Oh Boy…are you going to l-o-v-e this…I sure do!

You know how sometimes you sign up for offers, or more info…fill in your name and email address…(which they swear upon their children’s lives NEVER to divulge)…and a few days later you are getting email from organizations and people you never heard of in your whole life?

Well…that little mystery is just about to be solved!

Now first you need… or have to get…  a Google email account… which is no big deal… just type Google email in your search bar, then click on one of the thousands of links, and then sign up for the account.

And THEN the fun begins!

Only use this account for opting in or signing up for offers or info. (Still use your real email account for your personal or business email.)

Choose something easy for you to remember…like yourname@gmail.com     or     yourpetsname@gmail.com    

Then…next time you sign up for something…and have to provide an email address…you are going to remember your gmail account…and you are going to use that…

Only with a little “twist”. 

Come to find out, we can use this little-known secret:

Say you want info on an offer by JoeBlow, and Joe wants your name and email address so he can send it to you.

Great! 

And say you signed up at Google email and your new gmail address is:     herekittykitty@gmail.com  

So what email address are you going to give him?

herekittykitty+JoeBlow@gmail.com

You know why?  Because here’s the secret: when gmail sees the +  sign in an email address, it uses all the characters to the LEFT of the + (which would be your herekittykitty) to know who to send the email to!  Really!

That means when ABC sends you an offer…you know what to put as your email address, right?

herekittykitty+ABC@gmail.com  

And it gets even better….

NOW you will be able to use this trick to find out WHO gave your email address out to everyone else in the first place!

Cool Gmail Trick: “CAN SPAM!” (or at least catch the ‘dirty-dog’ who gave them your email address!) · Cool Online Tools

IE7 in Windows Vista: Configuring Your View Source Editor

We’ve noticed a few blog posts asking why IE7 in Windows Vista displays a prompt to launch Notepad. You can see this prompt by right clicking on a webpage and selecting View Source. I want to explain why the prompt is displayed and also tell you how to turn it off.

As you probably already know from previous blog entries, Windows Vista includes an IE security feature called Protected Mode. Protected Mode runs the IE process with lower privileges and also helps protect against malicious webpages that try to automatically pass content to higher privileged applications like Notepad.

Before launching applications like Notepad that weren’t designed to work with low privilege, Protected Mode displays the following prompt to get your permission. This prompt is designed for the worst case security scenario, which is a malicious webpage trying to silently elevate out of Protected Mode by launching an application or reusing one that you’re launching. For example, in the scenario where you select View Source, a malicious webpage could try to silently pass its content to Notepad instead of the webpage’s source code. This could be a dangerous scenario if there was vulnerability in Notepad

If you only browse to web sites you trust and you don’t want to click through this prompt in the future, you can check the “Do not show me the warning for this program again” box before clicking “Allow”. Checking this box and “Allow” will add the following entry to Protected Mode’s elevation policy:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Low Rights\ElevationPolicy\{9F5511FE-4BB1-474D-B6ED-8877567E7F36}]
“AppPath”=”C:\\Windows\\System32″
“AppName”=”notepad.exe”
“Policy”=dword:00000003

You can find more details on Protected Mode’s elevation policy in the Protected Mode technical article on MSDN.

If you later decide that you want to see this Protected Mode elevation prompt again for Notepad or any other application you added to Protected Mode’s elevation policy, either delete the registry key mentioned above or click “Reset…” in the Internet Options Advanced tab.

If you are looking for a better View Source Editor option than Notepad, install Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and add:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\VWDExpress.exe

to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\View Source Editor\Editor Name

Thanks for reading!

Marc Silbey
Program Manager

edit: Correction: If you are looking for a better View Source Editor option, Add: If you later decide that you want to see

Published Wednesday, March 28, 2007 12:15 PM by ieblog

Filed under: General IE Information, Tips and Tricks

Source: IEBlog : IE7 in Windows Vista: Configuring Your View Source Editor

How to Make Stikkit into Your Personal GTD Powerhouse

13Mar07

As most of my regular readers probably already know, I’m terribly impressed with Stikkit. Sure, it’s a little rough around the edges, but my goodness is it ever slick. In a previous post, I described how bummed I was that Stikkit wasn’t designed around GTD (selfish, selfish me). There has been a somewhat-active discussion around Stikkit + GTD in the Stikkit Forums, but it doesn’t appear that they ever arrived at a solution. Any proposed solution involved a fundamental change to the software instead of a more creative approach.

Well, dear readers, I’m happy to say that I think I’ve figured out a pretty keen way to use Stikkit as a functional, usable GTD system. It’s not bullet-proof by any means (and, truth be told, I haven’t actually implemented it myself), rather it’s the product of my limited knowledge of Stikkit’s capabilities married with a few hours of brainstorming and diagramming. And please also know going in that, because Stikkit wasn’t designed to be a GTD system, there are a few rather hackish workarounds contained in the following guide. Perhaps some of these things will be added as features to Stikkit somewhere down the road, but this should do for now. Read on, if you dare…

Obviously, the greatest challenge facing a GTDer looking to utilize Stikkit as their trusted system is the lack of hierarchical structure. In other words, Stikkits are not stored in any sort of discernible pattern and are only accessible via Stikkit lists, links from other Stikkits and any tags that are applied to them (or search). It’s the tagging functionality that will be doing the bulk of the work here, along with heavy use of the ‘aka’ capabilities of Stikkit (more on this later). I’ll be presenting this implementation in a somewhat step-by-step configuration – Projects, Tasks/Actions, Calendar and Tickler and Reference – and concluding with a short bit on using Stikkit for ubiquitous capture. But before we get to that, a word of warning:

To do this properly, you are going to be creating and managing a very large (bordering on obscene) amount of Stikkits.

Now then, let’s get to work…

Projects

• Each project will have it’s own Stikkit and will be the nerve center, so to speak, for the entire project. It should be tagged as ‘project’ (so that all projects can easily be viewed in the ‘Tags’ view of the Stikkit site), along with any other relevant tags you wish to assign it. Also, it is advised to create a meaningful (and easy to remember) ‘aka’ for each project Stikkit so it’s easy to link back to the main project Stikkit from any ‘child’ Stikkits.

Tasks/Next Actions

• As a quick glimpse at Stikkit’s help window will tell you, prepending text in a Stikkit with ‘-’ will mark it as an un-finished to-do. This also applies to the first line of text in a Stikkit (which becomes the Stikkit’s title). So, for each Task you have, it gets it’s own Stikkit and should be titled “-Walk the Dog”, etc. This way, all you need to do is click the ‘To-Do’ icon at the top of Stikkit to see a list of your next actions.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking – “but what about contexts, good sir!” – don’t worry, just simply tag it with the correct context (’@’ is the same as ‘tag as’, so ‘@home’ will work, etc.). And because you’ve already defined this as a to-do (task), it’ll have a lovely little bubble next to it waiting to be filled in once you’ve completed the action. The default behavior of the To-do list is to show all to-dos, but all you need to do in order to see them for a particular tag/context is enter that context under ‘tagged as’ on the right hand side of the To-do list.

  This next bit is where I imagine most folks will start to have a problem. Because there’s no way to open a Stikkit and see what other Stikkits link to it (at least, not that I’m aware of at the time of this writing), you’re going to have to make sure that one of two things happens:

  1. Your Project Stikkit has links to all of it’s relevant child Stikkits
  2. All child Stikkits link back to their parent Project Stikkit

  In my mind, the first option is the best one as it keeps the Project Stikkit as the backbone of the project itself. One could make a somewhat-compelling case for the second option, but I think that over time, it would cause your Stikkit heap to become rather unweildy.

Calendar and Tickler

• This is one area where Stikkit’s stock functionality really shines. Because of the natural language implementation that chugs along under the hood as you type, you needn’t get any more complicated than:

  Steven's Birthday Party is at The Burger Barn on October 21 at 10pm

  If you want to be reminded about Steven’s shindig, just go to the next line and type:

  remind me

  Pretty straight-forward, right? Well, there’s one little hitch, I’m afraid…

  By default (and this is the only behavior Stikkit currently supports, as far as I know), you can only get reminders 15-30 minutes before your event starts. So, if I’m out at a craft fair or something on the night of Steven’s party, a text message 15 minutes before the party starts won’t do me much good (unless the party is next door and Steven likes wicker). So, armed with this knowledge, you could just as easily set up a reminder Stikkit, like so:

  Steven's Party is in one week
  on October 14, 2007
  remind me
  

  I realize we’re kinda cannibalizing the system here, but statements like that one are pretty natural to write. Thankfully, Stikkit knows just what to do with something like that. And because the Calendar page offers an Atom feed, you can drop it neatly into your favorite RSS reader (some iCal integration would be extremely slick here, if there are any Stikkit developers reading this).

Reference Items

• Again, Stikkit is pre-drilled for exactly this type of thing. Enter your data (whether it’s a person, a link or just a random smattering of information that could be useful later) and make sure you tag it effectively. For example, let’s say that I happen to learn that my new sales contact at Acme, Inc. likes chocolate cupcakes. I might create a Stikkit that looks something like:

  Karen from Acme, Inc. really likes chocolate cupcakes
  This might be useful information when it comes time to ask her for a favor
  @reference @acme

  Again, Stikkit’s flexibility is gold here – you can literally put anything you want into the body of the Stikkit – but the tags are what will save your bacon when you need to retrieve this information.

Ubiquitous Capture

• If you’re at a computer all day long (or even if you’re not, cell phone users), you might be thinking that Stikkit would make a decent dumping ground for unprocessed information. Well, in my opinion, you’d be right

  But if you’re just shoveling information into new Stikkits all day long, how do you know what you need to sort through and process? Yep, a tag. How about this:

  Make sure you don't forget suzie's birthday in 3 weeks
  she also happens to like chocolate cupcakes
  @inbox
  

  So, you fire off 20-30 of those in a given day, all tagged as ‘inbox’. When it comes time to process your inbound items, you need only sort by the ‘inbox’ tag! The only pisser about this is the removal of the inbox tag, but if you’re opening and modifying each Stikkit during processing, it shouldn’t be that big a pain to remove that tag.

So, in a large, gaping nutshell, that’s my how I’d leverage Stikkit into an awesome GTD system. Granted, it is more work than some of the other choices out there, but I’m just so enamored with Stikkit’s coolness that I’m thinking I might actually give this a shot. Oh, and please know that I’ve only barely scratched the surface of what Stikkit can do, so don’t think for a second that functionality is as limited as what I’m describing here. I implore you, go play around with it for awhile and prepare to have your hair blown back. And heaven only knows what sorts of cool stuff could be built using their fancy API.

Now, friends, I’m very curious to hear your reactions/thoughts on this. As I said, this is all theoretical and may fall flat on it’s face in practice – please let me know if you think there’s anything that could be done differently (or better) that would help make Stikkit into a truly great GTD tool!

Technorati Tags: gtd, stikkit, productivity, brainstorm, web2.0

Source: How to Make Stikkit into Your Personal GTD Po

werhouse · The Cranking Widgets Blog

Is it spyware? Use TaskList to find out

Wondering what that suspicious looking Windows process might be? Look it up at TaskList.org, a comprehensive alphabetical database of various processes – good or bad – that might be running on your machine.

Click on any of the process links and you’ll be taken to a short and sweet bio page: what it does, why it’s necessary (or not), and what you can do to get rid of it, if you need to. A good resource to tap into before deleting things willy-nilly. — Wendy Boswell

Source: Is it spyware? Use TaskList to find out – Lifehacker

How to be a Terrible Network Admin: 25 Fail-safe Tips

You walk in to work everyday wishing you didn’t have to; you drag your feet all day long as you’re bombarded with complaints: “I can’t log into the system,” “I can’t access the printer (or drive or server),” “This software just refuses to work the way I want it to.” To top if off, you’re showered with the worst nicknames because you don’t seem to know what you’re doing. You are the terrible network administrator.

Rather than working with your users and engaging in practical IT security measures, the terrible network administrator enjoys doing next to nothing.

Here are the best 25 ways to make your tenure in networking “The Terrible Times,” not just for you, but for your organization and your end-users as well.

1. No priority for priority: Each new day in the TCP/IP world brings a host of new tasks, some trivial, others critical, and still others perceived as critical though they are not. Besides these, you also have items in your backlog folder that need to be addressed at the earliest possible time. So the best way to screw up your schedule (and that of your users) is to “run from pillar to post” attempting to set things right, without assigning priority to the most severe problems first, without tracking the status of all the requests that pour in, and without documenting the time, tools and methods spent on addressing and resolving each issue.

2. Be busy, not productive: The shortest route to this trick: do not automate recurring tasks, and under no circumstances should you find permanent solutions to common problems. You don’t need to know that you can simplify your work with tools – Neo, NetFlow, MRTG, Oak, TCPDUMP, ping – none of these are a regular part of your vocabulary. And you certainly don’t need to take the trouble to customize some of them using a scripting language. And finally, you don’t need to know that you can use the UPS in a major file server to send an automatic email each time there’s a power spike.

3. Say no to knowing your network: Monitoring your servers and your network interface is unnecessary, simply because you have no need to know how much traffic is traveling about your network. Regular observation of your network provides you with knowledge on normal, trouble-free usage, which in turn helps you identify problem spots and potential causes when you’re called to troubleshoot and plan for future growth. This is not necessary for a terrible network administrator.

4. Bye to Backups: Data is the lifeblood of any organization and probably the most valuable part of a network. Bad network administrators do not have reliable backup measures, do not backup data regularly, and do not have effective recovery plans for system data that is lost or corrupted.

5. Knowledge is dangerous: Identifying new security issues before they become problems is possible with a little research, yet incompetent network administrators are not concerned with such things. They don’t care to know when the new upgrade is out, or how to combat the latest forms of intrusion.

6. Take the “I’m Superman” approach: You’re having a lot of trouble dealing with a particular problem, but you are the know-it-all. You don’t need the assistance of any resource or reference, FAQ lists, or README files — you can do it yourself.

7. Don’t Document: Writing procedures for troubleshooting a major problem is such a boring task. Terrible administrators fail to log hardware and software specifications and details, make notes on the methods they adopted for troubleshooting (both the ones that worked and those that didn’t), and document the potential causes for network problems. Doing so would save the network countless hours of time and trouble, but then they’re incompetent, who cares?

8. People equate to problems: How often have you wished that the human aspect of the job would just disappear? A terrible network administrator just ignores the users. Who wants to take the time and be patient enough to deal with users who do not understand technical jargon? You don’t need to develop different techniques to deal with individual needs and preferences, nor do you need to understand the procedures and politics that pertain to dealing with human beings. For the incompetent administrator, knowing your network inside out is enough!

9. Get lost in translation: There’s no need for you to listen to (let alone understand) user needs and applications thoroughly before you map them to the right hardware configurations. Network system planning and design are not the concerns of a terrible administrator.

10. Automation is not automatic: A terrible network administrator does not bother to automate. While a good one would configure a system that is capable of raising an alert the moment it detects an anomaly, the terrible one would prefer to read individual system events and system logs.

11. Wrong approach to rights: Employees come and go: they move across departments climbing and falling on the corporate ladder. Each move requires a change in user access privilege rights. Allowing wrong access to confidential and sensitive data is an IT department head’s worst nightmare. But, the terrible network administrator does not need to continually monitor user rights, thus inviting disaster into the network.

12. Bypass passwords: While correct password etiquette demands that your password is sufficiently long, uses a mix of characters, doesn’t include any personal information, and requires frequent changes, a terrible network administrator pays no attention to this subsequently inviting hackers in. How about using one of the five most-used passwords in the world?

13. Patchy patches: Network security is at the bottom of the priority list for terrible administrators – they don’t upgrade security software, don’t scan for viruses and other malware on a regular basis, don’t believe users when they claim to have critical problems, don’t update their operating systems, don’t apply regular patches from the software manufacturer – in short, they don’t protect their network at all.

14. Hacking is unethical: Of course it is, but when you’re a network administrator, you should think like a hacker in order to be able to catch one or thwart his/her attempts. It takes a crook to catch a crook becomes the motto here. Efficient administrators try to stay one step ahead of intruders by knowing how to hack into networks themselves. The incompetent administrator does not bother about knowing when an attack is coming though.

15. Prevention is not better than the cure: As a good administrator you have to watch for the signs that tell you an intrusion is being planned. Perform port scans and check if your system files have been altered. Stay on the alert for internal attacks from disgruntled employees who have access to information. Lock down your network room. However preventive maintenance is none of a terrible network administrator’s concerns.

16. Pay no attention to your users: Since the most common means of entry for malware is through private user email attachments and downloads from dicey websites, it makes sense to monitor users’ email and internet usage. The terrible network administrator takes the “everybody is entitled to their privacy and perversions” route – he follows a lax policy when it comes to a question of network security.

17. Successors don’t matter: The bad system administrators have no sympathy for those who may replace them some day; the good ones ensure that the system is repeatable. A good system administrator will work hard to develop a standard for deploying an operating system or software applications in the same way across all the systems on the network. Anyone can manually load each system one by one, but it takes a skilled individual to design a system to streamline the process.

18. Predecessors do: Terrible network administrators will automatically assume that his predecessor was an excellent administrator, and not bother to find out if programs are up to date, if there are airtight security and password policies in place, if there are detailed records of past attacks and intrusions, and if employee access rights are controlled and monitored on a regular basis.

19. Time and tide wait for the terrible admin: That’s because they are not bothered with completing tasks in the minimum time required to do them. Even the simplest of tasks like resetting passwords take ages, simply because the administrator does not want to do his job.

20. Integrity issues: Ever consider selling your network secrets and passwords on eBay?. A network administrator with no sense of integrity has.

21. Be here, there, everywhere: While a good administrator will try to remain invisible, secure in the knowledge that he knows the network well enough to make even the most difficult tasks appear simple, the terrible network administrator will appear to be in more than one place at the same time, though he will not get anything worthwhile done. A well-administered network is usually attributed to an admin who stays behind the scenes but knows exactly what’s going on.

22. Cleanliness is not next to godliness: The terrible admin has his work easy – there’s no need to continually check and clean hardware, even if he knows that the procedures tend to extend the lives of the devices.

23. Fake facts for a while: While a good network administrator is generally adept at handling two or more operating systems and mail server programs and is familiar with the most common acronyms in the business, the terrible ones just fake their way through.

24. Jump to conclusions: When problems crop up in the network, the bad administrators do not consider the entire picture; they’re more focused on reaching hasty decisions. They don’t take the time to make notes on what has changed and what events have taken place prior to the occurrence of the problem.

25. Odds and ends will do: Why use products that are proven to work when the stuff on sale MIGHT be as good? Incompetent network administrators choose this policy: when the pencil breaks, the network will fall.

–

Source: Business Intelligence Lowdown: How to be a Terrible Network Admin: 25 Fail-safe Tips

Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts

1/30/2007 9:39:14 AM, by Ken Fisher

Today Vista launches. I’ve received a number of e-mails from readers looking for more information on the black arts of the OEM edition, so here it is: my brief introduction to everything you need to know before going OEM.

What is OEM?

OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer, and most often refers to the likes of Dell or Gateway. At least originally, “OEM versions” of products were usually the same products that you’d find at retail, but with no-frills packaging, reduced support, and sometimes lesser warranties.

When it comes to Windows, “OEM editions” most often refer to the cheaper versions of Windows made available to “system builders” and other classes of Microsoft partners. You can buy OEM versions of Windows online almost any place that sells software, such as NewEgg. Companies keep compliant with Microsoft’s rules by bundling OEM versions with a token piece of hardware, like a cable. Here’s a glimpse of current OEM pricing:

• Vista Home Basic $99 (full version retail: $199)
• Vista Home Premium: $119 (full version retail: $239)
• Vista Business: $149 (full version retail: $299)
• Vista Ultimate $199 (full version retail: $399)

As a general rule, OEM software is usually much cheaper than full retail copies, but only slightly cheaper than retail upgrades. Vista upgrade pricing, plus a word or three on the limitations of the upgrade versions, can be found here.

Can I buy OEM?

Yes, you can. Microsoft licenses OEM software to “system builders,” which the license defines as “an original equipment manufacturer, or an assembler, reassembler, or installer of software on computer systems” (emphasis added). You can install software on computers, right?

When asked, Microsoft says that OEM software is not intended to be installed by end users. Off the record, Microsoft spokespeople have told me that the big concern in Redmond is for Joe Newbie. They don’t want inexperienced users buying OEM software, but the fact of the matter is that anyone can buy OEM versions of Windows.

Truth be told, Microsoft is not opposed to the practice. Rather, the company says that people who purchase OEM software will simply be expected to abide by the terms of the licensing agreements. 

What’s missing from the OEM version?

When you buy OEM, you need to understand what you’re getting.

OEM editions of Windows don’t come in pretty boxes, nor do they include manuals. Of course, a real “manual” has never shipped with Windows, and chances are, if you’re interested in OEM software, you don’t need what passes for a manual these days, anyway. And the pretty box… well, that’s not really worth much anyway, is it? Rest assured, though: the software on the disc is the same as that found in any retail edition.

There are some gotchas, though. OEM software cannot be returned once opened. There are no exceptions. You open it, you’ve bought it.

OEM software is also tied to the motherboard it is first installed on. Unlike the retail versions of Windows which can be transferred to a new computer, OEM versions are not transferable. What about upgrading hardware? Microsoft says that anything is fair game, except the motherboard. Replacing the motherboard in a computer results in a “new personal computer,” which the company considers to be synonymous with a transfer. It’s not permitted with an OEM edition of Windows.

Nevertheless, I’ve known users who got around this limitation by calling Microsoft and reporting that their motherboards died when they wanted to build a new computer. It is Microsoft’s policy to allow motherboard swaps in instances where a system is defective or has suffered a hardware failure. But you shouldn’t bank on this approach; there’s no guarantee it will work and, well, liars don’t get ice cream. Also, while retail versions of Vista include both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, OEM versions are specific. You get one or the other. This follows from the per device restriction. The end result is that OEM versions may not be that attractive to users who frequently build new computers from the ground up.

Then there’s support. Technically, OEM versions of Windows get first-tier support from the system builders who put the OEM software on your machine. In the case of Mom & Pop Computers, that means M&P is your first support hit. In the case of you buying OEM software for yourself, technically this means that you’re your own support. What does this really mean? Retail Vista comes with 90 days of free support. OEM edition users don’t get that, but paid support is still an option, should you need it.

The sum difference

Should you consider OEM software? I’ve outlined the issues, now it’s up to you. Just keep in mind one thing: Microsoft has shown renewed interest in enforcing the terms of its licenses, and the technology that helps the company do so is getting more pervasive, and smarter.

Source: Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts

Convert Physical Machines to Virtual Machines – Free!

Use the intuitive wizard-driven interface of VMware Converter to convert your physical machines to virtual machines. VMware Converter quickly converts Microsoft Windows based physical machines and third party image formats to VMware virtual machines. It also converts virtual machines between VMware platforms. Automate and simplify physical to virtual machine conversions as well as conversions between virtual machine formats with VMware Converter.

Download the datasheet for more information or download the free VMware Converter and try it for yourself.

Source: VMware Converter for workstation to virtual pc and virtual machine migration: VMware – VMware

I’ve tired to talk to employers about the event of the next thing and they only see the cost of the class not the benefits. Maybe I didn’t explain the benefits good enough though.

I am taking this. Its available in a online class.

The ABCs of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

ITIL is a framework of best practices for delivering IT services. What’s the big deal about it, and why is it considered so important in corporate computing? We explain the basics before you hunker down with the books.

Source: The ABCs of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) – ITIL – CIO

I genuinely want to improve my blog to allow feedback and other things for those that may visit (Hi Mom, I know your the only one.) I just need to take the time and find out how to reconfigure my blog or even change applications again to get what I want.

Key things I want:

1. To host my own website on my slower then Shit webserver. I like to control my content completely without having websites at the will of other companies. Yes yes granted my ISP has the right to pull my connection but I pay good money to have it up and stable.
2. To allow registration with a good spam filter. My last blog was a vastion of spam links. I was so fed up with it I closed the whole site and tried other ways of Blogging without sucess.
3. Easy way of posting blogs. I use Microsofts Writer right now and love it. Select portions of the webpage I want to post about and click Post to Writer button on my Firefox toolbar. Pulls the whole thing in as you see below. Linking to the original post, pretty pictures and all.
4. Easy modification of the display. I’m not a programer and I know the basics of HTML to create a webapage and troubleshoot things. I am trying to learn Rails right now, but thats going to take a while before I rebuild my whole site in Ruby Rails and start posting to there.
5. RSS Feeds. I want to be able to add feeds and have feeds. I’m trying to start podcasting on my other websites I manage. I want to be able to post Podcasts on there and have feeds for it.

I just need to work on this want list and see what meets my requirements.

The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption

Here’s a compilation of silly and stupid ways companies are hindering adoption of their products and services. I must admit, some of the companies that I’ve invested in have made these mistakes—in fact, that’s why I know these mistakes are (a) silly; (b) stupid; and (c) hinder adoption.

1. Enforced immediate registration. Requiring a new user to register and provide a modicum of information is a reasonable request—I just think you should do it after you’ve sucked the person in. Most sites require that registration is the first step, and this puts a barrier in front of adoption. At the very least, companies could ask for name and email address but not require it until a later time.

   A good example of a site that does the right thing is Netvibes. It allows you to do a high level of customization without registering. (Thanks to Glenn Kelman)

2. The long URL. When you want to send people an URL the site generates an URL that’s seventy characters long—or more! When you copy, paste, and email this URL, a line break is added, so people cannot click on it to go to the intended location.

   Here’s an URL for a billiard table copied and pasted from the CostCo site. Just how many billiard-table models could CostCo be selling?

   http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11197553&search=billiard%20table&Sp=S&Mo=8&cm_re=1-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&N=0&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=All&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=billiard%20table&Ntt=billiard%20table&No=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1

   The justification often goes like this: “We create a long URL because people with Crays might break our code and see private pages. Seventy characters that can be twenty-six lower case letters, twenty-six upper case letters, or ten numbers ensures that no one can break our code since the possible combinations outnumber the quantity of atoms in the universe.” This is what keeps sites like TinyUrl and SnipURL in business.

   Also, speaking of URLs, it’s good to have an easy naming convention for URLs. MySpace, for example, creates easy-to-remember URLs like http://www.myspace.com/guykawasaki.
   

   ---

   Test: Can people communicate your site’s URLs to others over the phone?

   Extra credit: People using Verizon and can do this despite its coverage.
   

   ---

3. Windows that don’t generate URLs. Have you ever wanted to point people to a page, but the page has no URL? You’ve got a window open that you want to tell someone about, but you’d have to write an essay to explain how to get that window open again. Did someone at the company decide that it didn’t want referrals, links, and additional traffic? This is the best argument I can think of for not using frames.

4. The unsearchable web site. Some sites that don’t allow people to search. This is okay for simple sites where a site map suffices, but that’s seldom the case. If your site has a site map that goes deeper than one level, it probably needs a search box.

5. Sites without Digg, del.icio.us, and Fark bookmarks. There’s no logic that I can think of why a company would not want its fans to bookmark its pages. And yet many companies don’t make this possible. When my blog hits the front page of Digg, page views typically increase by a factor of six or seven times. It’s true that the Digg effect wears off quickly, but some new readers stick around and that’s a good thing.

6. Limiting contact to email. Don’t get me wrong: I love email. I live and die by email, but there are times I want to call the company. Or maybe even snail mail something to it. I’ve found many companies only allow you to send an email via a web form in the “Contact Us” page. Why don’t companies call this page “Don’t Contact Us” and at least be honest?

7. Lack of feeds and email lists. When people are interested in your company, they will want to receive information about your products and services. This should be as easy as possible—meaning that you provide both email and RSS feeds for content and PR newsletters.

8. Requirement to re-type email addresses. How about the patent-pending, curve-jumping, VC-funded Web 2.0 company that wants to you to share content but requires you to re-type the email addresses of your friends?

   I have 7,703 email addresses in Entourage. I am not going to re-type them into the piece-of-shiitake, done-as-an-afterthought address book that companies build into their products. If nothing else, companies can use this cool tool from Plaxo or allow text imports into the aforementioned crappy address book. When do you suppose a standard format will emerge for transferring contacts?

9. User names cannot contain the “@” character. In other words, a user name cannot be your email address. I am a member of hundreds of sites. I can’t remember if my user name is kawasaki, gkawasaki, guykawasaki, or kawasaki3487. I do know what my email address is, so just let me use that as my user name.

10. Case sensitive user names and passwords. I know: user names and passwords that are case sensitive are more secure, but I’m more likely to type in my user name and password incorrectly. One of the funniest moments of a demo is when a company’s CEO can’t sign into her own account because she didn’t put in the proper case of her user name or password. I’ve seen it happen.

11. Friction-full commenting. “Moderated comments” is an oxymoron. If your company is trying to be a hip, myth-busting, hypocrisy-outing joint, then it should let anyone comment. Here’s an example of one such policy:

    Q. Who can leave comments on GullyHag

    A. Anyone who has been invited, either by us or by a friend. The invite system works like Gmail. We’ve invited a bunch of our favorite execs, bloggers, and friends to comment, then given them invitations to share with their friends and colleagues. That way, the burden of inclusion, and exclusion, is shared.

    The concept that people have to be invited to post comments is pathetic—if you hold yourself out as a big cojones company, then act like it. Even the concept that one has to register to post a comment is lousy. There have been many times that I started to leave a comment on a blog but stopped when I realized that I’d have to register.

    

12. Unreadable confirmation codes. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t support spam or robots creating accounts. A visual confirmation graphic system is a good thing, but many are too difficult to read. For example, this is what I got when trying to create a Yahoo! account. Is that an uppercase “X”? Is the last character an “s,” “5,” or “S”? Maybe this only affects old people like me, but it seems that all one merely has to prove is that you’re not a robot so a little bit of fuzziness should be good enough. For example, if the code is “ghj1lK” and someone who enters “ghj11K” is close enough.

13. Emails without signatures. There have been many times that I wanted to immediately call the sender or send him something, but there’s no signature. Also, when I book an appointment with a person, I like to put in his contact information in case I need to change it. Communication would be so much easier if everyone put a complete signature in their email that contains their name, company, address, phone, and email address.

    On a corporate level, communication would be so much easier if companies stop sending emails with a warning not to respond because the sender’s address is not monitored. I don’t mean they should not include the warning. I mean they should monitor the address.

14. Supporting only Windows Internet Explorer. Actually, I’m not nearly as vehement about this as you might think. Supporting Macintosh, Safari, and other Windows browsers is a lot of work, so this is your call. If you define your market as only the people who use Windows Internet Explorer, so be it. You may have to really invest some effort into this one, but all the other items in this list are stupidly simple.

Source: How to Change the World: The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption

How to Open Password Protected PDF Documents

posted by Amit Agarwal on 1/24/2007 04:31:00 PM

There are sometimes genuine reasons to unlock or crack a password protected PDF file. You have the legal right to open the encrypted PDF document but forgot the password like in the case below.
Say one of your former colleague created some critical sales reports in PDF format but he is not working with the company anymore. In his absence, you have no option but to crack the PDF password in order to open, read or print these PDF files.
There are basically two types of PDF protection – the original PDF creator can either restrict opening the PDF file itself or he can restrict others from modifying, printing or copying text and graphics from the PDF file. Here are a few possible workarounds:
When there are Copying or Printing Restrictions..
Say you want to print a couple of pages from the PDF document but the document settings won’t let you do that.
Open the document in Acrobat Reader or Foxit and capture the PDF page as an image using any free screen capture software. If there are multiple pages, you may try SnagIt since it can autoscroll and capture multiple pages of the document in one-go.
If you want to copy just a portion of text from some PDF page, use a screen capture tool with OCR features (like Kleptomania, Capture Text discussed here)
Alternatively, you can invest in commercial solutions like Advanced PDF Password Recovery from ElcomSoft and PDF Password Remover from Very PDF.
(These utilities may not recover the password for you – they’ll just remove the restrictions from the password protected file)
When there are Document Opening Restrictions..
This is a very tricky case and there’s no straight-forward solution to read PDF documents that are password-protected at the Open level.
The software will use methods like Brute Force, Key Search and Dictionary Attack to guess the password. They will try to use all possible character combinations as the password and so the process might take hours or even days and would really depend on your computer’s processing power.

Advanced PDF Password Recovery Professional edition from ElcomSoft is a recommended option. When (if) the password is found, the program shows it, as well as the number of passwords which have been tested, and the program speed.
Legal Issues: – you maybe surprised to learn that these PDF password cracking software are absolutely legal and Microsoft even awarded ElcomSoft a Gold Certified Partner status.
Related: Remove Watermarks from Adobe PDF Documents

Reader Comments:

Written by Prasanna Narayanan at 24/1/07 6:03 PM

Is there a way like this to open password protected excel sheet

Written by Best Desi at 24/1/07 10:32 PM

Wow i dint know they are legal thanks for the info good as always.
Regards

Written by Anonymous at 27/1/07 9:45 PM

I have a PDF file that is protected with a password. It’s actually a magazine scanned in PDF which I downloaded from some book warez site. I tried the brute force method to crack the pdf password but it’s takign some time. Will post if the process is successful.

Written by Anonymous at 28/1/07 4:19 AM

You know those sites post the password in the item description/NFO file right?

Written by StandAlone at 28/1/07 10:28 AM

If the needs is printing the pdf document, i think we can use pdf-to-words converter.
Then we print it in words.
how it can be done?
we can use zamzar[dot]com or any commercial converter tools.

Written by brenton at 28/1/07 12:40 PM

Doesn’t help for e-books that you happened to purchase on one copy of windows, and then had to do a reinstall. D: I hate DRM.

Source: How to Open Password Protected PDF Documents at Digital Inspiration