Recently, because a client’s Facebook Share count disappeared, I decided to replace the Share button with the newer Like button. The Like button works but sometimes, the count was still defaulting to zero even though many users have Liked a specific article. To try and fix this, I wanted to add meta info to each Like button. Meta info will allow posts to Facebook to be associated with a pre-specified image, URL and other article properties. Without this info, sometimes the system picks the correct image but most of the time it does not. I was hoping adding meta info will resolve the zero count issue for the Like button. The solution was to implement Opengraph Tags to add meat info to the Facebook Like button. Essensially, Opengraph tags will tell Facebook’s that a Like button is specifically linked to a particular article along with it’s title, description, image, article type, URL and site name. The site in question is powered by Drupal so I decided to give the Opengraph module a try. The only problem was, during installation, I received a server error like so:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_substr() in path/sites/all/modules/opengraph_meta/opengraph_meta.common.inc on line 127

Searching and asking about this error code in the Drupal forums did not result in any resolutions. Then it occured to me that this error was a function error. So I thought it could be a web sever configuration issue rather than a Drupal issue. After sending a ticket to the server management company, I was told that we could fix this error just by including this module into PHP and doing a recompile. It took about 30 minutes for the entire recompile to take place. Only near the last few minutes did the website go offline for about 3 minutes. After that, the Drupal Opengraph Drupal module was successful installed and worked as indicated. Every article on the client site now contains 6 Opengrpaph meta tags and Facebook is indeed displaying the proper Like counts and image on a person’s wall after they have Liked an article.

If you are not seeing the Facebook Like button show the correct count or image,on your Drupal site, check out the Opengraph Drupal module. It just may solve your problem like it did ours.

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Did you get a new computer and now want to sync all your iTunes and iPhone data to the new computer? For anyone going through this process, take comfort in knowing that there is a simple way to seamlessly transfer all music, photos, data and iPhone apps to the new machine. There are quite a few articles discussing this but having to wade through all the technical data is daunting. In short, here is a simple process that worked for me. Note, I installed Windows 7 on a new harddrive so I still had all my old data after the new install. If you are doing an upgrade, be sure to backup all your data for the move and you will still be able to use this migration method.

1. Upgrade to the latest version of iTunes (this will make the transition easier as the new machine will also be running the same version of iTunes)
2. Sync iPhone on old computer for the last time
3. Deauthorize iTunes on the old machine
4. Copy the entire My Music folder from the old computer to the new computer
5. Install the latest version of iTunes on the new machine
6. Plug in the iPhone on the new machine and sync
7. Re-setup any preferences (where to sync music, photos, videos, contacts etc…) and re-sync again on the new machine and authorize the new iTunes

My original setup on the old iTunes machine was pretty much default and I just let it control most of the settings. So by setting iTunes up on the new machine similarly, I was able to just copy the entire My Music folder (where the iTunes folder is stored in) and let iTunes re-sync everything. iTunes did not miss a beat and did not complain about any missing libraries (or anything else) on the new machine. To my delight, it just continued to sync with my iPhone as if it was running on the old machine.

So if you are moving to a new computer and want to sync your iPhone to a new computer, give the above process a try. As with any computer move, just be sure to have backups of all your data before the move. Smooth syncing!

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There was a time when a personal computer would just do what it was supposed to. I am referring to the tried and true Windows XP operating system. Over the last two years, newer computers came loaded with its successor Windows Vista. I have to admit, I liked the new user interface and some of the powerful tools that came bundled with Vista. In fact, the install disc contained a tool that fixed one machine (twice) when Vista just refused to boot. I can remember both times thinking to myself how cool it was that a corrupted OS can self heal. Thinking back now, if Vista did not break itself, I would have had to use that boot-up disc at all! Enough about Vista. The following is a recap of my own experiences upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 and why I feel ripped off by Microsoft. It is not what you may think.

After much encouragement from a colleague, I finally dedicated some time to upgrade my Vista Business machine to Windows 7 Professional. The funny thing was, this colleague had never even used Windows 7 but like many others (including myself) had just heard many good things about this newest operating system from Microsoft. I had a gut feeling that they just wanted me to be the guinea pig and report back. Nonetheless, I performed a clean install of Windows 7 Pro on a new hard drive in my machine.

Microsoft Ripped Me Off

Since installing Windows 7, I felt totally ripped off by Microsoft over the last 2 years having to endure Vista all this time. It was not until I installed Windows 7 on my first machine that I realized I had been forced into a life of time-wasting; either waiting for Windows Vista to load, trying to fix software and hardware incompatibility issues or unknowingly agreeing to run my computer slower than the hardware would dictate otherwise due to all the overhead that comes along with running Windows Vista. Based on the overwhelming comments on one single article I posted called How to Fix Windows Vista Slow Network Transfer, I know that there are many other frustrated Vista users out there.

No cure for a deadly disease was discovered and it has only been a few weeks or so since the Windows 7 upgrade but I must admit, I feel completely liberated – if there is such a thing when describing about a piece of technology. Just knowing that my personal computer will once again do what it’s supposed to and do it rather quickly is a comforting feeling. Nonetheless, I still created a recovery disc for Windows 7. You never know when that might come in handy. I am hoping never.

Benefits of Upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7

As a heavy computer user, here are a few things that I can share with you about upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

1. Boot up is speedier in Windows 7.

2. Logging in to Windows 7 is also much quicker.

3. Network transfer speeds are fast and stable. It took tons of effort to tweak Vista to get decent transfer speeds but the higher transfer rates were not sustainable. Right from a fresh install and without any tweaking in Windows 7, LAN transfer speeds averaged about 50MB/s on a gigabit network. For those who may not be familiar with network speeds, this is pretty fast for consumer computer gear. It means you will be able to transfer 6 GigaBytes of data in 2 minutes (which is about the size of a high definition movie). Often times, it may not even be possible to achieve this speed between two internal hard drives within the same computer let alone through a network. Network transfer speed may be very important for those who run a NAS or server to share files, stream media or backup data across a network.

4. Windows 7 has a much sleeker look and feel and there are lots of easy tweaks for customization.

5. Again, it’s only been a few short weeks since running Windows 7 but it feels very responsive and stable. And a bonus for all irritated Vista users, U have experienced significantly less hard drive thrashing under Windows 7.

More Reasons to Upgrade to Windows 7

For many of you sitting on the fence and wondering if you should upgrade your Vista machines, take comfort in knowing that when you do upgrade to Windows 7, your effort will be highly rewarded. Of course, remember to download and run Windows 7 Advisor to make sure your computer is ready for the new OS. In addition if you do plan to upgrade instead of do a clean install, do your research and know which version of Windows you currently have as there is only one specific version of Windows 7 that will allow you to smoothly run the upgrade.

I have performed a clean install as well as upgraded a Vista Business computer to Windows 7 Pro and both times, it brought new life to these machines. I am very happy to announce that I have been completely purged of Windows Vista. Three cheers for Windows 7 – hip, hip hooray! And yes, the more I use Windows 7, the more I feel that I have been ripped off by Microsoft for having to put up with Vista all this time. It’s going to be smooth computing with Windows 7 and XP from here on. We must have hope right?

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While you may finally be able to achieve fast LAN transfers under Windows Vista, the high speed you managed to have gained may not last. The annoying symptom of moving large files over a LAN in Windows Vista’s is that network performance may simply slow down before the file is fully transferred. The problem was not easy to detect since it was not an issue when transferring smaller-sized files. No need to pull out any more hair, here is the solution.

After systematically shutting down services inside Windows Vista SP1, here is a fix that resolved the issue of a slow down in network performance as you transfer large files. My internet security suite is was Shaw Secure and it turned out that 1 particular setting was causing network performance to drop during large LAN transfers. In order to achieve maximum network performance and sustain high transfer speeds, Shaw Secure’s real-time antivirus protection had to be disabled. Here is a network bandwidth graph of transferring a large file over the LAN with real-time scanning enabled. See the drop in transfer speed after a while and it just never recovered.

If you run Shaw Secure or another security software and your Windows Vista network speed slows down over time, try disabling your real-time anti-virus scanner to see if it fixes the problem. Of course, if you do decide to disable real-time protection, be sure to schedule frequent scans of your computer to keep yourself protected.

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Recently, something very odd has happened to WordPress that powers this blog. Front facing pages load fast but the back end WordPress admin pages are extremely slow to load. So slow that at times, when I save a draft, the new content would not even take. Nothing times out but many admin pages are just extremely slow to load. It turned out to be one of the plugins. Luckily I don’t have many plugins on this blog and just systematically deactivated each. The culprit was an older Google Sitemap plugin. Simply made a quick update to a new one and admin sluggishness was gone! Can’t believe how fast WordPress can be when it’s working right. If you are also experiencing WordPress admin pages loading slowly, try deactivating your plugins.

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Twitter is a fun and productive tool that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates. This free social networking service has grown so exponentially that, unfortunately, it is often times plagued with bugs and server time outs – frustrating to say the least. The latest bug that is tormenting Twitter users worldwide is the inability to upload a background image. A Twitter background has to be 800 kilobytes in file size and must be in a JPG, GIF or PNG format. But even if you abide by these rules, many users are still getting the dreaded “There was a problem with your picture. Was it an animated gif? We don’t support those!” error. No Twitter, I was trying to upload a JPG that was 700 kilobytes in file size. Seems like Twitter already knows about this bug but there has not been a fix yet… until now that is.

• Profile images: can’t add or remove an image, or current image reverts to old image
• Error uploading profile picture or background image

Over at Joomlabear.com, there was a solution to remove metadata from the JPG itself and this allowed the image to be uploaded to Twitter. Unfortunately, this did not work for me.

Resolution – Cannot Upload Twitter Background

Although not a formal fix, what did work for me was to click on “Don’t use a background image” before clicking “save changes” during the upload process.

Using this work around, I was finally able to update my Twitter background. How do you like the design?

I hope this can help all of you who are also having difficulty trying to upload a background image to your Twitter account!

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For those of you using VirtualBox to run other operating systems on your computer, do not update to versions 2.1.4 or 2.1.2 yet. Don’t get me wrong, VirtualBox is a powerful and easy-to-use virtualization program; one that I could not live without. However, in my own experience of running XP Pro as the guest OS within Vista Business, VirtualBox (2.1.4 and 2.1.2) is hogging too much of the CPU. Reverting back to 2.0.4 fixed the high CPU problems. The changelog of the latest versions (2.1.4) does show fixes for various CPU related problems but it did not solve the high CPU usage in my environment. Others in the VirtualBox forum has indicated reverting back to 2.0.10 has also resulted in a fix. So if your virtualized environment slows down significantly on simple tasks within VirtualBox, check your versions!

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Google has been rolling out feature-rich and very useful apps for the past few years. They have even worked out a way for users to easily consolidate multiple accounts. This fix appeared shortly after my first post when I was utterly confused by Google’s first attempt to consolidate accounts. So it is with high hopes that after the publication of this article, we will also see a resolution for the confusion regarding Google Apps and Google Apps within Google Sites (which is NOT the normal Google Apps). Let me explain.

If you have been using Google Docs and Google Calendar within Google Apps, you will know that these are extremely useful applications. I found them to be so useful that I created a Googles Sites account to better administer these fantastic Google Apps. For those of you who may not know, you can actually create a free Google Sites account and control users and administer privileges tied to a specified domain within Google Sites (ie. your users will be able to log in to Google Sites using a URL provided by Google like so: http://partnerpage.google.com/domain.com – with domain.com being your domain name). Everything you find in normal Google Apps will be inside your Google Sites… or so it appears. More on this later.

Once you are logged in to Google Sites and using say Google Calendar (a Google Apps within Google Sites), this is actually a different account that a normal Google Calendar. Even though, you may have setup the exact same ID & password to log in to both Calendars but once you are logged in, you will know that these are separate applications. If one day you find that you are logged in to Google Apps and all your documents or calendar events have completely disappeared, this would be the first thing I would check. Log out and log in to the correct “Google Apps”.

Getting back to the differences between Google Apps and its counter part within Google Sites. There are a few minor differences but a recent the great feature rolled out by Google allowing users to view Google Calendar even when you are offline has not been ported to Google Sites yet. Google’s instructions say that

Users of Google Apps Standard Edition can get started on these steps immediately.

When I am logged in to Google Sites >> Manage this domain, I see this:

Google Apps for domain.com – Standard Edition

(domain.com being our own domain)

I assume the Calendar offline feature would be at our disposal but for whatever reason, it’s not there. As we move forward, I am hopeful that Google will find a solution to better manage the discrepancy between the normal Google Apps and Google Apps within Google Sites. This will lead to less confusion and allow more users to take full advantage of what cloud computing has to offer and more importantly, for businesses to full utilize all the great applications that come out of Google Labs.

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Over the many years of using a computer, I have tried many tweaks to try and make a PC run faster. Although there is lots of published information about tweaking Vista, I have not found one that utilizes a battery to speed up your computer. The discovery of this not-so-obvious solution truly made a difference in my daily computing. At the end of the day, Vista’s Windows Experience Index reports that my computer is faster and I can definitely feel that my computer is faster.

There is plenty of documented information on tweaking Windows Vista to run faster. Here are just a few of these good articles.

• How to Make Vista Run Faster
• Optimize Windows Vista for better performance
• How To Make Vista Start, Run and Shutdown Faster

Although helpful, none of the tweaks that I have found suggested using a battery to make Vista run faster. So here is my 2-step tip.

Use a Battery to Speed Up Your Computer

Step 1: Purchase a UPS. UPS stands for “uninterrupted power supply”, otherwise known as a battery back-up.

Step 2: Inside Vista, go to Control Panel >> System >> Device Manager. Double click on “Disk Drives” to show all available hard drives on your computer. Right click on a hard drive and select Properties. Under the Policies tab, you will see options for “Enable write caching on the disk” and “Enable advanced performance”. Select both of these check boxes and click OK.

After this tweak, Vista’s own Windows Experience Index show a 0.1 point improvement in the Disk data transfer rate (from 5.6 to 5.7). Launching programs takes a little less time now and overall performance is speedier. This is probably a surprise as the hard drive is normally the bottle neck in the PC. Speeding up the hard drive transfer rate should lead to increased performance, at least it did on one of our desktop systems.

Be sure to only enable advance performance ONLY IF you have a UPS. Note the warning under this option; it is there for a reason!

Recommended only for disks with a back up power supply. This setting further improves disk performance, but it also increases the risk of data loss if the disk loses power.

So if your computer needs a speed boost, you can try installing a UPS to try and give it that extra punch.

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If you are like millions of internet users out there, then you will agree that your web browser’s bookmark is probably less useful than it had been in the past. In reality, we bookmark more than we can ever use and more often than not, we never go back to old bookmarked pages. So what is the solution? Google has the answer.

A bookmark is meant to help us easily find web pages that we use often or have previously visited. Google does have a bookmark service but what’s even more amazing and popular is the ubiquitous nature of Google Search. You see, more users are beginning to use Google Search as their online bookmarks. Because search results are getting better and more relevant, a detailed search normally returns the web page of interest.

From time to time, do you find yourself typing in a product name or a website into Google and then clicking through Google search results to get to your destination? Admit it. You are sometimes doing that; and, probably will do so more and more in the future!

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Since Google is forcing a migration of all Feedburner accounts over to Google accounts be sure to update all your feed services including places like twitter, facebook, blogs, feed readers, itunes podcast accounts and anything else that you have associated with your Feedburner feeds! With all their technology, I am surprised (and disappointed) that Google did not put in place a seemless transition so feeds just don’t disappear overnight! And the no response from Google tech support does not help the situation. Thank goodness for our Google rep. Now, back to fixing dead feeds.

UPDATE: Nov 13, 2008 – Looks like some of our old Feedburner URL’s are now being auto-redirected to the new Google feed domain. Wished this would have worked right from the start. It would have saved hours of work trying to update all our feeds earlier this morning!

UPDATE: Nov 16, 2008 – Auto redirect from feeds.feedburner.com to feedproxy.google.com has broken once again. Time to update all final feed URL’s. Don’t forget to update the email subscription service if you run this feature.

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Have you ever wondered what your computer’s CPU or hard drive temperature readings are? What about how many hours your hard drives have been powered-on? Most users, indeed, will be able to retrieve these computer component temperatures. Given most computer systems have sensors to monitor these readings, it’s just a matter of using the right tool to retrieve the data.

A very popular computer sensor reading tool is SpeedFan. This little program is only lightweight in footprint. It has the ability to read CPU & hard drive temperatures, fan speeds and even various voltages inside your computer. Of course, in order for SpeedFan to work, your computer must have the appropriate sensors.

For enthusiasts who are interested to know more of the inner workings of their computers, SpeedFan is a must-have tool. Recently, there was a computer in our office that needed a check-up and SpeedFan reported all the necessary info to help troubleshoot the problem.

SpeedFan is an easy program to use and it’s completely free. After installation, just start it up and it will report back as many sensors as it can detect from your computer. Unfortunately, on one Windows Vista machine, SpeedFan only reported CPU temperatures but was unable to pull SMART info, hard drive temperatures or the number of hours the hard drives have been used. All computer hard drives can log this type information, you just need to know how to retrieve it. After some testing, it turns out that it was a permission issue. We were able to resolved the problem and got SpeedFan to report the missing information by right-clicking on the program icon and choosing “Run as administrator“. Allowing SpeedFan to run with administrator privileges, we were able to see the number of hours a hard drive has logged as well as minimum and maximum temperatures during its lifespan.

If SpeedFan is not showing your hard drive temperatures or SMART info under Windows Vista, try running it with administrator privileges. If you still cannot retrieve various readings, more than likely, your computer probably does not have the appropriate monitoring chips.

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