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After Several Months on Ting Here is My Review

I switched to Ting.com  and has been happy with their service. I currently have 3 lines with them and my average monthly usage is $30/month. My highest bill was around $45 which was around the time when we were moving and used a lot of data. This can be very expensive if you use a lot of data. The good thing is you can actually just setup an alert that will disable your minutes, sms or data if you are going over a specific rate. Ting recommends adding a bit of buffer since usage is not updated instantly, so for example I add subtract 50mb of data on the plan I want to stop it. Same with call and sms. The only drawback here that I encountered once is if you go over a few minutes, for example I went over 6 minutes on a plan and I was charged the next plan for a full amount.A good feature to have would be to create alerts base on some variable usage so you can disable a plan if you are close to your closing date and you only have few minutes left. Even with that bad experience I w
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AppLauncher Auto Organizer

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I have recently switched to an Android phone coming from an iPhone 5 and I totally didn't miss my apple (except for one tiny app I loved the most in iOS - Plant Nanny! - helps me get motivated to drink enough water) due to many cool Android apps which just fits my need. Plus, Google apps runs better with Android as expected. However, since smartphones stormed the planet, I am missing one feature which was usually part of the default settings ages ago - TADA! - the categories . Today's vanilla feature of the Android platform presents apps into a grid of icons spanning into pages as needed - not bad at all - but if you are app-packed, it may take you a few seconds longer to go to that utility app you are looking for. Good thing, there are tons of launcher/organizers out there made by the geeks of our planet (or are they really from around here?!?). I used to like GO Launcher but later on realized that it has too much features that I don't need. I am just a simple person a
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Globe Customer Service - Suggestions for Improvements

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I had a chat with a Globe agent today and it did not feel right so I had to share it somehow hoping to enlighten folks in customer service fields. This is not that BIG but I think there are still lessons which can be taken from this experience. I was seeking their support because I tested my internet's speed and it seemed a bit off.  I had 2.02, 1.02 and 2.24 Mbps download stream results in a series of speedtests for a 3Mbps subscription plan. During the conversation, I kept retesting and looking at the modem page and the speed improved so I cancelled my complaints. However, I noticed three (3) things that needed to be improved: Use of words . Whatever happened to "please" and "kindly"? Instead, the agent used "I want you to..." as if he was my commanding officer. It might be hard to really express yourself through a chat conversation but these basic things can help a lot. Avoid asking repeatedly as if you are a bot. The agent repeatedly
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What Graphics Card Fit In Shuttle XPC SZ77R5

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Earlier this year (2013) I bought a mini pc that will be dedicated for serving plex media server. I got the ShuttleXPC SZ77R5 because it was small enough for me and it works with the Intel Core i7-3770K since this need to handle multiple 1080p streams on my home network on different devices at the same time. The thing that I did not plan for is the video card. So I can make it a dedicated gaming pc for the most recent games and run it flawlessly. But these kind of cards are huge and usually won't fit this case without modifications. So after some research I got this card,  Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC with Boost 3GB DDR5 DL-DVI-I/SL-DVI-D/HDMI/DP PCI-Express Graphics Card 11197-03-40G  which barely fits and when you close the case it would probably overheat. Also you will have to remove the hard drive/cd rom rack to fit this card. I moved my hard drive on top of the case, there is a bunch of holes there where you can just attach it in. Then the hard part was cutting the case to
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Host Static Website on Google App Engine But With Flexibility of Templating System

If you already know how to use google app engine you can skip to the github project and the short summary will be enough for you to get started on creating static websites. I created this because google sites will stop supporting google adsense and I have a bunch of static sites for my projects that is using google adsense. https://github.com/faisalraja/app-engine-static If you are new to google app engine and would like a way to create static websites with ability to do stuff like server side includes to avoid duplicating your headers/navigation and everything that you can do with jinja2 templating system and starts your hosting for free with daily quota and competitive pricing, by the time of this writing is (1GB/day free and 12cents/GB after). First you need python 2.7 installed in your system, you can download at: http://python.org/download/ Choose the one for your system, then install google appengine sdk at: https://developers.google.com/appengine/downloads?hl=d
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Cookie-less Domain and Static Files versioning with Google App Engine

Cookieless domains are one of the must have optimization when you are serving a lot of static files. The reason is that if you have a cookie in the same domain it sends those cookies in the request headers if you are serving your static files on the same domain. Those build up and unnecessary. If you have your cookie in domain level and using appspot domain for your main domain this won't work. This will also version your files so in your app.yaml you can leave (default_expiration: "30d") all the time. Each deploy will prefix your static urls with different version. Here is how I did it: import os from google.appengine.api import app_identity VERSION_ID = os.environ.get('CURRENT_VERSION_ID', '1.1').split('.') VERSION = VERSION_ID[0] APP_VERSION = int(VERSION_ID[1]) APP_ID = app_identity.get_application_id() IS_DEV = os.environ.get('SERVER_SOFTWARE', 'Development/%s' % VERSION_ID).startswith('Dev') IS_BACKEND = backends.
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HTC One + I-Blason PowerGlider + Moga Pro Review

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I bought the I-Blason PowerGlider battery pack thinking that it would fit in a moga pro for extended gameplay use, because there was a review somewhere in xda that the mophie doesn't fit in the moga pro. So here is a quick video to demo it altogether. It does fit, but it can slip its heavy and hard to play while laying head up because the moga pro grip don't have a lock it might be the same issue with htc one alone. Although in the video it doesn't drop it does feel that it might, but it still fits which is the most important. Here are more photos: I used the moga tablet stand cause the HTC One + PowerGlider is too heavy to stay upright. For battery life, I've never ran out anymore, although sometimes I remove it and charge it by itself so I can still use the phone and never had to charge it directly. Beware though it only has half the mAh output of the charger, people say its fine but I really don't know how it would affect its battery. C
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