Then what happened?? The god damned Release Candidate!! That’s what happened.  I don’t know at which point Microsoft decided to add in their freezing, crashing, slow ass, shitty “plugin” to their OS, but it was apparently at the RC stage.  Did they not get enough complaints during the Beta?  Was it too good?  Why did they feel it was necessary to “Microsoftify” Windows 7?  Is there someone at the company who goes “Well, this is working too well.  We better make sure our OS lives up to people’s standards and freezes and crashes all the time.  It wouldn’t be Windows without it.”  Does having a shitty OS somehow make them more money?  Maybe since it creates the insane desire to get the next OS in the hopes that it won’t suck, Microsoft intentionally builds in everything we hate about PCs.  I never thought about it before, but I’m now pretty sure that’s the case.

So, now I’m off to format my hard drive for the 3rd time and put shitty ass Vista back on my laptop so that I can work for more than an hour without my laptop freezing.  *sigh* I wish I could just have the beta version back.

According to CrunchGear you can also turn tethering on and MMS directly from your iPhone by visiting this Web site using Mobile Safari: http://help.benm.at/help.php. We tested tethering and that worked, but have yet to get the MMS portion of this Web sites hack up and running.

via How to activate tethering on any iPhone without jailbreaking | iPhone Atlas – CNET Reviews.

I went to that help.benm.at/help.php file from my phone installed the package, restarted my phone, went to my settings and just followed the pictures from here. Obviously I couldn’t read it, but the pics explained it perfectly.

I’m totally stoked.  Now, hopefully AT&T won’t fuck this up

Note: I’ve noticed that my visual voicemail has stopped working correctly since doing this, I found this which is supposed to fix that:

MyDigitalLife.info

Basically, you just go to Settings -> General -> Reset on iPhone, and tap Reset Network Settings. The iPhone will reboot. After the restart, MMS, VVM and tethering should be working fine again.

Apple – iPhone – New features in the iPhone 3.0 Software Update.

You want to build a better search engine?  The answer is simple:  ASK.

Why is that so hard?  I don’t understand myself.  Google is so popular because they built the best algorithm out there.  And it’s smart.  And they can often figure out what you are searching for based on your search query.  But it can’t always.  So they put in billions of dollars and tens of thousands of engineering hours trying to figure out better ways to guess what you are searching for.  Are you looking to buy something?  Are you just looking for information?  Are you looking for a specific website?  Google tries to figure this out based on what you type.  But what you type doesn’t always give that information, and sometimes they get it wrong.  How do you solve this?  You ask the person what they are looking for.

The solution is simple:  Google delivers their same search results based on their best guess.  But they also put in 3 simple links below the search bar asking which of these best fits what you are searching for.  It’s just a simple “Refine your Search”, but it would do wonders.

The next problem is the homonymic nature of our language.  If you type in “bark”, are you talking about a dog or a tree?  If you type “grocery” are you talking about a store or the food in it?  Again, how do you solve this?  Do you guess?  No, you ask!

The solution here:  Again, deliver the normal results, but ask which definition they are looking for.  This already exits, but I haven’t seen it at a search engine.  I’m sure it exists elsewhere, but I’ve only seen it at istockphoto.

Here’s the root of the problem with the current search engines:  They have forgotten that they are part of a communication.  And a communication goes 2 ways.  As it is currently, the searcher types in a question and the search engine gives them an answer.  This is great, except when the correct answer to a question is another question.  Sometimes you need to clarify what the person has asked you.  That’s just common communication.  It’s the decency you’d give to someone who asked you a question in real life, so why is it so taboo in a search engine?

So, I’ll say it again:  If you want to build a better search engine, just ASK.  If you want to build a better search algorithm, teach it to ask smart questions.

In case you aren’t familiar with Project Natal:

It looks pretty damn cool, but I just see a ton of bugs and “Dammit, this doesn’t f#@$in work!”

Instructions

Things You’ll Need:

* iPhone

* iTunes

* Mac or Windows Computer

* Non-DRM song (i.e. one not bought from the iTunes Store)

(If you want to do this with a song you bought from the iTunes Store, you have to first burn that song onto a CD and then re-load it into iTunes from the CD – that way it loses its DRM-ness)

Step 1

Open iTunes.

Step 2

Find the song that you want to make into a ringtone.

Step 3

Listen to the song and find the part of it you want to use. The chorus may be a good place to start.

Step 4

Write down the start and stop times of the clip.

Step 5

Right-click the song and select “Get Info.”

Step 6

Click the “Options” tab.

Step 7

Type in the start time of your ringtone in the text box next to “Start Time” in the minutes:seconds (i.e. 2:01) format.

Step 8

Type in the end time of your ringtone in the text box next to “Stop Time.” Make sure the ringtone is no more than 40 seconds long.

Step 9

Click “OK”.

Step 10

Right-click your song again and select “Convert Selection to AAC”. Wait for iTunes to convert your song. It will create a duplicate version.

Step 11

Right-click the ringtone and select “Delete”.

Step 12

Click on the “Keep Files” button.

Step 13

Find the file. It’s usually in your User folder under Music > iTunes > iTunes Music and under the band’s name. It will have an extension of “m4a.”

Step 14

Replace the “m4a” extension of your ringtone with “m4r”. You can either double-click slowly to re-name your file, or right-click and select “Get Info” on a Mac or “Rename” on a Windows PC.

Step 15

Click “Use .m4r” or the PC equivalent when the system warns you that the change may affect the use of your file.

Step 16

Double-click the ringtone file.   iTunes will automatically add it to your ringtones folder in your iTunes Music Library.

Step 17

Connect your iPhone and sync your ringtones.

via How to Make Custom iPhone Ringtones for Free | eHow.com.

Step 18

Stick it to the man!

Here’s my reply:

Ok, here’s the 3 most important things:

1.  If you get a laptop with Windows Vista, make sure you have at least 2GB of RAM.  Vista uses about 1GB by itself and it’ll suck when you try to run any other programs.

2.  Don’t get a cheap processor.  Intel Celeron and AMD Sempron are the common cheap ones and should be avoided.

3.  Don’t get a Compaq.  They suck.  They’re cheap, and I have never had a good experience with them.

I have a Gateway and personally I really like mine.  Here’s the one I would buy if I was gonna buy one today:

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668194.php

It’s got everything you’ll need and is relatively cheap for a laptop.  It’s available at Radio Shack according to the gateway site.

There’s also a new breed of laptops called netbooks which are much cheaper, and are built to be used online.  They are pretty bare as far as programs and storage, but like I said are cheaper. I haven’t really looked into them at all, but pretty much every major manufacturer makes one these days. Here’s gateway’s netbook:

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668245.php

This one’s actually not too bad, it’s only $380.  The processor is a little slow (which is common for netbooks), but it runs Windows XP, which uses a lot less than Vista (most netbooks use Linux as their operating system because it’s free, but you’d have to learn a whole new operating system).  And this thing has a 160GB hard drive which is huge for a laptop.

I have proof:

07:27 willilance : 50647, there are forums on http://www.businessinnercircle.com which cover starting from scratch
07:27 ustreamer-50647 : thank you willilance
07:27 ustreamer-3057 : willilance you are awesome man
07:28 willilance : thanks!
07:28 ustreamer-23275 : yes willilance is awesome

See? 2 different people said it!

“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

-Barack Obama

Today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  In his inaugural speech Barack reiterated this point which I think is the crux of his run for presidency.  “We have chosen hope over fear”.  Barack ran under the banner of hope and change.  He didn’t succumb to the fear mongering that so often accompanies an election, or the news, or a salesman, or a commercial, or religion.  He relied on the fact that we need hope, not fear.  That people don’t want to be scared into electing a president.  Or scared into starting a war.  Or scared into buying a new car.  Or even scared into being a good person.  People want hope.  We want to hope that there is something better for us and for our children.  That while things may be difficult, we believe that there are bright skies ahead.

Barack’s election proved that people will respond to a positive message.  I hope that others will follow Barack’s lead and stop the fear mongering.  I hope that instead, the marketers and media of the world will learn this lesson and change their tune.  One single positive idea can outweigh a hundred negative ones.  You can get more done thinking positively than thinking in fear.  I know that it seems too simple and that it’s not what has been done.  Fear has sold newspapers for a hundred years.  Fear keeps people tuning in to the news at night.  It’s good for ratings.  It’s good for advertising dollars.  But is it good for the people?  No.  Fear has taken over the country and made it a scary place to live.  But you know what?  We’ve lived here for a long time, and we’ll continue to live.  And our children won’t be kidnapped.  And they’re not going to die from playing with a toy.  I don’t need to detail all the fear out there, you know what crap is stuffed down your throat.

My point is, there is hope out there.  And people will respond to it.  And they will respond even better than they respond to the fear.  This President has proven that.  So thank you Barack Obama.  Thank you for showing the world that hope will always prevail over fear.

You just need to log in to your cPanel, click on Backups and click on Generate/Download a Full Backup. You can choose a backup destination, for the purpose of this example, I’m just going to leave the default and save it to the Home Directory. You can save it to a remote FTP if you want, but that sometimes creates difficulties and I find it easiest to do everything as its own separate step. You fill out the email field with your email address as it’ll send you an email once it’s done (depending on the size of the site, it can take a long time). Then just hit Generate Backup.

Once you get the email letting you know it’s done, log in to that site in FTP and download the backup file (backup-12.30.2008_13-27-10_somesite.tar).

Now move to the new server where you will be hosting the site.

Note: don’t create an account for the site on the new server, the restore process will do that for you and if there’s an existing account with the same user name, it won’t work.

First you have to upload the cPanel move/restore .tar (backup-12.30.2008_13-27-10_somesite.tar) to the server, any existing site is fine.

Then you log in through SSH (this is how I do it, you may have another way) and move the file to the /home directory of the whole server.

After that, you log into WHM on that server.  Under Backup is Restore a Full Backup/cpmove file.  Click on that.  You should see the move/restore .tar listed in the box on the bottom.  It usually has the user name in the name of the .tar (in this case, somesite).  You put that user name in the Enter the username for the account you wish to restore: field and hit Restore.

It’ll process the file, create the account and get everything set up as it was on the old server.

Here’s the commercial:

Of course this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. In fact it happens quite often. And I know it happens to lots of other people as well.  I had a friend who wrote a pretty kick ass screenplay and started shopping it around.  He told me at one place he went they showed him 5 or 6 other scripts that were essentially the exact story he had written.

So, my question is:  Are there truly unique ideas?  Or is it just that some people act on them and others don’t?  It seems to me that the odds are against someone having the same random ideas as me, however I see them too often coming back at me for it to just be coincidence.  I like to joke that there’s a satellite trained on me to hear my great ideas and then use them for marketing or inventions.

I’m sure there’s some mathematical genius out there who could come up with some crazy formula to figure out the odds of 2 people having the same thought, but I’m definitely not that person.

I guess what I should really take out of this is that I need to start acting on my ideas and not just sit on them.  Sounds like pretty good advice

First off, you should have a config file that’s being called from every page in your site.  This way you can define some variables that you’ll be able to access throughout your site.  This is pretty common and is in fact the case on the site I’m working on.

Your config file should look something like this:

<?php

?>

This covers the basics and allows you to do a lot of cool things with your site.  Anywhere you need to put the base url, you can just use $setts['siteurl'] instead and it makes your whole site portable.  And, as the point of this post, you can use $setts['db_name'] in place of the actual name anywhere you need to.  You can even go one more and name all your tables as variables here, so they can be changed in one spot and affect the whole site.

Ok, last part here.  How to use the variable in place of the name:

Take:

$query = mysql_query(“INSERT INTO database_name.tblName (first, second, third) VALUES
(‘First Value’,'Second Value’,'Third Value’)”) or die(mysql_error());

And instead use:

$query = mysql_query(“INSERT INTO ” . $setts['db_name'] . “.tblName (first, second, third) VALUES
(‘First Value’,'Second Value’,'Third Value’)”) or die(mysql_error());

It’s just simple concatenation.  You have to close the quotes with ” then use the . as the connector, put in your variable name and then another . to add the rest which needs to have the quotes started again.

Hope that helps someone

I’m also getting to play around with Flash and JavaScript a bit too.  I’ve put up a Flash gallery page that converts all the pictures so they look like polaroids thrown onto a table.  It’s pretty cool.  I’ve just got some dummy pictures in there now, but once we get some pics of her clients, we’ll put them in.  It’s got a bug in IE though where it only works the first time you visit.  If you refresh the page, or go to another page and come back, it doesn’t work.  Kinda pissing me off on that one.  I’d like to be able to make some changes to it though and I’m working on some ways to do that (of course I need to learn a bit more about Flash first).  I’ve also got a pretty cool flash gallery where I can show before and afters in a book-like format where you can actually flip pages.  It’s really cool, but that’s not live yet.

I also just today found a pretty cool mootools FAQ script, so I got to play with that a bit too.

I really like having this site to learn and play with, which will also (hopefully) be something we can turn profitable by driving business to Gina.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by and check back often!