Chuck's Blog

During my daily browsing of eBay today, I found several lots of older tablet PC’s, most notable ones under 200mhz. While these could never be used for most of the day-to-day tasks we require from the average tablet PC, I was still thinking of some interesting uses for them.

Here’s a couple I came up with

• Install a minimal linux install and put some monitoring software on it. Presto, an instant and wall-mountable console
• Set it up to show pictures and rotate them every 30 seconds or so
• Front-end for a DIY home security system (Use it to turn off system, show system status, etc.)
• Wall mountable network hard drive server (Use USB hard drives and something like samba for easy access)
• Find a way to mount one in an older car and experiment with things like a simple mp3 player or a system to read engine error codes

All of these things could be done with a little tinkering on these outdated tablets. But this list in reality is very small, so I was hoping people could comment with some idea’s they may have?

Remember, these tablets are cheap in lots. Heck, it’s not even hard to get a half dozen for maybe 50$ + shipping if you look carefully enough.

AT&T 25$ prepaid refill card

SIM cards are used by carriers to identify a phone, store its contact information, and allow the consumer to use the phone of their choice. But in the U.S. there are unfortunately only a few prepaid carriers that use the GSM network that SIM cards are compatible with.

The carriers with significant coverage I know of are as follows:

• AT&T
• T-Mobile
• 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless

These three carriers offer varied plans, so if your planning on using one you will need to decide on what is your priority: data, air time, or texting.

Data

AT&T is the only one that offers a prepaid Blackberry style data plan, which starts at 4.99$/mnt for 5MB (???) and 19.99$/mnt for 100MB. While this isn’t much it’s the most your probably going to get out of them at this time.

T-Mobile does offer a good data plan for 1$/day, but it’s only compatible with Sidekick phones. I have heard across the Internet of people having success using other phones with heavily modified settings though.

7-Eleven’s service doesn’t offer a data plan from what I can find. They may support downloading data for a significant fee per kb though.

Air time

Each one of these services offers fairly good airtime plans, it just depends on whether your priority is just airtime or not. Package deals are available, and most of the time you can get unlimited evening and weekends. I won’t go into details because these plans are just so various.

Coverage also makes the plans vary in usability.

Messaging

I’m referring to MMS (or text messages) when I say messaging just so we have things straight. I’m not going to get into international texting since things get really fuzzy there.

AT&T offers three plans when it comes to texting: a 4.99$/mnt plan for 200 messages, a 9.99$ one for 1000, and a 19.99$ one for unlimited.

T-Mobile surprised me with their plan availability for texting: none other than the sidekick plan (Which is unlimited). So if you don’t have a sidekick it will cost you $0.10 each to send and $0.05 each to receive.

7-Eleven doesn’t have plans available from what I could find. So you have to pay between 5-4 cents a text either way for domestic texts.

Overall

Air time really varies depending on where you need coverage, so there is no solid winner there.

AT&T wins for data, since it’s the only one that offers a roughly 20$/mnt data plan. 100mb’s may not be much, but it works for basic emailing.

AT&T and T-Mobile tie when it comes to text messaging. Why? Well, because for about 30$/mnt T-Mobile gives you unlimited data and texting with a Sidekick device, which is cheaper than AT&T’s data plan combined with their texting plan. But since T-Mobile’s plan only works with a Sidekick they effectively tie.

You may even be lucky enough to have a dual SIM phone, where you could have data setup for one SIM, and airtime for the other. But if all else fails there’s always contracted plans.

Nowadays many WiFi hotspots are blocking or filtering port 25 traffic, leaving most email users with a problem: How do I send my mail?

If your lucky enough to be running your own postfix server that already is set up for SASL authentication, than give this a shot by adding it to your postfix master.cf file (Usually /etc/postfix/master.cf)

submission inet n       -       -       -       -       smtpd
 -o smtpd_enforce_tls=yes
 -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
 -o smtpd_client_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
 -o cleanup_service_name=sasl_cleanup

sasl_cleanup   unix  n       -       n       -       0       cleanup
 -o header_checks=regexp:/etc/postfix/sub_header

You will also need to create a /etc/postfix/sub_header file with the following contents

/^Received: / IGNORE

This sub_header file will remove the Received: header from your email, thus preventing other email servers from rejecting your mail due to the dynamic IP address from the hotspot.

Now all you need to to is set up your email client to use port 587 (submission) when connecting to your mail server. You also need to enable TLS authentication, since the submission port only allows encrypted connections. (You can change this by removing the smtpd_enforce_tls line, but that opens your passwords up to sniffing)

There are other ways to avoid the port 25 block of course, one of them namely being using ssh as a proxy for your connection.

These KA08′s are popping up like whack-o-moles on eBay  lately. Their quite often mistaken for a miniature iPhone at the first sight, but in reality they aren’t even a U.S. product. Their a Chinese close of the iPhone, and a rather nice one too.

As you can see in the picture, they follow the exact same layout as the iPhone, except smaller. I personally like its size when compared to the iPhone. I mean, just look at it. It’s about as big as a credit card, whereas the iPhone is about the size of a average PDA.

One rather nifty feature it has that the iPhone does not is two available SIM slots. This is a really good idea; I can already see putting a SIM for the U.K. and U.S. in so that its possible to just flash up the phone in either contient, without mucking with the innards. It also helps the phone is Quad-band.

A major downside to this phone though is the the lack of the App store, which is by far the biggest seller on the iPod. (Literally) It makes up for this in its price of roughly 70$ USD new though.

For a chinese clone this phone is actually pretty nice; so much so I’m considering using one as my primary phone.

Hmm. This doesn’t look good. According to this cnet news posting, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is planning to crack down on bloggers who review or promote products in return for freebies or payments. This would basically put bloggers who do not provide full 100% idiot-proof discloser in hot water.

“But some bloggers, the AP article mentioned, are concerned that the FTC’s efforts could go too far, possibly generating probes into posts that were written without any compensation, and possibly leading bloggers to post with more restraint.”

This would be my primary worry too. Sometimes when I find a product or service in the technical field to be of the highest quality I, well, blog about it. And no, it’s not really for the company’s benefit. In most cases its just me, another everyday consumer trying to help other consumers out. And plus, if I write a sponsored post I make sure to disclose how I’m being compensated, just so the reader has the ability to take my entire post with a grain of salt if they so desire to.

Another thing to note: Not all bloggers are American, and therefore not all bloggers can be controlled by the FTC. I’m interested in seeing how they determine a post is being compensated for, as I personally beleive there is no perfect way to do so.

But you have to give the FTC credit for at least thinking about trying this out, because it may help in the long run when it comes to those blogs that are run for 100% profit and have no origionality to them being shut down.