elearninglive.com :: mark siegrist

As those of you who may have read my recent posts on my switch from a Verizon landline to the new TMobile@Home landline replacement service have read, I ran into a problem during the switch to the @Home service: in order to have the @Home service I needed broadband, but my broadband was via Verizon DSL, which of course comes through the phone line. I’m an idiot for not thinking this whole thing through *before* jumping into the @Home thing, but in the end it’s working out quite well. Why?

Well…..first off….kudos to Verizon for now seemlessly offering ‘dry loop DSL’ (ie, where you can get DSL without landline service). But with that was also a pretty big price increase - from the $29.95 per month I was paying, to $41.95 per month. I decided to ask around, including the great folks who frequent the PANMA listserv, in regards to their experiences with Comcast broadband and whether the speeds they advertise are really truthful. After getting virtually all positive responses, I went for it and picked up a cable modem from my local Comcast office.

Before I get to the results I want to mention some history between myself and Comcast. About 8 years ago, when I first moved into my current home, I signed up for the @home broadband service (not to be confused with the new TMobile@Home….the ‘@home’ broadband I’m referring to was basically the first broadband available in my area…they turned out to be one of those dotcom busts even with the huge infusion of cash via an IPO). I had that service for about 18 months. Back then, I played lots of online multiplayer games, particularly MOHAA (the first one!). So lag and constant speed was important. The @home service was TERRIBLE. It was really laggy, and worse, it would drop for hours at a time. No internet. Or sometimes it would just be no email for 5 minutes here, 3 hours there, etc. Really annoying.

Then, Comcast bought them. The service did get better. Much better. But it was still real unreliable. Then, Verizon offered DSL for much cheaper, so I jumped ship. I’ve had DSL since then and can’t remember a single outage other than one time when it went down for a day (and IIRC, it was just email that went down). Verizon credited us proactively.

So I was leery about going to Comcast broadband again. But it’s supposedly reliable now, and after having it a few days (for what that’s worth…not much) it’s been solid. For just a couple of dollars more than the cost of keeping the DSL service from Verizon, I’m getting a HUGE bandwidth increase, and quite frankly I’m regretting I didn’t make the switch a couple of years sooner.

What is the speed difference? Well, the Verizon DSL was rated at, I believe, 768kbps. To their credit, I consistently got 2.8mbps down, and 350kbps up. The Comcast service is rated at 6mbps down. The speed tests vary with the Comcast service, but I’ve not seen it go below 7mbps yet. In fact, amazingly, it usually is in the 25mbps range!

As you can see from the screenshots above, there is no contest. The Comcast broadband test was done while my wife was upstairs surfing wirelessly or else I would have expected it to be in the mid-20mb range. It’s that much of a difference in speed between it and the DSL. Also, I’m not sure if I have the ‘Comcast Speedboost’ upgrade or not.

So…my point? DSL is a bad value now. Unfortunately FIOS is not available in my area, but unless it can guarantee me a steady bandwidth of greater than 20mbps down, and the cost is equivalent to the Comcast service, then I’ll be sticking with this for a while.

I can’t believe I’m a Comcast fanboy all of sudden.

Filed under: Ramblings, Tmobile@Home by Mark
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I’ve had the service since Sunday and so far so good, although I want to be up-front about this - I don’t make many phone calls. I hate the phone. I’m an email guy whenever possible. My wife, on the other hand, has those prototypical female relatives who can’t let a day go by without giving her a call. So she’ll be the one whining and complaining if the @Home service turns out to be a dud, while I sit back and smile at saving over $50 a month on the phone bill : )

I wanted to give a half-thumbs up to Tmobile’s customer service, and a full thumbs-up to Verizon’s. Yesterday afternoon I called Tmobile to begin the process of porting my Verizon-based landline number to the @Home service. It took me 3 calls to get to the person who could actually do the porting. The first time I called I got a lady who told me she couldn’t do it (even though the automated ‘how can I help you?’ voice asked me what I needed done, and I told it that I wanted to ‘port a number’, and it correctly responded by repeating what I wanted to do). So the lady doesn’t transfer me, she gives me a phone number to call. An 800 number that, it turns out, is disconnected!

So I call back and this time I get transferred….and after a few seconds I got hung up on. So I call back and the third time I get a friendly fellow who I explained what I was trying to do. He apologized profusely and said he could take care of the porting for me. I explained the situation - that I currently have Verizon DSL and phone, and I want to port my landline phone @ to @Home. A bell went off in my  head as I explained it to him, and before I could say, “Oh Shit!” to myself, he said to me - “Sir, I’m happy to port your number but if we do you may lose your DSL and, with it, your new @Home service will be useless!”

Amazingly, I completely forgot about this little detail : ( It is was kept me from trying Vonage all these years.

So I do some googling and find out about something called “dry loop DSL” - where you can get DSL without having to have a landline number. But every single shred of info on it on the web was a blog post from people complaining that Verizon either was telling them it wasn’t possible but was, or that it would be difficult to get them to agree to do it. I was prepared to dump Verizon DSL and go with, ugh, Comcast broadband (I may still do it….see below why).  So, with much trepidation, I called Verizon and explained the situation. To my surprise, the Verizon rep said to me (paraphrased): “Not a problem sir. What you’re trying to do is called dry loop DSL and we can do that for you. Hold on and let me verify that it will automatically switch over for you.” I had not mentioned the term ‘dry loop’ thinking I’d get someone who would have no clue. But this guy had a clue and was cool. He checked with his superiors to ensure that, once my phone number was ported, that I would automatically be switched to a dry loop dsl line, and they said yes that I’m all set.

So, in 6 to 10 days I’ll be switched over to @Home fully and will be better able to evaluate the service.

The one downside to ‘dry loop dsl’ is that my DSL bill is going up $12 to $41.95 per month, which sucks. I get a rock-solid 2.8mbps down and 700kbps up through this DSL service that I’ve had for about 5 years now. I originally had Comcast cable broadband when I moved into my current house and it was terrible - constant lag/drops, and even full days at a time with no email or, worse, no internet access at all. I finally got fed up and switched to Verizon DSL and have loved it - I can only remember one outage and it was for about 8 hours one day, and they proactively credited us for it. Comcast would do no such thing.

But now, Comcast is offering an ‘up to 6mbps’ broadband deal currently for $19.95 for 6 months, and then $42.95. Also, they’re offering $42.95 off the bat (ie, no discount for 6 months) for their alleged 12mbps service. If I was confident that I’d actually get those results and the service would be reliable, I’d go for it in a heartbeat.  But I do a lot of work from home as a web developer and the last thing I can tell my clients is, “Sorry I didn’t get that file to you faster - my internet was down…” when they’re looking to me to help them with server setups and the like! If anyone has any opinion on Comcast broadband in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area, I’d love to hear it.

Filed under: Ramblings, Tmobile@Home by Mark
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Tonight I picked up the VTECH phone set that TMobile sells/recommends for use with the @Home service. Actually, each of the sales reps are quick to say you can use any modern wireless phone, and you can (I initially used an older 5.8ghz VTECH that I had sitting in a box of ‘old electronics’ and it worked fine, just like a regular phone).

The VTECH phone that TMobile sells is the DECT 6.0 model TM3111-2. It’s the same as the DS-3111 I believe, and probably some other variants. The price from TMobile is $59, which is a little pricier than I’m sure I could get it for online but I wanted to have it asap so I could test it for another day and make sure I want to keep the @Home service. Since there is only a 14 day return policy with the service/phones, and its ~10 days for the phone # porting to be completed, I am waiting one more day and, if all goes well tonight/tomorrow, I will call up TMobile customer service to initiate the process of porting over my landline phone #. Based on everything so far, I’m happy with the service.

So…on with it….why did I spend $59 for one DECT6.0 phone with one handset? Particularly a fairly cheap-feeling one like the one TMobile sells? Well…think about this:

The base has to be hooked up to either the TMobile router directly, or indirectly. I had no way to do that without spending an evening fishing phone wiring through my walls, and there was no way I was doing that. So here it is:

For now anyway. I’ll eventually get it situated in a better spot. The main reason I bought *this* particular model is because, after verifying with TMobile’s customer service (the phone # rep, as my local store rep was clueless), it turns out that this phone has a the little orange ‘voicemail’ indicator/button on the bottom left (you can see it in the pic I’m sure). Whenever someone leaves a voicemail for me/my wife, that button flashes not only on the base but on each handset. So, it doesn’t matter if the base is in my family room/basement. As soon as we walk in the front door (a floor above), we can glance over and see if there are any messages. I’m not aware of any other phone that does this and works with TMobile’s service, but I’m sure there may be others.

It was easy setting up the phone and the one separate handset it comes with. TMobile stores are NOT selling additional/optional handsets, which is terrible. They should be selling those. I know I need one. But fortunately VTECH is selling them direct at this link for $29.99.

The phones work good. It took me a while to figure out how the voicemail indicator worked. Turned out I just needed to be patient - it takes a few minutes before the voicemail flashing light goes on, after someone leaves a voicemail. Ideally it should be faster (the router’s flashing voicemail indicator (yes, it has a flashing blue light to tell you a vm was left) flashes almost instantly once a vm is left). It takes anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes for the light to come on, which is a bit long in my opinion. If I had just missed an important call, to have to wait 10 minutes before knowing a critical vm is left is kind of a drag. Hopefully this is improved or perhaps there is a setting on the phone/service/router I haven’t figured out yet?

So far….so good. The ringer options on the VTECH are nice, and it otherwise has the usual assortment of buttons like skipping to the next vm message, deleting, etc. It seems to work fairly flawlessly with TMobile’s vm service so far. The speakerphone, which is an option on the handsets as well, works well - nice and loud. I haven’t much explored all of the features of the phone itself yet, but those are the basics/important stuff I think. The handsets are very light. So light I’m concerned they may break easily if dropped. We’ll see.

Filed under: Tmobile@Home by Mark
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I usually don’t mix personal posts on this blog, but it’s the only blog I have right now going, and well, this is a topic that people are really interested in it seems. There are very few folks who have actually signed up for the new Tmobile@Home service (I’m guessing this because so few people have info on the web about it). So, in the interest of sharing info back to the web community….here I go…

Yesterday afternoon I went to my local Tmobile store to sign up for the @Home service. I am currently paying over $60 per month for my Verizon landline, so I figured if I could get 99% up-time from this new @Home service for just $10 per month, it would be worth it. So I signed up, which took a while because, as I soon found out after saying to the sales guy, “Sign me up!”, that I in fact was the first person at that store to sign up for the service.

I have had Tmobile cell service for about 1.5 years now and have liked the service. The website is great and they seem to be on the up-and-up, so I took a calculated risk.

So, here’s the scoop:

Costs:

~$35 activation fee for the new phone number/line

My sales rep failed to mention this fee, which pisses me off but, quite frankly, I would have agreed to it anyway.

~$50 for a LinkSys router. I’ll post more details on the router later, but that is the one thing about the @Home service that there is a good bit of info on the net on.  I was using a D-Link Wireless router that had ‘Draft N’ status, so downgrading from the 802.11N to 802.11G was something I was disappointed with. Supposedly you can just connect both routers (and I have a 4-port switch laying around doing nothing to facilitate this) or chain them to the broadband source, but quite frankly I didn’t want to mess around with that. At least not during this ‘trial’ period. And besides, my wife is the only one who uses the wireless currently at my house and she’s using Ubuntu on her laptop with a wireless G card, so the N was going to waste anyway. The range of the D-Link wasn’t all that great either, so I figured I’d go with the LinkSys. Speeds seem no different to her after the switch. I can tell you that the ’strength’ level of the wireless signal coming from the D-Link was ~34% usually, whereas the signal level from the Tmobile Linksys was just over 50% yesterday. So that was better at least.

The router certainly is much more aesthetically pleasing too : ) It has lots of lights and is cool-looking, for what that’s worth (nothing). I’ve been running it since yesterday and no drops, no problems. It has 4 ethernet ports and 2 landline ports for you to hookup your phones. Any phone can be hooked up to it (well, I suppose rotary phones can’t). I hooked up an old wireless phone base/handset that I had in my basement to it (more about why below) and it worked flawlessly. Sound quality was great and it works just like a regular phone - when you pick it up you even hear a dial-tone like a regular landline phone. I walked upstairs to my bedroom, which is at the farthest point in my house from the router, which is in my new ‘family room’ (that’s code for our recently finished basement!), and the sound quality and volume level did not change. I was worried about that and was pleasantly surprised.

Some folks on the Broadband Reports website forum, which to date is the only decent source of info I could find about this service prior to buying it, have asked me to check if the outgoing caller ID lists my name when I call another landline from the @Home phone. I’ll try that tonight and report back with a new post here.

My current landline is with Verizon, and I use Verizon DSL. I have loved the DSL (I had Comcast broadband for a couple of years, which sucked - major lag/variance in bandwidth) and have had a solid connection with no downtime for about 5 years now. 1.5mb down steady. Maybe more now, haven’t checked in a while. I am going to run some tests using the @Home service and downloading a torrent or other large file at the same time to see how things are affected. If anyone has any tips/suggestions on how to best run some valid ‘tests’ I’d love to hear them.

Well, so far I’m happy. But I’ll tell you this: I haven’t initiated the porting of my current landline number yet. I’m gonna wait one more day then start the process, which supposedly takes at least 6 days, if not 10.

My main hurdle at this point is my telephones.  I have 3 ‘levels’ to my house - the basement, main floor, and upstairs. Since the basement was recently finished, I didn’t get a new phone for down there so I’ve been ‘phoneless’ down there from a landline perspective. In our living room is a great Motorla wireless base/handset that my wife won in some contest, and upstairs is a piece of garbage $9 phone. My problem is this: my @Home router is on my computer desk in my basement. I am not going to re-rig phone lines around so that I can plug the Motorola from my living room into the router, and since I want to get a new phone base with 2 handsets anyway so all 3 floors can be covered, I’m going to stop at the Tmobile store to investigate the VTech phones they are selling. IIRC, for about $100 I can get the base and 2 handsets. The key concer/question for me is this: if I set the base up on my PC desk in the basement,  no one will be able to see whether a new voicemail has arrived unless the handsets have some sort of flashing indicator on them. Hopefully they do. If not, I’ll have to find a set of phones that do work that way. And if that won’t work, I’ll re-think the setup of the @Home wiring. I can do it, I’m just too busy to do that these days. Also, allegedly, TMobile claims that the VTECH phones they are recommending/selling also include some special features/buttons specific to the @Home service. So, we’ll see. I’ll report back.

UPDATE 07.17.08: I’m noticing that many folks are coming directly to this post via the TMobile@Home website (which has linked directly to this post). Please note that I have added some more posts regarding the @home service. Click here to go to my blog’s homepage.

Filed under: Ramblings, Tmobile@Home by Mark
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This is more a post for my current and potential clients than anyone else….

A while back, maybe 3 or 4 months ago, I converted this entire site to run on WordPress. There were a lot of reasons for me to do it but since the primary content on this site is the blog (which I admittedly don’t add to enough!), it made sense.

Since then, I’ve been telling folks who approach me about putting together a website that they should go with WordPress, with a custom WordPress theme (more about that in a moment). Almost invariably folks cringe at this because WordPress is thought of (and rightfully so) as a great blog tool. But it does the small website thing really well.

I’ve found that many other sites out there go with WordPress instead of Drupal, Joomla, CMSMadeSimple, and the many other CMS systems out there. Check some of these sites out, all done in WordPress:

http://autoshows.ford.com/

 http://slamonline.com/

So what is a Content Management System? From your perspective, think of it as a web-based editor for you to login from your PC via the web, and then edit your content or add to it. Spot a typo? Just login and fix it yourself. Takes 2 minutes. Want all the text and images on your homepage (or any page) changed? Login and change it yourself.

Not that I don’t want to do it for you. I need all the money I can earn. But I cringe when I get contracted to work on a non-CMS site.

So the next time I recommend WordPress for a site, realize that it’s not just a blogging platform. It can be hacked into just about  anything you want. That said, if you need something full-blown with forums, ecommerce (beyond just paypal integration) then it may not be the right way to go. Conversely, if you just need a simple site that isn’t going to be updated very often then the time it takes to develop a custom WordPress theme is probably not worth the trouble. It takes time to develop one of those things, unless all you’re trying to do is make small changes to an existing theme.

But if you want a website in which, once developed, is something you can maintain yourself with an easy to use and learn content editor, then consider WordPress.

Filed under: WordPress by Mark
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I get this question from time to time. Usually people just think it can’t be done, because there isn’t an obvious way to do it via the GUI. Well, in fact it is obvious - but for something like this you expect it to be built into the GUI, something like a ‘Use multiple feedback levels’ checkbox and then spaces for the feedback. But that unfortunately doesn’t exist. This is something that should be relatively easy to implement in a future version of Captivate so we’ll keep our fingers crossed, but for now…there is a way to do it.

Click here to download the source file for the above swf.

Filed under: Captivate by Mark
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All of the preloaders that come stock with Captivate 3 have their associated fla and swf files in the following directory by default:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 3\Gallery\Preloaders

To create your own preloader, all you’ll need to do is copy one of the existing fla files, modify the graphics or create fresh ones (just make sure to apply the proper instance names like the original), compile, and be done.

If you need to change the percentage loaded in a stock (or customized) Captivate preloader, just open up the fla in flash and click on the actions frame. You’ll see the following code:

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

//Called when the preloader displays, useful if you need the size of the movie
function initialize(movieWidth:Number, movieHeight:Number)
{

}

function onProgress(loadedBytes:Number,totalBytes:Number)
{
var percentDone:Number = Math.round((loadedBytes / totalBytes) * 100);
//Load 60% before starting movie.
if(percentDone > 60)
this.done = true;
percent_txt = percentDone+”%”;
}

function isDone():Boolean
{
//by default the preloader will show until all frames are loaded
//this function can override this bahavior
if(this.done)
return true;
else
return false;
}
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Change the 60 in the line that reads:

if(percentDone > 60)

…to whatever percentage you want.

That said…in my experience 60% is ususally a good number, unless you’re confident that people will not jump too far forward in a larger Captivate swf.

Filed under: Captivate by Mark
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http://www.learningactionscript3.com/2007/12/14/sending-data-from-avm2-to-avm1/#more-29

It will be quite interesting to see how Captivate 4 addresses this issue. I heard from a very reliable source (as reliable as it gets…but that’s all I can say) that Captivate 4 (if that’s what the next version is going to be called) will have the ability to publish swf’s to AVM2/ActionScript 3 format. There are going to be lots of instructional designers/developers who rely on Captivate/PowerPoint as their sole tools who will be in a world of hurt if they find out that their old content is not compatible with newer AVM2-based content without a workaround such as the discussion in the link above. I’m sure Adobe has to realize this and the Captivate folks in Bangalore are going to come up with a slick/transparent way of handling this….

Filed under: Captivate, Flash by Mark
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I just completed a project in which a custom flash wrapper was used for navigation, where the captivate swf’s are loaded in dynamically via an xml-based navigation setup and into an empty movieclip.

Because the client needed their navigation menu links to target specific frames in particularly long Captivate swf’s, I had to use the rdcmndGotoFrameAndResume variable which I had never had to use before. Frankly, I never bothered using any of the ‘frame-based’ variables before because I never needed to - you really shouldn’t ever have a Captivate swf that is so long that you need to do that. It’s best to modularize everything into individual swf files that are more granular. It’s more flexible and easier to maintain that way. But…back to my point -

I ran into a problem where I banged my head against the wall for 2 hours trying to figure out why this code wasn’t working:

contentContainer_mc.rdcmndGotoFrameAndResume = evt.target.selectedNode.attributes.frame; //the target frame was stated in the XML file…pretty slick actually

There was more to it of course but basically, when the user clicked on particular links in the navigation tree menu, I needed the currently loaded Captivate swf’s playhead to go to the specific frame stated in the XML file’s ‘frame’ attribute.

The result at first (and for 2 hours!), no matter what I tried, was that the playhead would go to the intended frame as hoped, but it would be paused. It wouldn’t ‘resume’ playing. Since there is no ‘rdcmndPlay’ variable I tried rdcmndResume every which way possible. No luck.

Then I stopped, took a breath, and figured it out. You have to insert a pause BEFORE the resume command is issued! Makes sense, but shouldn’t they just have a rdcmndGotoAndPlay variable? These variables are nuts.

So the working solution:

contentContainer_mc.rdcmndPause = 1;
contentContainer_mc.rdcmndGotoFrameAndResume = evt.target.selectedNode.attributes.frame;
contentContainer_mc.rdcmndResume = 1;

Now here’s what’s interesting - the rdcmndGotoFrameAndResume, before I came up with the above solution, was acting like a toggle - so if I clicked on a nav link it would go to the targeted frame but be paused. If I clicked on it again, it would resume playing. Strange? Or am I just too burned out from editing so many crap html sites the past 2 months….

Filed under: Captivate by Mark
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I have been slowly, over the past few weeks, moving my site to WordPress. In other words, not just the blog stuff (which is all anyone ever reads anyway), but the static pages as well. After working with WordPress in-depth for the past couple of weeks and coding up this theme from scratch (100% pure XHTML/CSS), I gotta say - WordPress is even more awesome than I first thought. For the majority of websites out there I think it is the way to go.

With it’s simple to use and polished built-in CMS capabilities, it is something I’m going to recommend to most folks who ask me about developing a website for them. It just makes the most sense for the vast majority of small websites out there. It’s lean, easily styled and modified, the plugins are amazing (can you believe it - there are ‘forum’ plugins for WP - I’m going to add one to this site as my next personal project…beats answering questions in the comments!). The problem with most prospective website owners is that they want something they can update themselves. But they don’t want/can’t spend a ton of money hiring someone to do a custom CMS, or work with something like Drupal, etc. Yeah, I know, these guys ‘get what they pay for’, but here’s a good example:

My wife is a member of a local ‘Mother’s Club’. Here is their current website. The current caretaker is a mom with zero design/dev experience who the original site designers hoisted a copy of Dreamweaver 4 onto her, setup the FTP settings, and let her run with it….I felt bad for her. She’s done an admirable job actually. But you can see the result. Forget that the site design looks like crap to begin with (believe it or not it’s only a couple of years old….). It was developed, I was told, by a professor at a local community college who teaches design/development (LOL). Then they elaborated and told me that it was actually done by his students as a ‘class project’. That’s great. Now this non-profit mother’s club is left holding the bag on this clown’s class project. I told them what they need is a CMS (in simple terms), since they wanted the ability to constantly update it themselves. When I told em they should scrap the site completely and redesign/dev it in WordPress, they shuddered at the thought. I offered to do it for a measly $200 (I normally would have charged much more), not for the money but because I won’t work for free (those of you who do freelance know why). The money wasn’t the issue for them I don’t believe. The problem, I think, was giving up on a piece of garbage site they should have never been handed in the first place.

Tables? Comic Sans font?!? This site was designed not 2 years ago! By ‘professionals’.

Enough of my rant. On to something you may actually care about….

The Captivate questions have been coming my way from folks all over the world via the comments sections of my blog posts, as well as direct email. The Captivate posts of my blog get hundreds of hits each day. Amazing! Keep the questions coming - I answer every one as best I can. However, as I’ve stated the last few weeks now, I don’t use Captivate very often anymore. Not that I don’t want to. it’s just that I’m not using it much for my day job anymore, and when I started freelancing I had a huge project using it (along with a custom flash nav/wrapper, hence my posts on that subject) but since then….not much demand for projects using it. Once in a while I’ll fire it up to help someone with a problem they’re having, but that’s about it. That said, I’ll continue to do the best I can in regards to helping people. I’ve learned so much from the web it’s the least I can do to give back to the community.

Have fun! :: mark

Filed under: WordPress by Mark
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