Welcome 2007

Amazing CG picture

Hard to believe this is computer generated. See this one and many more at the link below.

Link:
http://propergraphics.com/portfolio_vehicles.htm

Gynotikolobomassophile

Gynotikolobomassophile and 22 other words you could care less about. Now that I have that keyword in my blog I am going to be flooded with traffic.......yeah right.

23 Onscure and obsolete words:
http://www.canongate.net/Lists/Words/23ObscureAndObsoleteWords

Determine your gender from how you write

Just in case you aren't sure what your gender is then try this little online utility that will determine you gender based on how you write.

According to it, I'm female. Good to know since I have been living 35 years as a male. Oh well, time for a wardrobe change.

Link:
http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html

MS gives laptops to Bloggers

Not me but others have received laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista. There are lots of people who are slamming MS for this PR move and others that don't have a problem with it.

Read an opinion:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html

The only thing I will say on this topic is I don't think its a bad idea. Giving someone a better tool to provide an honest evaluation is not bribing in my book. If a bloggers gives his or her honest opinion of the OS then whats the problem?

If MS wants to provide me with a laptop I will gladly give them a honest eval of the new OS. I can't afford a new laptop just to test Vista (won't run in VPC efficiently enough to test).

What is this?

Look interesting? Where is it?

Can Sxipper replace RoboForm?

Sxipper is a free plug-in for Firefox that lets you log into any website with a single click. Sxipper saves you time by keeping track of all of your user IDs, passwords, and the personal data you share every day over the web. Sxipper logs you in securely and helps to prevent you from being victimized by phishing sites and phony logins.

The nice thing is it can handle entire forms beyond the login credentials. The free price tag doesn't hurt either.

Link:
https://www.sxipper.com/

Funny Ad

New England Gangstas

A little too annoying for me.

Animated avatars.

What is the Gspot?

Sexual? no. Useful? very.

Ever get an AVI file and try to play it in Windows Media Player only to get an error about missing codecs? Fear not. GSpot not only gives you detailed information about the video but it also gives you the codec required to play it properly. So get your mind out of the gutter and grab this excellent utility while its available.

Link:
http://...find_what_video_and_audio_codecs_to_use.cfm

Also, stop by their forums for everything video:
http://forums.afterdawn.com/

Best of the Web 2006

I know there are like hundreds of these lists being generated before the new year actually begins but I especially like this one. The reason is its a collection from the best posts in a very popular forum so you are getting the best as discussed by many people instead of one, lone blogger like myself (reason I will not be doing on of these lists).

So, enjoy.

Link:
http://www.donationcoder.com/2006/

Microsoft Treemapper

Treemapper is an Excel Add-In that allows an Excel user to quickly and easily generate a treemap visualization of any hierarchical data in Excel, or from a CSV or XML file. Treemapper is based on the Data Visualization Components also available from this group.

If you haven't had the chance to check out Microsoft Research Downloads than I would recommend doing so. This is a place to see what MS is researching and playing around with.

Highlights:

• AURA: Exploring the Future of Holiday Shopping
• Microsoft Outlook Mobile Manager 2.1
• Microsoft Audio Watermarking Tool

Link:
http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/...

Metal pen is just weird

This pen is just weird. Can't be too comfortable to write with. I'll stick with a normal pen.

Link:
http://www.grand-illusions.com/acatalog/info_48.html

Snowman, I got no more

A holiday movie worth seeing

Love Actually is actually a pretty funny holiday movie. Rated-R so its not for the kiddies. Also, any movie with Keira Knightley can't be that bad.

Link:
http://www.amazon.com/...ASIN=B00005JMFQ

Snowman, almost the final

The 10 Gadgets That Changed the World

Changed the world may be strecthing it with these picks.

Link:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredphotos6/

Office Update Inventory Tool Version 2.2

The Office Update Inventory Tool version 2.2 enables administrators to check one or more computers in their organization for the status of Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007 updates.

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

Win a new Smartphone from Microsoft

Why not try and win a new smartphone from Microsoft. All you need is a valid email address and you could win of of the smartphones being given out per week until Jan 31st, 2007.

Good Luck!

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/.../holidaysweepstakes/default.mspx

The Five Best and Worst Things About Vista

After five years, Windows Vista is finally here. With a Mac-like interface, improved security, and far better networking, it's a great improvement over Windows XP. Like any new operating system, though, there are things you'll love about it, and things you'll hate about it. Check out my list of five things you'll love and five things you'll hate, and add to the list by using the link at the bottom of the article.

Link:
http://.../the-five-best-and-worst-things-about-vista.html

Google Toolbar 3 beta

Lots of new features. Should you take the chance and upgrade. Read whats new and decide for yourself.

The question I have is whether they fixed the BlogThis button to work with the new version of Blogger that just came out of beta.

Link:
http://www.google.com/support/firefox/...

Sitemaps

You should be using sitemaps on your site to aid and assist spiders that crawl your site. Its is really in your best interest.

1. Read about sitemaps:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/...

2. See the new standard being pushed:
http://www.sitemaps.org/

3. Create a Google Webmaster Account and get started:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

MS Windows Desktop Search add-ins

Just in case anyone is using Microsoft's Windows Desktop Search here are a few helpful add-ins.

• Add-in for Internet Explorer History
• Add-in for Outlook saved mail (.msg file) indexing
• Add-in for Lotus Notes

Google and Yahoo both offer free AJAX UI code

Did you know that both Google and Yahoo are offering free libraries for making AJAX type interactive websites?

Google Web ToolKit:
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

Yahoo! UI Library (YUI):
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

Big kudos on YUI as the samples and ease of use is quite impressive

Digg Feature request

Digg should allow developers and content managers the option to not have their pages listed on Digg or other social sites. We all know that a front page listing on Digg could bring down a server and I'm sure there are people who really don't want certain content from being Dugg. This could work for all social sites.

A simple META tag would work.

Search engines use a meta tag like this for excluding them:
meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"

So, how about something like this for social sites:
meta name="social" content="nolisting"

What do you think?

Submit this to Digg and lets see what others have to say

Post a story on Digg, free

Get it promoted to the front page, free.

Story is submitted with a spelling mistake in the title, priceless.

Link:
http://.../The_new_Digg_actuall_validates_against_the_W3C

(I thought I had read it carefully enough before submitting. Why can't they allow editing of the title / text for like 30 secs after submitting)

Pligg goes beta 9

Pligg is unique compared to most other content management systems because of it's flexibility. A web designer can do pretty much anything with Pligg because the software was designed to be used in as many ways as possible. Not only can a person with very little knowledge of PHP and MySQL install it, but they can modify and administer it with relatively little difficulty. For those who have a greater understanding of web languages, Pligg can act as the first step in a highly customized personal content management system.

This is a cool CMS system that I am so looking forward to testing when I get an idea and some time.

Link:
http://pligg.com/

HowTo: Modify the images from an Amazon feed

What some people are able to figure out or care to spend the time figuring out and here is one of those things, check out this tutorial on changing the images feed out of Amazon.

Link:
http://aaugh.com/imageabuse.html

While you're at it check out this post on how to use the graphics engine from Google to make rounded corners on your website.

Before you go off and added rounded corners to everything on your website keep in mind that Google makes no claim to letting you use this and they could change, read that as break, it at anytime.

Link:
http://xach.livejournal.com/95656.html

Google Patents

Are you serious? During my small break Google released another tool? Well, they did. Google Patents is, well, a patent search. The results are clear, well layed out and just plain easy to read.

Does this mean that sites like Free Patents Online are no longer needed? Thats the problem with setting up a site around the collection and evaluation of any type of data, someday Google will provide the interface to the data. If you don't get it, Google wants all data, they want to control and have access to anything data.

Link:
http://www.google.com/patents

Also, check out the Big Google List

Resuming normality part II

I think I will be going back to my original tech posts since I have so much that I want to blog about. Of course I haven't forgot about the snowman and will make one single post on Xmas Eve with the rest of the comic strips that I have left.

And all is right in the world again....

Snowman 8 of 15

Sick of the snowman

Are you sick of the snowman posts or should I continue? Majority wins.

Snowman 7 of 15

Snowman 6 of 15

Snowman 5 of 15

Snowman 4 of 15

Snowman 3 of 15

Snowman 2 of 15

Snowman 1

Large list of Online Generators

The Online Generators list seems to have everything you could every want out of an online generator.

Highlights:

ASCII Art:
http://www.glassgiant.com/ascii/

Color Blender:
http://www.colorblender.com/

Gradient Creator:
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/gradient/

Favicon Creator:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

A couple I created:

Quick Thumbnail:
http://quickthumbnail.com/

Make Password:
http://www.maord.com/


Link:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/.../online-generators/

gotAPI

gotAPI is an AJAX thingy for viewing the documentation of some very popular web technologies like HTML, PHP and CSS. None of the information resides on the site as they are only indexing existing documentation. In some ways its good but in some ways its kinda of annoying viewing the actual documentations page in a frame.

Link:
http://www.gotapi.com/

Is your business on Google?

Make sure by going to the Google Local Business Center and make sure you're listed.

Link:
http://www.google.com/local/add/lookup?hl=en-US&gl=US

Make Password by Veign

Make Password is another tool I threw togther quickly for a personal need and figured I would release in case others had a need. What this online tools does is create lists of random passwords and hash values. Its kinda of useful for individuals looking for inspiration on creating passwords and extremely useful for developers who often need to setup default passwords in a database.

You control the password length, character sets, hash values, quantity to create, and even the method to display the results.

And I know the domain name is weird but finding a good domain was not easy so I settled on a name that combines Make and Password.

Link:
http://www.maord.com/

Whats planned for the next couple weeks

Starting monday instead of posting technical posts I will be making only one post per day of a pretty funny holiday cartoon. Each day a new cartoon. I figured it would give people something a little more festive and funny to look at.

While you wait enjoy this:
http://www.veign.com/.../christmas-story-by-bunnies.html

What is Mail Fetcher?

Mail Fetcher may make Gmail the best online, free email service around by letting you check other non-gmail email accounts through their interface. Do you realize how big this is? Do you know what Google is attempting to do? They are trying to get, access, and view all of your other email accounts by letting you use the Gmail interface to interact with them.

Do you think this is a good feature or does it worry you about Google having access to even more of your data?

Link:
http://mail.google.com/...

Sysinternals roundup

Sysinternals Technet Website:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

Sysinternals Suite (The entire set of Sysinternals Utilities have been rolled up into a single Suite of tools):
http://www.microsoft.com/.../SysinternalsSuite.mspx

Are you ready for Vista?

Check out the Vista Readiness Test. I tried it and failed on many points. Curious on how many people have machines that are in fact 'ready'.

I failed on:

• Hard Drive Capacity
• Video Memory (recommended)
• Pixel Shader
• Drivers - I think everyone will fail on that since the test is on a driver website.
  

Link:
http://driveragent.com/vista/

Delete “access denied” folders or files

Symptom: you have identified files or folders belonging to spyware, malware, or adware that cannot be deleted since some background service has the files or folders locked. You receive a message “access denied” when attempting to delete them and uninstalling the malware from Add/Remove programs, or deleting associated Regkeys, still does not remove the files.

1. Right click on the folder, or file(s), and select Properties.
2. Click on the Security tab.
3. Highlight the Administrators group, and then click Remove. You should not have to highlight any other groups or user names.
4. When prompted with a message “you cannot remove xxxxx/xxxxx because this object is inheriting permissions from its parent, click on "OK" to the message, and then click the “Advanced” button.
5. Uncheck the box for “inherit from parent the permission entries……”
6. When prompted with another dialog “selecting this option means the parent permission entries…… will no longer be applied….” click “Remove”.
7. Still in the Advanced Security Settings dialog, click Add.
8. In the Select User or Group dialog, type in “Everyone” (no quotes) in the “Enter the object…” field, then click on "OK".
9. In the Permissions Entry dialog, check off “Full Control”. All other boxes should automatically be checked off. Click on "OK".
10. In the Advanced Security Settings dialog again, “Everyone” should appear in the Permissions entries field, and under “Inherited From”, should appear.
11. Click on "OK" again to exit that dialog.
12. Click on "OK" to exit the folder or file Properties dialog.

Try deleting the folders or files. You may need to reboot the PC in order to release the current security settings from memory. Once restarted, try deleting the items again. If removing malware from a PC, this is a good start toward disabling the software, especially where Add/Remove Programs, or registry key deletions have not worked.

You can also check out this utility.

Check your Gmail account with Outlook

First, configure POP access:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13273

Second, configure Outlook (or one of many other email clients):
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=12103

Third, check your email.

James Kim's body found

Just awful.

Link:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,234880,00.html

Repairing or checking a SQL Server database / table

DBCC commands

Full listing of DBCC commands can be found here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/.../ts_dbcc_217n.asp

DBCC CheckTable
http://msdn.microsoft.com/.../ts_dbcc_40o5.asp

DBCC CheckDB
http://msdn.microsoft.com/.../ts_dbcc_00gy.asp

Additional non-MS information:
http://www.informit.com/...qlserver&seqNum=30&rl=1

Just execute right out of the SQL Query Analyzer

As always backup first

Adobe Reader v8.0 released

Whats new:

• Collaboration features
• Redesigned interface
• Built in RSS reader (why?)
• New review and markup tools
  

Seems to load faster too. So far, I like it.

Link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

The Office (2007) Open XML File format

Some helpful links on the new Office XML format from MS

Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406049.aspx

2007 Office System Sample: Manipulating Office Open XML Format Files:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

Office Open XML Formats FAQ:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101723691033.aspx

XML in Office Developer Portal:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905545.aspx

Women and sports

http://www.ifilm.com/video/2802950?ns=1

AdSenseLog v4.5

AdsenseLog just released a new version of its very popular Adsense monitoring application. This software will help you increase your Adsense revenue earnings by letting you actively and easily monitor how your ads are performing. Since it sits in the system tray the montoring process is convenient.

From the developers site on whats new:
" The messages view can tell you what's going on in your account - which channels are performing okay, which are earning below their average, etc. The marker tool allows you to set markers in specific dates (for example when you made a change in ad position or color) and then view the changes that happened around that time."

Check it out.

Link:
http://www.metalgrass.com/adsenselog/

CNET editor's wife, daughters found; search continues

Some good news about James Kim and his family. Now they just need to find him

Good Luck!

Link:
http://news.com.com/...

How some spam works

'Pump-and-Dump' Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders

Pretty interesting.

Knowledgebase Publisher rolls on

Knowledgebase Publisher just released a beta of the 2.0 version and it just keeps getting better.

What's New:

• RSS Support
• CategoryID removed from KB links, now article could be safely moved between categories.
• Related articles support
• Attachments support
• Email Templates (all email templates could be easily customized)
  

See a sample at Horse911.com

Link:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kbpublisher/

Quick Thumbnail on TWiT

Pretty cool as Quick Thumbnail was mentioned on a TWiT podcast.

Microsoft Media Player 11 shreds your rights

One of the problems with WiMP11 is licensing and backing it up. If you buy media with DRM infections, you can't move the files from PC to PC, or at least you can't and have them play on the new box. If you want the grand privilege of moving that content, you need to get the approval of the content mafia, sign your life away, and use the tools they give you.

Link:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34523

Pixelotto Logo

See the new logo here before you will see it anywhere else, including his website.

Pixelotto brought to you by the guy who made the Milliondollar homepage is creating a new website to try and earn himself another million dollars. The catch is he will attempt to take in 2 million dollars and keep one for himeself and give the other one away in some kind of lottery - now the name makes sense huh?.

Link:
http://pixelotto.com/

How to drill square holes

Use a Reuleaux triangle of course.

Link:
http://upper.us.edu/faculty/smith/reuleaux.htm

iHosting should be avoided!

The company iHosting is nothing more than the WebHostPlus company rebranded. If you know nothing about Webhostplus or the many companies they control, then know that they are nothing more than scammers who destroy every company they purchase. I know, I was with one of the companies they bought.

This is a really, really underhanded company that doesn't care about its customers.

Companies they are / own:

ihosting | NetBunch | Vilitas | MyBizHosting | HostMeFast | My-Servlet Hosting | Managed.com
Mesopia | Dinix | 1PlanHost | WebHostPlus.com

Read all about the company here:
http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=540279

My original post on the matter:
http://.../webhostplus-netbunch-is-horrible.html

The class action lawsuit against them:
http://www.whplawsuit.com/