RWVHP

This one is a Symbian S60 application that “pings” the web server with your location at a user-defined duration or not all (for people with horrible mobile providers that charge by the KB), it’s currently a closed beta as they’re only accepting people with GPS (internal eg. Nokia N95 or Bluetooth) until they’ve mapped more cell towers to make it useful for people without it.

Now you know what it is, heres the name Locatik and my profile (for the stalkers).

<rant>

I placed my order with Forbidden Planet for a Nabaztag/tag on 9/Dec/2007, the order confirmation e-mail they sent out said “Please allow 21 days from date of order before checking non arrivals.”, so on 23/Jan/2007 I e-mailed there sales team asking about the status of my order.

On the 18th of Jan I return home from work to find a DHL card on the mat, not knowing what was dispatched I log into my online banking to find that Forbidden Planet have debited my account.

Today I got an e-mail from my e-mail sent on the 23/Jan stating “I can confirm that your order is in the process of being despatched and should arrive within the next 10-14 days.”, I get the package picked up, open it and find a… Marvel 1/12th Scale Metal Statue – Wolverine clearly not what I ordered, box addressed in print to someone else, DHL sticker put on it delivering it to me.

So I’ve e-mailed them as no one answered the phone number in the sales e-mail and on the invoice asking them to sort the problem.

What I can’t understand is how a company like this can still be in business, first they don’t have stock listing on the website (something I hadn’t noticed when I placed the order), second there was no correspondence to say the order was being debited or dispatched, thirdly someone’s managed to read a woman’s name and address in the other end of the UK and affix my delivery sticker to it. Fourthly and worst of all is the fact that they don’t seem to think they’ve dispatched my order.

</rant>

I like gadgets, probably too much, I also like integrating everything with everything else, so on rolls HA or Home Automation.

I’ve already had a X10 setup for a while that allows me to control lights, I’ve integrated this with Asterisk (with help from Adhearsion) which allows me to control lights from any phone, I also hooked Asterisk up with Amarok.

Well today I ordered some 1-Wire hardware to play with, I didn’t fancy running more cables for the 1-Wire setup and found HA7Net which is a Ethernet to 1-Wire gateway basically, the only problem with it seems to be you need to scrape the embedded web server as it doesn’t provide any kind of web service. I also ordered a 1-Wire temperature sensor to mess around with, and help me make a Ruby gem for the HA7Net.

I’ll try and get around to documenting what hardware I’ve got setup, as I can never remember what’s where and providing what (from VoIP phones, NAS, embedded machines, servers, consoles to a Nabaztag).

Consider this, your browsing the web on your phone with your unlimited data plan and a site requires you to register or login, whats easier to type on the phone? http://rwvhp.com or 07714110660 (my old mobile number), I know different people will prefer one over the other.

It is possible and heres how, VoIP uses ENUM and e.164 to work out the domain name from the phone number. This could also be used to work out the OpenID of the user with very little work and as far as I can tell is just as secure as OpenID as both can suffer from attacks via DNS.

I’m basically just throwing this out there to get some feedback and as a note to myself.