The Hot Iron

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Packers.com Reacts to Brett Favre’s Retirement

There’s nothing like a Web site being down when there’s a big event or a breaking news story.  For a high-profile Web site to be down can be detrimental to its owner, especially if the particular event – or any type of event - can be predicted.  Black Friday online shopping and Super Bowl ads mentioning Web sites come to mind.

Last week, it was mistakenly posted on the Web site of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers its star quarterback Brett Favre was retiring.  It turned out the “story” was merely a preparation for whenever the announcement of his retirement was made.  It caused a small panic for Cheeseheads everywhere.

Today it was announced Favre is retiring.  So I went to the Packers’ Web site at packers.com to see how they handled the announcement.  The team and its Internet consultant apparently anticipate a deluge of traffic, so they redirected traffic to the home page to a special “breaking news” page as shown below.

(click on the link to view a larger version)

On the page is the following text:

Welcome to the Packers.com Breaking News page.

Due to the magnitude of today’s Packers news, Packers.com is offering this Breaking News page in lieu of our normal Packers.com site. With minimal graphics and no ancillary content, page loads should be quick, even in this period of high demand. All news stories from today will be listed right here on the Breaking News page. If you are seeking archived Packers.com material, you may still access the regular Packers.com site here.

This is a wise move, and interesting they actually stated it as they did.  And to Mr. Favre, thanks for the memories, except for Super Bowl XXXI.

Monday, February 25, 2008

LinkedIn Offers Stripped-Down Mobile Version

Business networking site LinkedIn has released a version of its service formatted for mobile devices.  TechCrunch reported its release though there is no mention of it to be found on LinkedIn itself.

The mobile version is located at m.linkedin.com provides basic but stripped-down functionality of what you can do in a standard browser.  Once you log in, you can see your own profile and contacts list.  The Updates link appears to be similar to what is on the home page of LinkedIn, but unfortunately does not match the Web page.  This is a feature I have identified as one of the key features of LinkedIn.  Also, you can view your own Connections, but not your Connection’s Connections.  Perhaps this is why there is a “beta” label at the top of the page.

You can of course view the mobile version in a standard browser.  This will benefit LinkedIn members who are visually impaired and use a screen reader when surfing the Web.  A while back when LinkedIn restructured the Connections list, it made it unreadable for those using screen readers.  Using the mobile version will give those users back this vital feature of the service.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

likemind is back in Chicago on Friday February 15

The next likemind coffee will be next Friday, February 15 in dozens of cities around the world.  In Chicago, it will be at Intelligentsia Coffee, 55 E. Randolph, at the corner of Wabash in the Loop.

I call likemind it a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, et. al.  Coffee is gratis thanks to Anomaly.

This marks the return of likemind after several months, and now I am one of the coordinators.  In addition to posts on The Hot Iron you are welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

One Laptop Per Child For An Adult

The second gift I got from Dunkirk Systems for Christmas was a computer from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program.  This comes from what was originally the US$100 laptop program.  Now, they are $200, and through the end of last year you could have bought 2 for $400, one for yourself and one for a needy child.  This article talks about how the OLPC computers have helped a village in Peru.  For someone like myself who has had a computer since junior high school and made a career out of them, I bought into this program completely.

The notebook itself (sorry, I don’t like the term laptop) is interesting.  It is white with green trim and looks like it was made by Fisher-Price.  Its most prominent feature is a carrying handle – why hasn’t someone thought of this before?  It is designed to be rugged.  When you flip up the antenna on each side then the top, it is open for use.  The top swivels like a tablet PC but the screen is not touch-sensitive.  Right away by the size of the screen and keyboard you see it is for a child, especially with the spill-proof keyboard.  Other hardware features include a camera, speaker and microphone.  You can read more of its features on its Web site.

So what have I done with it?  Not too much so far.  I was able to get the MAC address of the WiFi card with help from the OLPC Wiki and set it into my wireless router and I was quickly on the Internet.  I ran the gauntlet of several of my Web sites with the pre-installed version of Firefox and all looked generally good, though I could not get the Flash plug-in to start and sound did not come from the browser.  I also tried some of the various applications pre-installed, from drawing to video, but only once.

When you connect to WiFi you look for it in the “neighborhood” and see dots representing each hotspot.  If another OLPC is within range, you see a stick-figure icon that is the logo for the program.  This is how children can link to each other and is part of the power – and fun - of this program.

So far I have yet to see anyone within range when I have used it, which doesn’t surprise me.  Does anyone out there reading this have one?  It would be interesting to get a group of people together with their OLPCs to connect and learn!

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Class Action Suit Settlement for Palm Treo 600 and 650 Owners

If you own or owned a Palm Treo 600 and/or 650 and had multiple returns for repairs or replacements, please read on.

I got an email from Palm on the settlement of a class action suit against them for the above reason, something I endured myself.  A Web site has been created at palzasettlement.com with links to PDF documents relevant to the settlement and filing a claim.  An owner can either get a repair, $75 if they owned a 600 or $50 if they owned a 650.

As I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on YouTube, check out the settlement Web site for complete details and you have until July, 2008 to file a claim.

Friday, January 25, 2008

TECH cocktail Chicago 7 Announced

Earlier this week TECH cocktail 7 (or TC7) was announced.  It will be held on Thursday, February 21, 2008 from 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm at John Barleycorn Wrigleyville in Chicago.

This event brings out many people in or affiliated with the tech community, and hopefully a few domainers will be in attendance as well!  As this free event usually “sells” out, RSVP now.  Hope to see you there.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

What’s In A Name?  Ask Verizon and AT&T About DSL

As someone who has worked with computers and high-technology for 20 years and as a self-professed generalist, if there is something I can’t grasp, then I fear how tech novices will deal with it. Take digital subscriber line, or DSL, a lower-cost Internet access provided over a phone line by the legacy telephone companies like Verizon and AT&T.

Where DSL is more than sufficient for most Internet users, it has received a lot of negative attention, much of it fueled by the cable TV companies who offer much faster broadband cable service.  One of DSL’s drawbacks is that the signal strength deminishes the further you are from the telephone central office in your community.  To distance itself from these drawbacks, phone companies have rebranded DSL under different names.

Here’s where the confusion comes into play.  Recently I helped 2 relatives get DSL, one from AT&T the other from Verizon.  AT&T called its offering of DSL “Broadband Internet” and offered different speeds.  I say “called” as when I went back to AT&T’s Web site to lookup the names for this blog post today, they are now calling it DSL!  This must have changed at some point in the last 2 months.  They call their 4 offerings Basic, Express, Pro and Elite.  Originally the confusion was over the name “broadband” as compared to what the cable company was calling broadband.  Now they have switched it to what I feel it should be, but this will mean I should make a pre-emptive call to one relative to tell them about the name change.

Verizon offers DSL as “High-Speed Internet” and uses the word broadband in its descriptive information.  One of the few mentions of DSL comes in its FAQ when it is describing the Yahoo! software that is offered as an add-on to the DSL software installation.  In the case of helping this relative with Verizon, she didn’t know of other Internet offerings, so no explaining to do.

Fortunately my Internet consulting firm Dunkirk Systems does not offer any products or services that need to have their name changed or attributes masked in order to sell them.  Granted, much of what I do needs further explanation that their name themselves, and this is something we are very upfront with.  Perhaps the DSL providers should band together to dispel rumors about DSL and call it what it is – a decent product for the masses.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

We Now Resume Our Regularly Scheduled Broadcast

For the past couple of days my two blogs - The Hot Iron and sourcegate - were broken.  You could bring up the main URL and see the home page, and if you clicked on any link you would get the very same home page.  This happened midday on Tuesday as the hosting company “upgraded” something, causing previous patches to prevent this problem to reoccur.

I am pleased to say both blogs are working.  Special thanks goes to Andy Knight who reached out to me after I posted this issue on the ExpressionEngine support forum.  Today he sent me details of a fix he made and it worked for me as well.  I posted the details of this fix on sourcegate.

Interestingly, over that time period my Feedburner subscribers increased by 5 readers!  I’ll look into that another time, as there’s a little catch-up I need to do.  And thanks to Andy, I have one less thing on my list.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Unlocking Knowledge, Eliminating Clutter with my Fujitsu ScanSnap

Dunkirk Systems bought me 2 presents for Christmas last year – a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner and a One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computer.  I have been using both for the past few weeks and both are worthwhile, and dare I say revolutionary gifts, even with their simplicity.

The ScanSnap is unique in its packaging of existing technologies.  As the name implies, it is a scanner.  I saw headlines for it in several trade magazines, and after reading information on several Web sites and its own – including watching videos of it in action – I knew this was for me.  It is a full-color, duplex scanner with a paper auto-feeder.  The accompanying software includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard, optical character recognition to create searchable PDFs and a business card scanning application that creates both PDFs of each side of a card and converts it to text.

I have written before about how I need to eliminate paper in my life and business - and the solution I developed has been working well for me.  But then there’s the burgeoning files of paper in my office that needs to be dealt with.  My goal is to scan documents and items going forward that I don’t need to keep the original of, and then to slowly go back and scan similar items I already have.  And backups – all must be backed up!

As I have gone through and scanned some older documents, I have found things I didn’t know or forgot I had.  As I scan these items I am creating a hierarchy of file folders on my computer to organize them, eventually allowing me to scan the text within the documents as well.  So in addition to solving the problem of stacks of paper, I am expanding my knowledgebase of information!

So far so good with the ScanSnap – I’ll report back on how things are going forward.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Subscribe to the Official Palm Blog for Critical Information

If you own a Palm device, I highly recommend you subscribe to the Official Palm Blog for one reason – I have found several posts over the last several months related to critical software and features for Palm devices I have not found elsewhere.  Not that these come out on a daily basis, and the blog itself does not publish daily, but the few I have seen I feel are important.

What prompted me to write this was a post over the weekend regarding Java for PalmOS and that you won’t be able to download it from their Web site.  It does not say if it will be available elsewhere though.  It will still be supported though, according to the post.

I have been a loyal Palm user for over a decade and despite advances on other platforms and devices I like the line they have produced, and knowing as much about it as possible is a good thing.  When I read this, however, I did not know Java was available for the Palm to begin with, nor do I know of any Java apps I could or would run on my Treo 680.

Do you run any Java apps on your Treo?