Bag Storage at Denver Union Station

Denver's Union Station has no place to check bags, at least as of August, 2024. They used to. The station has a very nice hotel called the Crawford, which used to check bags for a fee. They no longer do. The station also services Amtrak, and Amtrak used to have lockers, but they no longer do. I have no idea why, but it's easy to guess.

I had checked out of my hotel in Boulder, taken the (very nice) Flatiron Flyer bus back to Denver, and now I had time to kill before my evening train back to Chicago. Where could I park my bags, so I could walk around and explore, unfettered? I asked at the front desk of the Crawford Hotel and the nice lady there gave me a card for LUGDEN. LUGDEN is....a van. A van parked on Wynkoop Street, by 17th, right across from Union Station. They'll let you check luggage for a fee (at the time of writing, $3/hour or $10/day). I was able to check both of my bags successfully, head to Meow Wolf, followed by lunch and wandering, then swing back and pick up my bags in time to grab a pre-train cocktail at the Terminal Bar.

So, I'm sharing this here for those who, like me, searched online and found information lacking. You'll find old message board posts that suggest that Amtrak and the Crawford will check bags for a fee, but then neither Amtrak or the Crawford's website say this any more, and when I asked at the hotel, they weren't storing bags for non-guests. So, anything you see online suggesting otherwise is probably out of date.

Need to store luggage at Denver's Union Station? You'll want to look for LUGDEN. Find their website here, get a card from the front desk of the Crawford Hotel, or look for them on Wynkoop Street.

While it may seem to be a bit of an odd setup, everything worked fine, the process was easy, the person manning the van was professional, and they do take credit cards. I had no issues at all and would recommend them to others.

Cradlepoint CTR-350: Wifi Anywhere!

I've been coveting this little device ever since I first heard of it, earlier this year.

What does it do, you ask? Well, it couldn't be simpler. You take your Sprint EVDO USB modem, plug it into this small device (which is about the size of a pack of smokes), and boom, you've got an instant wifi hot spot.

Why would you want to do that? Sure, you can plug your Sprint modem into your laptop. But that means it only works with one computer at a time, and that computer has to have drivers and support for the Sprint modem.

What if you want to meet up with friends to do a bit of mutual geeking out? Starbucks has wifi, but it'll cost you. Wouldn't it be more fun to meet up at the local pub, even if the pub doesn't have wifi? Just bring along the Cradlepoint CTR-350 travel router, plug it into the electricity, and you've got an instant wifi access point.

Heck, if I ran a bar, or a coffee shop, I'd look at using this to cheaply and easily offer internet access to my customers. It's probably cheaper than what a cable or DSL provider is going to charge a business for a similar setup.

Let's break down what it actually costs. Sprint EVDO is $59/month. The Sprint USB modem will cost anywhere from $79-$279, depending on what your plan is and whether or not you're a new customer. And the Cradlepoint router is only $149. So for around $400 in hardware, and $59 a month, you've got an instant wifi hotspot for your business. That's got to be priced comparable, if not cheaper, than an actual commercial hotspot solution plus line and connectivity charges.

I'm not sure if the Sprint terms of service allow this, but I won't tell if you won't.

I'm not a security wonk, so I can't talk in great detail about the security capabilities of the device. At a glance, it seems to have everything you need, with support for WEP and WPA encryption.

It has an easy web-based control panel where you can configure all the relevant options. There are detailed settings that go far beyond whatever I'd need. So if you need to set up NAT, inbound port mapping, or special settings to give gamers' packets priority over others, you should be able to do configure the router to handle any/all of those requirements.

I've logged into the setup screens, but the only changes I've made were to change the SSID (visible network name) of the wifi network and change the default passwords. The device has separate user login and administrator passwords, of course.

I've left it configured so that it's open and unlocked, in a sort of “Starbucks-like” mode. By that I mean, anybody can connect, but they don't get internet access until they launch a web browser and enter a password.

This device doesn't have any flaws that I can find. I haven't done any serious throughput testing, but it seems fine and I managed to do a whole day's worth of work over a VPN connection through it yesterday. It didn't feel any better or worse than connecting directly over the Sprint modem via a USB connection.

The only problem I had at all was connecting my T-Mobile Wing cell phone to the wifi network. The web browser on my Windows Mobile phone shows the login screen just fine, but the submit button doesn't work. Maybe it's script based and not supported by the lite version of Internet Explorer found on my phone. That's a very minor issue as far as I'm concerned.

I see myself using this quite a bit in the near future. I travel quite a bit for work, and I'm always working out of different offices here in Chicago or elsewhere, coffee shops, or my home. This means just about every day I'm connecting to work from some different network, and subject to that network's flakiness or potential down time. And when our cable goes down at home, (as it has on occasion) I can turn on the Cradlepoint router, and both my girlfriend and I can jump back online and get done what needs to be done. Or, sometimes I'll have two computers running at the same time, one crunching big numbers for work, and the other with my email and RSS feeds open. Now I can keep this going, even if the network's down wherever I am.

Cradlepoint didn't pay me for this review, and I bought the device at full price directly from them. But, if they decide they like me for this, they should feel free to send me another one so I can send it to one of my friends in Minneapolis. I know he'd find it handy! :-)

(Random note: I wrote this review in OpenOffice on my new Asus Eee PC, while connected to the net via the Cradlepoint. I'm loving the Eee, and the Cradlepoint router makes it easier to share connectivity between my primary Windows laptop and the cool Linux-running Eee. Look for more thoughts from me about the Eee in the near future.)

D-Link DPH-50U Skype Adapter

What does the D-Link DPH-50U do? Well, it lets you hook a regular telephone to your computer. Why would you do that? To use Skype, of course. If you don't already know about Skype, it's time to learn. Skype is an insanely neat telephone replacement software for your computer. If you and your friends all have Skype, calls between each other are free. You could be in Tokyo, your friend could be in Iowa, it's still free. I love it. I've been encouraging friends to get Skype accounts left and right.

Both my home and office phones are actually Skype accounts. To make them work with real phones, we use SkypeIn (buying a phone number) and SkypeOut/SkypeUnlimited (calling regular phones). If you want to be able to receive calls from ordinary phones, you buy a SkypeIn number. In any area code you want, or even in any country they have support for. Then inbound calls to you at that number are free. As far as making calls, you can either pay per minute (about 2.5 cents per minute in the US, I believe), or you can do SkypeUnlimited, which lets you call anywhere in the US and Canada with no long distance charges. That's what I do -- I got it for some amazingly cheap price as a starter deal. But even at the "full" price of $29.95/year, that's still an amazing deal.

The adapter isn't necessary to use Skype. You can use a normal computer microphone and headset. If you have a laptop with a microphone and speakers built in, Skype will work like a speaker phone (which comes in handy for meetings at work). There are also various cordless and corded USB telephone handsets available (I'm quite fond of the IPEVO Free-1). But with this adapter, you can talk on Skype over a normal phone, and even use it to dial out (if calling a regular phone).

If you have an incoming call (from another Skype user or from a phone), the thing makes your phone ring. The inbound caller ID works as you'd expect, unless you get a call from another Skype user -- then the caller ID actually shows their user name. Pretty neat.

There's only a couple oddities about dialing this thing that make me wonder, what were they thinking? (Or that it wasn't designed in the US.)

• You need to dial 001 + (area code) + (phone number) + *. I assume 001 means US, then the area code and number are expected, but then you have to hit the asterisk. I know from a programming perspective, it would be very easy to set a "default" country, so you wouldn't have to dial the 001.
• And why do you have to tell it you're done dialing by hitting star? Can't it figure it out, say, if you've stopped hitting numbers for 2-3 seconds, then connect the call? Seems to be a no brainer.
• Out of the box, the thing plays a special information tone when connecting your call. You know, the three beeps you hear before a recorded voice tells you that you call cannot be completed? That's how the device tells you it's working. Very strange. Thankfully, upgrading the driver to the latest version (1.1 as of this writing) seems to address this.
  

These aren't deal breakers for me, but if you have somebody in your home or office who isn't tech savvy, these little quirks are going to confuse the heck out of them.

Even with all of that, it's still pretty neat to be able to plug in a normal telephone. We'd been having problems with our previous Skype phone (not the IPEVO one) at home, so today we wandered down the street to our local neighborhood Radio Shack and picked up a cordless phone with two handsets to use as our new Skype-based home phone setup. Took only a few minutes to set up, and so far, it's working great.

Review: Novatel Wireless Ovation U720 USB Modem: Part 1

I've been a customer of Verizon Wireless for around eighteen months now, using their PC5740 PC Card to get online to work remotely from just about everywhere I've traveled to. I bought it when I lived in Minnesota, where I spent a lot of time in bars, grabbing a cheeseburger while catching up with the insane workload leveled at me by my last employer. Since that time, I've moved to Chicago, and changed jobs to one where I travel quite a bit. And when I'm not traveling, I usually work from home. Our cable's gone down on occasion, and the Verizon card has saved my bacon, allowing me to stay up and running. I've used my “Wireless Broadband” connection in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago, Indianapolis, Washington DC, San Diego, and many other places, over the past year or so. When I travel, I rarely spring for the in-room internet access any more; just pop-in the Verizon card and I'm on.

There's a few drawbacks. One, the connection is occasionally fussy. They have a fall back to dialup-quality connection, and I end up on it enough that it just drives me crazy. Second, your computer has to have a PC Card slot to be able to use the card. That means no support for macs, desktops, or ultra-portable laptops. In our home, we have all of these. It would be nice to be able to connect to the wireless broadband connection from my tiny Sony Vaio U750 while traveling, maybe to connect to my Slingbox and watch something recorded on the Tivo. Can't do that, though.

I'm always on the lookout for new devices and new ways of doing things. While doing a random Google search a couple weeks ago, I ran across this. It looked too good to be true. Wireless broadband (or mobile broadband, as Sprint calls it) over USB? Reading the reviews, it looks like something everybody's been waiting for. Was it too good to be true? I decided that I'd check it out, and if it works as well as claimed, it's going to replace my Verizon Wireless card.

I ordered the USB modem from sprint.com last week, and the modem was delivered to me a few days later.

The device itself is just over two inches long, about an inch and a half wide, and about five eighths of an inch thick. It hangs out of the side of your laptop, attached to a USB port, or you connect it up via an included cable. The cable has two USB connectors for the computer side of the connection. This is to draw more power, sometimes necessary to get you the strongest connection and maximum throughput.

Click here to read on...

Part 1 of 3 | Part 2 of 3 | Part 3 of 3

Review: Novatel Wireless Ovation U720 USB Modem: Part 3

Part 1 of 3 | Part 2 of 3 | Part 3 of 3

Another Day, Another Try

The next day, Friday, I decide to use the Sprint connection for work. It fires up fine, and the VPN connects with no issues. I do my usual work thing all day long, and don't see a lot of problems. 90% of the time I'm in Outlook. If I'm downloading something it's a large Excel file. If I'm uploading something, it's a large attachment to an email being sent out of Outlook. I'm not sitting there with a timer, but I don't really notice any issues, either. It seems to work fine. The fact that I have a USB modem hanging out of a USB port is a bit of a concern; I wonder how many people are going to accidentally break off the USB connector. I connect it with the included cable, instead. Later that day I get knocked off a couple times as the cable comes loose. Work's a big frenetic and I don't have time to play with it now, so I switch back over to wifi and my cable modem.

On Saturday, I try another round of tests. In the living room of my apartment, here on Chicago's north side, I plug the Novatel modem into my older laptop. It's an Averatec 3200 series, with 512mb RAM, running an AMD Athlon XP-M processor at 1.53 GHz. Not very fast, but it should do fine for this.

I head over to www.speedtest.net to fire up some download tests. I repeat the same series of tests on both the Sprint USB modem and the Verizon Wireless card. The Sprint connection is fairly even throughout the testing; approximately 550kpbs down, around 120kpbs up. Testing the Verizon Card turns problematic. The connection first puts me online with “NationalAccess” instead of “BroadbandAccess.” This means it couldn't lock on to the faster connection, and so it's put me online via a dialup-comparable connection. Yuck. The testing confirms that. I know from fighting with the Verizon connection before, sometimes it's going to be fussy and nonresponsive. So, I reboot the computer. This makes it clear up and I'm able to connect and do the same tests via the Verizon connection. At first, the upload side of the test keeps timing out. I wait about a half hour and try it again from my home office. This time the download speeds measured are quite a bit faster than what I was seeing with Sprint. At least 1000kpbs, with upload speeds around 100kbps.

Back to the Sprint connection. Trying different sites on www.speedtest.net, I get quite a bit of variance in connection speed. For some of the sites, it does actually note transfer speeds in the high 900s – pretty close to the Verizon speed.

I think I've still got a few days to decide whether or not to keep the Sprint Novatel USB modem, or send it back. Right now, I'm leaning torward sending it back.

Pros:

• USB Connection. Works on macs, desktops, ultraportables, anything with a USB port and driver support.

• Easy to configure. Stable connection.

• If you're in a “Rev. A” EVDO market, it's probably faster than Verizon Wireless.

Cons:

• Unless you're in a “Rev. A” EVDO market, it's slower than Verizon Wireless.

• USB connector feels cheap; I worry about it breaking off.

• When in use, you've got a two inch device hanging off the side of your laptop.

If you've got a mac and desire a wireless broadband connection, this is the way to go. If not, and you don't live in a market served by Sprint's upgraded network, I wouldn't bother. You'll probably be happier with Verizon.

Part 1 of 3 | Part 2 of 3 | Part 3 of 3

Review: Novatel Wireless Ovation U720 USB Modem: Part 2

Part 1 of 3 | Part 2 of 3 | Part 3 of 3

Activation

I've heard horror stories about Sprint's customer service in the past, but I figure every big company has issues now and then.

I call the activation phone number. The magical lady in the wire said I'd be on hold for less than three minutes. After slightly over four minutes, a rep picked up, but then had to put me on hold again. I'm now eight minutes into this call. The rep's computer just went down, and we're waiting for it to come back up. Not exactly off and running. I don't remember what the process was with my Verizon Wireless card, but I suspect it was just plug the thing in and go. I ask the guy if we're still waiting for the computer to come back up. He says yes. At 9:42, the call disconnects.

Okay, calling back, we'll try again. This time the voice tells me we'll be on hold for less than ten minutes. Well, I'm on my Skype phone, and it's not costing me by the minute, so I guess I'll live, but it's not exactly converting me into a happy Sprint customer. This time around, it only takes about three minutes for a new rep to come on the line. This one has a working computer, and the process was pretty easy. Tell her who I am, and she gives me a six digit code to unlock the USB modem device. Drop it in, and we're off and running. Total length of time on that call was just over five minutes.

Installation and First Use

Setting up the software was easy enough. First thing it wants to do is download a sizable system update. This goes a bit faster over wifi than over Sprint's network, but installs just fine and away you go.

Browsing the web hasn't impressed me yet. I don't know if they utilize any caching. I surf on over to CNN's website and watch the bottom bar in Firefox, as CNN preloads a bunch of images. It seems a bit slower than I'm used to. I slide over to my desktop computer, connected via wifi to my cable modem, and do the same. It gives me a second to contemplate life while it preloads images, just like on the Sprint connection. Maybe it's not too bad after all.

I'm wondering how this compares to Verizon Wireless Broadband. I live in Chicago, which is a "Rev. 0" EVDO market-- Sprint hasn't upgraded their network to the new super-fast "Rev. A" spec here yet. That means, based on what I've read so far, that performance should be fairly similar to what I'm getting today with my Verizon card.

I set up two laptops side by side. My older laptop gets the new Novatel USB device, and my newer one gets the Verizon Wireless card. I start them both up. This is the first time the device has been hooked to the older laptop, so it wants to download a software update. While waiting and watching the download meter, it tells me I'm getting about 26k/second on the update being downloaded.

While I wait, I log into a website on the Compaq laptop, over the Verizon Wireless connection. I start a download of a 7.3 megabyte MP3 file. According to my unscientific methodology (watching the progress bar in Firefox's download window), I'm getting around 108k/second. Uh oh. If the numbers are to be believed, so far, the Verizon Wireless card's a lot faster. But, this laptop's a lot older and slower--let's hope the Sprint connection is being affected by that.

Let's make the comparison more apples-to-apples. I remove the Novatel USB device from the older laptop and plug it into the newer one. While downloading a second MP3 file, this one 7.6 megabytes in size, I seem to be getting only about 56k/second. Still not that great, compared to the Verizon Wireless Card. At this rate, if this is the best this device can do, I'm calling Sprint for an RMA number tomorrow.

Checking the box, I see that the Novatel device comes with a special USB cable. It takes up two USB ports on the computer end. I guess this is to give the device more power from the USB bus, to help it make a better connection. I plug it in with that cable and fire it back up. The speedometer in Firefox flops around, but ends up settling down at about 62k/second.

Okay, let's try the other computer. I plug the Verizon Card into my older laptop, and fire it up. I download one of the MP3 files I had downloaded from the other computer, and again, it's averaging at least 126k/second. It's actually up to 140k/second by the end of the download of the 7.3 megabyte file.

So far, not so good. But am I testing the bandwidth speeds correctly? At that point, I set it all aside for the day.

Continues here...

Part 1 of 3 | Part 2 of 3 | Part 3 of 3

Brookstone 5-Day Wireless Weather Forecaster

The short version of this review: This little device is cool.

The longer version: Is it $89 cool? I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it seems like it very well may be.

What is it, you ask? Why, it’s a clock, and a magical fancy weather device.

Remember the ambient orb? It was a weird little globe that out a few years ago. A coworker got one of them for his birthday. Via received radio waves, connected on the back end to a website, you could set it to change color or flash depending on different variables. If the weather took a turn for the worse, or if your stocks tanked, the thing blinks or changes color and you consider yourself informed. Interesting, but strange. This weather device is apparently a descendant of the orb, based on the fact that the instructions for the weather device direct you to ambientdevices.com to register the device, the home site of the ambient orb device.

So, I said that the weather device was magical, and I wasn’t kidding. I’m not going to focus too deep on the technology behind this, because I don’t know a ton about it, and I don’t need to. I do know that it works via radio waves. Somehow, the device knows where it’s located, or the radio signal is localized to different regions in the country.

Basically, you just take the thing home, put batteries in it, and you get the weather from AccuWeather.com. It tells you whether or not it’s raining or snowing, if it’s windy or cloudy, and the current temperature. It has today’s high and low, and it also displays the forecast for the next four days, including high and low temperature and weather predicted. If it’s going to snow on Tuesday, the thing will tell you.

It, of course, also tells you the current time, which it also obtains via magic (either over the radio signal, or via the WWV signal that every other auto-setting clock in the US uses).

This thing is pretty amazing and convenient. We keep ours in the bathroom. That way, while we’re getting ready for the day’s activities, we know what the weather’s going to be like when we head outside. I bet these make great gifts too – if you’re a friend of mine, it’s probably on the short list for what to get you at next Christmas.

Pros:

- No monthly fee. Purchase the device and you’re set. (Unless you want weather from some other city; see below.)

- Put batteries in and forget it. It takes a few hours to first gain its bearings and then you’re all set.

- It knows where you are automatically. Take it with you to California, and it’ll work there too.

Cons:

- It only works in big cities. Make sure you check the coverage map before laying out the cash for it. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you’re likely to be disappointed.

- You have to pay extra if you want it to receive weather data for some city other than your own.

- The device becomes a fancy plastic paperweight if Ambient ever goes out of business.

Click here to buy it now from Amazon.com.

Skype + IPEVO Free-1 USB Skype Handset

I admit it. I'm a Skype geek.

Even though Skype is no longer free, it's still the best deal in town. For only about fifty bucks a year, you get unlimited inbound and outbound phone calls in the US and Canada. Skype still feels a bit “in beta” sometimes – there's no outbound caller ID, and sound quality suffers as your net connection suffers, but these are bugs that'll get worked out eventually. And, it couldn't be any more convenient. Plug a headset into your laptop, whether you're in Topeka or Tanzania, and calls to your local (home) phone number ring through to you.

Not to mention, if you work in technology, and/or have cool friends, you'll be able to convince other people to sign up for Skype, too. Then you can call each other completely outside of the telephone network, and talk completely for free, even if neither party is signed up for a Skype In or Skype Out phone plan.

It makes my laptop into the world's largest cell phone that works anywhere you've got wifi (or wireless broadband). I travel all the time, and it's great to be able to hop on at a Starbucks or in my hotel room and take care of all of my calling needs without using up cell phone minutes. And when I'm working from home, it's my business phone. Let's face it, in this modern age, who has a land line any more? I sure don't. And I'm not so good with keeping track of my cell usage. I seem to run over every couple of months. So, to get around that, I use Skype as often as possible.

But, for casual calling, a headset is annoying. It uses up your headset port and microphone port. Not a big deal with the microphone, but for the headset, it blocks your speakers, making it tough to listen to iTunes or soma fm while you're waiting for a phone call.

That's where the IPEVO Free-1 USB Handset for Skype comes in. I've had this for a few months now, and it works really well. Load the driver, plug it into a USB port, and suddenly it's not Skype – it's just a phone. Pick it up, dial a number, hit go, and away you go. Hit the Skype menu button, and up pops a list of your contacts for you to scroll through. Hit dial and the call is connected.

When I first got it I was afraid it'd seem cheesy and too lightweight for every day use. I was wrong. The thing looks small, but it's big enough to be comfortably balanced in your hand. It sits face up or face down when not in use. The microphone is at the far bottom, just past a bit of open space. This is supposedly to help reduce echo when talking. I'm not sure if it actually has any affect, but the sound quality is great. People come through loud and clear, and people can hear me just fine.

The best feature about this is that you can configure Skype, and your Sounds control panel, so that Skype will always use the handset, and other apps will always use the computer's normal speaker and microphone ports. That way I can have my speakers connected to my desktop's line out connection, but still have Skype up and running, without any interference.

I've only got a couple of peeves with the handset. One, when the phone rings, the ringer isn't quite loud enough. If you're in the same room as the phone, it's fine. But, if you're three rooms away and have the stereo on, you're never going to hear it ring. Second, there's no headphone plug. Just about every cell phone and cordless phone has one of those little mini-plug ports to plug in a hands free headset. Why doesn't this device have one? Still, these are minor quibbles, and overall, I'm very satisfied with it.