Tech Tips and Reviews
Startup Houston Tech Event Listing Calendar.
September 21st – iphone Developer’s Monthly Meet up. Python enthusiasts. (python? Really?)
October 7th PHP User Monthly Meet up.
Scroll down There is more :-)
http://eventful.com/houston/events/categories/technology
Texas Technology Summit – Houston IT Conference, Texas IT Conference
These are registered event holders and sponsors for the 2011 Texas Technology Summit.
I myself do not get it, if the crowd depicted in the picture are not of one single race then why is it that having a picture of people who are into one particular political party, considered racist ? channel 13 Houston
Sure I understand that if the judge had stated that “look 75 percent of the people in this picture are one race therefore they are the cause”. But because 75% of the people in that picture are wearing the shirt of one political party does not mean that a race is a cause of the issue. It means one’s political blindness and theory, following like he is the pied piper and feeling that you are lawless or at least above the law because you show support for the leader, Could be closer to depicting what the Judge is saying by posting that Bulletin, than to accuse him of racism. See I think Obama has great intentions , I Hope he can pull this off. He is not my Jesus, He is not my temporary fill in until Jesus comes. He is the president, and well from since before my time, Media has made fun of the president and political stances. All presidents have faced ridicule and disbelievers. So let’s not act like it’s new (says it in his best Ronald Regan Voice While holding his fingers up in a peace sign like Nixon with a stupid look on his face like Bush with a Lewinsky dress over his shoulder).
See I don’t like racists any more than you may, In fact I may like them a whole lot less. I’m pretty sure if I analyzed you close enough I could find a reason I find you to be racist. I wouldn’t hate you. I would want to educate you.
There is a whole lot more going on in life than pointing at someone and calling them a different race.
There are more colors in the world than just black and white. Heck the ones you call black are not black and the ones you call white are not white. So quit being a pig about it.
Back on topic, I think a political rant site needs to get hold of what trail that judge was onto and straighten this whole mess out.
Comcast will set a total available bandwidth usage. They will be charging for people going over their monthly limit.
For an unlimited internet. they sure do dance around the word “limit” a whole lot.
They claim 43% bandwidth usage increase. Well if you buy every internet company that has many users on it, expect an increase. This is how media dumbs us down and tells us that we should pay more an accept the fact that we are bad.
Give us a choice? “throttle or cap” ? are you kidding me?
I am for neither one. I live between 2 dsl hubs!
I didn’t go over my limit. I am unlimited.
my usage did not increase, they increased the number of users.
Time to Dsl it.
Sell out’s explain it to us
Net neutrality or bandwidth capping. WTF is actually happening here?
Does the “Comunismcast” hat fit yet ?
They bought out all companies in Texas that could be an alternative to their internet supply, then they tell us we will pay for anything over a limit.. again, unlimited bandwidth….?
I say leave comcast and cripple them before all the other companies join suite. Make an example of them.
Didn’t Microsoft get sued for this exact same thing?
I had some time to sit and listen to the people from HiTech Integrated Solutions, a fire alarm, security and sprinkler company in Houston Texas, about a new product that amazed me. See I was looking for close to home technology that I could locate and not have to quote someone’s website and basically repeat someone who has sales pitched their news article. Soooo I called around and asked if I could ask a few places some questions. Of course I am a bit simple minded when using a telephone book (if it does not have a screen, my imagination is quite limited). So I headed straight to looking for anything with the word tech in it’s name that was located here in Houston. I stumbled upon ” HiTech Integrated solutions” . I called and spoke to a little lady ( I forget her name) and she sent me right through to the owner of the company, Mr Dan Cooley.
I asked Dan If he could give me ideas as to what makes his company High Tech . You could hear the smile in his voice and tiny chuckle when he said ” Well, simply we have nothing in beta, but we do have Focal Point“.
Yeah Right away I hit google. Came across the only documentation on it, pdf .
Seems like no one actually has it yet.
Wait you will see why this is High Tech! ..
This is some sort of Monitoring software for fire alarms and what seems to be security also. I had to call back later and ask a few questions after the conversation with Dan, i got in touch with “Eric” the CEO of HiTech. Eric Told me that The owner of companies that purchase the plan, get this little tablet pc thing , so they themselves can see and monitor alarm activity on their location. This thing is amazing.
It allows the owner see specifically what room and what device is causing the alarm. I am not talking text notification. i mean an actual detailed blueprint of the building with devices properly located in simulation to the real alarm installation. if there is a smoke detector in the far east hall of the building two feet passed the last door on the left, you see that device on the blue print. If that specific device is detecting an alarm, it will notify the Fire Alarm Control Panel, The panel will then activate the “gateway card”, the gateway card (it’s in a pci slot looking thingy, on the control panel) will then notify the Focal Point Tablet Pc ViA Internet connection.
This Tablet Pc has Microsoft Windows Xp on it. Kinda cool. Has a start button and everything.
ok so far this fire alarm company is turning out pretty HiTech.
The signal is sent to the Tablet Pc In data Form and Translated back for the user to activate the images on the screen, showing the owner of the location exactly what device in what location is going into alarm.
So yeah, I had to drive up there, I wanted to see this thing in action.
Looks
Other than the glass being on the face of the machine, it looks really tough.big Rubber bumper pads on the corners and a leather casing that wraps around it. Some big pen stylus with a button on the side of it. I would prefer that large of a stylus anyway, would hate losing the little tiny stylus’ that comes with pdas.
Just had to test the protective casing (evil grin). for starts , I laid it face down to see how much clearance there was, to see if the screen is easy to scratch up. Exactly 1/2 an inch. That’s pretty good. You could lose a pen under there and not scratch the screen..
Weight and feel
I give this about 4-6 pounds of solid durable hard plastic, encasing steel.This thing is not a little mini laptop, this thing is not some little kid’s video game machine . This is made for the working people who are in the dirt (minus the exterior screen). Just keep it in it’s case while you are not using it.
While I was there, I spoke more with Dan Cooley and he showed me how the thing works. Dan walked me to this little tiny demo room they had near the Accounting Manager’s office. In this room they had smoke detectors, Horn/Strobes and plain strobes and multiple pull stations mounted on the wall. Mr Cooley then booted up the tablet pc and showed the scoop. He had this imaginary building drawn up looking like a futuristic castle. Dan then pulled down on the pull station and instantly we got notification that the pull station in the butler’s chamber had been triggered. That was cool. Right then, Dan’s phone rang and I could hear the guy on the end of the line laughing saying “our castle is burning up!” . It was HiTech’s IT guy, 400 miles away in Corpus Christi. He had notification at the exact same time as we did. Very impressive. They seemed like a happy bunch.
So basically the owner of the property will have notice to his tablet, before the monitoring company has a chance to call him, but not faster than the emergency teams can be contacted. i learned that the monitoring company is automated to make all contacts the instant a warning is made. This sounds like it saves lives and property a whole lot faster than just some dude named bubbah saying ‘hey you alright?” .
I have made requests for further interviews. The guys at HiTech said they would be happy to entertain, and may point me straight to Fci, so I can see more HiTech exclusive products before it can be advertised.
Focal Point was an amazing set up, but man, i swear that sounds like it used to be a M$ product.
New locations coming to our fire alarm company, pretty good stuff.
Our Main office will stay the same same in Houston
We have purchased the property for our new locations and have construction on the way.
Our austin Facility is up and running. This is a great year.
I may even transfer to our San Antonio location as soon as it has ac .. lol Texas is fricken hot. anything to get out of Comcast’s capitolism.
I like to think we are better than all Texas fire alarm companies . I am sure we are the better fire alarm and detection company in Houston .
We are upgrading hundreds of fire alarm control panels (facp) from the 7100. it seems people want the new stuff. Really i am just the bew guy and all so I have no idea why they want the new one that sounds an alarm just the same as the current one that sounds the same alarm. I am sure it’s the ease of use in the new ones that allow the ‘actual owner’ a chance to understand what to do and how to do things, in certain situations. The E3 Facp is the “broad band” panel, The new. Maybe I’m old fashioned and like the old everything, Vintage means ” all bugs have been noted” and you can actually get help from past users< but this planet seems to be full of wealthier people than who are out for the E3 type things in life. Maybe it’s the security of knowing that you have the latest when your establishment is built and it should be good for a while that sales them to go that route. I myself will buy it used and and hack what I can into it’s firmware and make stuff better for me. But that is me. I guess that is me and why i am in the office doing cad instead of out in the field programming the panels. lol.
I mean it’s not like everyone in the world wants to have cool specialized interface that comes at the price of having to reboot every time you do something or what ever expense that modded software usually causes you to have to endure.
it sure would upset a fire marshal if every time he inspects my panel he sees his name on the display. lol
Probably not the most techy news I have done here but I got a new job working for a company called “HiTech” Fire detection.
A fire alarm and sprinkler company from out in Houston area. The guys here are great and very relaxed. Kinda strange to me because I have never been this comfortable in a work environment.
Well forget all the intros let’s get to the bone. I seem to have been assigned a task of building a website. See this guy Eein that I am working with built a site straight from css and tables and stuff which of course i think is fine and runs circles around the current site . But the owner saw me messing around with some flash ap and just jacking around with my desktop and a web template . Now see, I didn’t really want the task of building the site, simply because if it looks lame to me I will rebuild it , and rebuild it and it will never be finished. I have scrapped it like five times now already.
Well if a site is what they want then a site is what they get. You see though, I like the site that Eein built. It just looks better and is more sound and can be easily updated when needed, and it can be crawled at any time by any search bot. The owners of the site want a flash intro and a flash ap on the page , a flash ap that I really do not want to get buried in. They want a room to navigate in with a fire extinguisher and a sprinkler and a horn strobe and a lighted exit sign above the door in the back. I am sure I can do it, but man I would hate to have to edit it. I can edit it but dang .
You guys tell me what looks better. I really like Eein’s site I have said that from the start and am really against a bloated flash site. The current site is done in mostly Iframes and I really cannot see a bot crawling that which really is not a helpfull thing, ya know? See I know that they are going to be expanding to Austin Dallas and San Antonio real soon, like before the end of 2008. They surely will be wanting an update to the site telling people in those areas that it would not take long for us to get our guys on the site. Now that is becoming bigger work. I am still learning the ropes of the job and if I spend all my time on the clock building a site, when my evaluation period ends and I don’t know anything……. dude I will be screwed.
Looking at hours of photoshop and adobe flash cs3 man,!!!!
The dell machine and adobe flash cs3 and if you could zoom way in, you would see photoshop somewhere in the taskbar. This sad little machine is a trooper though, it is doing all that with only 512 mb ram, minimum for flash install. The 3.2g pentium is the life saver there though.
looks like houston.com has them in the forefront