incoming.verizon.net

Set up your login as username@verizon.net and enter your password.

For outgoing use:

outgoing.verizon.net

In the advanced tab make sure SSL is not checked and change authentication to “password”.

If you need more help, feel free to comment.

After reinstalling all the applications including the Apple January update, some games, some network tools, and some utilities, I tried the new Maps application. I was interested in seeing the Locater function of Maps. I tried it, and it was spot on accurate (within 250 feet). I first assumed that it looked at my name and retrieved my home address from the entry. But after a few more tests, I realized the scope of the area it determined I was in directly correlated the strength of the wifi.

After digging around on the internet, I found that Apple runs their location based service through a company called SkyHook. According to them, they have cars drive around and pick up wifi networks (wardriving) and store them in a “self-healing” database. While I don’t live in the middle of nowhere, I don’t live in a city either. I was surprised it was that accurate because I live on a dead end of a street that leads to another dead end. Other websites such as ip-adress.com which base your location off the ipaddress of the computer showed that I was in the closest town to my house. SkyHook also allow you to submit your location and mac address of your wireless router also enhancing the accuracy of the system. If you don’t have an iPhone/iPod Touch, you could also use a nokia n95, a symbian enabled phone or even a computer capable of running Firefox (IE also, but FF preferably). There is an extension made by Skyhook called Loki that installs itself which also locates your location based on wifi access points.

It, indeed, is an interesting service. On Loki’s site, they said they hope to expand to incorporate local advertising into browsers by locating your current position.

One of the big problems is due to Mplayers lack of video codecs due to copyright protection. If you try to play a video codec that isn’t supported only the sound will play through. After trying numerous times to downgrade Mplayer to get those codecs I succeeded, but many videos I played were extremely choppy, to the point that they weren’t watchable. To circumnavigate this problem I downloaded the videos and watched them using VLC without any problem, but I was unable to play videos within Firefox.

Just today I figured out how to get VLC as the default video plugin for firefox. Simply type:

sudo apt-get remove mozilla-mplayer
sudo apt-get install mozilla-plugin-vlc

And that’s it. If you ever need to restore the default video plugin to mplayer just type in:
sudo apt-get remove mozilla-plugin-vlc
sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer

So far, it has worked great, but I’m not positive it will work on all sites. Please leave a comment if you find any problems.

I got an Asus eee-pc a week or two ago. It’s a bundle of fun, with all the computing power I need. The only thing disadvantage of its portability is the small keyboard. I got an 8gb transcend card and upgraded to 2gb of ram. I also got a cirago micro bluetooth adapter, which has to be one of the smallest usb devices ever. Unfortunatley, I haven’t gotten the bluetooth working in linux, but that hopefully can be fixed.

Check it out here

Feel free to leave a comment on the build.