General News and Notes

Link: http://www.examiner.com/gadgets-in-san-francisco/motorola-responds-to-droid-x-exchange-issues

Well, I got my new DroidX today.  First impression: Gorgeous screen, bigger screen, thinner device.  Seems swift.  Seems slick.  So far...like it!

Second impression...hmmm...why can't the Corporate Sync connect to my Exchange 2003 server?

Turns out, it's a known issue with the DroidX.  If you have an Exchange 2003 server there is a good chance your DroidX will *NOT* sync with it using the native app.  Yes, I know the Droid (the first generation) worked fine with it, so did mine.  But DroidX isn't quite so accomodating apparently.

The Solution

There are hints in the Motorola support forums that the impending Froyo update (which is already out for most Droid 1's; but oddly not yet available for the X) will fix this problem, and bring a few other improvements, but in the meantime the solution is to download and install Touchdown for Exchange which apparently does still work (it does for me).  If you read the article linked above you'll discover that you can e-mail Motorola support and they will, probably, give you a free license for Touchdown so you don't have to pay the $20 when your trial license expires.

Conclusion

I like the DroidX, though the Exchange issue is a little disappointing.  I'll keep using it for a few more days and report back on how it's doing.

Got a DroidX and want to give your opinion on it?  Post it in the comments below...

Comment spam is threatening to kill a useful feature of the Internet.  I'm about thisclose to disabling the comments feature of these blogs simply because a bunch of spammers insist upon flooding the comments with spam and it just takes too much of my time to go thru and delete it all.

It's a double-shame because they gain nothing. These blogs are moderated so I'd have to approve their spam and I never do.  So they gain nothing but they create a lot of work for me.  We don't get that many legitimate comments here but I'd hate to kill the few legitimate comments we do get.  Soon I may have no choice though.

In the bigger picture this is just an example of selfish people choking out legitimate conversation for their own commercial ends.  These spammers are just trying to game the search engines by filling blog comment posts with links to websites they're trying to promote.  They're cheating and don't care that their noise runs roughshod over the legitimate use of the service.

In that way they're exactly like e-mail spammers. If it wasn't for an elaborate network of filters that keeps it at least slightly clean e-mail would be rendered completely useless by the spammers.  You may not realize the extent of it but it's estimated that far more than 90% of all e-mail traffic on the Internet is spam.  Imagine if you suddenly got 10 times more e-mail than you already get, but that 9 out of every 10 messages was junk mail.  In short order you'd stop using your e-mail entirely and then a very important communication system would be dead.

Unfortuntely a few selfish people don't care about that and thus a veritable army of technicians have to spend much of their day doing battle with these folks just to stem the tide and keep our valuable communications tools usable.  Sadly the comments section of this blog may not survive it.

In an effort to better support our rapidly growing base of clients in the Southwestern United States Roland Schorr & Tower is thrilled to announce our newest office - in Flagstaff, AZ - opening this month!

The new location will be on Woodlands Village Boulevard and they can be reached at (928) 377-5630.

I've been cleaning up my office a bit the last few days and that includes going thru some old files and disposing of things I don't need to keep anymore.  In shredding a bunch of old receipts and bank statements from 10-12 years ago I'm seeing signs of a simpler, more innocent, time.

• Simple grocery store receipts that have the full credit card number printed on them in plain text.  I bought a bottle of Pepsi and a loaf of bread and now my Visa card number is there for all the world to see.  Into the shredder for that one...
• My bank statements had my full social security number printed right on them.  Every statement.

My shredder is getting a good workout today.

Don't have a shredder yet?  You should have...here's one from Amazon.com.  I used an Aurora for years and was really happy with it.  I have a Fellowes P45C now and it doesn't seem quite as robust as that Aurora did.   Make sure to get the cross-cut model, they're more secure than the strip cut kind.

The truly paranoid among you will periodically feed in random papers just to "pollute" the shred so that anybody sifting thru it trying to piece things back together will have random noise to sift thru as well.

Whatever your approach to it, in today's age of identity theft you really MUST have a shredder for any documents that contain even remotely sensitive information on them.

Link: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/

A few quick thoughts as we take steps to prepare for the possible Tsunami today....

1. First and foremost please make sure that you and your family and neighbors are safe and prepared.  Stay away from the beaches (Tsunamis are NOT surfable waves).
2. If you have any empty water bottles, now is a good time to fill them.  Just in case we lose access to water.
3. Charge any portable devices.  Laptops, phones, cameras, anything that provides heat, light or communication.
4. Make sure you know where your candles and matches are.
5. Stay off the roads.  There are people who really NEED to be on the roads because they are evacuating or they are workers responding to issues.  Let's not get in their way.
6. Unplug any unnecessary devices.  Less load on the grid can only be a good thing.
7. Now is a good time to double-check your data backups - just in case something happens to your computer.
8. Rather than make phone calls, consider texting, Tweeting (http://www.twitter.com) or using social media like Facebook to keep in contact with family and friends. That will reduce the congestion on our phone system.

Hopefully this will turn out to be much ado about nothing.  But better safe than sorry.

As always, if there is anything Roland Schorr & Tower can help you with, please feel free to contact us.  You can call or text me at 808-782-6306 or via twitter @bschorr.

Best wishes and aloha,