Windows Vista SP1 Available Q1 2008

Nearly 9 months since Microsoft's Public Release of the Vista operating system, and Microsoft has finally announced a timetable for Service Pack 1's release, quarter 1 2008. This is a big step, considering that many companies and organizations (including myself), have been holding back from deploying vista until SP1. Like every OS since Microsoft's inception, Vista has had a rocky start on stability and compatibility.

Let's hope that SP1 for Vista gives Vista a fresh outlook, as was the case with Windows XP and its SP1.

Chris

HowTo: Succeed as a Consultant in a Sea of Direct Hires

Working as a consultant has its ups and its downs. Recently I have come to the realization that the direct hires that I work with do not like me. Or at least it seems that way.

Honestly, its not that they do not like me, but that they are threatened, jealous, or they just feel cheated that their boss hired a "consultant" to do work that they could have done. Whatever the employee's reason to be emotionally distressed, two people suffer. The employee and the consultant.

The employee suffers, because every encounter with the "consultant" is a tension filled battle of wits. In many cases the employee the employee in question armors up and begins wielding his or her sword. Now, can someone explain to me, as a consultant being hired for a project, why on the first or second day on the job you are going through an interview. Now this employee's main goal is to make you look stupid, make you feel uncomfortable and out of place. The employee becomes obsessive, telling his tale of his victorious encounter with the new "consultant" that he is assigned to work with. He then goes home to his or her spouse and complains about how they are not appreciated by their organization or that they are being cheated and etc. It is not pretty.

For the consultant, he is left working in tense environments where the employees that are supposed to be assisting him with his quest are resentful and resilient to being helpful. These situations only end badly. The consultant completes hours and hours of work, presents his work at the big meeting, only to find out a critical flaw that could have been avoided had the employee notified him of a crucial limitation. The end result, the consultant looks like a fool and the employee has triumphed. Only this is what the employee hopes for.

Luckily for me, I was taught this lesson on one of my first consulting jobs by another consultant. He warned me of this problem, so I made a plan to follow when entering into a new organization as a consultant.

1. Quickly analyze the importance of each person on the team. Determine the hierarchy of the team. Determine who is the most critical when it comes to you completing your project. This will allow you to realize who you should be making friends with, and who you should not waste your time on.

2. Once you determine the important players on the team, be genuine. Find common grounds of interest. Connect with them, do more listening than talking. If you take time to listen, you may find ways that you can help that person, so when it comes the time that you need help, they will not hesitate to provide you with what you need. The phrase that BNI members live by is "Giver's Gain" and as a consultant, this becomes something your use on a daily basis.

When I started with the county, it was the final stretch of the NHL season. With the Sabres having nearly their best season ever, I had an instant conversation topic that spurred the emotions of any Buffalo resident. (Literally!)

3. When you determine the employees that are going to give you trouble, don't avoid them, don't insult them, but learn to tolerate them. I know the biggest thing you want to do when that employee is ruffling his main, is tell him where he can shove his boot, but you need to refrain. Being a consultant is not just about getting the project done, but you are also trying to build credibility for yourself. No one wants to be remembered as the guy who did a good job but had no self control and picked a fight with one of the direct hires.

4. If you make a mistake, or someone else makes a mistake but it is your project. Take full responsibility for the mistake, even if it is not your fault. Respond to the mistake, get it resolved as quickly as possible. This will show you have class, composure and respond quickly under stress. The boss will respect that, and the employee that may be responsible has been foiled because you do not look like the ass.

Chris

Poll: The Best Windows Anti Virus.

So far we have 5 votes in. In the lead is Eset's Nod32 with 2. Tied for 2nd we have AVG, BitDefender, and Norton. 11 days left to determine the consumer's choice for Windows Anti Virus.

Which is your favorite?

-Chris

Finding New Work

As I near the end of one project I always begin searching for the next. As I follow the contractors code, I always make sure that the current project that I am working on will provide enough income to support myself and my family for 2 times that duration of the project. This way, I am not rushed to get more work, I can comfortably find more work that I am satisfied with. But when I do go job hunting, there are a couple tools I take out of the shed. In this article I am going to share a few with you.

• Always stay active on social networking sites like LinkedIn. Your connections may sometimes seek someone out with your credentials. If you have solid, recent recommendations, this can sometimes land you a project you would not have otherwise.
• Join groups revolving around your specialty. For instance, I am a part of the NYTech Meetup group. Even though I am not in NYC, I find some very useful conversations as well as the occasional request for a programmer. I would most certainly travel the 6 hours for a good contract.
• Throw your resume up on dice.com, monster, craigslist.org and any other job site that pertains to your specialty.
• Visit Freelanceswitch.com, they have some excellent advice and articles on finding work, not to mention "The Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites". They even have a section of their blog dedicated to Finding Work.
• If your problem is lack of portfolio, find someone who needs your services and would gladly accept them for a nominal fee. Once you have a portfolio, some testimonials and credibility, finding that work will be much easier.
• Develop relationships with people that would be natural referral sources. For instance, if you are a web developer, make friends with graphic designers. If your specialty is SEO, make friends with web developers, etc...
• Find a reputable consulting firm in your area that contracts most if not all of its employees. The county gig that I am on is actually through one of these firms. Granted, someone else is making money for every hour that I work, but I am still getting the rate that I required.

I hope this information helps.

Chris

exSunRocket Customers May Claim Lost Funds

SunRocket has recently sent out a letter stating that SunRocket, Inc. has transferred ownership of all tangible and intangible assets to the board members for liquidation. Upon liquidation, the board members are to distribute funds to all creditors, in this batch of creditors is the exSunRocket customer that had time left on their subscription.

If you are one of the subscribers who still had time left on his/her subscription (which is most likely everyone, I had 8 months left), you have the right to claim yourself as a creditor.

You can view the Cover Letter and the Proof of Claim Form here.

I filled out the claim, added all of my supporting documents and wrote my Statement About the Debt.

For the supporting documents, I included the following:

• My Plan information from SunRocket's account page. To get this, login to your SunRocket account, yes as of today it is still up. Click 'My Account', then click 'Plan Information'. Now when I printed mine, the text came out all garbled, most likely resulted from poor programming. So what I did was saved it as a pdf document, and then printed it and it looked fine. If you do not have the means to print to pdf, go download and install PDF Creator.
• My Account Overview from SunRocket's account page. Can be printed from when you login to SunRocket, click 'My Account'. I had the same text problem here as well.
• The email that I received from SunRocket regarding the discontinuation of services, which I made a pdf copy of for all of you here.

For my Statement About the Debt, I wrote the following:

Statement About the Debt

This is a claim for a debt from SunRocket, Inc. On December 06, 2006, I, Christopher M Mancini entered into an agreement with SunRocket, Inc, in which I paid SunRocket in advance for services to be rendered. In this agreement, SunRocket, Inc was to provide services for a total of 15 months, which would have ended on March 06, 2008.

Sometime around July 21, 2007, SunRocket announced that it was closing its doors. They discontinued accepting customer and technical support calls, as well as new subscribers. I received the attached message from SunRocket stating that all SunRocket services were to be discontinued no later than August 5th, 2007.

My claim is for $92.87. I am making this claim based off of the following calculation:

$92.87 = 7 months ( $199 / 15 months )

I took the total that I paid for services to be rendered and divided that by the total months in the agreement. Then I multiplied it by the total months remaining in the agreement using March 06, 2008 as the date in which my agreement was to end and August 5th, 2007 as the date in which my services were terminated.

Lets see if the "Assignee" will actually follow through and pay these debts.

Chris

A Bit of Fun

I am not one to enjoy forwards, most of the time I do not read them. My wife knows this, so she chooses wisely. This one made me laugh and I thought I would share:

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated
that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would
have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria found
in feces.

In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of Poop. However, we do not run
that risk when drinking wine (or rum, whiskey, beer or other liquor)
because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling,
filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember:
Water = Poop
Wine = Health

Therefore, it's better to drink beer and talk stupid, than to drink water
and be full of shit.

There's no need to thank me for this valuable information; I'm doing it as
a public service.

HowTo: Unlock Your Apple iPhone

On Tuesday August 21st, 2007, an incoming freshman to Western New York's own Rochester Institute of Technology has announced that he has unlocked his iPhone to work on other service providers networks. This 17 year old soon to be biotechnology major from Glen Rock, NJ, is in the books as the first person in the world to unlock an iPhone. Apparently, he spent all of his last summer before leaving for college, skipping the graduation parties to reach this objective. This is big news.

RIT is just loving every minute of this publicity, boasting how impressive their incoming students can be. The full article from RIT's press releases can be found in Google's cache.

Already, Hotz has traded the unlocked iPhone to a tech business owner for a Nissan 350z and 3 new 8gb iPhones.

So, here it is, the following steps were taken from Hotz's blog. One thing is for sure, this kid is not going to have a hard time finding work in the future.

What You Need:

• First, an iPhone. Of the sshed and jailbroken variety. Also, kill commcenter by moving the LaunchDaemon plist out of the directory.

• Some trusty case opener tools(read: guitar picks) Read one of the many tutorials available online for taking apart your phone.

• A soldering iron. This should've cost you more than $10.

• Fine pitch wire. I used magnet wire salvaged from a little motor.

• An unlock switch. The bigger and more badass, the better. Or if you are cheap, wire cutters :-)

• A red bull. This requires concentration, something I don't have without Red Bull.

Step 0:

You will need a couple things. First add termcap, second you will also need to move com.apple.CommCenter.plist out of its folder and reboot your iPhone. First time you start minicom use minicom -s to enter into setup and set the modem as /dev/tty.baseband

When you done with minicom remember to move back com.apple.CommCenter.plist otherwise your phone wont have service.

Step 1:

First, I would like to say thanks again to gray, iProof, dinopio, lazyc0der, anonymous, the dev team, nightwatch, and everyone who donated. Without them, there would be no unlock today, and I surely wouldn't be up at 8AM.
Second, you may brick your iPhone using this tutorial. YOU ARE WARNED.
Okay on to the actual step. Remove the black part, the three screws, and the aluminum case. Disconnect the wire connecting the phone to the case. Do not remove anything else. Comment on these posts if you are with me so far. Once we get a good number of comments I'll move on.

Step 2:

Also remove the metal cover over the comm board. This is all the disassembly you have to do. If you feel like being safe, desolder the battery red lead. I didn't :)

Step 3:

The red line is covering the A17 trace. In order to trick the chip into thinking the flash is erased in the correct section, you will need to pull this high. Scrape away at the trace with something like a multimeter probe. Then solder a very thin wire to it. Be very careful. Only scrape away at that solder mask above that one trace. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BREAK THE TRACE. This is the hardest step in the whole process; the rest is cake. Also solder a wire to the 1.8v line. Connect to wire coming from the trace and the wire coming from the 1.8v to your unlock switch. Be careful, you only get one chance to do this right. Thanks again to Nick Chernyy for the picture.

Commenter Suggestions:

• I suggest using 0,15mm coated copper wire, the one that looks blank and is coated with a heat sensitive material. Thats a lot more bendable.
• with some soldering experience this is a piece of cake. Equipment is the key, don't try this stuff with too big soldering irons. I use a 0,4mm needle style point
• Use an embossing heater to heat the solder and the board, shielding the plastic case with aluminum foil.

Step 4:

Ok, time to test what you just soldered. First use the continuity check on a multimeter to make sure the wires aren't shorting to ground or to each other. Make sure your switch is in the off position. Power up your iPhone. Hopefully it didn't smoke :) Now go into minicom to tty.baseband and send a few commands, AT a few times will do. It should respond OK. Now flip your switch, the baseband should stop responding. Even when you flip it back, the baseband still shouldn't respond. Be sure your switch is off, then open another ssh and run "bbupdater -v" You can get bbupdater off the ramdisk. This should reset the baseband, and minicom should start working again. If it did this, your soldering is most likely good, and you are ready to actually start unlocking your phone!!!

Commentor Suggestions:

• For information regarding minicom: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041026113304907
  

Step 5:

If it passed the checks in step 4, congratulate yourself. You are a pro solderer. Go eat lunch. If not, don't worry yet. I must've thought I bricked my phone 100 times. First of all, to power up your phone you don't need to reconnect the case with the power button. Just connect it with USB, it'll power itself up. Secondly, don't waste time compiling minicom. Download the binary here, and termcap here.

Step 6:

Now, with the switch off, your baseband should be working perfectly. Here you should take a NOR dump of your phone. The dev team's NORDumper is a great way to do this. This is good to have in case something goes wrong. You can extract the firmware from this as well, which we'll get to later.

Step 7:

So here is the first tool release, iEraser. This erases the current firmware on your modem. Don't worry, you can always put it back with bbupdater. Here how the bootrom check works; it reads from 0xA0000030 0xA000A5A0 0xA0015C58 0xA0017370 and all these addresses must read as blank, or 0xFFFFFFFF. When you erase flash, it becoms 0xFFFFFFFF. But you can't erase those locations, because they are in the bootloader. So thats where the testpoint comes in. Pulling A17 high hardware OR's the address bus with 0x00040000(offset one because data bus is 16 bit) So the bootrom instead checks locations 0xA0040030 0xA004A5A0 0xA0045C58 0xA0047370, which are in the main firmware and can be erased.

Pretty genius :)

To use this tool, you need the secpack from your modems version. The erase of this section is protected. Check the modem version in Settings->About. It'll either be 3.12(1.0) or 3.14(1.0.1 and 1.0.2). You need the ramdisk which cooresponds to your version. Then go into "/usr/local/standalone/firmware" and get the ICE*.fls file. Extract 0x1a4-0x9a4 and save it in a file called secpack and place it in the same directory as the ieraser tool. Run ieraser. This should erase the modem firmware and leave you one more step on your way to unlocking.

Commentor Suggestions:

• to create the secpack file out of the ramdisk you can do:
  
  dd if=ICE03.14.08_G.fls of=~/secpack bs=1 skip=0x1a4 count=0x800

Step 8:

Now its time to patch the firmware. Thanks to gray for finding these patches, this required some very complicated reversing. First, you need to extract the firmware from your nor dump. The range you need is 0x20000-0x304000. Save this file as "nor". The patches you need to apply are as follows. These are offsets from the begininning of the file to saved as "nor". Choose your version, and patch.
3.12: (213740): 04 00 a0 e1 -> 00 00 a0 e3
3.14: (215148): 04 00 a0 e1 -> 00 00 a0 e3
Resave the file nor, you'll need it soon...

Step 9:

The final tool is iUnlocker. This tool uploads a small program, "testcode.bb", to the baseband using the bootrom exploit. This program needs to be in a dir with "nor", the file you obtained in the last step. You need to have the switch on when running this program. This will download and run the code in "testcode.bb" Then the program will stop and ask to to turn off the switch. Do so. You type any character then hit enter. The nor download starts right away. When the counter reaches 0x2E4000, it is done. Run "bbupdater -v". Hopefully it will return the xgendata. If is does, the nor upload was successful.

Step 10:

minicom into /dev/tty.baseband. If you already used up your attempt counter, the phone should already be unlocked. If not just run 'AT+CLCK="PN",0,"00000000". That will unlock the phone for sure. Run 'AT+CLCK="PN",2'. It should finally return 0!!!
Your phone is now unlocked. Exit minicom and copy the CommCenter plist back to its place. Reboot. iASign. And enjoy your unlocked iPhone.

HowTo: How to quickly increase your Alexa Ranking.

I have recently come across a method to increase your Alexa Ranking. Alexa, if you are not familiar with them or their ranking system, here is a description from wikipedia:

Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website that provides information on the web traffic to other websites. Alexa collects information from users who have installed an "Alexa Toolbar," allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links.

Alexa ranks websites based off of the information generated by users who have the Alexa Toolbar installed, but what about all the users that do not have the Alexa Toolbar?

What you can do is this, append the following to the beginning of your internal links:

http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?

For example, click this link, it will redirect you back to this post "http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://blog.itrealm.net/2007/08/...".

Ok, so I have this fancy link, what does it do? Every time one of my visitors clicks that link, they are redirected to this post AND it gets counted as a tally towards my Alexa Ranking. Basically, you are virtually implementing the actions of the Alexa Toolbar, but for every visitor, not just the ones with the Alexa Toolbar.

Since I started using this redirect link on my blog, I increased my rank from 2,600,000 or so to 1,700,000 or so in just 5 days. Not bad huh?

Chris

Programmer Needed: Required AJAX skills in Cleveland, Ohio

I am looking for a strong developer with at least 3 years experience. This project is located in Cleveland, Ohio.

Skills:
MySql
HTML
Javascript
AJAX

Pay: $30/per hour

Duration: 8-12 weeks

Type: Contract

Please send word document resume, to chris@itrealm.net.

HowTo: New Method to Unlock Linksys Gizmo (SPA-2102)

This hack is for the Linksys SPA-2102 Gizmo from Ex-SunRocket customers. This method should resolve the factory restore and the Teleblend hijack problems. This method has been brought to my attention via a post on my blog. I have taken the instructions from the following link. Please leave feedback regarding success or fail attempts.

Chris

http://srgizmos.ragenet.us/index.php/SPA-2102

Unlocking the SPA-2102

There is presently one good way to unlock your sunrocket SPA-2102. A big thank you to Username for this hack!

You'll need a specific config file. It can be found here (Mirrors here, here (IE Only), here, here, or here)

After you get the file, you need to verify the md5sum of the cfg file inside the archive.

In linux, you can do this like so:

gzip -d linksys2102-sunrocket.cfg.gz
md5sum linksys2102-sunrocket.cfg

It should return an md5sum of 9abc05cce6cbc9b4be02b7c3a1b951ca If it does not, then it is not the genuine file, and, should be discarded.

The easiest way to do this, is:

1. Connect your computer directly to the INTERNET port of your SPA. Some users may need a crossover cable
   • If this doesen't work for you, you might consider something like:
     • Plugging your router's WAN port into your computer [ For this to work you need to be running a DHCP server on your computer or set the SPA to static IP in the 67.133.234.0 network ]
     • You can connect the SPA to any port on your network using the INTERNET port if you set your WAN port to a static IP 67.133.234.1 mask 255.255.255.0. You can do that via either the web interface or the IVR. Instructions can be found here
     • More Suggestions needed
2. Set your machine's IP address to 67.133.234.53
   • In linux, you can do this by issuing ifconfig ethX:1 67.133.234.53, where X is your interface number.
   • Microsoft Vista IP Change HOWTO
   • Windows XP IP Change HOWTO
   • Windows 2000 IP Change HOWTO
   • Windows 98/95/ME IP ChangeHOWTO
3. Install a webserver on your machine.
   • Microsoft's Personal Web Server should do just fine for windows users.
     • IIS installation On Vista HOWTO
     • IIS installation on XP/2000 HOWTO
     • MS PWS installation on 98/ME HOWTO
   • Or, you can get apache for windows here.
   • On linux, apache will work fine, but, remember to set the mime-type to application/octet-stream.
   • The easiest way to do this is: DefaultType application/octet-stream in apache2.conf
4. Create the directory /gms/linksys/SPA-2102/2102 in your web root.
   • In linux this is generally /var/www
   • In Windows, this can vary greatly, but, might be:
     • c:\inetpub\wwwroot\
     • If you're using apache as suggested above, it will be C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs
5. Copy the file you downloaded to the directory you just created.
6. Rename the cfg file to .cfg , I.E. 000aaa11bb.cfg all letters are lowercase, and, no dashes or colons.
   • If you don't know how to get your mac address, check the bottom of your SPA.
7. Type http://67.133.234.53/gms/linksys/SPA-2102/2102 in your computer browser. You should be able to see the 000xxxxxxxxx.cfg file you prepared. (If not, your web server may not be set up properly)
8. Wait until the light stops blinking and is solid
9. Pick up the phone, and, dial ****
10. At the prompt, dial 723646#
11. When prompted for a password, dial 79309925#
12. Dial 1#
13. Dial 1
14. Hang up
15. Go to http://192.168.0.1/admin/voice/advanced, and, login with the credentials admin and qwe%zxc5 [ For this to work you need to disconnect the device and plug it on the ETHERNET side. You also need to change your computer back to using dhcp if you using windows ].

Congrats! Your gizmo is unlocked!

Now, you'll want to at LEAST disable provisioning.

Scam Alert: Merrill Lynch Account Holders Beware

A few days ago, I received the email above. I knew right away that this email was a scam. Why? Because I am not even a Merrill Lynch customer, thats why. So please if you receive this email, immediately delete it.

Luckily for users of Mozilla Firefox 2.0, the browser recognizes the link in the email as a fraudulent website and will block its access.

Basically, the sender of the email is spamming this email to 1000's of people, hoping to catch just a handful that are Merrill Lynch customers that are unaware of the scam. When those poor unfortunate users click the link, fill in the "Secure Login" form, their account username and password has then been handed over to the criminal.

Words of advice, 99% of businesses today will not ask you for your username and password, they will not have you login to a special server on account of a hacker, nor will they request any special personal information via email to verify if your account has been "hacked". In a situation where your account has been hacked or they is a problem, they will call you. If you are unsure, call them. Never click without doing some research first.

Chris

About the Consultant

I am a self employed IT Consultant. I am well versed in many areas of IT, from configuring the Cisco IOS to developing intranet web applications used by thousands. I feel my strengths lie within sitting down with a client and matching their needs with a solution. I have an inate ability to see the whole picture and a clear vision of how to get from point A to point B.

I started out as a Mechanical Engineering student at Penn State. I spent 3 years studying till I decided I was miserable. I left Penn State and wandered aimlessly for a while, until I started a job at Office Depot and started classes at a local community college in CIS (Computer Information Systems). While at Office Depot, I started doing freelance computer repair for home users and then finally started working with my first small business.

Since then, I have maintained networks for a restaurant, gas station, real estate agency, industrial company, mortgage broker, interior designers, etc. I have had titles such as tech specialist, web master, lead web developer, and network analyst. I have built public web sites for a business expo, furniture store, concrete contractor and etc. I have built web applications for a Ebay liquidator, defense contractor, and local government agency.

Currently, I am working as a contract employee for a defense contractor and a hospital. Not to mention reoccurring freelance work.

I am also involved in a business startup, Property Stampede llc, more details of the startup can be find here in the near future.

My Websites:



Memberships, Groups and Associations:

SonyStyle Free Shipping Promotion

I know this is a little late, but Sony is having a Free Shipping Promotion on everything at Sony Style. The Promotion ends Monday. Anyone planning to purchase a new pc or playstation 3, this may be your opportunity.


Get free shipping on everything at Sony Style this weekend. Offer ends Monday, Aug. 20.

HowTo: Tweaking Gizmo for Better Service w/ ViaTalk

I had the opportunity to do some research, as well as speak with Collin, a technical support rep from ViaTalk, to get a little bit better grasp on how to tweak my gizmo (Linksys SPA-2102) to get better performance.

He is a summary of my research:

• Make sure you have the most recent firmware. For the Linksys SPA-2102 from SunRocket, you can get the latest firmware on Linksys' support site.
• Setup your UDP SIP Port to some other port than 5060. Pick 5080, or 5085, or etc... The reasoning, is by default, all gizmos are configured to transmit on 5060. When the call hits the ViaTalk servers, it is competing with other calls on that port. By picking a different port you reduce the amount of congestion that your gizmo may experience.
• Make sure that if you have a broadband router, that it has the most up to date firmware. If your broadband router is old (2+ years), you may want to consider upgrading to a broadband router that boasts high performance for "VOIP", "Gaming", or "Broadband Booster". These routers are designed to adjust bandwidth settings based on critical application use, such as digital phone traffic from ViaTalk or another service provider.
• Verify that the server you are connecting to your VOIP service provider is the closest possible server to your location. This is ideal, because the closer to you the server is, the less "hops" your voice packets have to travel through to get to the destination. For every "hop" your phone call needs to travel, will decrease the quality significantly.

Hopefully these tips will help some of you out there. If anyone has other tips to improve call quality, please do not hesitate to share by leaving a comment.

Chris

Fotolia: Royalty Free Stock Photos

I was first introduced to Fotolia.com through 1and1.com. 1and1 had a section dedicated to images and they had a link to fotolia with a promotion for signing up for a free account. So I tried it out.

As a web developer, I need images all the time, but sometimes a budget will not allow for a $100+ image for the homepage. Personally, I think it is ridiculous to charge that much for an image unless it was to be used for a billboard ad. Fotolia advertised prices of just $1. I liked that idea. Fotolia also advertised that you could sell images that you own, I liked that even more.

Signup was quick and simple. I started browsing what seemed to be an endless gallery of images. Many very high quality images. I enjoyed the way I could hover over a thumbnail to view the image larger. The first time I navigated Fotolia's website, I felt that their site seemed to load slowly, yet since then they have greatly improved the speeds that they pages load. Which must be a difficult task considering how large high quality images can become.

I have purchased many images from Fotolia, including the one in my banner. I have yet to sell any, but I am planning to begin tinkering with my 10x Optical 5MP Kodak Camera.

Chris

New Design: Editing a Blogger Template

So I spent all my free time, excluding family time and work time, redesigning my blog. At first I tried to just use a template that I downloaded for free, but every time I customized the template to fit my needs I received the following error:

Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.

So then I tried to use the download link under edit html. I edited it, and re uploaded it. I received a message regarding the deletion of widget navbar. Well that is the blogger navbar, that cannot be deleted. So I clicked confirm, and it gave me an error. Odd, so note to self, when backing up your template, do not use the download template method as it drops the navbar widget and you cannot re upload it.

So then I just copied the text out of the text area and pasted it into dreamweaver. Edited as necessary, then pasted back into text area, hit preview, then save. Voila. I will modify the template slightly and then offer it as a free download.

Chris

P.S. Please leave feedback on what you think?

ViaTalk: Porting Complete

This is just an update, as of today my primary phone number has been ported. They promised me it would be completed on the 13th, it is now the 17th and it is complete.

So if you are porting a number to ViaTalk, please do not expect it to be done in a quick fashion.

ViaTalk: Q and A From a ViaTalk Rep

Brendan from ViaTalk is a brave lad. Offering QnA in DSLReports forum to address the massive amount of concerns from subscribers. I will summarize the questions and answers posted.

Q: You've stated on numerous ocassions that current customers could expect some new features soon.When will these new features start to appear. With the SR influx your TS is almost unreachable and you stated a couple of weeks ago that the wait time should drop dramatically. When?
A: Features - Our dev team will be being diverted back to their regular duties within the next week or two.
Support - We've been working very hard on this, as it has been our primary area of focus lately. Hold times already have dropped dramatically - For instance our average hold time right now is at about 30 minutes.

Q: I as well as several thousand others, emailed in supporting documents for the contract buyout. The system created a support ticket for such. When do you anticipate these tickets will be addressed and current contract end dates then modified?
I understand this is not top priority, however, many of us feel lost in the system with no communication.
A: These are being treated as our lowest priority issue at the current time, as they are not really time sensitive issues. They will all be taken care of well before they will become an issue (renewal time).

Q: After signing up and already paying my $199 up front for a year, I was just sent an invoice today for an additional $2.50 for E911 service. I was under the impression that this monthly fee was included in the $199 yearly promotional. If that assumption is incorrect, the $199/year deal is no longer such a good deal. Was it supposed to be included or not?
A: There are two $1.25 charges, invoiced monthly on the 15th of the month, that cover various 911, regulatory fees, etc. These are listed on the plan pages, the order form, and in the terms of service.

Q: Could you please comment on this voicemail issue? It affects many of us and gives my callers the impression that we don't have a "real" phone company (or our answering machines are broken). The impression that I get is that no one really knows what the issue is - hopefully, you can dispel this. I'd appreciate hearing a firm target date for when this will be fixed.
A: We are aware of this issue and are currently working a resolution to it. My guess on an ETA would be within a couple of days.

Q: West coast servers? Plus is fail over still working even though it is not in CP? Thanks, Eric
A: We have at least one west coast server online currently, with more to follow in the future.

Q: There has been a lot of discussion for a long time now regarding the voicemail system. A voicemail system is a key element in a phone service...and the current system lacks just about everything that a "modern" voicemail system should offer (better navigation such as fast forward, rewind, pause, etc, etc). Using an open source product puts that responsibility on the provider to improve its functionality. Curious as to why this has remained the way it has for so long. It is a negative point of the service. Thanks Brendan.
A: Upgrading our VM system is something that is on our radar, however it currently is not at the top of the list as a result of our efforts being concentrated elsewhere due to the SR incident.

Q: Any plans in the near future to add the ability for a distinctive ring for a virtual number (no matter who the caller is)?
A: This is something we have discussed recently, and it will require some modification to how forwards are currently working, so while it is possible in the future it is not on the immediate radar.

Q: How about answering tickets? Mine was posted last week and is still open--considering the subject (I never got a password for configuring my ex-SR gizmo, therefore I have no service), I was expecting it to be answered by now.
A: We're working our staff back into their normal rotation/duties as quickly as we can. In the meantime, if you have access to your control panel, you can get this information yourself in the softphone section of your control panel.

This is a clear statement from ViaTalk, that they are dedicated to providing quality service to their customers. I feel confident that they have our best interests in mind.

But I have a few comments of my own, which I think would make me a happier customer.

• When you send someone an invoice, take a moment and write what it is for. Don't just send an invoice with no information on it whatsoever.
• Reorganize your pricing plans to include the $2.50 charge per month for E911 service. It is quite tacky to request your customers to pay $199 up front for service, and then charge them $2.50 a month for a lousy government regulation fee.
• The day that SunRocket showed signs it was going to tank, they should have had every HR person on the phone calling applicants. I am sorry, but it has been about 23 days since it was quite obvious SunRocket was biting the bullet, they could have had quite a bit of staff trained by that time. Or alternatively, they could have temporarily hired a call center to handle the influx until they could hire an adequate staff to handle the load.
• Offer better support for BYOD customers. Since you obviously will not have the staff to support your customers the best way possible the next time a large competitor tanks, then they should take the time to draft up some tutorials on configuring gizmos for their service.
• When it there is going to be an extra charge to port more than one number, tell the customer before processing the port.
• Lastly, when you tell the customer that their number will be completely ported by a specific date, have it done by that date. My one number was supposed to be ported on the 13th, it is now the 16th and it still has not been done.

Chris

Lingo: How Does it Compare

If you are an ex SunRocket customer, Lingo has an offer you may be interested in. They have a service plan that is comparable to that of SunRocket's, Unlimited US, Canada, and Puerto Rico calls for $195 a year. Not bad. Specifically for SunRocket customers, they are offering reimbursement of the shipping and activation charges after you stay as their customer for 90 days. Ok, so not the best, but not bad.

As you all know, I have not been 100% satisfied with ViaTalk, so I had to investigate. I called their tech support to see how quickly they answered, under 3 minutes. Wow what a difference. I spoke with "Andrew" (there was no way he was American, this was definitely overseas tech support), "Andrew" informed me that my SunRocket gizmo will not work on their network. Well thats not cool.

I have two phone numbers, unless I have a second account, the second one acts as a virtual phone number and can only be forwarded to my primary phone number. I guess I become spoiled with SunRocket, they let me have my second number forward to my cell phone without having a second account. Damn you SunRocket! I guess I will never find that option again.

My thoughts are this. Lingo is backed by Primus, a billion dollar telecommunications company, so they are legit. They have offshored support employees, no big deal as long as I can understand them and I wait no longer than 5 minutes. They cannot use my old gizmo, thats annoying for me, but may not be for the users that have bricks for gizmos. If you are one of the unfortunate exSunRocket customers that this has happened to, then maybe Lingo may be a good option for you.

Anyone who does sign up with Lingo, please add a comment to reflect upon your experiences with them.

I did see some mixed reviews for Lingo, so before you sign up, please do your homework.

Chris

Drupal: Installation Steps

I am currently working for a government agency out of Buffalo, NY. I am redeveloping their internal website. With Drupal I am creating the functionality to have Project Issue Tracking, as this agency provides software support to approximately 20 or so municipalities. On account of budget, we decided to use Drupal for the engine of the site.

Drupal, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a Content Management System(CMS). It is deployable on any server running PHP and MySQL. So here is a step-by-step installation guide for installing Drupal, and a reflection of my experiences. We are using a Windows 2000 Server box with Apache 2.2, PHP 5 and MySQL 5.

1. Download the Drupal 5.2 Package from http://drupal.org/drupal-5.2.


2. Upload the zip file to your root using your control panel's file manager.


3. Extract the zip file to your root using your control panel's file manager.(If you are not installing the Drupal site on your root, then extract to desired directory)


4. If you have not created one already, create a database and user for your new Drupal installation.


5. Navigate to /sites/default/settings.php with your favorite code editor (I use Dreamweaver) and edit the database string to match your database.


6. Then navigate to the install.php file at the root of your Drupal directory using a web browser. You will see the Drupal Web Installer.


7. Click install or next or continue. Just like that your site is created.


8. Click the link that states create the first account. This account is setup as the super administrator. Now that this account is created, you can begin building your site.

In my opinion installing Drupal was very simple. But compared to Joomla it was not as user friendly. Someone whom is less skilled with web technologies would have a little bit more trouble, but could still easilly do it.

Chris

TeleBlend Update

I had the opportunity to speak with Mark Kruskol of MJK Public Relations through email. He was the spotlight in Computer World's article titled "Dealing with a VoIP Provider as a Small Business Owner". He informed me that since the article he received a call from Brian Lustig, the TeleBlend Publicist who said that his incoming phone service should be working. His outage lasted from Monday, August 6 until approximately 2:30pm PST Tuesday, August 14th.

Personally, I think Mark's outage would have lasted quite a bit longer had he not vented his frustrations to Computer World. Clever move by Mark to expedite the restoration of his service. There is no excuse for TeleBlend to leave him and many other subscribers without phone service for 8 days.

Chris

Joomla: Installation of Version 1.5

I am currently working for a non-profit out of New York City. I am helping them develop a website that will assist students that are residence of NYC search and signup for volunteer opportunities. On account of budget, we decided to use Joomla for the engine of the site.

Joomla, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a Content Management System(CMS). It is deployable on any server running PHP and MySQL. It is a very robust CMS with default installation, but adds even more functionality using extensions. Extensions are components or plugins that are developed to add functionality to Joomla. Examples of extensions include; a forum, customer management, property listings, and etc. You can visit the Joomla website to see a full list of extensions.

For this client, we decided to use the Joomla CMS, but build our own extension to provide the functionality that we need.

So here is a step-by-step installation guide for installing Joomla, and a reflection of my experiences. We are using BlueHost.com as our web host, running PHP 5 & MySQL 5.

1. Download the Joomla 1.5 Package from http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/.
2. Upload the zip file to your root using your control panel's file manager.
   
3. Extract the zip file to your root using your control panel's file manager.(If you are not installing the joomla site on your root, then extract to desired directory)
   
4. Navigate to your web site's root or directory where you extracted Joomla using your favorite browser. I used FireFox 2.0.
5. You will see the Joomla Web Installer. Select your language and click next.
6. Next you see the Pre-Install check. Verify that all settings are green, if not correct settings as recommended. With BlueHost, the default settings are perfect. Then click next.
   
7. View the GNU License then click next.
8. Enter in your database settings. If you have not created the database yet, navigate to your hosts control panel and create it. Don't forget to add a user to the database. On BlueHost, the hostname is localhost. When everything is entered correctly, click next.
   
9. Enter in your site name, admin email address and admin password. Click next.
10. Click Create Sample Data if you are new to Joomla. The sample data will give you an idea on how Joomla works. Click next.
    
11. Delete the installation folder. Then click site or admin to begin using your new Joomla site.

In my opinion, this was a hassle free install. There was no errors encountered, not confusing installation steps and all around simple to do.

I will post more as we configure and customize Joomla to meet the needs of this client.

Chris

Social Networking Sites: Start Your Own

TechCrunch has recently posted a comparison chart of most if not all of the current "White Label Social Networking Solutions". This chart is a very thoroughly researched comparison. So if you are in the market of starting your own social networking site, I think you should visit this chart.

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/white_label_social_networking_solutions_chart2.html

Chris

Facebook Code Leak

Facebook, while performing maintenance on a web server over the weekend, apparently displayed code that generates its user interface. WOOPS.

Facebook claims that the code that was leaked did not threaten their users data. But security analysts argue that it very well may have.

The thought is this, a well versed hacker could look at the code and learn some of the inner workings of Facebook. This tidbit of knowledge, mixed with some sql injection and fake FaceBook pages on another web server is a cookbook for disaster.

A statement was made from Brandee Barker of FaceBook:

A small fraction of the code that displays Facebook web pages was exposed to a small number of users due to a single misconfigured web server that was fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. Because the code that was released only powers the Facebook user interface, it offers no useful insight into the inner workings of Facebook. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further

As posted on TechCrunch:

It seems that the cause was apache and mod_php sending back un-interpreted source code as opposed to output, due to either a server misconfiguration or high load (this is a known issue). It is also apparent that other pages have been revealed, and that this problem has occured before, but only now has somebody actually posted the code online.

So, I invite hackers to view the code at Facebook Secrets. This invitation is for educational purposes only, not to mention if you find security holes, maybe you could charge FaceBook to fix them.

Chris

TeleBlend: Small Business Owner Deals w/ Poor Service

Teleblend continues to blame shortcomings on SunRocket's mess. ComputerWorld describes how one business owner is dealing with the poor service that TeleBlend continues to provide. The article can be found here.

Microsoft Office alternatives: Open Word docs without opening your wallet

Microsoft Office is probably the most recognized productivity suite known in the world, but it comes with a hefty price tag. Ranging from $130 for Student edition to $540 for the Ultimate edition, many users find themselves in need of the ability to create and save Word and Excel files but cannot afford the Microsoft Suite.

If you are one of the many users who cannot afford Microsoft Office 2007, then you are in luck. In recent years more and more options have come available to users who need to be able to create documents.

• ThinkFree Online - ThinkFree's Online edition is a very powerful and robust office suite. It has word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation apps which are all compatible with Microsoft Office Formats. Store documents online, allow friends to join you in creating and editing documents as well as share documents by email. Price = FREE.
  
• ThinkFree Premium Edition - ThinkFree Premium Edition is a desktop application that gives you all of the functionality of ThinkFree Online but Offline. It has the ability to auto synchronize your documents online and off, so wherever you are you can access your documents. Because the Premium Edition is still in beta, it is also FREE.
  
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets - Google Docs and Spreadsheets plays a similar tone to Thinkfree. It is great for quick on the fly creation of documents. I have found limitations in its Spreadsheet tool that made totaling hours difficult. For example, as a consultant I keep track of my hours worked for people using ThinkFree Online. Well when I attempted this in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, it would not total hours in the fashion that I needed. Price = FREE.
  
• OpenOffice - OpenOffice is developed in conjunction between Sun Microsystem's and a community of volunteer developers. It is a very powerful and robust application. Having word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, illustration and math calculation software packed in, makes it a very worthy adversary to the Microsoft Office Suite. Price = FREE.
  
• Sun's StarOffice - Normally sold for $70. StarOffice is now available through Google's "Google Pack" for FREE. The only difference is that the Google Pack version has a Google search bar embedded within the application. Google's choice in using StarOffice over OpenOffice is still fully unanswered, but speculation leads to believe that it was because of a software use agreement shared between Sun & Google back in 2005. Price = FREE.
  
• Corel WordPerfect Office - Corel's WordPerfect Office suite is probably the most competitive suite to MS Office in that it is competitive packaged, priced, and marketed. It is cheaper than MS Office, but not by much. Ranging from $99 to $350, it doesn't offer much more than the free alternatives listed above. But some people just enjoy sticking with what they know, and since WordPerfect has been around nearly as long as Word if not longer, Corel has established a loyal user base. Price = $99 to $350.
  

ViaTalk: Fed up. Hope in sight?

I have been continuing to have issues with ViaTalk.

I submitted a ticket attempting to address poor quality of service on August 5th and have not received a response. I attempt to call them from my ViaTalk phone but it doesn't ring. It dials and then is quiet. I try from my cell phone, it works but then I hear that I am caller 54. Fun huh. No way on a weekday I am going to wait through 54 callers on my cell phone.

I receive notice on August 6th that one of my numbers was to be ported on the 9th and one on the 13th. I received notice on the 10th stating that my number was ported successfully. I logged in, there is no sign of my old number that should have been
ported.

I received an email on the 10th, stating the following:

Dear Chris Mancini,
Notice: Your invoice 393875 has been processed by ViaTalk.com.

Status:Manual Payment
Invoice Number:393875
Invoice Amount:$3.95
Date Paid:2007/08/10
Amount Left:$0.00
Trans ID:1520358057

Outstanding Balance: none

You may login to view your invoice(s) online at any time:
https://support.viatalk.com/billing/

Thank you,

Billing Dept.
ViaTalk.com

I went online, curious to know why I was charged $3.95 to my credit card. This is what I saw:

2007/08/10 Manual: Generated Invoice 393875 $3.95 $0.00 $-3.95
2007/08/10 Manual Payment (181074) 393875 $0.00 $3.95 $0.00

This gave me no information on why I was charged $3.95.

While searching through my account options on ViaTalk's website, I found an option labaled priority support. So apparently for $1.95 per month, you can receive "cut in line" priority when calling ViaTalk. Ok so I signed up, tried it, lets just say, nothing was "priority".

So, I started as caller 16 as I began my call as a priority support subscriber, it took 1 hour and 50 minutes to get on the phone with someone. I felt like a VIP, I swear.

So here is a condensed version of my conversation with Collin of ViaTalk.

I asked Collin how they could charge $1.95 a month for priority support if I was still waiting 1 hour and 50 minutes to speak with someone. He apologized on behalf of the company, and informed me under normal circumstances, their priority support subscribers usually experience less than 5 minutes of wait time.

He also informed me that ViaTalk has been on a hiring spree. They have doubled their staff in the last three weeks. There is only one problem, all of those new employees, are just finishing training. Hence the long wait times.

Collin has informed me that ViaTalk has opened its doors to over 20,000 SunRocket refugees. Thats about 10% of SunRockets original subscriber base, thats quite a bit of growth in such a short time.

In regards to the $3.95 charge was because I had transfered 2 numbers from SunRocket. The first number was free, the second was $3.95. Ok I am fine with that, but I informed Collin that it is good business practice, to inform the customer of charges before they occur. Even if they included in the invoice what the $3.95 was for, I would not have become upset over it.

He informed that because the number that had ported already had been my second number, it is setup automatically to forward to my ViaTalk number. It is considered a virtual number, that is why it does not display in my account. Personally I think it should, it is almost as if it doesn't exist. In order to use it, I would need to subscribe to a second line.

I asked him why I couldn't call ViaTalk from my ViaTalk phone. He said that this was not new regarding BYOD customers with SunRocket phones. Apparently, SunRocket may have configured the devices to prevent their users from contacting the competition, honestly I can believe that. So I will research and see if I cannot find a resolution for this, Collin was unable to provide one.

He also gave me some tips in improving my call quality, I will post them in a separate article.

My overall conversation with Collin was pleasant. He was obviously American, no outsourced support with ViaTalk which is good to hear. He was sincere and responsive to my distress. Under the circumstances, I feel that ViaTalk is reputable and that I feel that other subscribers having issues should hang in there. ViaTalk is working hard to meet the needs of their 20,000 new subscribers, which I believe must be a difficult task.

Google GPhone: Is it just a rumor or a definite possibility

There are rumors stirring that Google has begun R&D of a mobile telephone. This rumored phone would have built in all of Google's greatest apps such as search, gmail, and maps just to name a few. It would be an open platform phone with many options to customize the software loaded on it.

Personally, this is no surprise. Just look at Google's mission statement:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

With their recent efforts to mix it up regarding the upcoming 700Mhz wireless spectrum auction, this I believe is a strong possibility.

Google wants to make the internet and information accessible to anyone anywhere, in doing so they gain a strong advantage over competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft in search advertising. This sort of upper hand advantage could seriously bury Microsoft.

Many people will find decreasing need for computers at home, with many of the abilities of a home computer becoming more and more available on mobile devices.

I can guarantee that if Google releases a phone, it will be one that is compatible with any wireless standard (bluetooth, wifi, and all of the cell phone frequencies), it will be highly customizable and it will have a very intuitive interface. It will stir up a very uncompetitive market. Palm, LG, Motorola and Ericson will have to make some great strides in the development of future pda phones.

Google continues to refuse to confirm the rumor, but expect an announcement regarding a GPhone in probably 3-6 months.

Chris

Google is No Dummy

In July, Google has made a stand in their commitment towards open broadband platforms. Basically, they have lobbied the FCC to change policy's ruling the 700Mhz spectrum. The full post can be read here.

Current wireless standards are not open, have you tried to change cell phone providers at all recently? If you are not locked in a 2 year contract, you will be. Not to mention you have to buy a new phone to try a new service. Or how about the fact that if you want to have an Apple iPhone, that you have to use AT&T's network.

Most people do not know that the cell phone technology here in the United States is far behind that of Japan's and many other nations. In Japan, you can walk down an urban street, purchase a new cell phone from a vendor with a table on the street. Then pop a card out of the back of their current phone, put it in their new one, turn it on and dial a call. They don't even have to have their service provider transfer their contacts, its already on the new phone using that little card.

Google's vision would allow consumers to change networks on the fly, without having to purchase a new phone. It would allow consumers to buy a new phone, without having to notify their service provider or sign a new 2 year contract. It would make prices more competitive and would make it easier for smaller service providers to enter the market. It would allow tech users to choose their own software that operates the phone, no longer being restricted to the interface that comes with it.

In fact, if the FCC adopts the new rules of openness, Google will come to the wireless spectrum auction with at least $4.6 billion in their pocket in an effort to show the FCC Chair that openness in broadband platforms will not diminish the value at time of auction. Securing much needed revenue for the US Treasury.

Now why does it benefit Google to have open broadband platforms? Quite simply their mission statement says it all, taken from their website here.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

By organizing the world's information, they are making it search able, by making this information universally accessible, they are increasing their user base. With a larger user base, they make more money through advertising. Google is committed to their mission statement, that is why if necessary, they will be bidding at the next auction. If they win, do not be surprised if they build their own wireless infrastructure and become a major competitor.

Their goal is to remove the barriers and obstacles many consumers face in accessing the internet. Personally, I want an iPhone. I do not want to be on ATT's network, my whole family is with Verizon. I am also locked into a 2 year contract that ends in January of 2009. Fun huh?

The next step for Google, the GPhone... go ahead and laugh.

Another great article regarding this topic can be found at CNET.

Chris

Sherwood Violates Sunrockets Privacy Policy

Some of you that are exSunRocket customers may have received solicitations from Vonage. It was posted in a dslreports.com forum that one user had reason to believe that their customer information has been sold to Vonage. Their reasoning was as follows:

1. This users SunRocket account had both his name and his wife's name (hers being mispelled) on the account. The Vonage mailer had been addressed the same exact way(including the mispelling).
2. The Vonage mailer linked to a page on their website that specifically addressed displaced SunRocket customers. View the link here.
3. This user has never received Vonage mailings before this date.

Having reviewed the evidence, it is quite apparent that our information has been sold. Now the question is, is this a violation of policy?

SunRocket's privacy policy clearly states, "SunRocket does not sell, trade, or disclose personally identifiable information to third parties for unrelated marketing purposes."

SunRocket's privacy policy is still available online, here.

The real question, is whether or not the management of the liquidation process, Sherwood Partners, llc, is held responsible for violations of SunRocket's privacy policy. Personally, I think that as acting on behalf of SunRocket, they should be held responsible regarding SunRocket's privacy policy.

Chris

P.S. Just in case Sherwood Partners catches wind of this problem, I have made a copy of the Privacy Policy available here.

HowTo: How to promote your blog?

Hearing stories of professional bloggers making a living through their blog, reminds me of the Ebay seller turning a hobby into a million dollar company. Blogging is becoming a trendy activity. But like all things, your are not going to be able to quit your day job with out rolling up your sleeves.

So here we are, you have a blog and your goal is to walk into work one day and tell your boss you don't need his money anymore? This article will give you the knowledge and skills to accomplish that dream.

1. Make sure that whatever blogging software you are using, that it is pinging major blog search engines updates to your blog. For Blogger, this feature is under Settings --> Publishing and is called "Send Pings".
2. Make sure that you visit 5-10 blogs a week that are similar in topic to yours. Find a post that interests you and leave a comment. Leave a comment that will spark a reply from the author, not just spam. If the author feels appreciative of the comment you left, in most cases they will respond to your comment and visit your blog. Not to mention, the authors readers may visit your blog.
3. Carry your blog's url around as if it was your wallet / purse. On every one of your email addresses, add this url to your signature. In every social networking website that you are a member, include this url in your profile. On business cards, letterhead, forum posts, and comments on other blogs.
4. Visit forums that revolve around your topic. Genuinely engage the users of this forum. Chances are if they find your information useful or valuable they will visit your blog.
5. Travel over to feedburner.com, a service that was recently purchased by Google, begin to monitor and promote your blog. Feedburner has quite a few really neat gadgets and tools to help you promote your blog.
6. Submit your site to places like Open Directory Project, MSN and Altavista. There are many more than just these three, be creative and do some research.
7. Submit your blog to individual blog directories. Blog Connection has an excellent list here.
8. Find subjects within your topic that are trendy. For example, if your topic is mobile communications, then talk about the iPhone or Google's entry into the wireless industry. By writing about subjects that are trendy, there will be more users searching for information regarding those subjects.
9. No matter what the post is about, make sure that you use your keywords repeatedly within the post. Now lets be responsible and not keyword spam, but we do want to repeatedly use the keywords that users will use to find your blog. For example, when discussing the new iPhone, you should reuse the word iPhone and Apple probably 1-3 times per paragraph. This will bump you up in the results because Google will think that your post is more relavant than others.
10. Claim your blog / site on Technorati and Alexa.

If you follow these steps, you will see steady growth in the number of visitors and subscribers to your blog. Work hard, and you may have that opportunity to tell your boss, "go to hell!".

Chris

Website Hosting: Bluehost Review

CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM NOW.


I have been using BLUEHOST.COM for website hosting now since December 2006. I am very pleased with the quality of service I receive from them. They recently upgraded their control panel with a new user friendly interface.

The features of the hosting package are large compared to its price of $6.95 per month. You get unlimited domain hosting, 300gb of storage, 3000gb of transfer, etc...

I have experienced downtime once, and that was when they were experiencing many issues with ridiculous amounts of spam on their email services. They have since resolved this issue and has been smooth service since.

Whenever I have an issue, they are readily available by telephone or email. They are also great at communication, explaining bottlenecks in service and how they plan to improve them.

One feature that also caught my eye was their implementation of Fantastico. Which is an auto installer script that is capable of installing many types of web based applications. For example: PHP Nuke, tikiwiki, Joomla, Drupal, etc...

BlueHost.com recently added the ability to host Ruby on Rails documents.

If you are looking for a solid PHP host on a Linux operating system, then you cannot go wrong with BlueHost.com.

Chris

Need some inspiration?

Or how about just a really nice wallpaper for your computer? Visit desktopography.net to download a little piece of nature.

Desktopography.net is just the first of 60 places you can find inspiration when you stumble into writer's or designer's block. Take a look at the full article here on freelanceswitch.com.

I downloaded the icegrass design for my desktop wallpaper. It honestly makes me feel like I have spent atleast some of my day away from the keyboard.

Chris

Web Server Blunders: Oracle, Apache, and PHP on Windows

I recently had the task of upgrading a production webserver to the latest Apache, PHP and Oracle Instant Client. This webserver was a 6 year old Compaq 3u server running Windows 2000 server. The server was running WebServ 1.13 I believe, which is basically a LAMP install for Windows (would it then be a WAMP?) Apache was version 1.x I believe, PHP - 4.3.x, and I do not know what version MySql was. Oracle client was version 9.0.

So, i began on a late Saturday evening. I uninstalled webserv, i used the installer to remove the Oracle Client, and I began copying files over for the new setup.

Now, I had setup a testbox that was a fresh install of Win2k server. I set it up with Apache 2.2, PHP 5, MySql 5, and the Oracle Instant Client. It worked perfect! (well it did after a bunch of tinkering and downloading extra dlls and placing them all over the place.)

Once I had the webserver all setup, it was time to test it. Load the local website. It loaded...good. Attempt to login to the site (accessing the Oracle Database), error. I could not connect to the DB no matter what I tried.

The strangest part, was that it did not provide me with an error being unable to locate a dll, or use an undefined function... nothing.

So I began troubleshooting. After quite a few hours, I began to strip the machine down again. Then i realized my mistake, there were footprints of both the Oracle Client and Webserv all over the machine. The installers did an awful job of cleaning it all up (no surprise coming off a Windows box). I checked the registry, wiped anything that stated Oracle or webserv. I cleaned out any files left in the file system that had to do with Oracle or Webserv. After a thorough cleaning I tried my setup again.

It worked. I knew I wasn't crazy.

Lesson learned: When dealing with Oracle on a Windows box, wipe it clean, completely clean. Clean out the file system, registry, and services before attempting to install the instant client. And do not use the installer to uninstal the Client.

I will post later on the steps to cleaning out an Oracle Client installation and how to setup Apache, PHP, MySQL and Oracle Client on a Windows box.

Chris

Social Networking: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

It has come to my attention through a question posted on LinkedIn by one of my connections, that many other networking sites use deceptive methods to build a user base.

For example, Visible Path, allows you to import your contacts. Great, LinkedIn allows you to do the same. Here is the catch, when say my friend, John Doe, decides to sign up, he imports his contacts. Me being one of those contacts, is now searchable on Visible Path's website. The person that views my info in the search results, is not aware that I am not a member or user of Visible Path, he sends an invitation to join networks.

Personally, I feel that this method is deceptive, sneaky and unacceptable. As it becomes more and more difficult to keep secure our identities, we do not need social websites using irresponsible methods to grow their business.

My connection on LinkedIn had the pleasure of receiving this response from a VP at Visible Path:

Jane Doe,

Lynda Radosevich, here, VP of Communications for Visible Path. Thanks for your questions and feedback, and for the passionate discussion your post has sparked.

You make a good point--one about which we’ve been talking internally at Visible Path --that it would be helpful for Visible Path subscribers to see more clearly who is a current subscriber and who is not when sending connection requests. We definitely plan to make this change soon, we and understand your concerns.

I’d also like to address some of the responses you received by providing a little more information about Visible Path.

Our ultimate goal is to help people see the big picture when it comes to their network of connections and to help them share connections intelligently with other people they know and trust. When people sign up and download the Outlook plug-in, Visible Path creates a visual depiction of their connections so they can see how strong their relationships are relative to each other. The system’s privacy controls make sure people’s relationships and their contact information remain hidden. Our intention is to provide a comprehensive view of who subscribers really know (based on the information gleaned, for now, from Outlook), and how close those connections are. And, in order to show the most accurate picture, we include folks who are currently using Visible Path, as well as those who are not.

Your name appears in a Visible Path search because one or more Visible Path subscribers know you. Only the people that know you (or already know your email address) can connect to you, and only the people that know you can introduce someone they know to you. And if that person wants to introduce someone they know you to you, Visible Path sends you an email to make sure that you’d welcome the introduction. Ideally, this offers people all the privacy and control of the real world, and an even better way to connect.

To people using Visible Path, it's not the size of network that matters but the quality of the relationships within that network. Anything we can do to help improve that experience is very important to us, so thanks again for bringing your concerns to our attention.

Regards,

Lynda Radosevich
Visible Path

My thoughts regarding Lynda's response are simple really.

One, how many times have you gone to a mixer and there is atleast one person just hoarding business cards...I have a strong feeling that they use a site similar to Visible Path. How can Visible Path honestly control what they state as "Quality Relationships", since there is no way for you to disallow someone to add you.

Two, if John Doe performs a search, and finds my name, how difficult do you think it would be for him to find an email address for me that works? Unfortunately for me, and just about every professional that promotes themselves using the internet, hiding your email address is nearly impossible. It is somewhere and with the power that is Google, it is not hidden by any means.

Lastly, it is a fallacy if you believe that it is not Visible Path's goal to grow their network as large as possible. If they didn't they would not be able to attract investors, advertisers, or large endorsements.

Despite Lynda's best PR efforts, this is a losing battle for her regarding our privacy.

When it comes to privacy, I live by Ben Parker's quote from the first Spiderman. "With great power, comes great responsibility".

ViaTalk Continues to Show Signs of Poor Support

ViaTalk, one digital phone service provider who has gained greatly since SunRocket's demise, is continuing to display their current state of poor support.

If you are a BYOD(Bring Your Own Device) subscriber and you filed the paperwork necessary to port your SunRocket phone number to ViaTalk, you may not be notified when the porting is complete. Instead, you may come home and find your phone has no dial tone.

If this has happened to you, you simply have to login with your ported number and your old password, click on softphone configuration and view your new device password. Then simply login to your gizmo's admin pages and update your user name and password.

Under normal circumstances, I would not tolerate such poor service and lack of concern of keeping my phone service uninterrupted, but I continue to blindly show leniency to ViaTalk.

New Admin Password Found for Linksys Gizmo (SPA-2102)

undefined has posted a comment on one of my earlier posts, releasing a new password for the admin pages of the SPA-2102 Gizmo from SunRocket. The new password corresponds to the following password used to unlock the admin pages:

79309925

The admin password is qwe%zxc5.

Nice work to all who contributed.

Chris

Don't Use Ajax for Your Website

As web 2.0 becomes the craze that is taking over the internet. More and more companies are developing websites and applications using AJAX. If you look at job postings on Monster or Dice, one of the most common web developer requirements is that the candidate of experience with AJAX.

Find a website that uses Ajax, right click and select view source. What do you see... html, head, and body tags. Thats about it, there is no source code to be read. Here is the issue, what you see when you click "view source", is the same thing that Google's web site crawler sees. Which means that Google sees a blank page equaling no text or information for Google to cache and index.

If Google (and the others) cannot read your websites content, then your website will not show up in search results. In order to have an Ajax website that is compatible with search engines, you have extra work to do.

IMHO: Leave Ajax for intranet and extranet websites, websites that are private and not indexed or searched by search engine crawlers. It is not worth the time or money to program extra code so that a search engine can index your site.

Chris

Update: Quality of ViaTalk

So i promised an update on the quality of ViaTalk. Here it is, if you didn't read my previous post, you can do so here.

Quality of phone call has been much much better.

Still having issues accessing voicemail through the handset, most of the time I get a busy signal. I feel like I should submit a trouble ticket and demand they tell me who keeps checking my voicemail messages. :D

Best result to listening my messages has been going online and listening to them that way.

Have not had consistency in sending faxes. 1 out of 5 go through. I am also unsure as to whether ViaTalk has any restrictions preventing me from faxing so that I pay for a dedicated fax line. That would be very sneaky, but completely understandable in respect to such cheap phone service.

Customer support is still sluggish. They are responsive, but do not expect a quick response. This is also to be expected considering the large amount of orders for new service from displaced Sun Rocket customers.

IMHO: ViaTalk is doing well. You have to remember, VOIP is a low cost alternative to a land line telephone. You get all of the services and more of a basic telephone line at a fraction of the cost. ViaTalk is a relatively small company compared to the major players, but I feel that they are not sneaky as Teleblend is, they are one of the lowest priced, and the quality of phone service is good. Their support needs work and their network needs work, but hopefully with all these new orders, they will have the cash flow to make the right moves.

Chris