Technology
Technology stuff
9/2/2008
- My Remote Control Toilet Seat
Since I was on a roll with my blog, I thought I’d also talk about the most recent technology that changed my life.
Night light…
Heated Seat…
Heated Water…
Pressure Control…
Heated Air (For after…)
Settings for Him, Settings for Her…It’s Perfect!
We were playing Apples to Apples the other night and the green card “Perfect” came up. My wife, knowing my experience with my new toilet seat, put down the card “My Bathroom” and I instantly declared her the winner.
You can see more here:
Swash Intro
and
This one’s really funny (warning…you’ll see some bum’s)
I bought mine here (It’s significantly cheaper than anywhere else online).Enjoy!
Update: After posting this I got an email from Brondell who said that my story is the reason they started the company. So they could help people like me!
9/1/2008
- The Unthinkable Just Happened - 6 Years Of Digital Pictures…Gone!
Fortunately, I had about 16 different backups of them…so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
But, what if that just happened to you?
What if your hard drive failed?
What if Windows just went crazy and won’t boot?
What if your computer just failed and you can’t turn it on?
What if you got a virus that wiped out your data?Would you lose all the digital pictures of your kids? Would you lose years of work? Home movies? Contacts? Excel Docs? Bookmarks? Emails?
My hard drive that just failed was less than 6 months old.
This was probably the 8th hard drive I’ve had fail in the past 8 years.
HARD DRIVES FAIL!!! It’s only a matter of time…PERIOD. Every hard drive WILL fail.
This post is about being prepared for that.
If you’re not making regular backups of your computer, you are literally playing Russian roulette.
So, let me tell you the things I do, the things you can do right now to take care of this so you can sleep better at night:
1. Use Mozy. It costs $5/month for unlimited automatic backups. You set it up initially (which, shouldn’t take you very long because it will automatically backup lots of documents for you) and then it goes to work. Every day it backs up the stuff that has changed on your computer since the last time it made a backup.
You MUST do off-site backups! Mozy accomplishes this for you automatically. You never have to think about it again.2. Buy a 500GB external hard drive like this:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/857763
or even:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/856410
(**Note**: Both of those links go to fatwallet.com where people have found a great deal on something.)
Most large external hard drives will make automatic backups of your computer for you. They come with software for it.Now, you have an automatic backup that happens every day that’s attached to your computer. If your computer fails, you can immediately restore your data.
If your house burns down, or floods, or your computer gets Kool-aid spilt on it, you also have a backup online that you can download (mozy).Doing both of these things will take you less than 1 hour, and you will be protected against data loss.
3. Now, how about your website? Do you back that up too?
Oh, your hosting company makes backups for you?
WRONG!!!
Don’t ever trust your hosting company to make backups for you. They don’t do them as often as they say they do, their backups are rarely complete, and I’ve seen them screw up backups multiple times.
I use rsync to make backups of my web hosting accounts.
I use RIBS to manage what rsync does (rsync is an exceptionally complicated program. RIBS is a php script that will run rsync for you and gives you ton’s of options). This is something that would be a perfect task to give to one of the guys you hire in the Philippines to have them implement for you (or maybe someone on elance?).
I set up RIBS on a $6/month hosting account, and it backs up all my other hosting accounts. I set it up to back them up every 8 hours.
4. Do you backup your cell phone? Why not?
Look at this:
http://lifehacker.com/software/cell-phones/backup-your-cell-phone-data-with-bitpim-174785.php
Here’s how I do it on my blackberry. I use Funambol to sync my contacts to ScheduleWorld. I do this because it can happen over the air, so I don’t have to plug in my blackberry in order to back it up.5. I use Flickr.com to do another backup of my digital pictures and videos. It’s $25/year for an unlimited account, it’s a great backup of my pictures and it puts my pictures online for easy sharing, and they have good tools for easy uploading.
There are 3 keys to remember in setting up these backups:
1. It has to be automated. If you have to do it yourself, it won’t get done.
2. It has to be reliable. Make sure you have multiple backups.
3. It has to be regular. Don’t make backups once a month. Imaging losing a whole month’s work.
8/1/2007
- Opening and Managing 2 Google Accounts in the Same Browser
This is a follow-up to my post about why IE sucks so much.
I figured out how to not use IE, and still be able to open multiple google (or gmail) accounts in Firefox at the same time.
I had two different people tell me to use FF and Safari, which Apple just released for windows.
I figured out how to do it in Firefox using profiles, along with a short hack.
Normally, when you open up multiple Firefox windows, they share the same cookie data. If you’re logged in to one account on a website, and you open up another browser, you are automatically logged into that same account on that same website automatically. This is designed behavior in Firefox.
To set this up to work first you need to create 2 profiles.
- Close all your firefox windows
- do Start -> Run and then run this command: “c:\program files\mozilla firefox\firefox” -ProfileManager
- Create another profile using the profile manager
- Create a shortcut to user your second profile (you need to know what you named it, and it is case sensitive)
- Right click on the firefox icon on your desktop and select “create shortcut”
- Right click on the new icon and select properties
- The target field in the new window is something like: “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”. Change it to be: “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -P “YourProfileName” (where YourProfileName is the name of the new profile you just created)
You’re now done creating the profiles.
Now, you need to do the small hack.
Go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables -> System Variables -> New
In the 2 boxes, put MOZ_NO_REMOTE and 1 (so you are setting the environment variable MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1) and click ok, ok, ok.
That’s it. When you open firefox normally (with the normal icon) it will open your default profile.
When you click on the second shortcut (the one you just made), it will open your second profile.The two magically don’t share cookies, and now you can login to 2 gmail accounts at the same time, without using IE.
This will also work with any other site (not just gmail and google accounts) that requires you to login.
[tags]open two google accounts,open two gmail accounts, manage multiple accounts[/tags]
7/27/2007
- Why does Internet Explorer suck so much?
Can someone please tell me?
I mean, this is ridiculous.
I have quite a few google accounts that I spend a significant amount of time in.
I hate logging in and out of each of them, so I open up different browser windows that allow different cookie sessions and I don’t have to log out of one to log into another.
By default I use Firefox.
But, when I need another google account open, I have to open IE because it doesn’t share cookies.
However, IE always crashes!
It just freezes my computer. The mouse works fine, but nothing else responds (not even ctrl-alt-del).
Recently I’ve been able to track this problem specifically to IE causing the problem.
So, here’s my question (I actually have 2 questions):
Why can’t a piece of software that you’ve been working on for 89 years and that is an “integral” part of your operating system, just work?
Seriously, why can’t it just be a nice, functioning, leave my computer alone and don’t crash, piece of software?
My second question: Can someone help me with a different solution?
8/31/2006
- Browsing an S3 account
A little bit ago I wrote a php program to backup the data on my linux computer (I know, I know…all the linux geeks are swearing at me for how stupid I am…I just don’t care).
I hooked it into S3 when that came out so I could have reliable remote backups. The only problem was that I couldn’t find a good application to manage my s3 account without writing one myself.
I tried an ajax approach, but I couldn’t get it to work (too hot).
I tried ficillio.us but it didn’t work how I wanted (too cold).
Finally, I found a firefox extension for s3 (just right!).
It’s just like an ftp program, except it works in firefox. It also works very well on linux.
Perfect!
8/28/2006
- Berry411 for Blackberry: Awesome
I just downloaded and started using Berry411 on my blackberry.
It is SOOOO well done.
Previously I always used google maps mobile to do any 411 lookups I needed but from now on, it’s Berry411.
The 10 searches I’ve done so far have given me
- better results than google maps
- faster results than google maps
- more options than google maps
- more information than google maps
It remembers your addresses and automatically searches for things near them.
It has a database of words so when I typed in “pan” it gave me “panda express” as an option of what I wanted to search for.
It lets me search yellow pages, white pages, google, weather, shopping, movies, sports, all with one click!
Not to mention the (currently) 95 plugins for it that make searching all kinds of stuff easier.
Definitely a must have for a blackberry.
[tags]blackberry, blackberry applications, berry411[/tags]
8/24/2006
- Amazon EC2 - Scalable Servers On Demand
I heard about this about a month ago but wasn’t sure when they would release it.
Last night I got an email from Amazon announcing the beta release of EC2.
Similar to S3, which allows scalable data storage on demand, EC2 allows scalable computing power on demand.
As a web service!
It basically allows you to set up a server server (1.7Ghz Xeon CPU, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth) on the fly and then to use that server as you need it. When you don’t need it, release it.
You only pay for the time you’re using it.
$0.10 per instance-hour consumed (or part of an hour consumed).
$0.20 per GB of data transferred outside of Amazon (i.e., Internet traffic).
$0.15 per GB-Month of Amazon S3 storage used for your images (charged by Amazon S3).Sweet!
So, how will this affect the internet?
I don’t think it will really affect hosting companies. They don’t deal with large scale computing very often. They deal with people who don’t want to touch a server.
It’s probably most likely to affect colocation facilities where people store servers. Now, people don’t need to necessarily store servers because they can store the data on S3 and use EC2 for scalable computing power.
Don’t get me wrong, this certainly won’t eliminate the need for small businesses to buy or lease servers and have them in colo facilities, but it will allow them to scale their applications without having to buy a bunch of servers up front to make sure they have capacity for when they get ‘digged’ or ’slashdotted’.
It will also be great for companies who have super intense calculations to perform every so often. Instead of getting huge servers and having them sit idle for most of the time, use EC2 when you need it.
Unfortunately, it won’t be very useful to small businesses that just run a normal website that one server can handle.
Roy said what I was thinking about mysql. S3 and EC2 would really benefit greatly if there was a service like this that allowed mysql usage. That’s the biggest problem I see with this right now. You can’t put a database onto S3, and if you’re going to have heavy computing, you’re most likely going to need a database to crunch on. With EC2 the database is a long way away from the machine doing the computing, which will cause quite a bit of network latency.
[tags]EC2, Amazon EC2, web services, scalable computing, S3, Amazon S3[/tags]
8/23/2006
- Free Services Online
To add some of my favorites to Blake Snows list of free (I’m adding some almost free) services online:
- Google products: Gmail, spreadsheets, calendar, maps for mobile devices
- Amazon S3 - Super cheap online storage.
- Free Tracks Hosting - online todo list the way todo lists should be. There’s also backpackit and rtm. Both very well done and more than just todo lists.
- Overture keyword lookup
- Send large files where email doesn’t work
- Fatwallet topic alerts - get stuff unbelievably cheap, if you’re patient.
- flickr - great free photo storage/display/backup
More to come.
[tags]free online services[/tags]
7/28/2006
- Questionable program + Idiot = Sypware
Ok, today I’m going to admit it.
I AM AN IDIOT.
2 days ago I got some software that I thought was questionable. I’m not going to say what it was other than that I wasn’t sure if I should run it because I thought it might install spyware on my computer.
I was right.
It DID install spyware.
And now I can’t get rid of it.
I’ve run ad-aware and spybot s&d about 15 times each.
I’ve been into safe mode with hijackthis and I can’t even tell you how many other tools.
I’ve been all through the c:\WINDOWS and c:\WINDOWS\system32 folders deleting all kinds of crap.
I’ve been through about 7 different programs that are designed to remove specific instances of spyware like smitfraud, ishost, and virtumundo.
I finally resorted to other programs like ewido and stopzilla.Historically I have never done anything to stop spyware other than ad-aware because I have been smart enough to avoid it. I don’t just download and run anything. I’m usually pretty careful. (not to mention that I only use windows for programs that I can’t run on linux)
This time I was an idiot.
Now I have a roar that goes off every time I start my computer. I have to put up with it until I’m confident enough that the spyware is gone.
I can’t print anymore because in my efforts to try to remove all the spyware (which is self replicating) I deleted something that has to do with my printer.
Idiot!
7/11/2006
- Web Hosting
I often want hosting where someone else is managing the server. I get tired of managing servers.
For this extra hosting, I’ve been using Bluehost for a long time. They were the closest thing I could find to a perfect hosting account.
The only problem I had with them is that they only allow 5 addon domains per account.
So, today I went looking for another hosting account that allows me to host unlimited domains on that one account.
I already have accounts with Dreamhost and HostGator. They’re good so far, but only because I need lots of accounts with different class-c IP addresses.
Then I found HostMonster.
For some reason the site looked too familiar to me so I called them to find out who owns them. It turns out that HostMonster is owned by Matt Heaton, the same guy who owns BlueHost.
And, HostMonster has everything I’ve looked for in a hosting package:
- host unlimited domains with one account
- ssh access
- cpanel
- cheap
- good tech support
- good affiliate program
Needless to say, I’m super happy with HostMonster.
I just wish the guys at bluehost would have told me that hostmonster existed one of the 10 times I’ve asked for all these features over the past year.
6/12/2006
- The last straw with iTunes and my iPod
I can’t handle it anymore.
I love my iTrip, it’s great.
My liking of my ipod stops there.
Today was the last straw.
My brother-in-law was in town until this morning from Colorado. I had some educational mp3’s that some marketers had given away for free that he wanted to listen to. So, I bought ipod 2 ipod so we could transfer the songs from my ipod to his.
After all, I didn’t want to sync his ipod with my itunes and have it duplicate our libraries.
I also got the Book of Mormon on mp3 from his ipod.
Everything went great, until I fired up itunes this afternoon.
iTunes proceeded to delete all the book of mormon mp3’s I had copied from his ipod.
Now, I have to call him and warn him before he syncs his ipod to make sure he listens to everything I gave him.
Otherwise stupid itunes will delete it.
As soon as I discover that it deleted my files, I try to close itunes because I hate it and it proceeds to crash my computer!
So here’s to you Apple:
I HATE ITUNES
It’s the biggest piece of crap software I’ve ever used.
I’m done using it. I won’t buy an ipod again because of it. At this point I’d rather have one of those stupid failure sony mp3 players.
I’ll find another way to deal with my ipod, like with virtual ipod. I haven’t used it yet, but it looks promising.
Oh yeah, I’ve been holding this one in for a few months now too…just waiting for the right time to post it. This is an email my sister sent me (I requested it from her specifically so I could blog about it) after she called me at 2:30am one night because itunes had jacked her entire system:
alright. here’s what happened. my ipod would keep kinda freezing at the
beginning of a song for a while until it would finally decide to skip to
another song, which usually wouldn’t work either. so i plug it into my
computer to see if the ipod software needs updating. itunes freezes. then i
remember that i need to install the latest version of itunes, so i did. when
the installation finished, i left the box checked that says “launch itunes
now”. it didn’t open. so i went to the processes to see if the process at
least had launched, which it had. so i decide to end the frozen process so i
could launch a new one. i clicked ‘end process’ and pressed ok to the warning,
but itunes didn’t close. it only decreased slightly in the amount of memory it
was using. i tried again and it still didn’t close. so then i restarted my
computer to see if that was the issue. it wasn’t. the same thing happened. so
then i restarted, uninstalled itunes, and reinstalled it. still the same thing
kept happening. at this point i’m pissed at windows in general because a lot
of processes won’t close and i’m having a few other slight problems, so i
decide to reformat. things are going well, the reinstall works. then i’m
installing the ipod software from the cd, and it finishes and tells me to
restart. so i do. but that’s when the computer decides that it is unable to
boot. from anything. it only booted after i unplugged everything, which i now
know means unplugging the ipod. so i’m trying to install the ipod software,
but every time i get to the part where you have to plug in the ipod, it sort
of froze. it recognized the ipod was plugged in, said it needed to be
formatted (it didn’t), and then tried to format it but said it couldn’t
connect. the install finally failed. then i realize that every time i plug in
the ipod, itunes freezes also. so i close itunes, plug in the ipod, and go to
my computer to see if the computer recognizes that ipod is plugged in. only my
computer won’t open. so i unplug the ipod and immediately my computer opens.
that’s basically where it ends. i realize the ipod is causing ridiculous
problems on my system including not allowing me to boot, and i’m pissed. thank
apple for me.It’s a good thing dumb ol apple didn’t adopt a similar motto for the ipod as they did for their operating system.
Can you imageine: “It just doesn’t work”
For some strange reason, I see something eerily similar to microsoft here…
5/29/2006
- I love my DVR
It’s NHL Playoff season.
It’s also NBA Playoff season.
It was American Idol season.
I like to watch all 3 (I prefer the NHL over the NBA, I know, I know…you hate hockey) but it would be almost impossible without my dvr.
But that’s not what my post is about.
This post is about how technology is making my life better.
See, with my dvr I watch less TV, spend less time watching it, and I watch what I want.
I don’t spend time browsing the channels watching garbage. I don’t spend time before a show comes on anticipating when it’s going to come on, and watching some other trash before it.
Right now I record all the games that are on. Sometimes that’s 2 NHL games and 2 NBA games on the same night. When I sit down to watch stuff, I watch stuff I have recorded. I’m very careful not to find out the scores of games before I watch them, that ruins the fun of it.
When I watch stuff, I skip all the junk at the beginning before the game.
15 minutes saved.
Commercials? LOL.
The NHL has 90 seconds of commercials and about another 30 seconds of “stuff” every time they take a break.
The NBA has about 2 minutes of commercials plus another minute of “stuff” every time they take a break.I don’t watch any of it.
Halftime? Quarters? Periods?
Nope.
I can watch a full hockey game in about an hour and a half (an hour if I’m skipping each time they blow a whistle…it’s almost always about 30 seconds in between when they blow the whistle and when they drop the puck again).
I can watch a full NBA game in about the same time. If I’m really hurrying I’ll skip the free throws too. Man, I never realized how long it takes to shoot 2 free throws.American Idol?
LOLOL
I never realized how much of a rip-off that show is. 4 minutes of commercials about every 10-15 minutes!
Skipped!
A 1 hour American Idol show only takes about 35 minutes to watch.
When I watch a show, I never watch commercials anymore. That means that that program’s time is cut down.
It also means that I’m not bound to TV schedules anymore. If I want to watch something, I don’t have to make sure I’m home in time. If my wife wants me to go to the mall with her and it’s the middle of the Stanley Cup Finals, I don’t have to say “You’re freaking crazy!”.
I just pause it.
What this all means is that I spend less time watching TV, and my TV viewing time is better spent.
When I got it I thought it was just going to mean I would spend more time watching TV because I had so much TV available to me. What I’ve found is that I spend less time watching it because I can always only watch what I want to watch.
If there isn’t something on the DVR fo rme to watch, I don’t want to watch TV at all because I hate having to sit through commercials. When I don’t have any fast forward saved up on the show I’m watching, it drives me crazy. I pause it, walk away, and come back later.
My wife is happier.
My kids are happier.
I can watch a playoff game and play with my kids at the same time. I can concentrate on my kids and sort of watch the TV. If something exciting happens, I just hit the 20 second rewind button.
There have been few things that have changed my life a bunch.
The internet is obviously one.
My ipod is another. It turns travel time into productive time. I love it and I’ve made tons of money because of it.
My DVR is another one.
5/25/2006
- Water as Fuel Video
This is unbelievable. This guy has developed a way to use water as fuel for just about anything. He has a blow-torch that is amazingly hot. He has a car that runs on water!
Imagine that…a water powered car. Combine this with some solar power with nanotechnology and the energy possibilities are endless.
Watch this video:
Water Powered Engine
4/14/2006
- Google Calendar Released
I blogged a while back about moving desktop apps to the internet and said that I was using trumba as my online calendar app.
Trumba is a REALLY good application. I have nothing but good things to say about it.
However, yesterday google released their long awaited online calendar application.
It’s really nice. Lots of javascript/ajax stuff going on with it to make it easy to use. Lots of different views (pretty normal for a calendar), easily set up multiple calendars, easily invite others to view events, easily set up repeating events, easily set up reminders.
A lot of stuff is triggered by just clicking on somewhere on the page and a window quickly pops up or changes automatically. Very little refreshing of the page, much like gmail.
I’m not sure I’ll switch from Trumba’s online calendar yet. As you know I’m not a huge fan of Google “the company” so I’d like to support the little guys for a while longer. I’m not sure how well other calendar companies will fare with this though, because google offers everything for free, which others have a hard time doing.
3/29/2006
- Mozy for online backups
If you haven’t heard of Mozy yet, I feel sorry for you.
If you’re not using Mozy yet, I feel even worse.
If you’re not going to go sign up for free at Mozy right now, I just think you’re basically an idiot.
Either that, or you’ve never had a computer crash on you.
Mozy does online backups of your computer for free. Yeah, crazy. FREE.
They give you 2Gb of space for free (which is a ton…unless you’re backing up music/pictures/videos) and you can buy more space (right now at least) amazingly cheap.
I’ve been using it for some number of months now and absolutely love it (I think I blogged about it once before). It’s super easy to use and it backs up your data when you’re not around.
Anyway…yeah…if you don’t go use it, you’ll be sorry when your computer crashes.
2/3/2006
- Remove Scratches from Blackberry
I use a BlackBerry 7105t. I love it.
Recently it started getting scratches on the screen so I ordered a screen protector from www.theinvisibleshield.com.
When I got it I tried to install it (following their directions) and got really close to installing it correctly. When I looked at it there were a bunch of bumps under the protector right in the middle of the screen. No matter what I did I couldn’t get rid of them. I pulled the protector off and tried re-applying it but this time the bumps were worse.
Finally I emailed them with my problem asking if I could get a replacement.
Here’s where the cool part comes in.
They said yes, and they shipped me a replacement. This time, I successfully installed the protector and it looks great.
They also shipped me some of their Applesauce Polish, which is supposed to remove scratches from plastics (like pda screens, ipod screens, pda and ipod bodies, and even the metal back of the ipods).
This was totally unexpected. Talk about customer service!
It also totally worked.
My blackberry screen was starting to get quite a few scratches on it that were really bothering me. Now, they’re totally gone.
My ipod also had some major scratches on the screen that were really obnoxious. I’ve applied the polish 2 times now and the scratches are almost gone. I would guess that after 2 more applications the scratches will be completely gone.
I was totally amazed.
I’d guess that if the invisible shield had an affiliate program I’d make some money off this blog entry…but alas, they don’t.
But, I was so impressed with their customer service that I wrote this review for removing scratches from my blackberry 7105t and for theinvisibleshield anyway.
Now I need to go buy a screen protector for my ipod.
[tags]remove scratches from blackberry, blackberry, screen scratches, remove pda screen scratches, remove ipod screen scratches, clean ipod scratches, scratches, ipod, pda[/tags]
1/14/2006
- Firefox vs. IE
I thought this was interesting. I haven’t seen any stats on how well firefox is doing recently until I looked at the browser stats for http://www.writingup.com.
Writingup is a fairly normal website. It’s not technical, so I don’t think it would have a heavy slant either way. I know there are people using dial up on the site.
So, here’s the graph of browser stats:
This will explain it a little better:
Num. Perc. Browser Name Version 3540 69.41% MSIE 6.0 710 13.92% Firefox 1.5 297 5.82% Safari 1.2 266 5.22% Firefox 1.0.7 146 2.86% Firefox 1.0.4 47 0.92% Mozilla 5.0 26 0.51% Firefox 1.0 18 0.35% Firefox 1.0.6 11 0.22% Netscape 7.2 7 0.14% Firefox 1.0.1 7 0.14% Firefox 1.0.3 6 0.12% Netscape 8.0.4 4 0.08% Mozilla 4.0 3 0.06% Opera 8.51 2 0.04% MSIE 5.0 1 0.02% MSIE 5.5 1 0.02% Firefox 1.0.5 1 0.02% MSIE 5.23 1 0.02% Opera 9.0 1 0.02% MSIE 5.01 1 0.02% MSIE 7.0 1 0.02% Firefox 1.4.1 1 0.02% Netscape 7.1 1 0.02% Netscape 7.02 1 0.02% Firefox 1.0.2 This is the log of the last 5100 hits on the site. If my numbers are correct, between firefox and mozilla (different versions of both browsers), it looks like they have about a 24.5% share of the browser market. (Firefox is built on the mozilla engine…they’re practically the same thing).
That’s HUGE!
Up from like 3% just 2 years ago.
Combine that with the fact that my 19 year old sister, a college freshman at Va. Tech who’s not the most computer savvy person (she’s certainly no dummy either), recently installed Ubuntu Linux on her desktop because she was tired of windows, and it looks like microsoft is really hurting.
Seeing that I’ve run linux on my desktop now for about 3 years, I’m very much a fan of the changes that are going on. Yes, linux still has a ways to go before most users can enjoy it, the learning curve is still pretty high, but at least the trends are going in the right direction.
12/28/2005
- Virus targets Adsense
It was only a matter of time before someone figured out that data mining was only going to get them so far
Not that data mining isn’t profitable, by all means, it is! But, adsense is more profitable in the short term.
Jensense writes about a new virus that installs itself on your computer and then subtly changes the adsense ads you would otherwise view, to be ads the virus author wants you to see.
I could see this affecting a LOT of computers eventually, and becoming a problem because people 1. don’t know it’s there, and 2. don’t care if it’s there, because they don’t want to see the adsense ads anyway.
Not good news for adsense publishers.
12/5/2005
- Online Spreadsheet
I’ve been waiting for this to happen.
Phil Windley points out an online spreadsheet application.
It’s hosted, it’s free, and it works.
They have a “post this to my blog” link too, so you can post your spreadsheet to your blog:
I believe you have to be the owner of the spreadsheet to edit it and have it be persistant, but this opens up lots of possibilities.
One more step away from the desktop.
11/27/2005
- iTunes stinks
Having had a good thanksgiving and heard some good christmas music over the weekend I decided to go back and revisit the music on my ipod to see if I could get a playlist of christmas music.
I was quickly reminded about how much I hate the itunes software.
Who in the world thought up the idea of presenting every single song on a persons computer in one big list. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Let’s say I have somewhere around 5,000 songs. That means that in order to find my dumb christmas music on itunes I have to look through an asseninely large list just to create a playlist. My library is tiny compared to most peoples.
That’s besides the fact that when I opened up itunes it had magically added a ton of songs to my “library” 2 times, only to put an exclamation point next to all those duplicates telling me there was a problem. The problem didn’t exist the last time I opened itunes, and I haven’t touched the folders since then.
I’ve had nothing but problems with that stupid software since I got it. Apparently, others have too.
I don’t understand why people can’t just stick with what works like winamp. Why did apple have to go screw up the winamp process. I store cd’s on my computer in folders. When I rip a cd my ripping program puts all the files nicely into a folder in My Music. It’s organized. It’s easy.
iTunes has to go and un-organize everything for me, so that I can re-organize it all.
All this, plus the fact that when I play a song in winamp that sounds great, I can play it in itunes and it sounds like the cd had a billion scratches on it.
Plus it crashes all the time.
Here’s another problem that I can’t solve (all these problems from apple, the company that makes stuff that’s “soooooo easy to use”): I can’t have songs shuffle through a playlist on my ipod! Does anyone know how to make it do this? When I want to shuffle through my christmas list, I don’t also want to shuffle through the rest of my music. I’m enjoying my christmas music and all of a sudden I have a random chapter of The Da Vinci Code playing. Obnoxious.
I love the ipod itself…the iTrip is great. But I’m sick of dealing with iTunes.
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