I should just say, that I have a biased interest in zovo, being its founder and all.

From the internet: Skydrive outage

Office 365, Hotmail and SkyDrive hit by outage – Register

BBC News

Office 365, Hotmail and SkyDrive hit by outage Register But at least this time it had company as Hotmail and SkyDrive were also downed by the same Domain Name Service (DNS) issue. Luckily for Europe, outages started in the middle of last night when most of us were tucked up in bed – 4am GMT and lasting for … Microsoft services hit by outageBBC News Microsoft’s Hotmail and Windows Live knocked offlineInquirer Apple’s Store, Microsoft’s Hotmail and SkyDrive All Taking Thursday Evening OffAll Things Digital ZDNet (blog) -SBS -SmartHouse all 120 news articles »

Microsoft Skydrive and Hotmail services suffer from brief outage …

Microsoft’s online services such as Skydrive and Hotmail were hit with an outage on Thursday night for a couple of hours. It’s the second time inside a month that such an outage has occurred.

Publish Date: 09/09/2011 10:10

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-skydrive-and-hotmail-services-suffer-from-brief-outage

By Nancy_Valdes at 09/09/2011 11:58

Lots of you may have seen a bit of a viral buzz being created for zovobackup, with your friends tweeting and FB walling about it.

Why should you check it out? Pre-registered users will get an unlimited storage backup account for free when the service goes live.

Register now!

Why do you need zovo backup?

The files you store on your computer – photos, music, videos, emails and documents – are increasingly precious, but they’re so easy to lose. Hard drive failure, fire, theft or even just accidental user error can wipe out highly important content in seconds.

You could back up your data to CDs, DVDs, external drives or even backup tape, but all of this takes effort, you need to remember to do it, and they’re about as susceptible to failure, loss and damage as the PC itself.
zovo gets rid of this problem completely by providing a simple, secure and robust online backup solution.
Just install it, select which folders you want to backup and forget about it. There’s no need to schedule your backups or leave your PC on overnight – it backs up your files as you work. There’s no limit on how much you back up either, so it’s completely hassle free.

zovo pro takes this one step further by setting your files free and letting you access them wherever you are. See the same files on every computer you use – you can use them just like any other file on your computer, but if you change them, they will automatically change on all of your other PCs. View and even edit your documents online from any web browser anywhere. Even access your files on your go from your mobile.

• Join the Flying Club first (has to be through this link!)
• Then book your flight as per usual
• You’ll get 2000 extra miles for booking your first flight this way, then the following bonus points depending on the type of flight you book

Bonus points when booking a Virgin Atlantic flight using the above method;

• Economy – 1000 bonus miles
• Premium Economy – 2000 bonus miles
• Upper Class – 3000 bonus miles

For transparency sake, there is something in this for me too, I get the same number of bonus points as you do  It doesn’t cost you anything, you pay the same for your first flight that you would have, and you get a minimum of 3000 extra airmiles that you wouldnt otherwise have had (if booking an economy seat).

Enjoy!

A little bit of fabrication work had to be done to get this to fit.  Some brackets had to be made up, the RHS foot peg and rear brake lever had to be repositioned slightly, and the control regulator had to be moved.

The end effect is perfect though  Still a few more little bits to do, biggest of which are the forward controls, but we are nearly there!

• Yamaha XVS 650 dragstar owners manual download – PDF (9.46 Mb)
• Yamaha XVS 1100 dragstar workshop manual download – PDF (6.95 Mb)

The workshop manual applies pretty closely for both the 650 and the 1100 – other than some obvious internal engine bits.

Hopefully by this weekend I’ll have the turndown exhausts fitted to mine – expect many pics

PS: If you find this download useful, please post a comment, or come talk to me on twitter.

This post is a little on the ranty side, but there is a solution at the bottom

I really really really hate voicemail, I can’t even begin to find the words to describe how much I hate voicemail.  To me, voicemail is one of those technological advancements that should have remained in the last century, let alone the last decade.  Its an old solution to a common problem that still exists today.

This little extract from the Dilbert cartoons should explain part of how the whole “voicemail experience” makes me feel;

(All rights reserved Scott Adams, Dilbert.com)

This really does happen to me, people call me up and either;

1.  Leave long messages – which are better off conveyed in email.

2.  Leave short messages telling me that they’ve sent me an email or to check my email and call them back.

3.  Normal people leave short messages with their details and ask me to call them back.

Ok, so now you’re thinking leaving a short message can’t be a bad thing, and thats surely the point of voicemail… well its not.  Perhaps it used to be, but thats no longer the case.  There are much better ways to convey the information that I have missed your call and need to give you a call back – yep, a text message.  One would also be able to read the sms message and process the information in a much shorter time frame than dialing into voicemail and listening to the message.  Inefficient and stupid, simple as.

So i’ve tried a number of different things over the years;

1.  Turn off voicemail completely – only to get people whine that “oh, I tried to leave you a message but there was no voicemail”… thanks for informing me of what I already knew… yes, I turned my voicemail off, yes it was on purpose, and yes, if it was important enough, you’d have found SOME OTHER WAY to get the message to me.

2.  Explicit asking people to leave a “SHORT MESSAGE” – this worked initially, but people soon reverted back to leaving long messages.

I had pretty much given up trying to find a solution.  Then one day, salvation came, unexpectedly.  I was calling a customer and they were busy, but instead of getting asked to leave a voicemail message (which I don’t tend to do either!) a little recording started to play “this person cannot take your call, please try again later or send a text message”, on repeat.

Finally, there was a solution out there!  The bad news is that its a setting/option provided by their network operator.  A facility which my provider, Orange, does not.

No matter, I found another way.  This works on Orange, it may be different for your service provider.  Using AT&T’s text to speech demo I created this wav file recording “The person you are calling cannot take your call, please try again later or send a text message”.

Then within the Orange voicemail, there is the option for an “extended absence” greeting, now the major difference between this and a normal greeting is that you can opt to not accept voicemail messages while your extended absence greeting is active.  So using a pair of headphones right infront of the mic pickup on my mobile and some careful timing; now whenever someone calls and I am otherwise occupied they hear the synthised voice of Crystal, asking them to try again later or send a text.

Win   Finally!

Download the wav file: here

Or create your own: here

PS: Yes I know Google Voice would be the other solution to this problem, but its not available outside of the US, and I doubt they will bring the service to the UK, not for a while anyway.

So, while looking around the shed for a hammer (all 3 of my hammers seem to have grown legs – don’t ask!), I came across an old flash gun that I picked up many many years ago from eBay for a few quid.

(Yes I know its a rubbish photo, taken using my phone)

After excitedly fitting it to my camera, I decided that its “intelligence” was very limited, and I mean VERY limited!  There was also no way to point it upwards – so out came the cardboard, scissors and sticky tape.

Ta da   I’ve set it to full power manual mode, the camera can only tell it when to trigger, but at least its brighter than the standard flash, and its firing light upwards.

Here is an early test shot, taken indoors, my desk lamp was the only source of light in the room.

(Isn’t this just a lovely little espresso cup – recent present from the better half)

Ok the shot is blurry, but the result I’m looking for is the gauge and quality of the light, which is spot on (for a cheap little flash gun and some cardboard).

(Odd box of cables and bits I need to put in the shed)

Again the only source of light in the room other than the flash gun is my desk lamp.  I’m somewhat pleased with the result

Naturally, give it a few months and I’ll be blogging about how this setup was rubbish and I invested in an SB-600   Then again, this “natural” hardware progression is the better way to go in my opinion.  Fudge/Bodge it until you know how to use the tools, then get good tools.

I’m currently ill with a whole host of things, and looking at a computer screen for long periods of time makes me ill – so I decided to undertake a fairly simple bit of modding.

I took the wii apart, and to my annoyance found this;

Zoomed in;

Yep, it looks like Nintendo have dumped a whole load of “black stuff” around the very chip that I need to attach the wii-clip to.

Very annoying!  It looks like I’m going to have to use the soft mod technique unless I can find a way around this.  I’ve asked the wii-clip makers for their comments.

There is a MASSIVE amount of choice, and its a good way to find new music you haven’t listened to before. Accounts are free and you can create multiple stations, for example I have seeded a station using Craig Armstrong, and called the station “Chilled Work”. So when I am at the office, I have my little Pandora Player sitting on the desktop playing some nice mellowed out tracks.

Now, although Pandora is a web based service, I have thrown a VERY BASIC (I must stress at how basic it is!) application together. You will need to have the flash plugin installed – but if you’ve been using the web service you’ll already have that. If you don’t have the .NET 2.0 framework, the installer will grab what it needs and install those files too.

Once installed, the application sits in the middle of your screen, just leave it up behind your other windows, this way you don’t have to have a web browser open all the time. I know most of us actually have a browser open all the time, but this prevents you from accidentally leaving the pandora site, and thus stopping your music.

Get the install files from here. Its a tiny 259Kb in size. If you have any comments (other than “this is really basic” – I’ve already covered that) or would like me to add specific features to it, just post a comment

PS: Won’t work on 64bit OS, as Adobe don’t support 64bit Internet Explorer.