Tethering a Treo 700w Under Kubuntu Linux 8.04

I have finally been able to get the USB modem feature with the Windows Mobile 5, Verizon Treo working under Linux.

Following is a detailed how to on getting it set up and running.  In this case, I was doing it with an IBM ThinkPad T42 running Kubuntu 8.04.

This how to should help you figure out how to get other mobile devices to work as well.

  • The first thing that you need to do is make sure that you
Continue reading “Tethering a Treo 700w Under Kubuntu Linux 8.04”

Creating Aliases with a “.” in them under qmail

If you are creating aliases that contain a "." in qmail via the command line you need to make sure to replace any "."s with ":"s.

Otherwise, qmail will simply deliver the mail to the equivalent of /dev/null.

Such that the alias ryan.chapin@nbinteractive.com’s alias would be:
.qmail-ryan:chapinContinue reading “Creating Aliases with a “.” in them under qmail”

Boost the Effectiveness of your Contact Form . . . Respond Promptly!

So you have a Contact Us form on your site, with which, customers and prospects can easily send you an e-mail.  That’s all well and good, but if you don’t respond to those e-mails in a timely manner you could lose a potential new client.
This all ties into basic, human psychology.  People want instant gratification and they want it on their terms.  Which is one of the reasons why providing a contact form is so important.  It enables a → Continue reading “Boost the Effectiveness of your Contact Form . . . Respond Promptly!”

Loading and Manipulating FlashPaper 2.0 SWFs into Flash

This tutorial demonstrates how to load and manipulate (resize in this example, but once you have access to the API you can do a whole lot of other things) FlashPaper 2.0 SWF files with ActionScript 2.0.

You will need:

  • Flash MX 2004 or Flash 8
  • FlashPaper 2.0

Click here to see the example in action.
Click on the attachment to download sample files.
In this example, we will simply load a FlashPaper 2.0 document and scale it to fit the → Continue reading “Loading and Manipulating FlashPaper 2.0 SWFs into Flash”

Using Michael Jordan’s Open Source Captioned Skins for the FLVPlayback Component in AS 2.0

Following is a quick tutorial on how to set-up and use the set of captioned FLVPlayback skins created by Michael Jordan.

This tutorial covers using the skins with ActionScript 2.0 cuepoints.

First off, download the set of skins.  I’ve included them with this blog entry (because Adobe is notorious for moving and deleting pages), but there may be a newer version out there so check out this page, and/or Michael’s page.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the skins → Continue reading “Using Michael Jordan’s Open Source Captioned Skins for the FLVPlayback Component in AS 2.0”

Setting Up an IIS Webserver under Windows XP Pro

I recently had a client who was hosting a site on IIS under Windows XP Pro using .NET and ASP.

As a result, I needed to set up an appropriate development environment to test and debug the site before handing it over.

I opted for setting up VMware install that was running the necessary OS and software.

Following is a quick how-to on setting it all up.

Installing IIS 5.1 and .NET 2.0 on Windows XP Pro:

  1. Go to Add/Remove
Continue reading “Setting Up an IIS Webserver under Windows XP Pro”

Your Most Popular Entry Page and Its Impact on Layout and Design

Knowing your most popular entry point helps you determine the kind of content that is driving traffic to your site.  This in turn helps you determine what kind of changes and additional content you should add to your site to help boost your success.  There are a number of different tracking and reporting packages that can answer this question.  NBI provides a hosted tracking solution called goalTracker which enables you to answer that and many other questions about your website → Continue reading “Your Most Popular Entry Page and Its Impact on Layout and Design”

Deleting the Cruft in Windows 2000

Windows tends to store a ton of temporary files that, over time, tend to fill up your hard drive.

There
are a number of places to look for these files and a couple of things
you can do to periodically purge your system of files you don’t need.

First, right-click on your C drive and select "Properties".  Then click on the "Disk Cleanup" button on the main tab.

You can also look in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp

And look for → Continue reading “Deleting the Cruft in Windows 2000”

Search and Replace for a New Line Character in VI

For all of you out there who use vi on a regular basis . . . I recently needed to do a search and replace on a large document and needed to key off of the new line characters in the document.

After a bit of searching here’s what I found:

If you need to do something like, search for all new lines and add the new line plus "foo" do the following:

:1,%s/\n/^Mfoo/g

You get the ^M character by → Continue reading “Search and Replace for a New Line Character in VI”