Twisted Pair  

So the other week I happened to scratch my work phone, and being I also run around with my HTC 6800 at work, let’s just say it got me a little worried as this isn’t a cheap phone!

So I got’s a googling on my little lappytop and found this site by a company called ZAGG that make’s what they call “Invisible Shield” (I’d also like to note early, that I purchased this myself, this is NOT a paid ad post for them!)

It’s a plastic film that is used on the leading edge of helicopter blade’s to reduce wear, custom cut into shapes that will fit on most of your common gadget’s that have a screen that you worry about!

This also is NOT just a screen protector! This goes over all of the exposed and damage prone area’s of your device or as they call them “Full Body Kit’s”.

Here’s a few pics of my devices, a Dell Inspiron, Zune 4 gig, and HTC 6800.

The installation went pretty easy, although getting the large piece off of the backing paper for the laptop was a little scary as I really didnt want it to touch itself, but after it was on the lid, it was much easier to handle.  The Zune was deffinatly the easiest being it was only 2 pieces, and a square. And my phone was deffinatly the hardest, being there’s many odd shaped pieces that you have to try before actually securing to the phone. 9 pieces in total for the phone. 3 on the laptop. 2 for the zune, and about $80.00 for all 3 kit’s with a dash pad as a bonus

The directions were easy to follow, and getting the bubbles of air out was much easier then I thought with the included rubber wedges. I’ve installed window tint before, and this was much easier. Moudling it to the corners was also easy once you let the adhesive dry a bit. Was it worth it? Don’t know yet!
If you’ve been following my reviews you know I won’t say how well it works until it’s run it’s course in my daily life for a while!

So Stay tuned and feel free to ask any questions that you might have!

So I know the maintenance page on my site said 20 min’s and it’s turned into almost 20 hours, but I do have a day job (which took 11 hours of that time :/ ) and the rest was updating about 7 wordpress plugin’s, wordpress itself, as well as my ubuntu laptop which I use for my wandering about the house (it has 2 batteries) just got updated to the new Intrepid Ibex!

This is what a linux desktop should be like! If you’ve never tried linux, shit man, now’s the time! I’ve never been so pleased with a linux distro to date!

For starter’s the dark interface grabbed me right off the bat.

Clean, dark enough to be still readable, and very usable (trust me it’s not easy to get a dark display right, I’ve been doing just that for many years…) and packed full of many a new features!

(you’ll also note that I’m running this on a 1.4ghz dell latitude c640 laptop with compiz set on extra and at only 9% usage)

Some of these features I wasn’t quite expecting. Very VERY handy features, like, my new inspiron has a “scroll bar” feature on my track-pad that allows me to scroll pages without a wheel, but my latitude doesn’t didn’t until this update, now it DOES! Like Magic!

Also they have a new feature in the statusbar logout button, you can now have it set your status in apps like pidgin or the like’s.

(Pidgin on a side note also has an encryption plugin that’s available via synaptic if OTR was too difficult to install)

The update from 8.04 to 8.10 went smoothly, save for the mirror I had set was missing a file for some reason, so I had to change to a mirror I could trust (easynews where I’m at) and let it do it’s thing for a few hour’s, click one question about 9 min’s from the end, and reboot into this glory of a desktop!
Really if your running ubuntu already and haven’t switched over yet, it’s time. Just basically switch one setting in your update manager and reload it. Directions here.

Installing is just as easy, with only a few more click’s of buttons and name’s. Dual booting is also just as easy. it’s just a setting during the install.  Just download the iso file and burn to a disk. Really you’ll appreciate it.

Here’s a pretty well done video on how The matrix runs on window’s. In the end “Neo” states “Ubuntu. I’m going to learn Ubuntu.” and now is the time! GO NOW FFS!

So yea, I might have been playing a little bit, but really the updates did take there fair share of time

Iris, it’s a full screen, browser based on the very quickly growing Web-kit browser framework, and released by Torch Mobile.  It’s fast, sleek, and touch sensitive. (how I like my woman too )

It’s got some fancy features such as being a full screen worth, and allowing you to zoom into what your interested in meaning you don’t loose any of the page like you do with most mobile browsers, and being touch sensitive, you can scroll around with your fingertip!

Clicking a link also generates a pleasing although a little bit time consuming animation of the web page “ripple” with your touch.

It also supports multiple tabs! I’ve been trying to find a decent web browser that does this for some time now, so far  the winner for me has been “Web Viewer” but Iris has this one outshined by a LONG shot!

Yes I’ll also say with some confidence that this also blows Opera mini out of the water!

features such as an actual mouse cursor, for those apps, that just need it, an over-view window to preview the open tab’s you have, buit in such as an image capture feature will save the images for you easily, and speaking of captures … here it is

Other then that, it’s also got a better layout for css sites as it’s fully css and html compliant.

Enough Smoke and chat, about this bad ass browser, if you like google chrome for speed, and want it in a mobile tab supported browser, Get this app!

So I’ve been hosting and running an Openfire XMPP Chat server and I have to say I’m really impressed by the fit and finish of it. It’s really well done, and the features are easily configured and cover pretty much anything you could want to do with it right out of the box, save for a skype transport, but that’s a whole different can of worms.

If your still unfamiliar with what Jabber or XMPP Chat is and if you’ve also never tried Google Talk (which is using the XMPP standards) It allows for (or in some cases like mine require) encryption, a much needed but so often overlooked requirement these days for instant messaging.  I think the general problem is that the general user doesn’t really know that every conversation they have is going out in clear text. Which means that anyone, and I mean ANYONE could listen to those conversations you have on your msn connection late at night when you think that no one’s watching.

There’s only one fix for this. and really there’s a very rare application that does it well, or easy enough for the general public. Making this encryption stuff easy.

The first thing that I’ll say is if you just cant find it in yourself to use a new XMPP chat client of which I’ll run through below, your best bet is to use the Off-The-Record Messaging with pidgin which ranks 3rd in my bunch of XMPP ease of use, but probably second overall just being edged out by Digsby due to the email handling it does. The drawback to pretty much any of this though, is that to start an encrypted connection using OTR both sides have to have it, and believe me, it’s hard to get people to switch IM clients!!!

But alas for my chatting I have to give it to Pandion for being the easiest and best XMPP Chat client around. It’s easy to set all of the common things like status, away messages, join a group chat, go private, join a private chat, and you don’t have to remember anything like “public @ talk.twistedpair.mobi” (and no it’s not an email address!) because the bookmarks work just like you’d want them to. It joins using encryption by default, so there’s no futzing around with the settings, just set it to the server, create a user account if needed right there in the client, and chat away!

All the other clients seem to be taking the XMPP and putting it on the back burner, and that bothers me. Yes I’m aware that it’s the new guy to the block, but it’s the only one that’s offering any type of forward thinking! I’m sorry but I feel that the safety of the users of my product would be a bit of a priority to me. I’m also aware that there’s probably still more people using ICQ then there are taking up XMPP but COME ON PEOPLE! Everything you say is readable by anyone, does that not scare you! How many times have you given out personal info over IM? Passwords! Email’s! Phone Numbers! These thing’s matter!!!

But after all that, there’s a problem with Pandion as well … it hasn’t been developed since 2006. Shit. You just can’t win these days.

So that brings me back to Pidgin. I’ve been touting glee about this application for quite some time. You might remember it by the name gaim (loved it then too!). This has changed and so has the client, but only for the better! Faster, more Features (both at the same time! Hard to do!) it really is a well made client, but, it’s also a little confusing at first (not nearly as bad as miranda though, I’ve still not figured that damn thing out LOL!)

I’ve already made a walk-through on joining my XMPP Server on the “Live Chat” Page using pidgin and how to require encryption, and even using msn over the XMPP transport (which I also host), I’d still recommend installing the OTR plugin for those MSN chat’s.

Also like myself, it’s becoming harder and harder to find a server that DOESN’T LOG Packets!

I only log the last 3 messages that were said in the room, the rest are instantly deleted, never to be seen again. I do this only for the delay it takes some people to join the chat after being invited, and I hate to copy and paste conversations if I don’t have to.

If you still want more privacy I can offer that as well! Create your own room! Password Protect it! Make it moderated and force registration, I don’t mind! (So long as your not just camping, and from time to time join the public chat)

So let’s see those downloads! Grab an XMPP Client (choose from other’s lists here and here if you don’t like my suggestions) and start your own ENCRYPTED PRIVATE Chat’s! Be safe so that other’s might follow! Google’s doing it, it can’t be all bad right?

So just the other day I purchased a starter package from the guys folks at truetip.com and after the decision to go the whole month on just my phone for access, it just showed up today.

I got two finger tip styli (whats the plural for stylus?) and two for the end of my pen’s.

TrueTip Duo

My first opnion on them is mixed.

The pen caps are Wonderful!!! The tips are just soft enough that you feel the taps but not so hard as to scratch a screen protector.

Now being I’ve come from using a Nintendo DS stylus as it is much larger then the one on my phone I have to say I like using one the thickness of a pen, my hands are kinda on the larger side.

Nintendo DS stylus (left) - Stock Phone stylus (right)

However even as large as my hands are’ the finger tip ones are still too large!

Truetip fingertip FAIL

Both too long in where the ring sits (right on my knuckle joint) and the ring and curved tips are too loose. I have had a little luck in squeezing the ring and holding it as it is very pliable plastic, but at the same time that is another weakness as it seems to try and flex itself away and off of my finger.

So pen caps - GREAT!
Finger tips - PASS!