It looks like some spam comments  were causing the site to crash on all posts… Our traffic dropped from 4k hits a day to 20 hits a day! The comments have been removed, the database has been repaired…

If you see something funky make sure you say something! If you can’t comment email info at asktheadmin dot com.

Thanks for all you loyalty and Happy Holidays!

_TheTiredAdmiN_

You see, if you did not know, there are currently two major censorship bills passing through the halls of government these days. SOPA, and Protect IP. From what I understand from the media, SOPA is pretty much dead thanks to you Internet users that have contacted your representatives, but Protect IP is still being pushed through the Senate.

What is Protect IP? From Wikipedia:

The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011; United States Senate Bill S.968) is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S.The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 initial bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it.

The PROTECT IP Act is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010. A similar House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced on October 26, 2011

According to groups like the Eff and AmericanCensorship.org, this bill is vague enough that it will make it really easy for the US Government to shut down any website they deem a threat. Mmmm, what’s that smell? Smells like communist China! I don’t know about you, but I like my freedom of speech protected by the first amendment. This act threatens that freedom.

Imagine if one day Uncle Sam had an issue with AskTheAdmin? Guess what Jack! You can’t read it any more! Don’t let that happen!

Well, I’m asking for your help. Please use the form above to call your representatives and let them know that you oppose the Protect IP Act. We need as many calls as possible before the Senate breaks for the holidays if we want to stop it.

-=El Di Pablo=-

Are you sick of using the same social network as your parents? Well there is a new player on the block from our good friend’s at Google. It is beta now and has a small user base. Google describes this project as follows:

Sharing is a huge part of the web, a part that we think could be a lot simpler. That’s why we’ve been working on adding a few new things to Google: to make connecting with people on the web more like connecting with them in the real world. We hope you like what we’ve cooked up so far. And stay tuned, because there’s more to come.

And here is what PCWorld has to say:

Google’s new social network, Google+ premiered Tuesday promising a new spin on socializing online with a slick interface and unique spin on sharing with circles of friends. Google+ marks a departure from the social networking status quo represented by Facebook. The service launched to a limited number of users Tuesday in what Google is calling a “field trial.” A few PCWorld staffers were lucky enough to be invited to try out the service (it’ll roll out to everybody in the coming months), so naturally we got right to testing the new service.

In general we thought the service borrowed some good ideas from the reigning king of social networks, Facebook, but also offers some cool new approaches to sharing content and managing privacy. In short, Google+ is a solid start to an insurgent social networking platform that is sure to be enhanced rapidly over the coming months, and could soon offer a solid alternative to Facebook. Now, let’s dig in.

Click through to read their full post or head over to Google for them to alert you when the service is ready for prime-time!

_TheConflictedAdmiN_

This works great for remoting into any of your internet accessible machines over your G3 connection or WiFi. I will throw together a tutorial in the near future but I had to share this with you in the mean time.

Have you had any luck getting

When we bought the first generation iPad for our three year old we thought it was awesome. It is a great learning tool and can keep her busy for extended periods of time in the car. It has replaced our portable DVD player and has given my wife and I some entertainment from slinging Angry Birds. The one thing I thought it was lacking was a front facing camera (or any camera for that matter!) This is 2011 - after all a free cell phone comes with a camera, right?

Why oh why would Steve Jobs hold off on the camera? Especially since he was seen with a iPad with a camera before the first genearation even launched. There has been code discovered in the first generation device pointing to a non-existant camera. The only reason could be to sell more of their next generation iPad 2.

I just finished reading a post titled Hands On With the New Apple iPad 2 By Clayton Morris via Fox News here. You can read the excerpt below and click through to watch the video.  More of my comments follow this excerpt.

“Wicked fast” processor? Check. Lighter and thinner? Check. Over 10 hours of battery life? Check. Front and rear facing camera? Check. With Steve Jobs on medical leave, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller was widely rumored to be taking to the stage. That didn’t happen. Steve showed up and said “I didn’t want to miss this.” I was at the launch event, where Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple iPad 2, and got to spend a few minutes hands-on with the iPad. The brand new case, called the Smart Cover, automatically wakes the iPad when you open it up. There are sensors built into the side of the iPad, and magnets on the cover and along the edge of the device combine to create this function. The magnets also mean the case is conveniently removable. Don’t want it on while you’re using the iPad? Just tear it off. In terms of the new features the iPad 2′s iOS 4.3 brings, one of the biggest is GarageBand. With it you can play drums or compose on a full-screen keyboard. I can already imagine my seven-month old sitting here, pounding on the virtual keys. I can record right from the app as well. With iMovie, the other big new addition, you can edit and watch movies right on the iPad. iPad 2 now includes two cameras, a front-facing VGA camera for FaceTime and Photo Booth, and a rear-facing camera that captures 720p HD video, bringing the FaceTime video chat feature to iPad users for the first time. More than a year after igniting the tablet computing craze, Apple’s Steve Jobs surprised the world by taking to the stage in California to unveil this: the second version of its blockbuster iPad

And here is more information on the specs and release information from suite101.com

So what is a guy to do with one of these first generation devices? We would love to use the iPad for iPad to iPhone FaceTime between my daughter and I. Now we will have to take a hit and loose money to upgrade. It really never pays anymore to jump on a products bandwagon until the second generation or after a service pack has been released. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear from you in the comments below.

Gmail's new chat window

Hey Boys and Girls,
Commodore 64 here to give a quick heads up about Gmail. Seems they’ve upgraded their chat window to look smoother and cleaner than ever. Hopefully it will be more compliant.

I’ve been using gmail for a while, and so has my wife. In her place of work, they haven’t gotten around to updating their browsers, so she is stuck using good old IE6, which doesnt offer many options along the lines of gmail chat. Most of the features are disabled, save for actually chatting.

My hope is that they’ve given her some more features to play with…

In the meantime, i just thought it interesting to point out this slight facelift on the good old Gmail chat box.

Oh and by the way, Gmail has added some animated emoticons as well, namely the rocker dude emoticon, which you can get by typing the following characters:

\m/ x-( \m/

-enjoy

Commodore 64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on),8,1

Hors D'ouvres will be served near the IE6 dartboard?

IE6 will be barely missed by us here at AskTheAdmin. We’ve had bad times, and we’ve had worse times with our old frienemy Internet Explorer 6. Rest in pieces you old coot.

Commodore 64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on) ,8,1

Don’t forget to sign up for email updates by hitting this link or our RSS Feed here.

I read this yesterday via Slashdot regarding an Australian man who leaked the latest Super Mario Brothers game for the Nintendo Wii to the interwebs before the game was released. Check it out:

“A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites.”

So now that Nintendo did this publicly what do they hope to accomplish? Do they think they will actually see the 1.5 million dollars that this normal dude has to pay? Or did they alert THE WORLD to the fact that you do not have to pay for Nintendo WII games? The system has been hacked a long while ago but I did not think that was common knowledge – guess what?

It is now! What do you think? We would love to hear your opinion in the comments. Does this make you scared to download torrents or hack your hardware? Not Us over here!

_TheWiiPlayingAdmiN_

Chinese Hackers

Hello Kiddies,

Do you remember the good old days when hacking was done for fun? Back in those days anybody that knew Linux or Unix was considered a Hacker. One would think that since then, antivirus companies would have actually become effective. But what one company can compete with a whole country? To make matters worse, who can compete with multiple countries full of young hot heads venturing forth for the almighty dollar? That’s a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Since a hacker doesn’t technically require a whole lot of bandwidth to do what he/she does, internet access of any kind

Here at Ask The Admin we are committed to being sure every one of our readers is in the know. And while we cant really offer much in the way of a sure-fire killer app that can protect you from anything, we can offer you these few points of advice.

1. Keep your antivirus software up to date
2. Use a well known anti virus software, and do some research before purchasing
3. Be well versed with all the functions of your antivirus software, so no surprises come your way
4. Though it does slow you down, schedule full system scans as frequently as daily
5. Leave your computer turned off if you can
6. Lastly, try to use an OS other than Wind Blows (as we like to call Windows around here). If your a hacker its only more logical and profitable to target the statistically dominant OS, which is Microsoft’s unfortunately.

That’s all for today kiddies…

Has you or anyone you know been directly affected by this? Even if your just afraid and need a little encouragement, drop us a comment below.

This is Commodore64 signing off. Over and out.

Be sure to subscribe to our RSS FEED to stay on top of this and other topics that affect all of us.

Apple's New I-pad Disappoints

With the release of Apple’s shiny new I-Pad many enthusiasts were left wondering “What’s it for?”

This inherent identity crisis on the part of Apple’s new toy might or might not break it, since the price point resembles that of the original I-Phone. We all know how that turned out…

It doesn’t quite measure up to other tablets in any major arena : processing power, hardware, upgradability, versatility, and the list goes on.

I can imagine the disappointment to be largely due to Apple’s strong history of unveiling devices that re-pave the way for particular gadgets we’ve all used and loved – the cellphone and the MP3 player.

The question here is “What is being innovated?”.

I’m not sure even Mr. Jobs completely understands the specific direction for this device

Asus will debut their new EEE Tablet PCImage courtesy: www.techticker.com

Enter Asus. Another example of a company that has positioned itself to be known for innovation, minification, and basically answering the call of the wild market. I’m sure this device will be everything the I-Pad is not, and because of the price point set forth by Apple, I’m positive this little gadget, once polished, will be just as affordable.

I for one, will definitely be in line to pick up one of these tablets.

Let us know which device you think will accomplish what the Apple didn’t. And to be fair, let us know what the I-PPad does actually accomplish, or what need you think this pretty gadget fills – In The comments!

Thanks for tuning in kiddies,
This is Commodore 64 signing out-
Commodore64 (The one you used to play Bruce Lee on)

HEY- Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS Feed HERE

You can grab a track right from a audio stream.  Audials One will save the track to a MP3 that you can then listen to offline, burn it to a cd or throw it on your iPod. The application also has a built in search feature to scour the Internet for specific audio bytes and to top it all off it doesn’t care one bit about DRM or any other SILLY copy protection scheme.

You can actually play a DRM’ed track on your machine and magically strip it off when you are saving it as a MP3 – you can learn more via their tutorials here.

As I said before we have 5 copies to give away so step right up and enter our contest all you need to do is leave a comment on this post as to why we should give it to you. Be funny, be witty and this might just be yours. The publisher also told me if we see a lot of comments and tweets we can up the number to 10 or maybe even 20. Let’s see how much you guys need this..

A comment will get you one entry, tweeting about the contest will get you 2 entries (tag it #AskTheAdmin) and blogging about the contest will get you 3 votes.

The contest will go for one week from today! So get your entries in, starting NOW!

_TheJudgingYouAdmiN_

I have learned my lesson some time back and now keep my wordpress updated as quickly as a day after release. We have a mirror site for testing first and I can announce safely that the automatic upgrade works nicely and without a hitch. There are a bunch of new features, security improvements and overall speed enhancements.

Batch Plug-in Update in Word Press

When Word Press introduced one click upgrade for pluggins, it was like Christmas in July. But this time maybe on the actual Christmas or perhaps slightly earlier with the release of Word Press 2.9, we will now be able to upgrade multiple pluggins with one click from our WordPress Admin Panel.Optimize/Repair Database Functionality

WordPress has added a new feature to the core which allows you to repair and optimize your database. In order to activate this function, you will need to add this line in your wp-config.php

define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’, true);

Once you have added it, you will now be able to run the script which is located at this URL:

http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php

WordPress Recycle Bin / Trash

Regardless of whether you are a PC user, or a Mac user, we have all had moments when we accidently deleted something really important. But good thing about the operating systems is that they have something where our trash is stored at. In PC its called a recycled bin, and in Mac it is called the Trash, regardless of what it is called, the fact that we can restore it is what matters. WordPress has now added a similar functionality for the posts, pages, and the comments. Instead of permanently deleting these, you can now trash it and then later on empty the trash once you are completely done with what you were doing. By default WordPress will empty the trash every 30 days, but you can change the time limit by simply entering the following code in your wp-config.php:

define( ‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 10 );

Image Editor

The image editor is something that a lot of users were waiting for and it is included in this release. This editor will let you make simple changes such as cropping, rotating, scaling, etc.

Ability to add Post Thumbnails

You have probably seen many sites displaying posts on the homepage with a post thumbnail. Or many sites having the post thumbnail next to each post in their index. Before version 2.9, it was done through custom fields. In this release, you can simply add the thumbnail when writing the post and displaying it in the template is even easier.

In order for you to have this functionality available in the admin panel, you must have a theme that supports this function. It is really simple to add support for this feature and we will have a full tutorial on this coming up soon. You will need to visit your theme’s functions.php and add the following code:

add_theme_support( ‘post-thumbnails’ );

Once you choose the thumbnail, you can display it on the template using the following code:

We will be posting a full guide for this function very soon because it is a very useful feature.

Extend User Contact Info

WordPress user profile page is quite old and many new networks have gain popularity such as twitter and facebook. Prior to version 2.9, it was really hard to add a custom field in the contact area, but thanks to Joost De Valk for his contribution, now this feature is available.

Simply open your functions.php and add the following function:

function my_new_contactmethods( $contactmethods ) {
// Add Twitter
$contactmethods['twitter'] = ‘Twitter’;
//add Facebook
$contactmethods['facebook'] = ‘Facebook’;

return $contactmethods;
}
add_filter(‘user_contactmethods’,'my_new_contactmethods’,10,1);
?>

This will add extra fields in your user profile pages.

You can display these on author profile page by using the normal $curauth variable or the_author_meta variable. We will also be writing about these in the near future to explain full details how this function works.

New Excerpt Filter

Up till WordPress 2.8.6, when the user add the_excerpt code in the loop, it would display content with a 55 word limit and once the word limit was reached, it would add [...]. With this new ability, You can now specify a function and control both excerpt word count, and the more text. All you have to do is open your theme’s function.php file and add the following code:

// Changing excerpt length
function new_excerpt_length($length) {
return 60;
}
add_filter(‘excerpt_length’, ‘new_excerpt_length’);

// Changing excerpt more
function new_excerpt_more($more) {
return ‘…’;
}
add_filter(‘excerpt_more’, ‘new_excerpt_more’);

All thanks goes to Ramiy for suggesting this feature.

oEmbed making Embedding Easier

Thanks to ViperBond007 that this feature was added to the core of WordPress 2.9. It is a specification that allows media providers like Flickr, YouTube and others to provide data for consumer applications like WordPress about media.

There are many many more features that are being included in this version. To see a full list check out this page.

Don’t hesitate and do your part for the community. Download the Release Candidate from this Link and start testing out all the features, so this version can be released even faster.

 [Via WP-Beginner]

Well um not exactly. Google Trend’s might have influenced my title :)

That headline should have been that Twitter was hacked and down for a good portion of the evening due to the fact that the Iranian Cyber army seems to have hijacked their domain. If you use the same password from your twitter account on other services now would be a great time to go in there and change it. When browsing to Twitter yesterday you would have seen this text:

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

But they have regained control of their domain and posted this update on their status blog (http://status.twitter.com/) last night:

Update (11:28p): Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

After a few big name sites have had this happen to them you think people would start locking their domain’s settings! Could this have been avoided? Do you have more information? Are you part of this terrorist group? We want to hear from you in the comments!

_TheHackingAdmiN_

Remember we get a little bit of a kick back for anything you purchase so we can keep our servers going!

_TheAfilliatingAdmiN_

_TheUpdatingAdmiN_

So after 2 weeks of waiting on pins The Google has reinstated our Google traffic. This morning there was already 1500 hits this morning. So hopefully we will be back to full swing soon! Be on the lookout for more posts! Shoot any ideas or topics to Karl at AskTheAdmin dot Com.

_TheHappyAdmiN_

Make sure you actually do the update! I always he who laughs last has a backup but the admin that does not update his application will be hacked. Not exactly poetic but VERY VERY TRUE!

And if you do not know what I am talking about see this post here on how it happened and this post here on how to fix it!

_TheCarefulAdmiN_

Are there any Twitter Veterans out there? Want to chime in with your two cents on how to make my Twitter experience a little bit better? Hit the comments with your suggestions!

_TheTweetingAdmiN_

We will be back to semi predictable updates in the near future and if you are curious about the specifics of the hack/fix check it out here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-tell-if-you-have-a-hacked-wordpress-blog-how-to-fix-it/

I am working with Google right now to have the site recertified – by a human to get them to start crawling again. Strangely some traffic is still coming in from them but the majority now is from links on other sites such as Lifehacker, MakeUseOf and the New York Times. /Rant

You guys do not have to be coding in any particular language – you can even have HTML or FLASH pages rendered on the machine. I know this opens up the contest to A LOT of other developers. And in addition to that there will be MicroCenter’s with TouchSmarts for you to try your application on. So what are you waiting for??? Go get to it!

There is another “MicroCenter Day” this Sunday, the 20th.  MicroCenter will have a TouchSmart dx9000 open for developers (or anyone, for that matter) that wants to test out a piece of programming or an application—or, for that matter, see how the TouchSmart works.

There are a bunch of MicroCenter’s around the country—there’s a link to all stores nationwide here (http://www.microcenter.com/at_the_stores/)

So how are you coming with your application?

We at AskTheAdmin.com LOVE cutting edge technology! And when we first got to play with Microsoft’s surface I fell in love! Then I saw the outrageous price tag and put it out of my head. Now HP is working on some realistic and amazing technology. We are going to be checking out and reviewing their dx9000 in the near future along with having a contest to give one of these guys away.

The Marriott Airport Hotel in Nashville recently installed two HP dx9000 TouchSmart systems at their concierge station in the lobby. The software application they’ll be using was developed by HP partner, Nashville-based technology company Uniguest, and offers travelers and hotel guests a revolutionary, custom-branded user interface with advanced security that allows users to access real time flight arrival/departure information and also print their boarding passes.

The whole concept behind using these in the business world is customizable applications that are developed and power the machine. That means these devices can do anything you want them to and really anything you can imagine. Check out this video below and let’s hear your thoughts on them!

_TheTouchMeAdmiN_

Do you guys go off the grid or is your mobile surgically implanted nowadays?

We would love to hear from you in the comments!

The Admin is on his way to the woods! Speak to you on Monday!

_TheOutbackAdmiN_

Now, the nitty gritty.

Holy %^it things are moving fast. We’ve got DHTML, Javascript and CSS already throwing us curveballs on a daily basis.
As if things werent moving fast enough, we have the advent of Google Chrome, Safari for PC (wtf?) and the resurrection in popularity of Opera. Lest we forget all the other OS’es running Konqueror and other lesser known browsers.

It’s sheerly mind-boggling the amount of keeping-up a front end dev must do. My belief is that tabular information and the basic premise behind query languages will always stay the same as long as the data stays 2 dimensional. However the demands on today’s user interfaces grow every day some schmuck makes a widget with a slider that moves ever so more fluidly than its predecessor.

Enter AJAX – Asynchronous Javascript And XML – This was the next stepping stone for many interactive user experiences which relied on the native, built in browser libraries and started to finally move us away from the annoying Flash platform and it’s keyframe-style programming model, and into a new era of highly visual programming with limitless animation possibilities. So, we spent time learning that. Greaaaat.

Then Adobe bought Macromedia. How annoying. But still, Flash has always been Flash.
But not anymore… now it’s called FLEX, and like AJAX it also abandons the concept of keyframes in favor of object oriented animation and programming. But once again, its something new to learn.
If it’s not a browser, its a new OS. If its’s not a new OS, it’s a new version of HTML or CSS ala W3C. If it’s none of those things then it’s a new language/platform altogether.

The art of keeping up with the plethora of versions and platforms and languages (OH MY!) is truly an artful balancing act. Something of a circus I would say. I’ve played Civilization type games where the team who upgrades faster wins. This is totally the case for front-end devs. Because the expectations of the end user are so directly tied to front end design, it becomes almost impossible to achieve that ‘WOW’ factor that used to happen in a simple tween of a vector back in the day. Simply put, people have probably seen it all, or at least feel that way. Now people expect slick sliders and even checkboxes that fade on and off. On the more advanced side people are now expecting that same drag and drop desktop functionality in websites and reporting features ala Crystal Reports, but REAL TIME.

I always saw this coming – the day web browsing and data perusing can ultimately shed it’s refresh button forever. Advances in OS interfaces (ala OSX) have given people more of a feeling for what they’re touching with their mouse. People today feel somehow more connected to the website they are viewing. No longer are people just hapless viewers. Upon entrance to a website (onLoad), users are already drawn into the experience with a multitude of switches and buttons and ads being flown at them in what seems to be 3d.

This burder is being taken on by the front end web dev today. In today’s market companies are looking for all around guys, like myself, who can dive into a simple SQL statement as quickly as formatting a complex wireframe based on CSS principles, and just as quickly repair a content [div] that has broken out of its bounds for some strange reason, and only in one browser and not the other.

I am still doing my 3 articles a week for MakeUseOf.com and I have been averaging 1 eBook a month for them as well. I just posted my second post to GeeksAreSexy.net. If you want to check out my posts click the following links:

• http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/author/karl-l-gechlik/
• http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/03/12/how-to-reset-your-lost-2003-active-directory-admin-password/
• http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/03/04/how-to-recovering-your-windows-password/

And I was quoted in the New York Times recently but I never linked you to the online article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/technology/personaltech/09basics.html?pagewanted=print

And as promised here is today’s great time waster. A goodie brought to my attention by GAS writer Brian Boyko:

Find out if you are a Network Rockstar here http://www.networkrockstarchallenge.com/ or by clicking the image above. I have gotten 8/10 anyone do better? Is it just me or do the questions get harder each time I play?

Got some tips or hacks to share with our readers – then send us an email to tips@askTheAdmin.com

Interested in writing for us? Email WriteForAtA@AskTheAdmin.com today and let me know what you could add to our already awesome team!

_TheAlmostARockstarAdmiN_

I have been getting a lot of emails asking for DropBox invites. I do not know how many I have left but I will put them out here for you. Consider it a first come, first served basis.

You need to go to this link and sign up: https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTQ3OTM5

DropBox is a free storage bin on the internet for all your porn work! For those of you that don’t know what dropBox is – check out our review here:

http://www.asktheadmin.com/2008/04/dropbox-review.html

Enjoy!

_TheDroppingAdmiN_

That’s right boys and girls Microsoft has an awesome offer on the table and it appears it has been around for more than a month. AskTheAdmin reader and contributor Peter Diamond put me on in an email last night. Apparently Microsoft wants YOUR feedback on how you can use their services to evaluate their products and in return you get access to lots of Microsoft resources like Beta Support, free downloads of new software and loads of tools.

Of course you have to be serious about the program and submit your Full Name and contact information. You need to participate in giving feedback on the program and letting MS use it in a online post.

Users just text messaging Matt an email address will obviously be rejected. We know how much AtA readers LOVE giving out personal information – But, this could be your leg up in the evaluation efforts of new software evaluations like Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 – hell there is even support for Vista. What are you waiting for?

Just the TechNet Plus Subscription usually costs $350 find out more about TechNet here – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/default.aspx.

You can find out more about this IT Momentum Program Here: http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms/archive/2009/02/17/it-pro-momentum-program-still-accepting-applications.aspx

All Microsoft wants for your free enrollment in this IT Momentum Program is a little feedback so they can write a blog article on how people are using these resources and if and how they help them. A small price to pay for all this support and help! I just signed up… What are you waiting for?? Tell them AskTheAdmin.com sent ya!

Here is how you go about signing up:

Email mhester@microsoft.com or please contact one of my teammates (U.S. TechNet Presenters) tell them that you want to be a part of the program and that you are willing to share you experiences with them! I just signed up and got my invite how about you?

Peter also sent us this link – http://www.microsoft.com/click/thrive/ It is a site dedicated to help you THRIVE as an IT Professional. Check it out.

Enjoy and go be productive young admin! Every dollar counts in this horrible economy!

[UPDATE for 3/3/2009] If you sent Matt a note requesting consideration but didn’t bother to send me your full name or more than a subject line of text to get into the program then your email was deleted.  Sorry folks, this is a professional program not a text message from your phone and I will not guess at your name.

_TheITProMomentumedAdmiN_

I had recently introduced my buddy over @ Bauer-Power.net to Digsby so I went to his website and saw this:

Are you using Digsby? Is it working for you? Are you a Digsby developer? Then let us know what’s going on in the comments!

UPDATE From Digsby:

We are having server-side issues that brought down the service.  We are working on the problem now and will be back up shortly.  If you want to be notified when we come back online, send an email to bugs@digsby.com.

After a year of almost perfect uptime, this is the second outage in the last week.  This is completely unacceptable and we will make sure this does not become a regular occurrence!

11:52 Update: The digsby site is not coming up anymore and the information that was at http://blog.digsby.com/archives/121 is also 404’ing

3:20 Update: They just posted an update (and spelled dependent wrong!):
We are working to restore the databases now so we can bring the servers back online.  Part of the team is meeting right now to discuss the implementation of “local mode” so the client is not dependant on servers.

_TheConnectingAdmiN_

It’s been a while since I updated you on the going on’s around the AtA offices. A few of our resident admin’s are now out of work as a direct result of our faltering economy. So if you are looking for a front end web designer in and or around NY/NJ let us know – we have a guy for you!

Some of you know about my writing gig over at MakeUseOf.com, you can check out my posts over there on free software/web applications. Their domain was recently hacked and they lost control of the domain name and site for 24 grueling hours! Ouch.  You can read all about it here. Thankfully the owners were able to recover the domain with the help of GoDaddy and it is back up again!

We can’t wait to find out how Aibek’s Gmail account was hacked and why GoDaddy facilitated the transfer within 1 hour! I can’t get those Fluckers to do anything for me in less than 24 hours… They just love the word PROPOGATION… Say it with me now kids…

I have been busier and busier trying to put food on the table so I have been spending less and less time on AtA. As a result of that you have been seeing less posts and some of our resident admin’s have jumped ship. So if you are interested in writing for us send us an email at writeforus at asktheadmin dot com.

And here are some of our latest and greatest stories with their titles changed to confuse the fluck out of ya :)

• Is your website loading super slow? Try this free resource.
• Recover passwords in any application from behind those stars!
• Windows XP – The Secret “No To All”
• Vista is smart enough to page you when a event occurs.
• Move print drivers from one machine to another!
• Achieve Computer Zen…

Keep those questions coming! Even if we don’t publish everyone – you WILL get an answer! And just an FYI: We were offered a pretty crazy sum of money for AskTheAdmin.com this week. What do you think we should do?

_TheBusyAdmiN_

I finally got to put some faces with the good people over at HP at the Sheraton in Mid-town. They were showing some of their new lineup including touch screen pc’s,  affordable digital picture frames and some awesome new machines. There were a couple of NDA’ed machines as well.

I also got to see the revised HP 2710P Tablet that is now the 2730P Elitebook – let’s just say it has ALL the things in it that we were missing in the 2710p. It now has a touch pad and a scroll wheel! FTW!

These HP products keep getting better and better… Do you know why? Because they listen to the people that actually use and recommend their machines unlike some other companies. Yes we are looking at you DELL. We still don’t have that tablet you were going to send us to review – it has been over a year hasn’t it??

Oh well back to the daily grind but if someone wants to grab me a birthday present (Oct. 4th) I will not refuse the 2730p! :)

_TheNdaAdmiN_

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Obviously I am getting a lot of my news from the comics nowadays… I knew DieBold Voting machines have been suspect for a while with all there ease of hacking methods…

But now it looks as if Diebold is blaming issues with their voting machines on poor old Mcafee… If the device was created properly it would not need antivirus software running on it. Hello?

Is this thing on? Maybe I can help you make a more secure OS for your device… It’s called Linux. Look into it.

_TheSayWhatAdmiN_