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Blackberry Desktop crashes when reading Outlook calendar

April 17, 2008 By 4 Comments

For the past two days, my Blackberry Desktop software has crashed when it was trying to read the Outlook calendar entries. Rebooting didn’t help, and I really didn’t want to reinstall software and go through the pain of resynchronizing.

Luckily, the solutions was relatively simple. After Googling around for a bit, I came across this post on BlackberryForums.com, describing an easy and effective way to make my Blackberry’s calendar match my Outlook calendar (again).

The KB entry referenced (KB 11703 on the BlackBerry Technical Solution Center) describes the procedure for Windows 2000/XP. The procedure is similar on Windows Vista, the only difference is that the Intellisync folder is located at C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\Intellisync. You don’t even have to reconfigure the synchronization settings – after deleting the Intellisync directory, start the Desktop Manager and synchronize your Blackberry.

But I have to agree with the post directly below the solution: I wonder what got it messed up to begin with…

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Opera Mini cannot have secure connections

March 17, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I got a new cellphone a couple of weeks ago, and in trying to follow where several men have gone before, I got a BlackBerry (Pearl 8130 to be precise).

One of the things that really appealed to me was the possibility to surf the net from pretty much anywhere that Verizon Wireless has coverage. But the built-in browser was a little clunky, and I had heard about Opera for cellphones. I was able to install Opera Mini without much problems, and liked some of the extra features it had over the standard BlackBerry browser.

Right until I listened to episode 126 of the Security Now! podcast. In that episode Leo reads an email from a listener (Anand K.), describing that he discovered how the Opera Mini browser talks to the Internet. It doesn’t talk directly to web servers, it talks to a transcoder server, which is like a proxy with extras. The use of this transcoder server makes it impossible to provide end-to-end SSL security for client connections. The show notes for episode 126 do a pretty good explanation on how this affects the possibility of having secure connections, and how the Opera Mini transcoder has to have access to all your data, your passwords, user name, login, cookies, etc.etc. Not only that, but all the information is then transmitted in the clear to the actual web server…

To be fair, Opera describes this behavior in their FAQ, but this is terrible! If you use your mobile phone for anything that requires security, ditch Opera Mini immediately. Opera suggests to install Opera Mobile, however, I don’t think there is a version for the BlackBerry. Back to the built-in browser…

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Skype 2.0 beta for Linux includes video

November 20, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Skype announced the release of a beta version of Skype 2.0 for Linux. The new version supports video, so Linux Skype users can now put the webcam to good use.

The Linux beta can be downloaded here. Hardware requirements are:

  • Processor: 1GHz or faster
  • RAM: 256MB
  • Hard disk: 20MB free space
  • Microphone and speakers, or headset
  • Internet connection, broadband is best, GPRS is not supported for voice calls, and results may vary on a satellite connection.
  • Videocard driver with Xv support
  • Qt 4.2.1 or higher
  • D-Bus 1.0.0
  • libasound2 1.0.12

The page has versions for Ubuntu (7.04 – no 7.10, although this version should work fine with Gutsy), Fedora (Core 6, and 7), Debian Etch, OpenSUSE 10+, Mepis, Mandriva, Xandros and CentOS. There is also a generic Dynamic and Static package.

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Kensington Bluetooth 2.0 under Windows Vista 64-bit

October 11, 2007 By 17 Comments

I finally got my Bluetooth adapter (a Kensington Bluetooth USB Adapter 2.0) working. Initially when I bought it, trying to install the factory supplied driver wouldn’t work. After a tiresome exchange with support, where they informed me that there was no Vista driver available, and they didn’t have any information about whether or not the driver would be developed.

Well, apparently they developed one (yay Kensington), but failed to inform people who had filed a request for it (Booh! Hiss!). However, when I tried to install it, everything seemed to work fine until a message box popped up informing me that the installation had failed. Digging through the Vista Temp directory, I found the installation log, with one Error message (the rest was fine): “ERROR Device plugged in, no MS stack”.

After trying to run the installation program with Administrative rights, and with UAC turned on and off, I was ready to give up. The funny thing was that the installation program just seemed to download the actual installation program, explode it, run the setup program in there, and delete it when it finished or failed. So, during a new attempt, I grabbed the directory that the installation program created. It has the platform specific files (in my case 64-bit), a setup program and some other stuff. Of course, the installation failed again, but at least I had the files now.
Update:The files are located in \Users\[you]\AppData\Local\Temp\BTW_6.0.1.6200.

When I pulled up the Device Manager in Vista, it showed the Bluetooth EDR dongle listed. I tried several different things (which I won’t mention, because they didn’t work), until I decided to Update the driver for the dongle. When Vista asked me for the driver, I pointed it to the driver directory within the exploded installation directory, and Vista was happier than a clam to install a bunch of devices (Kensington Bluetooth EDR Dongle with trace filter, Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator, and two Bluetooth devices in the Network adapters group). Yay!

The next (and last) step in setting up the adapter with my Motorola RAZR was the easiest: go to Control Panel, Bluetooth Devices, and Add a new device. Make sure your phone is discoverable, and set up a passkey. Voila! The phone should now be connected.

Next thing on the list is trying to grab floAt’s Mobile Agent. I have an older version installed, and have already figured out that the only way floAt can talk to my phone seems to be to use the COM port (when you pull up Bluetooth Devices, click your phone, select Properties, and go to the Services tab, it will tell you which COM port the phone uses).

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Apple vs. Cisco: sour grapes?

July 17, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I think Apple is still peeved about Cisco suing them over the iPhone name.

Apparently they are now taking revenge by knocking Cisco’s Wireless Access Points off-line. Or at least, so says Duke University. According to the IT department at Duke, the iPhones periodically flood the school’s WLAN with MAC address requests, knocking several access points off-line for 10 to 15 minutes.

Duke has submitted a trouble ticket with Apple, because Cisco claims the problem is not on their end.

Personally, I think Apple found the perfect DDOS attack against Cisco. Cisco may need to revise their opinion, and fix this possible Denial of Service.

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