Samsung Galaxy S III to supercede the hunk of junk that Verizon put out for their first 4G LTE phone

I once was a brief lover of the old Samsung Droid Charge...only because of the amazing community at RootzWiki and XDA-Developers.  I am not kidding.  If it wasn't for these people, I would have thrown that stupid phone into a trash can and found an old Droid Razr flip phone.  That Charge was awful.  Buggy even with un-rooted stock installed.  Best I could manage was the most recent update rooted via superuser (God bless you ChainsDD).

First off I'll mention I have dropped Verizon like a bad habit.  I loved the unlimited data package as I used my device for tethering my laptop via WiFi tether but the new shared family plans are allowing me to save $25 to 65/mo for two phones and a bunch of data.  I give two prices because I probably will go on an existing family plan my folks have to get even more savings.  Verizon phones were always the bastard children of the Android mod scene in my opinion because they use the CDMA chips.  The selection of phones are subpar and now that 4G is more ubiquitous, who cares?  The GSM phones always seem to have more updates issued which interests me.

I toiled between the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III however there were two items that sold the Galaxy for me.  HTC's body has an internal, unremovable battery.  I travel a lot and at times will run a battery dry with 10 hours left in the day.  I didn't feel comfortable with that option even though the Tegra chipset was supposed to rock with battery usage.  Also, the One X only has 1 GB of internal RAM for the OS and non-expandable 16 GB's of memory for storage.  I struggled with the Charge's 1 GB of RAM and didn't want to run through that again.  I also need the flexibility of a removable micro-SD card for various reasons and like the idea of expandability.  The HTC build quality is awesome and the interface is buttery smooth.  I also love HTC's attitude that it has taken with the developer crowd. It pained me to leave that phone behind.

So far I am pleased with the hand feel, the screen size, and the current version of TouchWiz.  The widgets are MUCH more improved over the Charge and the fact that I can be part of the Ice Cream Sandwich discussion makes things even better.  Using Odin to root my phone and hack the flash counter was a bit troublesome but I think have have gotten around it.  There are minor differences between rooting a the S vs. the S III...thank you again XDA-Devs.

Only issue I would through out there that I didn't figure out at first is that there is an internal SDCard and an external, optional SDCard.  When you load your files over from your old phone and look to restore everything via Titanium Backup (rooted phone of course) you have to move the TitaniumBackup folder to the internal /sdcard/ folder, not the mnt/extsdcard/ folder.

I can't say much else for the phone but I do wish it had the Exynos chipset for forward looking performance, but whatever.  I am already more than twice the power the old Charge with a whole lot more stability.  For goodness sakes the damn Charge sometimes would freeze just from picking up or making a call.

Beautiful wallpapers for your Android device

I can't verify the autheticity of this page but you should check out Freeza Inc.'s site which includes an enormous amount of high quality images for your phone or tablet.  Check out a few here care of www.freeza-inc.com:

Running a new business, or three, and making them all work

I am having issues making time for this blog due to various reasons and un-reasons however I think I have a thread that may be interesting.  A few months ago I quit my job to start a new one - self-employment.  Depending on how you look at it, there is a terribly fine line between self-employment and un-employment.

My brother and I are tackling this all at once and are in full marketing mode.  Also, in the meantime I have decided to try a few different approaches to making money outside of my main line of business to pay the bills.  This includes computer repair, bicycle repair, roof replacement sales, and construction project management.  I'd work at a coffee shop if the hours would work with my personal life.

Business Number One Set Up - For homies with real work to make real money (Fo Sho Method)

I am probably going to have to work backwards a little so bear with me.  First off I'll start with the process.  We started a single firm as an limited liability company to allow for us to file our taxes as a sole proprietors while being a bit limited from any lawsuits.  We perform that has a little exposure in the transportation industry.  You can do this process very simply via the state you live in, however based on legal advice it is important to establish some operating rules and get a corporate handbook.  You can do most of this without legal services as the corporate handbook typically comes with generic operating rules you can fill out yourself.

Then we got an email address via Google Apps, domain via Network Solutions, set up a site via Wordpress and their hosting, an 888- phone number, and physical (virtual) address via DaVinci to begin establishing a presence.  We are using Mavenlink for project management and time tracking, Expensify for receipt/expense management, and Quickbooks for accounting.  This went quick and easy, so to speak.  A few notes though...I prefer Basecamp over Mavenlink due to some minor nuances but both are super easy to use.  Try out Everest on Android which interfaces with Basecamp from your phone.  Expensify also recently had to break their relationship with Quickbooks due to some Intuit pressure so we are looking for alternatives.

We travel a lot (when we are working) and work from public wi-fi hotspots when we get out of the house so we are exposed to a lot of network sniffers.  This led me to desire a VPN (or SSH proxy which I already ran but never liked it being only HTTP traffic).  I have a Mac at home and Verizon FiOS connection with lots of bandwidth.  I tried various approaches to command line set up for a VPN but was not successful.

As a last ditch effort I bought Mac OS X Server for Mountain Lion at a hefty price of $20.  Yep.  $20.  Do you realize they used to sell their Xsan software for $1000?  It is included in Server.  VPN?  Yep, included.  SSH?  FTP? Open Directory?  Logs and Stats?  Certificate management?  User and Group management?  Calendar, Mail, Wiki management?  Websites?  Yep, all of it.  $20.  It doesn't allow certificate authentication for VPN on the client side as far as I can tell but whatever.  I am not a network or server admin and it costs $20. Come on.

Follow the setup, head over to the VPN option, turn it on, set up a long key, use LT2P and your golden.  Oh yeah, you have to get a Dyn.com address to point to your computer if you have a dynamic IP address, and then port forward 3 ports for VPN on your router, but that is it.  There are manuals out there to do all this so I am not going over it here.  Now I can connect to my home server when at a local coffee shop and not worry about any script kiddies or mischievous part time hackers messing around with my network data.

Business Number Two Set Up - For the guy or gal who wants to freelance (Lazy Pants Method)

In the meantime, I started another business to make ends meet.  This work includes local computer and bicycle repair.  Both hobbies but things that I am very adept in.  I needed a domain, website, phone number, and advertising.  Since I plan on making money on this and didn't want to complicate taxes, I am operating this business as a DBA (doing business as) under my already created LLC.  I asked for approval from my brother since this work could expose our LLC and he gave it to me.  Remember in a partnership you should treat it that way.

We bought another domain address through Network Solutions and then my brother set up a second Google Apps account linked to the new domain.  This gives me one interface for managing the accounts and email addresses.  Very nice.  I also am hoping to track all of my customers and invoicing through our existing QuickBooks account for ease of tax payment.  I then headed over to Google Voice and set up a new phone number to go along with my Google based email address.  Set up is a snap but then what do I do with the number?  I first had it linked to go straight to voicemail as I already have a personal Google Voice number linked to my Android phone.

Halt! Major problem...I had 3 missed calls with no voicemails.  Did these customers not leave a voicemail because the call screening was on or because they didn't want to leave a voicemail?  Not sure but all I know is I didn't have a chance at even selling them.  ALERT, ALERT! SUPER CRAY CRAY SECRET OF THE DECADE: I pay for a Skype number for business purposes (I like to give my clients a local number to call and then forward it to my cell phone) and realized I could forward the Google Voice number via Skype to my cell phone to side step Google's one-phone-per-voice-account requirement.  Hey Oh!  You like that?  Yes.  It worked.

I now have two Google Voice accounts forwarding to my phone (at a cost of about $60/year due to Skype) but that is a tax deductible expense.  Bad news is that the Google Voice app on my phone only shows messages from my personal Voice account.  Fix for that is you simply tell Google Voice on your business account to email you for all missed calls and voicemails.  I have Gmail notifications for these emails therefore I know when I have a text, missed call, or voicemail.

Oh, forgot about advertising.  Craigslist, Google Places/Local, Yelp for Business, Greensheets, and Google AdWords.  I first tossed an add into Craigslist for the bike business because everyone and their grandma claims to provide computer services.  I have had good luck with Craigslist so you should try it out.  Google Places/Local is helpful as it will give you a solid presence when someone searches on Google and your work is related to your location.  For example, I want people to see me in my area when they search for my service type.  Also, you get a dashboard to see the analytics and I think more reviews gets you higher on the page rank.  Same with Yelp.

Greensheets is a local free rag that I have sold things in before.  The cost is reasonable but it is very old media.  For me, I am looking for folks who don't want to take the traditional REI, Best Buy, big bike shop route and I think these services fit me well.  I have not tried AdWords yet as I need to see more revenue first.

In Closing...

Well, I think that sums up this post for now.  Shoot me a comment if you have questions or need additional explanation.

Not your grandmother's 5 year old computer

In a galaxy right around the corner, about 10 years ago a computer nerd could spruce up an aging computer with a shot of random access memory (RAM).  For those who didn't want to spring for the newest computer on the market or get a faster processor for the motherboard, RAM was it.  It was reasonably affordable, quick to swap, and "voila".  You have a seemingly more responsive computer. 

Fast forward to today.  I have a Macbook Air released in late 2010 (although I didn't dive in until early 2011).  This laptop comes with a solid state drive (SSD) that has no moving parts.  It also has a processor that was 2 years old when released.  2 YEARS!  Think about computers these days.  What is 2 years in computer processor terms.  This is like 10 dog years which is about 77 human years! 

What Apple did was take a known upside to SSD's in that they have super fast read/write times for data compared to traditional hard drives, and attached to an older, cheaper processor.  Remember as well, (generally) slower processors use less energy.  Less energy in a laptop is more time off it can be untethered form the power cord.  The SSD's speed made up for the processor's age but you still had a very competitive laptop for the market. 

I have an old 2007 iMac.  I love it.  24" screen, aftermarket 1TB hard drive, 4 Gigs of RAM.  It generally does what I need it to do.  A problem of late I have been having is if Parallels is running (and another user account is logged in) RAM becomes scarce and processing slows to a crawl.  My idea?  Stick an internal SSD with SATA interface for my OS and key applications and convert my internal SATA drive into an external firewire drive.  I already keep my media files on a Drobo so I don't really need that much storage.  

If the MB Air is any indication, for about $120 bucks I can take an old iMac and make it new again.  I won't be pounding away at the newest video game or editing 250MB files in photoshop, but I bet it'll do everything else I ask it to quite quickly. 

This is just a hypothesis currently.  Changes will occur soon and I'll post my benchmarks.  Until then, Happy Birthday.

Excel Tip - Workbook wide header/footer change

I admit I feel a little stupid now that I know how to do this.  "This" meaning how to change multiple headers and footers of Excel spreadsheets within a single workbook.  Good ole Lytebyte informs me that all you have to do is use the CTRL (Win) or Command key (OS X) to select multiple spreadsheet tabs, go to File -> Page Setup -> Header and Footer, make changes, and hit OK.

That's it.  No more clicking through each spreadsheet to make the change.  You simply use the CTRL/Command key for what it what was meant...selecting various things at once.  AAAHHHHH.  Sorry.  I could have used this trick a long time ago.

OS X Tip - Missing Window

I use multiple spaces (now called Desktops I think in Lion) and multiple monitors.  Lately after I disconnect my monitor to take my Air somewhere else, when I open up my laptop I notice there are a few windows open that will not leave the phantom space/desktop.

In Windows, you can right click the app in the dock, select MOVE, and you can use your cursor to move the window back to where you can use it.  OS X doesn't have that functionality.  The ONE solution I have found to work without fail is the Zoom function.  I think this relates to the green plus that resides at the top left of a window.

If you create a new window in the app, such as Word, and then click on the Zoom button, the window magically pops into view.

Saved my butt a few times, hope it does for you too.

UPDATE: Not sure if this is a Lion update issue or not but my technique has not been working lately.  Try this instead.  Go to Word, then Window, then "Zoom Window".  This does the same thing as the green "+" as mentioned above but is probably more effective.