One of the things I did last week was migrate my feeds to Google from FeedBurner. For the most part things went smoothly, although subscriber stats are still low. Ironically it appears that all of the Google Reader subscriber numbers have been missing since the move. FeedBurner would often drop those numbers so it was not surprising that they are still having problems with them now that I have my feeds at Google.
One of the things I was not expecting switching my feeds over to Google was a 502 error. Thankfully it only appears to have lasted for a day, but I have read that some people are having more issues with the 502 error. If you have migrated your FeedBurner feeds to Google you might want to subscribe to the new The FeedBurner Status Blog. You can get recent information on the status of FeedBurner, including a work around to try if you are getting the 502 error.
I would usually post this video over at my Video Rambler blog, but the computer geek in me just feels I need to post it here. With the launch of the iPhone3G yesterday it seemed like everyone had some kind of post about the new iPhone. I admit the new iPhone looks very cool, but here in Canada there is only one huge problem with buying an iPhone. Rogers is the official carrier. With the fees Rogers will be charging for the new iPhone contracts you might as well sign over your first born to them. That is the number one reason I will never buy an iPhone.
If you are a Canadian and want to protest the high prices Rogers is charging for data for the iPhone I suggest you vote with your wallet, and simply don’t buy an iPhone and you switch your cell provider as soon as you can. Another way is to sign the petition over at RuinedIphone.com.
Since it is impossible to put Rogers in the Blendtec blender, the next best thing is to blend the new iPhone. I have to admit it looks like fun! Love the slow motion work on this video.
Hope everyone is having a great day across Canada! I am actually out enjoying one of Canada’s great National Parks. If you want to know more about Canada Day Wikipedia does have a decent entry about it.
Hope it is a beautiful day where ever you are in this great country and that you are having a relaxing day!
The news is official, my wife has accepted a new position at Christ Lutheran Church in Regina Saskatchewan as an Assistant Pastor. As a result I will be moving my office from Rosthern Saskatchewan to Regina Saskatchewan during the summer. If you are one of my fantastic clients you should have gotten an email with some details about the move and how it will affect your services. There will be more big news in store for LGR Computer Enterprises once the move takes place and I will announce that information here.
We have not found a new house in Regina yet, but we have officially listed our house for sale here in Rosthern. You can see the listing at Rosthern Agencies, one of my great clients, who will be handling the sale of our house. If anyone would like to live in the great community of Rosthern this is a great house to have. We have a great yard with a garden in the back. We are listing it at $169,900.00, which is a great deal if you look at prices in Saskatoon for a house and the 70 by 200 foot lot that we have. We also have great neighbours that we will miss.
I’ll post more once we find a new house and get closer to the actual moving date.
I could go on at length about my dislike for Simply Accounting, but I will spare you my ranting about the product. It is enough to know that I have had clients that have had bad experiences with it, usually because their data file will go corrupt and something went wrong with the backup. I don’t even use it in my office but many of my clients do so I have been forced to learn a little about it simply to help them backup their data. Well I discovered recently that Simply Accounting finally did something right as far as backing up is concerned. They made it automatic! Congratulations Simply Accounting you finally made it easy for people to backup their accounting data. If you have upgraded to Simply Accounting 2008 you can now backup your accounting data automatically daily when you close Simply Accounting. The people I know that use Simply Accounting did not know about this feature and if you look through the Simply Accounting website you will probably not find any mention of it, but it is there, look through the PDF user manual for instructions on how to set it up. This one feature could save people a great deal of grief and it is unfortunate that Simply Accounting does not make a bigger deal out of it. If you use Simply Accounting I highly recommend you turn on the automatic backup.
Happy Easter everyone! Hope you are all having a great day! It is still snowy here but spring is around the corner.
With the spring just around the corner I decided to change the theme here on LGR Webmaster Blog. I wanted to start using a theme that was widget enabled and was very clean. I also knew I did not have time to create my own, luckily I came across the Upstart Blogger Minim and with a few modifications uploaded it the other day. There are some other changes I want to make but it will do until I get a little more time this week or next. If you notice something not quite right let me know. There is always something that breaks when you change things around it seems.
I also added a couple of RSS widgets on the middle column. One is my Twitter feed, so you can see my latest tweets. Always glad to have more people follow me on Twitter. I usually follow back (I only speak/read English so if you Tweet in a language other than English I won’t follow back. Sorry).
I also added the latest posts from Epiblogger, the team blog I post on about blogging. I post the majority of my thoughts and ideas about WordPress and blogging in general on Epiblogger. We will be launching a free ebook soon for RSS subscribers, so if you want first dibs on the ebook go and subscribe to the Epiblogger RSS feed. Epiblogger will help you to become a better blogger so if you are interested in blogging at all you should check it out.
I have also added Project Wonderful Advertising. I tried Project Wonderful advertising on another website earlier. It was not very successful on that site, but it was not a blog. To be fair I thought I should try it on a blog and see how it performs, since many of the sites already on the network are other blogs. It is still fairly inexpensive to advertise here so if you would like to advertise on the LGR Webmaster Blog check out the advertising page on Project Wonderful. I will have a review of my experiences of Project Wonderful in a little while so look for that.
Again Happy Easter! Hope you are relaxing and taking it easy!
I don’t think I gripe on this blog very often, but I have had so many problems with SaskTel email in the last month or two that I just have to gripe. For those that read this blog not from Saskatchewan you might not know much about SaskTel. SaskTel is the telecommunications company here in Saskatchewan. They are government owned and have a monopoly in providing phone service to people in the province. Shaw is starting to offer some voice over ip options but for the majority of places in Saskatchewan if you have a land line phone you have a SaskTel account. What does any of that have to do with my problem? Nothing really just some background.
In any case SaskTel is also one, if not the largest, Internet service providers in Saskatchewan. It makes sense really since SaskTel has the infrastructure to provide Internet service over the phone lines that they own. I get my high speed DSL connection from them. However I don’t use SaskTel for email. I use GMail. Mainly becuase the web mail option from SaskTel is an old clunky interface, and for the most part sucks. GMail is a much better system. The problem I have is I create my invoices as PDF files and email the invoices out over email from my GMail account. Most of my clients in Saskatoon and north are on SaskTel accounts and use SaskTel for email. Any email I send to my clients on SaskTel that are in Saskatoon and north never receive the email. It simply disappears into never never land never to be delivered or seen again. The mail does not bounce, it is not marked as spam, it just is gone.
I have tried explaining this to SaskTel support but when they try testing it they are sending mail to people that are either in Regina or Moose Jaw. Nowhere close to the Saskatoon and north. When I tried sending mail to SaskTel support it of course works perfectly. I try sending an email to one of my clients in Rosthern with an attachment, it disappears. Needless to say I have not been able to deliver any invoices to people in Saskatoon, Rosthern and Prince Albert by email. I have had to either hand deliver the invoices, use fax or old fashioned snail mail. This has been happening for over two months. I recently just tried email out new invoices to clients in Rosthern that are all on SaskTel email, guess what? None of them got the emails with attachments. I even tried sending it to my SaskTel email account. One email with an attachment, one without an attachment. I got the email without the attachment. The email with the attachment disappeared.
I know that no one will guarantee email service, but this is ridiculous. If you are using SaskTel for your email I highly suggest you switch to an email provider that is more reliable. I have been very pleased with GMail, and use it for the majority of my email. I can download it using POP3/IMAP and use my favourite email client to read and reply. When I am away from the office I can use the web to check and reply. Until I get my clients all switched over to GMail I suppose I will have to hand deliver my local invoices, otherwise I will never get paid. Thanks for nothing SaskTel.
If you have been around here for a little while you might remember me talking about the wi-fi detector shirt from ThinkGeek before Christmas. Thanks to a loving wife and a very determined sister in-law I actually got it for Christmas! I have to say it is the coolest geek shirt I own. I have not worn it to much yet, just to cold out side to show off the cool wi-fi detector on the front. I was thinking I might wear it into the city one day when we are going to be running errands in a mall. What is the point of having a wi-fi detector shirt on if no one can see it.
I think my geekiness has reached a new low. I don’t care.
In a totally unrelated post that has very little to do with anything else on this blog, I StumbledUpon these videos earlier today and they made me laugh. Nothing like turning the tables in the PC vs. Mac commercials. I think the Money one is my favourite.
I was responsible for coming up with the Thoughts post over at Epiblogger last Wednesday. One of the things I put on the list was to talk about your newest gadget. I wanted to write this last week, but just never got around to it until today. We have a new gadget around our house. The One Laptop Per Child program that I donated to in December was part of the Give One Get One program. I am happy to say that we got ours here.
What a great little device! My son uses it most, but I have taken some time to get to know it and I am very impressed with the capabilities of that little machine. It easily recognized my wireless network and connected. I did a little work to get the full flash player installed so my son could play games at PBSKids (and I could watch YouTube videos), and I played around with the terminal.
I was impressed with the image quality of the built in camera. Here is a sample image from the camera of my son. I thought it turned out pretty good considering the price of the machine. I have seen expensive webcams with worse picture quality.
I like the web browser on the OLPC. It is based on Firefox, so it renders pages nicely. I also like the fact that you can use the controls at the sides of the screen to scroll the screen. I had no problem using Google Docs, Calendar, Reader and Gmail with it. Here is a quick little video of opening the browser and surfing to this blog.
Impressed as I am with the OLPC there are a couple of things that I just wished were different. The trackpad works well but I keep tapping on it to click. I am used to my laptop trackpad that has that. The keyboard is small. It is certainly made for kids. Watching my son use it it is perfect for him. So this is not a complaint because I understand that this machine is not meant for us big kids. Besides I was able to easily hook up a USB keyboard and type away. The game controls on the side are great, but I have not been able to find any games that my son can use them with. Perhaps I have not found the right place to look on the web. I liked using them to browse the web with but I could not find a way to click links with them. Maybe I just have not configured it right.
Overall I can see my son and daughter getting a lot of use out of the OLPC. It is nice to get an idea of the capabilities of the machine. I am sure they will serve the kids will in the parts of the world that get them. I hope they help in their education, I know it will help my children.
One of the things I did last week was migrate my feeds to Google from FeedBurner. For the most part things went smoothly, although subscriber stats are still low. Ironically it appears that all of the Google Reader subscriber numbers have been missing since the move. FeedBurner would often drop those numbers so it was not surprising that they are still having problems with them now that I have my feeds at Google.
Happy Easter everyone! Hope you are all having a great day! It is still snowy here but spring is around the corner.
