schlingel.me

Schwatch .Beat-Time ScreensaverYou probably always wanted a...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:44:48 +0100

Schwatch .Beat-Time Screensaver

You probably always wanted a Swatch .Beat screensaver for your Mac, right? I did, so I created one in Quartz Composer.

You can download it at: http://cloud.schlingel.net/441O1g0a1f2k and copy the file to ~/Library/Screen Savers. Now make sure you completely quit System Preferences (if it is running), and re-open it. Now you’ll find it at the very bottom of the Screen Savers list.

Enjoy!

My wedding/party live-updating-photo wall

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 20:13:13 +0100

For my wedding in August 2012, I wanted something geeky, yet easy enough for everyone to take part. As I always liked the idea of putting disposable cameras on tables, but hated the turnaround times for films to be developed, I decided to bring that part to the 21st century.

The plan was a projection screen, that displayed photos, just seconds after they were shot. And to cut the right to the conclusion: It worked absolutely great. To do the same on your party or wedding you need the following ingredients:

As many Eye-Fi Cards as you can afford/acquire
(optional) cheap point & shoot cameras
A Mac
A projector
A wireless base station, that can handle a lot of Wifi Clients and covers the entire area your guests will be in (an Apple Airport Extreme will do just fine)
RemoteSnap on as many guest iPhones as possible
RemoteSnap Server on your Mac
Eye-Fi Center2 on your Mac
A slideshow app with “hot folder” capabilities like Toucan

At first you want to configure your Wifi. I recommend setting up a WPA2 protected Wifi, even though you know all the people that are around. You never know if some douche stumbles by, joins the Wifi, figures out what’s going on and takes pictures of his tiny wiener to be displayed on your projector right away. If you are into that kind of stuff, omit the password ;)

Now configure your Eye-Fi Cards to join this Wifi and set up Eye-Fi Center so it saves the pictures to the same folder. To make sure, people never run out of space, configure the card to delete successfully transmitted photos if running low on space (not all cards have this feature). Note: With the latest firmware Eye-Fi cards don’t require an Internet connection any more and transmit directly to the Eye-Fi center application on the same Wifi.

What I did, asking attendees in advance if they plan to bring a camera with an SD-Card slot or rather bring an iPhone as their camera. Like this I was able to hand pre-configured Eye-Fi Cards to guests with cameras, and also bought a few cheap point & shoot cameras to place on desks without cameras.

Now install RemoteSnap Server on the Mac and configure it to save images to the same folder as Eye-Fi Center. It is very important, that all images end up in the same folder.

For the “hot folder” slideshow, the bad news first: You can’t have the fancy eye-candy-ish software that I used, as it was specifically built for me by my colleague Achim at Boinx Software. But there is other software that does the same thing, just not as pretty. For example Toucan. Set the application to monitor the folder, where all the images end up. Make sure you have at least one image in there from the beginning, as for example Toucan might get upset otherwise.

Install RemoteSnap on your iPhone and have your guests install it as well. If on the same Wifi, the app will find the server automatically and the moment you snap a picture in the app, it will be transmitted in the background. Make sure to use the paid version of the app, and request the same thing from your guests. If you use this for a wedding or other important event, you might want to consider gifting the app to the guests. You don’t want cheapskates to use the free version to save 2 bucks and end up with images that have irremovable watermarks in them.
Keep in mind: This setup doesn’t only create an instant slideshow but also collects all the photos made at the event without you having to run around collecting them afterwards, so investing a few euros here is worth it.

So if everything is set up correctly, taking a picture with either RemoteSnap or an Eye-Fi Camera will transmit it to the Mac and a few seconds later it will show up in the slideshow.

I have found nothing like RemoteSnap for Android phones. But as Android users are used to a bit of pain, they could install the Eye-Fi Android app and then transmit photos they took with it. If anyone has an alternative, please let me know.

That’s how I did it and if you follow the instructions, you should be able to make it work as well.

Have Fun!

Create video files with multiple audio tracks and subtitles (Mac)

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:41:00 +0100

If the video is also supposed to have multiple audio tracks, first add the audio tracks to the movie using QuickTime 7 Pro. Make sure you have the movie and each audio track you want to add open in QuickTime 7 Pro, and furthermore ensure they all have the exact same length and that the playhead is set to the very beginning.

Now go to the first audio track, hit CMD+A to select the entire audio track and switch to your video. Here, click Edit >Add to movie. That adds it as it’s own audio track.

By hitting CMD+J the properties for the movie open up and you can select the appropriate language for the track. You can even rename the track by double clicking the name in the “Name” column.

Repeat this until you added all the necessary audio tracks. Now go to File > Save as and save it under a new name, making sure you select “Save as self contained movie”.

For creating the subtitles, use the horrible Java application Jubler, it’s ugly but gets the job done. To have preview playback, you’ll need a mplayer binary. Use this version of the MPlayerOSX binary. No substitutions here. It still works on OS X 10.8. Extract it, right click it once and chose “Open” to tell GateKeeper it is cool.

Now in Jubler go to Jubler Preferences (CMD+,) and select the binary using the wizard in manual mode and you should be good.

In the blank Jubler window first click the “New” button on the very top left to create the first subtitle, then click the preview button to load a movie to match to.

Click browse to choose a file.

Beware: Clicking “Browse” will open a window behind all the other popups, so you first have to move two windows aside to see the actual file chooser. After beating your head against the wall, choose your movie and click OK.

Now you can type your first subtitle in the grey area, once you press CMD+Enter, a new subtitle will be created. Finally adjust the start and end times. By clicking the Play button on the top right you can check the timing. Repeat until your are insane or until your work is done. Whatever happens first.

When you are done save your subtitle files as SubRip .srt files and head on to iSubtitle. I found the free Subler doesn’t work anymore for me, so I had to go with the 18€ iSubtitle. Open your video file with iSubtitle and drag all the .srt files you created in the sidebar. Now assign the correct language to each of them, save and you’re done.

Change the language of individual iOS apps without a jailbreak

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:52:00 +0200

It’s very easy to change the language of individual apps on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with two free apps, and without the need of a jailbreak.

Just download iExplorer from http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/ and PrefSetter from http://www.nightproductions.net/prefsetter.html

Now follow the tutorial and you’re done.

Change the language of individual iOS apps without a jailbreak

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:52:00 +0200

It’s very easy to change the language of individual apps on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with two free apps, and without the need of a jailbreak.

Just download iExplorer from http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/ and PrefSetter from http://www.nightproductions.net/prefsetter.html

Now follow the tutorial and you’re done.

digital conservatives

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:02:52 +0100

On the interwebs, everyone seems to make fun or ridicule conservatives. Not that I find that a bad thing most of the time. For example:

Conservatives: We want to control and censor the Internet!
Us: These idiots don’t understand the web, change/new is good!

Conservatives: We don’t think gay people should be allowed to get married!
Us: These idiots are afraid of things being different.

And so on.

But the second something in our holy internet world changes, we become conservatives right away. Whining and bitching about something to change like our lives would depend on it.

Most recent example: Twitter

It seems Twitter found a way to move on. To monetize their platform and to make it more appealing to the general public. They release a new version of their iPhone app, and refresh the Web site, and again we idiots start crying like babies. We start to yell at them, because we don’t think DMs are as accessible as we want them to be, we whine because we don’t see a need for a “Discover” tab. As before with #fixreplies we moan about the change and want things to be the old way (yes I moaned too). And of course, the user interface of the app is different. How dare they?!

For fucks sake, wake up. Change happens! We are changing the world every day and require others to embrace the change we come up with, but are unable to cope with DMs moving to another spot or the fact that Twitter tries to focus more on stories?

Face it: Twitter offered us a great service for years, free of charge without a business model, but still paying their people, servers and bandwidth. Now with “Discover” they might have found a way to inject sponsored messages into your Twitter experience. So what? TV does it. Youtube does it. And your favorite blog probably does it as well. Why for heavens sake is Twitter not allowed to change and start to generate revenue?

Take a closer look at “Discover” for a while. I already found bits of interesting stuff and new interesting people to follow. Now think about people new to Twitter, suddenly they have easier access to trending/popular topics.
For me, Twitter always was about getting information and comunicating with people, and while the communication part didn’t change, getting information just got easier.

Oh and in case you are just whining about the new look, functions or whatever of the new Twitter iPhone app, there are tons of developers standing there with open arms, ready to welcome you to a world of a Twitter client that might just do exactly what you want.

So please stop whining, stop being conservative and live the future (also in technology), because the future begins. Right. Now.

TuneSwitch on OS X Lion - Discontinued

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:23:32 +0200

Many of you might have noticed that TuneSwitch doesn’t work on OS X Lion any more. That is because the method I used to access the keychain doesn’t work any more on Lion. I had plans to port it over but then I came across an app that does the same thing as TuneSwitch, but from the menubar and it it Lion compatible. It is also free if you were wondering. The only downside is that it doesn’t use the keychain but its own (probably proprietary) storage format (maybe it is just CoreData), but there is no saving passwords in plain text if you were worried.

So without further ado, I announce TuneSwitch to be discontinued and refer you to http://www.appletips.nl/itunes-account-switcher/

Thanks to Alex from http://www.iphoneblog.de for telling me about iAS.

iPhone Postkarten-Apps

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:47:00 +0200

Wenn man im Urlaub ist will man manchmal einfach personalisierte Postkarten nach hause schicken. Mit der Kamera mit Internetanschluss in der Hosentasche, bietet es sich an das alles direkt vom iPhone aus zu machen und es gibt natürlich auch Apps dafür. Und sie kommen alle mit Brechdurchfall.

Kartensender, posterXXL Postkarte, Click&Buy Postcards, fotoclicks postcards

Scheinen alle dasselbe App-Framwork zu benutzen. Hässlich extrem eingeschränkt (Ein Foto in Vollbild und Text in einer Größe). Benutzerführung ist ein schlechter Witz (“Diesen Knopf dürfen Sie jetzt noch nicht drücken, erst Foto wählen” - JA WARUM ZUM TEUFEL IST ER DENN DANN ÜBERHAUPT KLICKBAR?!), bei Kartensender bspw, kann man beim wählen des Kontaktes aus dem Adressbuch das Land nicht ändern und es wird Standardmäßig USA eingesetzt. Wenigstens merken sich die Apps die Zahlungsdaten (bis auf die CVC der Kreditkarte, was ich im Grunde gut finde).

Kartenpreis: 1,89€*

Fazit: Nicht kaufen/nutzen

ePostkarte

Die Österreichische Post schickt ihre App ins Rennen, ohne Retina Support, nervigen Bildgrößenschränkungen und gewöhnungsbedürftiger Benutzeroberfläche habe ich noch vor dem Bestellprozess abgebrochen.

Kartenpreis: 1,99€*

Fazit: Liebe post.at, für ein Unternehmen eurer Größe kann das nicht Euer Ernst sein!

Funcard

Die Deutsche Post bietet mit ihrer Funcard App, die Applikation mit dem größten Funktionumfang an. Mehrere Bilder, frei positionierbar und skalierbar, mit Textüberlagerung usw, auf beiden Seiten: Alles machbar. dabei ist es leider alles andere als Intuitiv, Textgrößen müssen vor dem Eingeben definiert werden und im Querformat-Modus können die Karten nur betrachtet werden, jedoch nicht bearbeitet, was Angesichts dessen, dass hier alle Elemente größer wären durchaus Sinnvoll wäre. Der Adressbuchimport.. naja es wird automatisch die erste Adresse einer Person gewählt statt eine Auswahl anzuzeigen und mit Land “Germany” kann Funcard nichts anfangen. Argh.

Bis zu dem Punkt ist das alles noch erträglich und die App wäre glatt meine Empfehlung geworden, bis es ans Bezahlen ging. Man wählt bspw Kreditkarte und es geht ein Webview auf (autsch), die Darin angezeigte Webseite ist viel zu breit für das iPhone Display und lässt sich auch nicht skalieren (WTF?!). Daten eingeben, abschicken, “Vielen Dank, zurück zum Shop” als HTML Link (WAS ZUM TEUFEL?!). Man klickt den Textlink an und ist wieder in der App und wenigstens die Karte ist weg.
Kartenpreis: 1,90€*

Fazit: Sobald die Post es schafft das Payment nativ einzubauen (inApp Purchase?) wäre das mein Favorit.

Postkarte

Die App von fotopost24 ist ähnlich hässlich wie die zuerst genannten, der Prozess des Erstellens einer Karte ist etwas durchdachter und es gibt keine Benutzerfühungs-WTFs wie bei den ersteren. Wenn man per Lastschrift oder Paypal zahlt kostet eine Karte 1,49 €, was der niedrigste Preis von allen Anbietern zu sein scheint. Bei Zahlung bspw mit Kreditkarte fallen extra Gebühren an. Auch hier kann nur ein Foto im Vollbild + Text in vordefinierter Größe genutzt werden. Wenigstens funktioniert der Datenimport aus dem Adressbuch.

Kartenpreis: 1,49€*

Fazit: Guter Preis, wenig Features, wenig Schmerzen. Trotz allem meine Empfehlung (danke an @dertobi und @franker69 für den Tip)

phonebrief

miro empfiehlt in den Kommentaren phonebrief, also habe ich darauf einen Blick geworfen:

Mit 99 cent pro Karte und der Möglichkeit auch briefe zu verschicken klingt phonebrief nicht schlecht, gerade bei Apps die mit Fotos hantieren erwarte ich jedoch Retina Support und den hat phonebrief nicht. Noch viel schlimmer ist jedoch dass mit die phonebrief App zwar anbietet ein eigenes Foto zu nehmen, jedoch nur direkt eines mit der Kamera zu machen und keines aus der Bibliothek zu wählen.

Sehr positiv bewerte ich die Möglichkeit im vorraus Geld aufzuladen, so muss ich mich im Urlaub nicht drum kümmern wieder Kreditkartendaten einzugeben.

Kartenpreis: 99 cent

Fazit: Kein Retina Support, keine Bilder aus der Camera Roll. Nicht kaufen

Pokamax

Alex erwähnte in den Kommentaren Pokamax und das habe ich mir auch geladen.

Als erstes mal wieder: Kein Retina Support. Was ich (zumindest als iPhone 4 Besitzer) davon halte wisst ihr ja. Preislich ist Pokamax auch nicht konkurrenzfähig. Eine Karte kostet 1,99€ man kann jedoch auf das Bild selbst noch einen Schriftzug setzen, das können die meisten anderen nicht. Ausserdem gibts auf der Pokamax Webseite noch Kiloweise andere Kartentypen. Noch ein Pluspunkt: Die Firma scheint auf Twitter sehr aktiv zu sein. 2 Minuten nach einer erwähnung im Tweet kam direkt eine nicht-Roboter Antwort.

Kartenpreis: 1,99€

Fazit: Ohne iPhone 4 einen genaueren Blick wert.

Habe ich eine gute Postkartenapp übersehen? Nichts wie her damit und ab in die Kommentare!

*Alle Kartenpreise beziehen sich immer auf den Versand nach Deutschland.

TuneSwitch is now on GitHub

Mon, 09 May 2011 11:39:00 +0200

As people asked for it, Tuneswitch is now available on GitHub.
It is licensed under the DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE. Have fun!

TuneSwitch - Manage multiple iTunes accounts (UPDATED)

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:57:00 +0200

UPDATE: I discontinued TuneSwitch, see more at http://schlingel.me/tuneswitch-on-os-x-lion-discontinued

NOTE: I am getting quite a few reports about iTunes crashing or passwords being improperly filled. I am unable to reproduce these errors. If you encounter this behavior, please leave me a note in the comments, with your iTunes and OS X version. (thanks to Morten for this!)

As seen on Reddit there is a possibility to switch between iTunes Store accounts using AppleScript.

While I liked the Idea, I didn’t like the way it was done. You had to store the password in plain text in the script and you needed one script for each account. Instead I wanted a solution that took advantage of the OS X Keychain.

So I built TuneSwitch. Upon first launch, it will offer you the possibility to create a Keychain entry for your first account.

Here, enter your iTunes Store Account name (like yourname@me.com or whatever your AppleID might be)

Now enter your password and hit OK. This will create a keychain entry named “iTunes: <YourAccountName>”

When your’e done or you already have iTunes accounts in your Keychain you’ll get a list. Either choose one or click “Create new Keychain entry” to create another entry.

Select the Account, make sure iTunes is running and there are no open windows and dialogs in iTunes. Hit OK and watch the script do its magic (or fail).

If you need to edit the account settings, open the “Keychain Access” app and edit the entries.

You’ll find the script here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6260/TuneSwitch.zip

It should work with any language iTunes might be set to. If it doesn’t work in your language, it is probably due to some weird way iTunes handles your language and I probably can’t do much about it.

General Information:

The part that I took from the original script, relies on UI scripting to “click” the Store menu and click “Sign out” / “Sign in” and such. UI scripting is error prone and might sometimes fail for weird reasons. I tried to minimize errors here, e.g. by sending each letter of the account name and the password individually with very short breaks in between instead of sending them all at once.

Acknowledgments:

To communicate with the Keychain in an efficient way (instead of waiting for several minutes until the useless scripting bridge parsed all the entries), I am using Daniel Jalkuts “Usable Keychain Scripting” (http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/446/usable-keychain-update). Thanks Daniel for sharing that. Make sure you check out http://www.red-sweater.com for MarsEdit, one of the best Blog publishing tools out there.

UntitledEPIC!

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 01:13:55 +0100

Untitled

EPIC!

How to use Pandora outside the US (with a VPN)

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:58:00 +0100

A while back, I posted a bit about how to use Pandora without a VPN and it worked sort of. From time to time, I’d also like to use other services like Hulu.com or whatever service thinks I am not american enough to use it. So I finally subscribes to BlackVPN. It gives you a US IP by providing a VPN connection that also has some kind of anonymization without plastering your face with ads like HotspotShield does, but it costs 5€/month. (If you want to sign up for BlackVPN, use my offer code TRSHNHG, it’ll give you 2 extra months free.)

So here was the problem again: I don’t want to send all my traffic over the VPN so I started searching and asking people on Twitter. My friends @Loredo and @wnetoa finally showed me how to properly set up static routes.

In essence what has to be done is to create a file (or modify it if it already exists) called ip-up in /etc/ppp

It’s contents need to be

#!/bin/sh

# pandora
/sbin/route add 208.85.40.0/21 -interface ppp0

This will install a new static route for every IP from 208.85.40.0 to 208.85.47.254 (that is roughly the iP range Pandora uses) over your VPN connection everytime you connect a VPN. Please also make sure the file is owned by root and chmod it to 0755.

That also means, whatever VPN connection you establish, this route will be set. You could add an if-statement to check if the correct gateway is selected but as the BlackVPN gateway changes all the time I just didn’t care. Furthermore routing this IP block through other VPNs wouldn’t matter as it would just not work as it does without the VPN.

Make sure that in OS X you a) use the built in VPN client and b) DON’T send all the traffic over VPN!

Why didn’t I do it for e.g. Hulu? Well, while finding out the IP range for the site might be easy, their data comes from akamai and this will most likely turn out to be a PITA. So I just created a second VPN connection in OS X that routes everything through BlackVPN.

This will most likely also work on Linux, and if you have Windows: do a format c: and install a proper OS like e.g. Ubuntu :)

Buying MS Office:mac 2011

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 00:32:34 +0200

If someone intends to buy MS Office:mac 2011 that will be released in October, I’d suggest buying Office:mac 2008 now. If you buy it from now on, you’ll be eligible to upgrade to 2011 for free. Even better: you buy the normal home & student version and get a 2011 familiy pack, that contains 3 licenses and would retail for about 149€ (equals $857495,12)

The best deal I found for germany was actually on amazon: http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/asin/B0010QTCKM/digital0c-21

For the US: http://www.softwaremedia.com/microsoft/office-suites/office-2008-for-mac-home-and-student.html

Where to get the free upgrade and all the Terms: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/office-2011-upgrade.mspx

Fellow geeks: I need help (again) ;)

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 08:19:43 +0200

Hey guys, I am a little out of ideas here.

At home, I need to re-connect to my wifi every five minutes, because my internet connectivity is gone.

I still have an IP address, and I don’t need to reset my router or so. It is just disconnection from the Wifi in OS X and reconnecting. At the office, I have absolutely no problem but at home, I do. At first I thought it was my old Airport Express as it is over 5 years old. So I got an Extreme today, set it up completely fresh but no luck. Same problem.

This happens with all the machines in the household, also iPhones and is pretty annoying.

My setup: Airport Extreme, connected to a router/DSL-Modem in the basement. I didn’t replace the router so far as I don’t have a spare one. Would a it make sense that this issue comes from the router? (The Airport Extreme is in DHCP Bridge mode BTW).

I always get an IP adress within seconds. Weird.

Any other ideas than replacing the router?

How to get a US Google voice number outside the US

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:08:38 +0100

Google did all to prevent non-US residents to get a google voice number. But there is a way.

At first you need a Google Voice invite (I have three left if you are interested) and this might be the hardest part.
You need a US IP address, this can be done by using HotspotShield from http://anchorfree.com. Install the software, connect and go on.
Now you can sign up for Google Voice. Choose your number wisely, because changing it costs $10.
It will then ask you for a real US Phone number to verify (and redirect) your calls.
Get yourself a free number over at http://www.virtualphoneline.com
In the Virtualphoneline settings, redirect your Number to your Skype acount.
Go back to Google Voice, enter the VPL phone number and let them call you
Your Skype will ring and you have to enter the two digit code to confirm the number
Done.
If you happen to have registered a Gizmo (http://www.gizmoproject.com) account a while back you can add Gizmo as a phone number (http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115122)
Maybe you can simply download Gizmo from e.g. versiontracker.com and register an account inside the app.
You still can’t add non-US phone numbers to your account, but you have a free US phone number and as you might know: GV even gives you the possibility to make free US calls e.g. using Gizmo (http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115123).

So, why not just going with the Virtualphoneline number?
They only have longer numbers for free. The call quality is rather poor. The service is good but a little weird. No customizable voicemail. No free outbound calls.

Any Questions?

Meine Antwort an T-Mobile

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:48:54 +0100

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

was mir allein an einem Tag in Ihrem Kundenservice widerfahren ist, ist für mich unerklärlich und in Anbetracht dessen, dass ich jeden Monat 70€ an sie zahle eine absolute Frechheit. Natürlich verstehe ich volkommen dass 70€ für T-Mobile vernachlässigbar und Bestandskunden gegenüber Neukunden nicht wichtig sind.

Nach wiederholten Ausfällen meiner Telefon und Datenverbindung wurde ich von Apple Care dazu aufgefordert einen Ersatz für meine SIM Karte zu bestellen. Das habe ich am 16.11 gegen 09:45 Uhr getan und mir wurde von ihrer Mitarbeiterin versichert, dass mir eine inaktive SIM Karte zugeschickt würde, die ich durch einen Anruf beim Service aktivieren müsse.

Zehn minuten später zeigte mein iPhone nur noch “Kein Netz” mehr an. Da meine Kollegen im Raum nebenan auf ihren T-Mobile iPhones problemlos Netz hatten rief ich wieder beim Service an. Die Mitarbeiterin teilte mir mit, dass es in meiner Region gerade eine Netzstörung gäbe. Auf den Einwand hin dass meine Kollegen Netz hätte meinte sie nur, dass so eine Störung auch mal nur ein Telefon betreffen könne. Wie sich später herausstellte waren diese Aussagen eine glatte Lüge, wahrscheinlich um mich aus der Leitung zu bekommen.

Nach weiteren vier Stunden rief ich erneut an und teilte dem Servicemitarbeiter mit, dass ich vermutete, dass die erste Kollegin die SIM Karte, entgegen Ihrer Aussage, aktiviert und damit die aktuelle Karte deaktiviert hatte. Er liess mich wissen dass ich nun wohl mal 2 Tage ohne Handy auskommen müsse, sicherte mir jedoch auf meinen Protest 15€ Guthaben zu, da er auch nichts weiteres tun könne.

Die 15€ investierte ich dann in eine Prepaid Karte, auf die Anrufer mittels Anrufweiterschaltung geleitet werden können. Was bei einem früheren Vertrag schon Problemlos funktionierte.

Bei meinem vierten Anruf der Servicenummer erklärte ich der Mitarbeiterin, dass ich “gerne eine Anrufweiterschaltung meiner T-Mobile Nummer auf eine andere Nummer” hätte. Es dauerte 3 weitere Anläufe bevor sie überhaupt begriff was ich wollte. Nachdem sie mich dann erst in die Warteschleife gelegt hatte eröffnete Sie mir dann plötzlich, dass sie “das System nicht mehr hereinlässt” und ich bitte in 10 Minuten nochmals anrufen solle. Ich würde natürlich niemals annehmen, dass sie mich nur abwimmeln wollte.

Für den heutigen Tag habe ich mein Anliegen aufgegeben und werde wahrscheinlich auch die nächsten 2 Tage immer mal wieder damit verbringen erbosten Kunden, Kollegen und Freunden zu erklären, dass ich sie nicht absichtlich ignoriere sondern mir vorübergehend die Leitung abgedreht wurde und es scheinbar technisch unmöglich ist eine deaktivierte SIM-Karte wieder zu aktivieren bzw. Anrufweiterschaltungen einzurichten.

Die 15€ sind ein schwacher Trost in Anbetracht dessen was ich inzwischen an Zeit und Telefonkosten (von der Prepaid Karte mal abgesehen) bereits in diese Unternehmung gesteckt habe.

Für den Fall, dass sie meine kleine Erlebniserzählung bis hierhin durchgelesen haben (was ich in Anbetracht meiner Serviceerfahrungen in ihrem Haus stark bezweifle), fordere ich Sie dazu auf meine Kündigung an die entsprechende Abteilung weiterzugeben.

Hiermit kündige ich meinen Mobilfunkvertrag mit T-Mobile zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt. Ich erwarte eine schriftliche Kündigungsbestätigung mit der Information über das Enddatum des Vertrages binnen 14 Werktagen.

Mit verbindlichen Grüßen,

_____________________________________
Bastian Wölfle

My "fun" story with T-Mobile Germany

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:08:57 +0100

During the last weeks (since the 3.1.2 update) I experienced that my iPhone lost its data and phone connection, without displaying any error. I was just not reachable and couldn’t make calls. I restored my phone and set it up completely new, but after one day the problem was back.

So I called T-Mobile to ask for help. They directed me to Apple Care. So I spent 30 minutes on the Apple Care Hotline. The result was: Please call T-Mobile and get a new SIM card. So I called T-Mobile. At first they wanted to send me back to Apple but I really didn’t like that, so I was able to convince the lady that she sends me a new SIM card free of charge. Just to be sure I asked what I needed to do when the card arrives. She said “It will not be active when it arrives, so please call us as soon as you have it. It’ll then deactivate your current card and activate the new one” Fair enough. So I left for work.

On my way to work I suddenly realized that I had no cell reception any more. I was just driving through a forest so I thought this might be okay. After arriving in the office I noticed that I still had no reception. So I asked the guys here if they also had no reception, but they all had. So I called T-Mobile again. The lady asked me for my postal code and told me then that there was a network error in my region. I told her that all my colleagues that are on T-Mobile as well did not have any problem. She said “A network error can just affect single phones sometimes.” Even though I thought that was BS, I hung up and waited 4 hours.

It wasn’t better after 4 hours so I decided to call again. The guy just wanted to start telling me BS again but I interrupted him and told him that I was sent a new SIM card this morning and that I suspected the lady did send the card activated (what would deactivate my current card). He looked again in his records and guess what. This was exactly the case. In the next sentence he told me that I now had to wait about two days until my new SIM card arrives. I told him that he can’t be serious, but he was. Once a card is deactivated it can’t be activated any more. So here I am now. I am unreachable during the next two days and I got a ridiculous 15€ extra balance. The worst part is: The second lady simply lied me in the face just to get me off the line.

Dear T-Mobile, the moment my current contract runs out, I will be off (just like 95% of all other iPhone users).

Does anyone have had similar experiences?

How to scan directly to Evernote (Mac)

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:04:00 +0200

This a description on how to scan documents directly to the Evernote application on the Mac. If you can’t really see the video, please watch it on YouTube in HD.

The required AppleScript can be downloaded here.

Questions/Suggestions/Improvements anyone?

How to listen to Pandora.com outside the US (without a VPN)

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:08:00 +0200

Back in the day, when Pandora was still accessible from outside of the US it was my main source for music recommendations (and I spent a lot of money on recommended music). Then the record industry decided to limit Pandora to the US only.

You can still listen to Pandora if you use a VPN solution like HotSpotShield but this means you will Tunnel all your computers traffic to some VPN and might not be able to access stuff that is on your local network (and you slow down your internet connection).

After a night with little sleep and some help from a very nice Twitter follower (who has a VP Server in the USA) I found a convenient way to listen to Pandora from here.

Step 1) Get a SSH account in the USA. Either you know someone who can give you one, or you get yourself a hosting package with SSH (e.g. hostmonster.com has rather cheap ones) or you try something like bshellz.net, for a one time payment you get a shell account with tunneling capabilities (might not be in the US, I am not really sure. There might be other services like this that are definitely in the US).

Step 2) Establish a SSH tunnel. If you are on a Mac, you can either do this via terminal by typing in:

ssh -D -p <port-number> -D 2001 <username>@<shell-host>

or you simply get the SSH Tunnel Manager freeware app and enter your data.
Be sure to enable “Enable SOCKS4 proxy” in the options. In the Terminal this is the -D switch. The number (in this case 2001) is the port you can access your socks proxy afterwards.
Now connect either using the terminal or SSH Tunnel Manager.

Step 3) You can now launch Firefox, install the FoxyProxy addon and configure it to use a socks proxy on host: localhost and the port you set up above. And you’re done.

Or you get even geekier:

Step 4) Open your plain text editor of choice (SubEthaEdit, Textmate, BBEdit or so) and add the following lines:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
// send all pandora.com requests through our socks proxy:
if (shExpMatch(url, “*.pandora.com/*”)) {return “SOCKS localhost:2001”;}
if (shExpMatch(url, “*.pandora.com:*/*”)) {return “SOCKS localhost:2001”;}
// All other requests don’t need a proxy
return “DIRECT”;
}

Save this file as proxy.pac. This file will later tell your system to only route requests to pandora.com through the tunnel.
Step 5) Open System Preferences > Network. Now select your active network device (Airport or ethernet). Now click “Advanced” and then select the “Proxies” tab. In here change “Configure Proxies” to “Using a PAC file” and choose the file we just created. Click OK then click Apply. That’s it.
If the tunnel connection is established you are now able to access Pandora.com. To make it even more convenient, I recommend the free PandoraMan application.

Any questions?

Fellow geeks, now I need your help, please!

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:09:16 +0200

I need to generate a huge amount of traffic within a short period of time on one of my servers and this is where I need you guys. Everyone who can spare a little bit of bandwidth e.g. at night could help me by repeatedly downloading this file: http://essen213.server4you.de/du.mp4. You can delete the file right after downloading and start over again (it is a recent DigitalUpgrade show, if you wonder what it is about).

If you are using OS X, Linux or Unix you can create a .sh file with this content:

#!/bin/sh

# Loop forever

while :

do

curl http://essen213.server4you.de/du.mp4 -o /dev/null

done # Start over

This loads it right to nowhere and starts over after it has finished.

If you are on windows this won’t work, so I created a folder with 2000 symlinks to that file: http://essen213.server4you.de/download if you grab all these links using e.g. DownThemAll it’ll do the same trick.

(Hopefully) the download speed will become VERY slow sometime, but don’t worry, this is what I hope for.

This is really my own server, so it is really ok to do this, it won’t hurt anyone. This server doesn’t contain anything but this file.

I’d like to ask you to do this for a few days (or nights), this should really help a lot.