DNS is used to convert the human readable domain names we use on the internet (such as amazon.co.uk), into machine readable IP addresses (e.g. 87.238.81.129).

Your computer accomplishes this by using a Name Server (NS), the NS your computer uses normally defaults to the one supplied by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). However the NS from your ISP may not be the fasted performing or have as many extra features a 3rd party NS providers. The speed with which the NS converts the Domain Name into an IP is the resolving speed. The resolving speed can be affected by various factors such as the speed of the NS server itself, the latency of your connection to the NS and the physical distance of the NS from you. So in order to maximise the speed of your web browsing etc. its important to have the fastest DNS resolving speed possible.

A good and easy to use tool that allows you to test the resolving speed of your current NS, vs various 3rd party ones is Namebench. This tool will send multiple DNS requests from your computer to your current NS and to the 3rd party NS list that Namebench includes by default. It then outputs a report comparing the resolving speed of your current NS vs the 3rd party NS services. It will also recommend the fastest NS for your internet connection. In my case using the DNS Advantage NS gave around an 80% speed boost.

If you’re not so worried about speed, you can also use your NS as an extra layer of security.

Antivirus

Software Firewall

Router with NAT Translation and a Stateful Packet Inspection Firewall

Have separate User and Admin accounts

User Account Control (UAC)

Windows 7

Use a 64 bit version of Windows 7

Use Google chrome as your default browser

Don’t install standalone Flash

Don’t use Adobe Reader

DNS servers

Turn on Microsoft Update

However I am lazy and want to have to have to go to the first direct website all the time, to launch the app. Also, I don’t use IE as my default web browser and the direct link on the first direct page is hidden by JavaScript. Which means it’s not possible to use a normal web shortcut.

After some experimentation, I found creating the application shortcut with the below code works well:

(this is a shortcut for a 64-bit system hence the (x86), if on a 32-bit system modify the link accordingly)

With the web being at most 15 years old, it is almost impossible to get usernames you’d actually want on popular services such as Google. I realise this is something that affects all popular service and it’s unfair to focus on solely on Google, however it easier to focus on one service and it is with Google that I find this annoyance with usernames most acutely.

As of now it is pretty much impossible to get any decent email address on Gmail, at least if you have an Anglo name. Have fun trying to get tommorris@gmail.com or any other combination of initials or letters that are vaguely recognisable without having to resort to adding random numbers/letters at the end e.g. johnsmith3451@gmail.com, which not only looks stupid is starting to become a barrier to usability, as the more random character that are introduced the greater the possibility of transcription errors when people write down the address.

We are having this problem now with only 15 years on the web and 25% of the world population on-line. The proportion of the global population using the web will only grow as it becomes more fundamental to the functioning of society, the global population itself could grow to as high as 10.5 billion by 2050, this is compounded in that future generations will likely use the web to a greater extent than current generations.

So how can a web service provider like Google address this? In the example of Gmail they could possibly add more available domains on top of gmail.com, but I expect this will only partially help. One way to counter this, at least in the medium term is to allow users to use their own domains with Gmail, this is of course possible now with Google Apps. However this is a very business/institution focused service and doesn’t account for people using it for personal use. However the fact remains that many people use apps for personal use and this likely to grow as the pressure on traditional usernames increases.

It seems to me that Google should take notice of this trend and create an apps product targeted at personal/family use, which enables full integration with Google’s existing services. Otherwise it takes the risk of alienating users who may move elsewhere.

However, there are have been a couple of especially irritating issues, which is due to my use of Google Apps. The crux of the problem, is that the Google Apps account is not perceived to be a “Google account”  by Google. So in order to access Google services other than those available through Apps, you will have to create a Google account.

Naturally I already had a Google account, but thought i’d set up a new one with my Apps email in order to keep everything together (or so I thought!). This is where the issues start, as when you create a Google account, it also creates a contact list for that Google account, separate to the contact list in the Apps account.

So because of this I can use Google Reader with my Google Account, but can’t use the social features with the contact list in my Apps account. I also can’t link faces to Apps contacts in Picasa. I’m sure there are other areas where this is an issue, but this the most I have come up with so far.

Needless to say this incredibly annoying, especially when it comes from Google, a company that claims to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful“. Unfortunately they aren’t doing a very good job of organising Google Apps data and making it available to their own products.

I believe both these services have a good chance of being successful in their own right, however I think both could complement each other if combined into a product which leverages the unique strengths of the other.

Why Google Voice should integrate with Truphone Local Anywhere

One of the biggest possible constraints to the rollout of Google Voice, in markets besides the US, will probably be the need to integrate with the local PSTN network in each country. Instead of doing all the leg work itself, Google Voice could plug-in to the Truphone MVNO architecture which can offer global PSTN coverage in one fell swoop.

Truphone integration could also enable Google Voice to be less reliant on mobile data connections by utilising Truphone’s sim technology. Google could then market itself as a truly global phone company.

Why Truphone should integrate with Google Voice

Google Voice could really complement the Local Anywhere product, the features added by Voice through the web app would make the product far more compelling as well as provide a unique selling point over other roaming sim providers. The halo effect from integrating with a Google product could also drive a lot more attention to Truphone.

Other companies integrating with Google Voice is not unheard of, for example Gizmo 5 has enabled integration with Google Voice already.

I have owned a Windows Home Server (WHS) for quite a while now and a year or so ago I bought an Xbox 360 to accompany it, mainly for the media streaming capabilities. However trying to setup streaming to the 360 proved to incredibly annoying. This is mainly due to the fact that the codec and container support of the default solution: using the 360 as a media centre extender, is supremely crap, which when faced with my media collection which has a large number of Anime files in various containers like .mkv with various codec types and soft subtitle files on top, led to situation in which it failed miserably.

The only real chance of getting this media to display on the 360, without going through and re-encoding all my media, is to transcode. At the time the program I used to attempt this was Tversity. However even this had problems, namely getting Tversity to recognise .mkv files was inordinately hard and forget about trying to get soft-subs to work.

So I gave up on streaming nirvana, until the past week where I thought i’d have another stab at it, hoping that the general situation for streaming to the 360 would have improved. After a couple of days of messing around, I have finally managed to find a solution that will not only stream all my media to the 360, but also embed soft-subs as well!

I will outline the process I followed to achieve this below, but the main reason for my current success, I believe, is replacing Tversity as the media server/transcoder with PS3 Media Server (ironic I know). I installed PS3 Media Server on my desktop instead of the WHS because the processor is far more powerful, and you will require a decent processor to enable effective transcoding, however if you have a decent processor in your WHS you could probably just install PS3 Media Server on it without needing the desktop.

The steps I followed:

• Install PS3 Media Server
• Install AVISynth 2.5.7, which can be found here (apparently 2.5.8 may not work well with PS3 Media Server)
• Install a codec pack, I use CCCP
• In CCP settings: Set the FFDShow Audio Mixer to 2/0/0 Stereo
• In CCP settings: Set “Autoload VS Filter” to true
• In PS3 Media Server, select the folders you want to share to your 360
• (Optional) In Haali settings: Configure audio/subtitles language priorities, I suggest the following If you watch anime:
  • Audio Language Priority: jpn
  • Subtitle Language Priority: eng

You should now be able to access the media server via UPNP on your 360 (assuming your network is setup correctly), PS3 Media Server will display the folder structure of your media collection on the 360, but will also include a “TRANSCODE” folder in each folder, this allows you to select different transcode options for each individual video file from the 360 itself, I use the “Avisynth/MEncoder” option most of the time, as it tends to give the best results.

Having recently moved to Gmail from Hotmail, I thought I should tackle another email related task I’ve been putting off, namely setting up a backup regime for my email.

I have previously never bothered as I have always thought the chances of a company like Microsoft or Google losing email to be quite remote, however this is more an attitude born of laziness than good sense, as a quick search will show mistakes can happen.

So with this in mind, I set about finding the easiest way to backup my Gmail account. I came across a simple solution (that suits me at least), which leverages my old Hotmail account. All I did was setup the Hotmail account to collect mail from my Gmail account via POP and dump it in a newly created folder called “Gmail Backup”. I selected “Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)” in the pop settings so it would pull all the mail in the Gmail account to the Hotmail account.

I’ve found this to work really well, as it will pull down not only the email received at the Gmail account, but also all the email I send from the account. Granted the mail on the Hotmail end is completely unstructured (i.e. no labels or differentiation between sent and received mail) but it’s better than nothing and best of all it works completely automatically without any input from me required.

Hopefully this will prove a fairly resilient system, as I imagine the chances of Microsoft and Google both destroying/losing/incinerating my email, at the same time, to be vanishingly small. Or perhaps I’m being lazy again…

Essentially the service uses the existing global MVNO infrastructure Truphone received through its acquisition of Sim4Travel last year, to provide a sim that allows you to have multiple inbound numbers.

These numbers can be in several different countries, for instance you could have a number in the UK and France, where ringing either number would call your mobile phone wherever you can get mobile reception with Sim4Travel (which is pretty much anywhere in the world!). The main benefit of this is that people can call you at local rates even if you are abroad, and you don’t have to pay the extortionate roaming rates that traditional mobile carriers charge.

This video gives an intro to the service:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY_R6yNNlVQ[/youtube]

However information regarding the details of the service is still a bit sparse, things i’d like know:

• Will you be able to interface with the service via SIP? e.g. if I already have a DDI will I be able to forward it to the local anywhere service to answer calls?
• Will I be able to get land line numbers for it as well as mobile numbers? Having land line number could save callers a lot of money, potentially allowing people to call your mobile for free (if their land line plan includes free calls to land line numbers)
• Will the service support data as well as calls and texts, and if so will it enable realistic usage (e.g. being able to buy usage in gigabytes) at reasonable cost?
• Will it be possible to sign up to contracts (perhaps rolling 30 day contracts) to secure better pricing?
• Will there be any integration with the Truphone phone client e.g. could the voip client transparently handover calls to the gsm network when you go out of wifi range?
• Will call charges be the same as Sim4Travel? How will the extra inbound numbers be priced, or will that be recouped through call charges?
• If you port your number to the service, can you port it back out to another mobile carrier as per normal? e.g. using a PAC code
• Could you have more than one number in one country e.g. one for personal use and one for business?
• Will it be possible to integrate the service with ENUM?