Archive for December, 2008
Holiday HD Giveaway Winner Choosen
Friday, December 26th, 2008 | Company News | Comments Off
The winner of the Holiday HD Giveaway has been chosen. Congratulations to Joe Tchen!
Update: the first winner did not get back to me. This post has been updated with the new winner, who did.
iPhone 3G- A decent upgrade
Thursday, December 25th, 2008 | Reviews | Comments Off
I had to buy a new iPhone last month- somebody stole my original one. Luckily it had a passcode, and nobody made any calls on it.
I did want to wait to upgrade for a couple of reasons- I wanted 32GB of space for all of my music and a few movies, I wanted a processor upgrade (like the new iPod Touch apparently has), and I wanted any other new, unexpected feature Apple would add on.
Nonetheless, I did need new a new iPhone. I like it. It feels good- lighter actually. Reception is definitely better. And the call quality is noticeably better as well- my fiance says I am much clearer now, even when driving. I like being able to use the internet and receive a call at the same time. I’ve missed calls because of that with the old one. The flush headphone jack rocks. I love being able to plug in any head phones and using them without a extra adapter. And of course with 3G I don’t get the “brrp, brrp, brrp” on speakers like I used to.
I don’t like the screen as much- its too yellow. The original had a much nicer white balance to it- which brought out the colors better. My home button also feels soft and mushy. It doesn’t have that nice click to it (it also doesn’t activate all the time either- maybe that’s related). I hate that all my old docks don’t work any more- at least not without some dremeling.
Overall I am happy with it. Still has some thing I don’t like, but its not a bad upgrade at all.
HOLIDAY HARD DRIVE GIVEAWAY
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | Company News | Comments Off
In the spirit of the holidays, Volitans Software is giving away one free hard drive to a lucky winner. The winner will have the choice between a 1.5TB desktop hard drive or a 500GB laptop hard drive. All you have to do to enter is fill out the following form. Rules and other fine print:
- No purchase necessary to win, but try a copy of SMART Utility while you are here. It’s a great way to check out your current hard drive. Note that purchasing SMART Utility does not increase your chances of winning.
- Entry period runs from 12:01 am EST on December 9th, 2008 until 11:59 pm EST December 24th, 2008.
- Winner chooses between new Momentus 5400.6 SATA 500-GB Hard Drive (model ST9500325AS) or Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 1.5TB Hard Drive (model ST31500341AS), or equivalently priced drive if model is unavailable. Drive will be shipped free of charge to winner.
- Winner will be selected at random on December 25th, 2008 from the email entries and notified by email. Winner will be posted on the website on or after January 15th, 2009.
- Winner must respond within 7 days of being selected or a new winner will be chosen. Volitans Software will not be responsible for email delivery failures, including but not limited to power outages, server crashes, filtering technologies, or incorrect email addresses.
- Only one entry per person, as multiple entries will be discarding. Entries will be monitored for cheating, and entrants may be disqualified if such cheating is discovered.
- Friend’s email address will only receive a one-time automatic email about this giveaway. We will not add your friend to a mailing list.
- Giveaway is open to individuals who are legal residents of the United States and 18 years of age or older. Individuals must also be legally allowed to participate in giveaways. Giveaway void where prohibited by law. While we appreciate all our customers in all states as well as in all countries across the world, laws very greatly and we cannot satisfy all legal requirements everywhere.
- By participating in the giveaway, entrant agrees to not sue Volitans Software and not hold Volitans Software liable for mistakes or other violations.
New Software- ModBus Probe and ModBusKit
Monday, December 8th, 2008 | Company News | Comments Off
Volitans Software has joined a partnership with R Engineering, Inc to create modbusApps. Here is our first press release:
modbusApps is proud to announce modbusProbe, an application for the Apple OS X operating system to poll modbus(R) enabled control system devices. The application can poll either serially via a USB adapter or directly via TCP. There are a number of excellent Windows based programs that provide connectivity to logic solvers, but to date little development has been done with the Apple OS X operating system.
The application includes the ability to poll all four types of registers and display the results in decimal, hexadecimal, binary, or integer format. A help file has been developed to provide a basic understanding of the modbus(R) protocol. Future enhancements include the ability to monitor the data stream to and from the polled device(s) as well as providing the user to write to the device.
In addition to this application, the Cocoa Framework will be offered under the GNU License as a freedownload to give other Mac programmers the basic tools to develop modbus(R) tools for the Apple OS X operating system. The framework modbusKit may also be downloaded from the modbusApps website.
Features
* TCP and serial protocol supported
* Reading of Coils, Discrete Inputs, Holding Registers, and Input Registers supported, writing coming soon
* Uses a connection list with name, type, and device ID (IP address or serial port) for maintaining connections
* Uses zero or one based addressing, with check box for toggling
* Displays data in integer, hexadecimal, decimal, with binary coming soon
* Displays number of polls and successful responses
* Displays register prefix (10000x etc)
* Displays Warning dialog box if it can’t connect to the modbus TCP server
* Checks for updates via Sparke Framework
* Basic application help book for the app and on modbus(R)
* This alpha release expires January 31st, 2008
Pricing and Availability:
modbusProbe is in Alpha release and is a free download. As the application matures, it will become shareware with an expected cost of approximately $100 (USD). Note that this Alpha release has a date stamp expiry.
New MacBook Brief Review
Friday, December 5th, 2008 | Reviews | Comments Off
I had a chance to play with one of the new unibody MacBooks the other week. My school district purchased two to use as spares. The first thing I noticed was how solid they felt- not just compared to the old plastic MacBooks, but to the old MacBook Pro’s as well. The case did not flex at all- even the old MBP’s case flex a little bit. That certainly is very nice. One thing I do wonder is how well it will hold up in a drop.
The new trackpad was actually easy to use. I was worried how the buttonless “feature” would work, but I had no problem using it all all. It felt natural. I liked it better actually. I could not get the 4 finger swipe to work however- not sure if that was a bug or what.
It didn’t feel any faster but then I did not have much time to play with it. I also did not get a chance to test out the screen- which really is my biggest fear. I am not a fan of the glossy screen. Hopefully, when they update the 17″ MacBook Pro, which is what I am waiting for, they will have an option for glossy.
The only downside I could really see is the loss of FireWire, which is a huge mistake. Losing target disk mode is a giant loss- not only for the Migration Assistant and recovering data, but for booting other Macs with that Mac. The MIgration Assistant is the best thing that the Mac had and Windows didn’t. Now a stupid decision has cut that out.
But other than that I would score it as a win. I would definitely get a MBP though- gotta have FireWire.