August 2008 Archives
The Dead Sea Scrolls are going digital according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. This is pretty interesting since they're basically releasing to digital form, scrolls that speak of early Jewish for the entire world to see instead of just educational institutions.
What's interesting also is that this is going to take two years to complete, but I don't see why they can't just make the multi-volume disc media available online. The new digitized versions will include infrared scans of the scrolls that will shed some more light on parts that cannot be seen in visible light.
Overall, this is definitely an interesting historical work that will soon be available for all.
Photo Credit:(Dale Gillard)
...and personally, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. 250G a month might sound like a lot but let me put it another way. Those that have moved their phone service, and actually watch HD content online are going to get hit hard. Very hard. Think about it.
250G divided by 30 days is 8.3G a day. If you take a look at your HD content, A single Bluray disc can store up to 50G but assuming that you cut out all of the scary stuff, you're still looking at a DVD's worth of video at about 1.5-3G. Then consider if you actually run services like Netflix Instant viewing. Yes? Internet radio? That's some more bandwidth. And don't forget podcasters, and other folks that stream audio and video and people that use Skype and Vonage.
In fact, in total, the HD and digital television channels use way more than 250G a month of bandwidth unless they're paring it down to 320x240 resolution. It's ridiculous to even cap when you pay $50/month for digital television and the same $50/month for bandwidth but television takes more?
It's a bad move by Comcast, and even the cable television industry as a whole. In doing this, they not only will be giving up any leeway they gained from infiltrating on the telcos for phone service, but they also open the doorway for the telcos to reap turnover for those that are looking to regain some of their lost revenue.
Photo Credit: (scriptingnews)
What a move by the McCain camp. I'm not one for the political mumbo jumbo, but this was a great way to divide up the Democratic vote. Especially after the bitter Democratic nominee runoff.
This choice of running mate shows one of two things. The first is that the Republicans can also nominate women into Vice Presidential candidacy which puts Obama at a disadvantage since he didn't go with Clinton as his VP choice. The second is to divide the HRC voting group up. In both instances, in waiting until Obama had already made a play, this was actually a brilliant political move. In either case, it shows that GOP can also put women into power and with the back-and-forth during the Democratic nomination, it reinforces those that are more conservative but sided with Hillary to make the leap.
The election year for 2008 is definitely going to be interesting although I have a few thoughts myself on where it's actually going to eventually end up based on electoral votes and certain geographical trends. It isn't quite a check yet, but watch out. Definitely a Bishop and Pawn vs Knight play.
On top of that, as far as I could tell with the references to age of characters, at least the Nicole Emerson, to be under the legal drinking age. Yet, both of them are out holding alcohol at multiple points of the film.
The Tribe itself looked like a fraternity gone bad. They performed entirely juvenile acts and was surprising that Shane (the head vampire) would even do the things he did or make these guys his minions. Why indeed? They were so stupid most of the movie that it was a wonder that they didn't stake themselves.
Most of this movie could probably be attributed to a bad vision and somewhat blech script. Which makes it hard to deal with since there were good actors/actresses and it could have pulled off the entire "cheesy vamp" feel but still holding the nostalgia of the older glory. Unfortunately, I just kept looking and looking for something more from Lost Boys: The Tribe
In development, there's always the pains of tracking down bugs. But if you run traces, it helps triangulate where the source of the problems are. Pismo Trace Monitor is used for such real-time monitoring. This basically can be used to send out trace data so that in the event of tracking down an issue, you can send diagnostic information on any DLL, executable or driver that has been outfitted with the trace code.
Very useful for profiling pre-release or even release applications since it can be called directly from C or C++ code.
It's an amazing thing, that the cost of being a student has risen in the past decade. In talking with a friend, I was told that a freshman's first semester these days depending on major can easily run over a thousand dollars in textbooks. A grand? Are you friggin' serious?
That's absolutely ridiculous considering a couple facts. One is that your textbooks only get more expensive as you progress up through seniority in college. Mainly this is because it's more specific knowledge, and being that there are less people that learn it, the publisher looks to capitalize on those that do. But to give an example of the difference of textbook costs, my freshman year in college ran about four hundred or so dollars. As the years progressed, I believe my highest book costs were in senior year around eight hundred dollars. Some of this cost is recouped in sell-backs, but not much since you only get maybe a fourth of the price you paid if I remember correctly.
Costs can be further pushed back by buying used books. Or even ordering the text versions from another source such as Amazon. But some collegiate bookstores are now going through the nasty gestapo tactic of giving you the book lists in advance or not giving them to you at all forcing non-outspoken students to buy only from the school bookstore.
It's not wonder that there are open source books are now becoming more and more popular. I do understand that some texts supplement some professors' incomes but on the flip side, I also do remember some absolutely ridiculous Calculus texts that cost close to sixty dollars that were bound like the stuff you get at Kinkos.
Scary stuff. Education is becoming unaffordable with these insane costs that hit the students' wallets. Now, granted that bio and chem books are more expensive in the long run so if you don't have a major that requires them, it might be cheaper. But shelling out even a measly five hundred a semester racks up like nothing else. And if you're on a quarter system? Woe is you. Three times a year versus twice for semester based.
And here you thought that people wanted you to have an education. They do. They just want you to rack up some serious student debt on textbooks too, as if tuition alongside room and board wasn't hurting your wallet already.
If you're looking to take advantage of compressed files, or even iso image files and being able to mount them without burning them to a disc or such, then Pismo File Mount Audit Package will come in handy. It has full filesystem support, and explorer integration (so that you don't have to launch the program every time you need to use it). You can basically right click on any iso, zip, or even compact folder system and mount it just like a drive. This allows you to keep the same file structures without having to unzip, or install certain things which makes things very usable.
Freeware for Windows 2000 up to Windows Server 2008.
I was flipping through the channels watching Olympics while I was on a business trip. And lo and behold I saw the funniest sight ever. Wait, are those people powerwalking? What the...
Apparently there's an endurance sport called racewalking that's been part of track & field for ages. It's different from powerwalking being that there are more rules to follow and there are some serious optimization of how the hips move and how it's judged. But it was still definitely a jaw-dropping sight.
While it was kind of funny to watch and obviously it often gets little respect, I have to admit that it's definitely a lot more difficult than you think it might be. The point of it is that you have to keep form for the entire length of time and that most events are over an hour long meaning that it becomes a total endurance sport. On top of that, you can't run and thus making it extremely difficult in the latter half of races since the range of motion makes you want to break out in a faster pace. It's sort of like keeping a horse from going from a trot to a full gallop, which is pretty difficult since it's the middle ground between speeds.
Who knew. Then again, this year was also the first year that the summer Olympics included BMX racing. Guess they're starting to merge those sports from the X games alongside some things that most people have never heard of. Racewalking. hmm. Crazy stuff, I tell ya. Crazy stuff.
...At least I think it's new. Never encountered this yet at any airport until yesterday. And I wasn't about to get delayed home for taking a picture so I'll just describe it.
After stepping through the metal detector, the TSA personnel asks you to push a red button. I asked, which red button since there was this thing covered up in mesh or something and I assumed I had to push right in the middle. The TSA guy pointed to the red button to the side. Interestingly enough, I push the button and I was done.
The button itself wasn't a biometric sensor as far as I could tell, just a standard red button. But the covered up 'mesh/tape or whatever it was' area was more interesting. As I was putting on my shoes, I looked back and noticed that the device was tied to a laptop. If the person pushes the red button, and it flashes green, then they're good. If it flashes red, then they have to go through more screening.
Which made me wonder. Was that middle area a camera? And if so, is TSA using facial recognition software? That would mean that there's a database somewhere that it's being tied into but I don't know for sure. All I know is that I've never seen this before and found it quite interesting considering I travel enough on business to have seen all the fun security things including the shoe air puffer. The entire thing could be much more simple, but I'm just curious as to if anyone knows what that was and what it does since it was only in a smaller airport where I saw it.
Definitely something that captures your attention when it's change out of the usual security travel habits of "take off shoes, take out laptop, put in bin, put stuff on conveyor, walk through detector, grab stuff off conveyor, move along."
So they send Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) of the Department of Domestic Security, off to find the cure in the zone with a military team.
Doomsday
What was interesting in this movie was the way it portrayed government thought. Here, it basically had a Prime Minister that was controlled by a fascist advisor. And how they would hold-back the cure to seem like they were heroes when they released it. That's pretty ruthless, but sometimes people make everything political. Thought that was definitely interesting. While this movie had some reminiscence of Children of Men, I think that it didn't quite reach the depth of that film.
If you would rather get this movie digitally, I would recommend taking a look at the iTunes version of it. This movie was the first Bluray release by Universal since HDDVD so, you'd be missing out on some of the quality factor, but sometimes... it just really doesn't matter for some movies.
If you're sitting at a server, there should be three lights on it. One LED is the power. The next is maintenance. The third is system (looks like a two arrows in a circular pattern).
Depending on the light blinking, it can tell you crazy things. Like whether or not your server is entirely hosed. On a Sun 3500, here are the LED codes:
Left LED (green)
On -- the power supply is delivering DC power
Middle LED (yellow)
On flashing -- (first 60 seconds of AC power) self tests are running
Off -- (after self tests end) no hardware failures detected
On -- (after self tests end) hardware failure was detected
Right LED (green)
Off -- (first 60 seconds of AC power) self tests are running
On flashing -- (after self tests end) system is running
Off -- (after self tests end) system cannot run; repair is needed
I can tell you that the issue I ran into was an Left: On, Middle: Off, Right: Flashing. According to the chart above, the server is working right? But it was after a cold boot because the console froze on a probe-scsi-all. And the console would not come back up. After spending much frustrated time trying to figure out how to make it connect again, I did the following:
Power cycle console.
Yup. That's it. That resets the console to work with the server. Go figure. And it seems that not many people run into this issue since I have yet to see a fix documented somewhere for this. Oh well. Good times.
If you're looking for a client that can do everything1, then Digsby might be your key to a bright bright future.
It can do all of your major IMs (Yahoo, AIM, Microsoft Live, ICQ, and more), and it can check email and connect up with Facebook, Twitter, and keep track of several social networking things all from one single client.
This is actually pretty neato skippy, although I have to say that with all of this, I'm actually surprised that it doesn't support IRC at all like some other IM clients. Sort of important if you're actually trying to do the whole all-in-one thing (of which I totally approve). It supports Windows, MacOSX, and linux, which is great and I have to say that it really takes all-in-one clients to a new level. Remember back in the gaim and trillian days? Oh yes. It was nice wasn't it. This just makes it that much better.
1 - Everything is is slightly relative isn't it.
Changing an IP address is a little more difficult than your usual commands in linux. At least if you want to change it permanently.
If you just use the ifconfig command, that is only a temporary solution. It will automatically reset itself upon a reboot. So you have to do that and also edit /etc/hosts, change your /etc/defaultrouter (this is the file that points to your router or whatever is sending your broadcast).
Usually this is enough, but in Solaris 9 and up, you might need to edit your /etc/inet/ipnodes if it's been changed before. Also, if you use VLSM (variable length subnet masks), then you'll also need to edit /etc/netmasks.
No one ever said Unix was easier. Just more stable.
Why? Because 'the balaclava "could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act".' Wow. And you would think that the word Evil printed on it doesn't throw someone off a bit. And on top of it, pretty much every person that has ever worn face protection for skiing or snowboarding has owned something that could be used for some bad act. In fact, you could wear costume masks from Halloween and whatever else you see on television or movies.
Next thing you know, pantyhose and cosmetics will be confiscated since they can "conceal someone's identity". At which that point, there would be officers' wives revolting. Or something. Now if it wasn't a legitimate product, and there were fake pistols or something in the game, I would say that it might put security at risk. But a giant stitched "EVIL" across the forehead? Wow.
Either that, or there's a huge conspiracy from the companies that make those jester type snowboarding hats.
I'll admit. I didn't get the entire EP album. The only reason I've been playing this song over and over again is because it's a catchy tune. A Beautiful World by Tim Myers. And after seeing the Target commercial above a couple times during the Olympics? I just had to have the song. So I went and grabbed it off of 
.
And I wasn't disappointed. You know how sometimes if you hear thirty seconds of a song, the rest really sucks? This isn't like that which gives me a new artist to look forward to in the future. Gotta give it to Target for finding this amazing piece and putting together a pretty snazzy commercial.
So it wasn't any surprise that Thr3e
But that's okay. It's Hollywood! Things don't have to make sense. Or something like that.
While being a total bomb in the box office, and being ripped apart by movie critics, I actually found it to be one of the better thriller movies that I've seen. There are so many bad ones out there that this was almost a breath of fresh air. So maybe it's just one of those things. An interesting factoid is that this movie was distributed by Fox Faith which targets evangelical Christians. While the book of the same name by Ted Dekker, is found under contemporary Christian literature, I really didn't find this movie exactly having Christian content. I suppose being derived from one that writes Christian literature was good enough, but psycho killer films just doesn't exactly ring with faith, regardless of the religion.
Definitely an interesting choice of distributors. But it still captured my attention long enough to be very enjoyable.
Full disclosure: I'm also a shareholder of this company.
It seems like Netflix has been having some issues with their inventory systems and it's actually costing them a lot of money with each day that it's down. As of today, it's still not completely fixed but as a customer? I'm not that worried.
One of the most interesting things about being a customer of Netflix is that even when you don't know about the problems they're having? They find some way to make it up to you, and everyone else that's effected or would have been effected by it. Even it wasn't exactly their fault. In this case, their inventory system blew up somehow and caused delays to the delivery systems.
That would explain a lot considering we had returned a couple things, but there weren't replacements. Looking online, it seems like they're set to ship tomorrow, but who really knows for sure. But really, the greatest part is this:
We're sorry to report that since Tuesday we've been experiencing issues with our shipping system, so many of you have not received DVDs in a timely manner and many of you have not received emails letting you know we got a DVD back from you.
We pride ourselves in delighting you, and we've let you down. We apologize and are working around the clock to restore normal operations. To all of you whose shipments have been delayed, we'll be automatically applying a credit to your next billing statement. Or, if you are new to Netflix and your first shipments have been delayed, we recognize that this is not a good way to begin your Netflix membership and we'll automatically extend your free trial.
Our goal is to ship DVDs as soon as possible and to keep you updated. Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience we've caused you and thank you for your patience.
The Netflix Team
See that middle paragraph? They're going to credit people because of it. Yes, it was their fault, but you know how many corporations don't play the right customer service role to solidify loyalty? Many. And Netflix continues to surprise me with this type of attitude. That kind of stuff will get them far in a world where customer loyalty is hard to come by.
When you run servers that happen to run on Redhat's open source versions (called Fedora), you'll get thrown into the dark ages at the rates that they release version numbers. Fortunately there's a way to upgrade through the versions as long as you have the time and a console connection.
To upgrade from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8, just follow this tutorial. Similarly, follow this tutorial to upgrade from Fedora 8 to Fedora 9.
It's pretty much the same upgrade procedures, where you use yum to check and make sure that all of the upgrade files are going without crashing dependencies. If there are dependencies, then you would use yum to install those first, then run the upgrades again. And I can guarantee that these procedures work even though it takes a bit of time. I remotely upgraded a server at work from Fedora 6 all the way to Fedora 9 (current version) going through this process. And it runs just dandy right now on FC9. yum.
If you're looking for a networked device monitoring system and you're a Windows admin, then IT Desktop might be your dream come true.
A free download, ad supported, this basically supports pretty much every type of inventory you can think of from software, hardware, to licenses and asset tags. It even tracks your network and Exchange traffic for you along with giving you fun little displays and sets up a IT Help desk/portal for all things internal. Suitable for pretty much anything you need to do in a small corporation.
All that with only a 7MB footprint. Not bad! It does require you to run XP Pro SP2, Vista, or Server 2003 and the clients must be Firefox or IE. Outside of that, the world is your oyster! Well, maybe just your corporate network.
Ever get confused with all of that accounting software? Feel overwhelmed? Believe me, I know exactly how you feel. And while it would be great to spend time learning the ins and outs of accounting, wouldn't it be nice if it just made sense? Just like when you balance your checkbook?
The wait will be over soon. If you've been waiting for an accounting solution that is simple to use but has the complexity to fulfill your small business needs, sign up here. You won't want to miss this.
Spice is a circuit simulator for the Unix platform to analyze and design IC boards without having to build and design those circuits. This piece of software has been around for a while and I totally forgot that it was freely available for not only education but actually as design utility.
There are others out there that are commercial and have more functionality and such, but overall, you can't beat the free from U.C. Berkeley. I remember spending many late night hours in the lab with this piece of software and if you're looking for something to help do IC design, don't forget some of your old college software friends.
If you've been looking for an ecommerce package since you're setting up an online storefront and you want to find something that's beautiful but also easy to manage, I would suggest you take a look at Magento.
Magento has taken the open source world by storm and won many awards for usability and design as of recent. I've been following them ever since they released in beta in hopes that they would provide a much needed re-design of currently bloated and annoying configurations of current online stores. No offense to the other projects, but it's just ugly.
Currently, I have this in actual production and I have to say that it's very much what it strives to be, which is easy usability but the look is sexy and wanting. Simple but complex. What every piece of software strives to be. There are always new things coming out and outside of the default designs being somewhat limited, it provides a great foundation for any sort of online ecommerce. It also allows you to focus mainly on the design instead of the lack of functionality.
If you're looking to upgrade your store, or even looking to open one on the Internet, I would take a look at their tour, and demo, and see if that would fit the bill. I can tell you that from someone's that implemented a multitude of stores, this was one of the easiest to configure and manage in a very long time.
The style of drawing was done in a very similar way of Aeon Flux in the sense of over-accentuating the female form. But on the flip side, this anime was actually very much about a mother's love for her child and what she goes through to protect her child. The end seemed a bit rushed, which makes you think that they knew that there were only going to be so many episodes.
Interestingly enough, this storyline was done as a cooperation between Gonzo and Top Cow (who owns the franchise). And unlike the usual storyline, this was done with all new characters, new plot, and all that.
Overall, I enjoyed this series although I think the ending could have been a little bit more drawn out instead of seemingly to fall all on the last episode. Sometimes, the wrap-ups are all a bit ... hurried in many animes and this didn't seem different in that sense. If you like what you see, I'd probably look into getting the Witchblade Box Set
Sometimes, it probably pays to know exactly whom you're taking your computer to when you have it fixed. Ever done some easy background checks on corporations that you do business with? Well, sometimes it pays to do so.
Here, a lady found her computer was running slower than when she brought it in to have it repaired. Another shop found that the previous repair person had installed webcam spy software and had it set to upload pictures. And apparently this was going on with multiple women on who's computers he fixed.
Scary. Of course, it doesn't necessarily help you out if you have someone look at your computer from say.... Geek Squad, considering how many times they've been busted too from copying pictures and such from people's hard drives. In the end, it just pays to know someone that you trust to manage your IT work. Just because you pay them money, doesn't necessarily mean that they're looking out for your benefit and not their own.
[shiver] Creepy.
Photo Credit: (3blindmice)
What's beautiful of about css is that you can literally set up all sorts of things with positioning for your page without changing the actual HTML. And changing HTML is super old school.
But with about fifteen lines of css by Ryan Fait, you can pretty much make a footer hug the bottom of the page and it seems to work with all browsers (which is very key in design work).
If you do some design work and have been searching for a little something to help you out, reading this code should help you understand a little about how css works and why this does the trick. Pretty much what it does is that it declares the page to be 100% height without the last portion of it. Then setting up the footer to fill the missing portion.
Saw a clip of this on CNBC today and I decided to see what the big deal was. I have to say that it was rather amusing since the entire ad beginning of the ad pokes fun at the age of John McCain. It's actually a pretty interesting bipartisan solution, and it's an interesting choice of running mates. Either way, it's definitely funny considering Hilton's parents donated to the McCain campaign as far as I know. Ahh... celebrities. You gotta love it when they can throw a little humor on the whole dusty world of politics.
When Trend Micro first came out with HouseCall, this online antivirus scanner was only IE enabled. Very annoying, but also pretty useful considering it was one of the few if not only online enabled antivirus scanners. This meant that as long as you had an Internet connection, you could work on an infected system without having to worry if your rescue media had the latest and greatest antivirus definitions.
Well, they've come a long ways. now support Firefox and even MacOSX, it now has a lot better support. In fact, it can even scan in linux and Solaris. Goodness gracious. Unix online virus scan? Wow. Maybe Clam has a bit catching up to do.
While it now does have the two different engines that run (the ActiveX one that used to be the only one) ActiveX and Java, I have to say that there are a couple cons to this product. The first would be the fact that it doesn't seem to have support for Firefox versions 2 or later. What's with that? Firefox has got to be one of the more dominant browser types. And what about Opera or Safari? Well... no matter. The second is that if I remember correctly with the older ActiveX engine, it took a dang long time to load. Why didn't they just implement it directly in the Java engine and throw away the ActiveX? java does actually work in Windows you know.
Regardless? I do love recommending this when someone thinks they are in need of antivirus and I'm not there to help them. It's easy enough to run yourself and there's less worries that there will be a virus smart enough to actually detect a Java or ActiveX engine antivirus scanner. Perhaps they might, but the likelihood would be more so on an attack of the offline scanners if anything. Just take a look and bookmark it for the next time you might need it.
I have to say that I was pretty flabbergasted when I got this email. Let's just say that having dealt with RCL's customer service, I know they don't pull amateur plays like this and if their marketing department DID indeed pull this off then it's a really poor job at doing something with a business.
So why did this email ring up like a scam? First, it was sent from a Flickr account to my Flickr account. Not from an official email from Royal Caribbean or a RCL address and it wasn't addressed through my RCL account. In fact, it was manually typed since the person actually messed up my account name. Guess some people don't read. Second, it had an email to Yahoo. Who the heck uses a free Yahoo email for anything business related?
And when you go to the survey site itself? It looks just like a RCL site. And from the email, it says that you can login from your Flickr account for your "convenience". Don't even buy into that. Probably pulling your password just as you enter it. And what's more is that the domain is owned by:
Registrant:
JWT
466 Lexington ave
new york, ny 10017
US
+1.2122107214
Domain Name: ROYALCARIBBEANSURVEY.COM
Administrative & Technical Contact:
David Chang
JWT
466 Lexington ave
new york, ny 10017
US
+1.2122107214
Domain Name Servers:
NS36.PAIR.COM
NS6.NS0.COM
Transfer-Lock Status: ENABLED
Created: June 18, 2008
Modified: June 18, 2008
Expires: June 18, 2009
Very interesting isn't it. It seems that JWT is a supposed marketing firm or something. But even so, you would still think that Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. would own the registration. Still pretty dang strange. So, with all of that?
I called RCL customer service. They knew nothing about this, so they said they'd forward it up through security and find out since it did look awfully suspicious. They said that they'd call back if they needed more information and I agreed to forward them whatever I had. Then Flickr got an email too. Why all this precaution?
When it comes to marketing a brand like RCL, you can never be too careful with scams, especially one that has such great customer service. If indeed it's a marketing gimmick or campaign, then it'd be better to have it shut down due to security reasons than to taint the brand itself. Either way, from a technically capable person viewing it as a customer of RCL, I wouldn't want to see this type of thing go on. Ever. And believe me, online scams are a plenty as it is and tracking them isn't always as obvious. If you're legitimate but bells ring screaming scam, then you're doing something very wrong.
Hopefully they get it sorted out. But for now, I would avoid entering any sort of RCL survey that is originating from Flickr. If it's not coming from the official mailing list for Royal Caribbean, I would be extremely weary that they are doing anything with Flickr.
I have to say that there are some services that have fantastic service.
A couple days ago, I had called 1-800-flowers since something had been bugging me. About two weeks ago, I had bought a bouquet of flowers. Now the flowers that came didn't look like the ones in the picture, but I thought nothing of it. I did find it strange however since I thought I had purchased a vase with it but it didn't come with one.
So I got in touch with Kim, from the Oklahoma call center. I have to say that speaking to this lady was a pleasure since she was cheerful and very apologetic. I have to believe that even if I was an irate customer, that she would have defused the situation with the tone of her voice, and how she responded. First, it was with my original order that I had wanted to pick but didn't since the website was messed up. After chatting about it a little bit, she could recreate the issue with her manager and told me that a ticket was opened with the IT department to have it fixed and to try back in a couple days. Needless to say, that particular product actually was fixed later that evening when I tested it again just to see.
Then came my vase question. The order had gone through a couple weeks now and the flowers were dead and gone, but I was just curious to know if i did indeed purchase a vase or not. I told her nothing came, and she didn't even question it and instead apologized and refunded my money. Wow. I have to say, that's indeed superb service.
I even asked her about the point system since it was something that they recently implemented and she laughed and told me that she thought they expired in a year, even though I read that they expired in 90 days. She gave me a number to VIP customer support (actually the one she had listed to Petal Points that apparently goes to VIP support) and I confirmed the 90 days.
I have to say that I have never once had a problem with any of my calls into 1-800-flowers.com and each of them have been very nice and friendly and could fix whatever problem I was having or actually told me if they didn't know. Friendly people that can laugh over the phone usually helps diffuse many angry customers (of which are usually the ones that call in). I'm glad that the somewhat premium that you pay with them not only shows up in the products, but also shows in the staff they employ.
BerryStats began as a project of Brent Grim which has now been updated and made a bit more useful by maximillian from Confessions of a Freeware junkie.
So basically, what the entails is an administrator that is running IIS with ASP support, have relative server paths enabled, and have the BlackBerry server going and on the client side be using Internet Explorer or BlackBerry Browser.
What this does is, it allows an administrator to actually list server statistics, list keys, kill a handheld, list and count keys, and a whole bunch of other things, but the key here? Straight from a Blackberry browser. Which is pretty sweet. It basically gives you a lot more statistics and functionality as a BSE administrator. And anyone that has actually been a BSE admin knows that it's pretty much a pain in the rear.
In any case, if it looks like a fit with what you do, you might want to take a look at it since it sure looks inviting when it comes to Blackberry services.
You can track the beta here.
If you're looking to make your PageRank better, you have to play the whole page relevance game. RelevanceSpirit is what you need to use for this. Basically, you can have low PageRank but really good relevance.
If this is the case? It can actually shoot your PR rating up. Bad relevance will eventually get thrown out since your content doesn't match your metatags or so on so forth. Thus, this takes care of improving your PR score by eliminating simple mistakes in relevance.
While good for the corporation that's looking to sell shares and obviously bettering themselves in the eyes of shareholders and investors, high valuation is pretty important. But let's be honest. The numbers are speculation based on revenue and such which is why companies can hit really high highs, but also really low lows, without actually changing too much in day-to-day operations.
From the technical field, AOL has been reigning king since the forum days of the late 80s into the early 90s where Compuserve and GEnie existed. In that sense, AOL's brand was superior seeing that it put into place one of the largest online services in the world and by 2003 had bought out Compuserve. But from those that were more technologically savvy, the brand itself took a turn when it started to market with it's free "X" hours for dialup service. Floppies, CDs, DVDs, you name it. The more it turned out to mass market the "dumbed down" version of online services, the more the brand went south with those that were involved in the tech industry.
In the end, even with the buyout of Weblogs, Inc. and gaining some of the more prevalent web news services such as Engadget, being associated with the brand of AOL just doesn't quite do it anymore. The juggernaut of the 90s just doesn't have it's namesake anymore. Now it's associated with the more simple user, those that are into the entire point-and-click scenario of the Internet. In fact, there isn't one single techie I know that would actually recommend a person being tied to AOL service unless they happen to work there.
Maybe it's just me, but that's grounds for rebranding. When the namesake has been pushed into an area that there is no way out of it, and it's been associated with a more "layman's" brand? It's time to change. There's a good reason why Apple has a great brand. It takes a more complex type of subject and makes it intuitive and useful for a beginner without sacrificing the complexity of the software or devices. That "sacrifice of complexity" is what holds those two brands worlds apart.
Currently, AOL is probably going to be sold off either in pieces or altogether with a valuation of approximately $7 billion USD. If the divisions bought out by stronger brands, I would assume that the stronger brands would pitch out the old name and use their names instead on the letterhead.
Maybe it's just me, but since the 90s, I haven't seen AOL as a strong brand for a geek. Maybe for that layperson, but with the times, it might be time to take on a new name and shed some of the old baggage.
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It can also calculate if you will lose PR due to bad links, inventories which ones are bad ones, and what can or cannot be read due to your robots.txt file. It also checks syntax and meta tags, since those are other things that could interfere with the most optimal setting for highest PR.