Author Archives: OZ

All of the sudden Facebook for Android stopped working [U-Verse]

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Starting this week, Facebook for Android stopped working while under my home network. At first I thought it was just an issue with my Access Points, and rebooted. It did not fix the problem, so I went ahead and rebooted my main router running DD-WRT. Still with the same issue, I decided to reboot the U-Verse gateway. Unfortunately nothing seemed to fix the problem.

I performed some research online and found out that by changing the MTU size of my main router, it might fix the problem. I went ahead and plugged in 1492 instead of the default 1500; done. It fixed the issue immediately.

I wonder why it started happening all of the sudden as it never gave me any problems with the MTU size of 1500 for at least a couple of years. My guess, AT&T made some changes.

Go to this link for instructions on how to get the best MTU size.

Ping Test

Analog Intercom/Buzzer stops working with VoIP – Future Nine [fixed]

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Quick post here regarding my Voice over IP provider, Future Nine, and the Analog Intercom/Buzzer at the front gate of my community. When someone dials-in from the main gate, I need to pick up the phone and press 9 to open it. It has not been working as of late, and the only way to circumvent the challenge was to reset the Linksys VoIP box. It would last a few minutes.

My current internet provider is AT&T U-Verse. The VoIP box is plugged directly to the U-Verse gateway.

Future Nine replied to my concerned and suggested to make these changes under the advanced tab (LAN port, default gateway IP – http://192.168.0.1/admin/advanced)

SIP Port: 15060
Proxy: incoming.future-nine.com:15060

I am currently testing the changes, and will update with results in the next few days.

Update 02/22:

The service is now working properly. It seems that AT&T blocks port 5060 for their own VoIP service.

Spotify does not play track links from Facebook [Solved]

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I never had a chance to figure out why I couldn’t play tracks  from Facebook or Spotify Play Button at home. After further research I found out that my DD-WRT flashed router had the “Deny DNS Rebinding” option enabled. Spotify needs to resolve *.spotilocal.com to 127.0.0.1.

In order to resolve it, I added this command to the DD-WRT startup options:

sed -i ‘s/stop-dns-rebind//g’ /tmp/dnsmasq.conf
killall dnsmasq
dnsmasq –conf-file=/tmp/dnsmasq.conf

Everything is good now, fortunately.

 

Latest release of Spotify for Android

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Spotify has a preview release for Android downloadable from their website. I have been using it for a few days now and I am pretty happy with the enhancements.

Annoying bugs/issues that I experienced with the previous release, now fixed:

  • App Crashing every time a song was added to a playlist.
  • Gap between songs that made continuous mixes terrible to listen to.
  • No  “similar artists” feature.

Official List of enhancements:

  • Totally new app with full support for Android 4.0
  • Top-to-bottom redesign
  • All-new slide-out navigation
  • Even more social – check out friends’ profile pages and playlists on the go
  • Artist imagery in high resolution
  • Related artist view – available for the first time on mobile
  • ‘Extreme’ sound quality setting for 320kbps listening
  • So much faster

Features that will be added to the final release:

  • Last.fm scrobblling
  • Folder support

You can download the preview version here.

Enjoy!

Source: Spotify blog.

 

For the ones that think $9.99 a month is too much for Spotify

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This is an extract of one of the replies I wrote on a Techcrunch post.

I do not think $9.99 a month is ridiculous for unlimited streaming and caching of content @ 320 kbps OGG Vorbis compression. It is a heck of a deal for the quality offered and the quantity of music, including some rarities and remixes that are sold at over $1.29 per track on Amazon.

I undestand some people like to own and Spotify will not satisfy that requirement. However, it allows you to listen to all types of music, including new content that is published almost on a daily basis in high quality (that last is very important for me), and then you can decide if purchasing it for life is a good option (Amazon, GMusic, iTunes, whatever).

This is my take about purchasing music. First. Very limited content is available in loss-less format. If I am going to pay, might as well be for the best quality available. Second. You cannot resell digital content legally. You take the music with you until your next life.

I have playlists totaling over 5,000 songs in Spotify. I listen to them randomly anytime, anywhere. And continuously add new content. I would be out of my mind if I were to spend $5K in music. $9.99 a month sounds good enough. Good for 41 years worth of music service, and that is if I do not add more songs to Spotify. Unbeatable.

Convenience wins. iCloud you might say? Wrong. You can’t stream with iCloud. You need to have a local copy of the track on the device you will play back.

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