FacebookTwitter

Why Can’t The MLB Stop Spoiling Games For Fans?

By on Jun 18, 2018 in Software |

Baseball is the only sport I care about in the slightest, and I’ve been a Cubs fan for most of my 36 years. There was a brief time before I knew what baseball was that I wasn’t technically bleeding Cubs blue and I had to take a short break in the 2000’s in order to decide if I can handle any more disappointment, but other than that, big fan. Over the past few years, I’ve consumed all of my baseball through the MLB’s various streaming services. This has generally consisted of web browser based video players, the Roku app, and the MLB At Bat mobile app. None of these has ever been perfect. Audio issues, low quality, and massive buffering have all been frequent. However, in 2018 things have taken a severe turn for the worse, and MLB support seems completely unable to help. I work a lot, so I rarely get to stream games live. That means I don’t...

How Three Massive Companies Fail To Get VoIP Right

By on Jan 1, 2018 in Blog Posts, Internet, Software | 0 comments

For years I’ve been using Skype for my business telephone system. Although it’s never been perfect – the admin interface is atrocious and reliability is a problem – Skype is simple, cheap, and has all of the features I need. Well, it did have everything, until they inexplicably decided to axe custom voicemail greetings. Without the ability to have professional voicemail greetings for when customers can’t reach someone, Skype can’t really be considered a proper solution for businesses. I did a bit of research and asked around for better solutions. My needs are simple: I’m looking for a good softphone, an easy to use admin interface, the ability to import my contacts from Skype, and I need to be able to port my phone number. I came up with three companies that seemed to meet my requirements: Vonage, Jive, and 8×8. Although they all advertise...

How to Export ALL of Your Skype Contacts

By on Nov 5, 2017 in Software | 0 comments

It’s been a while since I made the move to Skype for handling all of my business calls. There have always been problems with Skype for business use, including confusing billing and an abysmal management interface, but the removal of custom voicemail greetings was the last straw. Tomorrow my number is being ported to Vonage. The most important thing to migrate over from Skype is my contacts. I’ve got years of phone numbers saved that I don’t want to have to re-enter. One would think this would be an easy process. After all, Skype does include the ability to backup contacts to a file, but this ended up exporting less than half of my contacts. When people call my phone number, which is setup through Skype, I see their number in caller ID. Then I rename it to their personal or company name for future use. Apparently, Skype doesn’t consider these to be...

How to Setup Your Company Exchange Server on a Windows 8 Phone

By on Dec 12, 2012 in Blog Posts, Software | 0 comments

I had a Windows Server SBS 2003 w/SP2 box with Exchange 2003 SP2 installed. The certificate on IIS was expired, but it pointed to servername.local. The internal domain name meant that I needed to use a dynamic DNS address for external access and also allow webserver/SSL ports through the company firewall. That part was easy, but the connection didn’t work.I was trying to connect a Windows 8 phone to the Exchange server, but it failed because the certificate name didn’t match. I was using a dynamic DNS address such as example.dyndns.org to attach to the server remotely. https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ told me the problem lay in the certificate file.My problem: I wanted to set up the company IIS/Exchange server to allow the remote connection from a Windows 8 phone to the Exchange Server which wasn’t going to work with a mismatched SSL certificate.Turns...

Windows 8 Requires Windows Firewall to be enabled to install apps?!

By on Nov 13, 2012 in Blog Posts, Software | 1 comment

One of the first things I do to any new Windows desktop PC is disable the Windows Defender and Windows Firewall services completely. I use a real AV solution so I don’t need Defender, and I have a high quality hardware firewall in place so I don’t need no bobo Windows Firewall.Well, much to my surprise Windows 8 gives you a little extra encouragement to leave the native firewall enabled; you can’t install certain apps from the Windows Store unless it is.Today I was trying to install the Slacker Radio app and got error code 0x80073d0a “App couldn’t be installed…” That’s just great, I thought. So I went a Googling and found this. I re-enabled the Windows Firewall and the installation went through normally.I guess I’m just going to have to leave the damned thing enabled, even though it irks me. Furthermore, the Windows 8...

New Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook Drivers Begin to Support Windows 8

By on Sep 17, 2012 in Blog Posts, Software | 0 comments

I love my Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook. It’s the best notebook I’ve ever had. Windows 7 never felt quite right on it, so as soon as the full version of Windows 8 was available I slapped it on there. The installation went pretty smoothly. Dell still hasn’t released official Windows 8 drivers for the ultrabook, but Microsoft supports most of the hardware natively; except for the Cypress touchpad.The touchpad drivers for the XPS 13 have always been problematic, even in Windows 7. Various updates have fixed and later broken functionality. The issues center around gestures and scrolling, which just aren’t reliable.Well I’m happy to report that Dell has released a new version of the Cypress Touchpad drivers (2.5.0.52, A03) which not only resolve those issues, but install normally in Windows 8. They also released a new BIOS revision (A07) which specially states...