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Showing posts from January, 2011

Google Instant bugs - and no good way to report them...

Ever since "Google Instant" was released by Google, the search box occasionally just disappears in Firefox: This seems to happen right around the moment when Google Instant directs Firefox to a new URL and I happen to be pressing the back button on my Logitech G500 Mouse . Which is, by the way, a very nice mouse for gaming and general-purpose use for us right-handed folks. Left-handed folks are, unfortunately, so neglected by computer equipment manufacturers. Anyway, I'm not sure why this bug happens. There is also another annoying bug with Google Instant that happens when I'm typing quickly. It switches from the main page to the Google Instant page. The search box is there with my search but complete search results refuse to show up and clicking the search button does nothing. Starting over and running the exact same search causes search results to show up. Google is one of those companies that doesn't publish their e-mail addresses anywhere. I do

Two ways to make your computer faster that no one thinks of.

I've been using Windows for a really long time. As have many other geeks/nerds. I've seen my share of "Registry Cleaners", speedup tools, and tips from other people. All these things don't work. They really don't. You might get a temporary "boost" in certain areas, but a month later you'll be experiencing enough seemingly unrelated system problems that you'll end up reinstalling Windows. People always tell me their computers are slow and want to know how to speed it up. Today, I'm going to show you two ways to truly speed up a Windows-based computer and keep it lightning fast. First, fire up that slow computer and launch Task Manager. Go to the "Performance" tab, and look at the amount of memory being used. If the amount of memory being used exceeds 80% of the amount of available physical RAM, that means that portions of the OS and other programs are being moved to what is known as "swap space". Swap space

Dedicated Hosting just got affordable...

It used to be, in order to have your own dedicated host, you had to plop down hundreds of dollars a month. Today, I noticed that 1and1 has a fantastic deal on dedicated hosting for $60/month on a permanent basis - this is not one of those 6 month deals. Cloud hosting and virtual hosting are, in my opinion, no longer competitive with this deal. I use dedicated hosting myself and absolutely love it. Most people opt for shared hosting, which introduces them to a world of hurt. If you have multiple websites, shared hosting gets expensive really fast. Plus shared hosting has significant downsides: - No control of the server. You are at the mercy of the hosting provider and their settings. - Web hosts cram hundreds, possibly thousands of websites onto a single box. Your website is not alone. - Greater risk at getting hacked because someone else on the same box got hacked. - You risk getting kicked off the hosting provider due to "too much CPU, RAM, or other resour

How to get unblocked from Hotmail/Live

For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to get my domains unblocked from Hotmail/Live. I set up a new domain for Barebones CMS ( barebonescms.com ) and put forums on the site and forgot to add a SPF record for the domain. A couple weeks ago, Hotmail/Live servers decided that e-mail from barebonescms.com was invalid and therefore refused delivery. Due to the holidays being crazy, I was unable to get around to dealing with the problem. Then I discovered that Hotmail/Live was actually blocking ALL e-mail from my e-mail server regardless of domain. This sent me on a search to see how I could get unblocked. Of course, the first step was to fix my DNS records to add a SPF record. SPF-aware mail servers should really be assuming a default of: v=spf1 mx -all Or: v=spf1 a mx -all That way, most of us don't have to fiddle with silly things like this. The next two steps to getting off the Hotmail/Live block list is to go here: https://support.msn.com/ And requ