My previous experience was using an Asus UX31E and Apple Macbook Air.
Before purchase of my XPS 13 I looked at every Laptop in the flesh at JB HiFi and Harvey Norman that met my requirements (the short list was Asus UX31E, Mapple Macbook Air and Toshiba Z930).
The Asus screen was great but the keyboard was crap and the Apple was, well, Apple (that means crap also).
If you're in the market for a new laptop that's light, easy to use, reasonably priced and has a shit-hot-display (let's refer to this as an SHD from now on), buy this.
When buying a laptop there's a holy trinity for requirements you should follow:
* Hardware Specs
* Battery Life
* Price
I can tell you now - this is the best-in-balance in all three categories.
The Dell XPS 13 1080p is available in Australia for $1299 from Dell.
Runnning Win 8 this thing looks slick.
If you miss the start button, install Classic Start 8 for free :)
Full review at:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6849/dell-xps-13-q1-2013-ultrabook-review-what-a-difference-ips-makes
Soon as I get one I'll post up a review :)
Cheers eh.
For those of you in the market for a new laptop, LOOK AT THE DELL XPS 13 1080P.
I've got the non 1080p version and it's the lightest laptop with the best keyboard in this class I've ever used.
Period.
My only not-really-a-complaint is the screen - and it's not a major one - as in it doesn't bother me at all to use the 1366 * 768.
Before purchase of my XPS 13 I looked at every Laptop in the flesh at JB HiFi and Harvey Norman that met my requirements (the short list was Asus UX31E, Mapple Macbook Air and Toshiba Z930).
The Asus screen was great but the keyboard was crap and the Apple was, well, Apple (that means crap also).
If you're in the market for a new laptop that's light, easy to use, reasonably priced and has a shit-hot-display (let's refer to this as an SHD from now on), buy this.
When buying a laptop there's a holy trinity for requirements you should follow:
* Hardware Specs
* Battery Life
* Price
I can tell you now - this is the best-in-balance in all three categories.
Runnning Win 8 this thing looks slick.
If you miss the start button, install Classic Start 8 for free :)
Full review at:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6849/dell-xps-13-q1-2013-ultrabook-review-what-a-difference-ips-makes
Soon as I get one I'll post up a review :)
Cheers eh.
Monday, March 25, 2013
GNS3 - Connections to the Real World through ESX
Gday again.
Well now that I'm back in Cisco land at work I thought I'd take full advantage of being able to lab things up in GNS3 now that I've exceeded the capabilities of Packet Tracer...
I remember running up GNS in the past and remembered having a horrible time getting things to work.
Well good news everyone!
It works like it's supposed to now!
It's seriously easy to install on a Windows box.
Just follow the quick start guide and you'll be up and going in no time :)
After you've got some virtual routers up and running don't forget to set your idlepc values otherwise your physical or VM guest CPU will get chewed up very quickly.
Now that's all well and good, but how do you connect a virtual router to your real network I hear you say?
Well it's not hard at all (although you'll get a bit of a bum-steer following guides floating around the net...).
There's a guide available over at the GNS3 site however I found I had to do things slightly differently to get things working...
The first step is to add a cloud to your topology and add the Local Ethernet Adapter as an interface.
Next add a router, power it on and configure an interface with an IP address in the same subnet as the adapter to which the VM guest NIC is assigned.
It's important you do the cloud first before the router otherwise the connection won't work (all you need to do is restart your router if you did it the wrong way around).
Add a link between the cloud and your router (hint: the connection tool will always choose eth 0/0 on the router first) and you're done for the GNS3 part.
Now back in your vSphere client go to the host configuration tab and click Networking.
Select the network you've setup from the Network Ports list and enable the tickbox for the option Promiscuous Mode.
Finally, get some ping action happening and see if your virtual router is now reachable from the real world (and vice-versa).
Enjoy :)
Well now that I'm back in Cisco land at work I thought I'd take full advantage of being able to lab things up in GNS3 now that I've exceeded the capabilities of Packet Tracer...
I remember running up GNS in the past and remembered having a horrible time getting things to work.
It works like it's supposed to now!
It's seriously easy to install on a Windows box.
Just follow the quick start guide and you'll be up and going in no time :)
After you've got some virtual routers up and running don't forget to set your idlepc values otherwise your physical or VM guest CPU will get chewed up very quickly.
Now that's all well and good, but how do you connect a virtual router to your real network I hear you say?
Well it's not hard at all (although you'll get a bit of a bum-steer following guides floating around the net...).
There's a guide available over at the GNS3 site however I found I had to do things slightly differently to get things working...
The first step is to add a cloud to your topology and add the Local Ethernet Adapter as an interface.
Next add a router, power it on and configure an interface with an IP address in the same subnet as the adapter to which the VM guest NIC is assigned.
It's important you do the cloud first before the router otherwise the connection won't work (all you need to do is restart your router if you did it the wrong way around).
Add a link between the cloud and your router (hint: the connection tool will always choose eth 0/0 on the router first) and you're done for the GNS3 part.
Now back in your vSphere client go to the host configuration tab and click Networking.
Select the network you've setup from the Network Ports list and enable the tickbox for the option Promiscuous Mode.
Finally, get some ping action happening and see if your virtual router is now reachable from the real world (and vice-versa).
Enjoy :)
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Raspbmc
Well I've been after a cheap all-singing all dancing media centre platform for a while now that could act as a complement (say on a second TV) to a full-blown Windows 7/8 Media Centre (which I personally think is hands-down the best for compatibility and features).
After looking at Pivos running XBMC on Android and not quite wanting to splash $150 on something I wasn't 100% sold on just yet, I started looking at what else was available (I also have some reservations about the input control).
After a fair whack of research I found I kept coming back to this article over at smallnetbuilder:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/multimedia-voip/multimedia-voip-reviews/32034-raspbmc-reviewed
Apart from the low cost, another major selling point of the Raspberry Pi Model B is that it has a somewhat decent GPU that Raspbmc takes full advantage of.
From what I've read, it will handle pretty much anything you can throw at it (in terms of decoding) except super-high (say 40mbps) h.264 content - but it only just gets choppy processing that.
There's also reports that with the bleeding-edge version of Raspbmc they've added support for live TV recording using a USB DVB-T adapter.
For the super low-cost of the unit I figured, oh well, if it sucks I haven't exactly wasted a lot of money.
As far as the shopping list goes, here's a quick break-down of costs:
Raspberry Pi Model 2 inc. delivery: $56
Case: $10 delivered from ebay
WiFi Adapter: $12 delivered from ebay
MC Remote: $19 delivered from ebay
SD Card:$16 from UMart
2A Micro USB Charger: $11 delivered from ebay
As far as getting Raspbmc on there goes, it looks quite painless.
All you need to do is download this handy utility which will make a boot SD card that the unit boots from and then downloads the setup files live.
The only remaining thing is to purchase licensed codecs (MPEG2 and VC-1) codecs from the Raspberry Pi store and you're good to go.
Very excited and will post mini review soon :)
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