3 huge giveaways that its fraudulent:

1. The fake app requires you to rate 5 stars before it will allow the use of filters.

2. The app is embedding AirPlay advertisements in the notification area immediately (currently the moat lucrative form of Android advertising)

3. The grand daddy: the screenshots are of an iPhone!

I was so anticipating this app, but alas, it looks like you and I will have to keep waiting.

Earlier this week I received a call from a local business client who was having problems publishing a self-maintained website for their store. Although my service call began with troubleshooting a problematic website, the situation promptly escalated to showing symptoms of a serious hardware issue.

At first it seemed like the Macbook Pro owner’s issues were purely related to iWeb and needing to be properly configured for their web hosting account. It wasn’t long before I discovered that her Mac was having issues accessing files from its hard drive. And that’s when it happened…

Upon a system restart, the Mac would not boot past the initial gray screen with Apple logo, spinning wheel and frozen progress bar.

It was quite obvious the computer was not successfully accessing its operating system files but it was too early yet to be sure whether it was due to mechanical issues with the hard drive or motherboard, missing or corrupted files stored on the hard drive. I was going to have to narrow it down before making a diagnosis that could cost the client unnecessary data loss, expenses for hardware or labor.

I would suggest the following steps that I tried prior to assuming a hard drive failure:

1. Attempt to repair your system drive using Disk Utility.

Obviously if you are stuck at the gray screen of agony, booting past it isn’t an option. But you can boot from your system disc labeled Mac OS Install DVD. To do so, pop it into your optical drive and hold the Alt/Option key while you power up the computer. Keep holding it til you see your boot drive options and then click the Mac OS Install DVD to boot from it. Once past the language selection, you can access utilities from the top menu. Disk Utility is the one you want. When it opens, click on your hard drive in the left column sidebar and the click Verify Disk followed by Repair Disk under First Aid. If your computer completes its process, then it might just be your lucky day. You should now initiate a normal restart to see if your problem has been resolved. But if your situation is like mine, you might get failures indicating the hard drive is unreadable. Pass go, but do not collect $200.

2. If you DON’T have a Mac OS install DVD OR you DO have access to another Mac and a firewire cable, try booting in Target Disk Mode.

This is when you boot your afflicted machine as though it was an external drive to a healthy Mac. To do so, first turn on your sick Mac while holding down the T key and you will see a gray screen with a large occasionally moving Firewire logo. You can now connect the two computers via firewire cable and boot the healthy computer while holding the Alt/Option key as described above. Your sickly computer’s hard drive in target disk mode should appear as a boot option on your healthy computer. Choose it and proceed. If you are able to boot to it successfully, you can try again to run Disk Utility from Applications->Utilities and to verify/repair the hard drive. If this works without a hitch, again try and reboot your computer normally to see if your problem has been solved. If not, keep reading.

3. This option is the one that surprisingly worked for me: Boot into Mac Safe Mode while showing its progress in a command line UI.

Your Mac will automatically attempt some more gloves-come-off disk repair measures when you boot into safe mode.

To start up into standard Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), do this:

1. Be sure your Mac is shut down.
2. Press the power button.
3. Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
4. Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).

To start up into Safe Mode with display of the progress in a command line UI, do the same as above EXCEPT hold the Command and V keys along with Shift.

In my case this process worked and I was able to boot into safe mode with the affected computer. You can now restart the computer as normal and you will likely be able to boot now, possibly after a brief progress bar display during bootup. If this works for you, you should still be concerned! Even though your computer is working seemingly normally, you should consider yourself blessed (I don’t do luck). If you’ve found my advice helpful so far, heed my next directive: use your extra life to immediately make an entire Time Machine backup onto a reliable clean external hard drive. You will need this if/when your hard drive crashes if you want to recover your documents and/or applications.

If none of the above worked for you, it may be time to bring out the big guns if you really need to save your data.

4. Try an advanced data recovery software such as DiskWarrior or Disk Drill.

Short of sending your hard drive to an expensive data recovery specialist, this might be your last resort for a DIY fix. These solutions may require you to remove your hard drive, use a live boot cd or target disk mode. You should refer to their respective developer’s website for a thorough outline of the process.

In Conclusion and in Summary

In any case, there is a reason your hard drive is having these issues. Replacing your hard drive very soon should be your plan especially if you have a hard drive more than 3 years old and you don’t have a strong hunch that you caused your own issue in any way.

My Recommended Hard Drive Purchase to Fix or Upgrade Your Macbook

I recommend Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM hard drives and I use them in my own and client’s machines. Replacing my original Hitachi hard drive (which had incidentally NOT failed, but was critically full at only 160GB) truly breathed new life into my Macbook Pro. Not only did it provide tons more storage space for me, but the 7200RPM performance and larger 16MB cache has greater responsiveness and performance.

• 320GB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM Hard Drive – Price Check
• 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM Hard Drive – Price Check (The one that I chose for my 2007 Macbook Pro)
• 1TB Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM Hard Drive – Price Check

Question: How do I know what version of WordPress I'm currently using?

Honey, I know you’re busy, but I’m having major computer problems and I can’t do any work! I understand if you can’t get to it for a while, but just let me know. If so, I’ll have to call Geek Squad.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! You and I both surely know one true thing: Friends don’t let friends, and sons don’t let mothers, call Geek Squad to solve their tech issues!

This actually happened to me today. Fortunately for my mom, although I’m busy, I love her too much to let her throw her money down the drain only to worsen the issues that are crippling her computer. Since I live in Redding, Northern California and my mom lives hundreds of miles away in the Long Beach area, putting hands on her computer in person just isn’t an option. In most cases, I have been able to solve her minor problems using any garden variety remote desktop utility (for example, Windows Remote Desktop, RealVNC, LogMeIn, etc.). But in this particular case, things got just a wee bit trickier.

How to remotely remove the infamous ‘Xp Home Security’ malware virus

My mom’s vintage Dell running Windows XP SP3 somehow got infected with the famous ‘XP Home Security 2011′ pseudo anti-virus (but really virus) malware. Like many PC infections of this type, it’s preventing me from running my favorite virus and malware removal tool: Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

OK, Kyler… get to the point! How do I run MBAM if the virus is preventing me from opening it? And remotely?!? (Hint: Safe Mode!)

Just a little Googling just now revealed that my favorite easy-to-use remote desktop utility LogMeIn (which is also famously free for personal use) will permit you to remotely restart a computer into Safe Mode With Networking and with LogMeIn ready for remote control! Windows Safe Mode is what you will need to reboot the computer into before you can run Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware without the malware and/or virus causing it to be killed before running. Once remotely booted into Safe Mode With Networking, you’ll be able to remotely run this or other virus/malware removal tools to get your job done.

How to do this:

1. Have LogMeIn installed on the remote computer and running (see LogMeIn.com for details on this)
2. Connect to your infected remote computer
3. On the left sidebar of the initial remote computer page, click on ‘Preferences’
4. Click ‘Advanced Settings’
5. Under ‘Reboot Options’, click on ‘View Reboot Options’
6. Choose ‘Safe Mode Reboot’
7. Be sure that any bootable media is removed from the remote computer (OS CDs, boot discs, floppies, etc.)
8. If you are ready for the remote computer to reboot, click on ‘OK’

The remote computer will reboot and, after about a normal boot cycle’s delay and almost like a magical miracle, the remote computer will become available again in your list of LogMeIn computers. You can then reconnect, initial remote control and git er dunn!

If you are in the Redding, CA area and need help with healing your computer of viruses or mal-ware, or other Mac or Windows issues, please feel free to contact me to arrange a service call in your home or business.

Try it for yourself:

http://www.yourfonts.com

Any day of the year you can get excellent web hosting services from me provided by the excellent folks at Hostgator.com. As a reseller, I provide my clients in Redding, California and beyond with my personal support of their web hosting accounts for the event that they might have questions or a problem. Additionally, as a Hostgator.com Affiliate, clicking on my links on my website to Hostgator.com‘s website is another way to support my small northern California business.

But tonight I’m writing to you with this simple plea:

PLEASE! LET ME HELP YOU GET AN UNBEATABLE DEAL ON YOUR WEB HOSTING!

I have never seen a deal as good as what Hostgator is offering on their Black Friday 2010 specials!

Here’s what Hostgator.com is offering for it’s Black Friday hosting deals, as described straight from Hostgator:

We’re offering 50% OFF EVERYTHING From 12:00AM CST – 5AM CST That’s 10:00PM – 3AM Pacific

We’re offering 80% OFF EVERYTHING From 5AM – 9AM CST WHILE SUPPLIES LAST (first come, first receive; so definitely don’t miss out!) That’s 3AM – 7AM Pacific

From 9AM – 11:59PM CST OR after 80% OFF accounts have sold out, we will continue to offer 50% OFF EVERYTHING That’s 7AM – 9:59PM Pacific

This applies to ALL Accounts and ALL Term Lengths. So [my] visitors and friends will have the opportunity to receive up to 80% off of up to 3 years worth of Hosting! That would come out to $35.64 for 3 FULL YEARS!

That includes Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting AND even Dedicated Servers!

[...]

This will apply to the client’s first invoice (first term length they sign up for whether that be 1 month or for 3 years).

Now here’s the part where you get a deal even if you already have hosting!

Hostgator will transfer your data, databases, email accounts and the whole shebang for you FOR FREE! So if you’re on another hosting provider already that costs any more than these deals - and trust me – you are! – then you can still get in on this deal and save some major money.

Some examples of the ridiculous deals that you can get on Black Friday, this week:

1 year of UNLIMITED storage and UNLIMITED bandwidth hosting for as many domains pointing to the site for $23.88!
(Baby Plan – 12 months prepaid)

3 years of UNLIMITED storage and UNLIMITED bandwidth hosting for $35.64
(Hatchling Plan – 36 months prepaid)

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via Email, Facebook or Phone and I will be glad to help!

And remember… you’re gonna have to get up early – but it’s the early bird that gets the worm!

Use coupon code “graphicpilot” when you sign up so they’ll give you the ‘special treatment’!

Don’t worry, I get it. I was there not so long ago myself. So lets take a look at how to login to your WordPress administrative control panel, affectionately named the “Dashboard”.

Here are your super-simple 3 easy steps:

1. Assuming your WordPress installation is in the root of your public folder (“public_html”), your administrative login is located at http://www.yourdomainnamehere.com/wp-admin
   • For regular non-jedi users like the commenting public – it’s at http://www.yourdomainnamehere.com/wp-login
2. Enter your WordPress user name into the ‘Username’ box
3. Enter your WordPress password into the ‘Password’ box, then click ‘Log In’
4. Voila! You’re in. Ok, that’s not really a step. But just the three steps just seemed so lonely without this one

The simplest way to do this is to use the “Add Media” function on the page/post screen (see the Upload/Insert buttons to the left of the “Visual” and “HTML” tabs). Choose the appropriate button depending on whether you are adding photos, videos, audio, or miscellaneous media (e.g. PDF files). This method will complete both steps as outlined above.

In the “From Computer” area of the screen you need to upload the desired image file. NOTE: Before hitting the “Upload from Computer” button it is recommended that you select the “Browser Uploader” instead of using the default Flash Uploader.

Click on the "Browser Uploader" link in the lower right for a simpler, more stable upload

After selecting the “Browser Uploader”, hit the “Browse…” button and choose the desired image file on your computer. Then, hit the “Upload” button. Your image file is now on your web server.

Make sure you give the image an appropriate title, as well as a relevant description if desired. Choose the desired alignment and size, and hit the “insert into post” button. Your image is now inserted into the post at the location where your cursor was last active.

Every time you upload an image to your web server it is added to the “Gallery” of images that are available for that blog. If you want to insert the same image into another post go to the “Gallery”, hit the “Show” link next to the image title, and then follow the same instructions to insert that image into another location or post.

This time, if you want to use an image you already uploaded, use the Gallery tab and then click 'show'. NOTE: The image shows the word 'hide' because it is already shown.

Pages and Posts are very similar in their methods to publish. In many cases, they can even be displayed almost identically at your WordPress. The main difference between the two is that Pages are by design static while Posts can be static by are by design typically dynamic. In brief this simply means that pages are usually used to present long standing information so once you publish a page it will remain visible to the viewers until you remove them.

Posts on the other hand are most commonly used to present time sensitive or even frequently changing information and typically in chronological order.  If the administrator of a WordPress site chooses a number of posts to display in a specific location, for instance five, the standard practice is for WordPress to display the five most recent posts in the designated category or with the specified tags. (I will explain categories and tags in greater detail at a later date.)

Steps to Adding New Pages

1. Log in to your WordPress Dashboard. If you don’t already know how to do this, please read my tutorial here first.
2. To go to the Pages main menu, click on the word ‘Pages’ in the left sidebar of your Dashboard. Your sidebar items may or may not be expanded to show their sub items. You will not need to expand them this time but, if you are simply curious, you may click the down-pointing triangle to the right of each title.
   

   You will find Pages below Links in the sidebar

3. Now that you have reached the Pages main dialog, Click on ‘Add New’ near the upper left of screen. This will open a blank page ready for you to fill in. It’s going to feel much like writing an email, just with a few extra options involved, so don’t be intimidated!
   

   You will see a list of any existing pages, as seen in this example taken from my client's dashboard

4. In the top blank white box, give your new page a title. In most cases it helps to be concise because this title will be how your page is listed in the navigation menu of your site. If possible, try to keep it to 3 or 4 short words.
5. Create the content of your new page. The next blank white box below the title is where the content goes. If you have ever used email or word processing software, you will see some very familiar buttons at the top of it, including text formatting like bold, italic and strike-through, font color, underline, text alignment left, center and right and pre-formatted options in the drop-down menu titled “Format”. In the format submenu, you can designate the way WordPress should stylize a block of text you have highlighted. For example, Paragraph (or normal formatting), Address (generally italic) and Header (generally larger and bolder than Paragraph).
   1. Editing Modes. There are two modes in which to edit your content in WordPress: using the Visual mode tab or the HTML mode tab, both at the upper right of the content box. In most cases you will use the default Visual mode as it presents in a “what you see is what you get” method. In the event that you need to do more advanced editing to the end product using HTML, you can use the HTML mode tab which will show all the coding markup while you edit. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, it is unlikely you will need to use this.Your WordPress page can contain much more than just simple text.
   2. Multimedia (photos/songs/video). You can use the multimedia buttons just right of “Upload/Insert” at the top of the content box to place photos, music and video into your pages. Upon clicking on the relevant boxes, you will be prompted either to upload a file from your computer, provide the address of such content that is already hosted at another website or to select a multimedia file you have already uploaded which will be in your Gallery. Click here for a tutorial on inserting pictures, music and video.
   3. Don’t Sweat It! Feel free to experiment with your content. You don’t have to worry about wrecking anything. The New Page dialog you are at is isolated to affecting just the new page. If you get frustrated and lost, you can always click “Move to Trash” at the far upper right in red to throw it away and start over!
6. Choose where your new page will appear in the navigation menu. This is accomplished in the right sidebar under Attributes. If your new page is going to be a top level item on the menu bar, you can leave the default Parent selection of “Main Page (no parent)”. However, if you would like your new page to show as a sub-menu item under a parent, then choose the menu item you would like to be its parent.Next, if your WordPress theme has multiple templates for page layouts, pick the one that fits the way you want your new page to be displayed in the Template drop-down menu.Lastly, under Order is a box with a zero in it by default. If you replace this with a number, it will designate which order position your new page will appear in either the Main Menu or Sub-Menu, depending on whether you chose a parent and if there are other items in it’s same menu location.
   

   This is found in your New Page dialog's right sidebar

7. Choose whether you will allow Comments and Pingbacks. Allowing comments will mean that readers, most likely with a required approval from you depending on how you have your site configured, can leave their responses to your comments. When approved, these comments are displayed below the comment in a discussion thread with information about the commenter. In my opinion, allowing comments makes any page subject to become a discussion and therefore it would potentially have a “bloggy” feel. If your content is informational by nature and doesn’t really need the input of the public, you might choose to uncheck the “Allow Comments” option. Pingbacks are a method to notify you when somebody on another website provides a link to your page you are creating. By allowing this, you will be notified when somebody references your content and you can therefore investigate whether you approve the usage of your content and how it is presented. I have not seen a way that pingbacks visually effect the presentation of my original content, so I generally leave this option on.
8. Publish or Preview the page. Your required information is now complete. If you click on Preview in the upper right corner of the New Page dialog, you will see a preview of how the page will look to the public. This is an option if you want to avoid prematurely allowing anybody to reach your content.If you click on Publish, your new page will then appear where you chose to place it once you revisit your site. (Note: if you do not see the new page, click on your browser’s refresh button to make sure it is loading the latest content.)

   See the examples in the screenshot below - you may click to see larger size. On the left, I put the new page as order “2″ but with no parent (on this particular site, ‘Home’ is always present in the menu so it essentially is position order “0″). On the right, I chose ‘Carriers’ as the new page with order “99″ to be sure it went to the bottom.

   

   Notice on the left the New Page has no parent, where on the right Carriers is the parent