Sidewaysgravity Blog

Well it appears I have finally got a somewhat functional way to get google voice (text messaging) and my iPhone to play nice together. The best thing is that I have to a degree, a form of push notification for text messages.

Since I am writing this from my iPhone, I will try to make it brief.

1. You need a gmail account, preferably one that doesn’t get any email.

2. You need an iPhone with iOS 3+.

3. You need to be able to add a Microsoft exchange account onto your iPhone. I think in iOS 3 you only could add one but in iOS 4 you can add multiple.

From there all you need to do is set your google voice numbers to forward text messages, and voicemails for that matter to the gmail address in step 1. Also make sure to tell it not to send the text. It should be a checkbox for if it’s a mobile number. Just check no and it will only email and not text it to you. The purpose is to avoid using text you have to pay for.

Then you will just need to set up your gmail account as an exchange account mail.

Use the following link to set that up.

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

Once you have you email setup, you can set your options to enable push for your gmail. Anytime you receive a text message, it goes to your gmail which pushes it straight to your iPhone. On average there is about a 10-20 second delay from when it is sent and when I receive it.

But wait, how do you send messages you ask. There are two answers for that. First, the easy way to send a message is to reply directly in gmail inbox to the email/text. Google will figure it out and forward it on as a regular text message and the receiver will never tell a difference. Second, if you are initiating the text for the first time, unfortunately the only solution I have is to use the google voice web interface through safari. You can add an icon to your home screen to take you straight there to make the process easier, but after the first text it’s all handled though mail and super easy.

One last note, in email, it just shows the number and not the name. There is sort of a way to get around this although not fully tested. When you are viewing the actual email, the from address should be the phone number, if you click on it then it will show you the entire address which is a google voice address. You can select to add to an existing contact and then select who you want. This adds it as an potter field and then it will show the persons name when viewing the email.

The down side is that it still does not show the name when viewing the list of emails.

All in all I am loving the new setup. Would I give it up for a native google voice app? Yes. But for now, I get instant push notifications for all my google voice texts, I can easily reply, and I don’t have to pay for sending and receiving text messages. I will note that instead of text, it does use data, but so far and at least in my case it is much cheaper this way. Since I am not using fetch to constantly check mail and having it pushed instead.

Let me know if you decide to give it a try and how it works for you.

Happy texting.

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Last night all of my macs in the house got notice that there was a software update for the Airport Utility so we ran the update on all the computers. It then showed that there was “something wrong” with my base station, the status light had gone yellow, and when I went to see what was wrong, it said their was a new firmware available (Version 7.4.1). So I told it to do the update.

Once the update completed, My laptop could see the base station through the airport utility, it could connect to it and I could use the internet. When I went to configure the base station though, It could not connect to it and it soon stopped showing up in the airport utility. Since it was late I unplugged it all and went to bed, and decided to mess with it the next day.

The following morning I noticed some more unusual behavior, the Airport Utility could no longer see the base station from my laptop, or connect to the internet. To get it to see the base station in the utility I had to physically connect via ethernet, which made the base station appear in the utility and also allowed an internet connection. But it still would not give me access to change any settings.

Ever since I upgraded to the new firmware I get the error message “An error occured while reading the configuration.” And I do have it connected to one of the ethernet ports. Since I could not connect to the base station via the Airport Utility I decided to reset the base station to its default setting.

If you are looking at your base station from the back side, there is a small hole located on the right side, with a little circle with a triangle icon located above it. This will reset your base station to its default settings. Doing this will reset what you named your router plus reset all passwords, and take it back to its original factory settings. A paper clip works great and is the right size. You will need to push the button and hold it down, you should notice the light on the base station change to a blinking yellow, and once the reset is complete it will blink at a constant rate and then you can stop pushing the reset. The yellow light should then go back to a slow blinking yellow. Once you finish resetting your base station you should now be able to access it via the Airport Utility.

Note: even though you reset the base station, it still keeps the latest firmware, but it seemed to fix whatever was wrong after resetting the base station. Also, if you are going to do a reset, it is a good idea to write down your current network name and password, that way when you set up your base station again, you can use the same settings and wont have to change all the setting for the computers that connet to it wirelessly.

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The other day I was asked to help a friend of a friend to format and reinstall windows onto their desktop machine. I normally dont like doing it unless it is my computer since I dont know what files they want to keep and which ones they dont. So my rule of thumb is to always have them move any and all files they want to keep onto their desktop, that way if they loose a file during the format, then its not my fault.

While copying over some files onto my usb thumb drive, I noticed that it was getting close to its capacity (2gb) eventhough I really had just a bit more than 300 mb stored on the drive. Somewhere along the line I was loosing 1.5 gb of data storage with no rhyme or reason. I thought that it might be a mac/pc thing, since I primarily use my usb drive with my Macbook. So I plugged in the drive to my mac, lo and behold, I was still missing the 1.5 gb of space.

To make the blog post not any longer than it needs to be, I beleive the difference comes with how files are marked for deletion on a Mac. A while ago I noticed that after deleting several gigabytes of data from my MacBook, the space was not free’d up until I emptied my trash can. That makes enough sense. While “deleteing” a file really just marks it for deletion in the trash can, it still leaves the file their until it is actually deleted from the trash can. What I did not realize is that on my mac, it does the same thing with my thumb drive. Any time I delete a file from it, it only “marks” it for deletion but leaves the file on the drive.

The solution is simple, plug in your usb drive, open your trash can and empty the trash. My usb has an led light for activity so I could see that it was being accessed to delete files, and after it finished… presto, my full 2gb was available.

I am pretty sure this process is done differently on Windows computers, but I am not sure how. I believe that when you delete a file in Windows, the file itself is physically moved to a deletion area, where as on the mac it is only marked for deletion and is no longer visible. But I am not expert on this so if something is not right, please correct me.

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It has been exactly one year since I got my Apple Airport Extreme base station and it has been that same amount of time since I was able to connect my Nintendo DS Lite up to the wifi…. until today.

The symptoms, there really was only one, when going to connect to the router, my Nintendo DS would show my wireless network with a gray lock. No lock is an unsecured network, a red lock is a secured network, and a gray lock is also a secured network, but one that has settings that the DS does not support.

Today I found the solution to my problem, the gray lock, through lots of searching and two very useful posts.

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Edco/airport-extreme-and-nintendo-ds-wifi-78447.phtml

and

http://forums.mactalk.com.au/33/41958-connecting-ds-airport-extreme-802-11n-solution.html

Both posts basically say the same thing. Just in case these links don’t work at a future date I will sum up what they say. Your Nintendo DS only supports certain encryption settings (WEP). Wireless (N) which is what the new airport extreme’s use does not support the type of (WEP) that is needed. When you open up the Airport Utility found in the Applications/Utilities folder you will click on the manual setup. The Airport icon should be selected by default and you will need to select the Wireless tab.

Radio Mode while holding the option key

In the drop down labeled “Radio Mode” by default there are no non-N network settings…. but they are their… sort of. When you click to select the Radio Mode, hold down the option key and like magic you will see several options that were not available before. From this list you can choose 802.11b/g compatible for your Radio Mode. Now you can select for the drop down labeled “Wireless Security” Web 128 bit. This is assuming you want wireless security on your router. With that selected you will need to create a thirteen character passcode that you will use to connect all wireless devices. Once done, click on update and try your connection again.

One side note about security that was brought up in the reply posts of the second link was that WEP security is not very strong. This is true and it is something to take into consideration if changing your settings to WEP from a more secure method (WPA). Because I do not use my DS online very often, and since I now can easily set it up, I keep my network at WPA2 security and only change it to WEP when playing the DS online. Although its not the best solution, it works for now.

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One thing that has bothered me with the iPod touch since I got it was how to pause the music while I was working within an app. It wasn’t until this morning that I discovered by accident how to access your volume, play, pause and skip to next and previous songs.

By double tapping the home button from any program or even the home screen you can get a small mini navigation tool for your music. If you haven’t found this yet I hope of helps to enjoy your iPod, and if you already knew about it I’m sure your wondering why it took me so long to finnaly figure it out.

If you know about any other helpful tips or tricks for the iPod, please me me know.

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I’ve had my iPod touch for a couple of days now and found another reason to like my Airport Extreme.

While in the parking lot heading home I realized I had a close to full strength signal on my iPod from my base station which was a couple hundred feet away, five stories up, and in the corner of an old brick building.

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I just got my iPod touch today and I am trying out the wordpress app and the ability to post from the touch. So far it has been pretty easy to use and to get used to. Typing can take a while to get used to but after using it for about a day I have already increased my typing speed. It has a fairly good spell correction built in that can help when you are only one or two letters off so that you don’t have to delete and retype things.

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