Archive for the 'tech' Category

Nokia N95 SIP “unable to connect to the connection server”

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As many other happy owners of one of latest (well, it was released more than year ago, but it is still quite modern) gadget from Nokia, I could only use a fraction of its features, which it has in abundance. There are some rarely used (has anyone ever used “barcode scanner”? ), some just not frequent, but some of them are just not easy to use. And some have bugs despite it has been a long time since phone’s firmware was first released.

Device has WI-FI. And SIP VoIP client. And I was desperate to find a way to make cheap, or, better, free international calls. Finding VoIP provided isn’t hard - there are plenty of them around, and I am currently with JustVoIP (free landline calls to some countries, particularly to one I am interested in, guess which one), but getting communicator working with it was something similar to playing DOOM 2 on “Nightmare”. Yes, every time, again and again, I was getting wise error message “Unable to connect to the connection server”. No explanation why and what to do about it.

You, probably, already came across small truckload of Nokia SIP setup guide, but still could not get that working, as I did. Well, this is not because these guides suck, they just miss a point.

Before configuring SIP, make sure you switch Wireless power saving off. On my Nokia it was of by default, which, I guess leads session initiation to break when phone thinks nobody uses WiFi.

To switch power saving off, go to: Settings->Connection->Wireless Lan->Option->Advanced settings. Power saving option will be at the bottom, switch it off.

Now you can return to your provider’s connection guide and repeat attempt. A couple of other points I also noticed are:

  • Always enter your public name as xxxx@myvoipprovider.com, where xxx is username or SIP number they provided to you. Don’t forget to replace myvoipprovider.com with your provider’s domain name
  • It may be worthwhile using server IP address instead of domain name in proxy and registrar server options
  • I could not find how “Realm” affects the connection
  • User name is case sensitive!

In my case, justvoip started to work right after I switched power saving off. Voip quality rocks - people on the other side of globe think I somewhere much closer :)

Software engineering proverbs.

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Software is Too Important to be Left to Programmers, by Meilir Page-Jones

More proverbs here.

Another joke:

Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end. (Henry Spencer)

From here.

Splashtop: Mozilla in BIOS.

This entry is also available in: Русский

It happened.

Now it is hard to get amazed by a newly released hi-tech gadget or a new “technology”. It looked like everything has already been invented, and while we discuss whether .NET framework’s performance is good or bad or what hard disk drive to buy to install Vista on it, Asus released motherboards with integrated linux.

Just imagine - you turn your PC on and desktop appears immediately with  read-to-use Web browser, Skype and more. Of course, this still looks like a toy rather a useful solution, but it depends what we want from computer. This technology exactly fits “home media center” idea - it is not a big deal to add all essential media players, photo gallery software to the flash and you’ll get a device that just works. No more worries about viruses, firewalls, malware and the whole hard disk is at your hand - operating system does not take a fraction from it, not talking about enormous tens of gigabytes needed for Windows Vista.

I don’t think Windows will die in near future, however I think such ideas can add a big nail into its coffin.

I wonder how soon we’ll see notebooks and desktops with all essential software in a flash on motherboard?