"The Family Man" Network

This is another part of the study on doing a good job in home networking. I did this work for Dynacenter as they figure out the top tasks that folks will have. If you have random thoughts send them on to Steve.

It seems to me that for the family scenario, we are talking about the Dad who buys a machine for someone with a family. In case your wondering, the title of this comes from a great Nicholas Cage/Tea Leone movie of the same name so I'm not being sexist. Here are the things that I would want to do in no particular order.

1. Sharing the broadband connection. There are going to be more than one PC around. At least one for Mom and one for Dad and ones for the kids before you know it. Our kids got them so early it is amazing. Calvin could say, "www" when he was five. Of course, he is crippled by having a geek dad, but its a sign of the times. He says "google" at six. Main issues are make it easy with all those darn TCP/IP and other connections. Should just plug and go.
2. Family Photos (Analog camera style) on a web site. Steve is going to understand this as he has his new baby, but I think that this is an obvious one. The main issue is that if you have an analog camera. Something Connie still prefers, even though we send it to Photoworks, the work of actually transfering it to somewhere useful rather than directing people to see it immense. The web based software is slow even with a broadband connection. I haven't tried Ofoto or the others, but it is hard to believe it could be faster than a 2.4GHz Pentium IV with a 120GB hard drive. A kind of standard machine now. So, the main thing for analog is to automagically suck down those websites and get the jpegs for publishing. Second, is that the thumbnail and web conversion tools are really awful. I've used Video Editing Meets DVD Authoring for some data on this. I'm going to use Pinnacle for this and have tried Ulead which was clumsy but it worked and was super task based. Now with DVD editing, IMHO, you have to have a home web server to serve up the videos over the Internet. And that is something that will neve be hosted.
3. Kid diaries and Christmas letters. Some folks may not believe this but I think there is small minority of folks who will want to have diaries about their kids. Personally I've tried this and I think the once a year Christmas letter is all most people can stand. I know Steve thinks he'll do it more regularly, so I'm probably in the minority. To me, these diary things are actually more in the young adults and kids target audience than in the "family man" one.

Real Family Man sites

It's interesting to note how many of those folks who are 30 and 40 have similar sites to Tong Family. Here's a list for you to look at that I did by just going through the list of people I knew with sites and then tracking down references to other folks. That probably gets you most of what the enthusiasts are doing. Then, did a google search and started with the most popular family sites:

• Bill Baker. Bill was the guy who started me on the family web site path. His is now password protected. He's still over at Microsoft and it is interesting to note that the two items with much stuff are Photos, News and Calendars. And that he has password protected his stuff. By the way, I do think that passwords or some sort of protection is important. I like the magic cookie URL that you can mail around the best. Folks are used to saving emails with links in them and that works better than my poor dad trying to remember a password. I have not found any easy to use package that generates this for you though. I'll also bet you a zillion dollars that only the photos have much content and they are way out of date. Bill by the way is the guy who got me to do a site. Interesting to note, he turned me on to getting a name. I have tongfamily , he has bakerfamily and also a hoster, so the word of mouth thing is very strong.
• Mike Nash Family. Mike is my fellow enthusiast and yet with all the resources at hand working on Windows, it ain't the prettiest site in the world. The FrontPage stuff tends to have the best prettiness to work ratio, but most folks just slam stuff up there. Also note that this mainly has photos of his baby. I also thought it is interesting to note that he has a hot list and like mines, it hasn't been updated since he created the thing. Still talks about Windows 2000 for instance. Points out that if we really did hot lists right that they would somehow know how to update. The Blogrolling is a big step in the right direction. But still requires religion to hit the button but at least there is not publishing to be done. And like most sites, most of Mike's pictures are a year old.
• Craig Fiebig. He's turned off his site. Don't know why, too bad. Would be interesting to call him and ask.
• Chris Sevak. Linked from Mike's site. Interesting to see that it is a new baby site too. Boy are Abigail and Emma cute. Note also that this is a FrontPage site, but that he just put gigantic JPegs up there because it is so hard to do thumbnails. Also the pictures are few and old. No security.
• Chris and Kira Jones. Chris Jones runs the Windows client group and believe me could do an awesome job at a site if he wanted. Interesting to note again that it is a pretty lean site and has baby pictures of Kate mainly. This is another FrontPage photo gallery based site. That is a pretty good tool. I did notice that the content drops off exponentially since January of this year.

Google Search. Interesting to do a search on the Google site. Interesting to see what the most hit web sites have.

• Teel Family Web Site. For this site, it is clear why it is hit alot. There is genealogy. That's a pretty prevelant sub theme amongst certain sites. Much of it is trips and things that people have done. So there is the diary aspect and the photos are everywhere.

Mike Nash. One of my best buddies. he's got a terrible looking site, but that is probably because he is too busy working making the world safe from hackers at Microsoft. Here's a much better corporate biography. David J.. Another buddy of mine from Hollywood no less. Of course as part of the Mike Nash clan, it's hard to believe that anyone could be funnier than Mike, but it is true, he is.

Mike-Levin.com - Who Let In The Bees? - bees

General Colin Powell

Never Give In  - Winston Churchill never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Tongs and Friends in print

Some great examples of times we've been in print and our friends. A great change from three years ago where I'd sweat bullets waiting for the latest PC Week article. Here are some recent pieces about us or those close to us:

• In Ghana, the beat of life is sounded on a drum . Our great friend Eve Tai wrote a wonderful piece about her trip to Ghana to learn out to drum. What a great treat to see her byline.
• Touching the Heart's Delight: Fun and filling, Chinese dim sum is a tradition worth adopting . This was really inspired by my mom. She led Catherine and Jim on a great expedition to the Noble Court. Was a great fun time.
• Catherine in the Seattle Times. Since Catherine is a regular columnist, you can read other stories by Catherine by a quick search.

Soundtrack Reviews. Since I don't have kids old enough to hear really new music, I primarily use movies I watch to get introduced to new sounds. Here's a site that does nothing but track soundtracks (no pun intended). Rates them, etc. Perfect for me.

Winter Biking It's getting cold in our neck of the woods. I think I Blogged this before, but here are some of the key places that you'll need to go to get ready:

1. Fox Wear. This is where I'd stop first. They custom make just about everything and Lou is a great guy who lives in Salmon Idaho. They can make up things for my extra long arms. I'm a 16" collar but 35" sleeves kind of guy.
2. Col d'Lizárd - Online Catalog. These folks used to be called Gekko Gear and they are like Lou, but tend to have nicer sales for stuff that doesn't have to fit just right.
3. Lake MXZ 300. After that, my big problem is how cold my feet get, so I'm trying these boots from the Lickton's where they seem to stock it.

Pedal the perimeter of the US. Wow, a fantasy for me. Interesting to see two ordinary people ride 11,000 miles over about a year. Pretty fun journal to read.

Safety Vest for Biking Flashlight Reviews and LED Modifications. OK, the ultimate in nerd factor. This site just reviews flashlights and other things with lights. I got to this because Steve Hooper recommend a Ledtronics safety vest and a quick google search got me hear to order something that is really bright.

Electroluminescent vs. LED. This got me into a decision about whether to get an LED or an electroluminescent vest. This is the comparison they have...

• EL width is like a paper.
• EL is lighter than LED. (Light Weight)
• EL light is brighter than LED.
• Brightness compare: (General Reflector: 300m, LED:750m, EL light: 1000m)

Road Bike Clincher Tire Review by Greg Pelican This was closest Google hit to a search for road bike tire reviews. Pretty good summary I think. Note that Bethel Cycle is not up, so this is copied from the Google cache Back in my photo science days a common adage was the cheapest way to improve your camera was to change your film. This analogy can be applied to cycling as well. There is nothing (for less than $100) that can impact the performance of your bike like a new set of tires. This review is based on personal experience blended with feedback from local racers and customers. Tire choice is definitely a subjective matter, but the purpose of this review is to help cyclists narrow down your options. The focus of the review is on the category winners, not on the poor performers. Every popular brand and tire have been tested.

• Best Lightweight Tire: Veloflex wins the category of best lightweight tire. These tires are hand made in Italy in the original Vittoria factory (Vittoria's are now made in Thailand). These tires are super light 170 grams for 20mm and 180 grams for the Pave 23mm. The thin rubber thread provides excellent traction and there is a thin Kevlar layer underneath for protection. The tires have a nice round cross section and look like a good tubular when mounted. Our experience has been that the tires are perfectly round and roll excellent. We recommend the 20mm for time trials and the 23mm for road racing. These are fast tires with a low profile (some riders complain that they ride hard and don't provide a lot of shock absorption). I use them for all around training and racing and have had good results in respect to holding up to road hazards. Keep in mind that the tread and sidewall are thin, so if you hit a big piece of glass you will get a flat and maybe slice the tire. Also, once the thin rubber tread wears down replace them. For me this occurs around 1,500 miles. Price $44.99
• Best Crit Tire: The Vittoria Open Corsa CX wins the category of best Crit tire. These tires are reassuring to have on your bike when you line up for that gnarly Crit in the rain. The big round profile of the 23mm tires provide excellent grip and a large contact area to the road. I feel more confident in high speed cornering and sprinting with these on my bike. The tread has a twin rubber compound. The sidewall is softer for grip and the center is harder for longer wear. The Vittoria's are a little heavier at approximately 240 grams, but they provide grip like no other clincher. Believe me there are many times when traction is way more important than saving an ounce! A side benefit is that the extra rubber and larger profile of the tires provide a cushy ride. This is very noticeable with stiff oversized aluminum frames. The tires are tough and wear well. Price $55.99
• Best all Around: Michelin's Axial Pro does everything well. They provide great traction; they are comfortable and last a long time. Axial Pros stand up to a ton of abuse. They have a twin tread design like the Open CX. I would stick to the 23mm tire as the 20mm. is on the narrow side. The tire is mid-weight at 225 grams for the 23mm. This is the longest lasting, high performance tire that we know of. Most riders get at least 2,500 to 3,000 miles of wear (way more than Continentals Grand Prix 3000). This tire is hard to beat for all around performance. Price $44.99

In conclusion there are no bargains with tires. You get what you pay for! Pro photographers never risk a project on off brand film, and I would never race on cheap tires!

Why 802.11 Networking is great. A note from Tom Hatsukami as he installed the wireless network I recommended:

I finally had a chance to get our home wireless network up and running this weekend, and I'm in heaven! This is the best thing since the invention of the wheel--I can check my e-mail or look at my kid's school website from anywhere in the house without tether! I'm spoiled now, however. When are they going to have a computer that is voice activated that is immediately available and can tell me who the 34th President was, or when I should leave for work to beat the traffic (like on Star Trek)? Thanks for your help and advice...

Interbike 2002

OK, this just happened in mid October. I have to get out there sometime I think. Here is a quick report from some pretty good sites...

Speedgoat Report

The next set of stuff is coming out. Got to remember not to buy until it is fully stocked. Here is a good report from Speedgoat. Actually better than the various magazines. Points of note:

• Eggbeater Pedals. I just bought an Eggbeater pedal for instance, but now I know why it is on sale at colorado cyclist. Here is the much-heralded next step in the evolution of the Crank Bros. Eggbeater pedal, the incorporation of titanium. There and three flavors, starting with a basic 230g ti spring model, and ending with the full Triple Ti at only 185g. The Triple uses a ti body, ti spring and ti spindle. And check out that slick new kit you get when purchasing a Crank Bros. Pedal. It includes all the little pieces and extra stuff you?ll need, all snugged up in that super fine case. Rats, I just bought the old aluminum one at 280 grams. I guess I'd better not eat anymore brownies :-)
• Mountain stems and handlebars are suddenly showing up with 31.8mm diameter, a size road bars currently seem to be painfully inching toward. For a while now we?ve had both 26.0mm and 31.8mm road stems and bars, and 25.4mm mountain bars and stems, but the potential move to a standard 31.8mm for both road and mountain would be nice
• Titec Carbon Stem. One look at this cartoonishly massive Titec full carbon fiber (only the bolts and nuts aren?t carbon) stem and it?s grin-inducing 135g weight will make you a 31.8mm believer.
• Salsa Campeon frameset. What?s unique about this? How about a frame that not only has carbon seatstays, but features a full 6-tube Scandium tubeset (every tube that isn?t carbon fiber is Scandium, people) and comes with a a price tag of under $800. Wow, maybe a low cost second frame for me in the era of Nasdaq at 1000
• Mavic Speedcity. The most interesting development in wheelsets has to be this 700c Mavic disc-brake ready Speedcity. Mavic originally released these as a wheelset mountain bikers could slap on to go ride on the road, but they?re big overseas among the trekking crowd?people who usually ride a lot as a kind of utilitarian means of transportation over fairly demanding terrain that spans huge distances and often involves brutal climbing and inclement weather. Oh, and these people often use bikes that look a lot like full-suspension 29?er mountain bikes (29?ers are just mountain bikes with 700c wheels). Moots had already made the connection and was running these wheels on their 700c Mooto-X displayed at the show.
• XTR 2003 is quite proprietary. Cranks and bottom-bracket are one-piece, the ultimate proprietary relationship. The cranks ARE the bottom-bracket, and this is actually our favorite piece of 2003 XTR equipment--assuming those outboard bearings last. At least the bearings are easily replaced with a standard cartridge unit all bike shops should be able to get you. But our concerns are definitely still there, and the replacement price tag of an individual shifter/brake unit will outright terrify you. In fact, it might be better to avoid riding your new XTR-equipped bike, lest you risk breaking a shifter unit. Based on pricing we?ve seen at this point, if you break just one of your shifters, you?ll find yourself spending roughly one suspension fork to get your bike up and rolling again.
• . VPP Santa Cruz and Intense are great. Everyone appears to be saying this. See Mountain Bike for instance. Here come the VPP's. The Virtual Pivot Point bikes from Santa Cruz are finally shipping, and having finally ridden a production model, I can safely say that yep, it's every bit as good as they said it would be. It's better. We had a chance to take the Blur and the Intense Spider VPP out for a spin around the nasty desert conditions, and came away sufficiently amazed. Will bikes like this take the place of XC racing mainstays like the Titus Racer X and Yeti ASR? Probably not. Anyone who lives in a heart rate monitor and couldn't care less about comfort and nasty-stuff handling will likely stick with the lighter (about a half a pound) and less elaborate (one pivot) venerable old Superlight, or the Titus or Yeti, and plush-addicts are still going to love Ellsworth and Turner designs, but if you want a bike that does everything really well and is officially the best balance of efficiency and comfort I've ever ridden, this is your new bike. I think it's the best all arounder I may have ever ridden.

Road Bike Review Virtual Tradeshow and Daily Coverage

They have a good virtual tradeshow where I clipped some cool things out

• Avid Discs for Road Bikes. All the benefits of the mountain version, with road lever capability. Now road and cyclocross riders can experience the unparalleled performance and reliability that Avid?s Ball Bearing system provides. See avidbike.com for more info. This is a great idea for wet Seattle

Bike Advice I've been learning how to maintain bikes for about a year now. Here's a quick list of the sites and books I've used. Good luck yourself!

1. Art of Road Bike Maintenance and Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. It is not as complete in the details, but gives you a good overview.
2. Sheldon Brown. This is the next level down. Sheldon's articles are just great and he's very practical. Helped me find great things like rear derailleur self-shifting solutions. Also good advice on routing cables and also on motorbike style brakes (you wire the right hand to the front instead of the rear brake).
3. Lickton's, but I try to direct my business here as much as I can to support their great efforts.
4. RoadBikeRider.com. I haven't used this site much but it appears to have some very good advice.

Web Hosting CyberPixels WebHosting - Hosting Plans. Recommended by paradoxx. Wow, the prices are great. I just signed up for this and we'll see how it goes. I'm going to move Geek Fishing as an experiment. Most interesting will be to test out some of the applications they install for you. Here's a quick list that I'm going to try:

1. MegaBook. This appears to be a freeware guestbook registrar
2. XMB. A very neat message board.
3. ImageArcadia. Image galleries.
4. Movable Type. They support this. Cool
5. b2 cafelog. The most feature risk blogger according to the blog comparison charts

If all works out, the only thing missing from using FrontPage will be some sort of navigation generator. I've been thinking about this and think the way to do the site long term is to make every major section a blog and then there will only be very simple navigation. A blog is a very convenient way to think about most entries on my personal web site.

paradoxx.net >> it's nothing, it's so normal. This is a great example of what's happening with Blogging. What an amazing site from someone who is 16 years old!

Home Networking I'm involved with Google results for Home Networking resulted in these hits. I'll be a regular on these, so as of today, here are the top 10 hits with some notes by me.

1. Home Net Help. I would not have guessed this would be the number one hit.
2. PracticallyNetworked.com. A good site for home networking with nice reviews.
3. How Stuff Works. A reminder that raw information is helpful.
4. Home Toys. Have to check this one out.
5. Home PC Network. I have to check this one out.
6. CERT on Security. Interesting the security of networks is so high on the list
7. Microsoft Home Net. Well, we do see the #1 software brand is right up at the top.
8. 3Com. This hit is a reminder that brands still matter. Also, John Ludwig points out that they were in the Dell channel. I need to buy one of their units and figure out what makes them so great.
9. Home Networking News. There is a trade publication for everything. Need to subscribe.
10. ZDNet Home Networking Guide. How the mighty have fallen. Interesting that ZDNet is just barely in the top 10 and C|Net is nowhere to be seen. Very different from the PC days.

Welcome to Bikesport!. They actually do some nice reviews on this site. I liked the one about the Felt DA650. I don't need a triathlon bike, but who knows. I also updated my Bike Manuals page with pointers to all the components I use and the torques for bolts. This is easier than the google search I do all the time.

Smash's World. Wow, a pretty cool site. MOst importantly, it has his own Kazaa participation Hack and also a kazaa lite 2.0 patch.

Bikes and HTML coding Just created a page for bikes that I Bikes and other referrals. Amazing what is on the web. There is actually a Vintage Trek Bike site with old brochures from 20 years ago.

On the way to doing that I also learned how to make popup windows. Didn't realize they required Javascript to do that, but there is a little library at Script Asylum that makes it easy.

Web hosters UnlimBand : Against Unlimited Bandwidth. I'm investigating getting a web host that runs PHP and Mysql as well as Perl which Via Networks does not, although it does have FrontPage extensions. Here's a site that is part of my search of where not to go. Interesting there is a site on this. Hosting Assured. Interesting that there is no Web Hosting Ratings. This is the top google listed site for hoster ratings. It seems very comprehensive. Good FAQs. Domain RegistrarsI use Network Solutions right now, but they recommend NameCheap and Godaddy.com. I'll have to give them a try with the new geekfishing.net domain we are going to play with. GoDaddy got a great review from State of the Domain Newsletter which has good data on shares. It is growing fast with a $9/year plan vs. $30 from Network Solutions I can understand that!.

What About PERL?. Talks about a common bug with running Perl installations. I wonder if this is John Ludwig's problem. Something about double quotes.

How to install Perl on IIS 4 or 5 Installing PERL on IIS 4 or 5 is fairly straightforward and a good thing too. Here are notes from a great site called Activestate.com.

Once downloaded, the installation program will take care of everything but there’s one catch. It only installs Perl to be active on the Default Website.

Of course, this won’t do, you have to configure it manually for other sites.

Parse your .pl or .cgi files through perl.exe. This is simple enough but has a significant performance consideration. Since IIS will call Perl.exe to process each request for a .cgi or .pl file, it creates a new, separate process for each file. This results in many separate processes running which consumes a lot of resources and make for very poor scaling. If you expect to have a popular site, this is not a good choice. It is however, easy and good while troubleshooting since it won’t crash your server if your script fails. You can also run perliis.dll as an ISAPI filter for higher performance but lower stability.

Set the permissions correctly. See the page above for detailed steps.

Bike Routes Here are some rides that I'm going to take over the winter and fall.

• Kingston Ferry rides. Didn't get a chance to do the Kitsap Color Classic since connie hurt herself. Looks like a great ride from the Kingston Ferry
• Bainbridge Ferry rides. This is the route of the Chilly Hilly which is a 30 miler from the Bainbridge Ferry. Supposed to be quite...well...hilly.
• Whidbey Ferry rides. This is a route that is great for Whidbey Island trips.

Bicycle Maps in Washington State. In looking for more places to ride, I found this site with a great list of trails and bike route maps around Seattle.

Short Ignition Descriptors. I've been doing a bunch of introduction mail lately. Here are I think the best introductions for later use of what I do over there...just putting here to clip in for later

Two line email introduction

Rich Tong is a partner at Ignition, an early-stage fund based in Seattle (Rich was Vice President of marketing at Microsoft, where he headed the Windows, Office and server efforts).

One screen of email introduction

As a quick overview, we are a vc firm established in 2000 in Seattle. Our first fund was $160m and our second, raised last November, is $285m. The partners are a group of ex Microsoft and McCaw execs who have built some of the biggest technology businesses in the world, including Windows and the McCaw cellular companies. We build on our real world experience and relationships to help premier entrepreneurs create the next generation of successful technology businesses. How we work...

• Invest in areas of expertise. We invest only in those areas we know -- communications and information technology -- where we can add the most value.
• Apply proven business values. They have served us well in our careers and we apply them to the companies we invest in.
• Invest selectively. We give our companies our full time and attention. We are actively involved. We strive to be the first person the CEO turns to for advice.
• Team approach. We apply the full resources of Ignition to each investment. We have world class experts in a broad range of functions, including executive leadership, marketing, technology, finance, sales, and engineering.

One page introduction

Ignition Partners was formed about three years ago to invest selectively in areas that we understand in software and telecommunications. We are looking for folks who like us think that this difficult economic time is a good time to invest in real businesses and that require investors with operating experience to get directly involved. We find we work really well with others with operating experience and great understanding of sectors. We have made new investments in four companies this year and continue to be active. There are seven general partners each with at least 10 years senior management operating experience. Brad Silverberg is the managing general partner, he led the Windows and Internet Explorer efforts at Microsoft and was previously head of development at Borland International. Joining him is Steve Hooper, former CEO of AT&T Wireless, Nextlink and Teledesic. Other folks include Jon Anderson, former controller for Microsoft and architect of its enterprise licensing programs, Cam Myhrvold, head of developer relations and telecommunication sales at Microsoft as well as Rich Tong, former head of marketing for Microsoft enterprise products and desktop applications. Based in Seattle, we have about $400M under management and raised our second fund early in 2002. Key limited partners include Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, General Motors, Dartmouth, Duke, University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon, Washington University and a host of other institutions.Half of our investments are in the Bay Area and co-investors include Greylock, Sequoia, Mobius and OVP.

Who Will Buy O2?. Some commentary from the UK about O2... O2 is a very-badly run company. The decision making is confused and power so diluted that there is no strategy or direction. The company, like BT, is so self-absorbed that people there don't think of their rivals in business as being their opposite number at other networks, but as those people they work for or who work for them. Purchasing is a complete mess. O2 ordered 165,000 RIM Blackberrys. In the first six months they sold 6,000. And were proud of it. The order has been cut back substantially but this means that O2 has lost its exclusivity and still has a stockpile. It's also not the way to treat suppliers, although such things are a habit with O2. Despite having warehouses full of £400 Blackberrys, O2 decided to take the HTC Wallaby. Remember O2 is a network not a handset manufacturer, and has little in the way of systems to merchandise, sell, train staff or run telephone support for handsets. Wallaby is a lot more than a handset, it's a Microsoft convergence product, a new version of Pocket PC OS, very difficult to support and generally unwanted. The XDA is an OK product, in a couple of years time once HTC and Microsoft have learnt a by the initial mistakes it will beget an excellent product, but the problem O2 has is quantity. The most successful PDA in Europe is the Nokia 9210; this sold 53,000 units in a quarter. Handspring is rumoured to have sold fewer than 20,000 treo's in Europe. For the XDA, O2 only has the UK and a minor presence in Germany and the Netherlands. A sensible number of units to buy would be 15,000. A wildly optimistic number would be 30,000. No, O2 is suspected to have bought 100,000. We've seen the first £100 price cut, expect more. Cutting orders is something O2 is getting a taste for, ask Quanta which was to have a phone sold exclusively to O2 with a pop group tie in, or Sharp, O2 ordered a very large quantity of camera phones and then cut the order by 80%.

Google News. It is amazing how far you can push free text search information. This is beta of Google's real time search of news is pretty amazing. Those folks over there continue to amaze me. Makes you think about how much more there is left to do in search and indexing and how lightweight systems using their news reader plus blogs could be a big deal in corporate settings. It is much less heavy weight and more personal. Somehow the web has gotten to be big a corporate fast, while most revolutions like the personal computer one are at the personal or department level. John Ludwig and I both think that there are investment opportunities here, but we still to think about this. I do think that this free search is another part of the puzzle. Another is the ability to link in IM and email simply. Maybe something monitoring in IM's case. Maybe a magic CC address in email.

AddPro - Submission. My poor sad sack friend, Adrian has a great web site, but it isn't even indexed on Google. Found a free submitter that puts him into at least 20 search engine and probably spams his name everywhere. At least maybe he'll get indexed by the link from this entry :-)

Mavic Technical Manuals. It is very hard to find the Mavic technical manuals online for bike parts because it is for dealers only and is password protected. Turns out however that the various PDFs are still crawled by google, so you can get to them with a search. Here is the one on the Ksyrium which I need because I need to replace the hub.

Sheldon Brown Bike Advice, Lickton's. I find Sheldon and Branford to be the two best sources on the Internet. There was recently a story about Sheldon in Bike magazine and it is true he knows an amazing amount. Very responsive on mail too. I highly recommend any of these small local shops. You can pretty much call any of these folks and they know what to get you. Right now I'm rebuilding the cassette on my bike and other things and it has been great to read and ask questions of them.

Naptheon build wireless application for Newport News. One of my buddies, Ty Carlson over at Microsoft dropped me a note about this. Pretty interesting vertical application and use of wireless

USATODAY.com - Cell phone users flip for AOL instant messaging. Wow, 500K users added per month doing IM on cell phones. Pretty amazing. An interesting trend that shows how powerful IM, SMS and email can be.

Select Audio Reports, Iraq Hearings: NPR Special Coverage. OK, I'm a news geek and back in 1991, you had to listen to a radio. Now you can hear it all online. INteresting to here the different POVs

Search Engine Submission Tips. My poor friend posted by RT @ 10:50:00 AM 

VentureWire Index. The chart shows the 90-day trailing average of the amount invested in venture-capital deals each day for the 90 days preceding today. The daily numerical index () is an index of the amount of private equity invested yesterday, with the percent change being the difference between today's 90-day trailing index, and the 90-day trailing index from the day previous. The index baseline, 1000, is the 90-day trailing index from January 1, 2000.

Upcoming phones Carriers are pretty bad at previewing what is coming. Here are some sites that I use to see what is up

• World GSM Cellular Phones. A top google hit. This site has lots of the world and other phones that are only available overseas. For instance, the drool is on for the next generation Nokia 6610 and also the upcoming Ericsson T300.
• Motorola Previews. The new C330I thinks its very neat as a cheap color phone.
• Sony Ericcson. A great list of interesting phones here. For instance, the T300. Look slike a super affordable T68 that's coming soon.
• Nokia European Phones. These are the cool new European phones that eventually make their way to the US. Drool includes the 6650 with a built-in still/video camera but this is pretty heavy at 141 grams or the really funky 3650 or the 3510i which is only 100 grams and has a color screen.

BIKEMAN's On-Line Store: DERAILLEUR CABLE SETS. Just a note for myself. I need a new derailleur cable set. The ones on the bike are too short now that I blew up my carbon handlebars :-(

Lake MXZ 300. These are supposed to be great. Got them, they feel great. Lickton's has them, but the problem is that my Speedplay X/1's aren't cleat compatible. When will we ever get just one style. These are SPD, but Speedplays aren't. Arrrgggh. Bike Nashbar.com - Crank Bros Egg Beater Pedal - '02. The solution is a set of mountain bike pedals. Heck, I'll switch them over to my new mountain bike assuming I ever get them :-). On sale now at Nashbar.

Second Annual Weblog Awards. Ok, I'm off to find some great blogs now that mine is basically stabilized. Here is one spot that I'm looking at.

• Webloggers. Best Weblog webring.
• Movable Type. Hmm. Blogger was nominated. I'll ahve to try this.
• Loobylu. Best Australian or New zealand weblog
• Weblog Wannabe. Best Asia weblog
• PlasticBag.org. Best European weblog.
• Wil Wheaton Dot Net Best american weblog.

UniteTheCows - Kazaa Participation hack! Well, this is the latest version of the Kazaa Participation Hack. This program will fake uploads in your Kazaa application, in order to increase your Participation level. Kazaa now has a new participation feature, this fakes things and ensures you get the best files The participation level serves one important purpose: It will give you higher priority on the download queues. REMEMBER: If you un-share your files once you have raised your participation level, this program will have no effect. ALL USERS who do not share on the network are given a level of 0, no matter what your client says! SO SHARE!! The download can be found here (you must register first): Kazaa Participation Hack 1.3 (fixed now lol, sorry) Privacy Warning: Note: This software sends anonymous usage statistics via SMTP (e-mail). There is a reason for this - excessive use can get you banned from the network. My server keeps track of the Kazaa Usernames that use this app, and how often... if you are using it too much, you'll be warned. The only thing that is sent is your kazaa username. That's a guarantee! Note also, that some McAffee users have detected a worm in the files released here. This is totally untrue, and if you updated your virus signatures, you would realise that it is a bug, and has been corrected Enjoy this release. Do not post any questions here or comments about previous versions.

Welcome to our Wireless World. Here is another website with data on cell phone and the plans.

speedup.tk A cool tool

WWW.K-LITE.TK - KaZaA Lite. KaZaA & KaZaA Lite Add-ons FastTrack Accelerator - Attempts to "find more sources" for idling downloads on your KaZaA & KaZaA Lite "Transfers" list. The FastTrack Accelerator seeks out other KaZaA users sharing the same file and attempts to download immediately. By using this tool, you'll notice every file you attempt to download, downloads! Using the FastTrack Accelerator, you can find rare files easier and more effectively then other file sharing programs. If you use KaZaA Lite, the FastTrack Accelerator IS A MUST!!!. After using FastTrack Accelerator (a.k.a. Speedup) for a couple days, I found every file I had in queue was downloaded. Every time I use KaZaA Lite & Speedup, I successfully download all of my requested files, which is a surprise to me. Usually I can get about 60-85% of my downloads to complete overnight. To configure KaZaA or KaZaA Lite to have a MAX search result of 400, follow these easy instructions. 1. Run regedit - Goto the start menu and select "run" and enter regedit 2. Goto: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Kazaa/Advanced 3. Open MaxSearchResult 4. Enter Value Data as 190 Features

Zeropaid.com - KaZaA Lite

WWW.K-LITE.TK - KaZaA Lite

PowWeb - "The perfect hosting solution". Will have to find a rating system for hosters. This site is advertised on hitbox.com. Nice thing is that it is $15/month and has 250MB, domain, FrontPage extensions, MySQL and PHP4. HitBox Outsourced Web Analytics. Google shows this to be the most used real time web statistics tools. Now, Ludwig uses Site Meter. I'll have to try them both.

Thermos Nissan Wide Mouth Snack Jar JMG300. We don't get hot lunches at our school, so Connie found these nifty Nissan Thermos. They are pretty amazing and although costly, they seem to work well. I sure hope they don't lose them!

Ten Things I Hate About You - release date March 31, 1999. OK, I hate to admit that there are actually teen flicks that I admire, but here's one that reminds me of Say Anything, one of my top favorites. Also has a great soundtrack. Not exactly the most rewarding film ever, but what the heck. Cute. Of course, just so you don't think Rich is a sissy, my other favorite movie of all time is Terminator :-)

Mnemo-zine. This is my good buddy, Rob Bennett's weblog. Great looking and it is what Radio can do for you. Hmmm. Should look into that tool too.

free php / cgi / mysql hosting directory. Here is another one that even has ratings. These are the five star ones... Hosters PHP MySQL Space Popularity Portland Communications PHP4 Yes 15 46370 CoolFreePages PHP4 Yes 50 35510 CoolFreeHosts PHP4 Yes 30 20855 Tripod PHP4 Yes 50 11888

Free PHP Hosting :: PHP/MYSQL Web Hosting Reviews :: The Best Spot to Search and Compare Free PHP Web Hosts.. An of course, there is actually an entire site dedicated to the topic of free PHP Hosting sties. Wow. I love the Internet. How can folks afford to do this. I see that some have FrontPage extensions as well.

Just $5/month! - Tranquil Hosting(tq). I need a web hoster that has PHP4 and Mysql support. These are the folks that cafelog.com were using for a while. Wow, great prices. $25/month gets you to 2GB of disk or $15/month gets you 250MB and PHP4 and Mysql. Only issue is that frontpage extensions aren't supported, so I'll have to move off of FrontPage, which I probably need to do anyway. I'm going to investigate other content tools. The main things I use FrontPage for are: a) Navigation. It has nice navigation creation and b) Photo Gallery. A new feature I want to use, although I have ACDSee to do the ugly version of this right now. So this week is about finding a content and management system with navigation support against PHP4 and Mysql host rather than FrontPage extension hosts. If you have any ideas, send me email

tb-standalone - Standalone TrackBack. Wow, trackback and pings are a great idea that blogger doesn't seem to have. You can basically incorporate entries across a bunch of blogs with trackback and know who is linked to you. Here is a standalone tool that does this for you via a CGI script.

Blogger archive script generator. Very cool a script generator so that you can get the archives to go latest first, etc. Nice work Phil!

Blogger FAQ blog. Yuck, the official Blogger FAQ doesn't help with all the tags that you need. Here is a more complete list. The one I'm looking for is $BlogArchiveFileName which you can use to put your archive list on the front page.

b2 > ReadMeYou can now post news from an email client! This is a great reason to use b2 or blogger pro or radioland. So, it looks like either I pay for the latter, or find a hoster with the former... But first you'll have to edit b2config.php, filling the appropriate values for your POP3 email account (this interface doesn't support IMAP yet, only POP3, sorry). Once you have edited the config options, you can make your webserver execute b2mail.php every set amount of time (depending on your host's performance, this script can be resource intensive, so don't make it run every minute or you'll be kicked). You can do it with Cron-jobs, or if your host doesn't support it you can look into the various website-monitoring services, and make them check your b2mail.php URL.

wapblogger - a WAP interface to Blogger, LiveJournal and other smart weblog-style tools. Wow, you can from a WAP phone send something to a blog. How cool. You need to hit the WAP URL wap.ubique.ch/wapblogger to get there from any wap phone. Can't wait to try it. This plus audio blogging and the Radioland email to blog are very smart ideas.

b2 >b2 installation. Arrrgggh. Hours later and the problem is that the installation instructions for B2 are incomplete. You have to go into the mysql administrator and create a database called b2 and then it all works. Doesn't mention this in the installation and you only get a cryptic "undefined database" message. Now, let's try logging in.

PHP Coder. OK, the last step is to get an IDE for PHP. Wow, amazing what is free. Just downloaded this tool which has syntax checker, etc. Now, I can single step and figure out what is going on.

b2 on a Windows server is not supported. Wow, still couldn't get B2 to run, I had forgotten what configuration hell was with all the various INI files. Here are the quick notes from that author on hacking at c:\windows\php.ini... Too numerous are the threads about problems installing b2 on a Windows server, and too many times it all comes down to a misconfiguration of the php.ini file. Since this is NOT a problem with b2 it is quite innapropriate. Here are steps to ensure when you edit php.ini to have b2 run properly on Windows (or elsewhere): - register_globals ON - include_path must have '.' in it - error_reporting should not be as paranoid as showing Warnings all the time. you'll know what I mean when you have a screen filled with Warnings.

WinZip® Home Page. so of course DDG is actually in Unix Tar compressed format, so you have to get winzip in order to read it since Windows XP doesn't know this. Arrghh. How many layers down do I have to go. Also, with dbg, he saves it with the file extension .tar[1] so of course winzip won't recognize it, so you have to rename the extension.

DBG: Php Debugger. OK, I've gotten Mysql, PHP4 and B2 installed, but the b2install.php script is generating an error, so off to find a good debugging tool. Google led me to this for a step by step debugger. Wow, a single integrated suite would sure be great. And of course, it turns out this debugger needs a new DLL for every version of PHP. So, you have to run the windows installer from an older version, then untar the latest version with winzip and then copy the DLLs into the right place. On my machine, into the php\extensions directory.

Configuring PHP 3 and 4, MySQL 3.23, PHPMyAdmin, gd, Zend Optimizer for IIS 5.0 under Windows 2000. OK, to get to Cafe/B2, a great blogger according the blog Compendium, I had to learn how to install MySQL, a terrific free SQL database and also PHP4. Wow, this was pretty tricky to do just by reading the base documentation. Fortunately, Den Bourdon over in France had the easy instructions. It is amazing how often a simple description can be so hard. The only issue is that his actual test script is written in PHP3, not PHP4, so it doesn't execute right. But, a quick search for "hello world php4 script" at Google got me rapidly to my favorite test script. Google is amazing!

802.11 Wireless Home Network Recommendations. The new 802.11a at 72Mbps is coming out. Quite a few folks have been asking me about it. Right now for most homes I'd recommend that you get a low cost 802.11b solution for right now. My buddy Tom Hatsukami was asking and wanted to buy NetGear, so here are recommendations in the NetGear line. I've personally used both Linksys and D-link and haven't had any horror stories, but the advice holds no matter which low end you use. Here is the hardware I'd get...

1. NetGear MR314 Cable/Wireless router with 4-port hub at $99 MR314 on Pricegrabber for the price.
2. NetGear LAN Card is 802.11b LAN Card at $52

Here's why, I'd vote the other way, other folks might differ, but here's Rich's POV:

1. It won't be faster for you. 802.11a is much faster at 72Mbps but your DSL connection is probably running at 256kbps (about 20x slower), so you won't see it any faster than an 802.11b 11Mbps connection. You need additional bandwidth if you have a server or lots of PCs, but that's not true in the home usually, except for maybe at The Ludwigs.
2. Overall 802.11a is twice the price. It is expensive the prices are much higher for both the wireless router and also for the cards themselves. As an example, shows it at $204 for the HE102, and the equivalent adapter is $90 at 802.11b adapter price.
3. HE102 is not the right device for you. You want a wireless router, not a wireless access point, so that you have multiple PCs connected to your DSL. I don't see that NetGear has a combined 802.11a access point plus router, so you'd need to buy two boxes.
4. The HE102 is "single" mode 802.11a, so that means it won't work with any of the more popular and earlier device (called 802.11b--don't ask me why the b comes before an a, but that's the way that it is), so if someone comes over they likely won't be able to connect

Rich's Page Rank falls. I'm so depressed! I used to have a Google PageRank score of 4, so I didn't feel so bad that Ludwig had a rank of 5. Now, I find I've just dropped to 2. Whatever the heck that means. Most depressing is that sites that you would think have few links to them like Dynacenter have page ranks of 4. What gives. Not that I'm competitive of course! Now the fact is that I've no idea what a PageRank is or how it is calculated, but how could there be so few links to me and how did I drop from 4 to 2. Of course I'll never by 9 out of 10 like MSN, but come on.

Celestia: A 3D Space Simulator. Wow I was browsing through Sourceforge and went through the most downloaded open projects. Found this incredible viewer of celestrial bodies. Amazing what people have built. It works great and I can't wait to show it to the kids. Nice thing is that it is tied to various public databases around the world so that you can actually travel to a star (like Star Trek!) and then right click to get the actual real information about it. A geek's toy for sure.

Electronic Federal Tax Payment System. Ok, now that I'm just a self-employeed geek, filing all these tax payments is a big hassle. I'm just bad with paper. Amazingly, the government has an online tax payment system. I'm going to give it a try. Wish me luck!

Ok, I'm looking for three phones...you should definitely check out Amazon. They have a $150 rebate on, it is amazing, main issue is that you can't get family plans with them.

1. Nextel. Need a replacement for my work phone. There are two choices
   • Nextel i90c. This is the clamshell and is not color, but it is quite cheap. Only $150. Weighs 4.8 oz.
   • Nextel i95c. This is the color, but it costs $400! Might as well get a Sprint Treo for that. Nice thing is that it only weighs 4.5 oz.
   • Nextel i80s. Ok, this is the cheapest one. It is $30 from Amazon.com or free from letstalk.com and it is $75 from Nextel
2. Rich's Newest GSM Phone. Want a small lightweight one. The Nextel is just too big! And this lets me share with Connie and my parents as weel as go worldwide. The choices are between...
   • Ericsson T68 or Let's Talk. This is the phone that Connie has. Very confusing user interface, but it is color and a world phone as well as GPRS. Cost is $200 for AT&T or T-mobile. But at , it is $50 right now!
   • Motorola V70 Very sleek look but not color nor is it a world phone. Super light though and has a 2.5mm headset. Cost is $125 from Cingular but this requires a two year contract.
3. For the parents. The choices are for low end GSM phone
   • Motorola V66 or Let's Talk. It is $50 from letstalk.com or you get $50 back with rebates on Amazon! It doesn't have a family plan though. Main thing is that it is super light and a world phone. See below...
     • Only 2.79 ounces with slim battery
     • GPRS - for faster internet connections
     • Voice-activated dialing
     • Up to 180 minutes of talk time and 120 hours of standby time
   • Motorola T193 for Free. Main thing nice is GPRS, but isn't a world phone and is 4 ounces. With a streamlined design, the Motorola T193 has all the features you need, like voice dialing and vibrating alert. Plus you'll get the features of the built-in organizer functions like a datebook and currency converter. The Motorola T193 also includes:
     • General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)-"always on" Internet access
     • SMS messaging, with reply and phonebook lookup options
     • Vibration alert
     • Voice-activated dialing
     • Up to 300 minutes of talk time or 150 hours of standby time
   • Nokia 3390. $50 rebate, 4.2 ounces and it has that trusty Nokia firmware with an AOL IM client built in. It is also single move
4. Rich's latest CDMA phone. OK, I need one of these. The winner looks like either the
   • Handspring Treo 300 for $500 or Amazon has for $420. But it weights 5.2 oz and is color. MAybe I can get rid of my Blackberry? See the Amazon reviews though for how incredibly bad Sprint customer support is and the general integration. Seems like a time to wait. It is really unfortunate, you have to have an SMTP port open to read mail. So, this is not as good as Blackberry integration out of the box apparently.
   • Samsung A500 or Amazon. This is 3.6 ounces and is a color screen. I presume it has the Samsung software which I've always liked. But it is $300 on the Sprint site, although it is $220 on Amazon. Also has short battery life because of the incredible TFT screen. The Amazon reviews are filled with poor coverage and customer service comments as well.