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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Simple Solution for Amazon’s Web Services Reliability

Saturday, February 16th, 2008

This past Friday a major 2 1/2 hour outage of Amazon web services hit the Internet. The blogs were abuzz with the gory details but the resounding scheme has been that it is not reliable enough yet. Being an Amazon AWS user as well as many others who visit their ...

Hi-tech Thiefs

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

Someone told me recently that some local thiefs have begun to use computers to try detecting which houses have Wifi networks before deciding to break in. The ones with Wifi networks are assumed to have a computer and are robbed first.

SiteMeter Responds

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

As seen in the comments of my previous posts and here, Sitemeter decided to respond. Two points: 1. Why wait for over a week before a response? Blogs are there for a reason - its gives companies ability to respond quickly. 2. Why not post about it on their own blog? Setting that ...

SiteMeter and Spyware (Sort of)

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

Tonight word comes from multiple blogs (here, here, here and here) that a popular free stats called SiteMeter made a deal with a third party marketing company called Specific Media to place tracking cookies on ALL sites that use SiteMeter. Sitemeter's privacy policy makes no mention of this fact. Needless ...

Sprint Finally Opens Up Their LBS API (Sort Of)

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

(This is a follow on two earlier posts about lack of access by small businesses to the Sprint LBS API) Sprint finally allows access to their LBS API via a new "Professional Developer Program". The catch - a fee of $1,295 for the first two applications, and the same for every ...

OverDrive Media Console Installation Errors

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Our local library offers audio books for download but requires a DRM program called Overdrive Media Console to be installed first. Unfortunatly, it kept on failing with the error message: The system administrator has set pollicies to prevent this installation The solution is to rename the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies in the registry for duration ...

MySpace vs. Google?

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

While MySpace continues to be the #1 social network on the Internet, most people tend to forget that that Google also owns a social network called Orkut. A few days ago I got an email asking me to switch to using a Google account for Orkut. Additionally, Orkut now lets ...

Webmin, Rackspace and Securing Servers

Sunday, January 14th, 2007

Last week my company was making some server changes (which hopefully I will blog about at some point) which necessitates a security check. Being a startup, we cannot afford a format ethical hack/penetration testing, so the next best thing is an automated security tool. I tried using Nessus from Windows, ...

Solving “Unknown Device” Errors when Upgrading Windows

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

The following was something I learned from a recent computer upgrade I did for someone else (from Windows ME to Windows 2000) - after installing Windows 2000 fresh, and getting all the drivers, there was still one unknown device left in Device Manager. Apparently it is a common problem with ...

Social People Search on the Cheap

Friday, November 17th, 2006

After reading this gushing Techcrunch post on how good Wink's new people search feature is (it searchs all of three networks!), I decided to see if I can do the same via Google's new Custom Search Engine service. The result which can be tried below, is a new project: www.socialpeople.net ...

How to Install HP LaserJet 1100A as a Scanner on Windows XP

Sunday, August 20th, 2006

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY OR WARRANTY FOR THESE INSTRUCTIONS WHICH ARE NOT AUTHORIZED BY HP IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM. IF YOU ARE FOLLOWING THESE INSTRUCTIONS, YOU ARE DOING SO ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK I recently troubleshooted an HP LaserJet 1100A all-in-one device for someone. The problem is that the ...

Opera 9 Released

Tuesday, June 20th, 2006

Opera just released version 9 of their browser (see this).

The WRONG Way to Sell a $600 Phone

Thursday, June 15th, 2006

Yesterday my company ordered several of the newly released Treo 700p smart phones for myself and two other people in the company. The list price for these is $649 per phone (before any discounts). The Bottom Line is that if you are selling something that expensive, then you better make sure ...

Mozilla Trademarks Their RSS Icon?

Monday, June 12th, 2006

My good friend Daniel Goldman posted an interesting story at OperaWatch regarding the fact that Mozilla required a singed agreement from Opera Software before allowing them to use their RSS icon. It appears that Mozilla filed for trademarks on this icon and is planning on enforcing a licensing policy. More ...

No Access to Sprint LBS API for Small Companies

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

(This is a followup on an earlier post about availability of GPS info on Sprint PCS's CDMA network) Recently I had a short email exchange with someone at Sprint about obtaining access to their LBS information for the use in my company's products. My company targets a small vertical niche market ...

WPA2 Drivers for Discontinued Microsoft Wireless PCMCIA Card (MN-520)

Saturday, January 14th, 2006

After struggling to find WPA2 drivers for the Microsoft Wireless PCMCIA adaptor (MN-520) for a newly rebuilt laptop, I decided to post instructions as to where to find them. Especially, since this product has been discontinued by Microsoft and for some obscure reason removed them from Windows Update. Anyway, to instal ...

Single Click Subscriptions for RSS

Monday, October 10th, 2005

A few months ago Dave Winer mentioned the so called "Yahoo problem" - the proliferation of subscribe buttons for different aggregators. Instead he proposes to have a single service which stores user's RSS feeds in an OPML file and different aggregators will access it. Of course this service will need ...