I just got a new phone, a T-Mobile Blackberry 8120 with WI-FI…off of ebay of course, and I have my phone unlocked using it on my AT&T plan. My old phone, a  Blackberry 8100, served me well for two years but it was just time for an upgrade. The new 8120 is great, it feels and looks alot more sturdy and works great so far. Until I ran into a couple of problems.

The first problem I ran into was that my phone just randomly rebooted during the middle of the day. I don’t have it set to turn off and on so it wasn’t that. I’m not sure what happened, if it happens again I’ll have to look into it further.

The second problem was my blinking red light. Naturally when you get a phone call and you miss it the blinking red light activates letting you know you have a missed call waiting. Well the same thing happens for a Text message, IM, Email and voice mail. I had gotten a text, missed call and a voice mail all in one day. I checked them all but the blinking red light would not go away. I checked again, and again and again to no avail. Finally I checked my voice mail and realized it said “first skipped message”. This was the key, I pushed 7 to delete the message and the blinking red light ceased to blink. Problem solved…for now.

Problem: Blinking red light won’t go away on blackberry 8120.

Solution: Check IM, Text, Email and delete any Voice mail that has been skipped.

Google Analytics is a great tool for web developers/Site Admins but there are some features that are a little harder to find than most. I will be doing a mini series on Google Analytics going over some of it’s cool features.

Part one of this series is about Google’s click site overlay. What is it you ask? Good question! Google calls it “Site Overlay” according to them it is “Click data on top of your website”. To be a little more in depth I would say it is a click map of your site. It shows your site with an overlay that has an info bar over each internal link on your site. The info bar gives the percentage of times that link has been clicked in proportion to all the other internal links. When you hover over it with your mouse it tells you how many times that link has been clicked and where it links to.

As nice as this feature is, there is always room for improvement. Some of the downfalls are the lack of external links and differentiation between internal links. First let me explain what I mean about lack on external links. Yes you can see the bounce rate and the time spent on the site but without the external links information you can’t tell where they went and if you referred them to another page. This would be handy information to know because with this information we can determine if we need to relocate our links. Now what I meant about differentiation between internal links. Lets say there are two links that point to home page, if one of those links is clicked “Site Overlay” thinks that everyone of the links has been clicked once. This becomes a problem because one click looks like two. Now imagine we have four or five of these links that point to the same thing, “Site Overlay” is now useless. We don’t know if they clicked on the top of the page or the bottom of the page or on a different page.

This is my plea to Google, Please fix the site overlay feature on Google analytics! If you feel the same way I do leave a comment letting Google know!

I found out today that Godaddy doesn’t support Gzip compression. After months of trying to get Gzip or any other type of compression to work I finally broke down and emailed support (I hate contacting support because they never seem to answer my question). Here was my conversation with them:

Hello,

Is the mod_gzip module installed and enabled on my server? What version of Apache is installed?

Walt

——————–

Dear Walt,

Thank you for contacting Online Support.  The mod_gzip modules in not available on our Linux hosting plans.  We use Apache 1.3 for the web server.  You will need to refer to web server documentation for accessing it’s version.  I apologize for the inconvenience.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.

Sincerely,

Paul P.
Online Support
Technician

———–

I thought maybe he didn’t know exactly what he was talking about so I asked him if they used mod_deflate and when they were planning on upgrading Apache, his response:

Dear Walt,

Thank you for contacting Online Support.  We do not support mod_deflate on our shared hosting servers, nor can customers initiate upgrades to apache on the accounts.    I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please let us know if we can help in any other way.

Sincerely,

Jason P
Online Support Team

———————————

From everything I have been able to figure out, Godaddy doesn’t support any kind of compression. So I asked them directly, what kind of compression do you use?

Dear Walt,

Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, that is not something I am able to discuss. You can find more information in regards to our Data Centers here: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/hosting_technology.asp?app_hdr=99&ci=1406

We appreciate your understanding.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Sincerely,
Clint S.
Online Support Technician

——————————————

In summary, no compression with Godaddy. I’m sad to say I will be switching to another host when my one year of service is up. Anyone have a good Wordpress hosting provider to suggest?

I’m always on the lookout for a better plugin so I thought I would help you all out and show you what I have here at The Tech Talk Blog. I probably am using way to many but I do like the functionality. Here goes:

• Advertising Manager
• Akismet
• All in One SEO Pack
• Broken Link Checker
  
• Contact Form 7
• GD Star Rating
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Math Comment Spam Protection
• MaxBlogPress Favicon
• NextGEN Gallery
• Plugin Central
• SEO Slugs
• SEO Super Comments
• Simple Tags
• Social Bookmarks
• Subscribe To Comments
• TweetMeme Button
• Twitter for Wordpress
• Wordpress Download Monitor
• WP-PageNavi
• WP-Polls
• WP Super Cache
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

I told you mine, now it’s your turn. So what plugins are you using? or are there any plugins you would suggest for me?

In my endeavor to make my blog better, stronger and faster I ran into quite a few tools that helped me out. Although I’m still in the process of improving my blog I would still like to list these tools for your use.

• http://ismyblogworking.com
• http://redbot.org/
• http://validator.w3.org/
• http://feedvalidator.org/
• YSlow (firefox Plugin)
• Firebug (firefox Plugin)
• Reverse IP Lookup

I told you what I use, now it’s your turn. What tools do you use on your site/blog?

I ran into a problem with a Scan and Fix error when plugging in a USB device while using Vista or Windows 7. This one has been bugging me for quite some time so I decided to find a fix for it. I found a great article by Mark Flavin that pretty much always fixes this problem.

Problem: Scan and Fix Error

Solution: chkdsk [the drive letter] : /f

When this dialogue box appears click “Continue without scanning”.

Now open the start menu and type cmd. Right click on the icon and run as administrator.

When the command prompt opens type the following command.

chkdsk (device drive letter): /f

for example my flash drive was mounted at drive l so I typed

chkdsk l : /f

Once that is done you shouldn’t see the scan and fix error again for that device.

Apply this fix any time you get the scan and fix error.

Today was the breaking point for me. My windows hosting with Go-daddy has been terminated in favor of Linux. As most of you already know Wordpress is geared more towards Linux and the open source community but ported to windows. So inherently there are going to be issues on windows that are non-existent on Linux. I believe I ran into every problem there could possibly be with the windows port of wordpress without a solution to most of those issues. The main issue was with pretty permalinks, apparently even though Go-daddy has the windows version of the mod-rewrite rule it doesn’t work right.  Now that I have switched there have been zero issues thus far and I am completely happy. I’m just glad that’s over with. Anyone else running Wordpress on windows and running into problems? Do you think you will switch to Linux?

The next evolution of windows is upon us. Windows XP was a great operating system and still to this day holds it’s own but it’s aging. Our hardware has advanced so far that XP just can’t keep up. For example, multi-core processors have become the leading technology, the Mhz race is over. XP was written for the Mhz race but we are out of that now and we need an operating system that will cater to our needs. Enter Windows Seven!

Windows Seven is the next evolution of Microsoft’s famous Windows operating system. Many believe that Windows Vista is the next evolution and Windows Seven is just the next step but that is not true. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about lets step back to 2000 when Windows ME was released. Does anyone remember how horrible it was? I do, and I also remember the people that went out and bought it thinking it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Can anyone say Windows Vista? Anyway, Windows ME was just a step up to the greater evolution of Windows XP the god of operating systems.

I must admit I used Vista Ultimate x64 and it did work well but I waited until after the first service pack was released. The things I liked about Vista were the search built into the start menu, start menu navigation, the address bar and Aero. All of which have been included in Windows seven but they work even better with a revised task bar to boot.

I have heard people say that they don’t like the new start menu navigation but I don’t understand where they are coming from. Sure the old menu is familiar but it’s also inefficient with all the pop-out boxes that if you accidentally miss with your mouse you have to start over. Windows vista and Seven both fix this problem with the in menu navigation and the built in search.Which brings me to my favorite feature, start menu search.

The start menu search is the most handy feature windows could have added. Combined with the index feature the built in search makes finding anything in windows quick and easy. All you have to do is click the windows key on the keyboard, start typing what you want and poof there it is instantly. This is just one part of the new features that had improved the organization of windows.

The new address bar is another great feature of windows vista and Seven that improves organization of windows. The address bar allows you to click on any previous folder in the current structure and move directly too that folder or one of it’s sub folders.

The last feature I will talk about is the new and improved gui named windows aero. Aero added some pretty things to windows like glassy looking task bar and windows. Windows Seven has taken it a step further and added windows, a feature which allows you to preview any open window and make the others look like glass.

Along with the improved visual features Windows Seven has even better features under the hood. It has been said that Windows Seven will only be distributed in 64bit, a step in the right direction if you ask me. We’ve had 64bit processors since 2001 but not a real 64bit OS to use it on until now, which allows for the use of memory past 3GB. It has improved on  multi-threading and usability. The next evolution of Windows is here and I welcome it with open arms!

What do you think?

Windows 7 has many new features one of which is improved security. To achieve better security Microsoft implemented something called “Action Center”. According to neowin.net “Windows 7 Action Center is a one stop place where you can find system maintenance information, security information and also troubleshoot computer problems if any.”

Essentially what Microsoft did was update and rename vista security center to Action Center. Most of the time though the action center just sits down in the icon tray annoying you with messages about your computers status. So in order to to fix this annoyance all you have to do is click on the hidden icons button in the icon tray, then click customize. Once the window opens click the link below the icons and behavior box that says “Turn system icons on or off”. After the next window opens you can select different icons to turn on or off, among them is the Action Center. There you have it, no more annoying Action Center.

Problem: Need to turn off Windows 7 Action Center.

Solution: Click on the hidden icons button -> Customize -> Turn system icons on or off -> Action Center ->on/off

I have a Dell D820 with Windows 7 RC installed. The other day after a full charge I was suddenly told  by windows that I should consider replacing my battery. So I started thinking my battery was dead, well that’s great. Then I remembered that dell batteries have a tester built into them to tell when they go bad. Fortunately the battery was good, unfortunately I found out that Windows 7 RC has a major battery bug.

The only solution I was able to find was to go into device manager and disable “Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery.” However this is only a temporary solution, and it will disable the battery metering. Did this solution work for you?

Problem: Windows 7 RC giving message to “Consider Replacing Your Battery”

Solution: Disable “Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery” in the device manager. Only a temporary solution.