This may be part of their plan to get people to come back to the site. And guess what? It worked. I went back to MySpace to modify my email preferences and unsubscribe from every list they had me on.  They have 31 different check boxes that you have to uncheck manually (no uncheck all option). The only reason I didn’t completely delete the account was because this one was set up for a business and it may get some minimal traffic…

The problem with using the iframe tag with WordPress is that (for security reasons), the iframe tag disappears when switching from Visual mode to HTML mode, and back again.  This can be very frustrating when you think you embed a video only to find out that it has disappeared from your post.

Luckily, WordPress plugins come to the rescue.  There are several plugins that allow you to properly use iframes in WordPress. The most popular of these seem to be: Embed Iframe, IFRAME Embed for Youtube and Insere Iframe.

While the other two may be worth checking out, I went with the last of these, Insere Iframe, because it was the one with the most flexibility and also allowed the easiest rewriting of the iframe code you will get from sites like Youtube and Vimeo.  Once you install and activate the plugin, you get a new [iframe: ] tag to use in your posts.

Here are two examples of how to copy and change the iframe code:

Using Vimeo Iframe Video Code in WordPress

Vimeo will give you iframe code that looks like this:

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/14269383" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe>

With this new plugin, you simply change that code to:

[iframe:  src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/14269383" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"]

Using Youtube Iframe Video Code in WordPress

Youtube will give you iframe code that looks like this:

<iframe type="text/html" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KDv5hnQ9ADk?hl=en_US" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Change that code to:

[iframe: type="text/html" width="400" height="325" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KDv5hnQ9ADk?hl=en_US" frameborder="0"]

That’s it. Simple and future-proof. I’d recommend making the switch now.

The first is Rappaportive. I’ve been using this software for awhile now and it is really cool.  What it does is try and pull the contact information from anyone who emails you from various social media sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.).  If it finds information, it will display it along the right-hand side of your Gmail window.  This includes things like their photo, location, and links to the various social networks they have profiles on. It’s really great to see a photo and information about the person you’re emailing, especially when you may have never met before.

The second is Cloud Magic. Cloud Magic is a plug-in for Firefox and Chrome that adds super fast searching to Gmail. Yes, Gmail does have Google’s search built in,but Cloud Magic improves on Google’s search by through a number of things. First, it uses a floating toolbar that allows you to search without having to open a new tab. This is extremely useful when composing an email and needing to find some relevant bit of information to include. It also allows you to link all your Google App accounts and search through the email in each of those accounts as well as the one you have open. (I have about 6 different Google Apps accounts, so this is extremely useful).

You can find out more about Cloud Magic in the video below:

Both tools are incredibly useful and add a lot to the Gmail experience.

That being said, I’ve never really liked iPhoto.  I tried to use it, organize my photos with it – really get into it. Unfortunately, it just didn’t seem intuitive to me.  Luckily, Picasa for the Mac is available and in my opinion, it’s the best photo manager around.  In Picasa, things just seem more intuitive and straightforward. Folders are organized effectively. Using Collections is a breeze. Uploading to Picasa Web Albums is free and easy (1GB of space is free and 20GB only costs $5 for the year.)

Now, the latest version of Picasa adds online photo editing with Picnik, batch uploads to  Picasa Web Albums, some meta data improvements, and a very cool feature called “Face Movies” which allows you to create a video from anyone’s photos which will always display their face in the middle throughout the entire photo slide show.  You can check out the one I made here:

I’d recommend dumping iPhoto and getting Picasa now.

- via Picasa 3.8: Face movies, Picnik integration, batch upload, and more [Google Photos Blog]

I saw this info-graphic awhile ago and thought it would be good to repost it.  Basically, since HDMI is all digital, the signal is either going to get there or it’s not, so it doesn’t matter whether the cable costs $5 or $500. You’re better off going with the $5 one though…

If you’re looking for cheap cables, be sure to check out MonoPrice as well as DeepSurplus.  Both have some great deals on cables that cost much more elsewhere.

In other news, Ultrasn0w 1.1.1 has been released (the tool you need to unlock your iPhone).  This new release has been tweaked and should improve standby battery performance.

I’m currently waiting on my new factory unlocked iPhone 4 which is coming from the UK.  My friend, who waited for about an hour at the new Covent Garden Apple Store to pick one up, tells me that the line for the unlocked iPhone was about 100 people when he got there and 300 people when he left. There was no line at all for iPhones with a service contract.

He also says that a lot of the people in the line were foreigners wanting to get one.  The Apple employee told him that they were moving around 3,000 iPhones a day from that location alone.  They had gotten a new shipment the previous night and expected to be sold out by that afternoon.

- via iPhone Hacks

I’ve been using this software for awhile now and it is really cool.  What it does is try and pull the contact information from anyone who emails you from various social media sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.).  If it finds information, it will display it along the right-hand side of your Gmail window (where the ads usually appear).  This includes things like their photo, location, and links to the various social networks they have profiles on.  It helps to make email a lot more personal, especially when it pulls up a photo of someone you’ve never met before.  It’s also free, which makes it even better.

The first program that I had to feature is KeePass Password Safe. This is one that I only started using three months ago and now don’t know how I ever managed to get along without it. Oh wait, I didn’t. I would have some Excel spreadsheets with passwords, forget others, use the same password for many different web sites, etc.  Now, with this program, I easily store all my account information in one secure place and have secure and unique passwords for all the web sites I visit.

KeePass allows you to create entries for all your web site passwords, pin numbers, credit card information, etc. – pretty much anything you would like to store in a secure manner. It stores this information in a secure AES and Twofish encrypted database that you only have to remember one master password to open.  In addition to storing passwords, it also allows you to auto-generate long secure passwords, which can then be copied from the program when needed. You can also create groups, enable enhanced protection and memory protection, and much more.  The best thing is that it’s free!  Not only that, the code is open source, so the software can be evaluated to make sure there are no backdoors or security problems. There’s also a number of plugins which further extend its functionality. The main downloads on the site are for Windows, but there are also ports and builds for Mac OS, Linux, iPhone, PocketPC, Blackberry and more.

It’s very easy to use, but like any new program it takes some time to make it part of your routine. Once you do, I’m sure you’ll also wonder how you ever lived without it.

I also mentioned ZumoDrive along with KeePass in the title of this post.  ZumoDrive is a cloud-storage solution that works on Windows, Mac OS and iPhone. It’s a bit unique from other cloud-storage solutions in that the files you store there do not also take up physical space on your hard drive. ZumoDrive sets up a “fake” local drive (Z: by default on Windows) and then streams those files over the Internet when you need them. They’re not actually local, even though it looks like they are.  This is great for devices like the iPhone or NetBooks that do not have a lot of storage capacity of their own. They give you 1GB of free storage, and larger plans start at only $2.99 per month.

The way to combine KeePass and ZumoDrive is to store the KeePass database on your ZumoDrive cloud-storage drive.  KeePass operates exactly the same way as always, but now your encrypted database is stored on the cloud and you can access it from your home computer, work computer, laptop or iPhone and it will always be in sync and backed up automatically.

These are both great products and they both have some great uses!  Hope this post helps you to better manage and secure your accounts.

Luckily, there is a quick hack to make this work thanks to the FreeMyFeed web site. FreeMyFeed handles authenticated RSS feeds and will give you a non-authenticated feed in its place that works perfectly in any RSS reader.  Here’s the steps you need to take:

1. Head over to http://freemyfeed.com
2. For “feed url” enter: http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss
3. Enter your Twitter username and password in the appropriate boxes.
4. Click submit and you’ll be taken to a page that provides you with your new non-authenticated RSS link.  Copy that to your favorite RSS reader or  simply use one of their provided links to add it automatically.

That’s it. You now have your Twitter updates in a convenient, easier to read format.

yum update

Unfortunately, I kept running into unresolved dependency errors like these:

--> Missing Dependency: libebook-1.2.so.9 is needed by package 1:control-center-2.16.0-16.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libecal-1.2.so.7 is needed by package gnome-panel-2.16.1-7.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: ghostscript is needed by package ghostscript-fonts-5.50-13.1.1.noarch (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: ghostscript is needed by package libgnomeprint22-2.12.1-10.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libebook-1.2.so.9 is needed by package 1:control-center-2.16.0-16.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libgs.so.8 is needed by package ImageMagick-6.2.8.0-4.el5_1.1.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libebook-1.2.so.9 is needed by package gnome-panel-2.16.1-7.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libedataserver-1.2.so.7 is needed by package 1:control-center-2.16.0-16.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libedataserverui-1.2.so.8 is needed by package gnome-panel-2.16.1-7.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: evolution-data-server >= 1.1.4 is needed by package gnome-panel-2.16.1-7.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: libedataserver-1.2.so.7 is needed by package gnome-panel-2.16.1-7.el5.i386 (installed)

Turns out the resolution was simple. All you need to do is clean out the yum dbcache with the following command:

yum clean dbcache

Then, re-run the yum update command. If that does not work, try running the command:

yum clean all

That should take care of these dependency errors.

I really wanted to force Outlook to prompt me for the account to use when sending email, but after some searching, it appears that is not possible.  Maybe it will be in the next version of Outlook.

The best option I could find was to set up deferred delivery in Outlook.  This cause Microsoft Outlook to delay sending your email for a specified number of minutes (I chose 5 minutes).  While this is not an ideal solution, it does allow me to quickly go in and change the ones that I remember – usually right after I send them.  So, it’s better than nothing, plus it allows me to pull back emails that I may have written too hastily as well.

1. shutdown -r -t 1
   When you use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to a Windows XP or windows Vista PC, the reboot option is not available on that PC. Well, often times you need to reboot the PC, so using the command above will do that.  The “-r” option tells the PC to reboot and the “-t 1” tells it to reboot in 1 second rather than the default 30 seconds. No reason to wait around, right? Running shutdown /? will give you a list of ll the options available.
2. net statistics server
   Running this command on a Windows XP or Server 2000/2003 machine will give you a number of statistics, but I most often use it to determine how long a machine has been running since its last reboot. (Like the uptime command on Linux.)  This does not work in Vista but if you run the task manager, you can see the uptime in the Performance tab under “System.”

As I said, these are two that I use frequently and that may be helpful for you too.

I found this tech article about the problem and proceeded to follow the steps to make the PDF converter compatible with 64-bit versions of Windows.  I rebooted my PC and when I re-opened Quickbooks, I could get into the “Printer Setup…” menu.  However, I got the error, “You cannot print directly to the QuickBooks PDF Converter. Try using QuickBooks Save as PDF menu option.”

I was about to go look this up, when I checked the printer setup options again and restarted QuickBooks. When I restarted, everything worked fine. I’m not sure what that was, but it seems to be working fine now.

Hope this helps.

To resolve this, we added Blackberry’s IP address ranges to our spam filter’s whitelist IPs.  Here are the IP address ranges to allow:

206.51.26.1-206.51.26.255
193.109.81.1-193.109.81.255
204.187.87.1-204.187.87.255
216.9.248.48-216.9.248.52

That seems to be a comprehensive list.

IMAP: Invalid credentials (Failure)

This was a new error and went away if I clicked on the remember password box and clicked OK, but it was annoying.  Luckily, after some research I found this fix: 

1. Close your email client
2. Go to https://www.google.com/a/YOURDOMAIN.COM/UnlockCaptcha and enter your username and password to unlock the captcha. (Obviously, replace YOURDOMAIN.COM with your own domain name.)
3. Restart your mail client.

The problem should now be fixed.

Here’s some other features:

•  Mounts remote storage as a local hard disk on your PC
• Data transfer by drag and drop files in windows explorer
• Able to run files(video, audio and any other .exe files)
• Able to run NetDrive as a system service when Windows starts. Mounts drive automatically when Windows starts.

Get it at http://www.netdrive.net/

Now, you have to configure auto-update to receive anti-spam updates.

Now it’s ready to go!