The good news about the Barnes & Noble announcement is that they plan to make their ebooks available on many platforms. Here’s what the company president had to say about that:

“Today marks the first phase of our digital strategy, which is rooted in the belief that readers should have access to the books in their digital library from any device, from anywhere, at any time,” said William J. Lynch, President of BN.com.

vReveal is a MS-Windows® program. Normally this would not be a problem, since I have Windows XP Pro®, Vista® and even the Windows 7® beta operating systems running in virtual machines on my Mac. I use both Parallels Desktop for Mac and Sun Microsystems’ opensource VirtualBox. But my new 24″ iMac apparently has some hardware not supported yet by either of these VM systems, and it’s possible that vReveal itself does not support my video card, even though it’s made by their partner, nVidia (nVidia GeForce GT 130). Maybe upgrading to the latest version of Parallels will help, too.

So, I have some more work to do before I can try out vReveal. Luckily, nVidia has a nifty tool, shown below, that can help locate drivers for their video cards. By having it here in my blog, I can use it from within the various VMs I have running to see if I can get them optimized to take advantage of the nice graphics I enjoy on the Mac OS side. And of course you can do the same; enjoy! The sound card issue may be isolated to Sun’s VirtualBox, and if that’s the case I’ll have to spend some time on the users forum over there to see if I can resolve that issue. But at any rate, here’s the nVidia widget:

However, now I’ve gotten a little crazy. I heard in a podcast that MicroSoft has a free beta release of Windows 7 that will run until June 2010, and since I’d just bought another 2.5″ external hard disk drive and had plenty of storage space, I decided to see what it’s like. Well, this is what it’s like to run Windows 7 in a Sun Microsystems VM on Mac OS X:

Now, is that geeky, or what?

One of the things that frustrated me most about the 360MB/48 hours limitations imposed by NomadISP at Beaudry RV was that I couldn’t download software and updates, much less audio books or podcasts or Adobe Acrobat to work on some ebook projects, I had to order it on CD-ROM instead of getting it immediately via download.

I wanted to start figuring out how to use the new features in version 9, so it was frustrating to have to wait for phyical delivery. Besides, we weren’t even 100% certain we would stay at this resort long enough for it to arrive! I went ahead and ordered it anyway, but after getting here and discovering the WiFi is decent, and that they won’t throttle our bandwidth (or so they advertise), I decided to get the 30-day trial. Well, that is only available for Windows™, and while I do have Parallels Desktop for Mac OS, and it is on the same computer, to the ISP it looks like a second machine, with its own IP and MAC addresses. I was able to log in long enough to update my copy of WinXP Pro to SP2, thank goodness, but when I tried to download the Acrobat 9 trial version, I got an error message saying my username and password weren’t accepted. So, I sent a query to Tengo’s support, explaining my situation, and will wait to see what they say. Meanwhile, though, because Parallels allows me to access a “shared” folder from Windows, I downloaded the installer from the Mac side, and copied it over to the Windows desktop. That worked!

I will not be happy (nor will I do it) if I have to buy yet another “card” to use the local WiFi on each virtual machine. That could really run into money, at $29.95/month per VM! If I absolutely must use the ‘net from a VM, I’ll switch over to our Verizon AirCard, but it is limited, too, and I don’t want to overdo it in case we need that bandwidth later on.

If President Obama really wanted to stimulate American productivity and commerce, he’d consider upgrading the country’s internet infrastructure, perhaps using WiMax, to make sure everyone, everywhere can get online to do what they need to do. Think of all the thousands of ebook and independent music publishers out there who could supplement their faltering personal economies by selling their wares online, if only they could!

Update on Local WISP

4 March 2009 — After I posted this blog, I got a reply from TengoInternet. Apparently I do not have to buy another account to use with my virtual machines. Sometimes switching between them lags slightly, but the same account does work on both MacOS and WinXP (and presumably Linux) on the same hardware. So my rant was unnecessary, but it’s possible that just after informing tech support of what I was doing they flagged my account to allow the strange-looking behavior. I got a reply to my email to tech support, and although they didn’t say so explicitly, I haven’t had any problems with it since then.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/03/01/virtual-machine-real/feed/ 2 http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/12/the-rest-of-the-story/ http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/12/the-rest-of-the-story/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:31:27 +0000 Katherine W. Prawl http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/?p=160 When I left off in my last posting, I was going to chase down the last vestiges of malware still apparently lurking on Phil’s MacBook Pro from the DNS Changer trojan horse. Even though I’d eliminated the installer, what it installed was still creating some kind of traffic back to a couple of IP addresses belonging to an ISP in the Ukraine. I could tell this was going on by observing the “network monitor” that is part of the Little Snitch spyware detector. Watching mDNSResponder light up more than once a second with calls to one of two IPs made it very obvious why our bandwidth usage was totally out of sight. As for what it was transmitting, I shudder to think…. Best case (which is not good) would be that its controllers were using Phil’s machine as part of a spam network. Worst case is that they were stealing data from his computer. Needless to say, we will keep a close eye on our various financial reports for any suspicious activity, but so far nothing like that has shown up, thank goodness.

mDNSResponder, by the way, is a software server that enables Apple’s Bonjour network, among other things. It is part of the MacOS. However, I didn’t know that when I started trying to track down all the rogue processes. As I mentioned previously, I blocked mDNSResponder using a Little Snitch “rule”, but I wanted to eliminate what was launching it. To this end, I started up the MacOS utiliy, Activity Monitor, which in addition to showing all the processes running on the computer, allow the administrator to shut them down selectively.

Little Snitch network monitor

Well, to make a long story short, apparently I got carried away. The concept was sound, but since I didn’t take the time to learn enough to really know what I was doing (always a dangerous thing for someone poking around the underbelly of the OS), I must have killed too many instances of the process, or the wrong ones, or something. Every time I tried to open a web page in FireFox, I had to click away a warning dialog, which got very old, very quickly. But the Little Sntich network monitor still showed traffic trying to go out to the Ukraine, even after restarting the computer and reinstalling FireFox!

So, I made an appointment with the “genius bar” at the local Apple Store. The very helpful techs there hadn’t seen this particular problem before, but they were able to isolate whatever it was that was making that call, and shut it down. As it happened, it was a QuickTime™ process, which is not surprising given that Phil probably acquired the trojan by trying to view a video someone had sent him. To help avoid such problems in the future, the “genius” suggested installing a bit of freeware, Perian, a QuickTime component that opens just about any video codec on the Mac without having to go out and find a tool or possibly accept dangerous suggestions from potential malware. Not only that, but “genius bar” help is even free!

So, we’re back to responsible, malware-free telecommunications. Next month, when we try using our Verizon wireless internet gear without the added stress of unwanted transmissions, we’ll reevaluate our experience with that system.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/12/the-rest-of-the-story/feed/ 0 http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/08/ah-ha/ http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/08/ah-ha/#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:38:10 +0000 Katherine W. Prawl http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/?p=148 On the advice of our good friend, Mark (whom you may recall showed us his on-the-road internet setup, which got us started down the mobile WiFi path), I’ve been looking into the possibility that Phil’s MacBook Pro could have some kind of malware that is sucking up all our bandwidth.

First I found Little Snitch, a spyware detector. That certainly made the case for an infestation, as even with the Airport card tuned off, as soon as the application started up it showed a process (mDNSResponder) trying to contact an IP address I didn’t recognize. Sure enough, WHOIS showed it belonging to somebody in Ukraine. Well, as Phil pointed out, it can’t be a Russian spy, as the Ukrainians will be the first to tell you they are not Russians, but it is certain that we don’t particularly want any eastern European entity to receive packets from our computers without our knowledge. So, I used the Rules window of Little Snitch to turn off mDNSResponder until I could find out what that is, and entered a rule into our modem’s blacklist to block the whole range of IP addresses owned by that Ukrainian ISP, since while I was watching there were several other addresses showing up in Little Sntich’s Network Monitor as being targets for whatever process was trying to reach out and touch someone from the MacBook Pro.

That was a good first step or two, but once we saw what was going on, I wanted a way to remove the bad stuff. So, I found MacScan, from SecureMac, and ran the scanner in demo mode on both Macs. On my iMac it found 34 “tracking cookies”, most of which I recognized as belonging to ads in sites I remember visiting, and which don’t offend me since I understand that’s how they justify spending big bucks on informative websites. Many of these anti-virus, anti-malware applications classify such things as “spyware” but just tracking my browsing habits in aggregate form doesn’t rise to the level of spying in my opinion. I went ahead and let MacScan delete them, though. They’ll come back, but so what? There were no trojan horses, viruses or keyloggers on my computer, though, which is a good thing.

 

Phil’s MacBook Pro was a different matter. As well as 25 “tracking cookies”, it found a real baddie, DNS Changer 1.1, a genuine Trojan Horse. That is probably at least part of the problem, although I think there is still an issue with something trying to call home to the Ukraine. Even after “isolating” the Trojan Horse, when I restarted his computer the Little Snitch Network Monitor showed activity trying to talk to IP addresses 85.255.114.61 and 85.255.112.107, each in turn as the other failed. This was even before I tried turning on the Airport Card! I turned that on, but they still couldn’t get out because of the rule I’d put on the router. Unfortunately, nothing else could get in or out either, since the “call home” process was taking precedence over everything else trying to reach the internet.

So, I have more work to do. Next trick will be to open up Apple’s Application Monitor and identify the process that is doing this if I can, and kill it, once I find out where it lives on the system so I can remove it. But right now Phil is watching a DVD, so this will have to wait till that’s over.

It’s a relief to know there is in fact something bad going on, since knowledge is power, and now it’s just a matter of finding and killing it.

Anyone who has experience with these particular IPs and can suggest a fix, I’d be very happy to hear from you! Meanwhile, I’ll continue my research as long as that gigabyte of bandwidth lasts.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/08/ah-ha/feed/ 4 http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/08/bitless-in-tucson/ http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/08/bitless-in-tucson/#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:48:35 +0000 Katherine W. Prawl http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/?p=146 This afternoon I had a call from Verizon‘s sales, following up on our recent purchase of one of their AirCards and data plan. I told the rep that while we had no technical problems with the setup, and were actually pretty happy with it, their 5 GB cap is completely inadequate. In fact, four days ago I unplugged the system to avoid going over our limit, as we have used 4135 MB out of our 5120 MB monthly allowance, and as yet have two weeks to go before the end of the billing period. She apologized, of course, and regretted that Verizon doesn’t have a reasonably priced plan for us. They do offer a 10 GB plan, but US$200/month (plus taxes, etc.) is simply more than we’re willing to pay for what would still be inadequate, given that we have made a sincere effort to keep the bandwidth usage down and have been unable to do so. If we were paying that kind of money, I would not want to have to scrimp and save every bit that goes through our router, but that’s what it would take to stay under even 10 GB.

In the course of the conversation, though, after I explained how we use the internet, particularly for connecting to Second Life, she told me that while Verizon doesn’t have a plan that can help us, there is another major carrier in the US that has an unlimited data plan. She just couldn’t tell me who it was, being a competitor and all that. I thanked her for the info, and started doing some research. The Verizon rep told me we still have until the 14th of February to return our AirCard without having to pay a penalty to cancel our existing plan if we decide to go to another carrier, so time is of the essence.

After talking to AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, though, I’ve come to the unhappy conclusion that we are stuck. Oh, there are some unlimited data plans out there, in particular from Sprint (their Simply Everything® plan) and T-Mobile (who have a plan called Total Internet for Data Cards), but each has show-stopping details. The Sprint plan only works with some phones, and while some of their phone descriptions say they can be connected to a laptop (“tethered”), it’s not necessarily something they encourage, and they certainly don’t tell you how to connect it to a wireless router. In particular, the T-Mobile rep told me that while it may be possible to connect a phone to one of our computers, it would be really slow, possibly even slower than dial-up. That obviously won’t work for us.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/02/08/bitless-in-tucson/feed/ 2 http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/01/25/rubber-meets-the-road/ http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/01/25/rubber-meets-the-road/#comments Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:27:03 +0000 Katherine W. Prawl http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/?p=144 So now we know we need that amplifier. If you haven’t been following this blog, you might wonder what kind of amp is under discussion. Your best bet would be to start here and work forward in time to get the gist.

Back now? Good. OK, what convinced me was watching the “Cellular Signal Strength” indicator on the router all the way across New Mexico on Interstate-40 today. Dismal. The most it got was one and a half towers (tower #2 flickering off and on — mostly off). Now that we are in Albuquerque, or just outside the city limits, it’s up to three and a half out of four, which is not too bad. I am using the system in spite of the fact that the local RV park offers “WiFi access” because I’ve had past experience with the provider they use, and I was not impressed. If we are going to pay for WiFi, I’d rather pay for our own system than somebody else’s.

Speaking of paying, I was finally able to get MS Windows® to work again on a Parallels virtual machine today, so I plugged in the modem to the USB port on my iMac and finally was able to launch the MyVerizon desktop tool that indicates how much bandwidth has been consumed. I was a little disappointed that it only told me the damage up through two days ago, but that is better than not having any clue at all. It was good to see that till 3:45 p.m. (what time zone?) on 22 Jan 2009 we had only used approximately 218.something MB, out of our 5 GB monthly allowance. The bad news is that we used that much in just five days of not very intensive networking. Still, if we watch it, we ought to be able to stay under the limit. I do still think it’s pretty lame that the Mac version of the desktop tool won’t show bandwidth usage, though.

So, since we plan to spend time in cellular fringe areas, I suppose we will be ordering the amplifier that Mark recommended.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2009/01/25/rubber-meets-the-road/feed/ 8 http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2008/10/20/the-app-store/ http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2008/10/20/the-app-store/#comments Mon, 20 Oct 2008 02:49:58 +0000 Katherine W. Prawl http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2008/10/20/the-app-store/ OK, I confess. I’m having way too much fun with the iTunes iPhone App Store. So far I have no fewer than 85 apps (mini applications that are free or cost just a few dollars) on my phone. That does not include the four or five I’ve decided are simply lame and have deleted.

Here’s my list (not complete):

• Stitcher, a podcast streamer
• Facebook Mobile, for updating and reading the social networking site on the go. My name on the site is Katherine W. Prawl if you want to follow or friend me there.
• WordPress Mobile, which I’m using to post this blog entry since we are on the road and I refuse to pay the local highway robbery prices for slow, spotty WiFi when I can do most online stuff with my iPhone for no more than I already pay for AT&T mobile data service
• Mobile NOAA, for top-drawer, complete local weather info while we’re traveling
• Mobile Finder, which lets me access my desktop computer’s files as long as we’re on the same local network. While we are away from our own home router, I just use MacOS X’s “create a network” function on my computer’s built-in Airport card and connect to it from the iphone. Yes, I do use a password when we are in RV parks or rest areas. You never know who might be in the next vehicle! Anyway, with this app I can copy small files to my iPhone and even edit some formats, such as text, spreadsheets, PDF, graphics, audio and video. It’s great for annotated maps.
• Last.fm, an Internet radio provider that works even on the EDGE network when WiFi isn’t available. It uses AI to serve up songs you might be expected to like based on artists, titles or genres you request
• SpeakEasy, a sound clip recording app that uses the iPhone’s mic
• three different eBook readers, including the top-rated Bookshelf. They each will read different formats and offer various features.
• a slew of location-sensitive travel aids such as Taxi for displaying the names and phone numbers of cab companies available in my current location
• three or four games
• a number of reference apps, like Mobile Wikipedia and a copy of the Quran in translation
• several tools that use the iPhone’s screen, such as a level (which also uses the built-in accelerometer to sense the phone’s position), a flashlight and a ruler

So, you can see that I really do get a lot of use out of this marvelous toy. Thank goodness fir the 12-volt outlet and power inverter at the passenger’s seat in the RV for plugging in the wall recharger!

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2008/10/20/the-app-store/feed/ 0 http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2008/07/23/new-world-page/ http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2008/07/23/new-world-page/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:15:18 +0000 Katherine W. Prawl http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/?p=77 I’ve just added a permanent page to this site, featuring a link to my “room” in Google’s new Lively virtual world. Please link to my Lively room and let me know what you think. Oh, sorry, but so far only MS Windows XP/Vista users can actually do that for now, but Google promises Mac software soon, and presumably will also have something for Linux, too.

The ability to put a 3D world in a webpage has some intriguing potential.

Share and Enjoy:

]]> http://newmediaonthego.com/blog/2008/07/23/new-world-page/feed/ 0