I have been using the Opera 9.5 beta for WM recently, and while it is a fantastic browser (think Safari on the iPhone), it is a memory hog. I tried out and was impressed with MemAid by DinarSoft. this program monitors memeory usage and can reclaim 'lost' memory. It also allows you to set limist for the PIE browser cache, and even for Opera (although it does not work with the 9.5 version yet).
You can schedule a regualr memory clean on a daily basis, so that you alway have a 'clean' system.
Recommended tool!
I am afraid that I have to caution you about my recommendation above - I suspect that this program is responsible for the ROM corruption mentioned in the post above. However, I will add that it is only: 'suspect this program is responsible'.
Friday, August 22, 2008
More (good) technology news from Delta
On a couple of recent flights I was privileged to experience some of the new changes to Delta's interiors. One of the surprises was the availability of USB power at all seats ,yes including coach! One was on a 737, I think 800 series, which will found regularily on domestic flights, long and short. The second was on a 757-200 (Ex-TWA seating according to Seatguru) which had been refurbished with intercontinental seating (electric lie flat style, masses of legroom and in seat 110V or USB).
The USB connections are great for recharging a cell phone, especially since I find that I am tending to run out at the end of the day with my Treo 750. I was thinking of buying a second battery, but think I might not need to with this new power source. Of course, it is not available in all aircraft yet, but I hope that Delta will install these outlets out as they roll out their in-flight WiFi.
Way to go Delta, you are thinking of us frequent business travellers again - thanks
The USB connections are great for recharging a cell phone, especially since I find that I am tending to run out at the end of the day with my Treo 750. I was thinking of buying a second battery, but think I might not need to with this new power source. Of course, it is not available in all aircraft yet, but I hope that Delta will install these outlets out as they roll out their in-flight WiFi.
Way to go Delta, you are thinking of us frequent business travellers again - thanks
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Geek pride label
You may have noticed these strange bar code boxes around the place. They are 2-d or QR barcodes. There is now a site on the Internet where you can generate your own code with your choice of URL or text coded into the symbol. Why would you do this? Well, there are now programs which run on your cellphone and use the phone's camera to read the barcode. For example, I use I-nigma on my WM Treo 750, but a quick Google will find many different ones. You can also try this site, or use the software list on the Semapedia site linked below.
If I see one of these codes somewhere, I-nigma takes a picture and decodes it for me. If it is a URL, it will link immediately. So if you see me in the airport, feel free to take a picture of the QR coded label on my luggage, it will link you to this blog.
Another site that uses QR barcodes is http://www.semapedia.org/. They only generate codes linked to Wikipedia entries, but useful to put on buildings and other locations which have Wikipedia entries.
There is even someone on the Net who will create a wearable patch from your QR code. That is really showing your pride of geekdom!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Another PHL disaster
The PHL curse strikes yet again. After arriving two hours late, due to weather, last Sunday I arrived at Hertz a little before 2 a.m. to find that, while my name was on the Gold board, there was no car in the stall indicated. So I went over to the Gold office to find that they were closing up and sending us, there were more travelers in my position, over to the main office. This did not look too good, as there was already a line of at least twenty people waiting and only two agents. Luckily the opened a 'Gold' line with intially two agents. However, very quickly one of the agents disappeared, without any explanation. There was no visible manager at the office, no-one directing anything at all. The one person being handled in the gold line seemed to have some problem with his reservation and so I had to wait about twenty-five minutes before being helped. I was the next person in the Gold line, and I felt very sorry for the the five or six people behind me, as it seemed they would have a long, long wait.
During all this a manager surfaced briefly, looked at all the irritated people and disappeared again. The agents behind the desk seemed to have been dragged from everywhere, because the one that took over the 'Gold' line, had to ask other Hertz personnel about completing almost every part of the rental agreement. And yes, this was all being done by hand as the computers were down for their nightly maintenance. So when I was finally at the counter, it took another 15+ minutes to complete my paperwork. I walked across to the stall number that the agent had written down, and drove towards the exit almost over 45 minutes after arrival.
As the guard checked my paperwark and car, he looked a couple times and then, can you believe it, told me that I had the wrong car and that I had to go back to the office to sort it out. This really ticked me off as It was now after 2:30 am and I wanted to get to my hotel. The 'ghost' manager happened to be wandering the lot nearby, so the guard called him across. He also offered no other solution than returning to the office, so I removed my luggage from the vehicle and walked across to the competition (Avis). In spite of a line of people at the Preferred office, out was off the lot in less than 15 minutes.
I sympathize, a little, with Hertz that weather problems play havoc with the arrival of clients and pickup of vehicles but they need to find better ways to treat their regular customers.
Questions/comments for Hertz:
During all this a manager surfaced briefly, looked at all the irritated people and disappeared again. The agents behind the desk seemed to have been dragged from everywhere, because the one that took over the 'Gold' line, had to ask other Hertz personnel about completing almost every part of the rental agreement. And yes, this was all being done by hand as the computers were down for their nightly maintenance. So when I was finally at the counter, it took another 15+ minutes to complete my paperwork. I walked across to the stall number that the agent had written down, and drove towards the exit almost over 45 minutes after arrival.
As the guard checked my paperwark and car, he looked a couple times and then, can you believe it, told me that I had the wrong car and that I had to go back to the office to sort it out. This really ticked me off as It was now after 2:30 am and I wanted to get to my hotel. The 'ghost' manager happened to be wandering the lot nearby, so the guard called him across. He also offered no other solution than returning to the office, so I removed my luggage from the vehicle and walked across to the competition (Avis). In spite of a line of people at the Preferred office, out was off the lot in less than 15 minutes.
I sympathize, a little, with Hertz that weather problems play havoc with the arrival of clients and pickup of vehicles but they need to find better ways to treat their regular customers.
Questions/comments for Hertz:
- While there are still cars on the lot, why is the car allocated to me gone?
- If my car is used, why was my name not removed from the Gold board?
- If you know that the computers will be down, but still expecting a number of clients, why not print out the rental agreements before the system goes down, saving time when the client arrives. (They do this to have the RA hanging in the car for pickup, so it cannot be a big deal. Just need a special version, without vehicle number, which is the only thing that needs to be filled in at the time of pickup)
- If you end up seriously inconveniencing your regular (Gold) customers, offer something, for example a free tank of gas. [In my case I normally use much less than a 1/2 tank anyway]
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Pi.. Poor Planning Punishes Passengers
Unfortunately, as much as I love flying Delta, occasionally they do make mistakes. Two weeks ago was a howler......
It started with my flight out of PHL. Although evrything looked OK there, delays were being psoted for the ATL bound flights. Thunderstorms was the reason given, and normally I do not worry too much because all flights get messed up, including the connecting flights. But to be on the safe side I decided to ask whether I could go standby on the flight which is scheduled to leave one hour before my flight. This actually occurred just as they announced that my flight, a commuter jet, was delayed by a couple of hours, making it leave at least 30 minutes after the previous flight, instead of one hour before.
Much to my surprise I was called up for the new flight, but ended up with a middle seat fairly far back. Little did I know how much I would regret that decision. We finally leave the gate, and then spend forever on the taxiway. All the time I am looking at the time, and doing caculations to see if I would make the revised departure time (delayed) of my connecting flight.
As we landed at ATL, I checked my clock and then immediately called up the flight status for my connection. According to the website, the flight was still on the ground with a departure scheduled 15 minuets later. As it was departing from a gate close our our arrival gate I began to hope that I might be lucky this evening. We taxied over to the concourse, then the pilot cam on and said that our gate was still occupied, but that the other aircraft was loaded and would be pushing back very shortly. To cut a long story short, we stood outside the gate for a full hour after our arrival.
In the meanwhile, using my PDA with its Internet connection I was able to see that my connection flight left about 15 minutes after we should/could have deplaned. Adding insult to injury, while waiting I found out that the flight home before my connection was delayed even more, and I could have made that one, if we had not sat outside the gate for so long.
I understand, or at least try to understand, when airline operations fall to pieces because of weather conditions. But in this case I feel that Delta made a really stupid mistake by not arraning an alternative gate. This would of saved a number of passengers an unexpected night in Atlanta.
While Delta was probably claiming 'weather conditions' so not taking any responsibility for overnight expenses, if I had not been so tired (it was after all after midnight by the time we deplaned, I think we could have had an argument that it was not the weather, but poor planning and execution of their bad weather procedures that forced us to miss our flights.
The final mix-up occurred next morning, when I checked in for my 'replacement' flight. The evening before, on my way to the hotel, I had called Special Member Services to complain that I had bee rebooked on a 10:30 am flight next day. I was told all the earlier flights were full and that this was the first confirmed seat they could offer me. I asked to be placed on waitlist for the first flight (07:30 am), which was done. When I checked in in the morning, the selfservice machine just gave me a boarding pass for my 10:30 flight. Expecting a seat request for the 7:30, I quickly went to the Crown Room and asked why I was not listed for the 07:30. The agent checked everything for me and found that there was a single seat, at the back of the plane but aisle. The good news was that, now being confirmed in a seat, I was eligible fo the upgrade list. Given how busy things were, I did not even expect to get the upgrade, but my luck had turned. So there was at least one glimmer of sunshine in my trip.
But seriously Delta, please try harder and plan better.
It started with my flight out of PHL. Although evrything looked OK there, delays were being psoted for the ATL bound flights. Thunderstorms was the reason given, and normally I do not worry too much because all flights get messed up, including the connecting flights. But to be on the safe side I decided to ask whether I could go standby on the flight which is scheduled to leave one hour before my flight. This actually occurred just as they announced that my flight, a commuter jet, was delayed by a couple of hours, making it leave at least 30 minutes after the previous flight, instead of one hour before.
Much to my surprise I was called up for the new flight, but ended up with a middle seat fairly far back. Little did I know how much I would regret that decision. We finally leave the gate, and then spend forever on the taxiway. All the time I am looking at the time, and doing caculations to see if I would make the revised departure time (delayed) of my connecting flight.
As we landed at ATL, I checked my clock and then immediately called up the flight status for my connection. According to the website, the flight was still on the ground with a departure scheduled 15 minuets later. As it was departing from a gate close our our arrival gate I began to hope that I might be lucky this evening. We taxied over to the concourse, then the pilot cam on and said that our gate was still occupied, but that the other aircraft was loaded and would be pushing back very shortly. To cut a long story short, we stood outside the gate for a full hour after our arrival.
In the meanwhile, using my PDA with its Internet connection I was able to see that my connection flight left about 15 minutes after we should/could have deplaned. Adding insult to injury, while waiting I found out that the flight home before my connection was delayed even more, and I could have made that one, if we had not sat outside the gate for so long.
I understand, or at least try to understand, when airline operations fall to pieces because of weather conditions. But in this case I feel that Delta made a really stupid mistake by not arraning an alternative gate. This would of saved a number of passengers an unexpected night in Atlanta.
While Delta was probably claiming 'weather conditions' so not taking any responsibility for overnight expenses, if I had not been so tired (it was after all after midnight by the time we deplaned, I think we could have had an argument that it was not the weather, but poor planning and execution of their bad weather procedures that forced us to miss our flights.
The final mix-up occurred next morning, when I checked in for my 'replacement' flight. The evening before, on my way to the hotel, I had called Special Member Services to complain that I had bee rebooked on a 10:30 am flight next day. I was told all the earlier flights were full and that this was the first confirmed seat they could offer me. I asked to be placed on waitlist for the first flight (07:30 am), which was done. When I checked in in the morning, the selfservice machine just gave me a boarding pass for my 10:30 flight. Expecting a seat request for the 7:30, I quickly went to the Crown Room and asked why I was not listed for the 07:30. The agent checked everything for me and found that there was a single seat, at the back of the plane but aisle. The good news was that, now being confirmed in a seat, I was eligible fo the upgrade list. Given how busy things were, I did not even expect to get the upgrade, but my luck had turned. So there was at least one glimmer of sunshine in my trip.
But seriously Delta, please try harder and plan better.
Delta moving forward on technology again
Delta made some great news known this week, they are going be the first of the big airlines to offer WiFi on all their doemstic flights. The first aircraft will come online in the fall, and apparently they will be starting with the MD-88s. This is good news because those aircraft normally do not have an entertainment system. So now for $9.95, or $13.95 for longer flights, the entertainmnet will be 'surfing'.
Some of the comments in the Delta blog are suggesting that elite status travellers should get discounted or free access. I wholeheartedly agree!
Fly Delta into the future!
Thanks Delta
Some of the comments in the Delta blog are suggesting that elite status travellers should get discounted or free access. I wholeheartedly agree!
Fly Delta into the future!
Thanks Delta
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