Author Archive

A lawsuit has been filed against Best Buy for price match fraud. You know how they tout on their commercials that if you find a better deal somewhere else, they will match the price? Well, I guess that doesn’t count their own web site.

The Consumerist reports the details of the lawsuit and how the shenanigans occur:

1. You walk into a Best Buy to purchase a sale item you saw on their site.

2. The employee tells you that the item is no longer on sale, and shows you what looks to be Best Buy’s website, but it’s really a secret intranet that Best Buy’s corporate office denies exists. The price on the website shows that the sale is over.

3. You cry and leave, then at home you see that the sale isn’t over at all. What happened?

I have acquired a growing distaste for Best Buy and will only go there when dire circumstances require it, such as needing a new wireless router at 8PM on a Friday night. (heh)

Now I’ll definitely think about staying away at all costs.

This article explains why you can’t trust your friends on Facebook.  It demonstrates how easy it is to gain someone’s trust by using an account that they think is that of a friend. The next time your friend on Facebook asks you to borrow some money, or asks when you are going out of town, think twice. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever been to a coffee shop and got worried about hopping on their public wifi network to check your email?  If not, you should have been, and you should presently be concerned about wifi security anywhere you go — a topic we have covered here many times. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years, Experts Exchange has become quite the repository of tech advice, where people go to ask questions, then the experts compete to give the best answer and win the asker’s vote.  It’s a pretty slick system, I suppose, if you are an ‘expert’, and your goal in life is seeing your username at the top of a list on their site, or if you have a question and have been unable to find an answer to it on any of the completely free message boards across the internet.

Whatever your reason for paying the fee to join their site, you have probably run across one of their pages if you have been searching for answers to a technical problem online.  Their search engine placement has been historically good for a wide variety of key words and phrases.

A Bit of History

You have also probably run across Expert Exchange’s efforts to protect their paid content from the casual observer. If you are like me, you have seen them at the top of a search results page, cussed them out in your head, then moved on to the next result.  That is because you know they often seem to have people asking the exact same thing you are in search of, and they seem to have people who have provided answers/solutions, but when you go there you are asked to pay to see the answers.  But being the freebie seeking geek you are, you haven’t ever signed up for their site.

I remember that it used to be they would obfuscate their experts’ answers to a question with Javascript.  That worked for a few minutes, until Firefox gained popularity and it became really easy to turn off Javascript.

For a long time, I thought that they had ended up removing their experts’ answers altogether.  However, I learned that Experts Exchange is using a simple visual cue to make you think this so that you won’t find the coveted content for which they take great lengths to protect (and charge you $12.95 a month for access to).

The Hack

The secret is, if you just keep scrolling down the page, you will see all the answers to the question at the top of the page!  What they do to make you think there is nothing there is show several empty bars of “Expert Comment” and “Accepted Solution”, followed by a “Sign up to view this solution” section, making you think the content is hidden.  Below that, you will see a ton of “footer links”, making you think you are at the bottom of the page. However, keep going, and you will find the hidden pot o’ gold.

Why would they do this?  Because they need Google to be able to crawl their content so they can maintain the excellent search engine placement they usually have.  If they only showed the question, and not the answers, they would have much less worthy text to index, so it really behooves them to have that text shown somewhere in plain view. Obfuscating it with Javascript or CSS will only end up hurting them because Google looks at those things as ‘trickery’ due to the fact that they can be used for keyword stuffing.

This isn’t to say I don’t advocate paying for their service.  I actually had the company I used to work for pay the fee a few years ago, but didn’t find myself using it that much, so I didn’t ask them to renew it.

In summary, scroll scroll scroll your way to the bottom of the page when you find an Experts Exchange result while troubleshooting on the Internet.

I am always on the hunt for applications which either improve my workflow, provide me with a free alternative to something I would otherwise have to pay for, or generally improve my geek stature. So without further ado, here is a short list of some of the apps I have found recently:

• .htaccess Editor – This web-based tool allows you to quickly generate .htaccess files for your web site, without having to remember your way through vi or having to look up the sytnax when trying to do some basic user authentication.
• InstallPad lets you create a list of applications you often find yourself installing when setting up someone’s Windows-based PC. Any application which can be directly downloaded from the Internet can be added to InstallPad. All you have to do is run the self-contained InstallPad executable file, and it will go grab all the apps from the Internet and install them for you. It’s a pretty slick way to set up Firefox, Thunderbird, and more, all with one double click for free.
• Google Analytics Reporting Suite – A free Adobe Air-based application which runs from your desktop and allows you to quickly monitor all of your Analytics accounts through a very smooth interface, optimized to be less sucky than the clunky interface provided by Google. Requires Adobe Air, also a free app.
• MailStore Home – I have written about this free tool before, and it still blows my mind so much that it deserves to be mentioned again.  MailStore allows you to back up and archive your email accounts, whether they be in Outlook, Thunderbird, or GMail (or others). This tool saved my neck when my email accounts got too big for MozBackup to handle without crashing.  Now, I can use MailStore and archive stuff to keep my inboxes streamlined, then backup the archived email with my favorite paid backup tool, Carbonite.
• Tweet Deck – If you are a Twitter user, this is THE tool for keeping up with everything, posting, and more. Another free Adobe Air application, Tweet Deck runs from your desktop and has more bells and whistles than a elementary school band class.

For two years, I have battled with this issue of Bellsouth.net (and AT&T in general) blocking email from any domain hosted on my web server.  I set up all kinds of security precautions, set up SPF records, and ran all sorts of tests in order to subdue the fears that somehow my server was being used as an open relay for spam.

I was so sure that it was all correct, and was so frustrated that the problem wouldn’t go away.  It only appeared to happen with Bellsouth addresses.

I used the AT&T Unblock request twice, which helped for a short time, but I would soon find email being blocked again and many of my hosted clients complaining.

But today, scouring through the CPanel user forums, I discovered the cause and solution!

I had a hosted client who wanted me to forward all of her email to her Bellsouth account a couple of years ago.  I did this, and then she soon complained that she wasn’t receiving any email. I never stopped to consider the fact that the forward itself was the cause of the problem, and that Bellsouth thought that there was spam being relayed from my server!

So, I have removed that forwarded email account (got her to set up a GMail account), have re-filed a request with Bellsouth to unblock my server, and all should be good again.

I hope this helps someone out there!

This describes how to use the free versions of RealVNC to connect to your RedHat Enterpirse Linux 5 desktop from your Windows XP machine.  These instructions might work for RHEL4, CentOS, Windows Vista, and other flavors of Linux, but I haven’t tried them.  YMMV.

First download the latest free version for Linux to your RedHat machine from here:

http://www.realvnc.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi

Note:  Since you are on RedHat, make it easy on yourself and grab the RPM version.

Unzip/Untar the file to extract the RPM, then install it:

rpm -i vnc-4.*.*.*.rpm

Next, you will need to edit the script which launches RealVNC or else it will choke on the font paths.  So, as root, edit this file:

/usr/bin/vncserver

You should see a section in that file that looks like this:

# Add font path and color database stuff here, e.g.:
#
# $cmd .= " -fp /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/";
# $cmd .= " -co /usr/lib/X11/rgb";
#

To jump to it quickly, just search for the word ‘font’ in your editor.

Now, you want to uncomment and edit the two necessary lines so that it looks like this:

# Add font path and color database stuff here, e.g.:
#
$cmd .= " -fp /usr/share/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/";
$cmd .= " -co /usr/share/X11/rgb";
#

Got it? Good.  Save that sucker and close it.

Don’t Run RealVNC As Root.

You need to be logged in as a non-root user when you fire up the VNC server, lest the application bomb out with errors.  So, once you have chosen the user you wish to be,  log in and edit this file:

/home/username/.vnc/xstartup

You will want to change the last line to use your GUI of choice (I prefer Gnome).

Change:

twm &

To:

gnome-session &

Save that sucker.  Got it? Good.

There is one last thing to do before any of this will work, and that is to open the necessary port in your firewall.  On your RedHat box, open the Firewall editor and add port 5901 to the list of allowed ports.

Fire It Up

Logged in as the non-root user you decided to run this as, enter the following at the command line:

#> vncserver :1

The first time you run this, you will be asked to create a password. Choose something you will remember by the time you get to your Windows machine to connect in a few minutes.

You should see a few notes about the server being started and the log file being created.  And with that, the vnc server is ready for connections from your Windows box.

Setting Up Windows

Now, you need to download and install the free RealVNC viewer to connect to your RedHat machine, which again is available here:

http://www.realvnc.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi

When installing, choose the Viewer option, not the Server option.  Once it’s installed, launch the application, and in the Server field, enter the IP or hostname of your RedHat server, followed by :1.  For example:

192.168.1.2:1

Click OK, and you should be asked to enter the password you created a few minutes ago.  Once you do, if all worked as planned, you should be looking at your RedHat desktop on your Windows machine.

Notes

Stopping RealVNC

Sometimes you may need to stop and restart VNC on the RedHat box.  To do this, log in at the command line and enter:

#> vncserver -kill :1

It should say something like “Killing process 5036″, letting you know it has been completed.

Getting A Better Resolution

If your Windows box has a monitor running at a resolution different than that of your Linux box, you may want to change the resolution at which RealVNC runs.  To do this, just add the desired resolution to the startup command like so:

#> vncserver -geometry 1440x900 :1

I have about a dozen email accounts I try to manage locally with Thunderbird.  By and large, things run pretty smoothly until I need to move it all, as I did recently when upgrading from XP to Vista.

I have been a big fan of MozBackup in the past, but as my email accounts grew and I had more and more email stored in folders, MozBackup started taking a long time to process it all.  After my move to Vista, I realized I had over 2GB of mail backed up, and restoring it from Mozbackup didn’t work.  It recreated all my accounts and folders, but all the folders were empty.

After the initial panic faded, I found some forum threads discussing the manual opening of MozBackup archives and restoration of email.  I finally got it all back, but it wasn’t without more than a few sweat bullets hitting the keyboard.

Since this episode, I have been looking for something to put my mind at ease in regards to email storage, backup, and even reduction. I don’t know why I had never heard of it, but I stumbled across MailStore, which offers a free home version called, get this, MailStore Home.

MailStore Home will back up and archive email from many different clients, including Outlook, Thunderbird, Exchange, GMail, Yahoo mail, and others. At first I thought it was too good to be true, but after installing it I was quickly impressed with the simplicity and ease of use.

I had soon archived my two biggest email accounts, and even burned them to DVD through the MailStore application itself. Knowing DVD’s aren’t indestructible, I also backed up the archive using Carbonite (another of my favorite apps).

Going back into a MailStore archive is very easy, and it lets you read email, open, and even search mail and contents of attachments.

Once I was convinced that I had succesfully archived and backed up all my email, I was able to go through my Inboxes and delete over 1GB of email.  Hopefully, this will allow MozBackup to run more smoothly, if I ever really need it again in the first place.

If you find yourself with an unweildy inbox and a nagging feeling that you haven’t done anything to back it  up, go grab MailStore Home now.

mailStore Home: http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx

Move Your Web Clippings Out of Google Notebook.  Now.  The free service has already stopped allowing new registrations, and will no longer be updated.

I can’t express the grief I have over this, as I have been a hardcore Notebook user since I discovered it about 9 months ago.

In case you haven’t heard of it, Google Notebook is a tool which allows you to save clippings, notes, and bookmarks which you run across while cruising around the information highway.  It’s easy to save parts of web pages using the Notebook plugin for Firefox, and you can add bookmarks, pictures, and notes, and to boot.

There are alternative services offered, the most popular of which seems to be Evernote, but being forced to switch services is just not cool, not matter how good they might be.

I have had an Evernote account for quite a while, but I never used it because I preferred Google Notebook’s ease of use and simplicity.  The worst part is that in order to import half of what I have saved in Google Notebook, I will have to purchase Evernote’s premium service and do it all by hand.

So, check back soon for an Evernote review!

Fudzilla reports that Microsoft is about to lay out 17% of its staff.  Apparently, most of the cuts will likely be in overseas areas, as well as in the MSN division of the corporate giant.

Will other major vendors follow suit?