Roxio In Need of A Class Action Lawsuit

In trying to restore our system software, we ran into a problem. Many of our data disks were encoded with Direct CD and Direct CD isn’t compatible with Windows 2K or XP without updates.

So the easy answer was to register with Roxio, then download the updates; Right? Wrong!

They appear to have rigged their system so that all download requests for out of date software will fail, unless you download their newest version of the software first. Finding a trial version, is difficult to do (no links to trial versions on the main site - or you might not buy the new version?), try searching on the latest product name plus promo tiral.

Once the newest software is downloaded (400 + MB) and installed, your downloads for the software updates will sudenly work! We tried this under 3 complete re-installs of the XP SP2 OS - with all updates and IE 7, and FireFox. Each time our downloads failed prior to installing and registering the trial software.

Now, since they appear to force you to register to get updates, don’t provide updates for applications still available for purchase in retail (that hose your OS), Provide no technical support for the specific issue associated with their software wasting your XP SP2 OS, We think that they deserve a class Action Suit far more than Microsoft ever did.

Our reasoning is simple, Microsoft at least takes responsibility for their screwups (even if they charge you for the fix). Since they have been sued, why shouldn’t Roxio be?

Filed under: Propy's Blog, Software - Utilities, Tech Support on June 29th, 2007 1 Comment »

Must have applications for a clean Windows Installation

Now that the problem with the damage created by Roxio has been corrected, it’s time to put the system back togeather.

Here is a list of the application we use on a regular basis, most are Free, the rest are must have:

  • Tight VNC - Similar to Windows Terminal Services and Symantec PC Anywhere, Tight VNC provides remote control of any pc on your network (Also available for Unix and as a Java app).
  • KeePass Password Safe - Protect your usernames and passwords with this free database. Check out the database backup utility plugin available fro free from the same site!
  • Norton System Works - A number of utilities for protecting, evaluating and repairing your system.
  • FileZilla - A free Full powered FTP application

Filed under: Software - Utilities, Tech Support on June 27th, 2007 No Comments »

Roxio CD & DVD Creator - Win XP’s Death Wish

We have used direct cd for years to create CD’s of our clients files. Unfortunately Roxio hasn’t continued this function forward in the newest versions of their software.

So we picked up a version of Roxio CD & DVD Creator, then went ahead and installed it on a system running Windows XP Service Pack 2 with all of the updates installed.

After installation and reboot, the system had duplicate copies of the boot drive with different drive letters. Since their were only two hard disks in the system this was impossible.

At this point we attempted to use Norton System Works’ Disk Doctor to correct the problem. Norton was able to detect the problem, but couldn’t correct it as Windows had locked the system.

After another reboot, the system stopped responding, and even lost the file allocation table of the disk!

The long and the short of it are this:

Roxio should not be making software and putting on the box that it works with an OS that it doesn’t.

Also, since they are aware of the problem, they certainly should still be supporting it.

 Your best bet is not to use Roxio Products, when a company can’t stand behind their software, they shouldn’t have thier hand out for your money.

Filed under: Propy's Blog, Software - Utilities, Tech Support on June 25th, 2007 No Comments »

Domain Registry of America

Beware scams to get you to transfer your domain names to another registrar. A great example of this not so ethical practice is Domain Registry of America. Domain Registry of America will send you a written notice of gloom and doom about your impending domain name renewal. The catch is, they probably aren’t your registrar.

If you respond to their renewal notice, Domain Registrars of America will transfer your Domain to themselves (as your Registrar) and charge about 75% more than the going registration rate.

So remember that just because they spent the extra money to mail you a warning, doesn’t mean they aren’t spammers!

Filed under: Hosting on June 22nd, 2007 No Comments »

James Malinchak

James Malinchak has delivered over 2,200 motivational presentations at conferences and meetings worldwide, and was named Consummate Speaker of the Year by Sharing Ideas professional speakers’ magazine. He has appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and several hundred other publications.

Filed under: Speakers/Consultants on June 22nd, 2007 No Comments »

Does Keyword Location On Page Affect Ranking?

by Jon Ricerca http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

One of our members asked for a study of keyword location on a page. Is it more effective to have your keyword mentioned in the top third, middle third or bottom third of a page?

Here is the methodology I used to answer this question. I gathered the results of the queries naturally performed last month by myself and three associates using Yahoo and Google. I then fetched the pages and divided the body section into three equal parts for each page. I tallied the results for the first 8 rankings on both Yahoo and Google (keeping the results separate) and then converted them into a percentage of the total results for each search engine.

Here are the graphs showing Google and Yahoo results:

http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dfg02.gif
http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com/graphs/dfy02.gif

(Note to webmasters/ezine editors: You are welcome to hot link to these graphs or even copy them to your own site. You are also welcome to remove this note.)

The X-axis shows the ranking (from #1 through #8) of the search engine results in the study. The Y-axis shows the percentage of domains that contained the keyword in the top (red line), middle (blue line) and bottom (purple line) thirds of the body section of the page.

It is interesting to note that pages containing the keyword in the top and bottom third of the body section ranked much better on Google. The top section had a normalized correlation of +42 on a scale of -100 to +100. The bottom third also showed a remarkable positive correlation of +46 on the same scale. Having the keyword in the middle third had no significant effect (no correlation whatsoever… neither positive nor negative).

The Yahoo results were even more interesting. I generally ignore any correlations between -35 and +35 as being generally insignificant. On Yahoo, none of the three sections showed any remarkable correlations. The scores were a +17 for the top, -3 for the middle and -17 for the bottom third of the body section. Does this mean that Yahoo doesn’t even look for the keyword in the body section?

Advice: Mention your keywords near the top and/or bottom of a page for Google ranking.

Jon Ricerca is one of the leading researchers and authors of the Search Engine Ranking Factor (SERF) reports at SearchEngineGeek.com. For access to the other SERF reports, please visit: http://www.SearchEngineGeek.com

Filed under: Keyword Targeting on June 20th, 2007 No Comments »

PHPNuke Web Portal Application

Need to create an organized, site with lots of resources? Check out PHPNuke with it’s articles, topics,m forums,m blogs and more all built into one managable solution.

Filed under: Blogs Forums CMS on June 17th, 2007 No Comments »

Put IE7’s file menu back where it belongs

Finially a solution for the stupid IE 7 tollbar laout.

Call me a traditionalist, but I like my toolbars where they’re supposed to be. To me, this simple fix makes IE7 a bit less objectionable. — Rick Broida

 For those that have difficulty creating .reg files, we have attached it for you. Saeler Enterprises holds no responsibility for any damages, incidental or otherwise to your computer systems form the use of this file. If you do not agree to these terms, do not use this file.

 

Attachment:

 

 

toolbar-reg.zip  

 

 

239 bytes

Filed under: Resources, Tutorials on June 16th, 2007 No Comments »

PDFMaker unavailable in a Microsoft Office application

 

 

PDFMaker unavailable in a Microsoft Office application (Acrobat 5.x on Windows XP or 2000)

Issue

The PDFMaker (Convert to Adobe PDF) icons and the Acrobat menu are missing from one of the following Microsoft Office XP or 2000 applications in Windows XP or 2000:
  • Microsoft Word 2002
  • Microsoft Excel 2002
  • Microsoft Powerpoint 2002

Detail
When you start Word, you receive the error, “Adobe PDF Monitor cannot be found, please re-install Create Adobe PDF.”

Solutions

Do one or more of the following:

Solution 1
If you installed Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or later before you installed the Microsoft application or Microsoft Office, remove and then reinstall Acrobat.

Note: If you use Windows XP, install Acrobat 5.0.5, which is the first version of Acrobat to support Windows XP. You can download the free Acrobat 5.0.5 update from Adobe’s Web site at www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html.

Solution 2
Ensure that PDFMaker is available in the Toolbars menu and enabled:

In Excel or PowerPoint, choose View > Toolbars:

  • If PDFMaker 5.0 is listed, make sure that it’s selected.
  • If PDFMaker 5.0 isn’t listed, do the following.
    1. Choose Tools > Add-ins.
    2. Click Browse (Excel) or Add New (PowerPoint).
    3. Navigate to the Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 5.0/PDFMaker folder, and select PDFMaker.xla (Excel) or PDFMaker.ppa (PowerPoint), and click OK.
    4. Click OK (Excel) or Close (PowerPoint) to close the Add-In dialog box.
    5. Choose View > Toolbars, and make sure that PDFMaker 5.0 is selected.

In Word, choose View > Toolbars:

  •  If PDFMaker 5.0 is listed, make sure that it’s selected.
  •  If PDFMaker 5.0 isn’t listed, choose Tools > Templates & Add-ins:
  • - If PDFMaker.dot is listed, make sure that it’s selected, and then click OK.
  • - If PDFMaker.dot isn’t listed, do the following:
    1. Click Add.
    2. Navigate to the Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 5.0/PDFMaker folder, select PDFMaker.dot, and then click OK.
    3. Click OK to close the Templates & Add-ins dialog box.
    4. Choose View > Toolbars, and make sure that PDFMaker 5.0 is selected.

Solution 3 (Word only)
Replace the Pdfmaker.dot file in the Microsoft Startup folder:

  1. Exit from Word.
  2. Rename the Pdfmaker.dot file in the following folder (for example, to Pdfmaker.old):
    •  Office XP: Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office 10/Startup
    •  Office 2000: Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office/Startup
  3. Copy the Pdfmaker.dot file in the Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 5.0/Pdfmaker folder.
  4. Move the copy you created to the following folder:
    •  Office XP: Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office 10/Startup
    •  Office 2000: Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office/Startup

Solution 4 (Excel or Word only)
If the Security Warning dialog box appears when you start Excel or Word, select Always Trust Macros From This Source, and then click Enable Macros.

Solution 5 (Excel or Word only)
In Excel or Word, select Trust All Installed Add-ins and Templates in the Security dialog box, and then restart the application:

  1. Choose Tools > Macro > Security.
  2. Click the Trusted Sources tab, and select Trust All Installed Add-ins and Templates.
  3. Click OK, and then restart Word or Excel.

Solution 6
Make sure that PDFMaker is enabled in the Office application:

  1. In the Office application, choose Help > About Microsoft [application name].
  2. Click Disabled Items:
    • - If PdfMaker (.ppa, .dot, or .xla) appears in the Disabled Items window, select the file, and click Enable.
    •  If Pdfmaker (.ppa, .dot, or .xla) doesn’t appear in the Disabled Items window, click Close
  3. Click OK.

Solution 7 (Word only)
Deselect Word as the e-mail editor in Outlook:

  1. Choose Tools > Options, and click the Mail Format tab.
  2. Deselect Use Microsoft Word to Edit E-mail Messages.
  3. Click OK.

Solution 8
Restart the computer, remove all versions of PDFMaker, and then reinstall PDFMaker:

To remove PDFMaker 5.x from Office XP, delete the following items:

  •  the Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 5.0/PDFMaker folder
  •  the PDFMaker.dot file from the Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office 10/Startup folder
  •  the PDFMaker.xla file from the Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office 10/XLStart folder

To remove PDFMaker 5.x from Office 2000, delete the following items:

  •  the Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 5.0/PDFMaker folder
  •  the PDFMaker.dot file from the Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office/Startup folder
  •  the PDFMaker.xla file from the Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office/XLStart folder

To reinstall PDFMaker:

  1. Exit from all applications, including those that run in the background.
  2. Start the Acrobat installer.
  3. Click Next in the Adobe Acrobat 5.x Setup dialog box.
  4. In the Select Country dialog box, select the country you’re in, and then click Next.
  5. Click Accept to accept the license agreement.
  6. Select Custom in the Adobe Acrobat 5.x Setup dialog box, and then click Next.
  7. Deselect all of the components except Accessories and Acrobat Distiller Files (PDFMaker won’t work without the Distiller files).
  8. Click Accessories, and then click Change.
  9. Deselect all components except Acrobat PDFMaker; then click Continue.
  10. Click Next; then follow the on-screen instructions to finish installing Acrobat PDFMaker.

Filed under: Resources on June 13th, 2007 No Comments »

LunarPages Coupon Codes

There are thousands of web hosting services so why choose Lunarpages?

When comparing web hosts it is important not only to consider a price difference of a dollar or two. Although Lunarpages offers more data transfer and storage resources then you will likely ever utilize, they prefer to focus on something much more important, reliable web hosting and great customer service.

Above all Lunarpages takes care of you personally and attentively with 24-7 award winning customer support.

It’s all about making sure your website and email remain online and you are happy. It’s not just technical support to them; it’s about caring for people since 1998. 

These coupon codes work for all Lunarpages web hosting, windows hosting, vps, and dedicated server plans! Enjoy!

Lunarpages Coupons:

  1. 28poffWebHostingUnleashed -  28% Off Your Order!
  2. 24p - 24% Off!
  3. 28add1month - $28 Off plus a Free month!
  4. 28OffHosting - $28 Off
  5. 2MonthDeal - 2 Extra Months on 1 or 2 year plans.

Free CoffeCup Software at LunarPages
LunarPages is doing this great offer offering over $700.00 worth of CoffeeCup software. Very cool! I’m using CoffeeCup HTML editor and its pretty nice!

Filed under: Hosting on June 11th, 2007 No Comments »

WordPress Widgets Plugin

Widgets are now part of WordPress core! If you are running WordPress 2.2 or later, you do not need to install the Widgets plugin. You can proceed straight to the WordPress Widgets Blog to find some widgets to try out.

Filed under: WordPress on June 7th, 2007 No Comments »

Windows Update, Microsoft update Error

Because this article is so hard to find on the Microsoft site, we are duplicating it here to make our lives (and possibly yours) easier.

Error that you see in the upper-right corner when you visit the Windows Update Web site on a Windows XP-based computer: “[Error number: 0x8DDD0004]“

Article ID : 914224
Last Review : August 14, 2006
Revision : 1.1

SYMPTOMS

When you visit the Microsoft Windows Update Web site on a Microsoft Windows XP-based computer, you receive an error message that is similar to the following:
Windows Update has encountered an error and cannot display the requested page.

You receive this error message when the scan for the latest version of the Windows Update software runs on the computer.

Additionally, you see “[Error number: 0x8DDD0004]” in the upper-right corner of the Web page.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:
1. Register the following .dll files:

• Jscript.dll
• Msxml3.dll
• Atl.dll
• Wuapi.dll
• Wuaueng.dll
• Wuaueng1.dll
• Wucltui.dll
• Wups.dll
• Wuweb.dll

To do this, follow these steps:

a. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
b. At the command prompt, type cd %windir%\system32, and then press ENTER.
c. Type the following commands, and then press ENTER after each command:

• Regsvr32 Jscript.dll
• Regsvr32 Msxml3.dll
• Regsvr32 Atl.dll
• Regsvr32 Wuapi.dll
• Regsvr32 Wuaueng.dll
• Regsvr32 Wuaueng1.dll
• Regsvr32 Wucltui.dll
• Regsvr32 Wups.dll
• Regsvr32 Wuweb.dll
d. Type exit, and then press ENTER to close the Command Prompt window.

Note If the previous steps do not resolve this issue, continue with steps 2 through 4.
2. Stop the Automatic Updates service and the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). To do this, follow these steps:

a. Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.
b. In the list of services, right-click Automatic Updates, and then click Properties.
c. In the Automatic Updates Properties dialog box, click the General tab, click Stop, and then click OK.
d. In the list of services, right-click Background Intelligent Transfer Service, and then click Properties.
e. In the Background Intelligent Transfer Service Properties dialog box, click the General tab, click Stop, and then click OK.
3. Rename the SoftwareDistribution folder. To do this, follow these steps:

a. Click Start, click Run, type %windir%, and then click OK.Note The %windir% folder is the folder where you installed Microsoft Windows.
b. Locate the SoftwareDistribution folder.
c. Right-click the SoftwareDistribution folder, and then click Rename.
d. Type OldSD, and then press ENTER.
4. Start the Automatic Updates service and the BITS service. To do this, follow these steps:

a. Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.
b. In the list of services, right-click Automatic Updates, and then click Properties.
c. In the Automatic Updates Properties dialog box, click the General tab, click Start, and then click OK.
d. In the list of services, right-click Background Intelligent Transfer Service, and then click Properties.
e. In the Background Intelligent Transfer Service Properties dialog box, click the General tab, click Start, and then click OK.

Filed under: Software - Utilities, Tech Support on June 7th, 2007 No Comments »

Adding Default Editors

Question: Is there a way to set the default Text editor in FP 2000? I need it to use word pad not note pad cause I edit allot of PHP (Live edit)

Answer: Look under the tools menu for options, or customize (options for FP 2002 & 2003). You should see the option for configure editors. Simply select the extension and choose the editor.

Filed under: Website Editors on June 5th, 2007 No Comments »

Amazon.com Affiliate Login

Avoid the frustration of locating the Amazon Affiliate login. Use this shortcut, and add it to your Favorites.

 

Filed under: Affiliate Programs on June 5th, 2007 No Comments »

Hostgator Billing & Upgrade Center

Need to make changes to your HostGator Account, then use this link to visit the billing centers options page

Filed under: Hosting on June 4th, 2007 No Comments »

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