Month: May 2006

Blackberry juice

As of this month, Bell Mobility will now officially support the Blackberry 7250 for high-speed EVDO (~1Mbps nominal speeds). EVDO is now available in all major urban centres in Canada, and coverage is expanding all the time – why, this week they turned on EVDO in the Muskokas, in case you need to get your Google Maps fix while on the lake. Later this year they will upgrade the network to run at 3Mbps. So…it’s a good thing to have.

Here’s how to get it:

# Backup all your data and extra programs from your Blackberry, just in case.
# Upgrade to Version 4.1 Desktop and Handheld Software.
NOTE: Upgrading will take 10 minutes at which time the device will appear unresponsive. This is perfectly normal.
NOTE to BES Enterprise Mail users: You will need to redo the Enterprise Activation after the upgrade.
# Go to one of select Bell World stores to get your device re-flashed to EVDO. They *should not* be charging for this service as it is a maintenance upgrade.
# The indicator should indicate “1XEV” when the Mobile Browser is running (assuming you are in the EVDO coverage area, such as the Greater Toronto Area).

Detailed instructions here.

You may also notice that the new v4.1 Handheld software will now let you to use the 7250 as a wireless modem. It’s expensive though, so I would check with Bell World for unlimited plans.

If it’s advertised in spam, it must be true

The New York Times chats with antispam vendor MessageLabs about all the crazy and clever tricks spammers try to get their genitalia enlargement pharmaceuticals and pump-and-dump stocks to us:

But spammers have hardly given up, and as they improve and adapt their techniques, network managers must still face down the pill-pushers, get-rich-quick artists and others who use billions of unwanted e-mail messages to troll for income…

Shortly after MessageLabs created a filter to catch the stock spams, the images they contained changed again.

They were now arriving with what looked to the naked eye like a gray border. Zooming in, however, the MessageLabs team discovered that the border was made up of thousands of randomly ordered dots. Indeed, every message in that particular spam campaign was generated with a new image of the border — each with its own random array of dots.”

I have to admit, now that my ISP migrated to a new mail platform, and with Gmail filtering the rest of my mail, and finally Mozilla running a Bayesian filter, things seem to have quieted down. But I still recognize half of these tricks mentioned in the article, and it’s interesting to finally find out what was the reasoning behind the scenes. Junkmailers seem to be using every hack in the book, pushing HTML and IP to heights unknown.

Examples: the careful crafting of messages with spelling mistakes or metaphors (such as the use of “gappy text” or calling a Rolex a “wrist accessory”), to splicing email with images and obscure HTML, to using viruses and spyware to turn our PCs into their email servers.

Another crazy piece of trivia: it is estimated that 10% of all email traffic on the Internet originates from two men. One is a Ukrainian spammer with four known aliases, and the other is a convicted Boston spammer currently hiding out in Russia.

The Drake and the Devil

You must understand the Drake to embrace it. When I was waiting for two of my boys to get out of the loo last Friday night, I spied an intricate set of circular brushed metal meters, the type you might see on an old-fashioned water boiler. They were set against the wall in a mess of thick steel piping, and were labelled with locations such as “LOUNGE” and “PATIO”.

Every red line in every meter was jammed firmly to the right, past the maximum value inscribed. Except one. Oh, it was maxed out too, but it also pulsated, almost imperceptible in its tight vibrations, to the beat of a subwoofer that reverberated some distance away.

And this was only 10 ‘oclock.

The Drake Hotel is a former flophouse on Queen St. West that has gentrified itself into a “scenester” (as Space Cadet calls it) type of place that has no qualms in charging you $30 for eight slices of spring lamb. Thanks to a few million in angel investment, it’s become a tumble of bohemian and art deco and beautiful bodies, smack dab in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city. And mind you, the lamb doesn’t taste like $30, but you are still having an incredible time.

SSPX0063small.jpgAfterwards, thanks to an inside connection (thanks T!), we went to the front of the line at Devil’s Martini. Lots of sound, lots of liquor, and lots of bodies. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

Aside: Everything went swimmingly except for my annoying cab ride home. Cabbie claims he takes credit card, but when we get to my place, we find out his machine has run out of ink. Since I only had a ten, I suggest him driving me to the ATM about two klicks away, as long as he keeps the meter off.

So we drive up to the ATM, I get the cash, I step back into the cab and give him the fare plus tip, and he tells me to get out and walk home because he “can’t afford to drive [me] back for free”. I argued – at least as much as you can argue at 3am after drinking screwdrivers – but to no avail. I walked two kilometres home and only realized when I entered the front door that I left him a tip – a tip that technically would have been enough to cover the trip.