**UPDATED** With the degradation of Megavideo, Veoh, etc… I’ve revisited the streaming media situation check my latest article for a new alternative to Stage6 and the links below.
Today I am foregoing the normal Tech News in favor of a tribute to Stage6. The high quality streaming video site started by the folks at DivX was a cornucopia of independent videos on politics and religion as well as a place to find movies both current and classic. Their high quality streams were downright awesome. Unfortunately due to bandwidth cost and, I’m sure, potential legal issues they have discontinued the site. So now, a moment of silence for Stage6.
Many times I have users approach me with a vague complaint along the lines of, “The internet doesn’t work”, or “The servers are all down.” Both of these statements are highly implausible if I am still resting comfortably in my office chair and not either cowering in a bunker to escape the nuclear winter or working feverishly within the bowels of the Server Dungeon to resurrect the network.
I can thus assume that the problem is attached solely to that users PC and it is time to break out my handy Network Troubleshooting Flow Chart. It will guide you through the steps to find out where your network issue is. It stops short of offering solutions for most problems beyond the local NIC, but it is the process I go through to localize issues and can be a huge help to you when you’re seeking help for an issue an aren’t sure where to start. If you get to a step you don’t understand that means you should stop and find someone who DOES understand that step to help you out. This is just a guide to what you should do, not how you should be doing it. If you’ve found this helpful in some way please .
I have recently seen this issue coming up with a few different people with emails sent from blackberrys. The email appears with an attachment that is a small yellow icon. When you double click on it nothing happens, but when you forward the mail to someone else they can open it and web mail like hotmail can open it. The solution to this very odd issue turned out to be quite simple.
I ran across this link in a list of my old bookmarks and was reminded of how handy it was to have a bootdisk for essentially everything right at my fingertips. I thought this guide to setting up Windows XP was very nicely written, it parallels the way I like to install. The periodic Acronis snapshots are especially handy. I’ve started playing around with this cool CSS tool as I prepare to do some more customization of the site and it’s pretty neat, especially for those of us who don’t do a lot of CSS in our normal activities. This is an interesting article about a tool that I haven’t gotten to try out yet, so use it at your own risk, but it claims to be able to reduce Windows Vista to a 1.4 gb installation while still remaining usable. Certainly an improvement over the 15gb behemoth you get from the default install options. And finally this awesome little widget turns your 4gb Flash Drive into 4gb of RAM for your PC. Maybe not quite as fast as your normal system RAM, but it can still give your overstrained Windows XP system a relief. Try it out and see. And that’s your monday morning linkblast for today!
Many people share computers with family, or siblings, or are just worried about what will happen if their laptop gets stolen with all of their data on it. Here is a simple solution to those worries. Microsoft Private Folder provides each user on the system with a password locked folder to store their important documents in. If you need more than one folder protected you are going to have to shell out some cash for one of the many commercial software solutions around, but this should be sufficient for most users.
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