Apple iPhone event

Today is the big day, the long rumored first Jobs-less announcement. It is beyond me why Apple does not live video stream these announcement. You can find many live “text” streams on the internet.

If you have read many of my other postings and articles you may believe I am an Android fan. The fact is I have a deep appreciation for all innovation. If your in one camp or another, we should all respect Apple’s innovation opening gateways for products to the market. The mobile space would be a much different place without iOS.

 

Update: New 8 megapixel rear camera, new iCards app, new A5 dual core chip and Siri: voice activated personal assistant (beta). No exterior design changes.

Update2: Apple stock down over 3%.

Update3: Apple has posted the recorded video, QuickTime required.

October 4, 2011 · curtisvonlintel · Comments Closed
Posted in: Apple, Entertainment, Phones

Angry Birds and Google Chrome sitting in a tree

I don’t know what it is, but something about this commercial really makes me laugh.

 

September 28, 2011 · curtisvonlintel · Comments Closed
Posted in: Android, google, Uncategorized

Restore Viewsonic GTab – July Woot purchase

Disclaimer

I have no issue with any referenced Rom, app or website. I am not placing blame or suggesting anyone not use an app, Rom or website.

If you are here because you have a borked GTab, you should likely start with the Vewsonic GTablet For Dummies site. Despite the site title there is much useful GTab information contained within. The How-To and Common Issues section is also worth the read and will save you Googling time.  While the reading did provide for additional insight, it was not able to resolve my issue.

Issue

Initially the woot purchased GTab worked fine. As you may know the interface Viewsonic decided to slap on is laggy and lacks the Android Market. From there we go Rom shopping. I first installed ClockWorkMod and Cyanogen7, everything worked fine. I decided to try a Honeycomb based Rom, and decided to go with Bottle of Smoke. BOS worked fine as well. My mistake, was using the Rom Manager app. Rom Manager on the GTab is a big no no. After flashing with Rom Manager I was stuck in what is called APX mode. This is a system level flashing mode, basically think of it as either having no OS to boot or no method to boot the OS. Oh OS = Operating System. The APX mode is a black screen with the tablet powered on. The only way to tell if your in APX mode is with a computer attached via a USB cable, if your screen is black and the computer sees the device = APX mode. Even when I was able to get the OS to boot I could not power off or the tablet was back in APX mode when I powered back on. This has been referred to as APX Hell or APX loop.

Resolution

I spent more than an a few weeks with at least an hour each day attempting to restore the device. I did not post directly to any community (lurker), I did find the communities on multiple sites to be more than willing to help those that had posted. The two primary sites I can recommend is XDA and SlateDroid.

If your not familiar with NVFlash you should probably start with Google.

During my restoration weeks I attempted many steps to restore my GTab, some steps allowed the GTab to boot into the OS others did not, none allowed the tablet to reboot or power button on. One step that I have verified restores in my situation is this posting on XDA, full thread here. For our reading I have posted below, all credit to acidburn89 on XDA.

Looks like all the hard work finally payed off. I am finally able to reboot without any problems.
Here’s what I did. Remove the SD card, if any. Flash up your favorite temp OS, drain all the battery by hooking something up, like an android phone to the full sized usb and let the battery drain. When the device switches off, leave it that way for 30 minutes.
Next, grab nvflash_gtablet_46_2010112600.zip and nvflash_windows_20100500.zip from the dropbox link on THIS page. Plug in the wall charger and the usb and flash like any other recovery flashes… i.e., run the nvflash_gtablet.bat. All cool. Let it boot up. All you shit’s still there. lol.
Now, go to storage settings. You will notice that it is actually detecting the internal storage as an SD card. Cuz the tablet storage says ~1.6GB and the SD storage says ~13GB. This is new. So I unmounted the SD and ran a format. Your settings might crash, but keep pressing the “Wait” option for a while. Then hit the “force close” option. Pull up the storage settings and you will see that the SD card is almost empty. Next, go to security and do a “Restore to factory settings”. And when it reboots after this, i shit you not, you WILL see the birds. It will say detected recovery key pressed, get into recovery, clear your storage and boot back up, all shiny and new! Voila!
You can reboot and everything. lol. I love em birds.

You should note the link and the nvflash_gtablet_46_2010112600.zip referenced above is dead, instead go here. The file is in the folder Deprecated (Do Not use). Your probably thinking you should not use this file now, well when all else fails what is left to lose? When the OS loads you will be able to power down and up succesfully, first milestone. After you have the tablet up and running you will see your at version 1.0xxx, if you setup the tablet wifi you should receive an Over The Air update or OTA. The update will take your tablet to 1.1.3588. At this point you will be back to stock or nearly stock.

Now What

We are back to zero, decent, laggy and limited use tablet. Back to Rom shopping. After many more attempts of Rom flashing and APX looping, I found I could only get Cyanogen7 to boot and work on the device. The other Roms simply would not boot or boot loop back to APX mode.

Last Minute Note

There are two branches of Roms, 1.1 and 1.2. These branches are referencing which stock Viewsonic OS your running or the “TapnTap” version in the about tablet section of the setting menu. Please be careful when flashing Roms, be sure the Rom is for your branch.

September 16, 2011 · curtisvonlintel · One Comment
Posted in: Android, General Tips, Rom, Rom Flashing, tablet, Viewsonic G Tablet

Windows Server 2003 with Backup Exec 2010: Faulting application vssvc.exe

I have found that if not today probably tomorrow or the next day a server will throw the error:

” Faulting application vssvc.exe, version 5.2.3790.4143,
faulting module vssvc.exe, version 5.2.3790.4143, fault address 0x0004b452.  ”

You will find in your research many posting instructing to re register the dlls and VSS services. This may fix many errors like the above, it did not fix mine. As the title indicates this occurs on Windows Server 2003 when using Backup Exec 2010 to backup server system state. You may also find that this error occurs even if you have removed AOFO from the server and you have selected Backup Exec to us the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider.

At the command prompt type “vssadmin list providers”. If you see a listing like below for Backup Exec VSS Provider, that is part of our issue. Apparently the Backup Exec provider does not play nice with the Microsoft provider.

The Fix

First note the Provider Id, make a backup of your registry and remove the listed provider id entry from the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Providers\

Reboot.

Now create a batch file with the below commands, execute and reboot.

cd /d %windir%\system32

Net stop vss

Net stop swprv

regsvr32 ole32.dll

regsvr32 oleaut32.dll

regsvr32 vss_ps.dll

vssvc /register

regsvr32 /i swprv.dll

regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll

regsvr32 es.dll

regsvr32 stdprov.dll

regsvr32 vssui.dll

regsvr32 msxml.dll

regsvr32 msxml3.dll

regsvr32 msxml4.dll

Run your backup job again.

If you are still reading I suspect something didn’t work. Ensure you have administrative permissions and execute the steps again. I have used the above steps on at least 11 servers.

September 7, 2011 · curtisvonlintel · Comments Closed
Tags: , , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Academic Technology, Microsoft, Server Setups

Antennagate

Apple had their press conference and as many thought the main topic was the issue of the antenna. My breakdown of the event: Apple loves their customers, all cell phones have antenna problems, the iPhone4 has the best antenna of any iPhone, Apple customers are calling AppleCare at a rate of .55%, returns of iPhone 4s are 1.7%. Oh, I almost forgot, Apple called out HTC, RIM, and Samsung. HTC and RIM have fired back, not really agreeing with Steve and Samsung has yet to respond.

Items that drew my attention the second time I watched the press conference. How many times did Steve say: “Hard data”, “phones aren’t perfect” and “smartphones have weakspots”?

“Hard data”: 5

“phones aren’t perfect”: 4

“smartphones have weakspots”: 6

I didn’t expect such repetition in a 15 minute presentation. We heard one of the above statements every 56 secs, it seemed much more often.

I also take issue with the reported call in rate .55%. Steve reported this as the number of customers calling in, not the number of phones each customer might have that is experiencing or concerned about the antenna issue. I think its reasonable that many iPhone 4 customers have more than 1 iPhone 4. Its also reasonable that some customers may have more than one iPhone4 and could be concerned about the antenna issue with each iPhone 4. So if the afore mentioned is reasonable and possibly true then the .55% is probably low.  Further, how many users have heard about and experienced the antenna issue and didn’t call? I have to conceed Steve did say “hard data” and I am speculating.

During the event Jobs show three phones going from 5 bars on down to as many as no bars. He also said that all phone have this issue when they have “a relatively week signal”. To me 5 bars does not show a week signal, and all phone displayed during the even showed 5 bars. So which is it, is it attributed to a week signal and holding it with some sort of death grip, or just the death grip?

To sum up: Is it an issue? I believe that has more to do with personal experience than a global iPhone 4 problem. Is it a non-issue? Probably not, I suspect this will push antenna development, which benefits all consumers.  I have said it before, regardless of the stance we should all be thankful for the innovation Apple brings to the market. Apple has substantially pushed the smartphone market into new space.

July 18, 2010 · curtisvonlintel · Comments Closed
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Apple, BlackBerry, google, Phones

Apple to hold iPhone 4 antenna press conference

Engadget is reporting Apple will hold an iPhone 4 press conference this Friday the 16th. We would expect an official response to the antenna outcry. The consumer reports recommendation of “don’t buy” may play a role. With that aside the online chatter on the issue should have elicited a response a week ago.

July 14, 2010 · curtisvonlintel · Comments Closed
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Apple, Phones