For about a year now I have had a Sprint EV-DO card that has worked well in all of the locations that I find myself in. But recently I changed offices which moved me from a outer wall in a building with few windows to inner office. I knew I was in trouble when the guys desk I was taking over for told me that if I wanted my cell to work I would have to place it about 20 feet from my desk on top of a cabinet.

Obviously when I plugged in my EV-DO card at my new desk the signal was non existent even though I had perfect reception at my old desk that was less than 30 feet away along with a couple of walls.

I started hunting online for an external Antenna and Amplifier solution. The more I looked the more I become concerned when I found many sites that sold Antennas and Amplifiers did not have a customer support line. With the price of most solutions just under $250.00 I wanted to talk to someone that had a clue.

I finally found one company that had a responsive customer, and a warm body I could call with any questions I may have. Ultimately I ordered a amplifier and antenna from Gordon over at Maximum Signal. Gordon was very helpful and the kit I purchased really did the trick and I have a usable EV-DO card again.

The amplifier – antenna combo raised my signal from like -110 to -85 db it’s not perfect but it’s better than not working at all.

Meanwhile I am hoping Sprint looks at the building and installs a commercial amplifier in it so that our cell phones will work. It really sucks in this day and age to be in a location where the thickness of the walls kill the mobile coverage.

If you need a solution that works I highly recommend using the folks at Maximum Signal!

I will have more to say though about a couple of popular EV-DO sites that I have some serious concerns about in their site information and sales transparency.

Update: I have gotten some info that this is a hoax.

I can almost guarantee you that there will be a ban on using Laptops in Airplanes happening very soon. Some airlines have already banned the use of Dell and Apple computers in-flight. The latest laptop to blow up was a Thinkpad and I am sure if it had a Sony battery in it that it will be added to the list of banned devices used at 35,000 feet. [Engadget]

My moms house is 13 miles from the closest town were most of the major cellular services work. My mom business uses Verizon Wireless phones which is the only service that works reliably here at the house. I have a T-Mobile and Sprint cell phone in my pocket and neither of them even register a single bar of signal level. In order to get my VoiceMail I have to dial in via a land line or go to the second floor of the house and hang out a window.

Yesterday on a whim I plugged in my Sprint EVDO card into my computer and tried connecting to the sprint wireless network, even though their was no signal on the card it connected. I about fell out of my chair. Well it turns out that if I sit at the kitchen table which is next to a window the PCMCIA card will connect to sprint. I am getting transfer speeds that are a little slower than dial up.

To give you a idea my moms home is on a dirt road and will likely never get broadband via cable I doubt ADSL service will ever be available as well. This has made me realize that someday when Sprint and Verizon get their act together and get 3G or next gen wireless broadband speeds deployed to rural areas via their cell towers people like my mom will be able to get connectivity.

I have always told my parents that I would love to live in this area, we have land to build on but with no broadband there is no way I could operate my business. There is a huge untapped market of people here that are stuck on dial up in a broadband world.

Honestly I am pretty shocked that my EVDO service with Sprint works at this point even though it is at dial up speeds. The Samsung Sprint cell phone I am reviewing has no signal at all. I suspect if I stood on the roof I might get a signal with the handset. It is obvious that the antenna on the PCMCIA card is better.

I should have brought my wireless router that I can plug my EVDO card into as I would have tied it down on top of my dads 3 story barn to get a better line of site connection. Hey Sprint I would be happy to give you some land to put a tower up here at my moms place if you will give her free 3G broadband access as long as you have a tower here. Until then I guess I will have to deal with less than dial up speeds.

Lost some data from a crashed hard drive… We all have been there and if you haven’t you will (back up daily) but when it does happen to you and you get done screaming and crying you can always do this. [Extreme Tech]

If you have been listening to my Podcast you will know that I have had a dilemma, since the acquisition of the MacBook Pro I have been scratching my head on how I was going to have them both connected to the net when I was on travel or on the move. Yea I am one of those nuts that travel loaded to bear. Well I have been using Sprint EVDO service now for about 8 months and while it is faster than dial up but not as fast as ASDL I really did not like the idea of buying another card or having to pay for another broadband account that just does not make sense.

So instead what I have done is picked up a Kyocera KR1 Mobile Router this thing is awesome and testing it tonight setup took about 5 minutes the evdo card plugged in turned power on setup the wifi and I was in business. This allows me to share one EVDO card with 2 computers.

The box was a bit pricey but rumors are on the street that Sprint is going to be coming out with a USB EVDO card so that you can easily swap them if needed. But I like the setup I have better now.

With the upcoming Podcast Expo we are going to need connectivity in the booth and this will be the perfect configuration in that we will be able to use the the Mobile Router to stay connected and demonstrate things live. This will allow people to setup there accounts etc straight from the floor. [Kyocera]

Kudos to the folks over at Dell for blogging about the flaming laptop. It is not to often you see a laptop burn up like a few cars I have seen go up in flames. Seems they are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and a third party failure analysis lab.

Meanwhile if you own a Dell not sure I would be setting it on my lap or leaving it run with no one around. [www.dellone2one.com]

In a totally bizarre interview a hacker that is facing extradition to the United States claims that when he hacked into a NASA computer system on a supposed “dial up connection” that he found proof of UFO existence. Well the interview on Wired just gets really weird. One thing for sure when and if he gets extradited to the United States the Insanity defense will work good. [Wired]

In a totally bizarre interview a hacker that is facing extradition to the United States claims that when he hacked into a NASA computer system on a supposed “dial up connection” that he found proof of UFO existence. Well the interview on Wired just gets really weird. One thing for sure when and if he gets extradited to the United States the Insanity defense will work good. [Wired]

Ok starting this instant, I have removed tech.memeorandum.com from FeedDemon and here is why, I have 200 tech sites subscribed to in my news reader and I have not been reading them, the simple reason is I look at whats hot at tech.memeorandum and if nothing pops out at me I go back to doing other things. This has made me a lazy Blogger who needs a little kick in the pants. I am going to try and go 2 weeks and see if my blogging increases as a result.

If something really juicy breaks then you all can point me at the source story! Also if you have added a real good blogger to your news reader recently why not share it with me.

Holly mackerel, where was this site at when I was needing some templates several months ago, especially this one! If you want to score some templates hop on over to [blog.html.it/layoutgala]

This scenario seems to happen way to often, I was talking with Angelo the CIO at RawVoice yesterday and he says hey why don’t we do a Skype conference call tonight with the six of us instead of dialing in to Free Conference Call and I said great idea, this was after the new version of Skype reported to be able to support up to 9 people in a conference call.

So at the appointed time we try to make it happen and 3 of the group could not get it to work, turns out you can only do 9 way calling if all of the participants are running Intel Inside. This blew me away and kinda made me say what the heck is that all about.

So today I check the news and sure enough AMD wants that question answered as well. More of the details at [news.com]

I saw this post on one of the Skype Blogs and thought it was pretty cool idea where you add some images on your blog entries that would allow people to call you or leave voice mail directly from your website post. Interesting idea to say the least. [Skype]

Techcrunch has a good article on sites that you can go to find hot tech news. [TechCrunch]

Good ol Phillip Torrone from Make Magazine shows us how in a quick one, two, three process. [gizmodo.com]

I am setting in Honolulu International Airport with a Sprint EVDO card plugged into my laptop and guess what, no 3G access. You make a big deal about launching 3G in Hawaii yet your footprint so far is so tiny that I think the only reason you rolled out a small node in Hawaii was to get some press coverage.

Well here’s back at ya it sucks. This state has invested a lot of money in attracting high tech companies to Hawaii and that ha driven a lot of innovation but here you have a city that attracts visitors from all over the United States that come here to vacation yet need to stay connected well you have blew it so far in your 3G roll out by missing one of the most important areas in the whole state.

Want a quick way to design a menu template in CSS check out this online tool. [www.webmaster-toolkit.com]

Did that headline cause your eyebrows to raise a little bit. Mine sure did and when you read the article on what has been cooked up your gonna have your eyebrows raised a little more. Pretty cool to say the least. [www.oreillynet.com]

Lets gets a couple of facts out of the way, first of all overhead pictures have been available from private companies for a long time, second anyone that had a credit card could get access to that data. So I am sure it makes some countries a bit nervous that this low resolution imagery can be seen by the public on a very easy to access manner. But lets take this a step further what happens when someone launches a satellite create images of much higher quality.

I have no idea if their are laws on this sort of thing, but I am personally very uncomfortable with the thought that some private company would put up a bird that would offer higher resolution images than what is available now, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words and that type of information in the wrong hands could be a very bad thing. [NYT]

I have a Volvo Wagon and a Nissan Quest Mini Van sitting in the driveway. The Volvo has about 125,000 miles on it with a annoying Service Now light that keeps coming on even though Volvo keeps resetting it, and saying nothing is wrong. It’s my work car all I care about is that it gets me to and from work and I have it serviced on a regular basis. Its a work car and I am not worried about keeping up with the Jones. I hate car payments the wife bought it off a used car lot with 2 kids in the showroom driving the salesman nuts which resulted in a great price. Little advice load the kids up with sugar before you go car shopping, drives the salesmen mad.

Well that service engine light has been bothering me for two years, and when I received the CarChip from Davis Instruments the first thing I did after the 5 minute PC setup was install it on the Volvo. One thing I did do was set the clear service engine light in the setup so that I would have a clean configuration on the car.

The car installation took about 5 minutes. I got to thinking that their would not be anymore $75.00 evaluation fee’s at the Volvo dealerships as I was plugging this thing in!

I ran the unit in the car for the past 5 days, probably about 10 hours worth of driving time, the service engine light came on about 3 days into the test, and when I pulled the sensor of the car and brought it into the house I was literally blown away with the data that I was able to look over. I was able to tell how many times I exceeded 70 mph and a assortment of other details including the error code from that service engine light.

I did a couple of searches on Google with that code and figured out what the code meant. Then I did some more searches and determined that I am not the only person to have been bothered by this code on my model vehicle. The forum section I found this in gave some mechanic recommendations. I called my service agent at Volvo had him pull my service record, and had a pretty frank discussion with him. I faxed him the URL to the article as he did not have e-mail in the office, and he said he would call me back a couple hours. He called me and said that he thought we should order the net recommended specific sensor. I gave him the go ahead and hopefully next week no more car service light.

What surprised me is that I had to use the CarChip and some investigating on the Internet to do the job that the service department at Volvo has not been able to figure out in two years. On a side note my dad who has a small fleet of vehicles is going to have fun with this software and chip when he arrives in a couple of weeks. What I like the best, is that you can set 5 separate parameters to monitor.

Little bit of a touchy subject but here is something else you can use this chip for, we all raise our kids to be Angels but when they turn 16 and get a drivers license that can scare any parent half to death, no matter how much you trust your kid. Do you have a rebel in the house, and you just have a feeling that once they are cut loose you may have some issues? Well you can buy one of these and make an agreement with your new driver using the CarChip as a tool. With this unit you can use it to verify together they are living up to their side of the bargain.

Additionally they have an optional GPS system you can integrate with some of their sensors that will actually track where the vehicle has been, kinda gives me the creeps though. This device could come in handy in a traffic accident or if you have been given a ticket unjustly.

In using this device over the past 5 days I can say without any reservation that it has been insightful to my vehicles performance while at the same time has allowed me to possibly resolve a issue that has been bugging me for several years. Car dealers do not want you to have this technology, it makes you a smarter consumer. Another great product. [www.davisnet.com]

Disclaimer: Geek News Central was given this device to review, I utilized my personal vehicle and my standard laptop, the product was evaluated with no expectation from the vendor of a positive review.

Their is not a day that goes by that I don’t get 20 press releases, 10 software application notices and just recently offers to do product reviews. Thus far I have been picky, only selecting those articles, software and products that I am interested in. On the product review side, my wife keeps asking me why are you buying all this stuff, to stay in good graces I give her a heads up when I know a product review is about to be delivered. But unlike other sites that do a simple review, my policy is that I use the product for three days and use the product as it was intended.

With this latest development I have realized it that we as consumers and end users of the technology are starting to have an affect on the way companies do business. This is why tech bloggers mainly the “A” list (geez I hate that word) are getting front row seats at press events. Now I am in no way a, “A” list tech blogger, but I do know how many people are visiting this site in addition to over 200 e-mail comments a day split between the blog and the podcast the site is building critical mass.

At the same time I will always place a disclaimer on articles that are product reviews in which we have been provided a product to comment on. [WSJ]

That’s right my geek friends have a spare computer laying around and I think you could have yourself a weekend of fun loading Apple OSX (Developers Edition) on your Intel based PC that you have stored in a closet. May be a bit buggy but it sure will be a lot of fun to show it off to the geek next door who just purchased a dual processor G5. [Extreme Tech]

Rub it in a little and install the build on a high end Pentium 4 that you got for $500.00

My parents live 6 miles from the closest town and about 3 miles from the closest high speed cable drop. Seeing this article in Engadget today got me to thinking on a solution that I may have to play around with. The key will be finding someone willing to let me mount some commercial WiFi Gear up on their roof. Need to see who I know in the area as it would be a fun experiment to get them some high speed access. [Engadgett]

I have one of those dishes in storage also and I bet you using some of my RF skills I could build a better antenna then these guys did and even increase senstivity by buying a high end amplifier for the unit.

Hey I caught a whiff of this today and man this project looks pretty cool. I hope the BBC releases this as Open source i would love to have this incorporated over here for all of our Audio files it would allow people to find commentary in the archive very easily. So very cool! [BBC]

Imagine getting a call several weeks from now from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo saying hey we know you have a lot of data on your hard-drives and we want to store all of it for you, “for free”. and you don’t even have to send us a hard-drive. Every do some thinking about the storage infrastructure requirements to store all of the worlds data. Think about the power requirements and the cooling needed. What if you had a 10 million hard-drives running in a building and all of the racks to support that. I would think you would want that facility in Alaska some place were it stays cold a significant number of months every year. [Robert Cringley]

I have been watching our success rate at pinging major indexes over the past couple of weeks and I have drawn some conclusions. Most of the ping servers are broke big time and only a small portion of the pings are getting through. I have even went ahead and increased time-out times to ridiculous levels and to no avail the sites don’t pick up the pings.

IceRocket has not accepted a ping in over 2 weeks. This is the error message Ping ‘http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080′ failed: HTTP error: 302 Moved Temporarily, Weblogs.com Misses about 50% of the pings but hopefully Verisign will fix this during their server move. No wonder Yahoo podcast directory is not updating I am seeing this entry in about 80% of the attempts to ping them, http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.geeknewscentral.com/podcast.xml’ failed.

Whats wrong with these sites. Technorati has about a 25% success rate, but others I am seeing a100% success rate, it appears the bigger sites just cannot handle the number of incoming pings?

Thanks Dave for the link. For those of you that don’t have a clue what to do when it comes to setting up Port Forwarding on your router under your desk this website will teach you how to configure it and what port numbers you need to setup. [www.portforward.com]

Dave Winer is on to something that is pretty powerful. Visit the referenced link, read the article and click on the link on his page. I hope the search engine folks realize the power in this. [www.reallysimplesyndication.com]

I am not surprised that content publishers are being hurt by blogs. I used to get about 20 periodicals delivered to the house and went through their painful registration process to keep them coming. Guess what today my mail box is empty I am not killing tree’s

Why do I want to read two week old tech news and commentary from someone that usually has an agenda. The blog revolution continues to whack away at the regular media model.

Podcasting just a year old will continue to change the models, two years from now people are going to be getting all of their content via new models. [Information Week]

This is simply amazing technology, think of the lives it could save worldwide if it was standard issue with every swimming pool that was installed. Their is a video of the actual incident. [BBC]

I find an amazing amount of information each week from all of the search terms I have setup that look for keywords via Pubsub and Technorati and like some others I am about feed up with Technorati. Their quality has really been falling off I hate to say it but some of the traditional search engines that allow keyword searches to be converted into RSS feeds are doing better albeit a few days slower.

I agree with some other blogger posts that PubSub is kicking dirt in Technorati’s face at the moment, and the divide is getting wider every day.

Case in point, I submitted a Press Release to the wire services nearly 4 months ago it was picked up by both Technorati and Pubsub at the time when I originally released it but here is the kicker. Today I see it in my RSS feed for Technorati again with todays date as the publish date.

I am not sure what is going on over their but my feeddemon news aggregator has all of my Pubsub terms at the top of the column and technorati at the bottom. I used to inter mingle them but I find it a general waste of time to do that now. [Jason Kottke]