I use Quicken to manage my money (a.k.a herd cats). This morning I launched Qucken and it politely indicated that an update was available and asked whether to download & apply the update now? I selected "yes" - and the window closed.
Nothing else seemed to happen. No other window popped up. Thinking that maybe it had applied the update and closed, I launched Quicken again. A dialog came up indicating that Quicken was already running and that if this message kept occurring I should reboot the computer (yes - the suggested fix was basically toggle the power switch).
Opening Task Manager and viewing the network activity tab showed a slow trickle of data. Popping open Wireshark showed me the IP address, and using nslookup determined the address tracked back to quicken.com. I used Wireshark for two reasons: where was the conversation to, and was anything actually being downloaded?
10 minutes later a dialog finally came up stating the update was ready to install - and pressing the "next" button gave me an installation progress bar.
Yo! Quicken!! Bad UI!
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Killer App for IPv6 - the home Cloud?
I was honored to be on RunAs Radio talking with Richard Campbell about IPv6. We talked a bit about what the impact on IPv6 may be - and in a perfect world nobody should really notice, IP addresses should be under the covers. One thought came to me was IPSec and I recalled an interview I heard on a previous show with some guys from Microsoft. They were talking about how they could access their office network from anywhere in the world, VPN technologies were just built in.
After the interview was over another thought came to me. With all of this talk of the cloud, what happens if the devices within our home can be included in this thing we call the cloud. I find all of the software on my PC to be easier to use for managing my photos and music than any "cloud" app. I also have a problem paying rent to access my own photos and music. But wait! What if I could stream or access photos from the hard drive in my house?
How many times have you taken photos with a fancy camera and didn't have time to upload them. I pull out my smartphone to show picture to friends and family - and of course can only access those that I remembered to upload.
Gee, what if my home was part of the cloud? If I could securely access all photos, videos, and music from my phone as if it were part of the cloud! You could extend Skydrive or YouTube or Picasa to include the home. For content that you wanted to share with the world the upload/share button would move it to a public server. For those thousands of pictures of kids and dogs (cat people already have a web site), just pull out the smartphone and share with the grandparents.
After the interview was over another thought came to me. With all of this talk of the cloud, what happens if the devices within our home can be included in this thing we call the cloud. I find all of the software on my PC to be easier to use for managing my photos and music than any "cloud" app. I also have a problem paying rent to access my own photos and music. But wait! What if I could stream or access photos from the hard drive in my house?
How many times have you taken photos with a fancy camera and didn't have time to upload them. I pull out my smartphone to show picture to friends and family - and of course can only access those that I remembered to upload.
Gee, what if my home was part of the cloud? If I could securely access all photos, videos, and music from my phone as if it were part of the cloud! You could extend Skydrive or YouTube or Picasa to include the home. For content that you wanted to share with the world the upload/share button would move it to a public server. For those thousands of pictures of kids and dogs (cat people already have a web site), just pull out the smartphone and share with the grandparents.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
No IPv6 for you!
My new Motorola cable modem arrive last week and I hooked it up. Unfortunately it reports "IPv4 only" - I guess Comcast hasn't enabled IPv6 in this area. So I'm stuck using the 6to4 tunnel.
Device specifics: SURFboard SB6121. Hooking it up was painless. I called 1-800-COMCAST. The tech first asked for the device serial number - I've heard they do a stolen device search because people take the equipment with them when they move and sell it on eBay. Next he asked for the MAC and put me on hold for 5-8 minutes. When he came back on the line it all worked.
Word of warning, if you are using a VoIP phone, your old modem will be disabled during the call. Consider calling from a cellphone.
Device specifics: SURFboard SB6121. Hooking it up was painless. I called 1-800-COMCAST. The tech first asked for the device serial number - I've heard they do a stolen device search because people take the equipment with them when they move and sell it on eBay. Next he asked for the MAC and put me on hold for 5-8 minutes. When he came back on the line it all worked.
Word of warning, if you are using a VoIP phone, your old modem will be disabled during the call. Consider calling from a cellphone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)