When my external CD player for my Toshiba Portege R205 laptop broke down, I had to find a replacement.  After looking around, the only other small external drive was the LG Slim Portable Double-layer DVD reader/Writer.  I found it on the Best Buy website but at the time, they only had it for store purchase only for about $120.  One thing that this unit has that my Toshiba also had, is the ability to operate just on the USB connection without a power adapter.

In the picture below, you can see that the LG is slightly larger but not by much.  The Toshiba opens on the top, whereas the LG slides out the front.  The Toshiba is slightly thinner as well.

Size comparison - Toshiba (left) LG (right)

The picture below shows a closer view of the LG writer.  If you lay it flat on your desk (as pictured), you need more room than the Toshiba unit which opens on the top.  However, the Toshiba unit was just a CD reader only.  So you get a ton more features with this LG unit, including LightScribe which “burns” the label straight onto the DVD.

Front view

The only thing strange is that according to the documentation, some USB ports do not output the proper amount of power to burn DVDs.  To get around this problem, this LG unit comes with a second special USB cable that plugs into the “power” input shown below (left).

Back view of USB power (left) and USB data (right)

Using this unit with the Toshiba laptop was a snap and I didn’t have to load any drivers or CDs to RIP CDs onto the hard drive.  I did’t try burning DVDs using the laptop but I did do so using my desktop and just one USB and everything worked fine.  It’s slower than my internal DVD burner but that’s to be expected.  Actually, one of my DVDs didn’t read properly on my internal drive but did read on this external LG unit.  Not sure what to make of that except that I was glad it worked.

This unit is clearly for laptop users and not desktop computers because the cable that comes with it is very short.  It’s longer than the one that came with my Toshiba CD reader, but still too short to go from the back of a desktop unit all the way around to the front.  So if you’re going to use it that way, you’d better get another USB cable.

All in all, I’m happy with my new external DVD burner.  If you want something for your laptop that you can use without a power adapter, this unit is for you.

Somehow, I missed the news that Time Warner was discontinuing Usenet Newsgroups for their broadband accounts on June 23, 2008.

So to my surprise, last week, I loaded up my Agent Newsgroup reader program, and couldn’t access any newsgroups.

In case you don’t know what Usenet Newsgroups are, it’s a pre-websites, different area of the Internet where people post messages, pictures, video and music on a “forum” like format.  The only difference is, unlike websites, there’s no “owner” of these newsgroups.  You can find newsgroups that deal with every topic conceivable, from hobbies, politics, technical issues, all the way to, of course, porn.  Or pr0n, as it is known to Internet savvy people.

So I guess with gas prices rising, Time Warner had to cut some fat to help balance their checkbooks, and getting rid of their Newsgroup servers must be their way to do that.

After looking around the Internet for the best newsgroup service, I came upon Giganews.com.  All the reviews had this service highly rated, in speed, price, and service.  It’s not the cheapest, but cheap and slow is not what I’m looking for.

Another factor in my decision was they let you try it out for free for 3 days, AND a discount (50% or 20% depending on account choice) for Time Warner subscribers.  Free for 3 days and a discount.  Oh, this was a no-brainer.

Sign-up was easy and they accepted my paypal for payment.  As per the agreement, they haven’t charged me anything yet because it’s only been 2 days so far.  I’ve used the service and the speed is great and all the newsgroups that are important to me (read pr0n) are available on this service.

I’m not happy that basically Time Warner has raised their prices by eliminating services, but I am happy with my new Giganews account so far.

With the launch of Firefox 3, and it’s supposed 15,000 or so bug fixes and new features, I joined everyone helping Mozilla obtain their download world record.

Some of the big new features are: one-click bookmarking, iPhone-line zooming, smart location bar, password manager, spell checker (YES!), keystroke find, better performance, and last but not least, mailto links to webmail.

What this means is, when you click on a link on a website that uses “mailto:”, you can have Firefox go to Yahoo webmail instead of Microsoft Outlook (the default).  This can happen when you click on things like “Contact Us” or “email me” on a website.

The new Firefox comes with a setting for Yahoo webmail, but others are also available with more work.  For Yahoo webmail, at the top, click on “Tools”, then “Options.”  You’ll get a small window with a bunch of options.  Click on “Applications” in the top area (see image below).

Next, scroll down to “mailto” in the list.  Next to it, you’ll see “Use Microsoft Outlook (default).”  Click on this to get the pull down menu and select “Use Yahoo Mail”, or “Always Ask” if you want to decide on the fly. And that’s it!

If you want to use Google mail, it’s a little bit trickier.  For the entire info, see Lifehack or just read on.  Type “ctrl-t” to open a new blank tab.  Type “gmail.com” in the URL area to go to Gmail and login.  Now, you have to type the following javascript code in the URL address bar, and press ENTER (one line, no spaces):

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto",
"https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","GMail")

This will bring a line right below the URL area asking the following: “Add Gmail as an application for mailto links?”  Press the “Add application” button on the right.  You’re done!

Now you can choose between Outlook, Yahoo or Gmail.  Nice.

While we’re on the subject of Firefox 3, I’ve noticed a big speed improvement with AJAX websites like Google Docs, especially Google Spreadsheet.  It’s noticably faster than IE7.

If that’s not enough goodies, the photo upload feature works properly with WordPress 2.5.1 as well, unlike IE7.

Okay, that convinced you, right?

While the World Series of Poker 2008 is going on at the Rio, Microsoft has put their Surface OS tables in the lounges there.  This video shows some “applications” for the Surface, iPhone-like operating system, like games and ways to pickup on the ladies, or vice versa.

Frankly, I’ve never seen attractive chicks like these playing video games, or even touching anything geeky, other than the iPhone.  Maybe the iPhone will finally bring in the good looking people into the world of gadgets and geeks.  One can dream.

By now, you should now about my hate/more hate relationship with hosting company globat.com.  As I got ready to change hosting companies, my yearly contract was about to run out on May 9, 2008.  However, on April 21, a full 19 days before my year was over, globat was kind enough to automatically renew my 1 year contract and sent me a lovely email to let me know about the order that was processed on my behalf.

We have processed your invoice [redacted] today in the amount of $95.40 and the charges have been approved.

Transaction ID: [redacted]
Date: Mon Apr 21 00:22:27 2008
Domain: [redacted]

Services breakdown:

$95.40 for [redacted] TeraByte Xtreme™

You can view this transaction and the invoice referred to herein by logging into our billing interface at

https://login.globat.com/cp2/account.php?page=change_info

If you have forgotten your username and password, please use the following link
https://login.globat.com/cp2/forgot.php or call one of our Expert Customer Service representatives for further assistance. 

If you have any questions or experience any problems with your web hosting account, please contact us at:

http://www.globat.com/about_us/contact_us/ contactform.htm

or call us at (323) 874-9000.

Please do not reply to this email as it is automatically generated.

Don’t forget that you can use 1-Click Renewal(tm) to conveniently renew your account in the fture! Just login to your account today to save up to 30% off regular prices! Use this now at:

https://login.globat.com/cp2/renewal.php

Thank you for your trust,
Jackie Otero
Billing Manager
Globat.com
(323) 874-9000

WTF!?  No, you di-int!!  You’re joking now right?  I normally don’t make fun of typos (because I make enough myself), but I had to highlight the “fture” typo.  Do they not have a spell check over there at Globat?   Add to that, the ”Thank you for your trust,” at the end really takes the cake.  Yeah, just the opposite globat.  There is no trust here.  In fact, I trust you’re going to screw me over.

So now I have to log into my account to find out how to cancel my new 1 year contract.  When I click on “Cancel Account,” I get this nice screen message:

Well, that’s so nice of them.  It would be too easy to let me cancel my account via the website over the Internet.  Since your motto is: “customers are our #1 priority,” we get to call you between 9am and 5pm PST to close our accounts.

To make a long story short (too late), I did make the call, and Jackie answered the phone promptly, and she closed my account and… wait for it… refunded my money!  What!?  This is too easy.  I was expecting a big fight and having to call the credit card company, and the Better Business Bureau, but no such luck.

Isn’t that the most ironic twist?  Only when I actually close my account, did I get good customer service.  If they had done that while I still had my account, I would have kept my account going indefinitely.  Instead, I had to spend about 4 weekends to convert databases, write code, and re-write FAQs, just so that I could move to a new host.  I would have preferred to stay with globat, but they gave me no options.  I cannot continue to give them money for treating their customers like trash.

Good bye Globat.com.  Hello 1and1.com.

In case you’re not familiar with Joomla, it’s a PHP/MySQL based content management system (CMS) that you can use to create entire websites with.  I already had a godaddy.com account for another website so I decided to try to set up the new website using Joomla.

Everything seemed to work okay, except for the SEF.  SEF stands for “search engine friendly URLs,” which means that your pages are made to look like they are in directories instead of long commands to the CMS.  For example, without SEF, you’d have a URL like:

http://host.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=3&Itemid=41

With SEF:

http://host.com/content/section/3/33/

As you can see, the SEF is preferred not only by search engines, but normal people as well.  I already had SEF working with WordPress for cochinoman.com, so I knew that it should work.  If you’ve had the same problem, here’s how to make it work.

First, setup your Joomla global configuration under the SEO tab as follows:

It took me a while to figure it out but the following article in the joomla forum told me everything I needed to know.  First, you must rename the “htaccess.txt” file to “.htacess”  Now, edit it as follows:
## Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above.
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL
# is not directly related to physical file paths.
# Update Your Joomla!/MamboDirectory (just / for root)
RewriteBase /

The trick here is that when you do this the very first time, you must wait 1 hour for it to take effect.  This is where a lot of people give up and think their hosting account on godaddy isn’t working.  So did I.  Because of this initial delay, I suggest you do this first, then work on uploading and editing other parts of your website.

Once your server realizes you have created your .htaccess file, there will no longer be the cached delay and any changes you make will be immediate.

Everything works fine now with Joomla + SEF + Godaddy.com = success!

In case you missed my rants about Globat, it started here.

After my email confirmation with Edward Gaa, their VP of Sales and Marketing, AND a conversation over the phone with their customer service rep, that they will no longer have me on this rediculous opt-out list, I felt this was finally resolved.

But I noticed a new link in the administration screen of my account that would let me opt-out of their mailing programs. Sure enough, it showed that I was still on ALL 4 of their mailing lists.  What a joke.  No matter.  I calmly clicked on all 4 choices and opted out of all of them.  Nice.  Problem solved.  So I thought.

Keep reading. Yes, it’s hard to believe, but after all the complaints, changing the settings on their website, and calls I’ve gone through over the last year with Globat, they have the balls to send me yet another opt-out upgrade program for $49.95 for an online website WYSIWYG editor that I would never use in a million years.

But this time, it comes with the following message:

= = = Important: This Is an Automatic Upgrade = = =

Since we began our upgrade program, we have received lots of feedback from our customers who only heard about these upgrade promotions too late or through a friend. Many customers then suggested that we utilize an automatic upgrade process along with some form of an additional incentive to initiate these upgrades. Well, we have listened to your feedback and we are acting on it!

It’s impossible, I know. They are actually trying to convince me that their customers are knocking down their doors for this opt-out automatic upgrade program that they continue to use to rip off their customers.  Is this not illegal?!  If not, it should be.

To me, this is like a robber, trying to convice me that other people convinced him that we all wanted to be robbed. It’s so disingenuous on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start.

First off, let’s see those feedbacks from customers who wanted this feature. I want to see them. All of them. With the names of the people and their email addresses. Oh, you don’t have it available? No, kidding.

Hey! But what about those settings I set in my online account with Globat? What happened? Take a look.

WTF!!!??? As you can see, somehow ONLY the “Marketing E-mails” and “Automatic Upgrade Program” opt-out boxes are no longer checked. Isn’t that just amazingly convenient that just those 2 options are now checked off.

It would have been a little less creepy if all the 4 boxes were checked off. Then, I might have thought their database “accidentally” got cleared out. But when only the top 2 are checked off, then I know it was on purpose. Bastards. I hate them. I hate them with a passion.

No, it didn’t cost me anything (this time). Yes, it was just a few minutes of my time to read the stupid email and opt-out of the useless upgrades for $49.95. But that’s not the point.

The point is, Globat is ripping their customers off and I’m sure many of them don’t even know it,  Moreover, they have no understanding of what customer service is about.

Well, I’ve already opened a new account at 1and1.com. I have until May to move all my data over. It’s a lot of work to move.  But there’s no way in hell I’m giving Globat another penny. Not one penny. That would be rewarding them for running their business so badly.  And I surely don’t want to do that.

Have you ever lost your cell phone and lost all your contact information?  This seems to happen to a lot of people.

Verizon Wireless has an auto backup feature that is free.  No, they don’t go out of their way to tell you about it, but it’s been there for years.

Before you start, you must already have a “Get It Now” enabled phone from Verizon.  If you don’t have a compatible phone, you are SOL and it’s time to updated your phone.  If you’re not sure, you can go to verizonwireless.com to find out or call them.

So now, to get the backup feature for free, go to verizonwireless.com and create an account.  To do this, you will need your Verizon account information.  Next, login to your account.  Click on “Tools and Applications.”  At the pull down menu, select your phone.  To the right of that pull down, there’s another pull down labled “Jump To.”  Select “Business/Tools.”

Now, look for “Backup Assistant.”  Click on the link.  There will be a message there explaining that it costs $1.99 per month.  If you read the entire text, it tells you that if you are a “My Account” customer, the fee is waved and so it’s FREE!

Other than having your contacts automatically backed up, you also have access to the information via your Verizon account online.  Also, when you get a new phone, you don’t have to go down to the local office to have the numbers transfered for you.  You can do it yourself by using the restore feature on your new phone.  You can even “restore” a number that you have accidentally deleted from you phone.

If you’re a Verizon customer and you aren’t using this free feature, you should sign up right now.  Otherwise, you really shouldn’t even be reading this blog.

As Ashley “Kristen” Dupre brings down NY Governer Spitzer, she’s also going the way of Devine Brown by using her 15 minutes to jump start her music career.  Reports are that her first single has been downloaded 3 million times, and her second single, “Move Ya Body” moved up to a maximum 98 cents on AmieStreet.com. She’s got a music video out already to promote her music.

Larry Flynt is reported to have offered $1 million for Dupre to pose naked.  Dupre could “prostitute” herself and take up his offer or wait longer to cash in from Penhouse or even Playboy.  Better yet, she could have a reality show about her budding music career, or NY escorting.  The later would certainly be a big hit.  I’d watch it.

While looking for pictures of Dupre, I found some on the New York Post website.  They have pictures of Dupre, her family, and a few sexy pictures of her as well.  During my search, I came across chickipedia.com which has a few picture of Dupre also.

Chickipedia is exactly what you think it is.  It’s wikipedia, but for hot chicks.  Their database contains over 2,400 chicks and over 24,000 images of chicks.  For the most part, it’s pretty cool but they do have the exact same problems as wikipedia with clowns putting in erroneous information.  One example is Alicia Keys’ hips being listed as 51 inches.  Come on now.

One technically cool AJAX code they use is as you’re typing your text in the search box, it will show a list of matching names.  However, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to sort the database by, let’s say, largest breast to smallest.  You can find a list of everyone with a specific breast size, or height, but no sorting.  It really doesn’t matter because the physical size information doesn’t seem to be all that accurate anyway.  And yes, Jenna Jameson is there, but no hardcore stuff.

They also have videos of your favorite hotties.  Their cover page currently features Olivia Munn, who is the co-hostess of “Attach of the Show” on G4 TV.  Technology and hot girls.  My favorite combination.

After being charged for an upgrade that I didn’t want, I emailed globat and Edward to complain about it, and got the following email from globat:

Dear Valued client,

Thank you for contacting Globat.com.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Please be advised that the upgrade was already canceled and refund will be to post within 48-72 hours. Thank you for your patience.

Should you have any further billing questions, please do not hesitate to email us at billingdesk@globat.com.

Regards,

Lailani
Globat Billing Support
www.Globat.com Web Hosting Made Easy®

I really like the “Dear Valued client” opening to this email. It’s a step above “Dear Sucker.”  We’ll see if the refund really comes or not.  I see exactly what globat CEO Ben Neumann is talking about when he says “customer service is the most important factor influencing your success.”  How true his words are.

I’ve already found an alternate hosting company called 1and1.com which has the same features that I need.  Unfortunately, my godaddy.com account doesn’t have what I need.  Otherwise, it would be even easier to switch.