Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 30, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

A Game of Clue: What Killed Skype

Days after Skype, the popular Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP), crashed we finally know why Skype died for several days. Perhaps launching into what blasted Skype though you need to know how Skype works.

You need to keep in mind that Skype is a true peer-to-peer (P2P) network application. Indeed, if you trace back Skype’s ancestry you’ll find that its developers first cut their teeth on the Kazaa P2P file-sharing program. What’s important about that is that Skype, unlike client-server programs, relies on its client PCs to help carry voice communications.

If you’re a Skype user your PC may not just be an ordinary client, but it may be working as a Super Node (SN) as well. When you login to Skype, the odds are you’re not logging directly into the Skype login-servers but into a SN instead. The SN in turn, stores your Skype name, your e-mail address, and an encrypted version of your password.

Skype automatically and constantly modifies its network as users go off and on the service. With Skype installed, your PC may be used as a SN and you’ll never know it. As a SN, your PC will store the addresses of up to several hundred Skype users. If your PC isn’t behind a firewall and/or NAT (Network Address Translation), it may also be used to route calls.

More >

December 30, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

My 5 Essential Android Applications

There are lots of lists of the best Android applications. As the proud owner of a new Motorola Droid 2 and in-house tech. support for my wife’s Droid Pro, though, I started thinking about what the essential applications are for a new Android phone user.

Everyone uses devices in different ways. What works for me, may not work for you. Here’s where I’m coming from: I use my smartphone first as a phone and then as a way to receive information. I don’t try to work on a phone–even the over-sized Droid X.

I’m also not interested in texting. For some reason, even though instant messaging (IM) is second-nature to me, texting just never worked for me. If, like many other people, though texting is your life, I recommend you give chompSMS a try.

My friends who use it tell me they like that it includes contact pictures, signatures, and blacklisting to keep creeps off their phone. What they really love though is that they can text for free with their other friends who are using chompSMS. Free texting is a win in anyone’s book.

For my personal list though my first essential application is:

More >

December 27, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

The Top 5 Networking Stories of 2010

I’d much rather write about what was new and neat about networking in 2010, but the sad truth is I think the many of the most important networking stories in 2010 were about regulations rather than innovations.

That said, there was some “good news” about networking in 2010 as well. Number one with a bullet in my book was:

1. The Browser Wars Revived

Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, take your pick, all the Web browsers got better in 2010. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about which one is better. It’s Chrome by the way.

Agree with me or not, though, the important point is that because of this competition all the Web browsers significantly improved during 2010. While Chrome and Firefox, the two big open-source browsers, made the most gains I have to say that Internet Explorer 9 looks pretty darn good. Now, if only IE 9 were available for XP and IE 6 would finally die. Die! Die! Die!

Ahem. Excuse me.

More >

December 27, 2010
by sjvn01
5 Comments

2010’s Top Five Linux and Open-Source Stories

Sure, unlike me, you’re probably not reading this on a Linux desktop–Mint 10 for those who care about such things–but do you use Google, Facebook or Twitter? If so, you’re using Linux. That Android phone in your pocket? Linux. DVRs, network attached storage (NAS), trade stocks? Linux, Linux, Linux.

I think one of the most telling stories about Linux this year came from a friend of mine, Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, who told me of a friend who said “Linux was too hard.” When Zonker asked him about his Android phone, he replied something like, “Oh, but Android is easy. It’s not Linux!”

Oh my. Android is indeed Linux, as is so many other devices and Web services and sites. Open-source developers have just gotten very good at hiding the dirty technical details from you. It just took them a lot longer than it did for the Mac OS X designers to hide its Mach, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD Unix roots from users. In the last few years though, they finally got the hang of it.

We’re going to see this trend grow only stronger in 2011 with the rise of Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS. That’s why Chrome OS is my first big story of 2010.

More >

December 22, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Windows 7? On ARM Tablets? I don’t think so!

You’ve got to be kidding me. First, Bloomberg and then the Wall Street Journal reported that at CES next month, Microsoft will unveil a full-featured version of Windows that runs on ARM processors. The expectation is that it will be used in tablets… in 2013.

2013!? Come on, would someone please fire Ballmer already. I have no love for Microsoft, but if this is true, this has got to be the dumbest plan I’ve heard from Microsoft since 1995’s Microsoft Bob.

As Eric Lai explains, there are several ways that Windows on ARM could play out. I don’t think any of them can work though.

The only reason for Microsoft to bring Windows 7, Windows 8, or whatever to ARM is to put it on a tablet. The best existing fit would be Windows Phone 7, but the story being spun by Microsoft rumor spiders seems to be that this will be bigger and better than Windows Phone 7.

Excuse me as I roll my eyes. Microsoft has always promised that their next big operating system will be the greatest thing ever. The business reason for this is to try to freeze the market. Ideally, a customer goes: “Oh, I can’t buy WordPerfect today; Word 6.0 next year will be sooo much better.” This tactic worked for decades, which is why the younger among you will never have even heard of WordPerfect, much less used it.

That was then. This is now.

More >

December 22, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Changing DNS probably won’t help your Video Streaming

When I first read that some Apple TV users were seeing significant speed-ups when they start using a local ISP Domain Name System (DNS) server instead of continuing to use one of the universal DNS services, such as OpenDNS, DNS Advantage,or Google Public DNS, my first thought was, “That’s wrong.”

I understand their logic that “When millions of users all tap into the same DNS server addresses to resolve domain names, as Google DNS does by design, Akamai and other CDNs [Content Delivery Networks] route content to those users along the same path, preventing the network from working optimally.” The problem is that this isn’t really how the big DNS networks and CDNs work these days.

For starters, this proposed fix starts with the notion that your ISP has a local DNS, hence you’ll get a better, less-crowded route for your video. You probably don’t have a truly local DNS though. The national ISPs like Comcast. Verizon, or ATT, just like the universal DNS services, spread their DNS servers around. In this case, their DNS server isn’t going to be much ‘closer,’ in terms of network distance than Google’s.

More >