Thu Jul 24, 2008
Error 500 - Internal server error on Wordpress 2.x Dashboard
You may (or may have not) noticed over at adamandlauragowest and resoluteopinion that there haven't been any new posts in a few days.
Well, if you're wondering or perhaps have this same issue. I updated some plug-ins and started getting an Error 500 as soon as I logged in to the Wordpress dashboard on both sites.
Turns out, after some Google searching, that WP Super Cache was causing the issue with a recent update. I've just removed the plug-in for now and I can login just fine.
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Steve Ballmer is Too Late
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft sent an Email to the troops (read it here) outlining some new directions for the company.
I applaud Ballmer's attempt to make things better and plan for the future but I think it's too late. Steve is too late, just sit out the last 15 years of Microsoft on your high horse because the changes you want to make go against everything Microsoft is about and will completely freak your customers out. Look at Vista's development for example. It was 5 years late to market and I've ready in a few places that there were so many thousands of people working on Vista that development inched along with too much overlap and Vista now is just cobbled together.
Personally, I love Vista and don't have any problems with it but a lot of people do so I'll shut my face.
Anyway, read Steve's plan and come on back. I'll recap a few things and give some personal thoughts on his message.
Click "Full Story" for the rest
Full Story
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MobileMe: Yeah, it sucks.
I won't make a habit of complaining about MobileMe but I've grown to absolutely see no value in it whatsoever. In fact, I didn't see any value in it prior to purchasing it but I got a great deal on it.
The good:
1. Push contacts and calendars that works flawlessly. I have a Dell with Vista Ultimate, a Mac with Leopard, a VMWare powered Vista install on my Mac and an iPhone 3G. Across all four devices, my contacts and calendars stay in sync and I love it.
2. iDisk still comes in handy for file transfers but there are so many better options out there. Other than file transfers I see no value in iDisk other than daily backups of some of my content.
The bad:
1. Mail downtime. Of course, I don't use the email feature but I have it configured and it just doesn't work.
2. iCards. I missed iCards and now they're gone *tear*.
3. Interface. I miss the .Mac interface. I felt like I was getting more for my money. That's just me.
I'll try to do more with MobileMe in the coming months like setting up a website or using my MobileMe gallery more often but on the other hand, the more I vest in the service, the harder it will be to make myself avoid paying the $99 this time next year. It the service was $49, it would be a no brainer but I can't pay $99 for a service with so little to offer.
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Wed Jul 23, 2008
Facebook f8 Keynote
You can watch Zuckerburg's f8 keynote live now.
http://www.visualwebcaster.com/Facebook/50038/event.html
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Loopt. I Hate to Love You.
My favorite social networking service that I discovered via The App Store is called Loopt. They already have a website and an application on Facebook. Loopt is also supports dozens of mobile phones that aren't iPhone but I live in a world where if it isn't on iPhone then I don't know about it so I just learned about this awesome social networking tool.
You have friends and you want to know where they are. They have to tell Loopt where they are and then you can check all of your buddies and their current location. It's awesome! I can update my location using iPhone's location services and it automatically posts my location and an update to Twitter or Facebook. What more could I want?
Well, there has to be an easier way of adding friends. Perhaps giving friends a Loopt account number or my email address would be easier. Instead, they have to know my phone number. I'm not secretive about my mobile but wishing there was an easier way.
Justine Ezarik posted her thoughts on the service after she sent her number to a few contacts that didn't need her mobile number. Higher profile bloggers have to be careful about posting their number online and Loopt doesn't give you any other options.
There has to be another way to find your friends than through something personal like SMS.
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Touchscreens Today
All the coolest gadgets have them these days: touchscreens. It's not just ATMs and PDAs anymore. They're everywhere, from the cash register to our cars to our pockets. (Holding back on drooling over the iPhone 3G) We love them, we can't get enough of them; if you could put one on our forehead, we'd think it was...well, pretty dumb...the point is they're cool.
Having a touchscreen on my phone brings simplicity as I walk or drive. There's no fiddling with buttons. Calling up someone is as easy as flick, tap, call. It's similar with GPS and navigation systems, just being able to touch what you need makes driving actually more safe.
As there could be with anything, you can have too much of a good thing. People putting touch capabilities onto a UMPC, I think, is overdoing it a little bit, simply due to there already being a mouse and keyboard on the device.
I like touchscreens, they're handy, and quite portable. They make things easier to use, but they can sometimes have a use that can exceed the proper application.
Kolin Toney is a resident of Florida and blogs about tech over at his blog.
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A Trip to WaterField Designs
I was invited for to stop by the offices of Gary Waterfield, owner of WaterField Designs. A simple Twitter post that I was stopping by resulted in a few replies mentioning that their bags are the best quality bags in the bay area and I agree.
I've been using WaterField bags to hold my tech since 2004 and still keep them around for day to day things. I'm not a fan of messenger bags but WaterField's bags for iPhone, Apple Keyboard and cables are all genius and perfectly constructed.
Expensive? Not really. There are pricier bags that are of substantially worse quality than Gary's bags. It was cool seeing all of the bags out and ready for shipment and I'm happy for their success. I even snagged some stickers.
They don't have an open door policy but do me a favor and stop by the website for a few minutes. You'll love the bag selection and best of all, SF Bags is based in San Francisco. Thanks team for the tour.
SFbags.com
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!$title$! Sweeps The Web
Ever since Automattic released the Wordpress App for iPhone, I've seen these RSS entries pop up from my favorite sites. What's the story? Well, it seems to be an entry that is created when you setup the app to connect to your Wordpress blog. No word on what's causing the issue.
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Tue Jul 22, 2008
Finding The Tech Parties
I've been getting questions from people asking me how I find these cool parties hosted by the coolest companies. How do I know what's going on in SF? I take for granted that most people are in touch so never thought that it must be written out. Well, this is going to be a lazy entry and just contain links with descriptions.
1. Going.com focuses on events and nightlife
2. Upcoming.org is the place to find tech events. My profile is here.
3. funCheap SF is a place to find cheap or free things on a daily basis.
4. My Open Bar is an awesome way to find open bars day to day like a calendar.
I hope this gets you started. This is how I find everything that is going on in the bay area. If you have friends in SF that are in touch, look at their upcoming events on Facebook too.
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Mon Jul 21, 2008
I've Forgotten How to Write
This is going to be an incredibly honest and open post about myself. Today, I was filling out paperwork which I rarely do and quickly realized that I have forgotten how to write. The phrase, "If You Don't Use It, You Lose It" applies to me and my ability to write. As you all know, I have no problem whatsoever with writing things down on a computer. It's handwriting that's the problem. Maybe I should give you a little bit of history about myself.
I'm left-handed so naturally, I'm expected to have bad handwriting and look like a weirdo if asked to write anything down. I never surpassed that issue. I still write sideways and can't write on a straight line. In 2nd grade, I got my first computer and began typing all homework assignments on it. My typing speed increased but it was around 4th grade that my writing improvement stopped dead. Then, in 8th grade (high school) when essays and page long assignments become standard, I saved up and purchased an Apple iBook.
I was chosen in my high school to lead the student notebook initiative and helped setup a school-wide Airport wireless network, network printers in each hallway and deployed iBooks for teachers. from 8th grade to graduation, every assignment, note taking session and even some tests were performed digitally by me, printed off in the classroom and handed to the teacher. I did very well in school and graduated with honors. After that, I got a job at Apple Computer in retail and from there started working for a midsized IT company. I skipped college and relied on dozens of seminars and IT certifications for job advancement. I felt confident I wouldn't need college and so far, that's been the case.
Fast forward to today and the only time I use a pen is to sign my name. When I'm asked to write more than just my John Hancock, the result is scary to everyone in the vicinity. Today, I was writing roughly 3 sentences on a piece of paper and my hand cramped up despite not really squeezing the pen too hard.
I was writing signs for our garage sale a couple of months ago and I was writing "s" and "d" backward on the piece of paper. The "J" in Jackson was backward and what was written, was hardly legible.
It's sad. I blame myself for isolating myself to writing strictly on computers since I was a child. Laura does most of the writing for me and she's understanding of my "problem" but it's an issue that I must correct for my own sanity. I'll be taking a writing class and will begin practicing my ABCs again soon. There has to be more people out there that are having the same problems and I can't be the only one in this situation. You can laugh but this is completely serious. I had to get that off my chest.
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AAPL Stocks Plummeting
Today, Apple announced record quarter profits, record Mac sales, strong iPhone sales, increase in iPod sales and record retail store foot traffic and pretty much Apple's best quarter ever.
Yet, once again, stocks drop substantially. I don't follow AAPL on a daily basis but I do take a peek after every quarterly announcement and without fail the stocks drop so far down. I pray that Apple never announces a bad quarter.
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How Fast is Too Fast?
I've had a week with the new MacBook Pro. For those that missed it, I just bought the MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz w/ 4GBs of ram and a 7200RPM hard drive. It's the fastest Apple notebook ever from what I can tell. So, after a week I don't feel that I really needed this much performance. It's the fastest computer I've ever used and slightly slower than my Dell desktop at home (Quad core 2.66). The system boots in to OS X in about 30 seconds and after 1 minute, I'm ready to go with my 5 "always-open" applications.
Launching Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator shortly after launch takes about 45 seconds and iTunes starts instantly which is a big deal. I don't see a lag with coverflow or iPhoto scrolling and encoding music is faster than I could ever want. This is great but my first thought was that I don't need this kind of speed. My old 2.33GHz MacBook Pro was fast enough for everything I wanted to do.
I thought it was too fast until I pulled my old PowerBook 1.5Ghz out of the closet to recover some photos. The PowerBook 1.5 is a classic notebook that once retailed for $1999 about 3 years ago before being replaced by the 1.8GHz MacBook Pro. It was "the fastest notebook ever" and I was going mad while waiting for spotlight to search my drive, iPhoto to find 2002's pictures and a simply empty of the trash to complete.
I'm not saying G4 owners need to upgrade to Intel powered Macs but I forgot how slow things used to be in the old days. I can't imagine my computer being any faster at opening iPhoto because 1.5 seconds if fast enough but one day, for fun, I'll open up this "old" notebook and compare it to my 8-core 3Ghz MacBook Pro and laugh to myself and say outloud, "I can't believe this thing cost over 3 grand in 2008"
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CherryPal Review
I've ordered a CherryPal cloud computer and it should be here in the next couple of weeks. It's a very low power linux powered computer that runs on an XScale processor. The specs are very similar to an EeePC but this is a desktop computer. The price is only $249 so I'll be testing it out and giving some thoughts on the growing selection of cheap, low power and low performance systems that basically use the cloud for storage. It's an interesting market that I'm sure will be growing.
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DTT Main Page Changes
I've increased the amount of posts on the front page to 20 items. I've been consistently posting 5 things a day for the past 2 weeks so It's been hard for newcomers to catch items that are even 2 days old. I hope my posting frequency continues. If you have any other feedback let me know. Don't mention issues with site design or comments. A redesign is coming soon and will fix everything.
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The iPhone is Sold Out...Everywhere
I am extremely surprised that Apple has depleted supply of the iPhone 3G after 10 days on sale. I'm sure it surprised Apple too. They had to have sold 2 million iPhones in the past 10 days and this shortage is probably going to last another 2-4 weeks until supply is replenished. There are champagne bottles cracking open over at Apple this week and I send my congratulations out to them.
What does this mean?
1. A lower initial price of $199 is important to consumers. As I said before, $199 speaks to consumers and they don't care about paying more over the course of a 2 year contract.
2. The iPhone doesn't do everything that a Blackberry or Nokia N95 does but simple and sexy wins overall
3. People don't care about being locked in. With iPhone you have to use iTunes for every bit of content (even ringtones) and consumers don't care.
Gone are the days of downloading apps or ringtones from the Internet and dropping them onto your smartphone via USB cable and Apple's ongoing revenue stream from digital distribution sales will bring them cash for years to come.
Good for you Apple. The iPhone has a long way to go and adding features but maintaining simplicity will be a challenge that I'm sure Apple will pull off. The 2.0 software is buggy as hell and I pray for a fix very soon.
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Twitter: Home of Too Many Conversations
I love Twitter and have been using the service since March 20th of 2007. I've just surpassed 25 thousand tweets and have only 950 followers. 950 seems like a lot but for someone that has done 25 thousand posts in just over a year, for someone to follow you, they must be extremely interested in what you have to say. I receive replies to every one of my tweets and that's a sign of a true relationship with my followers. How many of your posts receive a reply?
How do I respond back? more than half of the time, I use direct messages to reply back to replies. It's private, personal and I prefer it. I hate receiving direct messages from others because Twitter's messaging system isn't very fast at all but you can send direct messages from Twitter's main page once you've logged in.
Type ,"d adamjackson Hi" and you've just sent a direct message. There's no need to go to the messages page to do this. The same rule works on Twitter clients across all platforms (even iPhone) and via SMS text messages.
Replies are distracting and followers don't like seeing your conversations with others. Think of it this way. Every day, you come home and your roommate is watching Jeopardy and that's on at all times when you're at the house. Eventually, you tune out the sound of the buzzers and dialogue and sounds that normally stand out become background noise.
If I have ten followers and 50% of my posts are replies to people or conversations back and forth with someone they don't follow, know of or remotely care about then they ignore some of my posts at first and eventually as a follower browses his or her Twitter page and sees posts from the 100 people they follow, my posts begin to fade and are skipped over more often. It's training the mind. If someone is talking but not talking to you, your interest in what they are saying weakens.
23% of my posts are replies to other people. I have thousands of direct messages back and forth with people but of 25 thousand posts, 23% is a very low number. I polled 25 random people on Twitter via TweetStats.com and all of them have over 50% reply ratios. Everyone has their own style but just know that your tweets become irrelevant over time and your followers start classifying your posts as background noise.
Be unique, fun, normal and don't make Twitter a chat room because you won't go anywhere and the only reason you'll get more followers is if you're Internet famous.
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Memory Card Tips
I receive these press release documents from Andy of MarkenCom.com and have for the past 3 years. I read each of them and usually it's nothing special but I received some tips this morning on memory cards. Keep in mind it was promotional but I liked some of the tips outlined.
Q - What are the best practices for caring for images stored on my camera's memory card?
A - It is best to download all your photos from the card onto the computer. Then delete the ones you dont want. If you continuously delete them directly from your camera, you could accidentally delete a desired photo, or risk corrupting the files. One corrupted image file can cause many other images files to be lost. Keep a spare memory card on hand if you anticipate running out of storage space on your current card, to avoid having to delete photos just to make room for new images.
One of the most common causes of corrupt files is turning the camera off or removing the memory card before the camera buffer has completely transferred your files to the memory card.
Always reformat the card in your camera each time after downloading and saving the pictures on your computer. Don't use the computer to format the card. You should use the format function on the camera to prepare the card for new picture taking after you have properly saved the images on your PC.
It is best to avoid continued picture taking when the camera batteries are nearly depleted to avoid corrupting the memory card if the battery should die while your camera is attempting to save your last photo. Be certain that your batteries have been charged sufficiently before taking pictures and keep a set of fully charged spare batteries handy just in case.
Q. What is the difference between archive and backup and why should I do both?
A. With an archive, files that are no longer needed on a regular basis are removed from the computer and stored in an organized way so individual files are easy to retrieve. Write-once media is generally used to ensure that the files cannot be accidentally changed or erased. Since storage media evolves, archives should be reviewed periodically and updated to current technology.
Backups are active copies that are often updated and used as replacements if the original files are lost or destroyed. Rewriteable media can be used for backups.
You need to do both backups and archiving because one (backup) is for recovery protection and archiving is for long-term data protection.
Q. When I put my memory card in my camera, I get a message telling me to reformat the card. Our Hawaiian vacation photos are on that card. What should I do?
A. Download and save the photos on your computer, then reformat the card in your camera. Don't use the computer to format the card.
For more photo tips and solutions, visit PhotoStorageGuide.com.
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Call for Writers
I have been putting some thought into this lately and wanted to put out a request for new talent. I'm seeking writers / bloggers who are already established with their own site and perhaps want to do some guest posts here. Perhaps you don't have a blog and simply want to post some thoughts here. Send me an email to adam@dailytechtalk.com and we'll chat. This will start as a non-paid gig but after you've jammed out a few articles and I get a feel for your writing style, we'll discuss payment terms.
I'm interested in original content in the form of editorials, reviews and audio / videocasts. There are openings over at MacworldBound.com as well.
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Yoono's Pascal and Chris Heuer on KRON4
KRON4 stopped by Mashable's SummarMashSF party and Social Media Camp and conducted some interviews. You can check out all four here but I embedded two of my favorites below:
Pascal of Yoono
Chris Heuer of Social Media Club
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Sun Jul 20, 2008
iPhone 3G Quirks & Firmware 2.0
Image via ten safe frogs via Flickr
With every new device and device upgrade, comes their own set of bugs and quirks. There have been many complaints on iPhone 3G and/or firmware 2.0 including iPhone 3G battery life, constant app crashing, and loss of sound. I have experienced all of the above. My "restart-my-iPhone-because-I-lost-SMS-in-sounds-and-misc.-sounds" count is up to a grand total of 33 since the launch date. I know I don't have much room to complain, I'm an early adopter and knew there would be numerous bugs and the like. This is more of a post to show what I'm experiencing and what I think needs to be worked on.
(Up the count from 33 to 35 now, in the course of writing the last paragraph it went up twice. :/)
My first complaint is the loss of SMS-in sounds. Ever since launch I've had this problem. What happens is the SMS-in sound goes away, that's it. Every other sound effect works, unlock, lock, keyboard clicks - it's just the SMS-in notification. This really has to be the worst sound, next to the Email-in sound, to lose (knock on wood, if I lose push email I'm done). The only thing the phone does is vibrate, which I hardly ever feel. Thankfully, this time around the sounds are a little louder and noticeable whilst in my pocket. The solution to this is to simply restart the phone. Honestly, this isn't that bad of a problem, more of an annoyance.
Next, I've been experiencing a laggy keyboard. While in Safari, mainly, the keyboard is very slow and sometimes doesn't register every hit. I've also had this happen in SMS. While I'm here, let me segue into another question. Why doesn't the iPhone have a "cancel" button on sending SMS? I've had this on every other phone before iPhone, is it hard to implement? I guess I should just watch what I type to avoid typos, but as much as I want to, I don't. Getting back to the laggy keyboard, I had the problem a lot when I was using the original firmware on iPhone 3G. I later upgraded to 5A347 (thanks Matt!) and the problem was somewhat alleviated.
Finally, battery life! This is one problem I know everyone has experienced with iPhone 3G. Luckily there are ways that we can avoid the huge drain that comes with 3G and the other new services. First and foremost, turn off your services when not in use! This applies to 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and push email. Realistically, you only need 3G on Safari and apps that need the extra bandwidth (Pandora, Last.fm, etc.). Turning off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Push email will keep the device from the constant scanning for the respective services. Your battery will thank you in the long run! Also, this goes without saying when it comes to electronic devices, but keep a charger with you. I have DLO charger in my car and an extra USB cord at work. This way, you can keep the device juiced up for when you need it the most. Yes, keeping it at full charge isn't the best for it, but Li Ion batteries aren't like the older Nickel-Cadmium batteries - they work better when kept full and don't need to be drained all the way.
I do have a few complaints with my new device, but I really am satisfied with it. Apple is taking steps in the right directions, although people disagree with lack of MMS, A2DP, copy/paste. I'm sure Apple has heard our cries and will fix these problems in later firmwares. MacWorld 2009 anyone? :)
(Add 3 more restarts since the beginning of this article)
Gerard "iGerard" Massey is a guest blogger from Gainesville, Florida. You can read more from iGerard over at his website iGerardFTW.
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