After resisting for about a year from talking about Twitter, I finally have to say something.

CNN “bought” the top Twitter account, which has 947,000 followers. The “sale” is not official because that violates Twitter’s terms of service, so the actual amount has not been disclosed. When the purchase was made, second place was Ashton Kutcher, followed by Britney Spears.  Kutcher challenged CNN to be the first to get to one million followers, which he has the first to do.

What a world we live in now, where a regular guy can have almost one million followers on a website, beating celebrities, then sell his list to a major media outlet.

I have mixed feelings about this. First, let me say that when I was made aware of Twitter about a year ago, I wrote a post (that I did not publish) about how stupid the idea was.  Then I remembered that I said the exact same thing about Myspace when they first came out so I realized that Twitter would be big as well, if my record held up.  Which apparently it has.

But I digress.

In case you have lived in a cave, Twitter is a social networking website that allows users to have “followers” that are sent short messages from the user via SMS messages on their cell phones.  Basically, it’s a opt-in, SMS mailing list in real time.  It’s been used to get big news items out of India during the terrorist attacks, and during the Olympics.

What amazes me is that a regular person can get almost one million people to be interested enough in what he’s doing to sign up as a follower. He must have an amazing life because I don’t even want to be a follower for my own life, let alone somebody I don’t even know.

At first, it seemed like a big waste of time. But now that this guy has “sold” his account to CNN, maybe it’s not a big waste of time. Maybe it’s a way to make money. Spammers will get on this next for sure, and buying up big accounts so that they can spam followers.

Twitter hasn’t figured out how to monetize their business yet. I imagine it shouldn’t be that hard to add a little advertising at the end of each message they send out.  Even if the message is just “… this message brought to you by…”

Just about the time people moved over to Facebook, I started to use Myspace.  So, when Twitter becomes last years’ news, I’ll be signing up.

If you want great sound to come out of your laptop, or you’re a mobile DJ, you can either get an external sound device (via USB) or a PC Card (PCMCIA) to plug into your laptop. PCMCIA cards are about the size of credit cards but thicker.  Below are some laptop cards that are on the market.

Creative Audigy 2 ZS (left), Echo Indigo DJ (middle), Creative ExpressCard X-Fi (right)

Currently, Creative Labs no longer support their old Audigy 2 Z5 PCMCIA card (left most card in picture above).  This is too bad because it works really well.  You can find some on sale on Ebay but it’s hard to find.

Only the new X-Fi Xtreme Audio  ExpressCard is available for $79.99 (right most in picture) from Creative Labs.  The X-Fi requires a ExpressCard/54 slot and will not work with the old PCMCIA or PC Card slots.  But since my Toshiba Qosmio has the ExpresCard slot, I decided to try it out.

The Echo Indigo DJ is also available, but you must have a PCMCIA slot on your laptop (see below). So the choices are pretty much down to the Echo or Creative and it just comes down to which type of slot you have on your laptop.

When I got my Toshiba, I wasn’t even aware that there were 2 different types of slots available.  The 2 styles are: the old style PCMCIA slot, and now the newer ExpressCard slots.  So be aware of this before purchasing your laptop.

Echo Indigo DJ close-up

What I like about the Echo (pictured above)  is that only the larger portion sticks out of the laptop and the head phone jack is on the side.  Therefore, if your slot is on the side of your laptop, you can have your cable plug in very close to your laptop without it sticking out.

The picture below shows a close-up of the Creative card with the following features:

• Headphone out / Line out / Optical out (shared 1/8″ mini jack)
• Line In / Microphone In / Optical in (shared 1/8″ mini jack)
• Speaker Docking Module connector (5.1/7.1 surround sound with the Surround Sound Upgrade kit sold separately)

Creative ExpressCard X-Fi close-up

Since the output equipment I’m connecting to are not state-of-the-art stuff, I really couldn’t tell any difference in qualty.  Even with good head-phones on, I really couldn’t tell any difference between the units.  But keep in mind, I’m not a sound engineer, or expert in this area.  Both produced what I would consider quality that is above what would be needed for normal use by any consumer, and maybe even some pro-sumers.

One thing that is a problem for me with the Creative and my Toshiba is that when you press the card in, it pops out.  At first, this seemed like a great feature to remove the card.  However, when using it, you have to be very careful not to bump it or it will get unplugged.  If you are doing a live performance, this is way too risky.  Even if your cable gets pushed against your laptop, this could cause your card to be unplugged.  I’m not sure if this is only a feature of the Toshiba or if that’s the way the ExpressCard slots work.

The other smaller problem with the Creative is that the jacks are located on the outside.  If your slot is on the side of your laptop, and your Creative sticks out, and your cables come out from there, you will need a lot of space on the side of your laptop.  If you’re cramped for space, this may not be the best solutin for you.

The bad news is, that’s all that’s available out there.  Alternatively, you can get an external USB sound output device from just about anywhere from $2.90 on Amazon up to $40 or so.  The Xitel MP3 Streamer is a little more expensive ($49.95 MSRP) than the cheap ones, but works just as well as the internal cards. It’s a little more expensive but it comes with a 30′ audio cable so keep that in mind when pricing.

So, if you have a PCMCIA slot on your laptop, I would go with the Echo.  If you have a ExpressCard slot, I cannot recommend the Creative Labs X-Fi card unless your laptop puts the card internally.  If you want to use an external device, I would recommend the Xitel MP3 Streamer, which is what I use with my Toshiba.

If you have some old IDE drives around but can’t access the data, you can get this Coolmax CD-350 converter from Coolmax (MSRP $33.99).  Amazon has it on sale for $22.73 at the time of this writing but their prices change requently so you’ll have to look for yourself.

Compared to the Vantec Nexstar, this converter is… well, let’s just say it, ugly.  But it does work.  It will convert 2.5-inch, 3.5-inch, or 5.25-inch IDE/SATA drives and connect them via your USB 2.0 port to your computer.  USB 2.0 is supposed to deliver 480 Mbps transfer rates.  I didn’t benchmark anything so I don’t really know if this is true or not.

As for power, for 2.5-inch drives, the power is supplied via the USB bus.  For others, there’s a separate power supply that you plug into the drive for power.  There’s also a power switch to turn the unit on/off.

All in all, it’s not pretty, but this converter does do what it says it does.

As you may or may not know, I’ve spent the last month or so trying to convert from XP to Vista with mostly good results.  One new Vista problem I’ve been having is my HP SC 2500 network printer keeps going offline and I’m not able to get it back online without deleting and re-installing it.

After reading some posts, and doing some trial and error testing, I was finally able to figure out what the problem was.  Basically, the driver was hard coding the IP address in the setting and when the IP address would change, it would be “offline.”

First, bring up the “Printers” list from the control panel.  Highlight the printer in question, and right-click to get the following menu shown below.  Choose “Run as administrator,” then “Properties.”

The “properties” shown below is the result AFTER I fixed the problem. Above the line with the checkmark is the original PORT with the absolute IP address.  This is what was originally selected.  Click on the “Add Port…” button shown below.

Now, you will see the following dialog box.  Select “Standard TCP/IP Port.”  Click on “New Port…”

Now, you have to find out what the Port Name is for your printer.  With the HP printer that I have, you push the “Setup” button, then go through the menu to find the “Network” configuration print operation.  This will print out the Network settings, including the Port Name.  Enter that name in the “Port Settings” as shown below.  Set the “Protocol” to “Raw” and Port number to 9100, and turn on SNMP status.

That’s it!  You’re done and your network printer should now be “online” properly.  Why do you have to do this when it wasn’t needed in XP?  That’s how Microsoft is trying to improve your experience with their new OS.  Thanks Microsoft for a job well done.  NOT!

As you may know, I downgraded to the LG EnV2 because I hated the touchscreen on the Voyager. In any case, the headphone jack on the EnV2 (and probably all LG) is 2.5mm, and not the 3.5mm for normal headsets.  This means that I need a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter to use a headset to listen to my music on the LG.  I decided to take a look on Amazon to see what was available.

The list below shows what pops up on Amazon when you search for “2.5mm 3.5mm.”  Some items were only $2, up to around $12, but with shipping, it would be more like $7 to $19 or so.  And of course, I’d have to wait for it in the mail, which I wasn’t in any mood for.

Next, I did a search on Fry’s website and got the following list with the same search.  On here, they have adapters from 99 cents up to $5. Of course, the problem with Fry’s website is that there’s no direct connection between the online items and what’s available in their stores.  You can call them, but sometimes it’s very hard to find out if something is in stock at the store.  There’s no Fry’s close to me so I decided to keep searching.

Next, I did the same search on Best Buy’s website and came up with the following list.

As you can see, Best Buy’s search sucks big time. It lists 4 items which have nothing to do with what I was looking for.  For that matter, I couldn’t figure out how my 2.5mm search was matched with those items.  If you have any online store, rule #1 is to make sure that your searches work properly so people can find what they want.

In any case, being the Internet savvy guy that I am, I googled Best Buy’s website by using the search “site:bestbuy.com 2.5mm 3.5mm” and came up with the following list:

As you can see above, the top item on google’s list is exactly what I wanted.  I clicked on it and found the following item below on Best Buy’s website:

Interestingly, the item is under “Car & GPS”, then “Antennas & Adaptors.”  Sure.  I would have easily found this.  NOT!  Unfortunately, this item comes with a bunch of other adapters that I don’t really need, along with the one that I do need.  But since Best Buy is close, and they do have the “pick up at store” option, I decided to go ahead and pay $15 for the conveinience.

This last decision turned out to be a big mistake.

The closest Best Buy did not have this item in stock.  However, all the other ones did.  So I ordered it for pickup at the second closest store in West LA. The following email came back 20 minutes later telling me the store did not have it in stock and that I would have to call their 888 number.

After going back on to the Best Buy website and figuring out that there is no way to cancel the order, or to even change it for pickup at another store, I was forced to call their toll free number. After going through their bot, the nice lady on the phone changed my order to the Culver City store, which is the 3rd closest.

After another 20 minutes, I got another email telling me the Culver City store was out of stock.  OMG!  Now, I’ve already spent almost an hour with this crap. I could have almost driven to Fry’s and back in that time.

Once again, I call Best Buy and this time, another nice lady answers the call but she can tell that I’m getting pretty frustrated by now. She tells me that the online inventory is separate from the in-store inventory and that she will check the in-store inventory for me.  After a few clicks, she tells me that the West LA store does indeed have 6 in-store and that I can simply go to the store and pick it up.  So she cancels my online order, and out the door I go.

So next time, I’m just going to call the toll free number and ask for the in-store inventory instead of using their stupid website.  That’s the lesson I learned here.

I wish my story ended here but it goes on a little more.  When I got to the store, I decided I wanted to test the in-store people to see how smart they were.  At the entrance, the cell phone section had 3 live clerks helping people. I went to the first one and asked if they had a adapter for my LG EnV2 so I can use a headset. She told me no.  So, I showed her the SKU number for the item I was looking for.  She told me to ask the second guy there.  So far, this is a fail.

I go up to the second guy and ask the same question. He types in the SKU number but it doesn’t come up because unknown to me, I wrote it down wrong. He does a search on the Best Buy website and comes up with the same stupid list that I got. BWAHAHA!  I tell him how to use google to find it and he’s amazed how well google works.

He sees the item on his computer but can’t figure out exactly where it is. We walk to the MP3 area and it’s not there. He asks the Geek Squad guy walking by and he knows that it’s in the car adapter area.  He walks me there and finds the item.

Basically, this last guy is the only person that really helped me find my item. The online store pickup, didn’t help me, except to tell me to go into the store.  The first lady at the store didn’t help me. Only this last guy helped me.

Most people would have given up BEFORE the second call to Best Buy.  That should be an indicator to Best Buy that something is wrong with their setup and they will soon be on their way holding hands with Circuit City if they don’t do something about it.

Dont’ say I didn’t warn you, Best Buy.

As you may already know, I’ve been slowly trying to move from Windows XP to Vista and have been encountering some differences.  One big difference is that Vista no longer supports the old XP Web Publishing Wizard.  In case you don’t know what that is, it’s a Wizard that helps you upload pictures onto a website without having to use FTP.  It’s very useful if you have a picture gallery on your website.

Well, it turns out that Vista still has this feature, but it’s hidden.

On one of my websites, I use Coppermine Photo Gallery for the picture gallery.  The application creates a .REG file that you can use to modify your registry to automatically setup to use the XP Web Publishing Wizard. The name of the file it creates will be something like “cpg_1157950751.reg” or with some other random numbers.  Inside this file, you will find a line as shown below:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\PublishingWizard\
PublishingWizard\Providers\websitename]

Now, replace the second “PublishingWizard” with “InternetPhotoPrinting,” as shown below.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\PublishingWizard\
InternetPhotoPrinting\Providers\websitename]

Now, double click on the .REG file to execute it.  The Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE) will execute your .REG file and create entries that will allow you to upload images to your website.  You will get a warning window first telling you that you are about to modify your registry.  After you click “OK,” you will get a confirmation window telling you that the entry was created.

Next, open “Windows Photo Gallery” from the Start menu.  If you can’t find it, type in “Photo Gallery” in the search box at the bottom and it will most likely be the first item at the top.

Launch it, and use the program to find the photos that you want to upload to your website.  Highlight the photos that you want to upload.

Now, click on “Print” from the upper menu area as shown below.  Next, click on “Order prints…” as shown.

Next, you will get a window to order prints, as shown below. Scroll down to the entry that was just created for your website. Click on it and a window will open with the application running on your website.

Once you have executed your upload, the next time you run Windows Photo Gallery, your website will be listed in the pull-down menu from “Print,” so that you don’t have to look through the long list of printing companies any longer.

Also, if I remember correctly, in the XP version, there was an option to resize the images before uploading.  Unfortunately, the Vista version does not seem to have this option.  This means that you will have to manually resize the images before you do your uploading.  It’s an extra step but it’s still easier than having to do everything manually via FTP.

It’s good to know that Microsoft decided to take out one of the truely great features of XP in Vista.  No wonder these guys are doing so well.  Love your Vista TV ads too, Microsoft.  Keep up the good work.

There’s never enough hard drive space and hard drive prices keep going lower and lower.  Seagate has a nice 1TB external drive called the Freeagent Xtreme for $229.99 but was on sale at Fry’s for around $180 or so.

The shape of the drive is not the usual rectangular box. Instead, it’s sloped in the front and can be either used standing up (see photo on left) using a stand, or flat on top of another device, like your desktop computer.

The specs are:

USB 2.0: up to 480 Mb/s
FireWire 400: up to 400 Mb/s
eSATA — up to 3Gb/s
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
6.89″ in H x 1.33″ in W x 6.77″ in L (175.0mm x 33.7mm x 172mm)
Weight: 3.06 lb (1.39 kg)

The photo below shows the interesting front light indicator that shows the drive activity.  I’m not sure if all this light show is great or not. I think I’d rather just see a LED indicator that shows me on/off and active/not active.  But these days, I guess you need a gimmick to sell external drives.

The picture below shows the back of the unit.  This side looks more like a conventional external drive with the power connector, eSATA, firewire, and USB2.0.  It’s not ultra skinny or small but slender enough to slip between other junk on your desk.

What I like most about this drive is it’s automatic power saving mode.  When the drive has not been accessed for a while, it will automatically power down and save electricity.  Nice green touch.  You pretty much forget about it until the OS tries to access it, then it will turn on and the crazy light comes on in the front.

If you need more hard drive space, this is a good quiet addition to your desk.

When my old HP desktop’s motherboard crapped out on me, I had to figure out a way to move all the data from the SATA drive over to my new HP computer.  If my old computer was working, I could just use the Vista transfer program to move everything over.  But since the old computer is dead, I can’t do that.

The easiest way to do this is to get a SATA to USB2.0/eSata converter, and of course, to get something like that, you just go to your local Fry’s.  What I found there was the Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock (MSRP $39.99).

This docking station will accept both 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA drives (click on picture below). According to the Vantec website, their new version also has Firewire, but the one I got doesn’t have that connector.  Their specs say that you can get transfer rates Up to 480Mbps with USB 2.0 and transfer rates Up to 3Gb/s with eSATA. I didn’t actually do any testing of the speeds that I got with it.

On my first use, for some reason, I could only see one of the partitions on the drive, but when I tried it again later with another computer, I was able to see both partitions. I don’t know what caused this difference, but I suspect that it may have been caused by a NAS drive being mapped over the drive.

Otherwise, I didn’t have any problems with this docking station and it looks great on my desk, and I’m very happy with it.

You may recall my older article about having problems with my first HP Pavilion ze5470us desktop from Best Buy, that was DOA and had to be replaced.  So when I upgraded to yet to another HP Pavilion m9450f, you may have wondered if there was something wrong with my brain.

At first, everything was going good. Except for compatibility problems with Vista, the computer hardware was working fast and smoothly…

Until 3 weeks later…

Just about the time I finally had everything installed and moved over from my old hard drive, I turn on my computer and I get a blank screen.  Oh crap.  Not good.

HP has a built in self test program by pressing F9 upon power-up.  This is actually a nice touch.  The screen below shows the result of the testing.  You can click on the picture to see a larger version.

Notice that the hard drive is dead. Also, notice where the diagnostic says, “Suggestion: Backup your important data” WTF? How am I supposed to backup my dead hard drive? It also says to call HP support.  Which I did.

HP support is one of the worst support call centers in the industry.  It took them 55 minutes to tell me that my hard drive was dead and that they would send out a new one to me.  Most of that time, I was on hold waiting for the 2 people on the line to read their script so they can tell me what I already told them.

Of course, I didn’t wait 6 days to get the replacement hard drive.  I went straight to Fry’s to get a 1TB SATA drive so that could start restoring my new computer. What’s really frustrating is that it took me about 3 weeks to finally get everything restored from my old computer and all the programs re-installed.  Now, I have to go through the entire procedure again.  What a pain.

The picture below shows the HP’s guts out.  The cage for the hard drive comes out so that you can install the drive.  It’s not as clean as DELL’s case but it’s not the worst one I’ve seen in my life.  I give it a 6 out of 10.

So I finally did get my replacement hard drive after about 6 days. However, it took about 2 weeks to get the “system restore” DVDs that HP sent out. Luckily, I did create these DVDs myself while the computer was still working so I didn’t have to wait.

After I got the replacement drive, I added that to the system to use as a backup internal drive. I had to go into the BIOS to tell it which drive to boot from, but otherwise, it all works fine.

In conclusion, it’s obvious that I’m as stupid as stupid does.  Even after having problems with my first HP, I still went out and bought yet another HP and paid the price.  To be fair, the hard drive dying is a Seagate problem, but HP gets the blame for putting it in their system.  It would have been a lot less work for me if the new HP was DOA instead of dying after 3 weeks.

So I’ll continue to use my HP and see how many weeks it lasts this time.

Now that I have my new computer, I had to move by bookmarks from my old drive.  In the old days, to copy bookmarks over to a new computer, all you had to do was copy bookmark.html or something similar to that. But now, with Vista, and new versions of new browsers, it’s getting harder and harder to do this simple task.

As you may have read, my old HP died and had to be replaced with a newer Vista version of the HP desktop. One of the first things I wanted to do was move over the bookmarks from Firefox 3, which is my main browser that I use.  As it turns out, not so easy when you don’t have your old computer working anymore.

The first thing to do is to be able to access hidden folders. To see them, you have to open Explorer (right click on Start, then click Explorer).

As shown below, next click on “Organize”, then click on “Folder and Search Options”.

Next, you’ll get a window as shown below. Click on the “View” tab, then scroll down to “Hidden files and folders.” Now, click on “Show hidden files and folders,” as shown below.

Now, open Explorer again and go inside your username, then “AppData”, which was the hidden folder, followed by “Roaming,” then “Mozila,” then “Firefox,” and “Profiles,” as shown below.

Note that “Z” is my username (so replace with yours), and the weird folder after “Profiles” will be different and is apparently a randomly generated folder name.

Now, the following files are of interest:

1. places.sqlite
   This is the Firefox 3 bookmarks and browsing history.
2. cookies.sqlite
   The cookies
3. formhistory.sqlite
   Saved entries from web forms and the search bar.
4. key3.db and signons3.txt
   Both files are needed for saved passwords.

The directory where these files are located is shown below.  Now copy these from the original drive over to the new computer.  Done!