2007 September VitaminCM – Nourish Your Mind

I Just Upgraded to WordPress 2.3

September 24th, 2007

Upgrading to the New Version Was a Snap

I was reading a post about the new version of WordPress (the software that I use to maintain this site) and some of the cool new featurs. So, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade. This was kind of a scary proposition, because if it all blew up, I’m kinda screwed.

I decided to make things easy by using a plugin that would do everything automatically. I used the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin to perform the process. Here are the intructions.

Is Microsoft Office in Danger of Being Dethroned?

September 23rd, 2007

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Can Open Office or Online Office Suites Dethrone Microsoft Office?

I keep reading all of these articles about the imminent demise of Microsoft’s biggest cash cow; Office. “Will Google Apps Dethrone Office”, “Is Open Office About to Unseat Microsoft”, “Will the Open Document Format Spell the End for Office”.

In a word, NO!

Q: Is there room for other players to get in the game? A: Of course.

Q: Can a few of them make a profit, or even grab a sliver of market share? A: Definitely

Q: Is Microsoft In trouble? A: Not even a little bit.

A Solution to a Problem That is Barely There

Of course Microsoft Office is prohibitively expensive (about $400 USD for the Standard version with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook). But seriously, the place where most people use Office is either at work or school. At work, it’s a given. Even if you own the business, can you think of a better use for a few hundred dollars?

When they relinquish their crown as the king of the software industry, drive your flying car over to my place and I’ll buy you a beer. If they’re still legal by then.

Where is your business without Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and Email? Plus, you can get it much cheaper if you buy it with your PCs. At school, you can get it with a significant student discount (recently dropped to below $75, that’s like two bags of weed and a case of Milwaukee Beast). Besides, we know that college kids don’t pay for software any way, that’s what open wi-fi and Bit Torrent are for.

Sure, people who buy a computer for their house need Office too. So they’ll have to pay up. But most of them have either a kid, teacher, evil hacker, or rich guy in the house. The ones who don’t have or know any of those types will just have to pony up the money or go for the freebies.

How to Download TV Shows from the Internet (Part 2)

September 19th, 2007

1 comment

How to Make uTorrent Automatically Find and Download your Favorite Shows

So you learned how to Download TV Shows from the Internet in my last post. Now that’s great for one off shows, but you’d really like to make your computer go out and grab the newest episode of your shows automatically.

You can have uTorrent go look for newly posted episodes of your favorite shows and begin downloading them automatically. This is done using an “RSS” feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication; which allows websites to post new content to their site and have a “RSS Reader” check and download this new content automatically. There is an RSS Reader built into uTorrent.

If you go to the tvRSS (the RSS in the name refers to this technology) download page for your show, there is an RSS link at the top of the episode listing. (circled below)

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You need to right click on this RSS link to open your browser’s Options menu.

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Select Copy Shortcut from the Options menu.

Easy Way to Download TV Shows from the Internet

September 18th, 2007

4 comments

How to Download TV Shows from the Internet

Well, it’s that time of year again, the Fall TV season is starting. Oh yeah after a long summer of nothing to do but go outside, meet other humans, and physical activity you can finally plop down on the couch and turn into a fat zombie watching the thrilling new episodes of your favorite shows. Now, I know you’re going to be there promptly every night living vicariously through your celluloid pseudo friends.

But, what if all of that human contact and activity from the summer bleeds into the fall? What if you find yourself having plans on, (don’t say it) a WEEKNIGHT gasp! Sure, you could just set the Tivo to grab all of your favorite shows, right after you remember to back up your computer, wear a condom and floss daily. Or worse yet, let’s say one of your “friends” or “neighbors” grabs you at the last minute and forces you to miss an episode of “The Office”. You can’t ask the Tivo to go get shows that it never recorded.

It must be difficult, expensive, or illegal. NO!, NO!, and “Probably Not.” It is pretty simple, totally free, and probably legal.

Well, all is not lost, you can always get any shows, with the commercials edited out right from the only “real” friend that you have (except for the TV), you guessed it, the Internet.

That doesn’t sound right. It must be difficult, expensive, or illegal. NO!, NO!, and “Probably Not.” It is pretty simple, totally free, and probably legal. (Well, when was the last time that you heard of someone getting sued for downloading Scrubs?) Follow these simple steps in this TWO PART ARTICLE and you can get any shows Freely, Quickly, and Easily.

What You Need to Download TV Shows

There are two things that you need to get your shows from the Internet:

A tool to download the files
A site that posts links to the files

See How Easily You Can Embed a Map on Your Site

September 16th, 2007

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Embedding Beautiful Maps on your Site or Blog Pages

Did you ever want to place one of those cool maps on your site or blog? Say for example if you have an event going on, or want to give directions to your house, or want to show where something happened that you are describing. Well, there are several really easy ways that you can use to give your pages that polished look. They use many of the popular internet mapping services along with varying degrees of know-how to get the maps from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft straight into your pages.

I’ll take a look at a few.

Google Maps

Let’s start at the top; the king of the heap, Google Maps. You know ‘em, you love ‘em. Speed, beauty, detail, elegance, it’s all there. Well, the good news is, they provide the best combination of Ease of Use and Functionality of all the contenders when it comes to easily embedding a nice functional map on your site or blog.

Here is an embedded Google map:

View Larger Map

This is quick, simple and nice. Once again, Google does it right.

Who Else Wanted More From the iPod Touch?

September 5th, 2007

6 comments

Nice Try, BUT, You Forgot a Few Things

I read all of the rumors for the last few weeks about the funny looking Nano, the iPhone 2, and every other thing. I secretly hoped that I would get what the iPhone made me really want. A world class Portable Media / PDA / Internet Tablet all in one. (NO PHONE, I hate the idea of that thing as a phone!)

Well what did the sultan of the mock-T give me? ~~The Finger~~ A big, beautiful touch screen iPod that is just about useless as a Portable Media Device. The PDA part is pretty close to what I wanted and the Internet Tablet is still a “Walled Garden” of Safari disappointment.

So now, I have the need for MORE capacity and I’m given LESS. All to say that it is thinner than Nicole Richie after she refunds her lunch.

Useless Portable Media Device? How can that be, it’s an iPod, and you almost tried to marry your current iPod? Well, here it is; The thing only has 16 gigs of storage. My third generation, black and white, music only iPod had 40 gigs back in 2003. Now, this thing has that gorgeous, huge screen that cries out for two things: High Quality Video and Lucious Photos. What do those two things have in common – You guessed it, BIG FILE SIZE. So now, I have the need for MORE capacity and I’m given LESS. All to say that it is thinner than Nicole Richie after she refunds her lunch. Was anyone’s iPod Video just way too fat? I don’t know, mine seems perfect. I’d even settle for a few more millimeters if they were packed with Songs, Movies, Photos, and Useful Applications.

Useful Applications, let’s talk about that for a minute. You really don’t need that much storage for applications, because YOU STILL CAN”T LOAD ANY REAL SOFTWARE onto this miracle of modern technology. So now I have a Ferarri that is not allowed to drive on the highway. Thanks! Open up the damn platform and let me put some cool software on the thing. It could be like a Palm Pilot with an attractive interface.

Another thing that I would allow a few more millimeters of girth for is GPS. It fits in the tiniest of cell phones, how much room could it take up? That would be great, plop it up on the dashboard of my car, let the music play through my stereo while magical turn-by-turn directions danced across the screen, all the while being charged by my car’s battery. Sorry, not gonna happen.

OK, here’s what I want out of a non-phone iPod:

iPod Touch screen and interface
160 Gigs of Storage on a Hard Drive
GPS with a cool Application
Open platform for Third Party Apps
Bluetooth that will connect to my Cell Phone
Better Browser
Skype

Now, listen to me Steve, roll up the sleeves on that mock-T and get to work on building me something usefull. When you’re done, I just might genuflect and kiss your ring. Until then, don’t schedule another one of your useless Dash-My-Hopes-Again dog and pony shows.

See my previous article on Why Unlocking the iPhone is Pointless

Update: I guess Scoble agrees with me, Check out his Open Letter to Steve Jobs.

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