Paul Danter

Phone Contract Confusion - Even Voicemail Varies!

I’m not stupid. But…

1. I should be able to compare mobile phone contacts and weigh up the benefits
2. Why are phone bills impossible to interpret?
3. I know 1 & 2 are done to confuse me and stop me asking questions, but why do we all put up with it?

The reason for this entry is that while I was trying to find out why I get cut off on some voicemail messages, I found that there quite a difference even in the basic voicemail service you are given on each major operator in the US.

The list is endless, but here are three ubiquitous features to compare:

AT&T

20 messages maximum
2 minute maximum per message
14-day retention

Verizon Wireless

20 messages maximum
3 minute maximum per message
21-day retention

T-Mobile

15 messages maximum
1 minute maximum per message
15-day retention

Sprint

20 messages maximum
2 minute maximum per message? (But I had to get this details from their forum)
20-day retention

Most offer a we’ll-nickle-and-dime-you upgrade for around $1.99 a month, but that’s pathetic!

Some of us rely heavily on voicemail and I’d have though it would be a commodity service, identical on each network. I would never even think to check out the specifics.

What else are we missing?

When you think of all the feature multiplied by all the plan variations multiplied by all the different handset capabilities, I’m surprised anyone ever buys a phone.

Is there a good comparison service out there?

Citizen Journalists And Mobile Technology

The attacks in India served as another case study in how technology is transforming people into potential reporters, adding a new dimension to the news media.

The New York Times discusses how, as the story unfolded, news emerged from a new breed of sources – including Twitter and Flickr – as updates were sent from Mobile Phone.

What does this mean to the ever evolving news media? While there are benefits, I hope news cycles do not become further compressed.

View Original Article

RMagick on Rails

There are some great guides for installing and configuring ImageMagick and RMagick on OS X for use with Ruby on Rails. In my experience, there’s always something missing.

I recently wanted to use the Gruff gem for generating graphs and my standard install failed. It turns out there are some font requirements, which I tracked down (but misplaced the link, so apologies for not linking back to the blog that helped).

Anyway, here is the end to end install that works for me (OS X Leapard, with XCode installed).

Get FreeType:

curl -O http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/ \ 
freetype/freetype-2.1.10.tar.gz
tar xzvf freetype-2.1.10.tar.gz
cd freetype-2.1.10
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Get LibPNG

curl -O http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ \
libpng/libpng-1.2.10.tar.bz2
bzip2 -dc libpng-1.2.10.tar.bz2 | tar xv
cd libpng-1.2.10
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Get JPG

curl -O ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
tar xzvf jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
cd jpeg-6b
ln -s `which glibtool` ./libtool
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.4
./configure --enable-shared --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

If you get the following error with the JPEG install:

install: /usr/local/man/man1/cjpeg.1: No such file or directory

...you just need to check the man1 directory exists. If not, add it then re-run the make install (from within the jpeg-6b directory):

sudo mkdir /usr/local/man/man1
sudo make install
cd ..

Get TIFF

curl -O ftp://ftp.remotesensing.org/libtiff/tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
tar xzvf tiff-3.8.2.tar.gz
cd tiff-3.8.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Ghostscript fonts are needed, get the package

Download from here, then

tar vzxf ghostscript-fonts-std-8.11.tar.gz
sudo mv fonts/ /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/

Get ImageMagick

curl -O http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ \
imagemagick/ImageMagick-6.3.0-0.tar.gz
tar xzvf ImageMagick-6.3.0-0.tar.gz
cd ImageMagick-6.3.0
export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-static --with-modules --without-perl \
--without-magick-plus-plus --with-quantum-depth=8 \
--with-gs-font-dir=/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Now Install RMagick

sudo gem install rmagick

Ruby on Rails Install on Leopard

A couple of nice tips for a fresh install:

• Dan Benjamin has the most comprehensive guide online for a purpose built rails install. It can be found here.
• If you want to install a sepecific version of rails, the syntax is:

  sudo gem install -v=2.1.0 rails

• If you use MySQL rather than SQLite, you can get the fixed preference pane here.
• If you have multiple versions of rails installed and want to start a project with a previous version:

  rails _2.0.2_ myapp

  

iPhone Tethering Will Be Official (in 2009)

It looks like Apple and AT&T have decided to do the right thing and offer an official mechanism to tether your iPhone to your laptop. Hurrah.

Details will follow. You can read more about it here.

Here’s my purely academic unoffical guide to how this can be achieved today.