I see you, “Busby SEO Test” and I don’t like what you are doing.

So, I have removed the ability to make your name a link of any kind.

Please stop posting your stupid comment spam on my blog.

Thanks.

The newest version of SMS Auto Reply now has logging to Outlook.

New calls or SMS messages that come in will be added to Pocket Outlook as a 5 minute appointment with the name and phone number of the contact.

Here’s a link to download SMS Auto reply v1.1.

The free version will still run for 30 minutes, at which time it will stop responding to incoming calls or messages.

As always, my products are released as DonationWare. If you like the product and it represents a good value to you, send a $20 donation. I think you’ll see that compared to other products which do similar tasks, this is competitively priced.

As a side note, I’ll admit that I haven’t given enough thought to how to handle upgrade scenarios for those people who have already paid for a v1.0 version. What I am leaning towards right now is giving one year of free upgrades within the same major version.

So for $20, you get v1.0-v1.9. A v2.0 release would not be included in free updates.

Another issue right now is that my installer does not handle upgrades. To install v1.1 on a device that already has v1.0, you have to uninstall your previous version.

Unfortunately this means losing all of the custom response configuration data for your contacts, which could be a real pain if you have a lot of contacts. I have to investigate a better way of handling this.

Since I’m also a photographer, and have lost cameras and had cameras stolen from me, I thought this was a really, really awesome site:

http://ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com/

If you find a camera, upload some photos.

If you lost a camera, go look and see if your photos are there.

Such a simple and brilliant idea. I love it!

By now, if you haven’t seen this you are probably living under a rock, don’t own a TV and don’t participate in any online political discussions.

I have gotten tired of seeing this picture posted all over various political forums as an example of how awful Fox News is. I’m not a huge fan of Fox; in fact I never watch Fox News.

So what did I do? I went and looked for other people posting about this faked image. I was lucky enough to run across this post at Cato which shows the clip that was doctored.

http://www.cato.org/videohighlights/index.php?highlight_id=36

So grabbed the frame, opened up Photoshop and ImageReady, and composited them manually.

It’s immediately evident to any rational person they are the same frame. I hope people will stop using that stupid image.

Politics seems to be one of the most-talked topic nowadays and you’re still not participating? Come on, “the land of the free” is endowed with broadband internet connection to be used for favorable tasks and not merely for downloading and file sharing. Anyway, back to the news image. This is probably one the reasons why the ratings of Fox News have been slipping lately. I mean, a lot of people acknowledge the network’s balanced and fair concept and then something like this comes up.

Tonight I received some inspiration and decided to brush off the old SMS Auto Reply code.

I’ve now made it capable of responding to either incoming calls or SMS messages.

You can also add custom reply messages for anyone in your Pocket Outlook address book.

Because this tool seems useful to a reasonable number of people, I’ve decided to release it as DonationWare just like I did with BT Audio.

The free version works fine, but only 30 minutes at a time. This is enough time, most likely, to get a feel for how the program operates, and maybe enough to get you through a meeting or two.

If you like it enough, use the PayPal button below to send a $20 donation and I’ll send you a registered copy of the program with no limitations.

Note that this application is only built for Windows Mobile Pocket PC edition, due to the requirement for a touchscreen.

It also requires the .NET Compact Framework 2.0, which I do not redistribute with the product, in order to keep the download size small.

Here’s a link to download SMS Auto reply.

I’ve noticed there are a lot of people coming to download my shareware utility BT Audio. I find that very gratifying, and appreciate all of the donations I have received.

One note I would like to mention is that when you send in your donation, please let me know what device you are using, and what OS it is running, so that I can send you the correct version of the software.

Thanks!

Click here to buy a registered copy of BTAudio:

I’m 34. Go me.

Buried within the registry on the Tilt is a camera mode that some people here will no doubt be interested in.
“GPS Photo” is its name.

As the name implies, in this mode, the built-in GPS is activated, and EXIF tags with GPS data are embedded into the JPG files.

At the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\HTC\Camera\P9

Change the value of “Enable” from 0 to 1

When you scroll through the different modes in the camera, the last one will be “GPS Photo” and it will begin initializing the GPS. You should be outside when you try this, or else the GPS will most likely fail to init.

Here’s what the EXIF data looks like.

GPS Informtion
GPSVersionID : 2,2,0,0
GPSLatitudeRef : N
GPSLatitude : 40 022 [DMS]
GPSLongitudeRef : W
GPSLongitude : 75 102 [DMS]
GPSAltitudeRef : Sea level
GPSAltitude : 0/1 meters
GPSTimeStamp : 02:14:20
GPSMapDatum : WGS-84
GPSProcessingMethod : HYBRID-FIX
GPSDateStamp : 2008:01:25

That’s right, a fraud.

In case anyone doesn’t fly United and doesn’t know what I’m talking about, Economy Plus is a marketing ploy to try to get people to pay for reasonable legroom.

What United has apparently done is to increase the seat pitch in most of economy (i.e. the seats are closer) and advertised their normal seats as “better”, a.k.a. Economy Plus.

When you board any United flight these days, they will pester you about not moving forward beyond a certain row, because [i]these passengers have paid more for the privilege of more legroom[/i] or other variations on that theme.

[b]What I can tell you for a fact is that this is a bald-faced lie.[/b]

My girlfriend and I just flew United from Philadelphia, PA to Jackson, WY and back. We bought our tickets on Orbitz, under the same booking. We paid the exact same fare for both tickets. No “upgrades” were made, and no frequent flier numbers were entered.

When I tried to do seating assignments, no mention of Economy Plus was made, and the flights were almost full, so I just made the best choices I could, and hoped to make changes at the gate.

On the flight from ORD to PHL, coming home, I had seat 25A and she had seat 9A. Seat 9A is an exit row in the Economy Plus section. I had asked earlier about switching seats, but the gate agent didn’t have anything but 12A available, and suggested I negotiate with another passenger directly, to trade seats so I could sit with my girlfriend.

I sat in 9B, and waited to negotiate. I informed the flight attendant of my intention. She suggested that I should try to negotiate a move back towards row 25, but did not otherwise object to my plan.

When it became apparent that there would be no other passenger with whom to negotiate, she began to object to my occupying the 9B seat, on the grounds that I had not paid for Economy Plus seating. I told her that was incorrect, and that we had both paid the same exact fare.

“I don’t know anything about that. You have to talk to the gate agent, who can do the upgrade for you.”

So, I went and talked to the gate agent, who immediately said, “9B is open, just take it. Tell the flight attendant we charged you for it. Wink Wink.” (Literally – she winked. Twice.)

I thanked her and went back to the plane, where the flight attendant said they would need “evidence” of my upgrade. I told her she could talk to the gate agent, and that it was all taken care of.

Eventually, they finally worked it out amongst themselves, but I found the whole experience quite annoying.

My advice to any and all travellers is to refuse to pay United for any stupid Economy Plus “upgrades”. It’s a crock, and a waste of money.

Not fun.

I decided to replace the faucet on my bathroom sink tonight. The old faucet was too short, too close to the back edge of the sink, and had some other design defects which have annoyed me for 2 years now. I was at Ikea tonight on other errands, and finally realized that the best place to find a faucet to fit my Ikea sink was at Ikea, not LowesDepot.

This is my old faucet, from Price Pfister.
[img]http://www.pricepfister.com/website/documents/Products/PRD_11rod_15664_42-h5fk-large.jpg[/img]

It does not extend high enough, or far forward enough. Worse yet, the way the head is designed, if I want less than FULL flow, it likes to make a big “bubble” of water instead of a nice stream. All that aside, I’m not really a fan of single control faucets.

I went with the Enskar:
[img]http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/55497_PE160605_S4.jpg[/img]

It’s going on this Hollviken sink:
[img]http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/27691_PE098055_S4.jpg[/img]

Which lives on this cabinet:
[img]http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/23878_PE108603_S4.jpg[/img]

It’s all very nice. At least, I like it.

But what I discovered is that the stupid flex hose supply lines I have under there don’t fit the new faucet.

[b]&)(Q!@$&%()!$%[/b]

And of course, there’s nothing in the wordless pictogram instructions that Ikea gives you, that says anything about the size of the fittings. All I have to go on are the straight pipes they supplied, so I’m going to have to take those with me to my local (read: expensive) hardware store and get the right parts.

It never fails. I start into a project, and halfway through it I discover some stupid thing that prevents me from finishing it when I have both the time and inclination all gathered together in the same place. So now my bathroom is a shambles, I have no faucet at all, and I will have to rush around tomorrow to get the parts I need.