Sure it does. Without a single specification for the HTML5 <video> tag, we’ll have a web of fragmentation, where browsers, developers and consumers must constantly work to find common ground. And the longer the problem remains unresolved, the more difficult it will be to backtrack. On to the format standard.

In such a case when dealing with one of the most prominent, open standards like HTML, we must take into account two things: accessibility and quality. Each of the three given possibilities, H.264, Flash and WebM, differ greatly in terms of accessibility and quality. H.264 and WebM come very close one another in terms of image quality, with H.264 slightly besting WebM. But more importantly, H.264 is not free. H.264 is licensed by MPEG-LA, and if you’re using H.264 in a commercial environment, MPEG-LA is charging you license fees. Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox browser, pointed out that it would cost them $5 million per year to license H.264 from MPEG-LA without any guarantee that the rate would increase over time (many believe it will).

The web cannot rely on patent-holders and royalty-collectors to ensure it remains open and accessible. We cannot trust that MPEG-LA will not find it in their interests to charge more for their royalties as adoption increases, nor can we trust that Adobe will keep their Flash platform secure and open. WebM is an ideal specification for HTML5 video as it is royalty-free and without patents. It’s open, accessible, and should be made the future of video on the web.

Learn more about the WebM project here.

6:30pm: Seated and waiting for the show to begin!

6:45pm: There’s been tons of power issues at the Hilton Center. Casino’s HVAC went out…waiting for Steve impatiently.

7:04pm: Second up, the cloud. Intelligent software that runs on devices and servers similtaneously.

7:07pm: We can all be bullish about the long-term prospects of our industry.

7:08pm: Project Natal will turn you, the user, into a controller for games. 39 million XBOX 360s around the world. 500 million games have been sold. $20 billion in total game revenue.

7:09pm: 2009 was a year where we made incredible strides in search. 11 million new users, grew our share, and introduced a consumer servcice that resonates with people.

7:10pm: New partnership with HP will make Bing the new default on HP computers sold in 42 countries around the world.

7:14pm: Windows PC sales jumped 50% the week it launched. 33% more windows pcs on black friday than the year before.

7:16pm: Windows 7 is by far the fastest selling operating system in history.

7:17pm: Nearly 300 million Windows PCs shipped in 2009. More than 12% jump next year.

The Sprint network gave out at this point in the keynote, completely overloaded by the 4,000 person audience. Unfortunately, that concluded this liveblog.

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.  Download 2.8.2 or automatically upgrade from the Tools->Upgrade page of your blog’s admin.

Be sure to update your WordPress installation as soon as possible and keep your site and server safe from intrusion!

In a letter to Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said today that it would let small wireless providers carry its exclusive handsets within six months and that any new exclusivity arrangement the company enters with handset makers will last no longer than six months – “for all manufacturers and all devices.”

Some may see this appeasement as progress towards a more open marketplace for the cellular world, moving towards breaking infamous exclusivity agreements such as the AT&T/iPhone deal. But the fact of the matter is that these agreements allow you to snag a $600 smartphone for $199. It’s the simple beauty of America’s free marketplace, and government regulation in this case would harm consumers and slow innovation.

Find Lowell McAdam’s full letter after the break:

July 17, 2009

The Honorable Rick Boucher
Chairman
Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet
House Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
2187 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Boucher:

Last February, a group of 24 small wireless providers asked Verizon Wireless to eliminate long-term exclusive handset agreements with LG and Samsung. We agreed to do so for those small providers. Today I am writing to reaffirm that commitment and to let you know that Verizon Wireless is taking an even bolder step to transform exclusive handset arrangements. Effective immediately for small wireless carriers (those with 500,000 customers or less), any new exclusivity arrangement we enter with handset makers will last no longer than six months – for all manufacturers and all devices.

This new approach is fair to all sides. Exclusivity arrangements promote competition and innovation in device development and design. We work closely with our vendors to develop new and exciting devices that will attract customers. When we procure exclusive handsets from our vendors we typically buy hundreds of thousands or even millions of each device. Otherwise manufacturers may be reluctant to make the investments of time, money and production capacity to support a particular device. This of course constitutes a major risk for us, because if the device is not popular in the marketplace we end up with excess inventory and potential competitive losses. On the other hand, if the device does well in the market, six months is a reasonable time for us to earn the benefit of our risk and investment.

Moreover, we have no objection to small carriers having full access to any manufacturer’s portfolio of prototypes and products in development, without being informed which may have been selected by Verizon Wireless. Obviously our pre-launch product selections are proprietary and must remain confidential between us and our vendors.

Our actions today are consistent with our long track record of leading the vibrant, highly competitive wireless industry in new and innovative directions that benefit consumers. We would be happy to meet with you or your staff to discuss this further.

Sincerely,

Lowell C. McAdam

cc: Chairman Waxman
Ranking Member Barton
Ranking Member Stearns

Today, Palm announced on its corporate blog the much-awaited public release of its Mojo SDK (although in Beta form) to mobile developers looking to create applications on the company’s best, most advanced OS yet. Along with the SDK, Palm launched a brand-new developer portal that includes Frequently Asked Questions, forums, and SDK documentation. Although there is an “early access program” which will permit a select few applications to be released  on the store before the floodgates are wide open to all apps, most Pre owners can satisfy all their app cravings later this year.

Just this past Monday, Microsoft Windows Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc posted an update on Windows 7′s “release to manufacturing” status. The update followed a series of rumors on the web reporting that Windows 7 did indeed move to RTM status and that the code had been signed off under “Build 7600″. Unfortunately, this was not the case. From the post:

Over the past week, there have been many rumors surrounding RTM.

We are close, but have not yet signed off on Windows 7. When we RTM you will most certainly hear it here. As we’ve said all along, we will RTM Windows 7 when it’s ready. As previously stated, we expect Windows 7 to RTM in the 2nd half of July.

The day could not come soon enough, as thousands of MSDN and TechNet subscribers are awaiting their chance to get their hands on the final copy of Windows 7 before it’s eventual General Availability release on October 22nd of this year. It seems as if this is the final stretch to the release of Microsoft’s greatest operating system yet.

Moments ago, Apple celebrated the success of its infamous App Store via a press release congratulating the company and its community of iPhone users on the most successful mobile application distribution system in history. A single year after its launch, the App Store has tallied 1.5 billion application downloads to iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s around the world.

In the press release, Steve Jobs stated the following:

The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality. With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.

There is no doubt that the rate in which customers are downloading apps is rapidly increasing. Although the store has been subject to much public scrutiny for its censorship, it is by far the most clean, elegant and usable mobile application distributor in the world.

Here’s yet another revived rumor for the week. Today, Netflix’s stock rallied 7% during peak trading hours on reports of Amazon, Inc. looking to acquire the 12-year-old DVD rental company. At this point in time,neither company has commented on the story, keeping it unconfirmed. However, the deal would indeed make sense for both Netflix and Amazon. The combination of both companies would bring together a database of both older and newer instant streaming releases through Amazon’s “Video On Demand” service and Netflix’s extremely popular “Instant Streaming” feature.

Bloomberg has commented on the possible deal, reporting the following:

Trading of call options, which give the right to buy the shares, surged to 11,477 contracts, more than triple the four- week average and five times the volume for puts, which give the right to sell.

Such strong stock fluctuations usually carry some degree of validity in their reported reasons for rallying or dropping. It may just be a matter of time before the reported acquisition becomes official — or not.

It’s that time again — The China Times is reporting (translated) that Apple has placed several orders with its common vendors Foxconn, Wintek, and Dynapak for touchscreens and such. The roughly-translated article goes on to state the new device will be released in October for something around $800. This certainly isn’t the first time such rumors have appeared and as such should be taken with a grain of salt.

Update: Further rumors indicate that Apple may be looking to use their own processors from their PA Semi acquisition to build the tablet. This approach could become very interesting.

On the 19th of this month, the next, third generation iPhone was released to the world. Unlike it’s two predecessors, the iPhone 3GS was not a major update in terms of its feature set or design. In fact, most of its new features became accessible from previous iPhones through a free software update, and the design of the 3G and 3GS are perfectly identical. Even for such a minor update, Apple’s almost-perfect marketing put out better sales numbers with the third-generation 3GS than it had with the 3G!

A recently leaked, internal AT&T memo tells just about all the information needed to come to the conclusion that AT&T is at Apple’s command.

1. Fact of the Week: On June 25, the day Michael Jackson died, text messages sent on our network spiked at 65,000 messages per second — the largest volume ever recorded — surpassing events like American Idol voting and New Year’s Eve, when millions of our customers wish their friends and family a happy new year via text.

2. iLaunch day 2009 was one for the record books, as AT&T customers scrambled to get their hands on the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet.

Here’s a look at some of the milestones we achieved:

• Best-ever sales day in our retail stores
• Second-largest traffic day in our retail stores
• Most transactions processed via our IT systems in a single day
• Most upgrade eligibility checks in a single day
• Largest order day in att.com history
• Largest features sales day in att.com history

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008 — all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

It’s quite unlikely that AT&T will ever find another handset manufacturer with the resources and marketing intelligence to drive so many sales and new customers. More than 40% of the 1.6 million new AT&T/iPhone subscribers of the last quarter were new to the network.

Whether it be $200+ subsidies per iPhone sold or forced, rapid expansion of their lacking 3G network, AT&T will do what it takes to keep it most valuable partner satisfied and locked in.

I would like to take a moment to deeply apologize for my lack of updates since the amazing influx of traffic brought by Engadget, Boy Genius Report, and countless other news sources. I’ve been swamped with tons of work and in addition have left the country on January 27th to study abroad in Israel for approximately four months. Within the coming days, I will (finally) be posting about my third day at CES, though it is now irrelevant — just for the sake of completeness.

Thanks for your understanding. I hope to get writing again very soon…

Sincerely,
–Michael

It’s another beautiful night in Las Vegas for the International Consumer Electronics Show. But first thing’s first: a big thank you goes out to Boy Genius Report, Engadget, and their respective authors for getting the word of the at&t-branded BlackBerry Curve 8900, which was first posted here, out to the world–I’m truly grateful. Also, props to Media Temple for handling the tremendous traffic received without a single hiccup on its Grid-Service. I’m very impressed.

In regards to CES, last night’s post earned me a ‘Blogger Pass’ to the show, up from a standard pass. The new badge gives me priority access to keynotes and other public events, as well as some quality freebies including a “CES Blogger Bag.” Unfortunately, there are no keynotes and very few public events remaining for this year’s show. However, I’ll have the same pass from the beginning of next year’s show, where it will be put to better use.

I spent a majority of the day in South Halls 3 and 4, which are not filled with brand-name booths, but rather smaller companies. Because of this, I don’t have much else to share with you. Most products I saw were not new, and others were remakes of old products–nothing worth posting.

For tonight, I’d like to point you to what I believe was today’s most exciting event (which I was not admitted to.)

Dell put an end to the anticipation of its upcoming ultra-light notebook, Adamo, which looks stunning to say the least. Check out Engadget’s coverage here and here.

Tomorrow, I’ll be working much more efficiently in the Central Hall to bring you more quality news from CES 2009. There’s much more to cover there for my last day on the show floor. For now, good night!

I’ve decided to outline the most interesting and worthwhile things I’ve seen today here, and follow it up with a photo gallery to correspond.

Motorola Booth

Motorola surprisingly wasn’t considered the boring booth this year as it had been in the past. Rather, Motorola used CES to release two new, noteworthy phones. First up was the Motorola W233 renew, an odd name for a phone that may just dictate the future of the mobile phone industry. The environmentally-friendly, “candybar-style” phone’s housing is made entirely from recycled water bottles. Through Motorola’s efforts, they offset the amount of energy needed to manufacture, distribute, and operate the phone. It’s a great new direction for the company and industry as a whole.

Next, the much more advanced Motorola SURF A3100 was shown off today at the Motorola booth. This is one of Motorola’s few touchscreen Windows Mobile-powered cell phones. Its 528MHz Qualcomm processor gives the phone a noticable edge in the performance of simple tasks such as browsing the web and checking e-mail. More so, its loaded with 128MB RAM, quad-band GSM, a 3.1 megapixel camera, and a trackball as seen in the G1.

Sling Media Booth

As I had hoped for, Sling Media had their much-awaited iPhone app on display, running on at&t’s 3G network–not WiFi. This gave a much more realistic depiction of what we can come to expect of the app in real world situations. My impressions of the fully-featured alpha application were positive. The remote controls were quick to respond for the most part, and video quality was excellent. Sling Media has confirmed to me that they will be submitting their app to Apple in late March for approval in the App Store soon after. There will be a limited beta before then, of which a lucky select few will be able to join.

Canon Booth

I actually had not expected to drop by Canon’s booth today, but the EOS 5D Mark II captured my attention and lured me in. The update to the popular EOS 5D includes a 21.1 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, Live View shooting, and 1080p video capturing. It has already been released and is available for purchase directly from Canon, although you must be on a waitlist. One can also get the DSLR at Canon resellers, where stock is not guaranteed.

The Outdoors

No, there is no such booth named ‘The Outdoors’. Rather, outside of the convention center I had a chance to meet and chat quickly with Ryan Block, former editor-in-chief of Engadget, and co-founder of gdgt, which has been covering CES as well. Lots of fun here…thanks for the chat, Ryan! =)

BlackBerry Booth

It’s been seen before, but hasn’t been officially released as of yet. That’s why this sleek device caught my attention: it’s the new at&t-branded BlackBerry Curve 8900, an update to the previous (and extremely popular) Curve. This confirms the device’s eventual presence in at&t’s BlackBerry lineup.

TiVo Girls

You read it right. I caught sight of TiVo’s new (and shall I say clever) advertising campaign in the form of surfers in bathing suits–at a consumer electronics trade show. Unfortunately for all the men in the convention center, the women were not permitted to enter the show floor due to “improper attire”…no joke. Get a glimpse below.

Well…that about does it for today! Catch you tomorrow for Day 2′s update.

7:51 pm: “Tripod” band takes stage once more! That’s about it…thanks for viewing! =)

7:50 pm: Technology industry has great opportunities ahead despite economic problems. “Thank you, and good night!”

7:42 pm: Microsoft Research takes the stage! $8 billion spent on R&D last year alone by Microsoft. Well done!

7:41 pm: Steve’s talking about being efficient with processor power. Finally! HDTVs will become cheaper, lighter, and more affordable. Future will entail writing apps that automatically customize to your device’s capability.

7:39 pm: Robbie’s off…Steve’s on!

7:36 pm: Little girl is demonstrating how to create your own game. Pretty awesome–and getting lots of laughs from the audience because she’s so fast!

7:34 pm: Another new XBOX channel called Community Games. Create your own games and play them with your friends over XBOX Live!

7:32 pm: Robbie’s having problems with his wireless controller–poor guy! No…nevermind, it’s fine. Showing off Netflix integration. New Windows Mobile Netflix Queue app coming out later this week on Windows Mobile Total Access.

7:26 pm: XBOX Live Primetime is a new channel with interactive games. Demoing “1 vs. 100″ game on Primetime. Sweet! This will be a hit…no question. Coming out Spring 2009.

7:25 pm: XBOX Live has had 10 billion hours of gameplay since its release. 10 billion!

7:23 pm: Halo Wars is a new strategy game. Expands the previous style of gameplay. February 28th Bungie releasing downloadable demo available on the 25th.

7:21 pm: Over 28 million XBOX consoles sold. Expecting even more sales momentum. 17 million active XBOX Live members. 70% growth in 2008!

7:19 pm: Microsoft Mediaroom is expanding by partnering with SingTel to view previous shows that you have not recorded on your DVR.

7:18 pm: Claims Zune a great success in 2008. Doubled Zune social network. 10 million unique users a month using Windows Media Center. Average session time per WMC user is 90 minutes!

7:15 pm: Robbie Bach, president of Entertainment division, takes stage.

7:14 pm: “Tripod” band takes stage. Intermission tech-based music!

7:12 pm: Windows Live Messenger matches photo tiles to emoticons you type in IMs.

7:11 pm: Social features in Windows Live Hotmail.

7:07 pm: Internet Explorer 8 accelerators. Translating Russian to English inside the browser.

7:05 pm: Showing Flash on Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile panorama stitching coming soon.

7:03 pm: Using Lenovo touchscreen to demonstrate Windows 7 multi-touch capabilities. Surface Globe app on display.

7:01 pm: 50% of US households have more than 1 PC. Introducing HomeGroups (new home networking).

6:59 pm: Charlotte Jones demoing Windows 7 beta. Showing new UI features…peek to desktop, etc. Jump Lists let you jump to a specific area of an app.

6:58 pm: Partnership with Verizon Wireless to offer Live Search on all phones.

6:57 pm: 20 million Windows Mobile phones sold in the last 12 months.

6:56 pm: 3 things. Worldwide availability of Windows Live Essentials announced. Partnership with Facebook to sync with Windows Live social networking. Partnership with Dell to pre-install Windows Live Essentials on all consumer PCs. First OEM to do so.

6:54 pm: Windows 7 is available now to MSDN and Technet users–worldwide beta of Windows 7 Beta live on Friday!

6:53 pm: Windows 7 on track to be the best Windows ever. Reliability and speed. “Working hard to get it right and ready. Should boot more quickly, have longer battery life, and fewer alerts.”

6:50 pm: Ballmer exclaims: “I’m a PC!”

6:48 pm: Introducing new hardware–new phones and PCs.

6:45 pm: Internet cloud will be the future of sync across all devices–Live Mesh, anyone?

6:42 pm: Smartphones will make up more than 50% of the mobile phone market in 2009 and 2010.

6:41 pm: 1 billion people own PCs in the world. Netbooks and OLPC will spread computing for the next billion.

6:35 pm: Ballmer takes stage and credits Bill for his work at the foundation.

6:33 pm: Showing Microsoft intro video…

6:30 pm: Gary Shapiro, President of CEA, takes stage to introduce Ballmer.

6:28 pm: CES official beatboxers are on stage…rapping about all things electronic!

6:20 pm: We’re being admitted into the ballroom!

4:30 pm: Here I am, in the midst of all the people who bring you your oh-so-loved gadgets. So far, I’ve met the CNN crew, as well as other industry affiliates who will be in tonight’s audience.

I’m writing to you this afternoon via tethering on my HTC 8925 over at&t’s 3G network.

More updates soon!

Setting up uSirius StarPlayr is a quick process. Just enter your username and password and you’re on your way to listening to your favorite satellite radio stations. When connected via cellular networks (either EDGE or 3G), the bitrate is 32kbps for both SIRIUS and XM channels. However, when connected to a WiFi network, you can listen at a maximum 64kbps for XM and 128kbps for SIRIUS (subscription required.)

After a few hours of continuous usage, I’ve determined the application to be extremely stable and robust. The only drop-outs I experienced in the playback were when the phone switched from EDGE to 3G and back. The interruptions didn’t last more than a few seconds, however, due to the fact that the app buffers a portion of the music ahead of time for such network issues. Hopefully, this issue (and the only one I’ve encountered) can be resolved with a larger buffer.

uSirius StarPlayr will be available in the App Store soon, following its beta testing. Its pricing has yet to be decided. Big thanks to Jason Millard and the rest of the NiceMac, LLC. team!

First off, happy new year! 2009 is sure to be a fantastic year for the technology industry. I can’t think of any better way to use the first post of the year than on the most popular consumer electronics trade show in the world.  For my third time ever, I’ll be one of more than 150,000 people making their way to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to check out the latest and greatest gadgets, listen to influential keynote speakers, and (hopefully) grab some freebies along the way…

CES has always been a strong foundation for both small and major corporations looking to release breakthrough technologies and products with the intent of capturing the attention of a giant audience. Unsurprisingly, the show was used to unveil the first VHS players, personal camcorders, cell phones, DVD players, HDTVs, and countless other milestone comsumer electronics.

Due to the astonishing amount of things to be seen at CES, I’ll outline a few events that I’ll be attending and some booths that I’ll be visiting and likely covering here.

Pre-Show Keynote – January 7th @ 6:30pm

In a change of normal routine, Bill Gates will no longer be delivering the opening keynote of the show as he has for the past 13 years. Rather this year, Steve Ballmer, Cheif Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation, will be adressing a number of topics to the audience. From what has been leaked, we can expect to hear about Windows 7 going into public beta, Windows Mobile Flash support, and new home networking advances.

Microsoft Corp. Booth

With all the negative coverage of Windows Vista, the folks in Redmond have been working fanatically to resolve the most critical issues in the operating system alongside adressing the overall performance of the operating system in common tasks. Windows 7, the sucessor to Vista, will include all of these enhancements and more. With some luck, I’ll be able to take a closer look at the operating system currently set to be released in early 2010.

Also, following the release of Power Pack 1 for Windows Home Server and the announcement of the all-new HP MediaSmart servers, the WHS team is sure to have much to talk about. Looking forward to quick chat with them…

Dell Inc. Booth

Facing increased competition from Apple and Hewlett-Packard, 2008 marked a year of innovation for Dell. The Inspiron Mini series took the ‘netbook world’ to new heights with its implementation of Intel’s Atom chipset. Furthermore, the Studio series proved that Dell was continuing to actively work on the design of its products. Dell should have much to tout at this year’s show.

DirecTV Booth

Last year was acclaimed to be the “year of HD.” DirecTV took the statement to heart, now boasting over 130 hi-definition channels in its lineup. Also, the company has worked with Microsoft to develop a method to watch DirecTV HD programming through Windows Media Center. Recently, the project was said to be put on hold, but it may be discussed at the show. DirecTV announced the return of TiVo DVRs in 2008, and it is likely that prototypes of such will be shown.

Sonos Booth

Sonos, along with Windows Home Server, is one of my most favorite “home technologies.” The networked home audio system’s setup is quick and painless, and its functionality is heavenly. Another ‘pro’ to the Sonos system is its constant (and free) software updates that dramatically improve the functionality and performance of the device. 2008 was filled with updates that added support for last.fm scrobbling, free Pandora playback, and a whole lot more. In addition, Sonos released a comprehensive iPhone remote app, which allows you to control the music playing in any area of your house. Should the Sonos team have any new products to announce, you can count on coverage here.

These are not the only booths I’ll be visiting. Not even close…I’ll be in Vegas for five days! These are just a few that came to mind right now.

Finally, here’s what I’ll be carrying on over to Las Vegas this year:

• Dell Inspiron 300m (What? I’m holding off for Windows 7!)
• AT&T Tilt – Tethering to the laptop for free internet access everywhere
• Nikon D70 – Take some pictures along the way
• Apple iPhone – Music and games for the short flight

That’s it for now–more on the 7th after my return from the Ballmer keynote!

ScreenToaster is currently an invite-only beta web application. Luckily, I was just admitted to test out this wonderful app.

The home page of ScreenToaster is a fairly simple one, and you sign in at the top right-hand corner.

Viewing your screencasts:

Once you’re signed in, “My Videos” will appear, showing the titles and thumbnails of any screencasts you’ve taken with the free service.

Choosing a video will present an embeddable Flash viewer, displaying your screencast in stunning resolution. The embed code is located on the left-hand side.

Taking a screencast:

Taking screencasts with ScreenToaster is an extremely simple process. After signing in, hit “Start Recording”.

Within just a couple of seconds, the Java applet pops up and instructs you on how to start and stop recording.

Hopefully this wonderful service will go live soon… =)

The problem I faced was getting the settings to work correctly under Media Temple’s grid hosting service, the (gs). After hours of messing around with the configuration files, I finally got it to work! Please note that the following instructions are meant solely for setup on the (gs), and will most likely not work in its current state on other hosting providers services.

Uber-Uploader comes with three files that contain all the customization possible: ubr_default_config.php, ubr_ini.php, and ubr_upload.pl.

My setup had the perl file in the cgi-bin of my domain, and the php files under the “upload” directory in the “html” folder; the following instructions will only work under that setup…

Here are all of the things you need to edit in UBR_DEFAULT_CONFIG.PHP:

$_CONFIG['upload_dir']:
/home/GRID_ACCOUNT_NUMBER/domains/DOMAIN_GOES_HERE/html/upload/files/

$_CONFIG['redirect_url']:
http://’ . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . ‘/upload/ubr_finished.php

Here are all of the things you need to edit in UBR_INI.PHP:

$TEMP_DIR:
/home/GRID_ACCOUNT_NUMBER/domains/DOMAIN_GOES_HERE/html/upload/temp/

$PATH_TO_UPLOAD_SCRIPT:
/cgi-bin/ubr_upload.pl

Finally, here are all of the things you need to edit in UBR_UPLOAD.PL:

my $TEMP_DIR:
/home/GRID_ACCOUNT_NUMBER/domains/DOMAIN_GOES_HERE/html/upload/temp/

Feel free to post with any comments or questions regarding the setup…

Enjoy!

Installation:

As with any Windows Home Server add-in, you must copy the “.msi” installer into the Add-Ins folder of the Software share. Following this, you will need to log-in to the WHS Console, click on Settings, then Add-Ins, then Available, and click Install next to GridJunction.

The installation only takes a few seconds, and will prompt you to restart the Console after it is completed. Next, you’ll log back in to the Console:

Once the console has loaded, you’ll likely notice that GridJunction doesn’t take up valuable “tab space” along the top horizontal bar because simply, it doesn’t need to.

Instead, you’ll find GridJunction under Settings. You will now notice that the add-in has moved to “Installed”.

Usage:

The add-in has a clean interface and lays out everything you need to know about the status of your UPS system. GridJunction consists of just four tabs: Events, Actions, Settings, and About.

In the case of a blackout or power loss, GridJunction will display real-time events with the status of your battery…

The “Actions” tab allows you set a specific percentage of battery level to safely shut down the server at. This is the most critical feature of the add-in. The developer of the add-in, however, plans to add more functionality by allowing you to choose to run an executable at a certain point while the battery is discharging.

Finally, the “Settings” tab has a couple of options: one to automatically notify you when there is an update available for GridJunction, and another to activate a brownout filter. For those unfamiliar with brownouts, they are short drops in voltage, but do not result in complete loss of power. By activating this setting, it will delay power alerts for ten seconds to give the system a chance to recognize that it was a “false-positive”.

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta is available for download at GridJunction.com.

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta Changelog

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta List of Known Supported UPS Systems

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta List of Known Unsupported UPS Systems

The developer plans for another small release later this week to address some minor issues.

I’ve had the opportunity to test out the service for a little while, and can easily say that it makes contacting companies a simple feat.

After logging into the site, you’ll notice the following:

On the left-hand side, you see a list of companies that you have added to your own collection of numbers. Clicking on one, (let’s say Adobe Systems), will then bring up the main fonolo page for “Adobe Systems”.

At this point in the beta, there isn’t much on the main page for any of the currently listed companies. Let’s move on to the phone tree…

The phone tree displays in text exactly what you would hear if you were to call the company right now. But the best feature of the phone tree is the ability to call in to any part of it! To the right of every subsection of the interactive menus are “Call Here” buttons. Clicking it will prompt you to choose any of the numbers you initially set up your fonolo account with (I blotted mine out for security):

Soon enough, your phone will be ringing away and the moment you pick it up, you’ll be connected to that part of the menu…

Ringing...

Connected!

Accounts with the new feature enabled will notice the following:

By clicking on “Details”, you will be shown a window with an in-depth set of information regarding your recent Gmail sessions, and will also be given the option to sign out of all current sessions even if you cannot physically access those computers in which the sessions exist.

All in all, Gmail users now have an extra way to keep prying eyes away from their mailboxes, thanks to this new feature…