Tag Archives: Technical

Sprint Hawaii your Blowing it with EVDO and 3G Coverage



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.


Google Earth causing Foreign Government Agencies to be Nervous



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]


Review CarChip E/X with Alarm by Davis Instruments



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.


Tech Bloggers changing the face of technology reporting



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]


So you want to run OSX on the Intel Based PC on your Desk?



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