The joys of technology Jan 06. 062
I’ve spent perhaps 7 or 8 hours trying to configure a Belkin Wireless Access point which I bought from PC World a few months back. I was advised that the ‘Bridging Mode’ which this access point had meant that I would be able to attach wired ethernet devices to my Wireless LAN with little fuss. Hmm… not so.
I finally discovered after much googling that the little Belkin box will never do the job, it’s apparently only compatable with Belkin routers and mine is a Linksys.
At the weekend I stuffed the little belkin box on eBay and ordered a Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge from dabs. It arrived 20 minutes ago and it’s already set up and working a treat.
The moral of the story. Never listen to a PC World sales man and always by same brand products when you’re dealing with Wireless networking. Unless of course you’re a complete geek and know what you’re doing.
Listen to me Talkr (kinda) Jan 04. 068
I stumbled across this great little free online service for converting your RSS feeds into MP3 files for podcasting goodness. Talkr might not have a trendy logo or backing from Yahoo! but they got themselves an r on the end of the name and a pretty neat little service to boot.
All you have to do is set up a free account then register as a ‘partner’ and add your RSS feed URL. They trot off and grab the feed and you can slap a nifty little link into your page template which links to your ‘Talkr-ed’ mp3.
The tricky part wasn’t getting it to work so much as temporarily defaulting Textpatterns RSS feed to 999 articles so that Talkr could provide audio for even my oldest posts (Sorry if you did an update with your RSS readers during the process!).
So, let me know what you think, click on the Listen to this post link below any artcile title to give it a whirl.
When upgrades turn bad Nov 28. 057
Maybe I’ve been doing something wrong, maybe I’m just thick but this morning I’ve had a total nightmare completing what should have been a simple task. Activating Studio 8.
I already own a fully licensed copy of Fireworks 8, but after my beta copies of Dreamweaver and Flash decided to time out I bit the bullet and purchased a Studio 8 upgrade from DABS. I have 2 boxed copies of ‘Studio MX 2004 Pro’, plus the boxed copy of ‘Fireworks 8’ so I assumed that I had more than was required to qualify for the upgrade as opposed to the full product version.
Studio 8 turned up on Saturday and this morning I got busy with uninstalling all previous versions of Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks etc.
With this done I ran the Studio 8 installer and then launched Flash first, studio serial number in hand, ready to get activation completed.
First I’m asked to enter my Flash 8 Serial Number, so obviously I just enter the Studio 8 serial, that’s all good. Then I get another dialog which asks me to provide my previous Flash version serial number from which I’m upgrading. 10 minutes later I re-emerge from the loft with my Studio MX 2004 Pro box, I enter the serial number as instructed… nothing. No green ‘tick’, nothing, nada, zip. So I try again but without the hyphens, again nothing.
Another 10 minutes later I’m back at the computer with my other Studio MX 2004 Pro box, I try this serial… again nothing.
Right, ok… time to give Macromedia Activation Support a call I think, so off I pop to Macromedia.com in search of a number… …there isn’t one. All support seems to be email based these days. Great, Fantastic. Just what I needed. That means that no doubt I’ll have to wait at least a day before I get a response to my query.
Right, I really need to get on and do some work now. I’ve paid for my software, whay can’t this be simple, I’ve checked, double and triple checked the numbers. They’re right.
Last resort, I do a quick search on google for ‘“PFD700”:http://www.google.com/search?q=PFD700’. It’s asking me for a Flash MX 2004 serial number, so I’ll give it one.
Success.
Not exactly the correct route, but in absence of any proper telephone support, it seemed the only logical option.
Update: Drew is indeed right, seems I was using serials from a NFR (Not for Resale) copy of Studio MX. However there are a bunch of other products you can upgrade from.
Yay, Print ordering from Flickr! Nov 24. 050
Looks like Flickr are trialing a print ordering service, it’s US only though right now.
Google Analytics Nov 15. 056
Google Analytics, this could be the serious free competition which products like Mint and Delineate really didn’t need.
Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.
Basically it’s like a hosted version of Urchin (Which is nice if you ever used it), you simply create a Analytics account, pop a snippet of JavaScript into your page headers and off you go.
Google Analytics delivers everything you’d expect from a high end stats solution, and it integrates with AdWords. I’m going to give it a bit of a trial run right here on nathanpitman.com to see how it shapes up.
Update: A nice write up on Google Analytics by Eric Peterson.