1. Apply Vocal Enhancer: Default effect.

2. Normalize process

3. Apply Reduce Noise process:
– Reduction: 25%
– Reduce by: 15%

4. Apply Compressor: For Voice: Subtle
5. Apply EQ Graphic: Bass Management:
– Low: 0
– Low-Mid: -3
– High-Mid: 0
– High: 8
6. Apply *another* EQ Graphic effect, just like above, only this time with the High setting back at 0.

What I found was that I had to always click ‘apply’ for effects before moving on to the next one. In other words, don’t get cute and just load up the ‘effect stack’ and then apply them all – in my case it didn’t sound good if I did it that way.

Unfortunately, Soundbooth does not offer a ‘batch processing’ feature for these effects, so for the 27 or so wav files I had I had to do each individually, which took some time.

Lastly, once I did the above for each of the wav files, I then used Soundbooth’s “Volume Match” batch feature to match the volume of all of the tracks of the first wav file in the group.

The result is not a perfectly clean set of audio and it’s definitely not ‘pro’ level but it’s a heck of a lot better than the source wav files were.

Keep in mind also that the EQ and Compression settings will probably need to be tweaked depending on the type of voice(s) audio you have. In this case, the majority of the voiceover audio was a female with a medium to upper-medium, sorta ‘nasally’ vocal sound. These settings took the ‘nasaly’ out and definitely helped.

Do you have a preferred set of audio processing steps? Also – I’d prefer to just do everything in Audacity. Any plugins that you have found that do a good job cleaning up voiceover audio? What I’ve found is that ’stock’ effects intended to do this just don’t help much or make it worse. Like Soundbooth’s ‘Vocal Enhancer’ – it’s not very good by itself, in my opinion. I’m amazed that there isn’t a simple tool built to do this. But I guess with everyone’s voices sounding different it’s impossible to get right.

And the one non-elearning topic that I’ve written about (and has garnered a lot of site visits, thanks to T-Mobile linking to my site when they first unveiled the @Home service), well, there’s not very much to write about a land-line replacement phone service. It either works or it doesn’t, and most people’s phone service is working by now. That said, last month was the end of my 2-year @Home service commitment/contract. I’m keeping the service as it’s just too inexpensive and it mostly works without hassle for me. Eventually I expect T-mobile to send me a notice telling me that the cheap ride is all over – they’re stopping the service – but for now I’ll keep it.

So now the problem is……what the hell do I do with this blog? I earn approximately $1 a day from Google AdSense (and THANK YOU to those who do click on the ads). I’m sure I could easily triple that if I wrote more, and I plan to, but the things I now find myself wanting to write about: guitar, fishing, my kids, tech in general, etc., are outside of the scope of a blog with an ‘elearninglive.com’ domain.

Hmmm….time to research. What do people do under these circumstances? Any advice?

Here’s how to get the basic tracking working:

1. In Quizmaker, setup your quiz and insert it into the slide deck.

2. On the Reporting tab, add the URL that the course (not the content!) will be accessed via in ACP. I’m not sure if this is really required, but in other LMSs I know it is so I just did it. Then, you’ll need to decide how you want the actual complete/incomplete/pass/fail reporting to work. There are a bunch of different combinations and you’ll need to decide what you want to do. Just beware that, if you choose ‘Passed/Incomplete’ or ‘Completed/Incompleted’, that if the user fails the quiz their status will remain ‘incomplete’.

3. Now click on the Tracking tab:

You’ll most likely just want to track the quiz and not force them to view every slide. That’s what’s demonstrated in this screenshot. Note that the 80% was what I set the passing score in the Quizmaker Quiz when I created it. You can’t edit it here but you could go back and edit it there if needed.

4. Publish the Articulate course.

Select LMS. Fill in the obvious info and select AICC for the LMS, then click on the Reporting and Tracking button.

5. Go to the folder that you published the course to and rename the file ‘index_lms.html’ to ‘index.html’. Connect looks for this file to start the course.

4. Zip up all of the files/folders (NOT in a root/parent folder though!), and upload to ACP as content, then wrap in a course.

That’s it. Keep in mind that the result will be just BASIC tracking. It doesn’t track the question/answer text, and the MAX_SCORE doesn’t ever display in the Connect reports.

Hope this helps others. If it does help, or if you have any suggestions/tips/ideas to enhance this process please leave a comment!

The article reads like it’s a done deal, and sure enough it is. Further research confirms that T-Mobile is stopping sales of the @Home service once the inventory of equipment runs out. I’d hate to be that guy that buys it now. T-Mobile claims they will continue to offer the service to existing customers.

My advice (for what it’s worth)

If you already have the service…then start looking for another service and/or consider using your mobile phones 100% and dropping landline altogether. That said, if you are not experiencing any problems with your @Home service then you should be fine keeping it. But make no mistake – they will eventually shut the service down. They, like many other companies, are striving to put out a femtocell product/service onto the market. I knew this up-front (not about the femtocell technology but about the short-lived nature of VOIP in general). I just figured it’d be 4 or 5 years. I was wrong.

T-Mobile *is* still selling new @Home subscriptions. But claim they are no longer putting any money into it. So if you’re happy with the service, then I suggest sticking with it until a better deal/technology comes along, or until T-Mobile forces you off it, or if the service starts getting flakey. But have an exit strategy in mind now…

If you do not have the service…then I wouldn’t buy it. Look for alternatives. If you have Verizon FIOS, I hear the phone service is very good. I’ve had FIOS TV and Internet for about 5 months and, while I feel the TV service is sub-par compared to Comcast’s, the internet is awesome.

As for me…About 6 months ago I moved to a new “dream home” that, unfortunately, has turned out to be a nightmare (well, not that bad – the house itself is fine, but the neighborhood is just not to my wife’s tastes). So my place is up for sale (please, hold the condolences!). Our plan is to move back to our previous neighborhood and if they have FIOS service there (they didn’t 6 months ago) then I’ll look into adding the phone service. But I will first seriously consider just dropping landline service completely. No need for it anymore.

For those of you who need a landline because you’re still sticking to those old fax machines, good luck!

If, like me, you’ve had the service for a while (I’ve had it since June 2008), then we can at least rejoice in how much we’ve saved. I used to pay about $45 per month solely for basic home landline service. So, $45 * ~19 months = $855. Deduct the cost of the new DECT 6.0 phones ($99 – I went deluxe!) and router ($50) and it’s still a substantial savings. And that is as of today. I expect to probably have my service at least until the contract runs out in June.

If anyone tries getting out of their contract with T-Mobile early, I’d like to hear what happens (i.e., do they let you out or are you stuck paying the early termination fee). Please let us know if you give them a call.

Some additional links announcing T-Mobile@Home’s demise:

http://voip-phone-systems.tmcnet.com/topics/voip-phone-systems/articles/72203-t-mobiles-monthly-home-phone-service-bites-dust.htm
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/12/11/t-mobile-discontinuing-home-landline-service/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBoyGeniusReport+%28Boy+Genius+Report%29
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/01/07/t-mobile-to-discontinue-home-service/

I moved this past July to a new house that previously had FIOS installed. I was pretty thrilled with the prospect of getting off of Comcast and moving to Verizon FIOS.

It’s been almost 4 months now since first switching to FIOS for my internet and TV, and as much as it pains me to say it….I would switch back to Comcast if I could.

First off, let me say this: Comcast’s broadband internet service is unstable, has a very poor Quality of Service (QOS) level – so poor that it makes 3rd-party VOIP services, like T-Mobile@Home, more trouble than it’s worth. But, and this is a big BUT, the TV services, while not great and filled with its own set of issues, is so much better than FIOS’s TV service that I’d switch back in a heartbeat.

TV Video Quality

The video quality is probably a bit better with FIOS. Of course, there’s NO WAY anyone can really compare that with any real measure unless they subscribed to both services at the same time and had two different televisions side-by-side. FIOS seems to have more HD channels and an overall nicer picture. Some things are clearly superior, like HBO. On Comcast, I had 11 channels of HBO, and only one came in in HD. The rest was SD. On FIOS, all 11 channels are in HD.

User Interface/Menu System

The biggest problem with FIOS is the TERRIBLE user interface/menu system. I can’t say enough just how horrible it is. Comcast’s was WAY better. From the goofy categorizations of channels that FIOS has, to the slow response of the box, it is just horrible compared to Comcast. And let’s face it, the user interface is a big part of the service. My wife still hasn’t figured out how to use the damn thing, but she has trouble working the toaster too…

Remote Control

The Comcast remotes suck. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse….Verizon outdoes them with the suckiest remote of all time! The remote is very ‘mushy’ in feel and the box is just slow to respond. It’s just flat-out annoying. And that along with the horrible menu system makes it just annoying at best.

Example: a couple of weeks ago I was on the internet when I got word that the remake of The Prisoner was finally coming on TV. So I go to my TV and make sure to schedule the series to record (more on the shitty DVR later). Problem is, there’s no way that I can find to jump from day to day, to record a future show. You have to manually keep pushing the right-arrow button on the remote and go through every half-hour increment between the present time and when the first instance of the show starts. It’s horrible! On Comcast’s remote there were DAY+ and DAY- buttons, so if a show was 7 days away I just had to hit it 7 times and bam, I’m there. Comcastic! : )

DVR

The DVR has, at best, only half of the capacity that the Comcast one had. Before, we’d never run out of space. Now, we have to clean it out fairly often. Other than that, the DVR works for the most part.

Customer Service

Yeah, this is what I hated most about Comcast. I am definitely not ‘Comcastic!’ about their customer service. And, like the remote controls, just when I thought customer service couldn’t get worse, Verizon gives Comcast a run for the money! Analyzing/discussing the quality level between Comcast and Verizon’s customer service is like debating morality amongst prostitutes, so I’ll leave it at that. They both suck. Of course, I had some extra holes in my basement walls from the moron that FIOS sent out to install the service and run the cables. They at least eventually made it somewhat right and patched it. They had to come back multiple times to get it done, and I’ll have to touch-up paint it. Morons.

Cost

They both charge way too much.

Internet

The Comcast internet service is laggy at times, which is a big problem if you play Battlefield Heroes like me, the QOS is bad, which is a big problem if you have a 3rd-party VOIP service like I have, and the speed is not what they claim it to be. Verizon FIOS kicks ass in the internet department. I’ve not had a single outage, have not had to reboot a router once, have never experienced any lag, and my Tmobile@Home service has been rock-solid and not a single issue since I moved to FIOS.

Summary

Both of these companies suck ass and treat their customers like garbage. Because my wife/kids watch a lot of TV I’d probably switch back to Comcast if I could (I’m in a 2-year deal with Verizon). But I’d hate to give up the internet service.

But for now…I found out about these options because I’m set to unhook my phones/router on Thursday as we’re moving to a new house (with 25/15 FIOS!!!) and remembered that call forwarding was included. One nice feature of VOIP is you just unhook the router and move it with the rest of the stuff, then hook it up at the new digs, or the hotel, or the homeless shelter if there is a last-minute problem at settlement : )

Anyways, there are three options:

(text below taken from http://support.t-mobile.com/doc/tm23766.xml )

Call Forwarding – T-Mobile @Home

The call forwarding feature allows you to forward your calls to a number of your choice.

There are three different call forwarding functionalities that your T-Mobile @Home phone supports: Unconditional Call Forwarding, Call Forward No Reply, and Call Forwarding if Not Reachable.

Unconditional call forwarding

NOTE: Unconditional Call Forwarding automatically forwards any calls that your T-Mobile @Home phone would receive to the number requested to forward your calls to. Your T-Mobile @Home Phone will not ring when Unconditional Call Forwarding is set up.

To activate or deactivate Unconditional Call Forwarding, perform one of the following:

Press Star (*) 72, and the phone number that you want to forward calls to. For example, you would press *72 1 555-555-5555.

Press Star (*) 73 to deactivate. You are not required to enter the phone number to deactivate Unconditional Call Forwarding.

Call forwarding No Reply

NOTE: Call Forward No Reply only forwards your T-Mobile @Home phone to another phone number when you do not answer your T-Mobile @Home phone.

To activate or deactivate Call Forward No Reply, perform one of the following:

Press Star (*) 42 and phone number that you want to forward your calls to. For example, you would press *42 1 555-555-5555.

Press Star (*) 93. You are not required to enter the phone number to deactivate Call Forward No Reply.

Call forwarding if Not Reachable

NOTE: Call Forward if Not Reachable only forwards your T-Mobile @Home phone to another phone number if your T-Mobile @Home phone or the T-Mobile HiPort is not reachable (due to electrical or ISP issues).

To activate or deactivate Call Forward if Not Reachable, perform one of the following:

Press Star (*) 62 Star (*) and the phone number that you want to forward your calls to followed by the Pound (#) key. For example, you would press *62* 1 555-555-5555 #.

Press Pound Pound (# #) 62 Pound (#). You are not required to enter the phone number to deactivate Call Forward if Not Reachable.

So, without further adieu….

Resize the Slide Notes Window

Anyone who has recorded voiceovers in Captivate will appreciate this tip from the official Captivate blog, where they explain how to resize the Slide Notes window (yes, it is possible, in a roundabout way!).

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2009/06/slide_notes_resize.html

Cool Buttons

The Captivate4.com blog has a post with ‘free resources’ that may be useful in your Captivate projects. Personally I think most of it isn’t all that great but the buttons are very good.

http://www.captivate4.com/2009/06/23/a-couple-of-free-resources-for-your-captivate-projects/

Using Advanced Actions

Thanks goodness we’re finally getting some good examples on how to use those pesky Advanced Actions. Here’s a great post from the aforementioned Captivate4.com blog titled “Using Advanced Actions to Store and Show a User’s Answers in a Quiz”.

http://www.captivate4.com/2009/07/01/using-advanced-actions-to-store-and-show-a-users-answers-in-a-quiz/

But alas, it’s been a full year of using the service and although I haven’t blogged enough on this site I know a lot of folks rely on this blog for information about the @Home service so I feel obligated to tell you my experience with it.

There are very few people who have had this service for as long as I have. Based on discussions with the Tmobile sales reps who I talked to right after I had purchased it, I’m pretty sure I was the first person in my area to take the plunge.

Before I keep rambling on, let me answer the question you probably want to know:

Am I happy I signed up for the Tmobile@Home service?

The answer is a very angry and tentative yes. Angry and tentative because the first month or so of the service I had the dreaded “blue light special” outage about once or twice per week. Then, after a service patch came out for the WRT54G-TM router, I applied it and didn’t lose service for months afterward. Now, this past month, I’m losing service constantly and have no idea why. And it’s not a simple matter of calling Tmobile Support because I know myself how to get the service back up and I seriously doubt that they can repair this intermittent outage problem. For all I know it could be my cable broadband provide, Comcast, who drive me “Comcastic” (not in good way).

This service is annoying at times, but I look at it this way:

I was paying $80 per month for phone service before. I’m now paying $10 per month. That is, in one year, a savings of $840. I’ll take plenty of inconvenience to save that much dough. I know there are a lot of people who would say that the savings isn’t worth the hassle or lack of piece of mind. If I were wealthy I’d agree with the hassle part, but I can’t agree with the lack of piece of mind theory since everyone who has this service has to have a cell phone and they can always use that if needed. Yeah I know – the 911 thing. I’ll take the risk.

But let me say this…as of today, while I’ve been a strong supporter of the Tmobile@Home service up to this point, I no longer recommend it. Not over the offerings that have popped up since (actually, right after I signed up for this service), like verizon or comcast’s bundled service. Note that I have no idea whether those services work any better, but I do know they’re more expensive.

Prior to a month ago I was a happy customer. This past month, it seems every other time I pick up the phone (which is not too often as I use my mobile phone usually), it is down. What is even worse is that often the blue light is still on on the router. It always takes a power cycle of the router followed by an ipconfig /release and renew and then a few minute wait before the blue light comes back and then service is restored. That’s just a real pain in the ass.

Next month I’m moving to a new house that already has Verizon FIOS installed. I’m looking at moving to Verizon FIOS for my television and internet service and it seems they have a special all the time going on where the phone is included. I may wind up going with that service and then evaluating both until next June when I can ditch the Tmobile@Home service (unless they sort out the issues finally).

Frankly, I’m not optimistic that any VOIP service is super-reliable yet, and I’ve said to folks repeatedly that the only reason it makes sense to use this service is because you always have the cell phone as the backup. Had it not been for the cell phone backup I’d have been *really* ticked and demanded a refund by now.

Incidentally, as I was typing this post I thought to look for an update to the LinkSys router firmware. What I found on the LinkSys site was the latest firmware, but it was v1.00.15. I checked my router’s Admin page and my firmware was v1.00.20. I recall sometime a while back that Tmobile automatically updated my firmware (they left a voicemail on the phone telling me to recycle the router, if I recall correctly,– it was kind of eerie, but cool). Out of curiosity I just ‘updated’ my firmware back to 1.00.15. My service is working for now. We’ll see if that helps it stay working.

I’m sad to have to write this post because, as I said, the first month was somewhat rocky but ever since it’s been great. But after this month….ugh!

Please tell us about your experience. Has your experience with it been similar to mine?

Update 06/29/2009 1:06PM EDT

I came home at noon today and needed to make a phone call and yet again, no phone service. Checked router and blue light was out this time. Cycled the router power, waited 5 minutes, refreshed and it was up again.

Interestingly, after having ‘downgraded’ my firmware yesterday to 1.00.15 and verifying that that was what was shown in the router Admin page, when I logged in today it was updated back to 1.00.20 – apparently Tmobile has remote access and automatically uses it!

On a positive note – this morning I received an email from a Comcast rep asking me to call their Support so they can check if the problem is on their end. I will try to do that later today and report back. So stay tuned!

Update 06/30/2009 6:23PM

I was in the middle of an important conference call from 4 to 6pm, listening to the conference call (muted from my end) when at about 4:45PM the phone went dead. Looked at the router and the blue light was on. Tried accessing the router’s admin page via http://192.168.0.1 and, like before, the router page simply wouldn’t load.

So I called into the conference call on my Tmobile mobile phone. When the conference call ended at 6PM, I decided I’d had enough of waiting for the phone issues to sort themselves out. I checked the phone again and, this time, I had a dial tone. So I tried dialing out but it would not dial out.

After searching in an endless loop on the Tmobile@Home Support page for an actual phone number to call, I gave up and did a google and found a discussion forum of folks complaining about the support, with a post from a guy saying to just dial 611. So I tried it and it worked – got connected right to an @Home support rep named “Rashad” (I’m certain I misheard or have the name misspelled – my apologies in advance if you are reading this!).

Rashad was pleasant and expedient and sounded very competent. I explained that my phone service has been dropping every day for a week now and the only thing that seems to fix it is to power cycle the router.

Rashad asked me which phone line (1 or 2) I had the SIM inserted into, to which I replied “line 1.” She then had me power cycle the router, and as expected, in about 3 minutes or so the blue light came back on and service was restored. She then had me take the SIM card out of the line 1 slot and put it in line 2, cycle the power to the router, wait the few minutes for the blue light to come on and then test the phone. I did, and service was working. She then initiated an inbound call to my @Home line and it worked.

She explained that she thinks the problem is either one of two things:

A. A bad SIM card or

B. A bad line 1 in the router

She took down my mobile phone number and the time (6:20PM) and said she will call me tomorrow at 6:20PM to see if the service is working. If it goes down between now and then, then she will get me a new SIM card to replace my existing one.

So that’s it for today. I was happy with Rashad and the level of support – she was quick and seems knowledgeable. Time will tell! I’ll update this post tomorrow with the outcome.

Update 07/01/2009 12:46PM

Just checked the phone. Got a dial tone (and of course the blue light is on), but can’t dial out and whenever someone dials me they get routed immediately to voicemail. I’m gonna power cycle the router just so I can receive calls for at least the next couple of hours (hopefully), but when Tmobile Support calls me at 6:20PM as they said they would, it looks like they’ll be ordering me a new SIM card. I can’t say I’m all that confident in that fixing the problem though…

Update 07/01/2009 6:40PM

As promised, the Tmobile Support rep “Rashad” (my cell phone is staticy in my basement so I’m sure I’m munging the name) called back tonight. She asked if the phone had gone down since yesterday when we last talked and I told her it did once and I had to power cycle the router.

So she had me go to this webpage and run the speed test:

 myspeed.visualware.com

I ran the test there and here were my results:

Note the quality of service was at 83% when I took the test this second time to grab the above screenshot for this post, but about 20 minutes ago when I performed it with Rashad, it was coming out at a much lower 67%. She said that anything below 85% is not good for VOIP. This tells me that the problem very well could be my broadband provider’s constantly fluctuating broadband service quality…Comcastic!

So then she had me try the VOIP Quality test, which can be found here:

myvoipspeed.visualware.com

Rashad started to go into about how the problem is my internet provider, which I countered with “I’ve had the same provider for a year and not had a problem with the @Home service until all of a sudden this week”. The last thing I am going to allow happen is let myself get stuck between a rock (Comcast) and a hard place (Tmobile) in terms of getting this problem fixed. I guess Rashad picked up on my slight discomfort so she backed off of trying to push it on my internet provider and said she wanted to troubleshoot the router (apparently she felt, unlike yesterday, that the problem had nothing to do with the SIM card). So she had me grab a paper clip and stick it into the red ‘reset’ button in the back of the router and hold it there for 20 seconds before releasing it. After a minute of the router lights flashing, my internet came back and a few minutes later the blue light for the VOIP came back.

She then had me go into the router admin page and set my wireless back to WPA Personal, change the SSID back to what I had it before, and put in my wireless password so my wireless devices would be able to reconnect.

So now it’s a waiting game to see if resetting the router will fix the problem. She said she is not going to be back in the office until late Sunday night and could call me at 11pm Sunday. I told her just wait until 7PM Monday so she’s set to call me then to find out if, during the next 5 days the @Home service goes down. If it does, she says she’s going to order me a new router.

We’ll see. I’d probably be a bit ticked at having to potentially deal with this for 5 days straight, having to power cycle the router at least once per day to keep my unstable phone service up, but the problem very well may be my broadband service and I don’t want to prematurely judge Tmobile for that. So, next update will either be Monday (hopefully), if the phone works fine through the weekend and it is determined that the router just needed resetting, or sooner if it goes down.

Have you ever had to reset your @Home router? This is the first time I’ve reset mine since owning it. Sucks cus I lose my port-forwarding that I had setup for P2P : (

UPDATE 07/02/09 4:10PM

Walked in the door to find out from my wife that our @Home phone is down yet again. Just like before, the blue light *is* visible and we do get a dial tone, but we can’t dial out and no one can call us. Sucks as I’m in for a long holiday weekend of power cycling my router at least once or twice a day : (

UPDATE 07/04/09 10:51PM

I’ve had to cycle my router’s power numerous times the past couple of days. From what I can guess, I get maybe 2 hours of actual working phone service before it goes down. And it’s insidious too – I still get a dial tone, but it won’t dial out or receive calls. I am not optimistic that a replacement router is going to fix the problem. If I were a betting man I’d say that they’re going to send out a new router, it won’t fix the problem, and then Tmobile will fall back on an excuse like it being Comcast’s fault. We’ll see.

No matter how this turns out…my one year review of the Tmobile@Home service is this:

Buyer beware. If you can live with numerous outages, often without you knowing the service is out, then by all means you can’t beat the $10 per month cost. But if you want reliable phone service then look elsewhere.

..now it’s time for me to sit and wait until the Tmobile Support Tech decides to come back from vacation and call me, so that she can order a new router. Ridiculous.

UPDATE 07/06/09 7:09PM

Just got off the phone with Rashad (pretty sure, after this many calls, that I have her name correct!). She is sending out the new router after I explained that I had to power cycle the router on Friday and Saturday to restore service, but it’s been working fine the past 2 days. Hmmm…..did Comcast notice my complaints on this blog and fix my service? Because all of a sudden, when I do the speed/quality test on my broadband I’m getting almost perfect service. Just ran it again and it’s a whopping 96%, as depicted here:

I’m starting to think that the problem has been Comcast all along and not Tmobile. To Tmobile Support’s credit, Rashad called back exactly when she said she would and was very friendly. Still kind of annoying that I had to be concerned with basic phone service all through the holiday weekend, but as I said, I’m starting to think I threw stones at Tmobile a little too quickly here. I’ll update this post again as I find out more.

But, if anything, at least my posts may help others who have had problems with their @Home service to troubleshoot – the myspeed.visualware.com test is very useful. I had no idea it existed or that the 85% QOS is the threshold that Tmobile (and probably other VOIP carriers) use to isolate issues between them and the broadband service.

UPDATE (2 minutes after I posted the last update!)

I just ran the speed test again, same server and everything, and my QOS measured out at 84%. This tells me that my broadband QOS is all over the map. Those of you with more knowledge on networking/voip – is this test legit, and do you agree that the problem is probably Comcast?

I won’t bother calling Comcast as I plan on cancelling their Craptastically expensive service at the end of this month when I move out of my current house and move into our new house which already has FIOS installed. I’d been holding off for years because Comcast had a monopoly on the local sports teams’ broadcasts, but Verizon carries em now so no need to eat shit from Comcast anymore. I can eat shit from Verizon now : (  (but cheaper). Just tested again and it came out at 97%. All over the place….

UPDATE 07/27/2009 10:18AM

Sorry I haven’t updated this post with the outcome. I’m in the middle of the sale/purchase of homes right now and moving has been my focus for the past few weeks. Stressful. Fortunately, @Home has not added to that stress since my last update.

Shortly after my last update I received the replacement router from T-Mobile Support as they had promised. But I haven’t even bothered opening up the package because my @Home service has been working fine for the past few weeks now, and as I stated before I’m fairly certain the problem was with Comcast’s horrible connection. Why do I think that? Because the speed and QOS service tests linked above are all over the place. One minute they’re good and the next they’re bad. Next week I *should* (that’s a whole ‘nother story) be getting Verizon FIOS installed and as of this Thursday I will be returning all of my Craptastic gear (HD boxes, cable modem, etc.) to my local Comcast office and cancelling the service.

Many years ago (about 9 to be exact) I had internet service through a broadband provider named @Home – NO RELATION TO T-Mobile’s @Home service! What a coincidence. They were the first big broadband provider in my area. Their service sucked in terms of constant ‘lag’ and ups/downs. But it beat the shit out of 56kbps! Shortly after I started using @Home (the broadband, not the phone!) service Comcast bought them out. The service got a little better but not great. Back then I played online multiplayer games, so when service would ‘lag’ or drop I’d know it right away. It was really annoying to be playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault multiplayer, running up on a German enemy and right before I gun them down my connection would slow down…

Flash forward to today. A new online multiplayer game is out named Battlefield Heroes and it’s awesome. Why? Cus it’s just like the Medal of Honor game I liked so many years ago. I haven’t played games since that Medal of Honor one as I’m not much of a gamer, but something about these war games I like. Twisted?

Anyways….guess what? Since starting to play that game, I’ve noticed my Craptastic Comcast broadband service lags constantly. Things haven’t changed it seems over the years. Comcast sucks and I’ll be glad to be rid of them once and for all.

Back to the T-Mobile@Home service….I’ve packed away the replacement router that their Support rep sent me. It includes a return shipment box, so when I get to the new house and finally get around to setting up my new office (gonna buy a new desk and set it all up right, so no rushing it!) I’ll go ahead and use the new router but I don’t think it will matter. Only reason I’m going to switch to the new one is because the Support rep told me I have to send back the ‘defective’ one and they included return postage/packaging with the replacement one they sent me, so if I don’t send it back they’ll probably bill me for it eventually.

After a solid month of using @Home with FIOS I’ll post an update as to how it works, including some screenshots of the speed/QOS results with that connection. I’m signed up for the FIOS 25/15 service, which cost a bit more but is worth it to me (we’ll see…).

So last week I went out and bought a tutorial book on Photoshop (I prefer books for comprehensive learning of an app instead of trying to find piecemeal tutorials online). I started learning Photoshop and it is just so horrible to use compared to Fireworks, which is very elegant in terms of its UI. The only reason I wanted to learn Photoshop was to import the layered .psd files into Captivate 4, which keeps the layers separated on import.

Well, it hit me last night, that I had forgotten completely that Fireworks can export to .psd!

I did a quick test by creating a multiple layer 800×600 file in Fireworks and did a Save As… to .psd, then imported into Captivate 4. Worked beautifully as expected/hoped.

I’m part thrilled, part angry at myself that I wasted $19 (thank goodness I waited to get one of those 50% off Borders spam coupons) on a book for an app I’ll probably never learn : (

This solves my biggest issue with Captivate – the transparent text is fuzzy/blurry – so bad it drives me nuts. From now on I’m going to do it in Fireworks whenever possible. It’s faster too.

Does this make sense? What negatives am I not seeing in regards to this workflow?