Category Archives: tech tips

American Airlines killed our Kindle

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Alternative title: What to do if your Kindle breaks after warranty coverage has expired. What happened: last night we found out our Amazon Kindle was dead. It had been killed by American Airlines. What we’re doing: We are getting a replacement Kindle from Amazon (see below). What we will do differently: We will be even more careful with carry-on items that may get “valet checked” when we’re boarding the plane. We will try to check all of our valuables before leaving

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Roundup of ISAPI rewrite filters for IIS

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Here is a roundup of ISAPI rewrite filters for IIS, they let the webserver take a human friendly request like http://www.jdhodges.com/photos/1002 and rewrite it to a url that a dynamic scripting engine (such as ASP) can understands like http://www.jdhodges.com/photos.asp?photoID=1002 This benefits users who now have a legible URL and especially search engines like Google which are much more likely to index a page which appears to be static than a dynamic looking URL string: Reasons your site may not be

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Does Windows 7 load balance multiple internet connections? [yes, probably]

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Question. Does Windows 7 load balance multiple internet connections? And what exactly is load balancing anyway? Answer. Yes,  Windows 7 appears to load balance! Annoyances.org – re: Multiple Internet Connections (Windows 7 Discussion Forum) Annoyances.org – re: Multiple Internet Connections (Windows 7 Discussion Forum) pg. 2 Windows 7 Break through. Excited!! Load Balancing Works! – Overclock.net – Overclocking.net NOTE: I haven’t found any official MS documentation on this topic, but from reports on the web it does seem to work…

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What does a firewall do? ANSWER

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Question. Thank you for the help…my firewall is enabled. Does this keep hackers from seeing what I’m doing with online banking, etc? (Just curious) What exactly does a firewally do? Answer. Here is a simplified explanation of firewalls as they relate to your personal computer: A firewall’s main purpose is to provide a barrier between the internet and your computer. Specifically, a firewall is supposed to only allow approved applications to transmit and receive data from your computer to the

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Unknown device / how to get MP4 player working [solved]

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Question. Hello, I bought a pink MP4 player (iPod nano clone) from a China or Hong Kong seller. The player works but I can’t connect it to my PC or Mac, when I connect it I get a “this USB device has malfunctioned” or “unknown device” in device manager. Please help me so I can load music onto the player! Answer. You may want to try a different USB cable, sometimes the ones that ship out with the player are

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Keyword suggestion and tracking tools

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Question: What are some good sites for tracking search engine keyword ranking and for suggesting keywords? Answer: Here is a list of keyword suggestion sites and keyword tracker tools, most of them are compiled from a digital point forum thread. WordTracker – http://wordtracker.com/ Digital Point – http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/ NicheBot – http://nichebot.com/ NicheBot Classic – http://www.nichebotclassic.com/ NicheBot Ranking – http://www.nichebot.com/ranking/ Vurr – http://vurr.com/ Google Adwords – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Yahoo Overture – http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Good Keywords – http://goodkeywords.com/ Keyword Count – http://www.keywordcount.com/index.php/welcome Keyword Density –

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Access XP share without password, from Vista

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Question: Tonight I was trying to access, via Vista, a folder that was shared from a Windows XP Pro machine. I kept getting a username/password prompt, but there isn’t a password set on any of users! How can I access the folder? Answer: by default Windows XP Professional won’t allow network users shared folder access without a password. So here’s how to allow network access using a blank password: First, on the XP computer that is sharing the folder make

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