last week i finally decided to shell out and buy a wireless adapter for my xbox, so i could play on xbox live and stream netflix. the price for the various xbox wifi adapters has as always seemed too high for me. afterall, i might decide that xbox live isn’t for me; sure i cancel that account, but i’m left with an adapter that i can’t use for anything else.
thankfully, i googled around for xbox wireless adapter alternatives. i discovered that i could take an old home router and possibly reprogram it to act as a wifi network adapter for my xbox, but that seemed like i could spend a lot more time than i was willing to invest. then i stumbled upon something called ethernet over powerline, power over ethernet, powerline hd, etc. basically, you use the powerlines in your house or office to connect devices like an xbox to a network/internet.
for just a little more than the cost of an xbox wireless adapter i got the Netgear HDXB111 Powerline HD Plus Ethernet Adapter Kit from Frys, who had it on sale for $20 cheaper than Amazon! So, now I can use the adapters for any ethernet capable devices without having to rely on cat 5 cabling and enjoy speeds that aren’t achievable using a distant wireless router and wifi adapter.
while setting up a new windows virtual server on the rackspace cloud i ran into a hiccup. not with rackspace, so far i’m liking their setup even though it’s still in beta mode for windows. the problem actually came about with installing microsoft’s sql express 2008 x64. the installer seemed to download without any problems, all 600MB of it, but when i ran the installer (actually a self extracting cabinet file) it would get 2/3 complete and then pop a message box with “File is corrupt.” so, i’m thinking.. that’s odd that i downloaded it straight off microsoft.com. so, i google the error message real quick.. i’m still addicted to google so no bing action. google came back with tons of discussions regarding this problem, many of them on m$ sites… google “sql express 2008 file is corrupt during install” and see for yourself. the only problem is that none of those discussions had a real solution. people, like myself, were upset with many of the m$ tech responses… paraphrasing: “just keep downloading it until it works.. something is probably wrong with your anti-virus software.” no help.
ultimately here’s what worked for me: i realized that because i was downloading the sql express 2008 software from the web server.. i was using the IE browser (because i didn’t have chrome or ff installed on it.. no need). however, i wasn’t just using IE.. i was using the 64 bit version of IE. i remember long ago, with vista x64 that the 64 bit version of IE corrupted every executable I tried downloading.. so i quit using the 64 bit version and stuck with the old trusty 32 bit version. anyhow, i just downloaded sql express 2008 x64 using the 32 bit version of IE and ta-da no more “file is corrupt.”
i’m too busy to login to all those sites discussing this problem, but hopefully anybody searching for a solution to “file is corrupt” when installing sql express 2008 will find this blog entry and save themselves some time and frustration.
lately i’ve been moving a number of my websites to new hosting providers. downtime was not my motivation for moving the sites, however after hosting most of those sites with one particular company for 10 years to hosts whom i have no personal experience, uptime is concern #1. with hosting companies you never know exactly what you’re getting until you’ve been running for a while, sometimes for several years
i’ve used free uptime monitors for a couple of websites in the past, but i’ve never noticed any problems that would encourage actually paying for better service. during the recent moves however, it has become very clear that i can’t afford to not have thorough monitoring in place. so, if you’re comparing uptime monitoring services and stumbled on this blog i’ll just say you absolutely have to consider pingdom. at work we use another service that our sys admin likes, but it was a little more expensive. he’s going to take a look at pingdom too and see if we can save a little bread and still get the same quality of service.
pingdom doesn’t just ping. it monitors all the other fun stuff too: http, https, tcp port, dns, udp, stmp, pop3, imap, post data and will check for specific strings on a resulting page. you can get notifications via email, sms, twitter and iphone.
Matt Taibbi recently wrote a terrific article in Rolling Stone magazine that sheds some light on the economic bubbles we’ve been experiencing in the last decade or so. Goldman Sachs is a particular target of Matt’s article, and for good reason. These vid clips have some quick snippets behind the story, “Inside the Great American Bubble Machine”
California’s state government is the poster child for how NOT to run a state. They’re printing up their own currency nowadays in the form of IOU’s. The smart banks are refusing to accept them.
1. Does it have the wow factor?
2. Does it have mass appeal?
3. It is demonstrable?
4. Does it solve a problem?
5. Does it give instant gratification?
So now you know the minimum requirements for developing a product that might make you rich and be seen on tv via Telebrands, the “As Seen On TV” company.
UPDATE: Billy Mays died while sleeping on 6/28/2009.
Micro$oft might be spending $100,000,000 dollars to convince you that they have developed a better search engine than Google, but Google’s I/O conference stirred up some conversations about the ability of Googlebot to crawl JavaScript. That’s a tremendous step forward for search engines. If it’s true it’s also a serious game changing feature; one that should shush those (like myself) who’ve been saying that Google has been neglecting it’s search engine and focusing too much on all the other stuff they’ve been building, buying and giving away. So, it seems that yes Google can and does crawl JavaScript.
Here are some articles that SEO experts should check out.. and you’ll get a whiff of how important JavaScript crawling is:
the much anticipated slingbox iphone app has been published in the itunes store. but somewhat to my suprise it’s not a free app for slingbox owners. it’s currently listed for $29.99. the iphone slingplayer is now the most expensive iphone app i’ve paid for; i guess in a few weeks or months i’ll know if it’s worth it, right now i’m not happy that i had to pay for it.
the bad: it only operates on wi-fi, no doubt an at&t restriction. as a u-verse cable customer, the app doesn’t have a remote feature for the “ok” button. there is an “enter” button which acts much like the “ok” button when typing in channel numbers, but the big problem is that when i connect to my u-verse cable box and it’s not active on you must hit the “ok” button to bring up the guide and/or channels. when you hit the “enter” key on the sling iphone app without a number it alerts you to select a valid number… no bueno (PROBLEM SOLVED, SEE UPDATE). the biggest bad is the price it should’ve been free, or least a lot cheaper. i wouldn’t even complain if it was $4.99.
the good: video and audio quality are good. slick and intuitive interface.
funny thing is i just happened to discover the slingplayer iphone app was out on my own, but randomly logging into the app store on my iphone.. instead of being alerted by slingmedia.. why did i sign up for the email alert?? maybe it went into my spam folder.. o well.
UPDATE: the tech support folks at Sling were quick to resolve this issue for me.. it’s just taken me a while to post this update but better late than never. check it >> iphone slingplayer missing remote buttons
i tested mozy, an online backup service, and was impressed. mozy has been running a lot of commercials on tv lately and it was enough to make me get serious about protecting some important computer data on something other than backup drives that would do me no good if my house caught on fire (heaven forbid). mozy is good and the price is great but then i looked into idrive and i was more impressed.
keep in mind all the services mentioned let you setup a free account with limited storage capacity (2GB) so that you can try them out before paying for upgraded and expanded storage.
idrive does have a storage limit, 150GB, whereas mozy and carbonite boast unlimited storage space. however, idrive offers some features that those don’t have. the feature i like more than anything with idrive is ‘versioning’. you can actually restore an old version of a file that you have been backing up. also, if you delete the files locally you can leave them online; mozy and carbonite will remove deleted files from their server when the sync happens. idrive can be setup to do that if you want, but it’s like a nice safety net for accidental and unintentional deletes.
if you have important files you don’t want to lose you should consider one of these services.. all of them are worth the money, i just prefer some of the idrive features enough to deal with 150GB storage limitation over the unlimited storage offered by mozy and carbonite.
also, if you’re an iphone owner idrivelite is a nice free iphone app for backing up your contacts online.
it should’ve been free, or least a lot cheaper. i wouldn’t even complain if it was $4.99.
