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SquareUp accepts CHIP cards now – will it be enough to get back on track ?

It seems that Square has seen the light, perhaps sooner than the rest of the US : swiping your card is showing to be more and more to be a security and fraud risk. In 2015, all new cards in the US will contain an EMV chip.

This is the reason why I wrote on this same blog in 2011 that Square wouldn’t be able to work in Europe in it’s current configuration

So a few weeks ago, they introduced a new cardreader that can accept EMV Chip-enabled cards. The EMV page contains some worthwhile statistics about exactly *why* the US is moving to using EMV cards. The numbers are staggering : it seems that the US has 24% of all credit card sales, but 50% of the fraud !

The following are lots of links to articles around the web discussing this new card reader and it’s impact for Square.

Mashable has a short article about this new reader, but if you want the technical in-depth details, go for the Ars Technica article. There you can learn for example that the new card reader is not yet fully chip-and-pin compatible : for now, you can only do a signature using the chip card, as the new guidelines in the US do not require that PIN is enabled.

Forbes has some interesting tidbits as well about Square, that it has lost 100 million in 2013, and has burned through more than half of it’s venture capital. Not good for a young company that needs to grow.

Which makes me think that Square is betting big on this new card reader to climb back out of the red.

If they are very quick (and *if and when* their adapter can also do PIN) they might still be able to grab themselves a slice of the market here in Europe and other parts of the world – there are still people here that would love to use the Square card reader as well. However, more and more competitors are launching themselves here, for example iZettle is already active in several European countries.

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Google ChromeCast : nice but limited (in Belgium, for now)


Last month I was passing through France and had the opportunity to buy a Google Chrome Cast doohicky for 35 euros; since then you can now also buy it in Belgium.

For those not in the know : the Chromecast dongle allows you to ‘cast’ things from your smartphone to your tv. So for example you can show Youtube clips or the latest snaps of your kids on your tv.

Setup is a breeze, really the easiest setup ever for such a complicated interaction of software and hardware – just install the hardware on your tv and install the chromecast app on your smartphone, the app gets you up and running in minutes.

Behind the scenes it must be quite complex: the app disconnects your smartphone from your wireless network, searches for the Chromecast dongle which is on it’s own default network, and asks your wifi password so it can pass it on to the Chromecast, updates it with the latest firmware, reconnects to your network, and it’s working ! I was fairly impressed with the ease of setup.

Once the setup is done, you can start ‘casting’ pictures, home-videos, etc from your smartphone to the chromecast. Each app that can do that has a chromecast icon somewhere that you can tap, and then select your chromecast dongle.

The data you are casting is actually not directly sent to the chromecast, but first goes up to the internet, and then back down to your dongle.

  • Disadvantage : your casted picture/video travels out of your local network, to make a detour on the internet – more distance makes it slower
  • Advantage : Google Movies / Netflix movies / Youtube clips stream at a decent resolution for your smartTV, and probably come ‘directly’ from the Google/Netflix/Youtube servers instead of traveling via your app.

I played around with it for few days, and here is my feedback :

  • It makes any tv with a spare HDMI and spare USB port a ‘Smart TV’ so you can upgrade your TV for a low low price of 35 euros
  • It plays well with your smartphone and any apps that can cast data (I use Android, YMMV on an iPhone)
  • In our world where our mobile phone is becoming more and more a centerpiece of our live, this integrates very nicely
  • If you could just use it for casting your own pics and (silly YouTube) videos, then the price of 35 euros is just right to make your tv smart, but it will be sitting mostly unused behind your tv: unfortunately out-of-view is out-of-mind
  • However, when you can use it to control your NetFlix account (or other similar streaming service)and order movies from your mobile to stream to your TV, *then* it becomes much more interesting !
  • Netflix has announced that it is coming to Belgium sometime this year. Meanwhile Google has quietly opened Google ‘Play’ Movies in Belgium as well… in the same week as they announced that their Google Chromecast is available in Belgium as well…

    Hmmmm… smells like a strategy to me 🙂

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TP-Link, D-Link, Devolo with HomePlug AV are all compatible

I just bought a new TP-Link starter kit to replace my last Devolo device (since I’m not a fan of Devolo anymore). Cheap when compared to other devices, especially as it has 2 ETHernet ports, which is what I was looking for.

The title on the box of the TP-Link starter kit, however, is a bit misleading : 300Mbps AV500 Wifi Powerline Extender Starter Kit.

My eyes just skimmed over the first words (300Mbps) and I immediately went looking for another device than this, because I was searching for a *500* Mbps AV device. Not a 300 Mbps.

I took me a few times to actually completely read the description on the device (after looking at more expensive devices). Turns out that it is actually a 500Mbps AV device, and the 300Mbps is for the WIFI part of it !!

TP-Link, you might want to change that… Customers might think like me that this is a 300Mbps device and go for another device.

The devices itself are small. The plastic does not feel perhaps as sturdily made as Devolo or D-Link, both of them seem like big blocks compared to the TP-Link device. However, that is not what you buy it for… So far, the TP-link devices certainly work, with almost zero setup.

Using WPS on the router I activated the Wifi-Cloning at the TP-Link device, a few blinks, done, and then it automatically repeated my wifi. Where the wi-fi reception in the kitchen was guaranteed to be close to non-existant, due to the router being behind multiple walls with different angles all the way at the other side of the house, suddenly reception of my network is now between 3 and 4 bars ! ETHernet ports work as well, as I can stream video from my NAS to my tv.

I can also confirm that TP-Link, D-Link and Devolo all happily talk to each other – as long as it states on the box that they are AV Homeplug compatible they should work fine together !

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Importing a comma-separated csv file into Numbers Tool

I created this to scratch an itch of mine when reading a csv file into Numbers that contained commas. It turned out that Numbers puts each line into a single cell. It ignores the commas. And there’s no way to specify that the delimiter needs to be a comma, not a semi-colon.

Here’s a small tool made using a small python script and Platypus that will launch as a ‘droplet’ and will allow you to drop a csv file on it that has COMMA (meaning this , ) separated values.

It will accept any csv file and convert from commas (,) to semi-colons (;) and save the result out again as “filename2.csv” – Numbers should be able to open it correctly then. Your original csv file is only read.

Please note that commas inside double quotes are preserved and not converted.

It works on my smallish csv files, but please note :

! WARNING ! THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES THAT THIS WILL WORK FOR YOU – YMMV ! WARNING !

Please note there is NO feedback if something goes wrong.

It works on my 2 macs (using OS X Mavericks), so I figured I would throw it out in the wild for those people who also might need it.

You can download the (non-signed) app here : Com2DotCom.app – you’ll need to open it using RIGHT-CLICKING on the App the first time.

Feedback, comments, bug reports, etc are very welcome. If possible, I’ll try to respond and help you out.

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Apple iWork updates : Numbers becomes slightly more useful

Some new iWork updates this morning on my Mac Mini : KeyNotes, Pages and Numbers can now save password protected documents, can now display charts based on time series, more compatibility with MS Office Documents.

iOs Keynote Apps have received similar updates.

You can now do some things with Numbers that Office Excel already can since ages : sort on multiple columns, chart on time series… Progress!

All in all a good update, but frankly, this is late in coming, and the updates should continue coming to get even more functionality in there. I understand that this is a from-the-ground-up-rewrite, but these functionalities are what people expect from the start, not delivered 6 months or more waiting for it.

Now if only with the new version I could figure out how to updating an existing chart line with a new entry that is in the same column as 4 other chart lines…

I have one column of numbers that has a monthly entry for each measurement. Multiple years in one column. I want to graph each year in this column separately. This works, but when I add a new monthly measurement at the end of the column and try to update the appropriate graph line, this results in a mess of graph lines.

So far, I haven’t found it, except redoing the whole thing from scratch. Somehow I expected a more intuitive process on doing this, but perhaps my intuition is failing me on this, or I have been brainwashed too much by Excel 🙂

Also, what is really bothering me is importing a csv file that has “,” separated values instead of “;” separated values. This results in the whole line being imported into the first cell, as Numbers expects “;” for csv. Nothing else.

I can’t even *FIND* the “import” command, you can only OPEN a CSV file in the regular way, and there are no options possible to indicate HOW you want to open the file / import it. Very disappointing.

Apple, please keep the updates coming, and make Numbers something worthwhile to use. Meanwhile, I have to write little scripts to do my work for me.

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Just updated to WordPress 3.8

I just updated to WordPress 3.8 – phew !! Sure are a handful of changes. Not too sure about the newest template, I’ll leave it activated for now, but it’s not how I want my site to look…

For example I have put all my widget elements in the right side container, so my blog posts can have a bit more space. Apparently this is not possible by default, as the text just stays centered in the middle instead of taking up all the space as intended. The theme as-is also seems not to be fully responsive, as it does not expand past a certain size… hmmm. Needs some investigation.

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Sonos Play:1 is marvelous !

Sonos Play:1 speaker
Sonos Play:1 speaker : great sound for a (relatively) small price

I just bought 2 Sonos Play:1 speakers for my living room, with the free bridge included (the offer lasts till the end of 2013, so you people who want to start with collecting Sonos speakers should hurry). Sonos speakers have been on my wish list for quite some time, ever since Vowe mentioned them on his blog, but they were always too expensive. Till now, with the Play:1 speaker coming out for a relatively cheap price of 199 euros. Still ‘ouch’ but it’s doable.

I was originally going to start out with one speaker, but due to circumstances I ended up with 2…

One speaker I originally bought from MediaMarkt.be, but at that moment they were out of stock. So I reserved one and paid an advance, hoping it would soon turn up. After 2 weeks they still didn’t have new stock, so I got a bit unhinged and in a fit I ordered from an online shop : bol.com and promptly got it delivered the next evening ! Kudos to Bol.com for their shopping experience and followup !

Then the same week I went back to MediaMarkt on other shopping needs, and guess what I found : a delivery just arrived from sonos, so I caved in and bought another one 🙂
(Two Play:1 speakers can be grouped as a stereo pair)

I had a hard time believing all the sonos hype about the setup and usage, but in my case it was all true : plug the Bridge in, plug the speakers in, install the app, follow the instructions on the app to link everything, and I was playing music in about 10 minutes (unwrapping included) !!!

A further 10 minutes I had my iTunes library linked to it (it should have been 5 minutes, but apparently you can’t have an apostrophe in your mac’s name for sonos to link up your library, and I had to look it up and rename my mac – no biggie).

You can really hear the difference to my other bog-standard Pioneer DVD 5.1 surround system when playing Jazz – when listening to Dianne Krall I could -for the first time- hear the individual sounds, even the champaign popping sound she makes !

I’m pretty happy with my Sonos setup, and I’ll guess I’ll start saving up for some other speakers in the future…

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Kindle on Android: learning your reading speed… and how to turn it off

[I added an update at the end of this post so you can read the solution – kudos to Karl Buehrens !]

I just had a Kindle software update on my Samsung Galaxy Note II Android 4.2 device that has a added a new feature : “reading speed”.

Now whenever I’m reading there is this grey text that is appearing on the bottom of my screen and it is annoying me with it’s info and constantly changing text. And there is currently no way to turn it off.

Learning reading speed” … “8 minutes left till end of Chapter”… 36% read.

WTF ? Who thought that this would be informative and useful to show this all the time ?

Why would I want to know how many minutes I still have to read to the end of the chapter ? Am I doing forced reading ? No. I read for my enjoyment, and it bugs me a lot to see that grey text. It detracts from the story that I’m reading and delivers nothing extra.

It’s almost feels like I should take my stopwatch out and see if I can read it faster and beat my reading speed.

Amazon, please add a disable function to the settings so that people like me who just want to read their story won’t get so annoyed with this grey line of text. Your app was fine as it was.
Update: a commenter on this post found the solution : you need to click on the message, and after several clicks, it will turn off and disappear !!! Non-intuitive, I kept searching in the settings menu.

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Devolo Support Sucks.

There. I’ve said it and I mean it.

Their products, when they work, do work fine. But when something goes wrong, you can’t count on support. So I’m steering clear of their devices AND their support, and I’m sharing my feelings in this on my blog.

 

Here’s the rant (quite a long read, got a lot to get out of my system) :

Devolo support seems to consist entirely of first-level support people that only know how to provide support by sending you a pdf with ‘things you can try’. At no stage did I feel that I reached second-level support or that I talked with someone that actually *read* my emails and asked me further technical info based on previous emails.

The overall feeling I got from the emails was that they wanted to get rid of me, but didn’t know how or that they were obliged to follow the rules, i.e. always respond to a customer request, even if it is to resend the same pdf with the same info you sent previously.

As you can read in my other blog posts, last year, about 7 months ago I needed a solution for routing my ethernet signal to my new work room on the first floor. Having used Devolo Dlan Duo devices before without any problem whatsoever I went out and bought 3 Devolo DLAN AV500 devices : 2 with just one ethernet port, 1 with 3 ethernet ports for the various devices (even my TV now has an ethernet port).

From the start, something went wrong with the device that was connected to the router. Every so often it would hang and I would need to go downstairs and unplug and replug it. Then it would work again. Later I found out that it’s actually the ethernet port itself that shuts down, it can still be reached via the power connection so you can actually do a reset from the DLAN cockpit software without needing to unplug it.

So to restate the fact :

  1. The device works, and works fast, no slowdowns, no short dropouts, it just works
  2. Suddenly it stops working, usually when transferring a large amount of data
  3. You ‘reboot’ it and it works again, just as fast as before
  4. It will -days or hours- later suddenly stop working again
  5. See 3…

This didn’t look to me as a typical hardware problem : it’s solved when you restart the device or reset it to factory settings. To me, it looks like a software problem, one or other counter is going haywire and a reset is needed.

So I contacted Devolo support via email in October 2012, and began a very long email back-and-from conversation that lasted until last month June 2013. To be honest, there were usually a few weeks between the answers what with work and family, so not every day a mail was sent.

I also wrote 2 blog posts about this problem that got quite a bit of reaction from other people who are having a similar problem. At the moment I’m writing this, at least 20 people have expressed that they are having the same problem. There have been 1172 visits to that particular blog post already, and unless they do something to fix their product it will only go up.

In the end, after numerous tests (update of the firmware to the latest dev build then, plugging 2 devolo’s in one extension cord to see if they have a good connection, having to confirm and reconfirm and then again reconfirm that no there is no slowdown AT ALL, switching one device in for the other) Devolo software support decided  that my device had a hardware fault, based on the fact that when it crashed, there is no visible indication that it has done so. And then it told me to sort it out myself by going back to the shop and asking for an exchange.

Tell me how YOU can explain to a shop attendant that you want to exchange the device because it is faulty when it shows NO VISIBLE indication that it is faulty ? I don’t know about shop attendants in your country, but the ones I know in Belgium are quite aloof and suspicious when you want to return hardware after 7 months of use.

I have several times told Devolo support that I am not the only one with the problem, please see my blog and read the comments. At no time did they respond to this. Probably because then they might have to actually investigate it, spending time and resources to actually solve the problem for everybody affected.

In the end I bought a new device to replace the Devolo DLAN 500AV+ but this time a Powerline device from D-LINK. Since both the devices use the same common “Homeplug” standard, they just recognise each other and start working together immediately together.

Problem solved, at my expense of course. But at the expense in the long run of Devolo as well. I’m no longer a customer of theirs, will buy other devices than Devolo, and I am making the world know of this so other people know what happened.

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Fun Project : visualisation of all the flemish schools

I’ve had a bit of fun recently with visualising some open data from onderwijs.vlaanderen.be where I downloaded the address list of flemish schools for kindergarten and “lower” schools.

  • imported the csv list via “base” in an sqlite database
  • added longitude and latitude fields to the db
  • wrote a small script that used geopy to query google for each address and add the coordinates to the db
  • then created another small script using pygmaps to create a custom html file which includes the necessary coordinates for each point on the google map.

The result is that I never knew how many schools there were in Vlaanderen !

Schools in Flemish Belgium

You can read more in the original post (in Flemish) that I made on the dataconnect website, where I advertise for my web site design and consultancy. For the full map, click on the above image to go there.