http://www.blyon.com/blog/index.php/2010/08/28/build-your-own-url-shortener

Into: http://blyon.com/?efa

This make the URL easy to cut and paste and reduces the characters you use for things such as Twitter.

I’ve been using TinyURL.com for ages. This morning I wondered to myself, “why not just use blyon.com?” After all, the domain is shorter than TinyURL by 3 characters and if it’s just me using my service the hash only needs to be about 3 characters long because I am not storing millions of URLs. Other services use a long hash (7+ characters) because they need more unique ways to identify URLs.

It took all of 30 minutes to write the code, and maybe another 30 to debug it.

Here’s how it works and how to setup your own!

Go to http://www.blyon.com/t to input the URL and get the short URL which uses http://blyon.com/? as the base. There’s a simple PHP script inside /t/ which creates the hash and puts it into a two table MySQL database. I used /t/ just because I already had something at the root of blyon.com.

I added another snippet of code on blyon.com’s index.php page which figures out if someone is trying to lookup a hash or not. If it finds a hash that’s valid, it does a 302 redirect to the right location. The 302 redirect is an easy location director built right into HTTP, so basically you’re telling a browser that goes to the short URL to go somewhere else.

Now, why do this? For starters I was trying to wake up and wanted to have something to do while drinking coffee (the NPR stream was down). However, there may be a lot of SEO reasons to do this. For one, all my links I post are linked back to blyon.com, which means if something I tweet goes around the block a few times, it will all point back at blyon.com. Taking this one step further might mean that I should also allow for special keywords to be created, thus helping google learn indexicals that I want valued for my web site. The third great reason to do this (besides keeping oneself busy while drinking coffee) is to maintain your own links. If TinyURL goes down someday, everything you have ever linked to will stop working as well. However, who’s to say your (or my) admin skills are better than theirs.

Anyway, here’s the code!

The entire package as a tar: redir.tar.gz

To create the TinyURL you need this PHP code (my /t/ index page): index.php

The database include code: dbconfig.php

To figure out if a request is for your main index page or a shortened URL: mainindex.php

The MySQL database you’ll need: redir.mysql

PS: Thanks to Nathan Hickson for helping me debug this.

Here is a step-by-step instruction set to migrate your iPhone4 from AT&T to T-Mobile.

Step 1: The Micro SIM

Engadget published an article on how to create your own Micro SIM from your old SIM, however, it is missing a bunch of details:

First, there are several types of SIM cards that are out there in the wild. T-Mobile has two which are interchangeable. One of them will not work as a Micro SIM because it has connectors which are too wide. If you try to modify one of the older types you’ll end up destroying the SIM card and be left with nothing. You can go to a T-Mobile store and buy a new SIM for $20. What you need is a 39.01a type SIM (shown in the picture) which is thinner and has smaller electrical contacts than the older types. [If anyone has more detail on the differences between the different SIM cards, please let me know and I will update the article to make this more clear.] The SIM itself is the metal contact portion of the card, so what you’ll need to do is cut the plastic of the SIM to fit inside the iPhone SIM cradle.

Removing the actual sim is very easy, just get a staple and fold it out a bit and push it solidly into the center hole located on the side of the phone. The SIM cradle will pop free. Pull out the old ugly nasty AT&T SIM and use it as a template for the new T-Mobile SIM card.

Do your best to align the metal contact area on the T-Mobile SIM with the existing AT&T Micro SIM, pay close attention to orientation of the notch cut into the SIM cards, keep those in the same direction. If you have the right SIM style, it’s pretty easy, you really just need to align the SIM as closely as possible.

When cutting out the SIM, do not initially use scissors — doing so will put a lot of stress on the SIM itself and if you hear a “crunch” noise you’re destroying the SIM. I used a knife to cut out the SIM and a very sharp set of scissors to trim it in order to get it to fit into the iPhone4 SIM cradle.

Make sure that there’s no protruding shards of plastic, if there are, you may have a very hard time removing your SIM card.

Step 2: Jailbreak

This step is pretty simple. Using your iPhone4 (connected to wifi or some network) browse to www.jailbreakme.com and follow their really simple instructions to jailbreak the phone. Once the phone is jailbroken, you can move on to further steps.

If you find you can’t “slide to jailbreak” you may need to factory reset your phone using iTunes. I had to factory reset because apparently the www.jailbreakme.com site needs a fresh install.

If you run into problems or want to know more about this process, follow the direction on http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

Step 3: Carrier Unlock

There will be a new application on your iPhone desktop called Cydia, just open Cydia, allow it to upgrade itself (upgrading the packages ensure you get the most current packages). Search for the application ultrasn0w and install ultrasn0w. Once it is installed, you will be prompted to reboot the phone. Before you do this, please take the time to visit the Dev-Team Blog to read more about their work and possibly give them a donation to help them with further efforts. They also have much better and in-depth tutorials on Unlocking and Jailbreaking phones.

Step 4: Swap the SIM

After the phone has rebooted, make sure the phone activates and is functioning before you swap the old AT&T sim out with the new T-Mobile SIM.

Step 5: MMS and Internet setup

Make sure you have a data plan with T-Mobile, they have an unlimited service available which can be ordered by asking for the Blackberry data service. That will come with SMS and MMS services as well.

First you need to re-enable your data plan and MMS, you can do that by going to Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data Network and enter the following:

Cellular Data:

APN: wap.voicestream.com Username: [do not put anything] Password: [do not put anything]

MMS APN: wap.voicestream.com Username: [do not put anything] Password: [do not put anything] MMSC: 216.155.174.84/servlets/mms MMS Proxy 216.155.165.50:8080 MMS Max Size: [do not put anything] MMS UA URL: [do not put anything]

Internet Tethering APN wap.voicestream.net Username: [do not put anything] Password: [do not put anything]

Step 6: Canceling your AT&T contract

Dial customer support at 1-800-331-0500, enter your old phone number that was on the old AT&T SIM. Wait to get a customer service person on the phone and tell them you are moving to Spain or somewhere like Brazil and ask to cancel the service. By telling them you’re leaving the country they’ll give you 60 days to re-activate service.

If you have the time, throw a fit and tell them you never signed a physical contract. Just sit back and demand they find your signature and the AT&T cancellation person will actually call the Apple store where you bought the phone. It will at least cost AT&T some money for the hour they will spend digging around for your information.

**Tip For Jailbreakers: Buy the phone under contract and sign “Apple Store Sales Person” when you agree to the contract. Then sing your real name on the bill itself. That will result in no termination fees because you can contest you never signed the contract! (I know it’s evil but so is AT&T)

Problems: Facetime

T-Mobile apparently does not have support for Facetime. I’ve tried a few different methods to get it to register while on T-Mobile but no luck yet. This is all so fresh that I am sure there will be a patch to re-enable it soon. I will update this post when there is a method to update the phone to enable Facetime.

There are two different definitions of gigabyte in general use:

1,000,000,000 bytes or 10^9^ bytes is the decimal definition, used in telecommunications (such as network speeds) and most computer storage manufacturers (such as hard disks and flash drives). This usage is compatible with SI.

1,073,741,824 bytes, equal to 1024^3^, or 2^30^ bytes. This is the definition commonly used for computer memory and file sizes. (This is equivalent to 1,024 megabytes, where one megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes or 2^30^ bytes.) Since 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) recommends that this unit should instead be called a gibibyte (abbreviated GiB).

I decided to do what was best for the customer and the company by splitting the difference between the two. The billing system ran well and after a year or two another developer Tim Dietrich (whom now works at 3Crowd) coined my measurement as a “Barretbyte”. At first he was rather disturbed and he thought I was over billing customers because of the averaged calculation, so I had to dig out the old code and my thinking and it turns out what we were doing as actually very fair to both the company and the customer.

The Barretbyte is (commonly misspelled as a BarrettByte) is the equivalent of a Gigabyte. It’s symbolized by GbB. The Barretbyte defines a billable Gigabyte as 1000 Megabytes, and a Megabyte as 1024 Kilobytes or 1048576000 bytes.

This is important because if your business is focused on billing in Gigabytes, it’s difficult to decided which one to choose. The GB is 6.87% less data than a GiB. The Barretbyte is somewhere in the middle at 4.63% larger than a GB but smaller than a GiB. As a content delivery network, that difference can cut heavily into the margin of the business. If a Gigabyte is calculated as a GB it harms the customer’s bill by almost 7% and if it’s calculated as a GiB it harms the CDN’s profit margin by nearly the same.

The following chart shows the math that constitutes the conversion between the various units:

This has become a standard in billing for data transfered at BitGravity, 3Crowd, and a number of other Content Delivery Networks.

Like Gmail, the Internet’s core protocol should also have had a Beta tag on it for an extended time – for the past 41 years to be precise. Generally speaking, it works pretty well, but the founding fathers of the Internet could not have anticipated that the software they were building would ever become what it is now: The infrastructure for all of society.

So it appears today that some major features were left out…but not because the people behind the design made a mistake. When MIT first used packet switching in 1965 to communicate with a remote computer in California (confirming that packet switching works), the furthest thing from anyone’s mind was security, network neutrality, network education, privacy, cyber warfare, and the slurry of problems that challenge both business and individual users of the Internet today.

In 1969, with the original workings of the Internet (ARPANET), security was simple: the network was tiny and users on the computers that were connected to it were trusted researchers. It was an open community. As Vint Cerf, one of the most notable developers of the Internet, was quote in Fatal System Error as saying, “My thought at the time, thirty-five years ago, was not to build an ultra-secure system, because I could not tell if even the basic ideas would work…We never got to do the production engineering.” The focus at the time, sensibly, was on fault tolerance, not security.

Vint Cerf – Photo by Charles Haynes

Now, nearly 41 years later, we read about Internet security issues constantly. The lack of security features in IP (Internet Protocol) has spawned entire industries, with vendors and service providers that are happy to sell you the next generation protect-all, whiz-bang software. If one were to ask a roomful of people in the security industry what they think about the security products, including their own, on the market today – if they think there are real solutions to the problems we all face – their answer would be a unified “NO”. No one thinks we are at the point where we can all just stop worrying about security.

Barack Obama Courtesy The White House

The disturbing fact is that the engine that enables our modern global economy is based on a really cool experiment that was not designed for security. Risks can be reduced, but the naughty truth is that the ‘Net is not a secure place for business or society. The role that the Internet plays in our economy places it in the category of a critical resource that the government must protect – just as it does our water supply and the national power grid. A threat to Internet security is a threat to national security. In May 2009, President Obama spoke about this issue and the plan his administration has to address it. He stated that the US is “not as prepared as it should be” to defend against cyber threats and he proposed new “digital infrastructure” initiatives to “ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient.” But can the US Government, or any other governing authority, ever adequately protect and defend the Internet? How can that be done if the Internet Protocol itself was not designed to, in Obama’s words, “deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks”?

Given the world economy’s substantial dependence on the Internet, wouldn’t it make sense to create a well-funded think-tank with the brightest minds in society to design a new protocol with a new vision? This time when we start the process, we will have the benefit of 41 years of Internet beta testing and we can rethink the vision to also include things such as:

• Security: Transmitting data safely but easily without special software.
• Privacy: Balancing anonymity and accountability. Allowing people to communicate freely but ensuring accountability to protect against abuses and criminal activity.
• Routing Intelligence: Routing data without neutrality issues and allowing the protocol itself to route traffic based on a myriad of metrics, conditions, agreements, and other factors.
• Enculturation and Education: Bringing new people (children, emerging nations, etc) onto the network with a step approach to ensure that they learn about network culture and functionality before they make mistakes.

I don’t think any of us who are involved with cyber security on a professional level can see the Internet as it is today functioning successfully for the next 50 years. I can envision a world of networking much different than today’s. So why not start turning the ship now?

Is designing a better protocol difficult? Yes. Can it be done? Absolutely!

I will be writing more on this topic in the coming months. Stay tuned.

It appears that Li-Ion Motors may have paid a company to publish my fake apology on India Consumer Complaints Forum. Maybe they did it themselves, I have no evidence to tie it directly to them. However, I did contact the India Consumer Complaints suggesting that they’re hosting a fake letter and they removed it. I’m guessing they are behind it because when you search, “Li-Ion Motors” in Google, my blog comes up on their first page of results. I imagine that they’re trying to push that out of the front page. However, this is only speculation on my behalf. If you would like to see my fake apology, I saved a PDF of the site: click here for the PDF. What’s more disturbing is that the letter used my picture, my name, and even suggested “My hosting providers has closed down the FTP of my website.” I think it would be rather difficult for my hosting provider to shut down my FTP given I am my hosting provider.

Let me state this very clearly: By no means do I apologize for my blog post, to my knowledge everything that I wrote is factual, and in my opinion Li-Ion Motor Company, EV Innovations, Hybrid Technologies or whatever they want to call themselves — is a scam.

More over, in my suit Lyon vs Li-Ion Motors (read the Electric Lemon article for background), their lawyer Scott Meehan quit representing Li-Ion Motors about two weeks ago. I am guessing that had something to do with not being paid and possible liability over what they are doing now.

To wrap this up: Stay away from these guys, they’re bad.

UPDATE:

More evidence that Li-Ion Motors are trying to manipulate chat forums and sweep what has happened here under the rug. Jay Groh emailed me this today and I thought it was worth sharing:

I don’t know if you have been made aware of the recent crap this company is trying to pull on priuschat.com but I will let you know anyway.

It starts here on a topic that points to your blog about your horror story.

http://priuschat.com/forums/ev-electric-vehicle-discussion/74243-electric-vehicle-innovations-li-ion-motors-horror-story.html

I’ll give you the quick short version.

The poster is john joseph. He claims to purchase a vehicle from the company and wants the topic closed.

He then posts again and a customer saying the company is great and still wants the topic deleted.

Then he represents hims self as someone from the company and if the topic is not removed he will take legal action. LOL

He creates another account under william larry and tries the same crap.

john joseph goes on to create two more topics on how great his company is.

http://priuschat.com/forums/other-cars/80560-li-ion-motors-hybrid-electric-cars.html

http://priuschat.com/forums/ev-electric-vehicle-discussion/80562-li-ion-motors-successful-story.html

I reported this as spam to the moderators and he goes as far as calling my posts illegal. lol He also claimed I posted links to my website which I did not do. I’m guessing he was referring to my sig which is in all my posts.

Anyway I though you might want to add this to your site to show how low these scumbags will go. The topics have a little more detail but will only take a few minutes to read through.

I’m glad you have not removed the blog and not cave into these dumbass take down notices. Good luck in the future. I just wish you did not get screwed because this is a small setback in the EV community.

–
Thanks,
Jay Groh

http://www.jaygroh.com

At 3Crowd have been working furiously over the last month on the development of our first two services. The whole team has been dedicated to delivering on our mission of helping companies reduce costs, deliver, and scale their network applications through a healthy ecosystem for data delivery.

With our first services – CrowdMonitor and CrowdDirector, we’re giving the world just a tiny view of the foundation we’re building to enable a new type of Content Delivery System. We are using the idea of a crowd or crowd-sourcing to leverage multiple CDNs that can be monitored, managed and deployed as one single service.

CDNs have been an integral part of the vitality of video on the Net, but we think they are starving the next generation of innovation. The natural evolution of this marketplace has favored the content distributors but the market needs to continue its evolution into a more balanced relationship.

CrowdMonitor and CrowdDirector will give content owners the power to know what’s happening with their content and the tools to dynamically manage their assets. They will have significant implications on performance, vendor flexibility and costs and not only impact the business of current content providers, but also re-orient the economics and invite a new generation of providers to participate in the market.

We have been thoughtful about how we are creating this ecosystem and have been working on it for a while. If we do our job right, Internet streaming will be more affordable than traditional broadcast systems and together will have success.

When someone calls me for advice, the first few items I go over have nothing to do with fixing the attack. I’m giving advice that I think is common sense, and I’ve been surprised that others don’t find it obvious.

Here are my Top 10 To-do’s for making life less painful during an attack.

1. Don’t Panic

While the network and your services are exploding and bouncing offline, there must be someone that is comfortable enough to make good decisions. I’ve seen managers freak out and threaten everyone with the prospect of the company collapsing. I think they were trying to motivate people to figure out some solution, but they ended up creating more chaos during an already tough situation.

Once I saw employees hastily rip out the network’s firewalls and re-configure the load balancers. They ended up creating more mess than they had before because they were reacting to an angry and stressed manager.

You are going to create a disaster if you approach with a sledgehammer and wishes. Don’t let anyone make quick changes; try to follow your company’s policies. Sit back, analyze the problem, isolate the actual device that’s failing in the chain, and make an informed–and usually small–adjustment.

If you’re in the 10th hour and things don’t seem to be improving, gather everyone, go away from the office, have a beer, relax for 15 minutes, and talk about something positive. The information flow after that beer might just save you and motivate everyone to do a good job – the solution will come!

2. Create a contact list of external email addresses and phone numbers.

This one is sadistically funny. Most companies host their email, VoIP system, IRC, Wiki, databases, primary storage, etc. all in the same colocation behind the same network connection that hosts their web sites and services. This is, for lack of better words, stupid. All of your digital eggs are in one basket, and that basket is also holding a grenade. A DDoS attack ends up crippling the company’s infrastructure, leaving it with no phones, email, or any communications structure whatsoever.

I’ve seen CEOs of massive companies using their hotmail account and cell phone to contact me because it was their only way of communicating from their multi-million dollar offices.

If you insist on being an “eggs in one basket” company, keep a list of vital email accounts and cell phone numbers on a notepad. That way you can at least call your IT person when everything is down.

3. Setup a “War Room”

Convert your conference room into a war room. Get everyone that has influence in the company in that room. This includes marketing, IT, the CEO, etc. It ensures everyone is on the same page, leaders can lead, and everyone can be in sync.

I typically fill the room with a constant flow of healthy snacks, coffee, and other beverages. If you don’t have anything like that handy, order pizza immediately or send someone shopping.

4. Get one of your guys to the colo ASAP

If you are offline due to DDoS attack, chances are your IT staff cannot log in to the remotely hosted hardware in your datacenters. The easy solution is to physically get them there. They can console in to the hardware and actually see what is going wrong. It’s not fun, but it will result in a much faster resolution to the problem (Make sure they have folding chairs, cash for the vending machines, and serial cables).

5. Find an old hub

Yes, I said hub. You know, those old things that cause collisions? If you’re dealing with an attack and yours is like a lot of companies, it may be difficult for you to set up a traffic monitoring port on your main routers. Assuming you’re setup with Ethernet, at least you can bridge a hub in-line and connect a laptop to the hub and sniff or analyze the traffic!

This is key because having eyes into the data stream really helps figure out how to filter it. Pulling random cables and shutting down random services is not the solution. Make an informed call because you were thoughtful enough to have a hub or SPAN/Mirror port pre-configured.

6. Understand the nature of the attack

There’s a reason you are the target for this attack. Obviously there are a lot of reasons for any given attack, yet understanding the attacker’s motivation is key to creating a better defense strategy. In the field I have observed a very strange phenomenon; the people working at a victim company usually have a gut feeling about why they are being attacked. So far, their gut instinct has been correct. Some people know they are being extorted and some people feel it’s a competitor trying to shut them down. Others have a customer that has pissed someone off so the attacker takes down the whole company just to silence one customer. Maybe shutting down the attacker’s target for awhile may actually save the entire ship. Go with your gut on this, make a hypothesis and test it.

7. Document everything

Your business was just smacked around by some bad guys, but what proof do you have? If you don’t have any, then what do you think the law enforcement is going to do for you?

During the attack, lock down all your logs and assign someone within the company to be the custodian of the records. Save server logs, web logs, email logs, any packet capture, network graphs, reports – anything – including a timeline of events.

8. Call your ISP

Your ISP can help, however they have a process to follow. The process usually requires a ticket escalation requirement before you can get real help. If you call early in the attack and open a ticket, that can help you when you really need someone.

Your ISP also has hardware that may be capable of filtering or rate-limiting the attack. The more you know about the attack and you can point them in the right direction, the more they can help you.

They may also suggest you to sign up for their DDoS protection system. Don’t do that right away; reserve that until you are out of all other options. If you do sign up, make sure there is a service level agreement. In the meantime, there are a number of free services you can request:

Null routing of the target IP address
Router ACLs of the top attacking source addresses
New IP addresses
Detailed traffic reports

If you can find the guru at the ISP that knows how to fix these problems, that might be time well spent.

9. Setup “We are down” web hosting services

If the attack is running longer than you had anticipated and you don’t have a solution in sight, you could get your site working at least enough to communicate to your customers. There are web-hosting companies, which as part of what they do, provide DDoS service level agreements. For a small amount of money you could quickly sign up with several of these companies, upload a “Sorry we’re down, but contact us here” page, and flip your DNS to the cluster of hosted servers.

Your customers will have more confidence in your performance and the attackers may get bored because the attack has not completely shut everything down. If this plan doesn’t work, at least you have diverted some of the attack away from your network.

10. Learn from the event

Post attack can be a blur; everyone is exhausted and burnt out. Mostly, everyone just wants the day-to-day atmosphere to return to status quo. Well, if you’ve been attacked and you did not learn and improve your strategy on how to deal with future attacks, then you are not doing your job.

You should start a review the very day after, while everything is fresh, and make sure that everyone is prepared. Go over what worked, what did not work, and how to improve your system’s overall technology.

Spend the money to fix things properly. Don’t just duct-tape it.

I wrote this blog to protect other people from making the same bad decision I made. Please understand that this experience is not an epidemic with all electric vehicles, it just happens to be my experience with this particular company.

I found a company called EV Innovations (whom just changed their name to Li-Ion Motor Corporation and was formally known as Hybrid Technologies). They convert (or as they would say “build”) standard gas-powered PT Cruisers into fully electric vehicles. This made sense for my needs.

My wife at the time was driving a PT that we bought from my late grandmother, it’s a pretty gutless car which has no sex appeal whatsoever, but it worked for us. It reminded me of my grandmother and is also a car I could drive into San Francisco and not really worry about theft or vandalism.

EV Innovations advertised their converted PT Cruisers as getting a distance of 120+ miles per charge with a charging time of 8 hours. Based on those specifications I could drive to the Sierra Foothills and commute to the Bay Area carbon free.

I did some research and found out EV Innovations at the time was testing their PT conversion as an EV Taxi in New York (which later ended in failure). They sold two cars to a company in Sacramento and the company was also featured on the Discovery Channel’s program Modern Marvels.

I also liked the idea of supporting a startup, I myself enjoy starting companies. Purchasing a car from an American based startup felt right. I know that if something was wrong with one of my customers, I would do anything under my power to make it right. Naively I assumed this was also true for EV Innovations.

I spent time asking EV Innovations a lot of questions about charging, regenerative breaking, cell types, and their engineering philosophy. Their sales people Kelli Cerven and Mike Cerven were very helpful. I decided to move forward and paid the deposit for half of the car, which was used to purchase a new PT with my specification. The car was to be ready in 90 days. Unfortunately, it ended up shipping in 120+ days. But things started to go wrong much before the car was delivered. It turns out the “new car” I paid for was in fact a demo car that already had 4,000 miles on it. In addition, they told me the car was ready to ship a month before it was actually finished. They asked for the balance so they could ship the car. I wired the remaining balance of the car only to find out later the car was not ready.

My Electric Lemon being converted from ICE to EV.

My first moments with the Li-Ion Motors (formally EV Innovations) lemon.

After all was said and done, three months after the promised delivery date, the vehicle was finally shipped, and yes, it was dead on arrival. The truck driver that delivered it didn’t even have a ramp on his truck, so we used the loading dock at a local grocery store where I was visiting family for Christmas in the Sierra Foothills. The truck driver pushed the car off the truck and drove away. I had it towed back to the garage at my family’s home and plugged it in but it would not charge. I immediately contacted EV Innovations and they instructed me to plug it into a 220V outlet and informed me that it cannot charge from empty on a 110V outlet. That seemed obnoxious, but I did as instructed and found a 220V line and plugged it in. It slowly charged to full.

The first drive made it about 50 miles (downhill) before we had to have it towed the rest of the way home to the Bay Area. The car was to do 120+ miles and their sales people suggested the “+” would be impressive.

EV Innovations asked me to do a number of things with the car, which eventually resuted in the car’s charging connector to melt and nearly catching on fire (Later they had to install a relay to prevent some sort of voltage issue which caused the problem).

After I reported the smoking plug to EV Innovations, I received this email::

From: “Luc Pham”
Date: December 29, 2008 3:58:14 PM PST
Subject: Charging
Mr. Lyon,
Please stop charging the car for until we replace the bad cell.
Please open up the emergency switch (EPO).

From there, it sat in the garage inoperable for months while EV Innovations figured out what to do. Eventually they sent people to work on the car; they replaced the lithium cells, re-wired parts of the car, etc. I had them sign work orders to prove that they were there. In all fairness, Luc was a very nice guy and he wanted the car to work. He apologized for the awful things his management has done.

Luc Pham, EV Innovations intern working on the car.

I demanded a refund on the car but they ignored my requests. I followed up by sending their CEO and board of directors a certified letter demanding them to repurchase the car based on the Song Beverly Act (California Lemon Law), again they refused to respond.

Eventually, they asked me to ship the car back to North Carolina so they could attempt to jam more batteries into the vehicle, change the power steering system, and perform various upgrades to improve the issues I have been experiencing.

I contemplated this option but with all the bad experiences I had with the company, I did not fully trust them. So I suggested that if I were to send the car back, perhaps they could provide me with my deposit back as a gesture of good will and integrity on their part. They of course refused saying this was “warranty” work and in no way was the car being sent back due to any fault of the company. I was at a loss.

At this point the car would go about 70 miles on a 10 to 20 hour charge (depending on voltage/amperage).

I was able to drive it between my office and home for a month until the driver side wheel nearly fell off because the bearings were incorrectly packed. That was it for me.

I demanded a refund, I demanded them to take care of this problem the way any decent company would. I called Tom Zgoda their “Plant Manager” and asked them to do this right. He said I was driving the car wrong and that it’s all my fault and hung-up on me. I then pressed him via email and he said said:

“It is our position that we have been diligent in addressing the warranty on your vehicle. I guess since you disagree with that, it will be up to the courts to make a final determination.”

I hired Mark Anderson, a lawyer who specializes in Lemon Law cases and set out to do exactly what he suggested. I filed suit.

My lawyer and I hired a superstar electrical engineering expert named Art MacCarley, Ph.D., PE., who happens to be the Department Chair of the Electrical Engineering department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Dr. MacCarley drove to my house and spent the entire day meticulously going through the car. Later he wrote:

“I determined that the converted vehicle may best be characterized as an engineering prototype or work-in-progress conversion, containing multiple deficiencies and defects introduced by the modification to battery-electric propulsion. These deficiencies and defects affect vehicle function, features and safety, and could be expected to limit reliability. Overall, the subject vehicle fails to meet the manufacturer’s representations and reasonable owner expectations of engineering quality.”

Art put it very politely, but basically he was saying that college students could have built this car better than EV Innovations. Attached to this article is the full report written by Dr. MacCarley.

There were spliced wires exposed to the undercarriage of the vehicle. In some cases it appeared that EV Innovations used the wrong gauge wire for high voltage lines and to top it off, and the power steering was powered by what looks to be a Briggs and Stratton electric lawn mower motor!

Excerpt from Dr. MacCarley’s report.

Excerpt from Dr. MacCarley’s report.

After we sent EV Innovations the report (I ended up paying to help EV Innovations understand why their cars are not safe) they asked to settle for less than I paid for the car. Minus the legal fees, I ended up with a loss. It was not the best outcome but at least the car would be out of my hair and I would never have to talk with the people at EV again. However, the “settlement” ended up being a delay tactic. They changed the terms of the settlement, never paid, never finalized the paperwork, did not return calls or emails as they promised, said we had been “overly aggressive” and said this is going into a “holding pattern”.

In their SEC filings from December 8th, 2009 they wrote:

“Barrett Lyon, an individual, has filed suit against the Company in the Superior Court of California, San Mateo County, for alleged breach of warranty for a vehicle he purchased from the Company seeking $68,222 in damages, plus attorney’s fees estimated in the range of $10,000 to $30,000. The Company has entered into a settlement agreement with Mr. Lyon.”

However, by December 8th, 2009 we did not have a settlement agreement and we were preparing to file a motion to continue the case and re-set a trial date. Prior to December 8th, they stopped responding to us and started to delay and break promises. Their statement in their SEC filings was very misleading to any shareholders of EV Innovations.

Today, the car sits in my garage. While very disappointing, I learned a lot during this year and a half long experience.

EV Innovations/Li-Ion Motors is in my opinion a criminal operation operated by people more interested in taking money from shareholders than building a real electric car.

There are plenty of amazing electric car companies out there such as Tesla, Fisker, and soon the big auto manufactures. Maybe in 3 to 5 years I will take another look at electric cars as a serious mode of transpiration but until then, hopefully morons like EV Innovations do not create a bad name for electric vehicles.

A detailed report on my car and the failure of EV Innovation’s design written by Art MacCarley.

Other EV Innovations a.k.a. Hybrid Technologies related links:

Hybrid Technologies is involved in illegal junk faxes

Hybrid Technologies And The Missing Fritos

Is Hybrid Technologies legitimate?

EV Innovations Stock Holders Screwed!

A hilarious CNET Review of EV Innovations.

UPDATE #1: Two days ago they changed their name from EV Innovations to Li-Ion Motor Corporation. I’m guessing this is to avoid bad press?

UPDATE #2: 1/4/2010 EV Innovations/Li-Ion Motors lawyer responds to my lawyer:

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:01 AM, Scott Meehan wrote:
Dear Mr. Anderson:

My client was not amused by the false and defamatory comments made by your client. I hereby demand that your client take down the subject entry and CEASE AND DESIST any further dissemination of the blog entry. We will be filing libel actions against Mr. Lyon and Dr. MacCarley. Will you accept service on behalf of Mr. Lyon and/or Dr. MacCarley?

Scott Meehan

UPDATE #3: 2/16/2010 Li-Ion Motors lawyer responds and demands I take down the blog:

The letter accuses me of staying that EV Innovations/Li-Ion Motors has refused to do the repairs, which is not the case at all. Read the blog and you will see that I am stating the facts of the case and my opinion. I actually highlight the fact that they have offered to take the car back to rebuild it to the standards I was expecting over a year ago. However, adding more batteries so it can achieve the driving distance that it was to reach from day one coupled with my past experience with them, just seems like a losing proposition. Given the absolute nightmare and consistent problems I have experienced, not to mention the fraudulent sales representations, I think they should buy the car back. In my opinion, if they were good honest people, they should buy the car back and learn from this experience.

Here is the letter they just sent:

UPDATE #4: 4/22/2010 Li-Ion Motors’ Lawyer Quits:

Apparently Li-Ion Motors was not paying him and or he did not like the liability that this case was creating for him. Here’s the PDF of his motion.

UPDATE #5: 4/30/2010 Li-Ion Motors Posts Fake Apology Letter from me!:

This is so strange I wrote post regarding my fake apology letter: Li-Ion Motors Crossed The Line

It is in this vein that I am starting a new business venture – 3Crowd Technologies. It’s in my blood. I can’t stop developing ideas that will reach these goals. I am more than excited to unveil this new project, but before I can fully do so, there needs to be some additional hard work put into it.

Stay tuned. It’s going to be a great ride and I can’t wait to tell everyone about it.

What aspects of the adventure would you find most interesting?

Send me an email with suggestions: blyon [at] blyon.com