Archive for the ‘english’ Category

ISP Monitor hack-a-day

Friday, June 27th, 2008

I have been busy this week adding new features to the site. I actually managed to add something new every day. So, what has changed?

Contact Form
I added a contact form to the “Contact” page. This was done because the addresses listed where getting huge amounts of spam each day. I noticed legit mails getting caught in the spam filter too. The new contact form however is database-driven so no more messages to us will get lost. Some work still needs to be done on the backend to actually reply to the messages and do some follow-up.

Password Reset
I’m working on a page where you can input your email address in order to receive a new password. When it’s done you will see it appear next to the login link.

Dynamic form Generator
I’m working on a class to handle form generation and validation. This will make it more easy for us to display forms and make layout changes to all forms at once. This will also be used in our admin section to make editing data a lot easier.

Subscription Managment
I had to recreate this page after the server crash but thanks to my new form class this is easier then ever. This will allow us to give others access to modify and add subscriptions, hopefully generating more content from foreign markets.

Site Translation Engine
Same as above, small engine to allow translations by others and display our content in your native language.

If you want to help out translating the site, software or manage subscriptions for your country, do contact us :)

WhiteDog has puppies!

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

New VW Beetle

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

My new watch

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

Women Driving

Monday, May 19th, 2008

ISP Monitor Update

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

From time to time, I will post updates about the ISP Monitor website and software and offer some sneak previews. So what have we been up to?

Compare Subscriptions
The engine that generates the subscriptions pages has been rebuilt. We were still using a static html frame and this has all been made dynamic. This also allows us to quickly add or change fields in the future. The page loads about twice as fast now as well. Soon we’ll add support for the “Boost” and “Speed” packs from Dommel. We’re also working on adding the subscriptions which include telephone services like Dommel HomeConnectand Scarlet Box. Obviously the engine needs some more tweaking :)

I also started working on a CMS to manage the subscriptions. It’s about the only thing I don’t have a frontend for yet. This will also (finally) allow others besides me to add subscriptions, hopefully getting some more international content.

Speed Test Maps
I added the ability to filter providers to make it easier to compare with “what you have”. A feature I wanted to add for a long time and was surptisingly easy to add :) Finally those coding standards turned to some good use!

Software
Not much going on here. Dommel was fixed, dxADSL was added and still waiting for word from EDPnet. Beta is available at the usual location.

A new watch for WhiteDog…

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Well, not really since I don’t wear a watch at the moment. I however stumbled on this beauty today:

This is the Sony Ericsson MBW-150. It’s not just a watch. It’s a bluetooth watch! It alerts you of incoming calls and messages, controls your music playback and even allows you to divert calls. It should work perfectly with my W880i phone. It should arrive before the end of the week. Stay tuned!

HDMI Sound Cards

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

As i am looking into upgrading my Home Theater to support Full HD, one problem that comes up is audio. While most people are just starting to become familiar with optical connections, the industry has already moved beyond that point. Thing like True HD sound use too much bandwidth to transfer over an optical connection.

So where does that leave us? HDMI supports video and audio. The only problem is combining the output from the graphics and sound card into one signal. I was initially looking for a video card with audio-in capabilities but did not find any that supported the newer HDMI 1.3 standard. This solution poses another problem as well: when such card becomes available, it will be very expensive. HDMI capable video cards however, are already available and very well priced.

The solution? HDMI capable sound cards. They have a HDMI input for the video signal from the graphics card and a HDMI output that sends out a combined Audio / Video signal. I have found 2 models already in the works:

Auzentech HDMI X-Tension Sound Card
Asus Xonar AV1

I will post more on them as they get released… and i decide which to buy :)

Robin Williams – Drunk Scotsman Invents “Golf”

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Windows cannot open this file

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Are you annoyed with this dialog box as well?

Just add the following registry key to disable that dialog and skip directly to “Open With”:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\
DWORD: NoInternetOpenWith – Value: 1