Vista and Serif Photoplus

Well, I'm still working with Vista Home Premium on the new laptops.

We've had some issues and some successes.

I use Photoplus 11 from Serif software. It's a really good substitute for Adobe Photoshop at about 10% of the cost.

The license allows you to install it on a desktop and one laptop. I checked out the Serif site and they indicated that Photoplus 11 will run under Vista if you install the patch they provide. I had my 12 year old son install Photoplus and the patch. So far, everything is working fine.

Once again, a migration to Vista can cause a lot of compatibility issues with both hardware and software. As you add your older hardware and software to your new Vista machine, you need to check for compatibility and visit the manufacturer's support pages. Moving to Vista, in most cases, can be a complex process.

Vista Home Premium and USB Hubs

Vista continues to offer nasty urprises.

I previously had a bad experience with a client where I connected a USB hub that we had just purchased. Apparently the hub purchased from Radio Shack did not have Vista drivers and resulted in a Blue Screen of Death necessitating a repair of Vista. That took over an hour that we did not bill the client for. Who would have though that connecting a USB hub would almost prove fatal?

Well, I'm on the road with a new laptop running Vista Home Premium. It's a decent machine but it only has 2 usb ports. One of them has my Chill Mat connected. I wanted to plug in my Sierra USB Aircard and a printer. So, I grabbed a mini 4 port hub I've been using with my old XP machine. In the back of my mind was the thoughts that you get when watching a horror movie... "Don't go in there!!!".. When I plugged the mini hub in and then plugged the aircard, which was working previously, I got a Blue Screen of Death. Reboot resulted in a Black screen of nothingness. Another reboot and things are working OK. Geez folks, IT'S JUST A STEENKING USB 4 PORT HUB... Not a drive, not a printer.. just a steeenking hub.

Anyway, I was lucky that things came back up without a reboot.

Vista Home Premium and a Photosmart A512 printer shared on XP

I just got a laptop primarily for the road that runs on Vista Home Premium. I was setting up the printers from the home office and ran into a nightmare with an HP Photosmart A512 printer that was shared off an XP Home machine.

I tried browsing for a network printer and was getting all kinds of "Access denied" messages. I did some searching and it appeared to be a known issue.

Eventually I found some posts that allowed me to connect. I had to set it up as a local port calling out the name of the machine (Server) and the printer share... Something like \\officemachine\HP Photosmart A512\ That seemed to work but it took over an hour of effort to get there. About 2 weeks later I had to set up another laptop with Vista Home Premium and ran into the same problem. Using the first machine as a model, I was able to get it connected in about 10 minutes.

This is a bit insane considering how long Vista has been out.

Blogger, custom domains and GoDaddy

WARNING - Messing with the domain records can cause all sorts of problems (infinite loops, etc). BE CAREFUL AND USE THE FOLLOWING INFO AT YOUR OWN RISK

I wanted to set this blog up with a domain name of www.chrismendlascorner.com instead of cgmendla.blogspot.com. The blog is hosted at Blogger.

I set up the cname records as indicated in the blogger help. I also checked the box to forward chrismendlascorner.com to www.chrismendlascorner.com.

It looked OK when I went to www. However, when I went to the non www, I ended up at the godaddy parked page. Of course, that is bad for (1) lost traffic and (2) lost revenue going to godaddy instead of yours truly.

GoDaddy support had a couple of ideas, but none of them seemed idea.

I found a blog with a pretty good description of the issues at


http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/2007/01/google-custom-domain-case-study-2.html

I deleted the A record but that did not seem to have any effect. I didn't want to delete the two DNS records pointing to the domain parking. (Not sure if you can even do that).

I'll have to check back after allowing time for DNS propagation. However it looks like the non www is still going to the godaddy parking pages.

I found a post that looks promising. The idea is to set up an additional cname record to point chrismendlascorner.com back to blogger (ghs.google.com)
http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-howdoi/browse_thread/thread/13988c234c9ae13b/75de5aa46c4ba09d?lnk=gst&q=godaddy+cname


I gave that a shot and will check back later to see if it took.


I thought that having things hosted at Blogger would make life easier. Apparently it does not. It would have been simpler to have used my own hosting as I do on some of our other blogs. Also, that would mean that I could easily set up a working email for the domain (Something that is required in certain instances)

Use Caution if you allow visitors to post unmoderated pics to your sites.

There are a lot of tools available that will allow webmasters to allow visitors to upload pictures and then make them immediately available to other visitors.

On one of the webmaster boards I frequent, someone raised the question of checking uploaded pics for inappropriate content. In other words, the uploaded pics were visible immediately.

This raises a lot of legal issues. Remember that there are a lot of lawyers in this country and they make money by suing people.

Here is a nightmare to consider

• You create a site for yourself that allows uploads that are immediately visibile to visitors
• You have no age restrictions or age verification for visitors
• Some idiot uploads underage porn
• A 15 year old kid visits your site and sees the pic
• His parents call the feds to have you arrested and then the fine law firm of Cheetum, Screwem and Fleecem and sue you for your entire net worth.

Life suddenly isn't as much fun as it was.

How do you protect yourself....??

• You would need to have a mechanism to remove offending material ASAP. ie. user reporting, artificial intelligence, looking for clues in the file name.. (ie if you are running a travel site and the file name contains things like teen, nubile, hot, etc..)
• Have disclaimers on the page that push the responsibility for content onto the poster. If you get a decent amount of traffic, then you want to consider having a lawyer who specializes in this area review or write your disclaimer. (Warning, some lawyers are experts at parting you with your hard earned cash.. Caveat Emptor!!)
• Have a means of tracking who actually posted something.. however proxies can mask the trail a bit.
• Be prepared to immediately remove any offending material.. Ie. If you are a mountain climber and the only operator of the site, you better back a laptop, satellite modem and generator while you are hiking at 14k feet so you can prevent the kiddies from being permanently scarred.
• Only allow uploads to be viewed by people who have subscribed and agreed that they will not sue you for 'offensive content'.
• Only allow registered users to upload pics. Part of the registration agreement is that the user/poster is responsible for all content.
  

No matter how you slice it, there is a certain amount of risk in letting users post unmoderated uploads that are visible to your visitors.