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Sharing thoughts and ideas on business, security and photographyDSTVmobile launch a cute new iDrifta for the iPhone/iPad
Posted on June 01, 2012Update : DSTV mobile sent me one of these to review. Some of my comments below are inaccurate. Take a look at the “unboxing” post here : Unboxing of iDrifta with lots of pictures and comments. Review can be found here.
Today DSTVmobile announced a cute new iDrifta specifically for the Apple iPhone and iPad devices. The iDrifta is styled to match your iDevice and is diminutive in size compared to the previously available Driftas. The new device seems to be powered directly from the iDevice so no worries about keeping it charged and waiting for when you need it. It comes with an inbuilt Apple dock connector so no cables to fiddle with or lose.
Image “stolen” from the DSTV website
Being built specifically for iDevices has both pros and cons. Up to now iPhone/iPad users only had the option of the wi-fi Drifta which didn’t plug directly into the iDevice and required you to connect over wi-fi, losing your internet connection in the process. Since the Drifta client application doesn’t multi task or suspend this wasn’t a big deal. Switching out to check mail or an incoming notification would have killed the client app anyway and you would have to wait 20 to 30 seconds to reload the app and have it pick up signal again, not very practical.
It is doubtful the new iDrifta solves this problem, although you may be able to stay connected to the internet and get your notifications, so switching apps you would have seen a notification and know for sure there is something for your attention.
I often find myself watching sport on the iPad as it has the perfect size screen for DSTVmobile. Any bigger and the picture gets really blocky. Being a bit ADHD I like to do a couple of things at once so after a while I tend to hook the Drifta up to the laptop and surf the net on the iPad. With this new device that flexibility would be lost – you can use it only with the iDevice.
Still, for those who want a Drifta to use on the go with the iPhone or iPad, this looks like a really good option. It will be available in 10 days time from the normal outlets.
As always, officially the device doesn’t support jailbroken iPhone/iPads. It is unclear which version of the Drifta software on the iDevice supports the iDrifta, so the current hacked versions floating around probably won’t work. Buyer beware.
I have sent some questions to Maiyo at DTSVmobile, so hope to provide more information and perhaps do a full review later.
Justin
Press Release below after the jump
Using your Windows 7 Laptop as a mobile hotspot #in
Posted on February 07, 2012Summary : This provides a way to share a connection (wired or 3G) from your laptop via wireless to other devices such as iPads, tablets or mobile phones.
Since I bought my iPad i don’t use my laptop (running Windows 7 Professional) as frequently, especially while travelling. I take the laptop with because there are some things that just don’t work as well on the iPad, but most nights the iPad allows me to check mail, read websites and just do enough of what needs being done. Both my laptop and iPad have a Cell C 2Gig / month prepaid card in them. As a result of the above usage patterns I am finding that in the last 2 months I have used up my allocation on the iPad by the end of the month while having unused bandwidth “lost” on the laptop.
I started looking around for a way to be able to share the bandwidth between the two more dynamically. There are hardware options to get a mobile hotspot, and these are available for as little as R700, however, this is yet another device to carry around and I already have too many, so for now that wasn’t the best option.
Google pointed me to a few software hotspots, I downloaded a few, but they all had limitations (such as only the “Pro” version being able to share a 3G connection) or wanted payment, which for software I hadn’t heard of and couldn’t test I wasn’t keen on.
After a little more searching I found the good news that Windows 7 has the functionality built-in. The only downside is that there is no GUI for this functionality. It requires a couple of DOS commands to be entered at the command prompt. No worries though, they can be scripted into a batch file which you can keep on your desktop and then just run as required (though it must be run as administrator).
The specific commands required are :
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=AAA key=BBB netsh wlan start hostednetwork pause netsh wlan stop hostednetwork pause
Note that the specific name of the connection you are creating must be inserted in the first line where I have AAA and your chosen key replaces the BBB.
Create a batch file (wifihotspot.bat) on your desktop, cut and paste in the above lines, edit the batch file, replacing the names with your choice. That is it. You should now be able to run the batch file (as administrator) and share your connection. To do so, just right-click on the batch file, select Run as administrator and away you go. Simple and effective.
The pause statements are to show you the status after the network is set up, and then to allow you to leave the batch window open until you want to shut down the network, press a key and it’s off. If you prefer you could split this into two separate batch files for an “on” and “off”.
On my machine I get the following responses when running the batch file:
C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=AAA key=BBB The hosted network mode has been set to allow. The SSID of the hosted network has been successfully changed. The user key passphrase of the hosted network has been successfully changed.
C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan start hostednetwork The hosted network started.
C:\Windows\system32>pause Press any key to continue . . .
C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan stop hostednetwork The hosted network stopped.
C:\Windows\system32>pause Press any key to continue . . .
Enjoy, and please share any enhancements, improvements or problems being experienced.
Updates to the “Unofficial DStv Drifta FAQ”
Posted on November 26, 2011There has been quite a bit of Drifta related news over the last while so I have added more questions and updated sections of the FAQ. The main changes have been :
- Blackberry availability
- Mac OS X availability
- Updates to Android compatibility list
- Walka handheld TV
Temporary mobile internet access in Spain (Valencia)
Posted on November 10, 2011Getting access to the Internet when travelling can sometimes be easy ( when the hotels provide free wifi) and other times prove to be tricky and expensive, especially when using roaming access from your cell phone.
Ahead of the current trip to Valencia, Spain I did some research and found a few options for prepaid 3G access. All the cell providers had options, including Vodafone and Yoigo.
In practice life was not so easy, the language barrier and shop assistants who were not into playing charades left me without access after going into numerous shops.
Finally I came across some websites who suggested Carrefour. I headed across to the closest one (near the city of arts and sciences) found a slightly more helpful assistant and picked up a Carrefour Movil prepaid Internet sim for 5 euros. They accepted my South African drivers license as ID since my passport was at the hotel. The SIM has no credit preloaded, so I loaded on another 10 euro. This gives 100 meg of data a day for 1 euro a day, and uncapped 128k speeds after the 100 meg.
At first the SIM didn’t work, but after manually creating an APN with “carrefourinternet” as the APN and all worked great. Mobile hotspot on Android 2.2 meant access could be shared between the iPad Laptop and other mobile devices. 100 meg gets used up quickly but the uncapped 128k works well enough and we are getting through about 250meg a day. For 1 euro that’s a bargain and much better value than the 20 euro a day fee at the hotel (only HTTP browsing is free).
Whenever travelling, try get a local prepaid SIM, you will certainly save yourself a packet.
Designed to fail – when things that should work just don’t #dstvmobile #fail #android
Posted on September 21, 2011In some ways this could be considered a followup post to the one I did last week on “A week with the DStv mobile Android application, the good and the bad” (link here).
Let’s start with the purpose of the DStv service, the Drifta and the supporting applications. At it’s most basic level, the purpose is to let us (the consumer) watch tv, and to let DStv earn revenue from providing us with that service.
Our obligation is to pay the initial fee for the device, and to pay the monthly service fee. DStv’s obligation is to provide a working service that allows us to watch the broadcast when we choose to do so, in the advertised areas of coverage, on the advertised devices.
This morning, that service failed me. How? Well, I have my paid for Drifta, have paid my monthly subs, and have the DStv mobile application loaded on a legitimate (non rooted, supported) device.
I turned on the Drifta, it connected to the DVB-H signal. I turned on my HTC Desire, connected to the Internet, loaded up the application. Up came the “authenticating” message, which then stayed on screen for a while before a message came up to the effect that the authentication server was unavailable, please try again later.
I tried many times over the next few minutes, each time with the same result. All the while the game I was wanting to watch was carrying on, without me watching. In frustration I tweeted out “Aargh. Drifta has DVB-H signal and is connected. HTC desire says Unable to reach authentication server try in few minutes. #norugby #fail“.
A colleague has an iPhone, which also has the application loaded on it. He came over to my desk and we tried to connect it to my Drifta. It first tried to connect to the last Drifta it had been used with, when that didn’t work it did a re-scan and connected to mine. It worked. First time, no problem, and the game came up. I got to see around five minutes for the second half before he needed to leave, and sent out a second tweet “Any Android users managing to watch Drifta? Authentication server wl.dstvmobile.com seems to be down. Working fine on colleagues iphone :(“
I received a reply shortly after “@jjza The Android Auth server ISP is experiencing connectivity issues. Techs working on the problem. Will keep you updated. #Drifta“. Replied “thanks Neil. Not happy but appreciate the feedback.” and two hours later received the update “@jjza #Drifta #Android Auth server connection should be back up. Please try again.” An hour later I tried again, it worked, and I replied to that effect.
Fine, it was working again, but I had missed the game. DStv had failed to deliver the service I was paying for. #fail
I am unhappy with this situation. Not because DStv messed up and didn’t provide the service. We all mess up from time to time and nobody can expect 100% perfect service. However, why should it work on one device and not another. There is no mention of this in any of the advertising or product documentation.
In introducing the Android application, DStv mobile have, by design, introduced an added level of complexity, and an additional point of failure, which can (and does) seem to fail often. Why is it that an iPhone can use the service without needing to authenticate (every time) to the DStv servers yet Android cannot have this same luxury. What possible reason is there for punishing Android users in this manner?
The only reason given is that the application is authorised (by DStv mobile) to work on certain Android devices (and not others – the logic behind that we will leave for another time). So whenever we load the application it checks to see whether it is “allowed” to use the application. This seems like a reasonable step, but is it really?
The idea behind this was to allow DStv to control the Android devices on which the application will work, and allow additional devices to be added without needing to release a new version of the application each time. The authentication information is anonymous, so of course it is not being collected and being used for any purposed other than authentication (such as usage statistics, device usage patterns etc) as that would be unethical, and quite possibly in terms of the upcoming Protection of Personal Information Act would be illegal too.
One can safely assume also that if a device is added to the “white list” of supported devices that it would then be allowed to used on that device and that privilege would not be revoked.
Surely then this authentication could be a one-off process. You download the app from the store, it is a “virgin app”. It phones home, sends through the device (not user, network, location and other) details, confirms it is allowed to work, and then is permanently activated. If the device is not on the white list, and error message can be displayed and the software remain inactive. The user can then try again in a week or two. If the application was really smart, it could then even do a push notification when the device was finally whitelisted, but let us not over complicate the situation.
So what would the benefits of this be?
- Activation would be one-off
- No internet connection would be needed every time you wanted to load the application
- No dependency would be created on an ISP to make sure the authentication server is up
- No dependency would be created on the cellular service provider to make sure their service is working
- You would not have to check both the DStv and Cell provider websites for coverage to see whether you can use your device
- No nagging suspicion would be created that just maybe DStv are collecting more information than they say, more often than they say
- I would have been able to watch the game
Let me repeat that last line, I would have been able to watch the game that I paid to watch.
So the ISP let DStv down. What was their Business Continuity Plan to make sure that this newly introduced (just for Android users) point of failure had redundant controls? There are so many more questions that could be asked here, the answers of which could affect whether their product offering complies with the Consumer Protection Act. Instead let us just ask, what is the solution.
In my mind, it is quite simple. Fix the application. Allow the authentication to be one-off (monthly if you must). And while you are at it, remove the Drifta BIOS update from the application, we don’t have to carry that around on the phone with us all the time, space is precious, and a bloated application double the necessary size is not welcome.
DStv, I really like the idea of the service, I recommend it to lots of people, in person and on twitter. I am an evangelist for your product, but I am also honest and a realist. Your Android application sucks, but is easily fixable. I can no longer recommend to anyone that they purchase your service to use on an Android device, you have designed it to fail. Please fix that so I can enjoy the product as it should work, and let your customers get the service they pay for (or would pay for).
Blackberry Data useage numbers in SA using DAVID #in
Posted on August 08, 2010I have been curious about Blackberry data useage for a while. The Blackberry contracts (BIS/BES) are around R65/month and include unlimited data for on-device browsing, email, IM, etc. I do a fair amount of browsing on my Blackberry (rather than my Nokia) largely because of the data. I have a small (30 Meg) data bundle on the Nokia and I regularly go over the limit. Not difficult to do given that some web pages (even on the mobile device) take a few hundred K, making it every easy to use a Meg or two reading just a few sites.
The other factor is that Blackberry is said to use a fair degree of compression through the use of their own data proxies and their own services. So how much value for money do I really get out of the Blackberry service?
I looked around for a tool to monitor the useage, and came across a few, but only one seemed as though it would be up to the task, so I downloaded “David” from the blackberry appstore. It is a 60 day trial version, but is more than adequate for monitoring a few days useage.
After 2 days, here is how it’s looking :
Two days useage +- 18 Meg (and after the 1st day it was around 9 Meg).
That includes Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, downloading some apps, browsing the net, BB Messenger etc. I am really impressed with the relatively low data useage given my patterns of useage. Anyhow, some very quick sums and it would be around 270 megabytes of data per month. For the price paid for the BIS/BES useage, that is really good value for money.
I’m probably an outlier on useage, though perhaps not in the top 2% of users. Still, for anybody looking to make decent useage of their mobile device and not to have to worry about crazy high bills, the Blackberry with “uncapped” data useage is a really good deal. BB Messenger also works a good deal better than MXit, they way its integrated into the device and has message delivery and read statuses. No more messages lost in the ether.
I’m interested in hearing about other people’s useage patterns and their thoughts on the Blackberry data bundle and value for money.
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