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New version of Kindle with lower prices

Mihov.com — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:00:58 +0000

I have found out today that Amazon’s e-book reader Kindle is out of stock. Recently they’ve dropped prices to $189 and apparently sold out all the basic models. It’s still possible to buy Kinde DX, a model with a larger screen.

I decided to visit Amazon’s site and see for myself. I was surprised when I found out the reason why the Kindles were sold out: they’re releasing a new version of Kindle which is smaller, offers more storage, the battery lasts longer and is faster for better reading experience. This is great, except that they’re starting to ship the new Kindles no earlier than on August 27th – which means that you can pre-order now and receive it a month later. The price of the new model stays the same at $189 plus post and packaging and customs if you live outside US like I do.

There was another pleasant surprise waiting for me: there is another version of Kindle available now that does not include 3G module and comes without 3G subscription. The new Kindles have Wi-fi access so 3G is not really needed if you have access to Wi-fi spot (for example at home) and if you control your life and can decide what you want to read before going to vacation. The price of this model is even lower at $139. This makes me want to buy Kindle now – and wait for a month before it’s here.

I’d love to test the new Kindle on holidays, but it looks like I’ll have to do just fine with old style regular paper books this year. The upside here is that I run an online bookshop and another Slovenian one so I can buy cheap (paper) books there. I sell eBooks as well, but without the reader they’re not much help. Well, maybe I should start selling an e-book reader as well.

List of my Slovenian domain names

Mihov.com — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:38:13 +0000

I have registered some Slovenian domain names (these are the domain s ending with .si). I have had some before, now I have bought some because of their good names to put relevant sites on them.

These are the domains that I have owned before:

mihov.si – My companies main web site.
imenik-domen.si – Domain names directory front pages.
shareware.si – A shareware directory to-be, but still populated with my own software.
spletnih-strani.si – I use this for promoting my companies services, for example imenik.spletnih-strani.si for a web directory, optimizacija.spletnih-strani.si for SEO services, izdelava.spletnih-strani.si for web development services and some more.
iSEO.si – A promotional site for my SEO services.
bestseller.si – A Slovenian book store that I have created and am still marketing it to become widely popular.

The new domains that have in my opinion interesting names are not fully set up yet. I am still researching the content I will put on them and publish them publicly:

sky.si – This domain was used for setting up the Bestseller site as a testing and proof of concept domain.
bea.si – I will use this domain name for setting up a Slovenian tourist information page about the interesting locations in Europe.
loan.si – Still has no content.
submit.si – This will be a site with a paying high-class sites directory, where my customers and their services will get published at the beginning, then it will slowly open for public.
mexx.si – This ia site about Mexico, Mexican food in Slovenia and Mexico related travel.

What so you think about my domain names and my services? In which direction so you think I should expand them?

If you’re interested in Slovenian domain names take a look at the Slovenian domain names directory that I run.

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LIST OF SLOVENIA DOMAIN

Choosing a Wiki script for my site

Mihov.com — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:56:48 +0000

For quite some time now I’ve had a wish to use a simple wiki for some of my sites. I think the wiki concert is great and it proved in practice as well. When I was travelling to China in 2006 I’ve set up a simple wiki (RoWiki by Marc Rohlfing) on my home server to stay in contact with home. I wanted to achieve that I don’t have to write e-mails to each and everyone interested, but also stay in contact with things at home. That’s why wiki technology was perfect for my needs. I chose RoWiki because it was based on PHP, it had only one file and it used file system to save data. It wasn’t perfect, but it had everything I needed. The thing worked like a charm, everything went ok and I didn’t spend too much time on line but everyone could know where I was (and vice versa).

When I returned from my trip I received several more requests to set up similar sites for travel notes for my friends. In the mean time I have also added some functionalities to RoWiki that I thought were missing, above all connected to formatting and display of Slovenian characters.

RoWiki is not developed any more, which I regret. It’s still available for download on the Maintained by no one site. There were some tries to add it to Google Code as R1Wiki (the page seems to be 403 forbidden now, I don’t know the reason for this), there are many versions of a wiki that evolved from it (TigerWiki, LionWiki, WiiKiss,…), but in my opinion RoWiki (with my additions included, of course was the greatest.

In one of the next posts I’ll explain how I chose my wiki now, after several years and with additional request in mind, including privacy, SEO and simplicity.

Marcaria is temporarily down

Mihov.com — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 08:52:09 +0000

Marcaria, a domain name registration service provider, that I just used to register my new .at domain fastbooks.at, is down. I have registered this domain name yesterday to create a book shop for German speaking customers. I received the e-mail that the domain is registered, but as I wanted to chanhe the name servers to point to my provider, the site didn’t respond. At the time of writing this the site seems to be down at least for an hour now.

I chose this company because of good prices and good customer support, but I hope this downtime is an exceptional exception and not a common day at work.

‘File is corrupt’ error while installing Firefox

Mihov.com — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:07:29 +0000

Today I have tried to install a new version of Firefox to my girlfriends Asus EEE that I already wrote about. I downloaded the latest version FF 3.6.6 setup file from Mozilla site and tried to run it on Windows 7. I was surprised when I got the error message while extracting files that the ‘file is corrupt’. I couldn’t continue, so I tried several things that didn’t help at all: re-downloaded the file, downloaded the file from Chrome, downloaded the preview version of FF40b2pre, downloaded the file from Snapfiles… After that I decided that this is weird and have downloaded the file to my Win XP machine, put it on my USB key and carried it to the EEE. The file was still corrupt to my surprise (that ment that Windows 7 are not weird), so I started an investigation of my own.

I downloaded the file several times from the same source. The file size was the same, but comparing the files by content revealed some differences. How could this be possible? I have restarted my Netgear router, restarted my cable modem, tried to connect directly to the modem but this didn’t help. I have read several forums – many people have had the same problem but there seemed to be no solutions. All the suggestions were directed in the anti virus software, but since I don’t believe in that and don’t use it this couldn’t be the case. I have read the forums further and have discovered…

…SPI or stateful packet inspection that my Netgear router WGR614v6 does. I have read a few things about it and it seemed ok to turn it off.

I have restarted the router and tried downloading the files again. This time they were identical! I am using this router for several years now and this was the first time this has happened. I’m not sure why, or what caused it now, but I’d sure like to know more about it.

The ‘file is corrupt’ error while installing Firefox is now gone, so I can continue on my tasks and thank the web again for helping me solve my (or computer’s) problems.

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Firefox 4.0beta1 is here

Mihov.com — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:04:29 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about the Firefox 4.0 beta 2 preview being released. Today Mozilla released Firefox 4.0 beta 1, which is not marked as preview any more. I expect it to be more polished and I hope to see that adding the add-ons works in this version. I use quite a lot of add-ons and if they don’t work the browser functionality is limited for me. I will try the version in any case and will report how it feels using it in regards to Firefox 4.0 beta2pre.

Is it time yet to upgrade?

Firefox 4.0beta2pre is finally here

Mihov.com — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:45:30 +0000

I have played a little with Firefox 3.7a6pre and the speed test results were great compared to Firefox 3.6. On the Mozilla project page I have been following the roadmap where it said that Firefox 4 beta will be released on June 24th. It wasn’t, but the delay was only a few days. Of course, I have downloaded the install as soon as it was available and played a little with it. First thing, I’m glad that they called the version beta instead of alpha – it makes me feel safer when trying it out. Second, the first impression was good. I have run it on my testing profile which has no add-ons and it works perfectly. The tabs look a little different and unlike in Firefox 3.6 they are positioned above the address bar. Not that I would notice, really. I have noticed, however, that the menu doesn’t hide by default and that I don’t see a bookmarks toolbar. Again, it’s there but it’s hidden by default.

I have repeated the speed test I took on 3.7a6pre and the results were slightly better on Firefox 4.0beta2pre. Compared to Firefox 3.6.6, the improvement in speed was 1.3 times. Note that 3.6.6 is faster than 3.6.3 was.

One thing I’ve noticed and have first thought negative of it was automatic updating. I love it now, because it brings me a new (nightly) version every day, but at the start I thought why I need to update a nightly beta version with another nightly beta? Now I update regularly and when my favorite add-ons will be available I’ll switch to FF4 for sure.

So this is the main downside for now: the add-ons. If I open the main menu, then Tools, the Add-ons, I get a nice looking page that should make managing add-ons even easier. However, when I click on the Get Add-ons pane and Browse all add-ons link I only get the Forbidden page…

My current Firefox4beta is “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:2.0b2pre) Gecko/20100706 Minefield/4.0b2pre ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)” and I have just updated it when writing this post. I have run the Sunspider test again and this version seems to be even faster – 1.45 times than 3.6.6.

My 6 months new Samsung Galaxy i7500 is already old

Mihov.com — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:17:24 +0000

I have purchased my first Android powered phone in December 2009. It was good looking Samsung Galaxy i7500 that ran Android OS version 1.5.

My first impressions were OK if I exclude the camera picture quality, the battery problem and the fact that even after solving it my new phone lasted shorter time then my previous phone (which I replaced because of low battery life, ouch…). Overall, the phone was great since I got an internet enabled device with a full browser and a GPS device in it. Soon I discovered other features that were missing or weren’t complete, for example Bluetooth for file exchange was missing, I couldn’t connect to WEP networks protected with a certificate, the picture browser was very basic, NPS for phone synchronization didn’t support synchronization and similar. I was really satisfied with the number of (more or less useful) applications in the Market. I was disappointed with the GPS because it didn’t have navigation.

After some time of using the phone I have noted that the phone has become slow and inresposive. This might be because of a big number of applications that have installed, but this should not happen if I’m not running them.

I have also discovered several bugs on my i7500 that are still not solved.

But the real frustration began when Google started to release newer Android OS versions. I have discovered that Samsung doesn’t offer proper support for this phone. There were no bug fixes and absolutely no OS upgrades for this phone. I have read and wrote about the firmware with Android OS version 1.6 released, but I still didn’t receive it over the NPS updates.

Now the Android 2.2 is out and I’m still running my phone with Android 1.5. Samsung missed versions 1.6, 2.0, 2.1 and is now missing 2.2 so I’m five version behind the world. All this might not be important if my phone wasn’t only 6 months old. I’m not able to accept the fact that I bought a top-end phone and after half a year I am looking forward to replace it because newer and better phones are available.

Recently, I got an answer from the officials at Samsung Slovenia saying that my Samsung Galaxy i7500 will never get the update to 1.6 or higher.

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The list of bugs on my Samsung Galaxy i7500 Android phone

Mihov.com — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:05:50 +0000

As you might know from my other posts I have a Samsung Galaxy i7500 mobile phone and I have had many problems with it and with the official Samsung service company. Many of the problems I have with my phone are bugs. The phone doesn’t work correctly and they should be fixes. Some of the, in my opinion, are critical and influence the device and its usability as a whole. I have found solutions for of them, for example for draining battery. Some of them have become worse through time or maybe with the firmware upgrades that I’ve done (actually I’ve done only one firmware upgrade).

Here is a list of bugs that I experience on my Samsung Galaxy i7500 smart phone:

1. If I use the the original pouch for the phone the battery drains in less than a working day. I have found workaround for this bug, but it disables me to protect the phone from scratches.

Severity: Major. Embarrassment for Samsung for not trying to solve it or putting instructions on not to use the original pouch.

2. Sometimes the phone’s ringer stops working. I use my phone as an alarm clock and from time to time my alarm doesn’t ring. When I look at the phone the display says that the alarm was silenced after 2 minutes of ringing. When I try to change the ringing volume, the phone restarts. It is a ‘soft’ restart and it doesn’t require me to enter my SIM card PIN number to unlock the phone. If I try to change the ringing volume again, the restart happens every time. The ‘solution’ for this bug is to restart the phone (’hard’ restart by turning the phone off and on again).

Severity: Critical. I don’t know a way to reproduce it if it’s not happening already.

3. Lately (after a firmware upgrade?) I have discovered that many people claim that I was not available (no network) when in fact I was. I also receive an SMS from my service provider that I have had a missed call when I wasn’t connected to the network. I have also discovered that this happens briefly after I was in a call or when I was using data services. The scenario to reproduce this behaviour is something like this: I call someone and I stop calling before he could answer. He calls me right back and gets the signal that I’m not available. The other scenario is that I’m using data services, for example reading (or synchronizing?) e-mail messages. When someone calls me in between they get the message from my operator that I’m not available.

Severity: Critical

4. Not often, but every now and then it happens that when I’m in a call and the call quality is OK, the call is dropped. This can be the operator’s fault or the other call party’s fault, but the fact is that I see this behaviour with this phone alone. When I was using my older non Android phones this didn’t happen to me at all.

Severity: Critical, but it might not be the phone’s fault.

5. Overall low battery life.

The specifications say that this phone can be used for 492 minutes of talking time or 422 hours of stand-by time. In my measurements I get 2-3 days at most, which is less than 80 hours of usage per battery charge.

Severity: Critical

If the bugs were easy to reproduce I would send my phone back to the seller. Since these bugs are hard to reproduce I don’t (or can’t?) do anything. Samsung Galaxy i7500 has disappointed me and I’m not sure what my next phone will be. I have a feeling that I won’t stick with this one for long time (or other way around, the phone won’t stick long with me).

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Noetics is real

Mihov.com — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:02:11 +0000

If you also recently read the book Lost Symbol by the great author Dan Brown you’ve surely asked yourself whether noetics really exists or is it just a work and the idea of fiction. Surely you haven’t put the book down just to check this on the web. Well, I have finished reading my book and have done this research for you.

The bottom line is that noetics really exists. It’s defined by the definition bellow.

Noetics is a branch of metaphysical philosophy, which deals with the study of reason and intuition, and their links with the common intellect. Noetics is a theory which examines the impact of (human) mind to the physical world.

Certainly an interesting science, the results of which would radically change the world as we know it if they will be relevant. The Institute of Noetic Sciences in California works with noetics. Their main field of the research are to discover the potential and capabilities of human consciousness, and deal with phenomena such as ideas, beliefs, and other intuitions.

So noetics is true and there are people in the world researching it. To my knowledge, the largest study on this topic was conducted at Princeton University in 1979, which later grew into The Global Consciousness Project. It is interesting that the results of this study (more than thirty years ago!) were fascinating and almost unbelievable (statistically looking at them), but there is no change in our minds. Also, our perception of the rules of the world hasn’t changed either.

To get started with noetics you can read the article in Wikipedia and of course the great book Lost symbol by Dan Brown.