Saturday, March 30, 2002

Instant Messaging Reading an article today in Yahoo magazine about IM and its place in the arsenal of communication tools.  Synchronous, and full of "presence," it does something that no other web application does: it keeps people close.  I haven't used IM a lot, but so far I have noticed that it is another way of communicating that has value.  Apparently some companies (including even a few small law firms) are using it to replace the intercom.  Instead of noisly paging people you simply use IM.  I think it would be a great tool at conferences to ask questions in an unobtrusive manner. 11:06:31 PM

My Wireless Heaven - Return to Paradise My linksys wireless network is a great thing.  I installed it about a month ago when my house was finally hooked into to the high-speed cable pipe.  Yes, March was a wonderful month.  High-speed access and wireless in one fell swoop. However, there was trouble in paradise because for the past few weeks I noticed the Wireless Access Point kept dropping the connection to various computers (not all at once though).  The solution to this problem was that I would have to push the reset button on the back of the WAP and then the connection to the Internet would be restored.  But this was a pain in the ass. I mentioned this to Keith (the computer guy at work) and he, of course, asked the obvious question: "have you upgraded your firmware?"  Uh, no.  So, I downloaded the firmware and installed it (a 5 minute operation at best) and now, guess what?  No problems.  I feel like a total idiot!  I knew that I should have checked to see if there was a firmware upgrade and installed it if there was.  Moral of the story: always check to see if you have the latest patches and software upgrades. 11:37:53 AM

© Copyright 2002 Ernest Svenson.