Owner: franzone.com - thoughts of a web geek URL:http://www.franzone.com Join Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:56:48 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: I'm a work from home web geek, a father of three, a husband, a world of warcraft nerd, a martial arts practitioner, a musician and many other things. Product reviews, technical articles, April Fools posts, live stories, oh... and we have comics! Site statistics:Click here
You Lost My Funding. Seriously? 2007-05-23 05:00:57 Ah, life’s glorious adventures! The twists and turns are sometimes like white water rafting. This is how yesterday started out. A phone call from the Vice President of the sector that I work under for my current contract.
Let’s rewind a bit. Let’s go back in time and relive the events that lead up to this earth shattering moment in my Tuesday. As Dane Cook would say, “Let’s Tarantino it.” Actually I just want to share a few points.
I belong to a home group (bible study, small group, whatever you want to call it). Basically we (a group of families and friends) get together and study the bible, eat, talk and build relationships… it’s fun. Anyway we’ve been studying the book of Colossians for a while now and this past Tuesday (May 15) one particular verse stood out to me. I couldn’t understand why really. It’s not a verse that I would have thought that I needed work on, certainly in light of some of the other surrounding v Read more:Funding
, Seriously
The Hare And The Tortoise 2007-05-22 05:00:41 Ouch! It’s been a while since running. I’ve been a bit depressed about it all and a bit busy with life, but that’s really no excuse. Well, actually it is an excuse… it’s just not a good reason. I’d like to start off this entry in my Runner’s Log with an old story that comes from Aesop’s Fables:
The Hare and the Tortoise
A Hare one day ridiculed the short feet and slow pace of the Tortoise, who replied, laughing: “Though you be swift as the wind, I will beat you in a race.” The Hare, believing her assertion to be simply impossible, assented to the proposal; and they agreed that the Fox should choose the course and fix the goal. On the day appointed for the race the two started together. The Tortoise never for a moment stopped, but went on with a slow but steady pace straight to the end of the course. The Hare, lying down by the wayside, fell fast asleep. At last waking up, and moving as fast as he could, he saw the Tortoise ha
The Ultimate Matrix Collection [HD DVD] … Father’s Day? 2007-05-22 04:50:55 The UltimateMatrix
Collection [HD DVD] was released today (May 22, 2007) and what could make your geek dad happier on Father
’s Day (right around the corner). This is a 5 Disc collection in [HD DVD] format with the following contents:
DVD Features (1080p):
Disc 1: The Matrix (1999)
Side 1
In-Movie Experience
Written introduction by The Wachowski brothers
Philosophers’ commentary by Dr. Cornel West and Ken Wilber
Critics’ commentary by Todd McCarthy, John Powers and David Thomson
Cast and crew commentary by Carrie-Anne Moss, Zach Staenberg and John Gaeta
Composer commentary by Don Davis with music-only track
Behind The Matrix: Making The Matrix, The Dance of the Master: Yuen Wo Ping’s Blocking Tapes, The Bathroom Fight and Wet Wall, The Code of the Red Dress, The Old Exit: Wabash and Lake, Agent Down, But Wait- There’s More
The Music Revisited
Marilyn Manson Music Video Rock is Dead
The Matrix Teaser, trailer, and TV spots: Manson, Reality, Forget Everyt
Get Your FREE Games Here! 2007-05-26 05:00:54 Following on the heels of yesterday’s post, I’d like to cover a site today that gives away commercial games for FREE. Actually if you read that post and went to the site then you probably already know about this site. It’s run by the same people, and actually it is just a subdomain of the same site!
Game Giveaway of the Day
In the main part of the screen is the featured game giveaway of the day. You have to download and install the game during the giveaway duration for it to be valid(free). If you click the More link then you can read more about the features and view any possible screenshots of the game and/or links to the publishers website.
Just like the software site, the game giveaway site has an RSS feed so that you can subscribe and get updated everyday in your favorite aggregator and never miss out on a free game!
Read more:Games
Google Buys FeedBurner For $100 Million 2007-05-25 05:05:43 Just in case you didn’t know there have been rumors flying around that Google
(Public, NASDAQ:GOOG) had plans to purchase FeedBurner
, the RSS management company that many blog sites including this one use. I don’t pay attention to rumors because so many of them fly around these days including the one a couple weeks back about Microsoft (Public, NASDAQ:MSFT) acquiring Yahoo (Public, NASDAQ:YHOO). Apparently this one is the real deal, at least according to TechCrunch. In this article on their site they expound, “The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point.”
These guys just don’t quit! Next thing you know they’ll just own the whole internet… perhaps the world. Who knows, maybe they’ll even go after Microsoft next… GoogleOS anyone?
Read more:Google Buys
Commercial Software for FREE 2007-05-25 05:00:25 I’m giving away licenses to commercial software products today! That’s right! Well… sort of. Ok, not really. I am going to tell you where you can go to find them though. This is a review of a website that does just that. They find good commercial software products that you would normally have to pay for and they arrange to give them away for FREE on their site for one day. You can go back to the site every single day and get a new software product… pretty cool eh? Want to find out more?
Giveaway of the Day
When you first land on the site you are immediately greeted with the sites credo to let you know what it’s all about. You’ll also notice that you can access the site in a number of different languages like (Spanish, Italian, German, French and Portuguese). There is of course a search function at the top of the site that allows you to search for software. This is after all a good catalog of applications. Ok, now for the meat and potatoes. In the Read more:Commercial
, Software
Google Unplugged? New API To Enabled Offline Web Applications 2007-05-31 00:47:22 Google has an early release of a new Google Gears (BETA) that will do just that. It couples a browser Javascript API and a back-end relational database to enable some sort of briefcase model for web applications.
According a TechCrunch article Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline
Google is hosting a developer day for 5,000 developers worldwide. The bulk of developers will be gathering at the San Jose convention center for a keynote by Google’s VP of Engineering, Jeff Huber. At the conference Google will be outlining their developer strategy. But the big announcement will be Google Gears, an open source browser plugin that will enable developers to create offline web applications using JavaScript APIs. As a developer, you’ll be able to make an application with the assurance that it will work offline and online across browsers.
I’m sorry… did he say across browsers? This is JavaScript right? Alrighty then. I guess if anybody can do it, Google can. The Google ma Read more:Applications
, Google
Squidoo’s Tentacles Are In A Twist 2007-05-30 23:04:38 Well… that is what they (Squidoo
) said, not me. I just love catching big websites with their pants down. In fact I decided to create a special category (Site Malfunctions) just for the occasion. Of course as with all of the big guys the site was not down but for a second or two. You have to be quick to actually catch them. So here’s the screenshot. Click to view the larger version on Flickr.
Read more:Tentacles
The Last Firefox AddOn You Will Ever Need 2007-05-29 05:05:51 How would like for your computer… nay, your web browser (cough, Firefox
) to know exactly when you need more information and to know exactly what type of information you need while browsing the web? Well, AdaptiveBlue believes they have done just that! Maybe not the exactly part, but pretty darn close. Just right click on a term while browsing a web page and you will be presented with a myriad of options like dictionary definitions, wikipedia entries, imdb listings, Amazon listings, ebay listings, similar tunes on last.fm, similar blog topics, and the list goes on. This is the Superman of add-ons!
I read about this nifty addon in the Compiler Blog on Wired’s Blog Network. The original article is titled BlueOrganizer Squeezes Your Personal Web Into a Single Click.
* BTW - Don’t bother looking for it. They don’t have RSS feeds over at WIRED Magazine. I’ve already submitted user feedback for that. You should do the same while you are there though, because
How Much Of Your Life Is Online? 2007-05-29 05:00:38 Do you blog? Do you have an online profile? Do you have an email address? How much of your life do you really have online? Does it make you nervous? Well it doesn’t make Hasan Elahi, a 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor nervous. In fact it is the opposite that makes him nervous. That is because professor Elahi makes a lot of overseas trips and a random tipoff left him on the FBI watch list. Of course the tip was false and he is in the free and clear, but once you get on the list… you never get off. So to create the perfect alibi he records every minute of his life and uploads it to a public webserver for all to view. Now that is being an open book.
I read this article in the June 2007 issue of WIRED magazine. The article is titled The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online. The story is not too long so if you have a chance I’d highly suggest taking a glance. Then once you are done with that (I cannot believe they did not link to it) you can check
For Those Who Have Served And Died 2007-05-28 05:00:47
Today is the nationally observed day for Memorial Day formerly known as Decoration Day so I would like to remember those men and women who have died in the service of our country.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. John 15:13 (English Standard Version). If that’s true of your friends… then how much more so for a nation full of strangers. It is a brave and courageous thing to go to war and serve in that manner. I cannot understand or comprehend it because I have never been in that situation myself. I am very thankful to those that have served and saddened at the thought of the many losses our country has suffered. I am also thankful for those that are still serving for without them freedom would not be possible for me or my family. Thank you.
I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me 2007-06-01 21:05:56 …And I have no privacy, whoa-oa-oa. Sorry, don’t you just love that 80s song, Somebody
’s Watching
Me by Rockwell? Well, it leads me to my topic today. I stumbled upon a site with some pretty neato gadgets that I figured I’d review for you today.
Pakatak is one of the UK’s largest independent suppliers of surveillance and monitoring equipment: for home & business security purposes, but also leisure and fun. One of the more interesting pages that I found myself caught up on was their spy cameras. Don’t we all just want to be an international man of mystery? Groovy baby, yeah!
They have really small wireless cameras that you could probably mount anywhere. There are even a couple of the infamous “pinhole” variety where the camera lens can virtually stick through the size of a small pin hole. Sweet! Of course night vision was almost a standard feature on most of the cameras I saw.
Finally once you’ve picked out your camera(s), along
Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates Video Online 2007-06-01 00:26:51 A big thanks to Wired Magazine for this big link. Yeah, I know I get a lot of my tech content from them. Why do you think I have a category dedicated to them (ReWIRED)?
Anyway, this year at the D5 conference (All Things Digital) Steve
Jobs and Gates
.htm">Bill Gates
were together on the same stage to talk about various things about the software and computer industry. The video of the event is online for you to view and is quite entertaining. If you are at all interested in computers, software and/or the tensions between Microsoft (Public, NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple (Public, NASDAQ:AAPL) then I would highly suggest giving it a watch. As a hint of how things started the first question asked was for each of them to comment on what and how they thought the other had contributed to the computer and technology industry. Hmmm… let’s try to shake things up shall we?
Take a look at these two screenshots:
Notice anything similar about the pictures? Oh yeah, they are exactly that! The Get A Mac ad Read more:Steve Jobs
Pound Bang Slash Bin Slash Bash - A Script To Write Scripts 2007-06-06 01:15:04 I thought I’d share some of my linux geekiness today and share one of the scripts I keep in my personal arsenal. This is one I’ve had for some time that I use quite often. It is very simple and it does one thing very quickly. It creates a script. What? Yep. Every get tired of typing #!/bin/bash and all the stuff that follows? Well keep reading.
Let’s just dig right into the script itself and see what it does. The first part of the file sets up some default values as you can see here. Nothing complicated; an author, company and file mode. If you do not know what that file mode means then you are probably in the wrong blog post. All hope is not lost though; why not check out A Practical Guide to Linux(R) Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming. Or if you can’t wait for shipping you can check out the Linux For Dummies website. It’s in a forum style and breaks down a lot of the basics in human readable language.
DEFAULT_AUTHOR="Jonathan Franzone"
DEFAULT_COM Read more:Pound
, Scripts
, Write
Can I Get A Side Of Configuration Error With My Domain? 2007-06-05 16:03:05 Helping a pal of mine research a new domain name I encountered a site malfunction on DomainsBot.com. Here is the screenshot for your enjoyment. Click the thumbnail to see the full screen picture!
Read more:Configuration
WordPress Upgrade And Blog Splitting 2007-06-05 00:29:33 If you didn’t catch my post from yesterday, I detailed how I just opened a new domain called Mouse Engine Optimizer. The reason for this was to separate out all of my SEO (search engine optimization) and overall Make Money Online posts into a different blog. The diversified content seemed to be throwing off my context-sensitive ads and making it hard for them to stay on target.
This process took three major steps which I will be covering today:
Creating The New Blog
Migrating Existing Blog Posts/Articles
Redirecting Traffic From Old URLs To The New Blog
1) Creating The New Blog
I figured since I was creating a new blog I might as well seize the opportunity to test out the new WordPress 2.2 upgrade. After all I’ve been itching to get to it since release, but haven’t yet had the opportunity. Easy enough I created a directory on my web host (1&1), downloaded the latest WordPress package and unzipped it to the root of my new directory. While uploading all of the lat Read more:Splitting
Saving The World, One Computer At A Time! 2007-06-04 12:21:15 You guys backup your computers on a regular basis, don’t you? Of course you do. I mean there’s really no reason not too. Me? Well, sure… I mean I usually start out with the intentions of backing up. OK! I don’t as often as I should. So today I want to review a site that makes this often tedious chore a breeze!
IDrive-E, a leading online backup service provider offers encrypted online backups for free (up to 2GB) and Unlimited storage (for $4.95/month). It is easy to use, fast and secure
If you go to there website (which I highly suggest doing), you can check out the features. If of course include all the latest high security so you can be confident that your data is safe traveling across the wire. They have hands free automated backup that is not complicated. This will ensure that you won’t have to remember your backups and will take the chore out of the task. Finally the interface? Easy! It looks and behaves just like Windows Explorer.
While there are ot Read more:Computer
, Saving
, World
New Domain Added - Make Money Online 2007-06-04 05:00:23 I decided this weekend that I would move all of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and overall Make Money
Online type blog posts to another blog. Why? Well, I’ve been having some problems with targeted ads. The problem? They’re not targeted at all! My niche is well… non-existent. Or has been at least in the past.
I started out with a simple subdomain fix for the problem, but then I came up with a quarky little name for the new blog. Then the new name happened to be available as a domain so I sprung for the $5 and setup a new domain. So the newest member of the franzone blogging empire is the Mouse Engine Optimizer. Go check it out!
Tomorrow I’ll be detailing the whole process of the WordPress upgrade, the blog post migrations and some redirection magic to prevent any possible 404 errors.
Is That OS X, Vista, XP or Linux? The Infiltration Is Complete 2007-06-09 04:00:40 VMWare Fusion Beta 4 is loose and in the wild as of 06/07/2007. We all know and recognize VMWare as the leader in the virtualization industry, so the following quote will come as no surprise.
Built from the ground up for the Mac, VMware Fusion leverages nearly a decade of virtualization expertise to harness the full power of your Mac hardware, while still supporting Windows-only applications, USB 2.0 devices, 64-bit, and accelerated 3D graphics.
Of course it also supports Linux
, Solaris and a list of other operating systems. In addition you can download a ready-to-use virtual appliance from VMWare’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace that is pre-configured and ready to go. Just drop it in and start it up. Now this is where it get’s juicy!
Say goodbye to the Windows desktop - seamlessly run Windows XP applications just like Mac applications; use Exposé to switch between any application, minimize to the Dock, bring forward only the application you care about, and use familiar Mac Read more:Infiltration
, Vista
Is Apple Infiltrating Microsoft? 2007-06-08 00:31:05 There are currently over 300 million installed copies of iTunes… that is approximately triple the number of iPods in circulation. Many of these copies of iTunes are installed on Windows systems and in fact contain mini-Apple
networking platforms that can communicate across your network with Mac computers! Here is a video clip of Walt Mossberg, Personal Technology Columnist for the Wall Street Journal talking about his take on this interesting phenomenon.
Pssssst! Hey you bloggers, down here. Would like to know where I got the video from? I knew you would. The News Room provides access to hundreds of thousands of fully licensed news stories that can be published, or mashed, on your site.
It was extremely easy to do. How easy? I just browsed through the categories until I found a story that was on topic for what I was looking for, then I hit the mash button. A little window popped up and let me configure the display of the video and then gave me the code to paste into my sit Read more:Microsoft
When Spyware Attacks! What Will You Do? 2007-06-07 23:39:06 I have a reputation for being an all around geek, especially with my family and friends. So given the opportunity to help those in need of assistance I generally turn down any kind of monetary reimbursement. Instead I just pile the whole family over to their house and they usually end up feeding us. We have a great time talking, I fix their computer woes, the kids play and all is well. Usually.
During this one instance, however the poor victim (the computer) was not so fortunate. It was so extremely bad that I could not at first tell what the problem was. The thing just wouldn’t boot up. I soon discovered that it was because the system resources were being consumed on startup by an enormous amount of spyware applications that had accumulated on the system. I ended up taking the system home with me. After many, many… many reboots and system cleans with several different tools the poor thing was rendered useless. The Windows operating system was completely corrupted and dam Read more:Spyware
What Does QA Stand For Again? 2007-06-07 00:23:16 Quality assurance and/or testing should be an integral part of any software engineer’s process. Well, for that matter it should be part of any person’s process who produces anything to distribute. Whether you are a one man shop, a group of five or an empire of thousands the process should be there and actually is pretty much the same in all scenarios. It’s only a difference of scale.
Now I know we’ve all had those bosses that tell you all you need to do is code, test, code, test… run, build, run, build. As long as you do that everything should turn out alright, right? Wrong! Here is a major flaw in that theory. You are the designer of the system or the thing that you are producing and thus you have an unfortunate bent towards the way it should work. You will view things the way they should be viewed and do things in the order they should be done in no matter how hard you try to throw things into the mix. Believe me I’ve tried to fight against this c Read more:Again
, Stand
I Am Now A PayPerPost Blogger! 2007-06-07 00:18:57 It is official! My first post was approved yesterday so I thought I’d give a shout-out to the latest site that I’m using to get a lot of the information (site reviews, technical articles) that I’m blogging about lately. PayPerPost
is a service for both bloggers and advertisers.
Advertisers who would like to place ads on blogs can place opportunities for bloggers to blog about your product, site or whatever you would like. You can set your word count requirements, the link requirements and what the link text should say and you can even require certain images to be embedded into the posts. Worried about placing your ad on small-time blogs? Don’t worry, you can set minimum Google PR and Alexa Ratings for your ad as well. Isn’t that nifty?
For bloggers it’s great too. After getting your blog approved you can go in and find opportunities to blog about. All the requirements are right there. You can just cut and paste the links and images for embedding. Vis Read more:Blogger
HDMI Cables Cheaper Than Retail 2007-06-06 19:58:54 For those of you with newer televisions with the HDMI hookups you know those cables do not come cheap. Well do I have a solution for you! Technical Cable Applications has a whole slew of cables for your every need, but more specifically they have HDMI Cables for way cheaper than you are going to find at your local retail shop. Plus you don’t have to leave your house!
This post has been sponsored
Read more:Retail
FeedBurner Subscriber Trends 2007-06-12 00:24:36 Since I’ve taken the plunge and actually posted my FeedBurner
subscriber badge on the site, it has motivated (more like obsessed) me to work hard at getting more subscribers. Since I’ve been watching this I’ve noticed a trend that is quite interesting. I’ve been hovering in the mid 30s for quite some time now and so last week I decided that I would try to shoot for 40 subscribers by the end of the week. I don’t know why it just seemed like a reasonable goal and something that I wanted to accomplish.
The numbers go up and down a bit and I didn’t think I would make it, but low and behold Saturday morning the number was a big shiny 40 smiling back at me. w00t! Needless to say I was very happy about that. Of course I would have no such luck in sharing this with the working world, because come Monday morning the number actually plummeted to 24. Ouch! That’s almost half.
After a bit of research I realized that the FeedBurner subscriber number is lagg Read more:Subscriber
, Trends
Why Is Internet Explorer So Stupid!? 2007-06-11 05:00:48 I actually have a speculation as to why Microsoft’s browser stinks so bad. It is because they do not have to fix it. Their browser is so deeply embedded into every Windows operating system on the planet, which is the most widely used home operating system. Looking at the statistics for this site the browser usage is actually split almost equally between Firefox and IE, but I believe that is because users who browse tech sites tend to be a bit more savvy when it comes to being on the internet. I also administer a couple of non-tech sites and I have checked the statistics for those sites. 90% of the users access the sites using InternetExplorer
.
Have you ever heard the saying, “Why fix it if it ain’t broke?” Well, in Microsoft’s mind their product is not broken since it is so widely used. Geez Jonathan, what are you so worked up about? I’ve been working on getting some other sites/blogs updated this weekend and trying out different WordPress themes. I Read more:Internet Explorer
, Stupid
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