I decided to go with the strongest encryption that my router (Linksys WRT54GC) allowed, WPA2.

I noticed a couple days later that my internet speeds were crap and suspected the usual suspect – my isp Comcast.

After a couple days I suspected wireless was my issue so I ran some bandwidth tests. WPA2 performance was deplorable. I jacked in a lan cable and speeds soared. Upon further research I found that WPA2 encryption is just too much for consumer devices. To which I post the question, “Why even package a feature into your product that’s going to cause shit performance?”.

Bandwidth Test Results

WPA2

LAN

WPA

So I’ve switched to WPA and things seem to be speedy again. Wonder when I’ll officially break down and get an Airport Extreme. Maybe I’ll wait till 802.11z comes around.

Most young people who are tech savvy are always known in their families as “the computer whiz”. If you’re lucky, your entire family are computer whizzes, but even then there are levels of wizardry.

When it comes to my family and friends I love to help out or impart my technical knowledge whenever I can. I am always willing to lend a helping hand, but sometimes it can be a grand pain in the butt to help someone with a computer problem – especially when they live far away and you have to deal with Windows.

A while back – I found myself in one of these situations. My grandfather – who is pretty computer savvy for the most part (he owned an Apple IIe which I would play Frogger on back in the day) has become increasingly frustrated with computers. Part of his problem, as I’ve noticed watching him operating the computer is physical. His typing skills had always been excellent, but at 83 years of age, his dexterity is just not what it used to be. I also noticed that when he clicked the two button mouse, he would inadvertently click both buttons, again because his fine motor skills had been inhibited. This prompted me to get him a trackball mouse, which is a much more appropriate input device for his situation.

Still, he would often call me with user experience problems, most often having to do with Microsoft Outlook. His life-line nowadays to a lifetimes worth of friends is predominately email. When email is not working it is the single most important thing to get fixed right away and I have become the go-to person for my grandfather with all of his tech support problems.

It is a role I cherish – not only because I get quality time conversing with my grandfather on a regular basis, but because he is always very appreciative that I’ve fixed his problem, or eased his worries (he is always afraid hackers are getting at his personal financial records).

But life wasn’t always so peachy until I came up with an elegant solution. Often times I’d spend upwards of an hour to figure out what he “saw” and asking him to describe intimately the details of his actions to try to diagnose a problem he was having. Increasingly it became a frustration because neither he nor I felt we were making any progress. He felt upset and frustrated. He felt like a burden. He was not a burden at all, but the hearsay tech support had to stop.

My problem wasn’t that I didn’t know how to setup VNC or log in remotely to my grandfathers computer – I attempted to do that last time I was at his house (about 1.5 hours away). However, they have 1 DSL line and no good way to test what I had setup from the outside until it was too late.

The Nuts and Bolts

One Sunday I decided not to neglect my problem any longer. I administer various dedicated servers remotely 9-5 all the time, why shouldn’t I come up with a similar solution to help my grandfather?

The Problem

1. He’s far away, I want to setup the entire solution remotely – but he’s behind a firewall and I have no way of getting to his desktop to configure his computer. Or so I thought.
2. He is not computer savvy. As I believe most people in a similar situation as I was in, the person who needs help doesn’t have the ability to set it up themselves with instruction only, I had to do it for him.
3. Time. I wanted something I could jump on – fix and jump off. Sometimes I get a call M-F during the day and I need to fix it and then get back to business, luckily I’ve worked at companies that give me the flexibility I need when it comes to this.

The Solution

++

Once you’ve gained access, use Hamachi (free) to create a VPN connection to circumvent firewall restrictions. Don’t forget to use a secure password when setting up your hamachi network of which you and your family member(s) will be members.

Refer to my del.icio.us hamachi bookmarks for some good resources.

Now that Hamachi is running on their system and is on your network, you can access the computer anytime – all that is left is setting up VNC access. VNC essentially does the job that Copilot did for us initially – it’s just free.

I recommend Real VNC (also free). It bundles the server and the client together. Setup the server on the remote computer (password protect it for peace of mind) and connect to the computer locally using the Real VNC Viewer client.

If anyone finds this article useful – I’d love to hear about it! Comments welcome.

My first year at SXSW in 2005, I employed iChat and Rendevous to communicate with colleagues regardless of whether they were on my buddy list or not.

My second year at SXSW, seemed to be the year of Dodge Ball and texting like crazy. I got hit with almost $30 in text messaging overages, this year I upgraded my plan accordingly ahead of time.

This year the king is definitely Twitter with a mash up of DodgeBall. Each has it’s own strengths and weaknesses. Twitter is sometimes abused xxx: Just getting out of the shower (who cares?), but when utilized in the proper way, can be extremely useful to meet up with colleagues and friends.

Here are a couple of scenarios I’ve found that have worked well for me:

• Meals & Private Parties: When you’re looking for some place to get some grub or something to do at night and you don’t have definite plans. Camp on Twitter for a while. If someone broadcasts a plan that sounds appealing, it’s easy to directly message the person in your network without coming across as needy or obtrusive. Often, you meet a whole different group of people beyond your “click” which can be very rewarding.
• Fringe Colleagues: If you aren’t acquainted enough to have a colleagues phone number, Twitter is an excellent medium that is a bit more personal than IM. Direct texting, d username message is a great way to directly connect with someone in your personal network. Which is the equivalent of text messaging someone sans phone number
• Location: If you are broadcasting your location, Dodge Ball is the way to go. It has functionality that is very useful to let people know “where” you are. @foodie goodie is a good example of a typical Dodge Ball message. It is a great way to let your network know which venues you are bouncing around to at night and is particularly handy for conferences because your friends will not only receive your location, but DodgeBall is smart enough to know which location you are talking about and specifies address information as well. This is extremely helpful because it removes the whole mystery of where that venue is actually located in town. If Twitter implemented such a feature, I’m pretty sure Dodge Ball would vanish quickly from the Geek Niche.

Check out the Twitter FAQ for more details on commands.

Of course, everyone at SXSW for the most part is very technology oriented. We all have the latest whiz-bangs and tech products. The question is will it ever catch on to masses? These models also only work if the culture behind them is “open” and completely depends on the context of the network behind it. It progresses beyond “clicks” and social hierarchies. For example, do you remember that person in high school that would somehow find the party that was kept somewhat secretive and exclusive? If you Twitter, you’re broadcasting not only to people who you should know where you are, but also in some instances, to people who you don’t want to know. Invites are out the window, exclusivity is lost. There are some very lax privacy options you can set, but without further segmentation of your friend networks, this is impossible.

In closing, a lot of these tools break the boundaries between the virtual world of the internet and the physical world. I welcome this, though these services may just be a stepping stone towards more inter-operable services like loopt, as long as we can bridge the gap between carriers. What do you think about Twitter and Dodge Ball?