Now we’re chargin’ with gas: ASUS Ai Charger

After finishing yesterday’s post on iPhone charging from a USB 3.0 port, I came across some references to ASUS Ai Charger. It’s a Windows software tool produced by motherboard manufacturer ASUS. It claims to increase the charging speed of iThings connected to the computer, and it works with non-ASUS motherboards, and apparently even laptops.

Few details are provided, and it sounds kind of sketchy, but I gave it a try on my EVGA X58 SLI LE motherboard. After installing and rebooting, there’s a new icon in the notification area:

Clicking, double-clicking, or right-clicking on it has no effect. When I plug my iPhone into a motherboard USB 2.0 port, it changes:

Plugging it into a port on my USB 3.0 add-on card has no effect.

So, what’s the verdict?

(Click to embiggen.)

It works! The purple charging curve, with Ai Charger, is almost identical to the green 1 A wall charger curve. (It’s offset slightly, because Ai Charger’s magic doesn’t kick in until the iPhone turns on and identifies itself to the computer. If I weren’t starting from a dead battery, there would be no delay.)

I don’t really know how Ai Charger works—it seems to look for a device that it recognizes as an iThing, and then tells the motherboard chipset to do something. There are some reports of blue screens on the Internet, and it’s not clear what motherboards or chipsets it supports. But if you’d like to charge your iThing faster, it seems to be worth a try.

iPhone 5 does not charge faster over USB 3.0

For a followup, with a solution for faster charging on many Windows PCs, please see: Now we’re chargin’ with gas: ASUS Ai Charger.

USB 2.0 ports are, according to the specification, limited to providing 500 mA of current to connected devices. The Apple iPhone charge provides 1000 mA, so it can charge an iPhone about twice as fast as a standard USB 2.0 port.

USB 3.0 increases the current limit to 900 mA. Even though the new Lightning-to-USB cable is a USB 2.0 cable, I was hoping that it would take advantage of the higher current limit when connected to a USB 3.0 port. After all, there are USB 2.0 ports on Apple computers and some PC motherboards that are capable of providing higher currents to iPhones and iPads.

Unfortunately, this is not the case:

Click to embiggen.

The charging rate when connected to a USB 3.0 port is basically identical to USB 2.0, and much lower than the wall charger.

These tests were conducted on my iPhone 5 within a few days of release day. My procedure was to deplete the battery, using the Drain My Battery app, until the phone shut off. After a couple of minutes to cool off, I connected the phone to a power source, and treated that time as a 0% charge. When iOS was back up and running, I used the Battery Magic app to monitor the charge percentage. I recorded the time and charge percentage manually at irregular intervals of a few minutes, until the app reported 100% charge.

The wall charger is the small, cubical 1 A charger included with the iPhone 5. The USB 2.0 port was a back-panel motherboard port on my EVGA X58 SLI LE motherboard. The USB 3.0 port was a back-panel port on a Syba SD-PEX20122 PCI-Express card in the same system. The USB 3.0 card is properly connected to a molex power cable. Neither of the USB ports claims to have any special, high-current or iThing-specific modes, just the normal 500 mA and 900 mA limits appropriate to their versions of USB.

From satellite to LTE for rural Internet access: Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed the shortcomings of WildBlue satellite Internet, and my plan for switching to Verizon Wireless 4G LTE upon deployment in my area.

Activation

The Pantech UML290 LTE USB modem arrived by two-day FedEx (no direct signature required) on schedule August 17, the day before LTE was scheduled to go live in my area. In fact, I had already heard reports that LTE was up and running, so I proceeded with activation on the 17th.

In the shipping box was a box containing the modem, with a USB extension cord and a driver CD. A SIM card was also included.

The instructions directed me to call a toll-free number to activate the modem. I did so, and entered the new mobile number associated with the modem, but I was flummoxed when the phone system asked for a password. My Verizon Wireless website password didn’t work. I stayed on the line for a human, who again asked me for my password. I asked for a hint (for example, they often suggest using your mother’s maiden name when setting up the password). She demurred. I verified my identity with my Social Security number, and she asked me for a new password. I gave her one, and she rejected it because it was more than 5 characters in length.

That would have been a useful hint, lady.

From satellite to LTE for rural Internet access: Part 1

The starting point

The Spousal Unit and I moved to a 20-acre rural property near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, about four and a half years ago. There’s no cable or DSL service at our home, nor is the local wireless ISP an option, due to obscuration by terrain and foliage.

Consequently, our Internet access has been provided by WildBlue satellite Internet, which I consider a method of last resort. I’ll provide the numbers below, but satellite Internet access is slow, high-latency, expensive, and unreliable in bad weather. It also has low monthly data caps. These factors limit our ability to use the modern Internet:

• Low speed: Slow downloads, no Netflix or other video streaming.
• High latency (due to the travel time of light to and from geostationary orbit): No gaming, no voice or video conferencing (Skype, Facetime).
• Small data caps: No Netflix or other video streaming, no digital software distribution (Steam, TechNet), no offsite backups. Care must be taken with podcasts, MP3 purchases, software updates, etc., to avoid exceeding the cap.

Improved SMS interface for Foursquare

Last November, I wrote a post criticizing Foursquare’s SMS (text message) interface. The interface was so badly broken that, more often than not, it was impossible for me to check in to my desired venues.

Last week, I was informed through a comment to that post that a company called DOTGO had implemented a new, improved SMS interface for Foursquare. I’ve tried it out a few times since then, and it’s a big step forward. It attempts to correct at least two of my biggest problems with the old interface:

• When your venue search matches multiple venues, the new interface asks you to pick which one you meant.
• The new interface purports to allow you to change your current city. However, I’ve run into problems using this, as described below.

Apple Location Services

My iPod Touch doesn’t have a GPS receiver, so the only way it knows my location is by looking up the detected WiFi networks in a database. The first and most famous such database is Skyhook, and Apple used to use them, but last year they parted ways, and Apple switched to an in-house database.

How do these databases know how to map WiFi networks to geographic location? Well, you can imagine driving a vehicle all over the place, like Google StreetView. In fact, the Googlemobile did detect wireless networks, and got in trouble for collecting a bit more data than was necessary. But I’m sure that kind of survey is one source of data.

Slonkast Episode 24

I was once again privileged to be a guest on the Slonkast this week. Kevin Slonka, Ryan Lantzy, Jim Jacoby, and I discussed Watson on Jeopardy!, Apple’s 30% cut of content sales, and more.

Download Slonkast Episode 24 (MP3, 93.7 MB)
The articles we discussed are linked in the "talking points" at the episode page.

Slonkast Episode 21

Last night I was privileged to be the guest of Kevin Slonka and Ryan Lantzy on episode 21 of the Slonkast, a podcast devoted to technology, social networking, computer security, and mobile technology. I had a great time on the show, and it reminded me of the glory days of the SACS Report. Except you can’t see my socks.

Router flu strikes again

Local blogger Angela documented an outbreak of router flu in the area.

Within minutes of reading her account of the flu, my previously-stable router spontaneously rebooted.

Hide yo routers, hide yo switches.

Firefox is in dis array

Downloadsquad reports that Mozilla has adopted two real, live baby firefoxen:

However, I take exception to this claim from the article:

Right now, in true soulless coder fashion, they're only known as "cub #1" and "cub #2"

If they were named by proper soulless coders, they'd be cub[0] and cub[1].

Foursquare’s SMS interface is a festering heap of targ manure

Update: There's a new Foursquare SMS interface available, courtesy of DOTGO. The new interface addresses most of my complaints below; I've written up some intial impressions of the new service. Check it out!

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I like the idea of Foursquare, but I don’t have a smartphone. That shouldn’t be a problem, because Foursquare supports checking in by SMS (text message). The idea is that you send a text message to 50500 in the following format:

@ location ! shout

Foursquare should check you into location. The optional shout is a message that's shown to your friends and included in tweets generated by foursquare.

Unfortunately, the SMS interface is a colossal failure. It’s as if they set out to develop the least useful interface that could be said to check the “SMS compatibility” box off the requirements list.

Reason Zero: The Mobile Site

Foursquare offers a mobile site, http://m.foursquare.com/, which I should be able to access through the web browser in my phone. But it doesn't work, and Foursquare doesn’t care. It didn’t work on my last phone, a Verizon Samsung Alias, and it doesn’t work on my new phone, a Verizon LG Cosmos. The dysfunctional mobile website is the reason I have to use the SMS interface in the first place.

I may be lazy, but at least I’m not crazy

The Google Suggest Venn Diagram Creator is a fun waste of time. Here’s the best one I’ve come up with so far:

Why are (men, women, cats) so… ?

My neutrons bring all the boys to the yard

Sometimes I miss Atherton Hall. Schreyer Honors College to auction off dates for charity:

Roommates Hannah Spece (freshman-nuclear engineering) and Uma Pattarkine (freshman-finance) will be auctioned off together.

“I like that all the proceeds are going to the Susan G. Komen foundation,” Spece said. “It’s also cool because we plan on walking in to the song ‘Milkshake’ by Kelis.”

That’s the most authentically Athertonian quote I’ve seen in the Daily Collegian since 1994, when Stan Briczinski (freshman-physics) said:

The SACS Report, Episode 4

The SACS Report was a public-access cable television show produced by the Southern Alleghenies Computer Society of Johnstown, PA, in the early 1990s.  For more background, please see the entry for Episode 2.

In this episode, we see the debut of my awesome sweater collection, featuring a button-up V-neck sweater over a turtleneck.  My patterned socks also figure prominently in this episode.  Unfortunately, the age of the VHS tape results in extremely poor video quality—the worst of the series—and my stunning wardrobe is mostly obscured.  The good news is that you’ll be able to devote your attention instead to my panel of guests, Craig Haynal, Mike MacInnis, and Ben Hauger.

On GPS navigators, traffic, and correlations

Our old TomTom GPS navigation device recently bit the dust, so we bought a new one, which came with free lifetime traffic information.  We don’t get traffic information around home—nor do we need it—but it’s a nice bonus when we travel to the big cities.

Generally speaking, traffic data is available for freeways, but not surface streets.  The TomTom unit has statistic knowledge of speeds on the surface streets, called “IQ Routes” (e.g. on Monday mornings, traffic on Foo Street averages 25 mph).

When there’s traffic on the freeway, TomTom will announce the delays (“12 minutes”) and in some cases suggest an alternate route (“5 minutes faster”).  The alternate route usually involves surface streets in lieu of the freeway.  It seems to me that TomTom must be comparing the actual freeway speed with the typical surface street speed (because it has no real-time data for the surface street). But does it understand correlations?  If the freeways are unusually slow, then presumably more people than normal would have already opted for the surface streets on the basis of traffic reports.

Second, what happens when most people have GPS navigators with real-time traffic, and follow the units’ advice?  Thousands of drivers may swamp a side street, trying to avoid a jam on the highway.  When that happens, we have a scenario more like finance than physics: the predictions of the model influence reality.  If you think you have a profit-making (time-saving) opportunity, it disappears in response to the advice.

The solution may be for the GPS navigators to introduce randomness into the suggested routes, dispersing their drivers onto several alternate routes.

I’ve also thought that TomTom should recommend randomized routes as a matter of course (when there are multiple almost-equally-good options) as a means of improving the IQ Routes database.

The SACS Report, Episode 3

The SACS Report was a public-access cable television show produced by the Southern Alleghenies Computer Society of Johnstown, PA, in the early 1990s.  For more background, please see the entry for Episode 2.

I was the moderator of the show, and apparently nobody ever told me not to wear the same outfit twice in a row when you’re on TV.

My guest for Episode 3 was Ben Hauger, who demonstrated an Apple IIgs, including its music-playing abilities (just $50 for a stereo upgrade!) and a variety of games and demos.  Also:  The difficulty of finding the floppy disk you need, and the ability to have more than 16 colors on the screen at once.

Virgin Mobile MiFi 2200: A “review”

This morning I was finally able to pick up my Virgin Mobile MiFi wireless access point at the FedEx Ground facility in Hunker.  My success was not due to any competency on FedEx’s part, but rather to good luck and helpful staff in Hunker.  I arrived at the FedEx Ground facility just after they “opened” at 8:00 am.  It’s clearly not a place where they intend to serve many customers in person:  You have to speak through an intercom so they can let you through the gate, and you enter through an office which has no counter or receptionist.  But a helpful guy met me there, and quickly discovered (surprise, surprise) that they had not received the instructions to hold the package for me.  He ran off to the trucks, and was able to remove the package from the truck before it left for the day.  I appreciated the effort, and the driver was actually happy that I came in.  The package was the only one for my area, so I saved the driver about 30 minutes by picking it up.  So kudos to the local staff, but the overall FedEx Ground customer service and internal procedures and communication still seem to be completely screwed up.

I ordered the MiFi with the hope of replacing my horrible WildBlue satellite Internet access with the 3G access the MiFi provides.  After an appointment in Pittsburgh, I hurried home to try it out.  The timing seemed perfect: since it was raining, my WildBlue Internet connection was, in its typical fashion, non-functional.

The device is very small (like a few credit cards stacked together).  I charged it up and turned it on.  It created a new wireless network that I could see in my laptop’s list of networks, and I connected to it easily using the credentials listed on a sticker on the MiFi.  I continued through the activation process, and once it became necessary for the MiFi to contact the mothership, it started to become apparent that the Sprint 3G signal strength here is poor.  The activation eventually completed, but I haven’t really been able to browse the web, and the MiFi status page shows that it’s “Connected,” but usually with 0 or 1 bars of signal strength.

So it looks like it’ll be going back to Virgin Mobile soon, and I’ll continue to be stuck with satellite Internet service.  When we moved here 3.5 years ago, I had to switch from Sprint to Verizon for cell phone service due to a lack of signal at our house.  I was hoping that the coverage had improved since then, and the online maps showed 3G service here, but I guess that’s not the case.

The SACS Report, Episode 2

In the early 1990s, when I was in high school, I was a member of a community computer club.  In those days the ‘tubes were short, and your online community mostly consisted of nearby people who could make local calls to the same BBSes.  We met monthly for demonstrations of the latest hardware and software.  As a form of community outreach and education, we put together a show on the latest computing news.  This was before “podcasts” and “live streaming,” so we used the 20th-century equivalent: public access cable television.  Think Leo Laporte meets Wayne and Garth.

I was selected as the moderator of the show, presumably on the basis of my outstanding sweater collection.  Just as Star Trek’s pilot episode was missing Captain Kirk, Episode 1 of the SACS Report did not feature yours truly as the moderator.  I’d rather poke fun at myself, so I’m starting this series with Episode 2.

The video quality of the footage varies from poor to adequate.  The episodes, being an irreplaceable relic of my youth, were lovingly archived at SLP speed on a VHS tape previously used to record baseball games.  The audio quality of this episode improves after a couple of minutes.  My archive consists of 6 episodes.  I assume it is complete, but I’m not certain.  I’ve simply assigned the numbers 1-6 to the episodes on my tape.

Episode 2 features two guests, Craig Haynal and Mike Dom, presenting the hottest computer games of the era, including The Sims, Wolfenstein 3D, and Los Dados Afortunados.  Revisiting this episode is appropriate, as Intel recently demonstrated a raytraced, cloud-computed remake of Wolfenstein 3D.  A massively multiplayer, raytraced, 3D update of Los Dados Afortunados is expected in Q2 2011, and should give Portal 2 una carrera por su dinero.