Review Box net

Im an unabashed fan of Dropbox. In fact, when I wear my Dropbox sweat-shirt, I get random people walking up to me telling me how great Dropbox is. I havent seen so many unsolicited declarations of love for a corporations product since I started wearing Google shirts in 2003.

Nevertheless, once in a while I get chafed by the quota limits, and I have to check out the competition. I picked up a 50GB Box.net account a while back due to the Android promotion, and recently tried to use it to share videos that Steve shot on my GoPro camera during the trip.

Well, to cut things short, its a big major fail. The UI sucks, mostly because its tied to a web-browser. To be fair, Google made the same mistake in killing G-Drive and assuming that the web-browser was the future of all computer interactions. Dragging and dropping to the browser works, but using the browser to upload large files is stupid and senseless. Furthermore, theres a 2GB upload limit, which defeats the purpose of having a big quota.

Given how the interaction model completely misses the point of shared files, I predict that box.net will be unable to out-compete either Dropbox or Google. If they have an offer to buy the company, they should take it because they will not make it as an independent company.

Not recommended.

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RF Remote

After a little modifications done to circuit and to the RX and TX code, i manage to use it as a remote controller. I fixed four buttons in TX side and receiver will detect which button is pressed and taddaaaa i can switch on an off anything that is connected to receiver board. I took some pictures so you guys can have a look at it...still planes are in my mind to design a cool thing..........















Transmitter modified















Receiver got command to switch on these 2 LEDs

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Review The Temple of Gold

William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, wrote The Temple of Gold as his debut novel. Im a big fan of The Princess Bride, so when I saw they shared the same author and Amazon offered it for a low low price of $1.99, I jumped on the novel and bought it.

I shouldnt have. This is an awful, awful novel. The lead character is unlike-able, and does so many stupid things that at one point I just stopped reading because I just couldnt stand reading a novel about someone this stupid. This isnt even about him being an anti-hero, this is just stupidity. For instance, he recognizes when someones really good for him in a relationship, but abandons the relationship anyway.

I eventually kept reading because I was stuck in a situation where I had nothing else to do, and kept hoping for a note of redemption in this novel. Unfortunately, there was none. Stay far far away from this book. I can hardly believe that the same person wrote The Princess Bride. Now I will hesitate to ever pick up another William Goldman novel again.

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How to Remove Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode

Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode is a false security notification displayed in order to trick users into believing that their PC is secure. As a matter of fact Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode is known to be displayed as part of an elaborate malicious software infection.

How to Remove Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode

Software Option:

Antivirus Clients: Anti-Virus software was developed to remove these exact kind of threats. Most people who get infected with malware get infected from having no protection or from using a free client that offered no real up front protection. Its important to secure your computer so know one gains access to it and to protect your identity online.

To Remove this virus we recommend Stopzilla , Spyware Doctor with Antivirus or Malwarebytes. All three offer good results in most cases.

Do It Yourself Removal Guide

How to remove Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode DIY Steps

Proceed with Caution. We offer this information free of charge. We can not be held liable for any actions you take regarding the below information. It is important to always have a backup copy of all your important data on a clean external storage device. Additionally, working with professional antivirus software such as Spyware Doctor with Antivirus alongside may help in many cases. If for some reason you still do not understand how to remove Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode it is always recommended to request the technical support offered by a remote computer repair site such as http://www.OnlineComputerRepair.org

Step 1. It is crucial to focus your efforts on preventing Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode related executable files from running on your system. It will be necessary to end their task and delete them from disk. Here are some helpful hints to remove the Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode executables

A. Boot your PC into Safe Mode with Networking in order to prevent Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode from running at startup. This is mostly the best solution for everyone since at this point it will be possible to simply delete all infected files that are related to this threat. The file paths for this threat are as follows:

XP: Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode executable path:

C:Documents and Settings\%User Name%DownloadsOTS.exe

C:Windows1rezerv.exe

C:Windowssystemup.exe

C:Windowssysdriver32.exe

Win 7 / Vista: Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode executable path:

C:Users\%User Name%DownloadsOTS.exe

C:Windows1rezerv.exe

C:Windowssystemup.exe

C:Windowssysdriver32.exe

B. Browse to the file path locations indicated above and rename the files mentioned in this article. After this is done you will have to reboot your PC in order to stop the files from execution. As they will no longer run automatically on startup it will be possible to easily delete each of them from disk.

C. While browsing the folder paths mentioned above sort the contents by last date modified. In this way the most recently modified files will be filtered out and as some are actually infected it will be easy to rename them and reboot in order to delete them from disk.

D. Use the Windows Task Manager to find and stop the running processes of the files related to Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode. Once located, choose to end their task so that it will be possible to delete them from disk.

Step 2. Delete all infected files from disk, if not already done so. Remember that it is not possible to delete files from disk if they are already running. In this case you will first have to stop their process and then browse to the executable path and delete them from disk.

Step 3. Run an anti-virus scan. This is a must step especially because chances are that once Avira AntiVir Enhanced Protection Mode has been displayed other forms of malware are affecting the operating system. We recommend one of the following antivirus products: Spyware Doctor with Antivirus, StopZilla or Malwarebytes. Install, update and run a full system scan using one of the mentioned antivirus products. You will find it necessary to reboot your system in order to completely disinfect your system after the scan process has been completed. In case the full features of any of these products are required, it is recommended to actually purchase a license key in order to protect your system against any possible similar future security incidents.

How not to Get Infected Again

In most cases users get infected with viruses and malware from not having propper up-front protection. Computer security experts recommend that you use an anti-virus client that offers up front protection to block viruses from installing and a security client that keeps up to date with the latest virus defenitions. The paid versions of Stopzilla , Spyware Doctor with Antivirus and Malwarebytes fit this criteria. Going with one of these clients is a step in the right direction to protecting your computer.

Need More Help? Want to Say Thanks?

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Product Review Garmin GLO bluetooth GPS unit guest post

For 2 years or so, I’ve been using a track-recording app on my Android phone to plot my courses on cycling and running excursions. I’m a cyclist, but in the past 3 years I’ve added running to the mix of things I do. On cycling trips, a cyclecomputer will tell me things like ride distance, average speed in motion, etc., but there’s nothing easy to wire into my running shorts to get the same effect on a run. I got interested in tracking runs with GPS, and it snowballed to tracking rides that way as well pretty directly. I was already carrying my phone with me in case of emergency or mechanical failure anyway.

Also, in about the same time frame, I got more active in a social media scene, after Google+ launched publicly. Posting about a completed run or ride, including the exact track, has been a reasonably nice use of the platform. And for the morbidly curious, here’s my Strava profile. I typically log all runs there -- I can’t get good metrics on them otherwise -- but I only log notable or unusual bike rides.

Over time, though, I noticed a couple of problems with using my phone to lay down a GPS track:

1. Recording adversely affects battery life. I’d get maybe 8-9 hours tops before the phone was nearly out of juice.
2. On the phones I’ve recently owned [1], GPS accuracy is fairly poor. In fact, even staying stationary in the open, the GPS position will jitter.

Both of these factors conspire towards making one adopt a behavioral tic: when stopped for a considerable length of time, hit the “Pause” button on the GPS-track recording app [2]. When the ride or run resumes, unpause and resuming recording. Which brings us to another pair of problems:

• Pausing the phone for every traffic light, 2-minute drinking break at a water fountain, etc., is a prohibitive pain-in-the-butt, so you’ll just have to accept the jitter sometimes.

• At the long stops, where you do take the trouble to pause: will you remember to unpause the GPS app when underway again? It’s easy to forget!

It seems most people deal with these problem by buying a Garmin GPS-enabled cyclecomputer or GPS training watch. The latter would be a better choice if running is in the mix. I didn’t give this option too much consideration, though. I like the idea of having a smartphone with a reasonable amount of computing and interactive power recording my ride. I also like uploading activities to the web directly from the device. Tethering [3] my recording device to a full-sized computer at the end of my rides to do anything at all interesting with the data appears to be the usual option with Garmin, and it seems... less appealing. Maybe I’m just impatient, but I like to have the basic thing that I do with a ride taken care of on its completion, not as part of some post-completion task. Sometimes a post-completion task that I’d be hours away from being able to complete -- many of my runs and rides do not end at home.

Then I heard (from an office e-mail list) some prerelease buzz about the Garmin GLO. Part of the context of this discussion was “hey, the Garmin Connect software ecosystem is kinda poor; this would be a way to get good Garmin data without having to butt heads with the software.”  This is perhaps hearsay, though; I’d love to hear some more definitive opinions on that in the comments.

The GLO is a small external GPS receiver which connects to a client device via bluetooth. Speaking more accurately, the device locates and tracks GPS and GLONASS satellites; the latter is a parallel system to GPS, largely workalike, with roots in the old USSR aerospace sector. It is also the namesake acronym for the device. An Android or iOS device can be configured to use the GLO as its GPS data source rather than the built-in GPS hardware [4]. The GLO gets its initial GPS fix relatively quickly -- though more on this later -- and once fixed, updates its position at 10 Hz. (With a phone, you’d probably be lucky to get a 1-Hz refresh.) Advertised battery life is 12 hours between charges.

What does it look like? Here: next to a deck of cards, for scale. The GLO is slightly slimmer than the deck.

The middle LED monitors the Bluetooth connection between the device and its counterparty. The lower LED is a GPS signal and battery status indicator. It is mounted on a push button that turns the device on and off.

GPS accuracy with this device was hyped as being quite good. Great! The promise of that was enough to justify the $99 asking price alone. The next potential benefit: a bluetooth GPS unit could be good for phone battery life by offloading power-hungry GPS calls to an external unit (and battery) and substituting lightweight bluetooth calls in their stead.

I hoped that if the battery-life improvements were good enough, maybe I could generally keep the unit recording continuously rather than worrying about pausing at long stops and forgetting to unpause later on.

Setup Guide

Given that there’s no good guide for setting up this device with Android elsewhere on the web, and it wasn’t entirely trivial to figure out, here’s a quick how-to:

• Turn both devices on.
• Pair your phone and the GLO via the standard approach for bluetooth devices.
• Install the Bluetooth GPS app onto the android device.
• Launch the app
• Go into the settings, and allow the phone to “Use Insecure Connection” (which isn’t checked-off/allowed by default).
• Back in the Main App screen, check the box to “Enable Mock GPS Provider”. This will take you to a developer option in the phone settings.
• Back in the Main App screen, touch the dropdown to select the source GPS device. It’ll be “Garmin GLO #6eadb” or something similar.

All of this is one-time setup. That done, connecting to the GLO is then just a question of launching the app and pressing the big “Connect” button.

I can’t directly comment on the setup process on iOS, though copy associated with the product makes me suspect it is less involved, as the device is specifically certified as compatible with Apple devices.

Initial Results

GLO accuracy is much better than base phone GPS accuracy. Here’s how a segment of my typical run to work looks if recorded with the base phone GPS (image taken from http://app.strava.com/runs/18462316):

and here’s how it looks with the GLO (http://app.strava.com/runs/19567252):

Much smoother, even scaled down a bit so as not to be unwieldy on this page, and generally much truer to my actual path. The GLO will still be off by a bit sometimes -- there are still lots of tall buildings in Manhattan, certainly -- but typically the egregiousness of this error is much reduced.

In fact, the built-in phone hardware was typically overstating the length of my runs by about 10%.

I haven’t yet completely run down the GLO battery in a single go, but the advertised life of 12 hours seems to be about right.

On the phone side of things, though, I wasn’t realizing the gains in battery life I was hoping for. Using the GLO was draining my battery more rapidly! Seemingly relatedly, my phone was warm to the touch after prolonged GLO-linked use.

Debugging battery life issues, and the solution

The first thing I checked was whether explicitly disabling the onboard GPS hardware made a difference when using the “Mock” source instead. This didn’t matter, though.

“Google Maps” was listed as the culprit application or process in the battery usage log, with the Strava App coming in distant second. Hmmm.

Then I noticed that for trips of 3+ hours, the Strava app would have trouble successfully uploading to Strava’s cloud servers at all. Digging into the underlying storage on the phone, I realized that the underlying .gpx files the app was creating were unusually large when using the GLO compared to without.

A-ha! The refresh rate on the GLO is 10 Hz, compared with maybe one update per second with the built-in hardware. How frequently does the Strava App poll for updates? Best as I can tell, it does so continuously, as fast as the device will allow for it. My conclusion is that the app was not engineered for the GLO’s speedy turnaround time, and was running itself (and my phone) ragged trying to keep up with all the updates.

Alas, the Strava app does not allow manually tuning the GPS refresh rate; it only offers ASAP behavior. MyTracks allows for tuning, though. I was able to reproduce the same battery drain & warmth effects with MyTracks at its default settings, but dropping the refresh rate down takes care of it immediately. Battery life was obviously improved with a 1-second polling interval, marginally improved further from there with a 2-second polling interval, and debatably improved again with a 5-second interval. Lately I’ve been using a 5-second interval.

With this tweak in place, battery performance seems to improve slightly over the non-GLO alternative, but not remarkably so. It’s still advisable to pause recording at a long stop [5].

Also, MyTracks’ introduction means that my workflow on the phone does not include automatic upload to Strava when the ride is done. Instead, I save the file to the device in GPX format, and then “share” the track file by email, To: upload@strava.com . It’s unfortunate. If I know a workout will be short, especially if I have means to charge my phone on the other end, I’ll often opt for the Strava app instead, heedless of the battery implications.

I’d also note that even if battery life weren’t at issue, pausing at long stops would still be good idea, if the stop involves a trip indoors. Movement indoors can cause apparent jitter in position even if there is none in actuality, as the GLO gets partial or reflected readings even inside the building.

Not just for run- and ride-tracking

I’ve also paired my phone with the GLO when getting ordinary turn-by-turn directions from the navigation feature of the Maps app. This has been helpful in gauging my position and upcoming turns more accurately. (With built-in GPS, sometimes my phone would lose track of me when driving, e.g., on the elevated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and decide that I was on one of the parallel frontage roads or on an underlying avenue instead. Eep.)

Other quirks

The first time the device is turned on in a rampantly new geography -- out of doors, with a good view of much of the sky -- it takes maybe 20-30 seconds to get an initial fix on its position. I noticed this when the device was new, and again immediately after air travel. There have been a few instances of the latter. Shorter positional gaps during which the device was off -- between work and home, say, or the 35 miles between my own apartment and my parents’ house -- have delayed initial fix slightly, but less dramatically.

If I start to record an activity before I get initial GPS fix -- something I’d really like to be able to do freely, since I live in an apartment building -- the recording app seems to receive a few stray points from the last place the GLO had a fix on its position, which get inserted as junk data at the beginning of my overall track. If I don’t want to wait before getting underway, I can repair this after the fact by manually editing the .gpx file before loading it. It’s human-readable XML, so this is fairly trivial. Alternately, I may use the “Crop Ride” feature in Strava after upload, though this seems to be slightly too blunt an instrument.

The unit will flash a different pattern on the charging/fix LED if it is running low on power. IME, it will shut itself off soon after that. There’s no way to otherwise gauge the runtime remaining, except to charge it fully. I tend to do this even if I don’t think I need the full runtime, just to make sure the device is in a known state.

If the connection between the GLO and my phone goes sour mid-activity, I’ve found that I have to power-cycle the GLO before it starts serving data properly again. I’ve only seen this happen if I physically separate the GLO and the phone, though. For example, let’s say I lock up my bike and take my pannier, with GLO inside, into a cafe. I put the phone in my pocket. Then I leave the pannier with my family while going to the bathroom 20 yards & a door distant. Oops.

The power button requires a press (for a short count) to turn on, or a press and hold (for a long count) to turn off.  This makes it too easy for the GLO to “turn itself on” if put in a pouch or a pocket, and silently drain away its battery out-of-sight. I’ve taken to wedging a small piece of paper between the battery’s contacts and the pickups in the battery slot to keep the GLO off when I really want it off. At other times, I stow the paper harmlessly under the battery cover.

I also worry about the converse problem -- the device “turning itself off” -- but this hasn’t happened yet. In any case, a sliding on-off switch may have been a better design choice.

Conclusions

Despite the quirks, the drawbacks of the polling-frequency workaround, and the fact that phone battery-life improvements are marginal, I do like this device. Seeing smoothly-drawn track lines at the end of a ride or run is much more satisfying than seeing squigglies, and the improved distance accuracy for running trips is very valuable in its own right. It’s enough trouble that I don’t bother with it for ordinary rides to work, but I never bothered with tracking these rides before anyway.

I would probably enjoy using a GPS watch as well, if I had one. Prices are slightly less gentle than the $100 GLO -- figure $170 MSRP for a decent wired-data-transfer GPS watch, or $250 MSRP for one that syncs wirelessly, via ANT+ -- but that wasn’t really the blocking consideration. Mainly, I consider the necessary intervention of a computer to get the data off such a device to be a serious drawback, and I can usually get away without doing this with the GLO. I’d like the GLO even more if I didn’t have to be so careful not to trip over its many quirks, alas. And if these quirks weren’t sometimes easiest to remedy with, in fact, computer intervention.

If you think you might be of a similar mindset, give the Garmin GLO some consideration.

---

[1] GPS accuracy on my current phone, a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, is poor. My previous phone/current backup phone, a Samsung Nexus S, is even worse.

[2] The Strava app has had a “Pause” button as long as I’ve used Strava. MyTracks finally added one a few months ago.

[3] Yes, I realize many devices can communicate wirelessly via ANT+ and don’t require a literal tethered USB cord to transfer data.

[4] Some Android and iOS devices even lack built-in GPS entirely. The most notable examples are wifi-only Apple devices, such as the iPod Touch and the wifi-only iPad.

[5] Lately I’ve been playing games to remind myself to unpause recording before I proceed. The latest: I’ll stash my phone somewhere on my person that I usually don’t -- in a jersey pocket instead of its usual spot in my pannier, for example. When I ask myself later “Hey, why did I take this out of the pannier?”, it jogs my memory. "Oh, right, I need to hit unpause before I put it away."

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Download Drivers Asus F8V Series Windows 7 32 Bit

 Due this Asus F8 Series have more models near this, i will come gradually to upload in next time.

Download Drivers Asus F8V Series Windows 7 32 Bit

 

Chipset Inf Update Driver

Download : Direct | Mirror

Audio Driver

  Download : Direct | Mirror

Lan Driver

Download : Direct | Mirror

Modem driver

  Download : Direct | Mirror

R5C833 card reader driver

Download : Direct | Mirror

Suyin_CN1314 Camera Driver

 Download : Direct | Mirror

ATI Graphics Driver
 Download : Direct | Mirror

TOUCHPAD driver
Download : Direct | Mirror

You can suggest for new drivers at comment box below.

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Download Drivers Dell Vostro 3450 Notebook Windows 7 32 Bit

I still have more driver on dell notebook, i will gradually upload them to next post.

Download Drivers Dell Vostro 3450 Notebook Windows 7 32 Bit

Wireless 5620 EVDO-HSPA Mobile Broadbrand Mini-Card Communication Driver

Download : Link

Intel WiMax Link 6150 Network Driver

Download : Link

Intel Huron River (HM67) Chip set Driver

Download : Link

Validity VFS300 Fingerprint Sensor (VFS5011) Driver

Download : Link

Dell Wireless 1702 802.11 b/g/n, BT3.0 + HS Network Driver

Download : Link

Realtek RTS5128 Card Reader Driver

Download : Link

Realtek RTL8111E Gigabit Ethernet Controller , RTL8111EL Driver

Download : Link

Realtek ALC269 HD Audio Driver

Download : Link

Intel HD Graphics Driver

Download : Link

Synaptics Touchpad Driver

Download : Link

If you still need other drivers in dell laptop, you can post comment for anything at below.

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Independent Cycle Touring presentations

Independent Cycle Touring, in some ways, is the book that I spent 18 years cycling in order to learn how to write. As a cycle touring book, it includes everything Ive learned, but as a writer, I honestly have no idea how to sell the book, other than a traditional book tour. Unfortunately, traditional book stores attract literary types, not outdoor types. Bike shops, on the other hand, usually attract racer-wannabes, rather than tourists.

One of my favorite outdoor stores is REI. Ive been an REI member since 1992, before my very first bike tour, when I bought tents, sleeping bags, and to the bemusement of my parents, started to learn how to pitch and strike these fancy high-tech American tents in our front-yard. I am very pleased to announce that Ive arranged with REI to tour most of their Bay Area stores and give a presentation about my recent adventures in Europe. This will not be a rehash of material already in the book, and is timed so that I would be back from a trip through the French and Swiss alps and will (hopefully) have fresh pictures to share.

If youre an REI fan and live in the Bay Area, mark your calendars for the appropriate stores. Registering for the talk/presentation is free. Thank you very much to Polly from REI for helping me organize this. A full calendar of events will be posted on the books Facebook page.

Independent Cycle Touring in Europe:

Imagine pedaling through quaint mountain hamlets in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, past fields of wildflowers in Germany’s Black Forest, along the shores of lovely lakes near Salzburg in Austria, or high above the Mediterranean in the French Pyrenees… With its diverse landscapes, vast network of roads and cycle paths, and bike-friendly accommodations, Europe is a fantastic cycling destination. Tonight, independent cyclist and guidebook author Piaw Na will share his expertise on planning bike tours in Switzerland, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, England, and Scotland. Piaw will cover the nuts and bolts of organizing an independent tour, including route-planning, seasonal considerations, lightweight gear, training, transporting bikes on planes/public transit, navigation tools, accommodations, and more. Following the program, he’ll sign copies of his new how-to guidebook, Independent Cycle Touring: Exploring the World by Bicycle. If you register for this free presentation at www.rei.com/stores, we will hold a seat for you until the scheduled start time. Seating may be available at the door, even if registration is closed.

7 pm–8:30 pm, Tuesday, August 2 at REI Marina

7 pm–8:30 pm, Wednesday, August 3 at REI San Carlos

7 pm–8:30 pm, Tuesday, August 30 at REI Berkeley

7 pm–8:30 pm, Tuesday, September 13 at REI Fremont

7 pm–8:30 pm, Wednesday, September 14 at REI San Francisco

7 pm–8:30 pm, Monday, September 19 at REI Saratoga

7 pm–8:30 pm, Thursday, September 29 at REI Mountain View

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College Savings

If youre an immigrant like I am, the American college financial aid system looks completely bonkers. Those of us from Asia, which has a more or less egalitarian elementary, middle, and high school education system roll our eyes about the "need-based" financial aid system. Most of Asia runs on merit-based system, because none of the insanity about property-taxed based local schools exist there. The property-tax based school system in the U.S. ensures that the poor remain poor, without much opportunity to qualify for higher education.

That being what it is, if youre a relatively high earner in Silicon Valley, it means that you do have to consider financial planning an essential part of preparing your child for college. Schools like to brag that 50% of their students receive some form of financial aid, which means that the other 50% essentially pay for college out-of-pocket in one form of another. Colleges also frequently include student loans as part of their financial aid packages, and I dont know about you, but I consider loans not "aid", but rather indentured servitude.

The first rule of financial planning for college is to fund your retirement accounts first! This is important because parental assets that are sequestered away in IRAs and 401(k)s cannot be considered in the financial aid planning formulas. Neither are primary residences most of the time. So that means if youre lucky enough to live off a $10M IRA and live in a $5M mansion in Menlo Park, all you have to do is to minimize withdrawals during the years your children are in college and youll be treated like a trailer-park parent living off social security for the purposes of financial aid. Note that if you were to somehow manage to sequester everything away into your retirement plans and still end up having to spend some money on your childs education from the IRA, IRA withdrawal for paying higher education expenses are not subject to the early withdrawal penalty, though any withdrawal would still be subject to income tax.

The next tax shelter is the 529 account or the ESA. Most Silicon Valley high earners wont qualify for the ESA, but the 529 is available to anyone. The problem with ESAs in any case is that there arent many low cost options for investing in them. Vanguard, for instance, has discontinued their ESA line of products. My wife writes about some interesting properties of the 529 here. Not only are 529s considered parental assets and therefore arent as disadvantageous for financial aid purposes as a UGMA/UTMA account in the case where you do qualify for some financial aid. The big feature of the 529 is the tax-free compounding of assets as well as the tax-free withdrawal of gains for the purposes of paying for college education. Its relatively flexible and worth considering.

The final consideration is the UGMA/UTMA custodial account. The advantage here is the the childs investments get taxed at the childs rate. The problem here is that if the child accumulates a lot of assets, that will reduce his or her eligibility for financial aid at a much faster rate than if the assets were accumulated in the parental IRA or 529 accounts. However, if youre confident that your child is not going to qualify for financial aid no matter, then this is a viable strategy for the tax reduction.

Ultimately, of course, none of this matters if your child doesnt want to go to college or ends up being so highly sought after by colleges that they all offer him or her a free ride. In which case you should still fund your retirement accounts first!

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Two of my books are now available on Amazon!

The 3rd Edition of An Engineers Guide to Silicon Valley Startups is now available on Amazon.com. Since paper books are now a vanishingly small percentage of my sales, Im outsourcing the production and shipping of paperbacks to Amazon whenever I run out of inventory. This comes at a price: while I was able to store and ship books at a low price of $29.95 per copy (just $5 more than the digital edition), Amazon has public shareholders and thus I have to price the book much higher to have the same profit. Fortunately, the ebook is still at the same price of $24.95.

Coincidentally, Id finally sold out of paperback copies of Startup Engineering Management as well, and thats now also available from Amazon as a paperback. Given that this book started shipping September last year, needless to say it has outperformed my expectations for it!

The last book for which Im still shipping copies is Independent Cycle Touring. I have 5 copies left, and once those are gone, expect the paperback prices to go up substantially, just like it has for my other books.

Im now very close to automating my business completely. Electronic fulfillment is now done by , and integrates nicely with paypal and Google Checkout (the former better than the latter). Thanks to Gayle Laakmann McDowell for pointing me at them.

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Referrals Google Plus versus Facebook versus Quora

I ran into this article where Google plus supporters claimed that all the estimates of Google plus usage are low. In other words, Google plus is far more popular than the estimated 50 million users. I wouldnt be surprised if the number of people whove logged into Google plus is incredibly high, north of 200M. Google has been pushing the notification bar and Google plus relentlessly, and integrating it into more and more products, while eliminating products (such as Google Reader) whose model dont fit into Google Pluss model.

Far more important than the sheer number of users, however, is the engagement of those users. For instance, while Buzz got pushed to nearly every Gmail user, most non-Google affiliated users told me (on Facebook, no less) that Buzz was a dead zone for them. So I used my own blog analytics to see whether Google Plus users got referred to my blog.

The number one referral (visitors who came from another sitee) to my blog came from Google.com. Thats Google+, right? No. It turns out to be Google Reader. The next most popular referral was Facebook, which was almost as popular. (Though Google Reader users are really engaged: they visit 4 times as many pages as Facebook readers, who presumably see the link, click to read the article, and immediately leave) The next best referral came from Quora, the question answer site. This came as a bit of a surprise. Then the dropoffs become really steep, my own Books web-site and Friendfeed, a so-called "dead" service. (As an aggregate-site of all my online activity, Friendfeed beats the heck out of all the other sites)

By the time I got to Google+ and Hacker News, Im down to one fifth the visitors that Google Reader sends me. This is incredibly low. I doubt if Quora has 200M users, but their users are incredibly engaged, unlike Google Pluss.

Here are a few lessons I would draw from this:

• RSS support is really important. Reader, Facebook, Quora, and Friendfeed all support RSS export or RSS import so you can track somebodys content. Google Plus insists on you manually typing in a share with no method of automation. Even Twitter supports an auto-export from my blog to my Twitter stream. While I do try to promote blog posts on Google Plus, I dont always do so, especially for book reviews.
  
• Google Plus is still extremely niche. Even though Im not active on Hacker News, for instance, its still way better at sending me referrals than Google Plus.
  
• Twitter messed up. I have no way whatsoever of tracking Twitter referrals at all. As a result, its not surprising that I rarely find time to engage on Twitter. But, because of the automation provided for sending blog posts, etc, automatically to Twitter, it costs me nothing to twitter my blog posts, so I do it. Which goes to show that automation will make up for other poor decisions on the social network front.
  
• I really miss the old Google Reader. The old Google Reader gave me 2X the engagement of the current Google Reader, according to the referral logs. Its a pity Google was willing to give up all that engagement, but Im guessing that as usual, small fry like me dont count for very much.
  

In the past, I would plea for Google to integrate blogger posts automatically into my plus stream, but Im now wary of asking Google to "integrate." Googles concept of integrating Google Reader was to destroy my Google Reader community and cutting engagement by 50%. I dread to think what Google would do if it seriously tried to integrate Blogger into Google Plus. I used to be able to trust Google to do whats right by its users, but now all I ask is for Google to leave the products I enjoy using alone.

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Logitech V220 Cordless Optical Mouse for Notebooks Cobalt Blue

Are you bold? Playful? Flirty? Or a little of each? It¿s plug-and-play meets playful when our most popular wireless mouse gets an expressive splash. Whether you love it for the soft grips, compact size, or touch of style for everything you do with your notebook computer¿you can find your favorite in a collection designed for you with fun colors and limited edition prints. Treat yourself to color, comfort, and convenience that can go everywhere your laptop does. And express yourself with a Logitech® mouse as colorful as you are. Also available in dark silver, rose pink, cobalt blue, plum purple, candy stripe, blush butterfly, or blue flourish.

Price: $24.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

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Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000 Dragon Fruit Pink

Optical - Mouse - 3 x Buttons - Type A - USB

Price: $29.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

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Logitech V220 Cordless Optical Mouse for Notebooks Blue Flourish

Are you bold? Playful? Flirty? Or a little of each? It¿s plug-and-play meets playful when our most popular wireless mouse gets an expressive splash. Whether you love it for the soft grips, compact size, or touch of style for everything you do with your notebook computer¿you can find your favorite in a collection designed for you with fun colors and limited edition prints. Treat yourself to color, comfort, and convenience that can go everywhere your laptop does. And express yourself with a Logi

Price: $24.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

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Bootloading Atmega1284P Part 1

Finally able to flash the Arduino bootloader it to fresh Atmega1284P via my version of ISP programmer. ISP programmer includes and Atmega328P and FTDI board for serial communication between PC and the Atmega328P. Armega328 is loaded with ArduinoISP sketch.

This works with Arduino 1.0.1(old version that i use for test) IDE and still testing for Arduino 1.5(i have upgraded to). Once the following files installed to the Arduino Hardware folder (https://github.com/maniacbug/mighty-1284p/zipball/master) please mind to restart the application. After restart you will see from the hardware list as Original Mighty 1284p 16 and 8MHz.

Select the hardware, port and the programmer as Arduino ISP and burn the bootloader. This process takes quite sometime and after its loaded, do a test by loading blink sketch. Use upload using programmer button to upload the sketch.

Blink sketch on test.. cool it works for me.

I am trying to workout this method in version 1.5 too, as soon as it works i will post it. :) enjoy programming Atmega1284P.

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Network Types

Introduction to Network Types
LAN, WAN and Other Area Networks
One way to categorize the different types of computer network designs is by their scope or scale. For historical reasons, the networking industry refers to nearly every type of design as some kind of area network. Common examples of area network types are:
• LAN - Local Area Network
• WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network
• WAN - Wide Area Network
• MAN - Metropolitan Area Network
• SAN - Storage Area Network, System Area Network, Server Area Network, or sometimes Small Area Network
• CAN - Campus Area Network, Controller Area Network, or sometimes Cluster Area Network
• PAN - Personal Area Network
• DAN - Desk Area Network
LAN and WAN were the original categories of area networks, while the others have gradually emerged over many years of technology evolution.
Note that these network types are a separate concept from network topologies such as bus, ring and star.
LAN - Local Area Network
A LAN connects network devices over a relatively short distance. A networked office building, school, or home usually contains a single LAN, though sometimes one building will contain a few small LANs (perhaps one per room), and occasionally a LAN will span a group of nearby buildings. In TCP/IP networking, a LAN is often but not always implemented as a single IP subnet.
In addition to operating in a limited space, LANs are also typically owned, controlled, and managed by a single person or organization. They also tend to use certain connectivity technologies, primarily Ethernet and Token Ring.
WAN - Wide Area Network
As the term implies, a WAN spans a large physical distance. The Internet is the largest WAN, spanning the Earth.
A WAN is a geographically-dispersed collection of LANs. A network device called a router connects LANs to a WAN. In IP networking, the router maintains both a LAN address and a WAN address.
A WAN differs from a LAN in several important ways. Most WANs (like the Internet) are not owned by any one organization but rather exist under collective or distributed ownership and management. WANs tend to use technology like ATM, Frame Relay and X.25 for connectivity over the longer distances.
LAN, WAN and Home Networking
Residences typically employ one LAN and connect to the Internet WAN via an Internet Service Provider (ISP) using a broadband modem. The ISP provides a WAN IP address to the modem, and all of the computers on the home network use LAN (so-called private) IP addresses. All computers on the home LAN can communicate directly with each other but must go through a central gateway, typically a broadband router, to reach the ISP.
Other Types of Area Networks
While LAN and WAN are by far the most popular network types mentioned, you may also commonly see references to these others:
• Wireless Local Area Network - a LAN based on WiFi wireless network technology
• Metropolitan Area Network - a network spanning a physical area larger than a LAN but smaller than a WAN, such as a city. A MAN is typically owned an operated by a single entity such as a government body or large corporation.
• Campus Area Network - a network spanning multiple LANs but smaller than a MAN, such as on a university or local business campus.
• Storage Area Network - connects servers to data storage devices through a technology like Fibre Channel.
• System Area Network - links high-performance computers with high-speed connections in a cluster configuration. Also known as Cluster Area Network.

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IR Remote from Arduino

Controlling couple of LEDs from an old stand fan IR remote control.

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How to Download Without Installing Malware

When the **** did it become so damn difficult to download a program from the Internet? If youve recently tried to grab a screensaver or software utility from the web, you know exactly what were talking about. Somewhere along the way, the simple act of downloading a program has become anything but easy, even for Internet veterans who arent easily duped. Many download sites are now designed to test the wits of savvy users and prey on the impatient with link landmines that will blow up your browser with toolbars and other unwanted add-ons. Even worse, you could end up with a malware infection. Should you give up?...

Hell no! Downloading might not be as simple as it once was, but its far from an impossible mission, convoluted download portals be damned. Well show you how to wade through the sea of shady links and track down the program youre looking, but it doesnt end there. You also have to be careful when installing an application, as installers sometimes carry adware, especially ones for free programs.

To Click or Not to Click the Big Green Download Button?

Lets walk through the process of downloading "The Matrix" screensaver.

The link we provided jettisons readers to where the screensaver is hosted on CNETs website. Heres what you should see when you navigate there:

CNETs download.com is a popular website so you might not think twice about clicking the Download Now button, but take a closer look.

The fine print indirectly admits to installing adware.

If you hover your mouse over the button, youll discover CNET is using an ad-supported wrapper. Not all downloads on CNETs website use the ad-supported stub installer, but the ones that do are indentified as such (so long as youre paying attention), both on the green Download button ("CNET Installer Enabled") and via the above pop-up box.

Downloading and installing looks so simple and easy but its often anything but.

If you choose to proceed, youll be presented with several attempts like the one shown above to install third-party software in addition to The Matrix screensaver. Simply click the Decline button to skip these offers one-by-one rather than mashing the oh-so-inviting Accept button. If you learned anything at all from mythology, its that you should avoid being tempted by Sirens, and download sites serve up plenty of them.

Do you really want to install random third party apps?

Some screens are a little trickier than others and offer only two options:

1. Full Installation (Recommended)
2. Custom Installation (Advanced User)

When you encounter one of these screens, check the Custom Installation radio button and then deselect any checkboxes asking if you want to install toolbars or other cruft.

The legitimate download button is often the hardest one to find.

If this seems like an unnecessarily long path to the end, thats because it is. Instead of jumping through CNETs third-party hoops, an easier way to grab The Matrix (and similar downloads) is to click on the direct download situated just below the download button. Easy cheesy, right?

This particular link has SEVEN download buttons. Which one is the legitimate one?

Lest anyone think were picking on CNET, its actually not that bad compared to plenty of other download sites that make things much harder than they need to be. Its certainly not uncommon to see adware/malware masquerading as legitimate download links. Some are worse than others. In the screenshot above, there are no less than seven links with the words "download" or "driver," but only one of them actually links to the file were looking for. How can you tell? Once again, hover your mouse over each button/link and see where it points to. If its a DoubleClick ad or anything similar, then move on to the next one. In this case, the second download button with a right-facing arrow directs us to a URL with the words "ARCHOS-101-XS-Tablet-Firmware-412-Download" contained within. Thats the one were looking for.

Scan for Malware

Once youve finally found and downloaded the file youre looking for, be sure to scan it for malware, especially if you grabbed it from a site youve never heard of. Use any on-demand scanners you have installed (such as a daily AV program and/or Malewarebytes), and also upload the file to VirusTotal, a free cloud-based service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs for dirty code.

Using Virustotal is extremely easy, especially with a browser extension

If youre a Firefox user, we highly recommend installing VTzilla, an official VirusTotal browser extension. The extension adds a toolbar to Firefox, which you can disable if you prefer, as well as a right-click context menu entry to scan hyperlinks with VirusTotal before visiting the site in question.

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An Engineers Guide to Silicon Valley Startups 3rd Edition

My first book, An Engineers Guide to Silicon Valley Startups continues to sell very well, considering that theres essentially no marketing budget for it and its spreading only by word of mouth. I recently ran out of the 2nd edition printing, and coincidentally, there were a few updates that needed to go in for the 3rd edition.

Over the last 2 years, its clear that the market for books that are mostly text has shifted dramatically. When I first started selling books, printed copies accounted for 70% of sales while digital copies were the other 30%. Now its the other way around and the tide continues to shift in favor of ebooks. As such, the costs of storing, shipping, and postage of printed books is no longer worth the amount of additional revenue I get.

Fortunately, Amazon is happy to print and ship books on an on-demand basis, so thats what I will do for printed books. This unfortunately means increased prices: Amazon wants their pound of flesh, so printed copies now cost $43.95 a pop, as opposed to $29.95. On the other hand, if the book is popular, Amazon could discount it, and of course, Amazon provides free shipping. For a limited time, you can pre-order the 3rd edition at the old price ($29.95 + shipping) from the books web-page. I need to order copies for the freebies as well as for the library of congress, so you would be pigging back on this process. (I also need to look over the final proof one more time)

The new edition features new sections on green cards, surviving a big acquisition, negotiating between co-founders, as well as an expanded financial planning section that was asked for by readers. In addition, my friend Scarlet Tang has re-designed the cover. One big disappointment was that I had moved the book over to InDesign CS 5.5 in the hopes of producing an EPUB and Kindle-compatible editions. Unfortunately, InDesign CS 5.5 crashes whenever it attempts to export an EPUB, so Im stuck with still only shipping PDFs. You can still use Mobipocket creator to create a Kindle edition from the PDF, but the results were not satisfactory to me, so Ill let those who want to do this bear the consequences for it.

As with the 2nd edition, everyone whos bought a copy within the last month (i.e., from April 8th) gets a free digital copy of the book. For everyone else, upgrade pricing is available. Note that you can only upgrade from a 2nd edition to the 3rd edition. No skipping from the 1st edition to the 3rd edition for $12.50. Note that Kindle edition owners do not get upgrades, nor will the Kindle version get updated to the 2nd edition. Its $9.95, which is already a hefty discount. As Ive previously mentioned, if youre actively job-hunting, the full version is what you want. If youre poor or in school, then by all means buy the Kindle edition.

As for my other books, expect them to go in the same direction as the print copies run out. I aim to be done with shipping and handling by the end of the year if not sooner.

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