BE Sure to claim your google places listing for your business

If you have a business, you should be sure that you have a listing in google places. Business owners can create update their listings for free.

This is a no brainer for storefronts and other brick and mortar businesses. Home based businesses need to exercise some caution. My company, CGM Systems, Inc is a home based business. I created a google places listing but listed "No Walk Ins, By Appointment only". Our township has an ordinance that prohibits me from having customers visit my home business . I do not want them visiting anyway. (Note that the people who buy houses and make them rehab houses for addicts are allowed to use a house to run a multi million dollar business. However, I can't have a client stop by to drop off or pick up a computer.. go figure).

The process to claim your google places listing is pretty straightforward

1. Make sure you have a google account
2. Go to http://www.google.com/places/
3. choose "CLAIM YOUR BUSINESS"
4. I haven't been through these for a while. Login using your google gmail account and fill out whatever you can.
5. Google will send you a postal mail letter with your pin
6. Use your pin to activate your listing.

You can see our listing by searching for "Computers" in the general area of my home.  Click here to see our listing

Some Guidelines

1. Think about which google account you will use. You should only have one google account. 
2. Consider the implications before posting a home based business. Implications include: privacy, safety, local business and home codes, competitors etc. (ie. It might not be wise to list a home based firearms or pharmaceutics business due to the possibility of attracting thieves. )
3. Consider adding photos of videos if they apply to your business
4. LINK TO YOUR WEBSITE - it is simply amazing how many google places listings fail to have a link back to their website. 

This is becoming more important as an ever increasing number of people are using google on their desktops and phones for their searches.

Wikipedia Blackout in protest of the Stop anti piracy legislation

Wikipedia is staging a blackout on Wednesday Jan 18 in protest of the STOP piracy act. The stop piracy act is an insane move by the coke snorting, heroin using hollywood degenerates to grab every penny then can, legitimately or otherwise.

The STOP act is a bi-partisan cluster fark. THose who received large amounts of money from the entertainment industry supported this unconstitutional bill.

Suppose you go outside and your 5 year old kid is dancing to Lady GaGa (First of all,   that is a problem right there). Anyway, you record the scene on your phone and upload it to youtube. Guess what, if more than 25 people view that video, you are a felon facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, court costs and penalties.

Oh, and if you hire a lawyer ... It is tried in FEDERAL court so you need a lawyer able to practice before the feds.. Think a 15 grand retainer to start. (Also think Shakespeare's Henry VI but that is another matter)

Yep, just posting a video of your kid dancing to the music of some freak could result in your losing everything.. your house, your savings, your car, your retirement and maybe a nice stay in a federal pen.

Wikipedia is shutting down for 24 hours in protest. God Bless them for having the testicular fortitude to do so. Contact your congresscritters and tell thim you are opposed to this travesty of a bill.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news%2Ftechnology&id=8507983

Want to know what that pic is?? search by uploading an image.

Here is an incredible google trick.. you can search by image.

Suppose you see an image on a blog and wonder what the pic is?  Here is one way you might find out. (this is also useful for dating sites where you can, in many cases, spot a fake profile pic)

1. Go to the picture you want to search. Right click on it and scroll down to "Save Image As".. click it and save to your pictures folder.
2. Go to www.google.com
3. Click on "Images".
4. You will see a search box with a camera icon in the right side of the box.. click on the camera.
5. A box will pop up which gives you a blue link that reads "Upload an image". 
6. Browse to the pic you just saved. 
7. Google will search for that image.

As an alternative, you can search by the url

1. right click on the image you want to search
2. choose Copy Link Location or Copy image URL etc. depending on your browser
3. go to www.google.com
4. click on images
5. paste the link in. 

This is an amazing and somewhat creepy tool. It could be used for nefarious purposes or it could be used by webmasters or models to determine if their pictures are being used without permission. 

J - Google AdSense module for Joomla - BE SURE TO ADD YOUR PUBLISHER ID

We are in the process of migrating our sites from MS Frontpage (uggggghhh) to Joomla 1.7. Many of these sites run Google Adsense.

We found a powerful, easy to use, module called J - Google AdSense. It makes adding google adsense code to your site extremely easy.

HOWEVER - I noticed that there is a field in the setup called Pub-ID. If you mouse over that, the message is that without a publisher ID, the module will run in the "Demo Mode".   In other words, if you don't put your publisher ID in the field, then you will never earn any money from the adsense ads.

Joomla 1.7 temp folder warning

I migrated a site from joomla 1.5 to 1.7. I've been having some problems with updating some plug ins. I was getting a warning that the temp folder wasn't set.

I got into the PHP.INI file and , at around line 500, found the problem.  THe upload tmp directive was commented out. I uncommented it and the warning was gone. I'm still not where i want to be with the functioning but this was one issue that is now fixed


; Temporary directory for HTTP uploaded files (will use system default if not
; specified).
upload_tmp_dir = /tmp

Redirecting a folder using Apache redirects

We are in the process of converting a number of our MS Frontpage bases sites to Joomla based sites.

Most of the FP sites had pages with HTM extensions. We turned on most of the SEO functions for Joomla 1.7. The resulting URLs have an HTML extension. Over the years, search engines have indexed the pages. If we simply switch form Frontpage to Joomla, there will be a period of time when the URL in the search engines leads to a page not found error.

One way to deal with this is with 301 redirects. You can edit your.htaccess file and set up redirects. For example,

Redirect 301 /about_wildwood.htm http://wildwoodviews.com/about-wildwood.html

That will work. However, we had a series of pages for various hotels in  the three communities. Doing a 301 redirect for each page can be tedious.

We found that the RedirectMatch command will work in our case. e.g.

RedirectMatch 301 ^/Motels/Wildwood/ http://wildwoodviews.com/accommodations/wildwood.html

That  will take all of the pages that were found under /Motels/Wildwood on the old server and redirect them to the general wildwood page. Keep in mind that this redirect is taking traffic intended for a specific page and dumping it to the general page for that area. For our purposes, with this site, that will work.

Caveats:

1. SEO is a complex field, there is no guarantee that this method will not harm your rankings
2. Using redirects can result in an infine loop locking your site.  ONE error can crash your site. Usually though, fixing the error restore  the site to visibility. 

WARNING - Anarchists plan Denial of Service attack on Oct 10 2011

The "Occupy Wall Street" Anarchist morons are planning to attack Wall Street with a denial of service attack on October 10th. "NYSE shall be erased from the internet".

This is a serious threat.  Banking, stocks and other transactions could be affected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz0swK0mpMk

The impacts are

• Inability to transact business on the internet
• Inability to access money. 
• Loss of records

What you can do

• Check ALL of your systems for evidence of trojans or other malware. In order for this to work, the perptrators need to have tens of thousands of computers under their control
• Make sure that you have cash on hand prior to the weekend. 
• Make sure that you have downloaded copies of financial transactions for your banks, IRA's, Mortgages and any other financial transaction. 
• Make sure that you have current backups, especially of servers.
• Have a plan for your family in the event that communications are disrupted. 

These people are idiot anarchists. They are trying to collapse the system. It is possible. 

Outlook Express Password Recovery

I have a client who just purchased a new machine.  I'm migrating his apps and data over the weekend in order to deliver it Monday morning. One small problem was that he had no idea what he was using for a password for his email. The password was entered in Outlook Express so he never had to use it.

I tried a couple of free recovery tool but both of them crashed. The old machine is running windows XP home.

I found Mail PassView at download.com. BINGO - I was able to retrieve the password within seconds.

Mail Passview can be found at http://www.nirsoft.net/password_recovery_tools.html.

These tools have legitimate uses. However one should be aware that they can be misused as well. If someone gets physical access to your computer while you are logged in, they can download, run and execute a password recovery app in less than 5 minutes. Physical security of your computers is important.

Verizon FIOS Copyright violation notice. DEALING WITH MORONS

I called Verizon today to see if I could get a cheaper plan for the house phone that did not have fios on it. When I called, I got a message that there was an alleged copyright infringement.

Well, I found out I can't get anything less than about $50 a month with caller ID.

I tried to find out what was going on with the copyright infringement thing. SO FAR I HAVE WASTED TWO PRECIOUS HOURS OF MY LIFE trying to get to the bottom of this.

I can't simply ignore it because Coke snorting screwed up hollywood a-holes like Charlie Sheehan have to support their tens of thousands of dollars a month drug habits. Hollywood has donated thousands to the congresscritters and the current white house occupier in exchange for laws favorable to them. The steaming piles of fecal matter have done things like sued a 60 year old grandmother in a housing project because her young pre-teen daughter downloaded about 5 songs... FOR SOMETHING LIKE A QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS..

I am now well into hour 3 with the non-support department at verizon.. I have to find out if it was a real complaint or if it was some little bastard schmuck of an ambulance chasing turd of a laywer who filed something.

I did go online on both accounts and checked there. Both accounts for the two phones say that there is no violation notice.

If you want to know how I feel about this: Shakespeare Henry IV. (Act IV, Scene II)

Screw Hollywood. 28 million people watched 2 1/2 men to find out that sheehans character fell on a third rail and exploded.. 28 people watched that drivel that was the result of a so called actor being unable to function in a useless sit-com. How many of those people are aware that the whitehouse pushed a loan to a company called Solyndra AND 500 ****BILLION**** dollars is missing??? Hmmm.. I'll bet it doesn't come anywhere close to 28 million people .   How many people are aware that the Obama department of justice was FORCING gun stores to sell weapons to illegal narco terrorist buyers and those weapons were used to kill US border agents?? Not 28 million..

Hollywood is the new circus of the "panem et circenses" of 2000 years ago.. Keep the people ignorant by feeding them drivel from hollywood, pay off the congresscritters and get laws allowing you to sue homeowners for alleged copyright infringement.


Screw hollywood and the leftist, useless bastards that compose it. 

Skype video not working on an HP Vista laptop

We had a client whose webcam would no longer work on her HP Vista Laptop. There were messages about 'a failure to render' and that Directx was not correctly installed.

We got repeated errors while trying to reinstall Directx. We also checked the video in Device Manager and Windows claimed that the drivers were up to date.

We ran Windows Update and found that Vista had not yet been updated to SP1. We updated to SP1 and all current updates. The problem persisted.

The next step was to go to the Nvidia site and download the latest drivers from there. After downloading and running the Nvidia package, Skype would once again run video from the laptop webcam.

UPDATE - As I tested the machine, the onboard camera continued to fail. I finally determined that the onboard camera was having some hardware issues. I plugged in Microsoft VX 3000 webcam. The software refused to install despite repeated attempts including updating the Windows installer. I finally got things stable by simply connecting the webcam without installing the software. Unfortunately the machine asks you to install the software for the 'new device' every time you boot. A simple "CANCEL" removes that annoyance.

Backing up PST files using the FILE EXPORT feature of Outlook

Many people will have invaluable information stored in Outlook. ... Calendars, Contacts, emails, notes and more.  They often have no backups of this file, especially in the case of home or home office users. They don't realize how vulnerable they are till the experience a lost or corrupted PST file.


I back up my PST files by simply doing a File export. This is a manual process but, once you have done it a few times, it is almost effortless.

1. Go to FILE IMPORT AND EXPORT
2. Choose EXPORT TO A FILE
3. Choose PERSONAL FOLDER FILE PST
4. Select the root of your outlook. (Usually Personal Folders) Otherwise you will only be backing up one folder
5. Check INCLUDE SUBFOLDERS
6. Give the file a name
7. I don't think the replace duplicates really matters
8. The export may take a while. I have an 800 MB PST and it takes over 15 to 20 minutes to run the backup. When you are done, Check the file sizes to ensure that you have all the data. The file sizes of the PST you are using for Outlook should be very close to the file size of the PST you create.
9. Make sure you save or copy the PST to a location other than the source computer.


If you ever need to use the backup, You can copy it to the computer with outlook. Then you simply open the file in outlook.

In the event you lose something like one contact, you can temporarily open up an older backup in outlook., find the contact in question, and copy it to your regular Outlook PST file.

There is also a free utility from Microsoft that will create regular, automatic backups of your PST file.

Changing the required icon for Fabrik forms in Joomla from an envelope to a star

Our sites are now built in Joomla using Fabrik for form management.

A client wanted the email required icon  to have a red star similar to the 'is not empty' icon when using validations.

The icons for the icon images live in /media/com_fabrik/images  .   The two files are required.png and emal.gif. required is a red star and email is a small envelope.

We fired up photoshop and downloaded the two files. We created a new email icon with the same name of email.gif. After uploading the icon to the original folder an overwriting the fabrik email.gif icon, we were almost there.

The email icon ends up very close to the label. We got around this easily by changing the label to "Email   ." In other words, the label, a few spaces and a dot. Since there won't be many email fields in a normal site, then this should not be too much of a problem.

One could also simply convert the required.png to a gif file named email.gif and get similar results. The difference is that the email validation would result in simply a red star without the envelope for an icon.

I've provided our modified email.gif file below. You may copy and use it if you like.

Copying files from a non bootable Vista machine using Knoppix

If you have a non bootable vista machine it is a good idea to back up the files on the drives before trying any type of major repair such as a Hive replacement or repair install.

One method to do this is to use a Knoppix boot CD. Knoppix is a Linux based OS that will run from a CD.

The steps are straightforward but somewhat involved.

1. Go to the Knoppix site http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html and download an ISO image of the latest Knoppix version. Usually you will see a directory listing of files. Look for the most recent dates, EN if your language is English and an .ISO extension
2. Insert a blank CD. Run a program that will burn ISO images such as Roxio. Burn the ISO image to a CD. 
3. Insert the CD into the machine you want to get the files from. Plug in the network cables. You may have to go into the setup to make sure the machine boots from the CD, not the hard drive. 
4. Boot the machine. Some of the versions of Knoppix have a reader which can be annoying as you scroll through the choices. You can adjust the volume in setup
5. If you are on a home network (ie not a domain) and you use DHCP, you should find that your machine has connected to your network.
6. Go to the choices for the Graphical Shell. When the GUI opens, look to the bottom left for FILE MANAGER.
7. Set up a shared folder on your network to receive the files. I use a Network Addressable storage drive. That is shared. Create a folder to hold the files such as Deadmachine
8. Choose Network drives in FILE MANAGER on the left. You should then see your network and you can drill down through the machines to your target folder. 
9. Open a new tab in file manager. In that tab, look for the hard drive where your data is stored. The most important folder will probably be the \users\[username] folder. Navigate to that. 
10. You can then select the folders you want and copy and paste them to the tab where you have your network target folder open. 
11. Most programs will store their data in the \users folder of Vista. If you have programs that store data elsewhere, be sure to find and copy those folders as well. 

That is basically it. I found the knoppix cd to be easy to use. It connected readily to my network and allowed me to find and copy the files I wanted. 

Google Maps Distance Measurement tool - Great for boating as well as driving

You can enhance the functionality of Google Maps with some extra tools from Google labs.

You can get to the labs with http://maps.google.com/?showlabs=1  then enable the tools you want

Several tools that would be great for boaters are

• The Distance Measurement Tool - If you enable this, you will get a scale in the lower left of your Google maps that allows you to get a rough idea of distances. You can also click on the faint icon next to the ruler and enable a more extensive tool. This tool will allow you to sum up the distance between a number of points. An example would be if you wanted to get an idea of how far it would be on the intercoastal waterway between Atlantic City and Cape May. You can get a quick estimate by zooming in a bit and plotting points that roughly follow the ICW. 
• LatLong Tooltip - You can press shift and see the latitude and longitude. 
• LatLong Marker - Adds an item to the context marker to add a label with latitude and longitude.  This would be helpful for finding the coordinates of a desired waypoint on Google maps. 

WARNING - Navigation often requires exactitude. While, they are helpful, do not rely solely on any of these tools for navigation. 

Field Expedient Trailer Wiring. ie a Komplete Kludge

We bought a used waverunner which we got REAL cheap.. Chris and I were bringing it down from Toms River to LBI. The lights weren't working and it was getting dark.

I found a Walmart and purchased a 4 prong 4' connector kit. I also purchased 2 wires with alligator clips.

I got out to the car and realized I didn't have a knife or any other blade, nor did I have electrical tape. I started heading back to Walmat when the lights went out... POWER FAILURE.... Right next to the Oyster Creek Nuke plant which is the biggest generating station in 50 miles.. go figure.

We had to split the ribbon wire to connect the two 4 prong plugs from the set.   Since I lacked a knife, I asked a couple of the people in the parking lot if they had one. After a couple of negative responses to "Hey, do you have a knife" from heavily tatooed, pierced 300 pound walmart shopper guys, I began to determine that my course of action might not be longevity enhancing. Believe it or not, a license plate makes a decent blade for separating the wires.   Luckily I had wire strippers from my network installation kit and was able to strip the ends of the wire.

Now, Connecting them was a challenge. We were working with rapidly fading daylight and no stores open because of an electrical outage... next to the oldest nuke plant in the country... A quick inventory of the assortment of stuff in my truck showed (1) Wall anchors (2) A couple of plastic bags..  We used the wall anchors as a half asssed substitute for wire connectors. I then ripped strips of plastic bag and wrapped that around the four connected wires. Then I completed the mummification with an additional bag.

The trailer lights depend on the trailer being electrically grounded to the vehicle. 20 years of salt water makes for some less than stellar connections. Couple that with the fact that the bracket for my ball.. (I mean the trailer ball).. was coated in black lacquer. A material not known to conduct electricity. We used the alligator clipped wires to complete the grounding by clipping them to bare metal on the trailer and bare metal on the Mountaineer. It's amazing how much plastic is used in an SUV. I've seen less plastic on strippers.

We headed back toward LBI passing multiple cops on traffic duty. I kept wondering if (1) The lights were still on and (2) if the bearings had yet reached the temperature of the sun's core.

We passed the Oyster Creek Plant. I suppose any grandchildren I might have are destined to have 2 or more heads now.

Right before LBI, we pulled into a Wa Wa. The lights were still on and all functions were working. The bearings were almost at room temperature...That was after about 40 minutes of driving.  We got back onto the road and completed the last 20 minutes of the drive. When we pulled into the driveway. The lights were still working... McGyver and the A-Team - EAT YOUR HEARTS OUT!!!... VENIMUS VIDIMUS VICIMUS..


Memo to self.. Semper Paratus.. Para Bellum etc.. KEEP A STEEENKING MULTI TOOL IN THE STEEENKING CAR ALONG WITH SOME TAPE.

Afterthought. I did have a first aid kit. Had my car looked less like a Fema Disaster area I might have noticed it and realized Band Aids would be superior to shredded plastic.
I don't recommend people trying this because it probably violates about 30 Federal Regulations, at least 20 People's Republik of New JErsey Regulations and common sense.. But Hey, it worked!!!