In case you didn’t catch the latest from WikiLeaks, the H-Pi software web pages have been updated with new layouts and graphics, and the software purchase pages have been consolidated into one new software uber-page.

Also, if you tried to view the H-Pi website between about 7:30 PM EST July 27 and 5:30 PM EST July 28, you would have been greeted with a 404 Error. The website was unavailable during that time interval, about 22 hours down. Any emails sent to @h-pi.com addresses during that time should be sent again. My apologies for the outage and any inconvenience this may have caused.

There have recently also been some issues with @h-pi emails getting lost in cyberspace, so I have started using a gmail account in order to communicate more reliably. That address is h [ dot ] pi [ dot ] instruments ( at ) gmail [ dot ] com. Keep in touch!

I get a lot of questions by email. Sometimes for tech support I’ve used Yahoo Messenger chat. A problem with that is, people who don’t already use Messenger have to download the software, set up an account, etc., and not everyone wants to do that. So, I decided it would be useful to have a custom web-based chat that would be easy to use for anyone who is online. The result is H-Pi Live Chat, a reasonably robust chat client I developed from a bare-bones open source chat project aptly named microchat.

At the login screen, you’ll find one of three greetings:

1. I’m online and available to chat
2. I’m online, but I’m helping someone else
3. I’m offline, but you can login anyway if you like

Live Chat allows any number of people to login, so it’s actually a chat room that can be used for conferencing. As the owner, I can lock out new logins at any time. Also, logins are announced, so there’s no a danger of a lurker listening in covertly. So, for example, if you are in a band of four members called The Four Tuning Geeks, and you all want to chat, we can all login, I can lock it, and we can have a semi-private conversation.

I say "semi-private", because the chat connection is unencrypted, open and public. If someone really wanted to eavesdrop, they could find a way to do it. Since I imagine you are probably not in the habit of shouting out your credit card numbers when discussing tuning issues, I think we’re all pretty safe.

Well, that’s enough blathering … Give it a try!

It was recently brought to my attention that the H-Pi website had some serious navigation and display issues when viewed on Windows machines running Internet Explorer 8, and I’m happy to hereby proclaim that those issues have been resolved … unless you find more problems.

Even though IE works (again) now as far as I can tell, I recommend PC users switch to Safari for Windows. It looks better and works better than IE. If you don’t want to install an Apple product, please try switching to Firefox. Both Safari and Firefox are superior to IE in both display and overall performance.

Website feedback is appreciated. Recently I took some time to improve the site in some general ways. Please remember that I code everything on the website, and if you see a problem, I want to know about it as soon as possible. Thanks!