After new server’s hardware setup at ARRL LoTW started processing QSOs faster then before.
Delay is now aprox 7 days versus the 10 days performance of previous month.
You can chech the status here:
Category Archives: Ham Radio 2.0
Interneta and ham radio, interactions and interfaces
Gmail goes Morse Code with Gmail Tap
With Gmail Tap announced today (April 1st) , Google adapted the Morse Code to the new Tap interface integrating a morse code interpreter into their Gmail App for Android Smartphones.
At first while reading I did suspected April Fools and so I still believe it could be a joke, but reading comments on play.google.com looks it’s a real announcement…. Let’s see tomorrow. 
Read more on Gmail Tap
By the way, April fools or not, if you want to use Morse Code to replace your keyboard you can already download an iPhone App, that will do exactly the same, Morse Code Email
QRZ.com new Design
Few hours ago QRZ.com published a new design interface.
They moved from the full wide screen size to the more common 970 pixel wide template. Much more similar to most of the blogs and news web sites.
One of the main innovations of this interface, is the navigation menu, that using the drop down feature allow a faster access to the numerous QRZ.com features.
While the Main site template has changes, the Forum template has been unchanged, and this is maybe one of the worst things… a so professional web site, with an huge income in founds, I expect could invest more on usability and web design.
In any case, the load time looks faster than before.
New Italian Flag by QRZ.com
IW5EDI / HB9
This is what looks like today my QRZ.com web page.
Looks like at QRZ.com have changed the reference to the Italian flag with the one belonging to Switzerland.
http://files.qrz.com/static/flags/248.gif
Well I’ve always dreamed to make some calls from a less popular country, but Switzerland is still too ham-populated.
Well, folks at QRZ.com you can do better, there are a plenty of new prefixes this year..
73
de
IW5EDI / HB9
RadioAnnunci.it
Last night I’ve published my latest ham radio related service on the internet.
It’s a regional classified ads web site, (Mercatino Radioamatoriale) fully in Italian, and dedicated to itailans Radioamatori.
It’s time now to spread the voice, making some direct promotion for the service that I’ve setup in only 3 weeks, using a craig list clone php application I bought last year, but never used anywhere.
So it’s now time to start promoting it for a while, even if I don’t expect a huge number of ads in coming weeks.
So if you are Italian, make a visit and register yourself. http://www.radioannunci.it
Geocities SK, 10K Ham Radio pages lost
Geocities is closing on October 26 2009, and with it many ham radio related web sites will be lost.
Currently Google index has 31,300,000 pages hosted on Geocieties.com and in particular, 6000+ pages related to Amateur Radio and 4000+ pages related to the Ham Radio keyword.
This will mean that a large quantity of knowledge and documentation about projects, modifications, antennas and technical tips will be lost.
Yahoo! that owns Geocities since 1999 has decided to shut down the world wide famous free hosting service born in 1995, recommending owners to move web sites elsewhere.
So if you have bookmarked any interesting sites hosted under Geocities, you have still a couple of days to cache them into your PC before they will get lost.
WebSDR: a Tunable Virtual Radio from Holland
That’s become a funny game during our last local net on 2 meters.
The screenshot you can see here behind is an online tunable radio working on 80 40 and 20 meters band from Holland.
We did enjoy comparing the delay beetween our receivers and the live feed coming form this web radio, and it was nice to discover that the difference was just half a second or less.
We did also test transmitting and getting heard by the remote station, and was interesting to see the waterfall differences on incrementing the output power.
But the most interesting thing was understanding what is behind this web page….
First of all this is not a common remotely tunable radio as you may have had the opportunity to play, there are many remote radios on the net but rather this is a Software Defined Radio. Let’s call it a Virtual Radio.
A Software Defined Radio, is a computer program, that emulate a complete radio, where tipical components like filters, mixers, amplifiers, demodulators, detectors etc have been reproduced by software programmed libraries. Input Output is demanded to commom sound cards, and a minimal RF frontend is provieded.
The University of Twente in Holland has published an SDR web interface that allow you to tune the radio, along to other concurrent users, by simulating a virtual receiver. It means that what you tune, is not heard by others, but only from your pc.
Like other virtualization technologies, a shared host platform is supplied (here is a common old-fashion pentium III PC running linux), and from this host you can load your own virtual exclusive radio and tune the waves via the supplied W3DZZ trap-dipole for the 80 and 40 meters
To load this sdr radio, requirements are Java Browser Plugin installed and access through TCP port 8901.
We can just say Bravo! to the hams that promoted this experiment.
Link to WebSDR on 20m, 40m and 80m
more Software Defined Radio Links, SDR Programs and products
AMSAT UK Site Hacked !
Surfing the net this evening, I jumped into the AMSAT UK site looking for satellite informations. The site reuslts hacked as you can see in above picture.
A quick jump to archive.org revealed that the amsat site has been implemented using Joomla a popular open source content management system that too very often release security fixes that needs to be applied as soon as they are availble.
DXTuners is back
DXTuners.com shutted down
Today surfing the net looking for ham radio live streaming, or remote controlled radios, I’ve jumped into dxtuners.com. Sadly, I’ve been redirected to new Kelly Lindman blog, where he annouce that his dxtuners.com has been shutted down by himself due lack of interest and time.
I’ve been an estimator of Kelly’s work since 1998 when DXTuners was named JavaRadio.com. (he had to change name some years after due to a SUN explicit request, cause of Java prefix name and itìs copy rights…if I don’t get wrong).
JavaRadio has been one of the first, or maybe the first attempt to link the internet with ham radio in a different way, allowing net surfers, to remotely tune a radio and listen the output via a live audio stream.
During years Lindman (SM0NHC), who is an IT expert, developed the client / server architecture using the emerging Java technology, and established a network of remote tuners all over the world. The network included stations from almost all continents, I remember the first remote tuners from Perth Australia, or Illinois USA, Lancaster in CA USA , Edinburgh Scotland, and a couple in Sweden… to support the project costs he was asking a yearly fee to get full access to the network, and with that requirement, I lost interest on that website, since it was exciting to tune remote stations, but not enought for me to pay a fee.
According to some news I’ve found, Lindman has not been able to delegate his functions to anyone else, and in May 07 decided to close the dxtuners.com.
I’m sorry to see a cool web resource, and a so valuable work (I refer to his Java System) be lost, but it can happen when things are driven only by passion, expecially if passion run out.
BTW TNX Kelly
73.
Want to try some remote receivers online? In the mean time, someone else has arranged a remote tuner control via the web, for free… try a google query for Online Radio Receivers
[tags]dxtuners,shortwave,hamradio,dx,online receivers,remote tuners,amateur radio[/tags]