How to troubleshoot synchronization problems when you synchronize your Exchange Server mailbox with your .ost file in Outlook 2000
Despite the title these problems occur with Outlook 2003, even in the new synchronization mode. No wonder it's hard to reliably sync a PDA with Outlook/Exchange.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Saturday, November 20, 2004
This is what I want in a digital camera ..
Canon EOS 20D Digital Camera Review: Intro and Highlights
ISO 1600. Sigh. I don't want a full fledged DSLR, I just want that beautiful CMOS sensor. I don't suppose Canon will ever put one in a non-DSLR?
the new Canon 20D offers dramatically improved noise performance at high ISOs, with the result that its images at ISO 1600 are remarkably clean-looking, and its shots at ISO 3200 are eminently usable
ISO 1600. Sigh. I don't want a full fledged DSLR, I just want that beautiful CMOS sensor. I don't suppose Canon will ever put one in a non-DSLR?
A small and interesting vendor of iPod fproducts
SiK, Inc. :: products
They make some interesting products! I like the power-only Firewire cable. Their line level portable audio out is neat too.
They make some interesting products! I like the power-only Firewire cable. Their line level portable audio out is neat too.
Printer connected to Airport Extreme Base Station stops working after firmware upgrade - fix
Macintouch Wireless Networking (Part 26): "Jason Froikin: AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express attached USB printers will often change ID's after a new firmware upgrade, even if you didn't rename the printer. It won't work again until you delete it from the Printer Setup Utility on your Mac and add it again via Rendezvous.
If you had the printer attached and turned on, sometimes the printer will get erroneous codes during the upgrade and get stuck. Turn off and detach the printer, restart the AirPort and, and reattach the printer. Then follow the instruction above."
If you had the printer attached and turned on, sometimes the printer will get erroneous codes during the upgrade and get stuck. Turn off and detach the printer, restart the AirPort and, and reattach the printer. Then follow the instruction above."
Friday, November 19, 2004
USB audio output adapter
HarmonyExpress - Portable Sound Card
This would be much more interesting if it had a digital output. Odd device about the size of a thumb drive, plugs into USB port.
This would be much more interesting if it had a digital output. Odd device about the size of a thumb drive, plugs into USB port.
Altec Lansing USB Powered portable speakers: XT1
Altec Lansing Products: XT1
They don't fold as nicely as SONY travel speakers, but they're quite elegant and compact. $130. USB powered.
They don't fold as nicely as SONY travel speakers, but they're quite elegant and compact. $130. USB powered.
Blogger is in miserable shape
Status.Blogger.Com
Blogger is in fine shape about 1/3 of the time, iffy another 1/3, and dead for the last 1/3. It's reallly in awful shape. If it were this bad early on I'd not have committed to it. Now, however, I can only wait and hope they're able to fix it. I haven't bothered sending them nasty letters -- it's clear they're working frantically. They grew too fast, without enough infrastructure. Their CEO left just in time ...
Blogger is in fine shape about 1/3 of the time, iffy another 1/3, and dead for the last 1/3. It's reallly in awful shape. If it were this bad early on I'd not have committed to it. Now, however, I can only wait and hope they're able to fix it. I haven't bothered sending them nasty letters -- it's clear they're working frantically. They grew too fast, without enough infrastructure. Their CEO left just in time ...
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Their pixels are bigger than your pixels
Reflecting Pool
The astounding volume of information captured in a single gigapixel image.
Juxtapose this with the reality that our optic nerves can only handle a surprisingly small flow of information, and information flow to the prefrontal cortex is even more constrained.
What we perceive is a peculiar reconstruction of a vastly denser external world ...
The astounding volume of information captured in a single gigapixel image.
Juxtapose this with the reality that our optic nerves can only handle a surprisingly small flow of information, and information flow to the prefrontal cortex is even more constrained.
What we perceive is a peculiar reconstruction of a vastly denser external world ...
A VC's guide to entrepreneurial success
VC Institute Bookstore -- Beste
3. They have a sound knowledge of the financial dynamics of their companies. By this I most decidedly do not mean that entrepreneurs need an accounting degree, or even an intimate knowledge of financial analysis. What I do mean is that they focus on key results areas, such as: gross margins, monthly fixed costs, sales/employee, sales to budget, dollar production/day - whatever factors drive cash flow and profitability in that particular type of business. Entrepreneurs exhibiting this characteristic can tell you (without looking it up) what the trend in gross margins has been over the past few months, or what the cash flow impact of a 20% shortfall in revenues would be next month.
Ten reasons to avoid venture capital
AVC Venture Capital
Recommended by Joel on Software. It's on a web site devoted to non-venture funded startups.
Recommended by Joel on Software. It's on a web site devoted to non-venture funded startups.
Google Scholar - a citation search engine
Google Scholar
Shades of Dickson's encyclopedia, or the Memex of Vannevar. Searching here for a medical condition returns very different items than a standard google search. I look forward to comparisons with PubMed results. This is very intriguing.
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.
Please let us know if you have suggestions, questions or comments about Google Scholar. We recognize the debt we owe to all those in academia whose work has made Google itself a reality and we hope to make Google Scholar as useful to this community as possible. We believe everyone should have a chance to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Shades of Dickson's encyclopedia, or the Memex of Vannevar. Searching here for a medical condition returns very different items than a standard google search. I look forward to comparisons with PubMed results. This is very intriguing.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
External hard drive enclosures: Next up is video out
Gizmodo : SigmaTek X-Bay: "I bet it won't be too long before all external hard drive enclosures come with a commodity MPEG-4 decoder chip and video out hardware built right in."
Dan's Data does a terrific review of PC power strips and surge suppressors
Power struggle
Dan's Data is without equal. Here he tackles surge suppressors. He puts in one place everything I've picked up over many years, and then adds much more. His discussions always remind me of how much we lost when BYTE went under.
We have 3 PCs and 1-2 laptops in our home, not to mention thousands of dollars of other voltage sensitive gizmos. I like the idea of having an electrician install a whopping big fusebox conditioner; OTOH it may be less trouble to buy $50 suppressors and replace them every year. I wish Dan would provide some examples of vendors he likes.
Dan's Data is without equal. Here he tackles surge suppressors. He puts in one place everything I've picked up over many years, and then adds much more. His discussions always remind me of how much we lost when BYTE went under.
We have 3 PCs and 1-2 laptops in our home, not to mention thousands of dollars of other voltage sensitive gizmos. I like the idea of having an electrician install a whopping big fusebox conditioner; OTOH it may be less trouble to buy $50 suppressors and replace them every year. I wish Dan would provide some examples of vendors he likes.
...No ordinary cheap powerboard ("cheap" definitely includes "$US100") actually provides very good protection from line current gremlins...Cheap surge filters are all based around components called Metal-Oxide Varistors (MOVs). MOVs pass current only when the voltage across them is above a set value, and they react to overcurrent in microseconds. A circuit breaker or fuse can take tens of milliseconds to trip or blow; that's much too slow for spike suppression.
Unfortunately, MOVs will only work a few times, at best. The more work they have to do, the closer to death they come...Better surge/spike boards are meant to tell you when their MOV's died via a little light or even a buzzer, but they commonly, actually, don't. A surge/spike filter that's been in use for some years and still reports its MOV as perfectly healthy is, probably, lying.
Better surge suppressors use two other kinds of spike-sinking component. Gas arrestor tubes are much tougher than MOVs, but respond too slowly to be useful for many applications, including computer protection. But they're present in better power filters because they can handle the load of a really big surge, after some other component has (possibly) bravely given its life to intercept the first several microseconds of overvoltage.
And then there are Silicon Avalanche Diodes (SADs), which are between gas tubes and MOVs in toughness, but as fast as a MOV. They're more expensive, though, which is why cheap surge/spike filters never contain them.
The best surge/spike suppressors gas arrestor tubes and SADs, and possibly MOVs as well. Proper "power conditioners" go on to include a great big heavy iron transformer, whose 50Hz resonance (60Hz, in countries that use that mains frequency) and enormous inductance blocks surges and spikes quite well too. This makes the power filter large and heavy and easily as expensive as a mid-range Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), but if there's an aluminium smelter down the road from you, this is the kind of filter you want. Rather than faff around buying tons of flaky powerboard filters for all of your electrical outlets, you should get an electrician to install one giant power conditioner at your fusebox; now, the whole house should be bulletproof.
... The take-home message from all of this is that quality power filtering isn't cheap. Fortunately, though, most people here in Australia don't need quality power filtering. To Aussies, I therefore say: Go ahead and buy dirt cheap no-CEW filter-boards, and be merry.
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