COM1; IRQ4; 3F8h

SEO

2010-03-03T08:40:00.002-05:00

I don't push this blog, I don't actively work this blog every week, but if I had questions from people I would do my best, as every blogger I have read seems to. So I threw a tweet out last night with the URL of the blog.. I am interested to see if there was a spike in my analytics reports... I will have to look at it later this week. Have to do the job that pays money first.

Have a day!

Phone Numbers to block

2010-03-01T11:21:00.001-05:00

Phone numbers I suggest blocking, based on 'cold calls' and/or either
violating the DNC list or pushing the limits of said list.

NRA Group     (800) 814-6580

Brivia Comm LLC   (561) 208-3307
Sterling Communications Group   (877) 481-7757
American Service Mortgage Company of Toronto (600) 233-1234
comnet marketing (541) 864-1492
automated bus g (602) 840-0462
American Financial (818) 727-9306
Ridgecrest Consulting (801) 878-8330
E COM CONSULT (516) 453-5577
E COM CONSULT (516) 453-5576
E Commerce Consulting (805) 309-5561
E Commerce Consulting (805) 309-5560
ECommerceConsultants (801) 869-1003
1-888-591-2190 Tradning Planet Ltd (623) 239-4511

--Wow lots of 'E Commerce Consulting' numbers

quiet that loud dishwasher

2010-03-01T10:57:00.001-05:00

http://www.soundproofing.org/infopages/soundproofing_appliances.htm

Home appliances sometimes create a lot of noise. This happens when we run them, or perhaps when they run themselves. This can be quite annoying.

Let's soundproof a dishwasher: We'll do this in a series of steps, each accomplishing a higher level of dishwasher sound reduction. This means we may need full access to all parts of the unit and it makes a difference as to whether it's a counter model or a stand alone cabinet type.
Step 1) The quickest noise control can be had without full access by just removing the front door cover. This is usually done by taking out 2 screws at the bottom of the door and lifting out the front panel. These panels are made easily removable in order to quickly change the color of the unit to match the kitchen decor.
You will usually find a piece of foam material floating loose about in the space between the inner door and the removed outside panel. It is worthless for our sound control purpose and may be discarded. Measure the depth of the space and cut a piece of "Super Soundproofing" absorbent mat of the same thickness or slightly thinner to fit into this space. Fit it right to the edge of the door, attach securely with contact cement to the inside of the washer, making sure you cover the entire area. Now replace the panel and the screws.
Step 2) Under the door will usually be another, shorter panel held in place in the same way. This will have (maybe) about a 2" thick fiberglass batting attached to it. Remove and discard this useless material. Cut a piece of 2" thick "Super Soundproofing " absorbent mat and glue intro place. (Thin thicknesses of foam can be glued together to make thicker thicknesses). Note that you haven't blocked any of the cooling vents, just replaced the batting. Put that small cover panel back.
Step 3) Now we need access to the dish washer unit, so pull it out of the counter or remove it's case so we can drape soundproofing mass loaded vinyl (we call it "Floor mat") over the unit. Cut a panel of it so that it goes from the floor on one side, up and over the unit to the floor on the other side. Don't worry about the back of the machine, nor does it need to be attached. Lay it over any insulation that may be on the unit. The material will be in the form of an upside-down "U". A dab of "Goop" (a household adhesive from the hardware store) here and there will hold it place.
Step 4) Line the dishwasher cabinet or the counter it fits into with 1/2 " "Super Soundproofing" absorbent mat attached with contact cement to provide an absorbent compartment for the unit to fit into and slide it back into place. Try to make sure the foam covers the entire area, without gaps. Use a thickness appropriate to the space.

Step 5) Check the fit between the unit and it's cabinet or counter, if it's more than 1/2", place a piece of wood molding along the edge with a strip of the soundproofing mat attached to it to provide a tight seal, thereby blocking sound from coming out around the gap of the washer and the counter cabinet.

One might be tempted to wrap the motor with soundproofing as motors might seem to make a lot of noise. But these motors operate near the limit of their ratings and are generally of the open frame variety because of much needed cooling. Thus it is not recommended nor necessary as much of the noise created is from the water washing cycles and we will have dealt with that very well!

What FF add-ons do you use?

2010-03-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

Adblock 1.1.2

Better Gmail 0.8.1 (disabled)

Download Helper 4.6.5

ForcastFox 0.9.10.1

Gmail Manager 0.5.7.5

Google Desktop Search (not compatible with 3.5.5) 1.1

Google Gears 0.5.33.0

Google Notebook 1.0.0.22

Google Vaice Addon 0.9.1

Google Wave add-on 0.0.3

Update Notifier 0.1.5.5

User Agent Switching 0.7.2

Xmarks 3.4.6

XSL Resulst 1.6.9 (Disabled)

Ipod repair thoughts

2010-03-01T10:56:00.000-05:00

Original Question
I think you said you have luck fixing ipods. I have a 4th gen (grey scale w/ click wheel) 20gB that gave me the unhappy iPod face about 2 years ago now. I looked it up online and it said "dude, you're screwed." This happened after I left in the car overnight during the winter, so I think it's probably a hard drive issue. At this point, cost wise, do you think its just as likely that it would cost more to fix it than it's worth? I would use this guy as a protable media library for my car, so battery life is not an issue.

Reply1
I have had really good luck with rockbox. I currently pretty much leave my 30G 4Gvideo in the car all the time, though I need to swap it with the rockbox30G-4Video.

There are a couple of other ones out there, but so far all but the Shuffle have been gifts to us, and the shuffle was a gift to me from Beth. It is the least uesed because I forget to turn it off. If you cant get to the HD from the IPOD FirwareOS, crack it open your self run diskwarrior or spinrite on it and see what is going on. There are plenty of hidden menus to let you know what is going on with the IPOD, I just don't remember them off the top of my head.

OP Response 1
It shows up on "My Computer" as a disk drive, but says no disk is available. Since I don't have Spinrite or diskwarrior, what if I sent it to you? would you be interested in fiddling with it?

Reply2
Diskwarrior is for macs, sprinrite for PCs. This is a DMG (Mac ISO) so you might be able to open it.

No, I am not splitting with my 4G_Videos.

SOME BLOG I LIFTED
Select+left to get to serv menu, and there are some diagnostics you can run.
Select+right to get to verbose boot
Select+down to get to disk mode
up stalls boot
down loads linux (with rockbox as bootloader)
Hold 'on'' loads apple boot loader

Happy Friday folks! This week's topic is all about helping Chuck out with recovering data from his daughter's corrupt hard drive. Before we begin, I cannot stress how important it is to backup your data, so that you do not find yourself in this situation. With that said, if you haven't backed up your data lately, get to it! Now, let's move on to the topic.

Well, Chuck, there are two possible ways a hard drive can become corrupt, one way is a physical failure (when something mechanically goes wrong within the drive--bad platter, bad circuit board, and so on), and the other way is logical failure (when the drive physically works, but data on the drive is in a corrupt state and it can be caused by a range of issues from viruses to file corruption.) If you read through the answers by our members, physical drive failure are by far more difficult to retrieve data from, as the mechanics need to be fixed, whereas logically failures, while not easy, are recoverable through third-party software, or costly services that specialize in data recovery. Either way, no method is guaranteed to recover your data completely.

This week, our members' solutions to your questions varied, as there are many methods to hard drive recovery--ranging from what software they used to retrieve date from logical drive failures, to the method of freezing the hard drive (which many recommend to be the last resort.) There are simply no wrong or right answers, just a bunch of different approaches. So, give all our members' advice and recommendations a read. I will mention that when it came to recommending a data recovery utility, a few titles that where mentioned more frequently than others were, SpinRite from Gibson Research and Ontrack Easy Recovery, both will cost you a bit of money. However, there were other options, which is to use Knoppix or Ubuntu Live Linux CD that are free to download. Overall, there were many helpful answers. I truly believe that after you read through these recommendations, you'll have some good ideas what to start with. I've selected a few answers to get you all going in the Q&A section, so check them out. Again, as a reminder to all you folks, back up your data and do it frequently, so you won't have to go through this stressful experience. Take care everyone and thank you all for your contributions to the question. Good luck Chuck and, if you have a chance, let us know what worked out for you.

Cheers!
- Lee

OP Response2
hmm. so the process would be to attempt to load rockbox... then fix the HD, then see if I can plug it into my ipod car controller and get ti to play. if not, could I reinstall Apple firmware? I don't understand the sentences about getting to the HD from the iPOD firmwareOS.

I did some more research, and everything indicates that it is a hardware problem. got an old 4th gen (grey) that you'd be willing to sacrifice the HD out of? I was wrong about it showing up as a disk drive on My Computer... that's my printers memory stick reader.

Reply3
I know you have an ipod control but it would be cheaper to get a maestro GPS navigator, hack it, put on a mp3 player and use it for your music, albeit in 2GB libraries

Got a lot to say... on Twitter?

2010-02-24T16:58:00.000-05:00

http://techpp.com/2008/12/28/5-ways-to-tweet-more-than-140-characters/

One of the very few irritating things about Twitter is the limit of 140 characters per tweet. It becomes extremely hard especially when you try to share a link with your Twitter friends. So what to do? Just break the rules
Below are the 5 ways to tweet more than 140 characters every time!

1. TinyPaste

Tinypaste lets you type or paste in a large amount of text, and then assigns it with a tiny url, to put into tweets, Plurks etc… It also comes with a nifty Firefox extension that allows you to select, right click and get a url straight away, a handy little tool, which is useful more than just for tweeting!

2. Bigtweet

Bigtweet enables Twitterers to send tweets of up to 280 characters even if you’re not on the profile page. It is a bookmarklet which breaks up tweets of up to 280 characters into multiple sections and sends it to your Twitter profile from any webpage you’re browsing. Not only that, this impressive Web tool provides tons of special unicode characters such as smiley face emotions, music symbols, trademark signs and many more. All these makes your tweets more lively!

3. txtB.in

It is similar to Tinypaste and allows you to share text data with anyone in the world in two steps. You enter the text into the text field and hit the save txt button. It then gives you a shortened URL that you can share with your friends to read this text. Absolutely no restriction on the character size.

4. TwitLonger

TwitLonger will post it to twitter using your account with 140 chars, including a Read More link to the full tweet. You can write what you need and a link to what you said will automatically be posted. If it still asks for an invite – get a beta invite at hello@twitlonger.com

5. TwitBlogs

TwitBlogs is a combination of Twitter and Blogging where you get the features of both worlds. You can use your Twitter user credentials to login to TwitBlogs. Once you login, you can compose your posts like in normal blogging with title, basic formatting, tags etc. Once you are done with the composing you can publish the item. The post published with be available as a tweet with a link to the post. You have the option to directly use Twitter from TwitBlogs as well. If you want the best of both blogging and Twitter, then twitblogs is the perfect twitter companion for you.
Any other services available? Any better ones? Let me know!

Mac Connections

2009-12-11T20:04:00.000-05:00

Connecting Mac to Wii
http://macapper.com/2007/04/27/how-to-control-your-mac-with-a-wii-remote/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2218197/wii_connect_to_pc_and_mac_software_install/
http://www.videojug.com/webvideo/how-to-connect-and-play-nintendo-wii-on-your-mac-or-pc-via-usb

Connecting Mac to xBox360
http://www.applematters.com/article/mac-to-xbox-360-with-connect-360/
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=179315

Connect Mac to PS3
http://www.applesource.com.au/how-to/soa/How-to-Stream-media-to-a-PS3-from-a-Mac/0,2000451082,339287550,00.htm
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26673
http://www.last100.com/2008/05/12/how-to-stream-media-from-a-mac-to-playstation-3/

Run Google Tasks on Your Menu Bar

2009-12-10T12:34:00.000-05:00

http://www.suberapps.com/2009/02/04/run-google-tasks-on-your-menu-bar/#tb

As you might already know, Google recently gave GTD fans some lovin’ by optimizing Google’s “Tasks” for iPhone and Android. (read more from Google’s Blog) Wouldn’t it be nice if you can also run Google Tasks on your Mac as a menu bar item with the same sleek interface you see on the iPhone or Android? If you had read my previous post on the “Fluid” app, you’ll know by now how you can turn web apps into a native desktop app. Using Fluid with Google Tasks means a free GTD native desktop app on your Mac that syncs with the cloud.

Here’s how:

1) Download Fluid app

2) Install and launch Fluid

Type in this URL in the URL field - http://mail.google.com/tasks/iphone

Type any name you want in the Name field.

Create the app!

3) Convert to MenuExtra SSB

Go to the Google Tasks menu after you have successfully created the app, select “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…” to put Google Tasks on your menu bar.

Now you have Google Tasks natively on your Mac as a menu bar item!

By the way, this tip is also possible with other web apps, especially if they have an iPhone optimized version:

Remember The Milk

Digg

Have fun!

Coke points

2009-12-02T08:34:00.002-05:00

Additional ways to enter Coke points to get Coke Rewards. On the go? Enter the code from your phone!

http://www.mycokerewards.com/earnPoints.do

On your desktop

If you like to move really fast, download the Quick Entry Code Widget and enter codes right on your desktop.

Download now

Text message

Like to text? You're in luck - text your codes to 2653 (COKE) while you're on the go. If it's your first time, we'll send you a reply with simple instructions to get set up.

Learn more about texting

My Coke Rewardsmobile

Want to get more? Enter codes plus get some My Coke Rewards highlights with our mobile phone browser. Text the word MOBILE to 2653 (COKE) and we'll reply with instructions on getting access.

See full details

Free Holiday Travel WiFi

2009-12-01T10:36:00.000-05:00

Google announced it’s providing WiFi free of charge to 47 airports across the country during the holiday season. (A full list of the airports is here.)

You should use OpenDNS

2009-12-01T10:33:00.001-05:00

If you're not yet using OpenDNS to see what's happening on your network - take it from me - you should.

OpenDNS, the world's largest and fastest-growing DNS service, is free to use and gives you the tools to easily see which Web sites are most visited on your network. If you see problem sites in your network stats, you can easily block them with OpenDNS's industry-leading free Web content filtering.

It also makes your network faster and more reliable. OpenDNS will quickly become your most valued tool in your IT toolbox.

http://www.opendns.com/

Do it right

2009-11-30T14:21:00.002-05:00

This is a 'low tech' commentary piece, but I just have to put it in. The trailer's running lights have not worked since we hooked up as we were moving cross country, after a shop had checked everything out, and given the green light on the operating and safety conditions of the trailer.

This hasn't been a major issue since we mostly tow in day light but with short winter days, night falls rather quickly. So I have started to work on the issues one area at a time. First the plug, no better. I figured I would also add a solar charger to the brake battery since we infrequently trailer. Next I replaced the socket on the truck, and well I have running lights, but no brakes. ERRG.

So I was testing the lines, and noticed that there was a dead 12V lead. Why was it dead? The relay had never been installed, I installed it, so we should now have a charge circuit for the battery, and allow us to have our accessory lighting to work in the trailer. BUT something is shorting out. So I am trying to figure out if they swapped the wire colors on me, or if they hooked it up wrong in the first place. I am going to have to jack it up, take a wheel off and take a look at the brakes, hoping that I did not mess them or the brake controller up in the process of this whole endeavor.

On top of this, I noticed that the accessory wire that was poorly routed for the camper topper, was pinched and shorted when the hitch was put on. This is the same company that cut the wire harness rather than install a plug and play T-wire harness upgrade for the truck. Has the system worked like it should have for the past years? Not exactly, the trailers lights have not worked inside. Why do we pay people to do crap work, just to have to go behind them and fix what they have messed up? Just do it right in the first place and it will be a much better place, with happier people. I have spent a large amount of time on this, and I can't just take it somewhere, it has no brakes! So I am stuck working on it either late at night or all weekend.

Defaulting to FF

2009-06-23T12:57:00.003-04:00

A couple of ways to do this.

Start...Set Program Access and Defaults...

Inside of FF goto menubar Tools..Options..Advanced..Check box Default FF browser

MPG -> DVD

2009-06-17T23:24:00.002-04:00

Q: I do not know why it has to be so very hard to get files from the digital camera (format MPG) to a DVD that I can play in the DVD player. I would have thought it would have been easy. Not so. I have spent several hours on this. The program that came with the camera will not write to a DVD, it claims it can not find the it. Others will write to the DVD but they will not play on a DVD player on the TV.

A: Get a Mac... I will be update this for PC die-hards in the next couple of days.

Remotely located iPod dock

2009-03-16T23:56:00.002-04:00

Using the Belkin F5L009 Network USB Hub I have my iPod Nano setup to auto connect/disconnect from the Mac when placed in the JBL Soundstage Dock.

Doesn't sound too complicated really does it? I have the JBL in the kitchen, and there is no room for a computer to hangout in there. I also have not had any time to run ethernet ports to the kitchen. So I have a pair of WAP11 AP setup for point-to-point to go from the main router closet, and connect in the kitchen. The main wireless routers can be setup to have the open network infront of the private, to limit exposure to my data.

So the Belkin software is setup to connect to the Nano automatically upon recognizing it has been connected to the dock, as well as load iTunes. Having Belkin load iTunes is a failsafe setting, to ensure that iTunes will sync. When iTunes is closed, the Nano is disconnected, again this is a failsafe, as iTunes and the Mac appear to do this if directly connected.

The setup in the kitchen needs a little cleaning up (wires are a little wild, not too bad). The biggest bonus of this setup is that many of the items are actually ontop of the cabinets. The wife can get her Nike+ data online with minimal interference from me, as long as the Mac stays running. (7 year old, never formatted, laptop with recently dead battery).

The Belkin also allows for connection of a total of 5 items, and I regularly have my X10CM11, iPod Shuffle, and Kodak DC connected.

GrandCentral --> GoogleVoice

2009-03-16T23:25:00.003-04:00

Question
Are you using the Grand Central service at all? I don't really use it much, and get a lot of wrong numbers.

Response
We try not to not give out our house number. And to 'new' people we only give out GrandCentral (soon to be GoogleVoice). For any of those odd numbers, I just label them wrong number and/or block them. Wife no longer gets calls on her cell directly. She did get lots of credit collectors (looking for other people), we just blocked them, and they have not gotten through since. Everybody pretty much calls the GC# though her dad does not apparently trust it for some reason (falls under the category of Jody-rig'd). Some people also think that calling the GC# is different than calling the cell or house number, and will call both or all three.

I love it though. I was on the phone the other day, and my cell battery was dying, and I ran to my office, pressed *, and the call transferred to my office, without the person knowing. I do that also when I answer my wife's calls at the house, and I think she will answer her cell, like her mom calls, I talk with her for a bit, and then I press * and my wife's cell phone rings, and we can all three talk, and then I hangup, and they continue to talk.

With GoogleVoice you can do SMS through your GC(to be GV) number. And you can connect an incoming call to an existing conversation with pressing 5. When we moved here, we just gave out the GC number instead of the house number AND missouri cell. This worked well on our side, because it turned out our number was published as a fax machine for a new nearby golf course, very annoying with autodialers calling every 30 minutes at 3AM on the weekend.

I also have it hooked up to gizmo, so if I every travel out of the country, and I can get computer access, I can 'skype', but with my own phone number, and for free, setting up the GC interface to call Gizmo.

If I had a data plan on my cell phone it would be even more useful, but I can't afford that, with 2 cellphones, an aircard, and a landline, communications is ~$200/mth. Due to that load I cant even start to consider things like TIVO, cable, SatTV, SatXM, Netflix, or RIM.

Google purchased Grandcentral 21 months back, and they now are re-releasing it as GoogleVoice. I dont have it yet, but am excited that some new options will be coming on line.

I recommend if you are going to be getting a new number, get a GoogleVoice number, and set it up with your home/cell/work phones. You will no longer have to worry about keeping your cell phone number when changing carriers, you currently can have free in/outbound VOIP based calls, you can peer it with the GIZMO project, and there are so many cool feature of the system that only VOIP can provide, like the call transfer feature.

rig'd

2009-03-16T23:23:00.000-04:00

*Jody-rIg'n' a term made sometime in the late 20th century to denote the fact that I can make something work, but it might not work if I leave, it may look ugly, or you may have to have the ability to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time to get it to work. Mostly concerning electronics, but could be electrica, plumbing, landscaping, etc. Credit is given to either Gray or Justin for the creation of this term, though it may of originated from other parties unknown to me at this time.

Surfing WAV files

2009-01-17T23:37:00.002-05:00

Question
I need a way to convert wav to mp3 or a way to work with wav files.

Response
Start...programs...accessories...entertainment...sound recorder

And/Or download audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows

Netscape Replacement

2009-01-17T21:43:00.002-05:00

Question
Also since Netscape is not going to support or update the product. What would be a good, and easy fix for a new browser that is not IE

Response
I would recommend Safari, but there are still some issues with some sites that don’t work it. Mozilla, or the full package is SeaMonkey. They are both built off of the original browser Mosaic. The Mozilla Foundation formed when AOL opened up Netscape, after purchasing it a few years back. I also recommend AdBlockPlus. Does wonders on eliminating net ads.

Opera is another option, but haven’t heard too much buzz about it recently. Obviously you have to keep IE up–to-date but run FireFox. IE7 is actually fairly safe now, with the information bar preventing auto-installs. But if you don’t like it you don’t like it.

Firefox
www.mozilla.com/firefox/

IE7
www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx
www.google.com/toolbar/ie7

IE8Beta
www.microsoft.com/windows/Internet-explorer/beta/default.aspx

SeaMonkey
www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/

Opera
www.opera.com/download/

AdBlockerPlus
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Safari
www.apple.com/safari/download/

Overwattage Lamp choices

2009-01-17T21:35:00.003-05:00

Question
I was wanting to know that since the new flourescent lights draw less power, can I put a light that is like 75 watts bulb in a 60 watt fixture since it does not pull that number of watts or even have the heat.

Response
What is a flourescent light?

The 60/75 question is probably very safe. Maybe even 100. Go LED! <-- Aside from they are expensive. As soon as I put up my flood lights for the yard, I am putting LEDs in them. I don’t want to have to change bulbs 2 stories up that often.
LED Flood light, ~$45, supposed to give ~10k-20k hours.

WiFi Router for Cable Modem

2009-01-17T19:38:00.002-05:00

Question:
My router crapped out, thoughts?

Response:
Go with a Wifi draft-n version. Probably will have three antennas on it, and should be backwards compatable to wifi-b and wifi-g. I favor Linksys (subsidiary of Cisco), but D-link and Netgear are just as reputable and good. For a while all the Linksys routers were running a customizable Linux OS on there residential routers that expanded their usefullness by leaps and bounds.

Dlink Wifi DIR-615
www.dlink.com/products/?pid=565

Linksys WRT610N
http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WRT610N

Netgear WNEB3100
http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AccessPoints/WNEB3100.aspx

Software to Record Steaming Audio

2009-01-17T19:27:00.002-05:00

OP Original Question
Several programs like Car Talk and Rick Steve's Travel allow you to
listen to their radio shows via streaming audio. But there are times
that I would like to capture the program in a wmf or mp3 file and play
it later on my SanDisk Sansa. Do you know of any utilities that will
allow you to record a program as it streams?

Repsonse 1
CarTalk is NPR and available on Itunes as a Podcast
Rick Steves Travel is the same way
http://www.ricksteves.com/news/podcast_menu.htm
I have a ipod adapter and I do cartalk (when I think about it). I really would like to get the wifi sync-ipod adapter so I can be lazy and not have to remember to get ipod out of car to sync up new music.

Audacity can convert many audio files to other formats...
http://audacity.sourceforge.net

On the Mac I have a program called Radiolover that would pull 30(?) minutes (shareware?) and make a MP3 out of the stream. The podcast is the way to go though for those two.

OP Reply
I have ITunes setup to download the Car Talk and Rick Steves podcasts. But how can I move them to my SanDisk Sansa as either a WMA or MP3 file? Everything I look at in the ITunes instructions reference an IPod device.

Response 2
Here are a couple of stream recorders that you can save to MP3/wma format

MediaRecorder
MediaRecorder receives streaming media from a Web source and saves it to a file for playback. It's as easy as specifying 1) the source Web address, 2) a file for saving the broadcast and 3) timer-based, clock-based or scheduler-based recording.
http://www.twinklesoft.com/mediaDetail.html

Welcome to the Streamripper home page, an Open Source (GPL) application that lets you record streaming mp3 to your hard drive
http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

Here are directions specifically for the Sansa
http://cannell.org/blog/using-itunes-my-sandisk-sansa-mp3-player

Using iTunes with my SanDisk Sansa MP3 player
Submitted by Larry on Sun, 03/04/2007 - 12:38. podcasting

Being able to listen to podcasts in my car has made a big change in my daily life. The thirty minute drive to and from the office is much less stressful. It's now a delightful respite from a busy day. On Fridays I usually work in my home office. This leaves a three day period where I don't have the opportunity to listen to podcasts. It's strange but sometimes, on Monday morning, I look forward to the drive.Although I love learning about new things I don't really like gadgets all that much. Once I'm happy with a cell phone, for example, I usually keep it until it is broken, lost, or the battery needs replacing (replacing the phone is usually cheaper). I also don't buy the most expensive gadgets either. My kids have iPods but I couldn't justify spending the extra money just to listen to podcasts and occasionally some music. I also have a seven year old desktop computer still running Windows 2000 (700Mhz Celeron, although the memory was
upgraded to 512MB).So when it came time to buy an MP3 player I went with a SanDisk Sansa
m250 . It's an inexpensive but good audio player that has 2GB of memory and support for "advanced" features like playlists. I say "advance" since I discovered many players don't support playlists, hard to believe.

The method I use for subscribing to podcasts took me some time to get established but it is working well for me now. I was familiar with iTunes since my kids have iPods. In addition, I wasn't able to find any other good windows-based software for subscribing to podcasts.iTunes makes subscribing to podcasts easy. From the online store to the way it automates the retrieval of podcasts; iTunes is simple to use. I haven't found a competing product this easy. I also find it
interesting that iTunes supports Windows 2000 but Windows Media Player does not.

Here is how I update podcasts on my SanDisk Sansa m250.

I use iTunes for managing podcasts. Podcast audio files are downloaded into a folder under "My Music". The Sansa is configured for run in MSC mode. This means the player will show up as a USB disk on the desktop computer when plugged in. I synchronize podcasts (and music, by the way) on my computer with the SanDisk Sansa using Allway Sync . This is a fantastic utility that can support many scenarios but works especially well with USB devices like the Sansa.
Allway Sync is configured to automatically synchronize files on my Windows 2000 computer with the Sansa (which shows up as a USB disk drive) whenever it detects the player is connected.

I have two synchronization jobs configured:

The audio files in the iTunes podcast folder are synchronized with a folder on the Sansa.
A folder containing my music is synchronized with a folder on the Sansa (more on this setup some other time).

Some things to consider with this setup:

I have to be careful and be sure to subscribe to feeds providing files in MP3 format. Sometimes this take a little extra work like going to the podcaster's website, finding the MP3 subscription link and adding the feed manually to iTunes.
iTunes is configured to automatically launch upon Windows startup. I also minimize iTunes to the system tray so it can run continuously.Once a week I mark all of my iTunes feeds as played. Otherwise, iTunes assumes they are not being used (they aren't, from iTunes' perspective). The Sansa takes a long time (seems like a couple of minutes) to turn on and get to the first menu after synchronization. I assume this is due to it rebuilding indexes and discovering new content.

So the sequence of events I go through to update the Sansa with new podcasts is:

Plug in the Sansa player into a USB port on the desktop computer. Come back in a couple of minutes and click on the little icon in the system tray that allows you to safely remove USB devices.
To see if there are new podcasts I bring up Allway Sync by double-clicking on it's icon in the system tray and look in the "New File" section.
Once a week I mark all of my podcasts as "played".

I have been using this setup for several months now and it is working well. This is an inexpensive method for subscribing to your favorite podcasts using an inexpensive MP3 player and a Windows computer.

Swimming with the fishes

2009-01-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

Question:
I got new fish, platies to be exact, how do I take care of them?

Response:
Um, hummm, check out this site: http://www.wikihow.com/Breed-and-Care-for-Platies

IPod Broke.. Ideas?

2009-01-16T01:52:00.000-05:00

Original Question (OP#1)
I think you said you had good luck fixing ipods. I have a 4th gen (grey scale w/ click wheel) 20gB that gave me the unhappy iPod face about 2 years ago now. I looked it up online and it said "dude, you're screwed." This happened after I left in the car overnight during the winter, so I think it's probably a hard drive issue. At this point, cost wise, do you think its just as likely that it would cost more to fix it than it's worth? I would use this guy as a protable media library for my car, so battery life is not an issue.

REPLY1
I have had really good luck with rockbox. I currently pretty much leave my 30G 4Gvideo in the car all the time, though I need to swap it with the rockbox30G-4Video.

OP #2
It shows up on "My Computer" as a disk drive, but says no disk is available. Since I don't have Spinrite or diskwarrior, what if I sent it to you? would you be interested in fiddling with it? hmm. so the process would be to attempt to load rockbox... then fix the HD, then see if I can plug it into my ipod car controller and get ti to play. if not, could I reinstall Apple firmware? I don't understand the sentences about getting to the HD from the iPOD firmwareOS.

REPLY2
There are a couple of other ones out there, but so far all but the Shuffle have been gifts to us, and the shuffle was a gift to me from Beth. It is the least uesed because I forget to turn it off. If you cant get to the HD from the IPOD FirwareOS, crack it open your self run diskwarrior or spinrite on it and see what is going on. There are plenty of hidden menus to let you know what is going on with the IPOD, I just don't remember them off the top of my head.

Reply3
Diskwarrior is for macs, sprinrite for PCs.

No, I am not splitting with my 4G_Videos.

Select+left to get to serv menu, and there are some diagnostics you can run.
Select+right to get to verbose boot
Select+down to get to disk mode
up stalls boot
down loads linux (with rockbox as bootloader)
Hold ‘on’’ loads apple boot loader

Happy Friday folks! This week's topic is all about helping Chuck out with recovering data from his daughter's corrupt hard drive. Before we begin, I cannot stress how important it is to backup your data, so that you do not find yourself in this situation. With that said, if you haven't backed up your data lately, get to it! Now, let's move on to the topic.

Well, Chuck, there are two possible ways a hard drive can become corrupt, one way is a physical failure (when something mechanically goes wrong within the drive--bad platter, bad circuit board, and so on), and the other way is logical failure (when the drive physically works, but data on the drive is in a corrupt state and it can be caused by a range of issues from viruses to file corruption.) If you read through the answers by our members, physical drive failure are by far more difficult to retrieve data from, as the mechanics need to be fixed, whereas logically failures, while not easy, are recoverable through third-party software, or costly services that specialize in data recovery. Either way, no method is guaranteed to recover your data completely.

This week, our members' solutions to your questions varied, as there are many methods to hard drive recovery--ranging from what software they used to retrieve date from logical drive failures, to the method of freezing the hard drive (which many recommend to be the last resort.) There are simply no wrong or right answers, just a bunch of different approaches. So, give all our members' advice and recommendations a read. I will mention that when it came to recommending a data recovery utility, a few titles that where mentioned more frequently than others were, SpinRite from Gibson Research and Ontrack Easy Recovery, both will cost you a bit of money. However, there were other options, which is to use Knoppix or Ubuntu Live Linux CD that are free to download. Overall, there were many helpful answers. I truly believe that after you read through these recommendations, you'll have some good ideas what to start with. I've selected a few answers to get you all going in the Q&A section, so check them out. Again, as a reminder to all you folks, back up your data and do it frequently, so you won't have to go through this stressful experience. Take care everyone and thank you all for your contributions to the question. Good luck Chuck and, if you have a chance, let us know what worked out for you.

Cheers!
- Lee

Got rid of landline, can I get rid of laptop?

2009-01-16T01:44:00.000-05:00

Question
So I order the Samsung Saga with a data plan, wireless plan and voice plan - a least it has an MU discount. Questions:

1) will I really need to carry a laptop much
2) do I need a cable modem anymore
3) can my Samsung modem run my wireless router, so that I can run two laptops at home

OK, stop laughing, as I am sure there is something ridiculous in these assumptions.

Looking forward to asking all these types of questions in person sometime soon. I am in DC from the 2-6, but doubt there is anyway to visit with my conference responsibilities.

Response:
There are trains to Fredericksburg (1hr north of RIC, commuter and Amtrak from DC). That is where Jesse used to live, and when my brother was here, we took the train to DC so we did not have to worry about parking.

Is the laptop to read email or to write email? What length? Attachments?
Laptop needed for attachments and long emails, I would not write this answer on a phone, unless I was waiting on something, or a passenger.

Most data plans don’t allow for ‘PAM’ (Phone as Modem) as have notes in the contract specific to this. If it allows for PAM, you probably have a limit. Believe it or not, Sprint says that I do more than 10G of data a month. I don’t believe it, but I have yet to reset my router to check. Yes, I download updates, and emails, but we have not downloaded movies in a long time, and I don’t download big stuff at home because it is running around 0.5, and at school I sometimes can get up to 60 if I am lucky, but usually, 2-10 speeds.

The way I have our data card set up is that it is plugged into a computer, which ‘calls’ sprint, and that is the wireless side of things, and then that computer is connected to the wireless router, and does ICS (Microsoft Internet Connection Sharing) and gives the router an IP address. The router in turn, then gives out the new addresses for the home network (print server, file server, laptops, camera).
With a ‘tethered’ PAM system, you would not have internet at the house unless you are home. You most likely would be running at 2X dialup speeds on the network due to the fact that the fastest Bluetooth runs is 0.115M (that I know of). A physically connected USB may run faster, but probably not, companies really don’t like PAM.
Depending on the phone, you most likely could not answer the phone during a data session.
We can run, according to Sprint, 3 laptops, I am not sure how they specify that value, but my guess was that the ‘host’ computer was to be sharing WIFI and Ethernet. I don’t recall any documentation from SPRINT on how to share, but also I am supposedly to now be limited to 5G/month, and like I said I am doing 11-12GB easy. But there is also the rumor that Business accounts don’t have the limit, and when I setup the DataCard it took longer because they set it up under the Missouri Business Plan, as far as I can tell. It has a Missouri Phone number, but was activated in Virginia, and I have not been told to stop downloading files.

Verizon, Alltel, ATT, Sprint all have this 5G limit. Comcast, Charter have limits too, but not as strict. I have never heard of limits on DSL.

I sent DB info on syncing Outlook with Google with your phone (Saga might be different). But since it is running mobilePC, you can just use activesync and get everything that way (momentary lapse of memory).

Opera browser is very much like Netscape

If you are getting in style with a new phone, you should prepare for the handsfree laws that are sweeping the nation
http://www.driveblue.com/

16GB microSD is ‘brandNEW’ so the price is excessive ($100) but you can get 8GB for $20
http://www.pricewatch.com/flash_card_memory/microsdhc_8gb.htm
--Besure to get microSD not miniSD

USB/Parallel printer adapter to bluetooth (print from phone)
http://sewelldirect.com/parallel-usb-bluetooth-printer-adapter_specs.asp?source=froogle&utm_source=Froogle&utm_medium=cse

Not sure what connection to internal GPS they allow you, so you can get an external one:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=WHT-BT-5721&cm_mmc=GoogleProducts-_-GPS-_-GPSDevices-_-WHT-BT-5721

In a wifi zone? Don’t want to use voice minutes, use VOIP. GizmoMobile. I have Gizmo linked to my GrandCentral number. Grandcentral(Google) is then forwarded to home/office/cell.... I think that is how it works. Not sure, I have it, but don’t use it. We waste something like 500 minutes each month (why not change contract? Remember the fact that I am not being charged for overage on my dataplan... Okay back to you). Or you can do Skype. JB uses Skype a lot when he goes overseas I notice. Or there is also (was?) aimphone, which is connected to your AOL account.
http://gizmo5.com/pc/
Www.Grandcentral.com
Www.skype.com
http://www.aimphoneline.com/?promo=778994&page=welcome