I believe this will be one really good feature of GMail, the ability to send and receive phone calls through your computer while you are logged into your email account (available to USA only). Since I use Google Voice this is automatically added to my GMail account for use. However at first try this morning I have not been able to get it to successfully call my mobile phone. While the phone rings and I can answer it I cannot hear anything on either the phone nor my headset on the computer. I continuously keep getting error messages like this:

Sorry! The voice chat with (xxx) xxx-xxxx failed due to an error [Code: 3 Remote: true] at 9:18 AM.
Click here to report this to Google.

I have been reporting the issues to Google but I wish this would just work. The best part that got me interested is that first it was automatically linked to my Google Voice account, second it is easy and free to make calls to any land line or mobile phone in the USA. International calls are available too at rates as low as $0.02 per minute. Have you been able to get Google Voice to work from within the GMail interface? What are your thoughts on this service? I think it would be beneficial if you remain logged into your GMail account all day however I already have my Google Voice number ring my mobile phone.

Ever since I bought my motorcycle I have been looking for a good shop where I could buy my gear and have my bike serviced. I started out by looking at Parkway Cycle which is located in Everett, MA. The service was great there but the location was a bit difficult to get to. You always have to deal with a ton of traffic and VERY limited parking to go to this shop. I had been talking with the staff there and they seemed really knowledgeable and helpful. However when it came time to make the purchase I did not want to have to deal with the traffic to go buy my gear. I had also found Greater Boston Motorsports (also known as GBM) located in Arlington, MA which seemed to have ample parking and a lot less traffic to deal with. I talked with the staff there on my first visit and they seemed just as helpful and nice as at Parkway Cycle.

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I know that most people probably just go to the website but i have become accustomed to reading Engadget on my Palm Pre. I know that they have an iPhone app so I am hoping that an iPad version is coming down soon. Currently i have the iPhone version installed but i hate how the graphics all look when it comes to iPhone apps on the iPad.

If you have been following my blog the last few days you know that I lost almost a years worth of data. I could have paid the web host $75 to recover the data but being that this is solely for my blog I opted not to do that. Rather I have recovered most (if not all) of my missing posts by using Google Cache. I did this by searching Google for my site and then the /YYYY/MM/ string and clicking the cache link in the search results. I do regret that all of my meta data such as comments/views etc for all of my posts have not been nor can they be recovered. I apologize but at-least the content is there so that when people click web links they are not confronted with a 404.

Last week at the request of my web host I started cleaning up my files in my directory. I was also trying to get rid of old stuff that was not in use any more. This led to me accidentally deleting my database for my blog. I have lost everything since March 2009. I guess this is a reason why you should make at-least weekly backups of your website.

I know the host could restore it for me but for them to restore my database to the prior day they were going to charge $75. While that is not a lot of money I am just not in a position to pay this price. I opted to lose the last year of posts (there were not that many anyway) and go on with life. Had this been more than my personal blog I would have opted to do the backup restore.

I am trying to pull my content from google cache and add it back into place however this does not include the comments left by users or user accounts that have been created since then.

Most of you probably do not yet know but I have resigned from Tatto Media and have moved back to Namespace, Inc.. While I am under a confidentiality agreement I cannot state what I was working on at Tatto Media however what I can say is that I was working with the latest technologies such as CakePHP, JQuery, CSS, etc to work on the products that Tatto Media has to offer. Since I have moved back to Namespace Inc I have been reading up on a completely new framework. Most of you are probably thinking oh another PHP framework under your belt… That’s not the case at all. The new framework that we are using is a Java based framework called Wicket.

So far Wicket seems to be a very nice web framework and Java is very appealing to me from a developers standpoint. I guess the good part is that PHP is based on Java quite a bit so picking up the language has been rather easy. I have also applied for an editor account on Wicket by Example so you will find anything I write about Wicket on that site. I may or may not publish the articles on this site as well I am just not sure yet. Regardless I will post something here stating that a new example or article has been posted by me.

If you have never heard of DropBox then you have been missing out. It is a file synchronization service which allows you to have 2GB of free space on their servers. The BEST news is that it has clients for Windows, Mac and Linux. When you install DropBox on your computers it reaches out to their servers and synchronizes your computer with the server. I am not exactly sure how all of the internals work this is just from my perception. The more computers you add the better things get. For me I have both computers at home linked and also my work computer. When I add a file to my DropBox at work it is synchronized with my other computers so when I get to them the files are just there.

There are many reasons why you would want to use this service. What if you wanted to have all of the books you bought that came with digital copies accessible by you from any computer you install DropBox on. What if you have files that you need both at home and on the go? A mock-up for a client that you created at home or work and when you go there with your laptop you don’t have to worry about making sure it’s on the laptop, no fumbling with cd’s etc. The files are synchronized and you are all set to go and show the client on-site.

There are a few things I think they could do better with the service and I will outline them here. You can share folders with other DropBox users however you cannot share a sub-folder. This should be corrected, if I wanted to share a single file with another user I have to create a folder and share that folder with them. Why did they not make a shared folder under your user account that would have sub-folders for the users who are sharing with you? I could see something like /Shared/User1/[files here], /Shared/User2/[files here]. When you share a folder with another user they also have the ability to delete the files. I don’t want to share a lot of files with a friend to find out they got mad one day and deleted all the files now I don’t have them. They could work on this sharing system and I would hope that one day they will implement a permissions system. UserA has the ability to read/write and UserB has the ability to read only. Something like this would boost my interest in the system even more.

When you share files with a friend it also consumes space in their DropBox account. So let me get this right the files are stored on the server once but if you share the folder with 5 people all 6 of you are taxed for the space those files take up on the disk. This seems bad to me because the files are in my account. I shared them with the other 5 users, why are they getting billed for the space as well?

Even with the few things mentioned above they have the VoteBox which is where you as a member can go vote on features that you want the developers to work on next. Whatever features are ranked the highest is what they work on next. I love this idea as it brings the community into the development process.

I have personally been using DropBox Since March of 2009 so I am not just blindly asking people to sign-up for a useless service. This is a service that I really find useful and would like to have all of my readers at-least try out.

If you have not tried DropBox yet I urge you to get an account and install the software. If you don’t like it I would love to hear why. I love using DropBox personally but even if you don’t please at-least install the software and link it to your account. I will get 250MB of free space for each person that does so. YOU will also get 250MB extra free. Sign-up and invite your friends you can increase your storage space up to 5GB from the 2GB that you get for free.

In a recent post by me a reader left some informative information about the scam sites that I have written about in the past. You might have seen my posts warning you about the websites called bid4that and Vuulu. I told you that these sites popped up and then vanished a few days later stealing money from the end users. They would allow you to buy bids and use them to bid on products however the winning bidder was never sent the product. Instead the winning bidder would be refunded for their bids. You might still be asking how are they stealing if they are refunding the winners bids? How about all of those who bid on the item without winning? They paid for the bids and the site owners reaped profits.

Bid4That did not last too long maybe a week and Vuulu lasted only a few days. I am really wondering how long this new site Muulu will last. I STRONGLY ADVISE ANYONE READING THIS NOT TO FALL FOR THIS SCAM! You will be throwing money away and will never receive the products from the site.

If you have been caught up by any of these scams please let everyone know in the comments. Don’t be afraid even though the site owner has made death threats to people in the past. There are plenty of other sites out there which talk about Muulu so read them and make your own decisions. Before you make the final decision read this post which includes a chat transcript with the site owner.

With any scam you are going to see failure however your job as a scammer is to at-least keep your website up and working. If you click on the image to the left it should show a larger version. This is a screen-shot of the Vuulu.com homepage at the time of this writing. You can see that it is not showing any products listed. Where did they all go? Were they all won by the auto bidding bots? Did the owner just forget to add more products and everything ran out of time? The answer to this is REALLY simple.. WHO CARES? They are on a venture to scam anyone and everyone they can, stay far far away from these guys. Blog about this scam and get the word out. Let everyone you know in on this little secret fact.

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Yesterday I wrote a post about how vuulu.com was a scam site and how it is the spawn of a site that I had previously written about called Bid4That. Today I am writing to confirm that I verified the death threat comment in the email that I had received from an informant. I got the verification yesterday through Twitter from Christian Owens, you can see for yourself by checking this Twitter Page.

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