Shane Molloy’s Blog of… blogness

Tip of the day

Don’t run the Exchange 2007 install from a virtual drive - it hangs nicely disconnecting the server from the network completely!

I’ve known about speedtrapsireland.com for a while, actually the people who created the site used to work in the company I am in. Basically it’s a google map of Ireland with waypoints added in marking where mobile (handheld/tripod/van) and cameras are. They’re added in by the creaters themselves and by the general public.

 It was a good site but forgot about it for a while. Few months ago I got an n95 and put Garmin mobile XT on it (see other post!). Anyway irishspeedtraps.com created a waypoint file that can be uploaded into Garmin devices which adds all the speedtrap waypoints into your map of Ireland. Just had to stick the .gpi file into the garmin folder on my phone’s memory card and that was it.

 Tested it after work, it’ll show a large red bar across the screen with the speed limit and the type of speed trap that was reported ahead and has an alert sound.

 You can get regular updates off the website and it’s €35 for the year. Very handy to have I reckon.

Well yesterday I got a Nokia N95 delivered to me and have to say it’s a brilliant phone. It’s the highest spec phone i’ve owned yet (last phone being a motorola razor v3x).

Wasn’t looking for one until one became available second hand for cheap enough so decided to go for it. It has a gps chip inside of it and had looked into it’s features before it arrived. Was thinking that the nokia maps probably wouldn’t be that great for Ireland as even TomTom maps can be dodgy but I came across a Garmin mobile xt software package.

Garmin seem to be the best GPS units for Irish roads at the moment so I got the garmin software and eventually got it working on the N95. Works just the same as a Garmin Unit with voice navigation, recalculates routes etc. Tested it today coming home from work and had no problems.

Battery life is pretty bad, lets say somewhere between day or two depending on how heavy your usage, but I can charge it in the car and off the laptop so no problem really.

After getting used to the interface and knowing where the settings where, I got Exchange mail syncing and pop3 mail connection properly. The client for Exchange will sync your email but also you phone contacts with your Outlook contacts so it’s handy.

It’s also possible to install 3rd party applications onto the phone that support the Symbian OS. Most of these are unsigned which means you have to go through the process of creating your own developers certificate to sign applications with. The cert is created using your own phone’s IMIE. It takes a while to figure out (plenty of tutorials on the web) how to do this but once the cert is created and you have it saved you can use it to sign downloaded 3rd party applications.

One of the best I found is rotateme which, like the iphone, will rotate the display to vertical or horizantal depending on which way you tilt the phone. Nokia didn’t seem to take advantage of the chip that allows this but many 3rd party apps do. There’s a whole host of other stuff to get like a youtube and divx video viewer app.

Anyway that’s enough on the phone, i’d recommend it to anyone that’s into gadgets or needs the functionality!

I’ve been hearing about the Eircom broadband security problems for a few months but never thought it was so easy so actually hack into another person’s connection until today.

They really fucked up, although they have sent letters out to people, the vast majority wouldn’t have the first idea how to make any changes. Most people get the Netopia wireless router, plug it in and then leave it alone. This is fair enough, they shouldn’t have to change anything, it should be properly secured already or just have wireless disabled. It’s automatically got wireless enabled with a default key they put on it before sending it out.

So basically the security is generated in such a way that some people have made a program that reverses the wireless ID and gives you the key you need to access the network!

Was setting up wireless in a friends house the other day, it was from eircom but I changed the security settings on it. There was another eircom wireless device next door with the default settings. With the hacking website we could have got access to it in a few seconds but we wouldn’t want to do that to our neighbours would we?!