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So I will be traveling to Europe soon, and I don’t want to pay the $0.99/minute rate that AT&T charges for international roaming. So I figured I would pick up pre-paid SIM cards overseas and pop those into my phone. If you’re not familiar with SIM cards, they’re the little chip that holds your cell phone identity so it knows how to talk to the cell towers (for GSM phones only).

Anyway, I’ve found that when dealing with the cell phone companies, it’s never as easy as it should be. So I prepared myself for the worst. By default, my phone is “locked” which means that you can’t just drop in a new SIM card and be off on your merry way. I knew that AT&T used to charge you ~$20 to unlock your phone. Apparently this annoyed people so much that a whole industry grew up around unlocking your phone for less than what the phone companies charged. Recently all that has changed and now AT&T will tell you how to unlock your phone for no charge. A step in the right direction, definitely, but they don’t make it easy.

After spending 20 minutes on the phone with the AT&T rep (after 10 minutes on hold), he finally got to the steps to unlock my phone. Since I was using my phone to talk to him, the rep told me to write down the steps. After doing so and making him repeat everything to make sure I got everything right, the rep then said he’d email it to me! Not sure why I needed to write it down if he could email it. Grr…

So when I got home I decided to try to unlock my phone. The instructions the AT&T rep had given me verbally were different from what he had emailed, so I was a little wary. It turned out that both sets of instructions were in parts incorrect and also misleading. So I did what I should have done in the first place and hit the Goog. I found this site on How To Unlock the Blackberry Pearl which gave me the correct steps I needed. So I now have an unlocked phone!

Since the post above was a little verbose, I’ll boil it down to just the important steps. Remember, this is only for Blackberry Pearl 8100 phones on AT&T:

1. Turn off the radio (the Turn Wireless Off program) VERY IMPORTANT.
2. Select “Options” and then “Advanced Options”
3. Scroll down and select “SIM Card”
4. Hold down and type “meppd” (this means you need to hit the following keys: [M] [ER] [OP] [OP] [DF])
   A lot of information will be displayed showing the security status of your SIM, Network, Network Subset, etc.
5. Hold down and type “mepp2″ (this means you need to hit the following keys: [M] [ER] [OP] [OP] alt [TY])
   A dialog will popup asking for your code.
6. Enter the Unlock Code you got from AT&T – yes you’ll need to call AT&T customer support and ask for the unlock code.
7. Press down on the trackball to submit. The Network item on the screen should change from Active to Disabled (meaning that Network locking has been disabled)
8. Reboot your phone (I’m not sure if this is absolutely necessary, but it never hurts)

Ta-da! Now wasn’t that easy?

I guess I’m not the only one eagerly looking forward to the new Iron Man movie. The Onion has made a little joke out of the popularity of the Iron Man trailer – take a look:

Wildly Popular ‘Iron Man’ Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

I pretty much have my whole life online. One of the major problems with this is that I have to remember like a million passwords. Instead of relying on the same password for everything, which is a big security no-no, I use software to help me.

1Password (for Mac) and Roboform (for Windows) are password managers that integrate directly into your browser, remember passwords for you, and even offer to fill in usernames and passwords when a site asks for them. This makes logging into sites a breeze. You can even have the tools auto-generate complex passwords for you to prevent hackers from guessing your passwords (if you have a simple password, they can do this very quickly using special software programs nowadays).

One thing I’ve noticed is that these tools have encouraged me to log out of sites when I’m done using them since it’s so easy to log back in. This is important because when you don’t log out, even of sites like Gmail and Facebook, you open yourself up to security holes. If a site you’re logged in to has a XSS vulnerability, hackers on a different site you browse to can do nasty things, like steal your personal information or snoop on your email. Scary stuff.

Both programs allow you to secure your list of usernames/passwords with a master password. Roboform even allows you to store your list anywhere you want, which means you can store it on a USB drive and take it with you. 1Password is slowly rolling out their My 1Password website which promises to make your 1Password data accessible from any modern web browser, regardless of platform.

Both programs also allow you to store other commonly used information, like your address, phone number, etc. This comes in very handy when filling in all those account signup forms.

Overall, if you spend a lot of time on the internet (and who doesn’t nowadays), buying one of these programs is well worth it. It will improve your online security and save you tons of time to boot!

I’m going to try to start writing a recurring series of posts about software that I think is indispensable but many people don’t know about. This is the first segment.

How often do you try to move a file or eject a USB drive only to greeted with an error like:

This occurs because Windows is still using the file or USB drive you are trying to modify. But instead of being helpful and telling you WHICH program or file is being used by Windows, it just gives you the generic error. That’s where Unlocker comes in.

Unlocker is a free piece of software which lets you right click on the file or drive and see why Windows is giving you the error.

Once you know the source of the problem, you can tell Unlocker to fix it, either by shutting down the programs that are “locking” the files or simply by unlocking the files in question. Keep in mind that if you unlock a file and move it without shutting down the program that’s using it, that program will probably complain.

Anyway, just a tip. I recommend downloading and installing Unlocker for the off chance you too run into this problem.

I finally got to test out my new Flip video camera this weekend. The quality isn’t that great, especially since I was taking video at a distance. But for a video camera that runs less than $150 and is the size of a pack of cigarettes, it’s not bad.

Here are some video highlights from our latest frisbee game:

For more on the Flip, check out David Pogue’s video review on the NY Times. The textual article is interesting too, but the video review is more entertaining.