Tech Related

New Blog Address and feed URL change

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 23:10:20 GMT

I'm gonna try something new. I'm moving my blog to a different URL which utilizes Blogger for my blogging engine.

You can now find me here:

http://blog.midspot.com

Maybe I'll switch back maybe not...

Please update your RSS feeds to the new address.

Blogging showdown

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:27:59 GMT

In response to yesterday's post:

Blogger did finally get me in and running yesterday. I know, it seems odd to me too that their support gets handy when my blog post comes out...

As for Wordpress, still nothing. I even visited their site last night and requested another activation key.

I guess we will wait some more...

Blog change, or not

jon@midspot.com — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 13:35:36 GMT

I am considering moving this blog to a standard service such as Wordpress, Blogger, etc. I have a couple of reasons behind this. First reason is that if for whatever reason my own servers, network is down, I can still (hopefully) use my blog at a 3^rd party to inform of the outage and give expected times that services will return to normal. Second reason is that when I look at a lot of the upscale bloggers they are using a 3^rd party service for the most part instead of rolling their own. This is due in part to the reason that services such as Blogger and Wordpress offer great ping support to assist in being listed with Technorati, PubSub, IceRocket, etc.

This makes a pretty compelling case to switch not?

Well here’s the rest of the story: Since October I have been trying to get Blogger to give me my login credentials for a blog I started there a couple years ago. I want to recover the account as it is the same username I use here. No dice. They want the original email I signed up with. Like I remember. I am known for using whatever@domainiown.com for registering at places as the addresses are all collected by my catch all. I do this cause if someone gets smart and wants to start spamming me, I can disable the address and not worry to much. Well I finally did figure out which address I used to sign up at Blogger and informed them 4 days ago and I still have not heard back. If it takes me five months to get a simple issue like that sorted out, I don’t think their service is for me.

On to Wordpress: Yesterday I applied for an account at wordpress.com. It told me to check my email for a verification link, which is very common in today’s world of Web 2.0 applications (so they think) but anyway I wait, and wait, and wait. 24 hours later, still waiting. I double checked the address even sent a test message, worked fine. Wordpress you’re off to a great start. You only have 4 months and 29 days to beat Blogger with the worst customer support ever.

So after my excursions it looks as though my blog just might stay on my own servers, where the customer service is excellent and under 2 hours, let alone 2 months!

Your thoughts?

Somebody had to see this before it was too late not?

jon@midspot.com — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:45:00 GMT

Who Represents? A database for agencies to the rich and famous: whorepresents.com (http://www.whorepresents.com)

Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views: expertsexchange.com (http://www.expertsexchange.com)

Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island: penisland.net (http://www.penisland.net)

Need a therapist? therapistfinder.com (http://www.therapistfinder.com)

Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales: molestationnursery.com (http://www.molestationnursery.com)

New to Milan and you need electric light? Why not sign up on-line with Power-Gen? powergenitalia.com (http://www.powergenitalia.com)

Credit Link

File Server Advice?

jon@midspot.com — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 17:17:00 GMT

I'm looking to set up a cheap file server in my house. I just have alot of files that I would like to share among my various computers. Also having a better backup of files is always a plus...

These are the requirements:

user and group privileges
raid mirroring support
web browser interface for configuring

Not huge requirements but it seems like any free/cheap solutions don't exist. I have looked at freenas, naslite and openfiler.

Openfiler seemed about the closest but it needs an active directory or ldap server for the users and groups and I don't want that much overhead. The other two don't support users or group authentication.

Any suggestions?

Last Month

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:56:54 GMT

Well it finally happened, last month my side business, Internet Wonders, brought in more money than my full time job.

Thanks to all my clients for making it happen. Hopefully someday it can be my full time, profitable job. I made myself a promise though that I won't take that step again until it continually makes more than my full time job for 12 consecutive months. Here's to 11 great months to come!

Common Mac Mistakes

jon@midspot.com — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:19:56 GMT

Having the Macintosh background I do, I found these quite hilarious and true!

1) they close an application's windows thinking the program has quit.
2) they'll download Firefox and then run the browser from the disk image and then not be able to throw away the disk image because the program is still running. See number 1.
3) .exe files lie scattered around the desktop from aborted downloads of Flash Player or some screensaver-cursor-spyware doodad.
4) untitled folder. untitled folder 2. untitled folder 3. untitled folder 4...
5) Using Safari's Google search field to get to hotmail.com.
6) Desktop Picture or Wallpaper is not a synonym for Screensaver.

Link: Common Mistakes Made by New Mac Users

Google Adsense top choices

jon@midspot.com — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:27:40 GMT

I just ran across this article this morning, highlighting the top paid words for the Google Adsense program.

mesothelioma $84.08
mesothelioma attorneys $80.93
mesothelioma lawyers $69.04
malignant pleural mesothelioma $55.95
Asbestos Cancer $54.17
mesothelioma symptoms $53.66
peritoneal mesothelioma $52.27
trans union $51.91
lung cancer $43.12
search engine optimization $30.19
mesothelioma diagnosis $28.70
home equity loans $20.06
Baines and Ernst $18.47
consolidate loans $17.74
Lexington law $17.68
Lexington law firm $16.81
debt problems $16.28
register domain $15.74
home equity line of credit $15.61
affiliate programs $14.33

Amazing how most of them are for lawyers and health conditions that have lawsuits starting like crazy. Americans and their lawsuit happy ways...

VC Pitch

jon@midspot.com — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 13:16:00 GMT

If you plan on pitching your start up to a Venture Capitalist any time soon, you may want to read Guy's post on presentation rules to live by:

However, I have another theory. As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup. These pitches are so lousy that I’m losing my hearing, there’s a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in while the world starts spinning.

This is broken

jon@midspot.com — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:38:51 GMT

http://www.thisisbroken.com/

Sounds like this site last night as I unsuccessfully tried to upgrade this install to the latest version of DotNetNuke. Looks like I had some unsupported modules installed which hosed the upgrade. Better luck tonight as I try again.

BTW I was able to finish my help desk module last night and hope to have it posted on snowcovered tonight. I just need to do some final beta testing first.