The die is cast. Really, it was cast when Microsoft released Vista, though I did not know it at the time. It wasn't long before I started reading about Vista, and negative impressions began to form. » read more »

I've been waiting a very long time for a plug-in/add-on/extension for Firefox so I can use regular expressions to search a web page. It's finally arrived: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

TuscanyCircle has undergone some minor changes recently. First, you'll notice the link colors have changed. Next, you should notice that the URL for its "All nodes" feed has changed from http://tuscanycircle.net/node/... to http://tuscanycircle.net/view/.... The former is now named "Front Page" and does not contain all new content but only that which has been promoted to the front pages. » read more »

The letters "RSS" stand for, alternatively, "really simple syndication," "RDF site summary," or "rich site summary." (Doesn't much matter which.) RSS enables the user to view a summary of updates for a web site. This provides a quick and easy way to see if the content on that site has been updated. Clearly, RSS feeds are well-suited for blogs, and they also work nicely for any site where content is updated periodically. For a summary of RSS, and its history, check out the wikipedia article on RSS. » read more »

RSS feeds at tuscanycircle.net

If you'd like to stay current with new front-page content added to TuscanyCircle (blogs, forum posts, comments, shouts), there are three RSS feeds to which you should subscribe:

• "all nodes"
• "all comments"
• "shoutbox"

There are listed as feeds on every page (under Firefox' feed icon, for example) as well as under the "rss" menu item for your convenience. The "Front Page" feed only catches those nodes promoted to the front page.

If you're new to RSS, try this brief tutorial. » read more »

Windows Mobile 5 (WM5) locks up or freezes upon many different stimuli. Most of these have to do with power-on conditions, namely because something or other takes too long to come out of sleep. There's the battery-level check problem, bluetooth, storage card, today plugins (esp. ones kept on the storage card), etc. Most all of these have all kinds of hacks available to remedy. The most persistent lock-up for me, though, tended to happen when receiving text messages. It happened on average daily, about every 5-10 texts or so. It didn't matter whether or not it was already powered up, although coming out of sleep did seem to make it worse. The notification options seemed to affect it significantly. If I had only a sound notification (no vibrate, no window, etc.), it helped quite a bit. Also, not putting it into sleep but merely turning off the display helped much, too. However, the problem did not go away completely. I stumbled across a seemingly unrelated matter, but it has apparently solved this last lock-up problem altogether. » read more »

What do you think about Top Level Domains? We're all familiar with some of the originals: .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil, etc. Now there are all kinds of new ones: .tv, .name, .biz, .info, .mobi, etc. The Internet evolved from several different networks. For example, universities had their own for data sharing (now .edu); the military had their own (now .mil); and on and on. Nowadays, though, what value does the TLD really add to a website's name? The branding is in the second level domain name. TuscanyCircle.net, TuscanyCircle.com, and TuscanyCircle.org all point to TuscanyCircle (duh), and the TLD really doesn't add much value. Comcast.com points to Comcast's overall business, while comcast.net is used for their ISP portion; this distinction can easily be lost on those trying to email someone with a comcast address. And what if I wanted to snag comcast.biz? Pragmatically, how are comcast.com and comcast.biz different? The first connotes a commercial enterprise and the second a business. Whoa. Big difference. </sarcasm> » read more »

Navisite must be one of the worst web hosting companies alive today. Besides their fiasco of a migration of Alabanza, going on 4 days of down time for thousands of sites (165,000 websites), they repeatedly lied to their customers about the recovery process. They missed every deadline they set for themselves--repeatedly. They failed to provide even basic protection for DDoS attacks even though their NOC was supposedly more advanced than Alabanza's. (There are doubts the reported DDoS attack was even real or if it was just another lie of theirs.) Communication was embarrassingly absent and when present, it was either a falsehood or merely vacuous. » read more »

DomainPeople has a habit of holding domain names "hostage", refusing to transfer them to new registrars upon request. They also routinely violate their agreement with ICANN that limits such transfers to no more than 5 days. Customer support is either unresponsive or else their responses are as mindless as any auto-responder.

NetFirms' online website mgmt. tools appear to be regularly or perpetually broken (their File Mgr. has never worked). They provide no means of terminating accounts. The impression I've gotten in my work with NetFirms (for sites I've inherited) has been that they're operated by some teenager in his mama's garage using tools he wrote [badly] for a high school project.