Free Disk Usage Graphical Tool – See Your Disk Space

0
16 years
by in Helpdesk

I frequently get requests on how to clean up a hard-drive.  Its generally something like “Where’d my space go?”  or “Windows gave me a out of space error.”

WinDirStat at Sourceforge.

This tool gives two views that rock:  a tree view with each folder’s space taken next to its name, and a second graphical view that shows files in terms of size.  The graphical view is even clickable, such that it will take you to the file in the other view so that you can identify it and see if you want to delete it.  Folders get smartly color coded … seriously, try it out.

Its free from a sourceforge project, so there’s not a lot of downside.  Unless you’re the kind of person that’s quick on the delete key.  Then, its like pointing a loaded gun at your foot.  Foot … meet delete key.  Not good.

Anyways, try it out.  I like it and use it on my windows partition of my MacBook Pro.  With 40 GB, space is at a premium.

–Ben

Monitor Your Website for Hacks – PHP Code Gives a Hash

8
16 years
by in Helpdesk

I’ve had some friends get their website hacked with a nefarious little code snippet that attempts to exploit the browser of visitors.  The site looks no different, but that’s the point.  Its difficult to tell that you’ve been hacked.Now, the fix I’ll suggest won’t work very well for dynamic websites.  It reads all of the website files and generates a hash.  That hash can be monitored by a desktop program.  I personally monitor my sites every 30 minutes.  Knock on wood that I won’t need to be informed.  However, I’ve set it up to email me in the case of hack where the hash doesn’t match.

  1.  Get the PHP hash generating code from WebsiteCDS (hosted by google code)
  2. Setup info is in the readme – however I suggest you change the email address and password before uploading it to the root of your website.
  3. Type in the websitecds.php location in your address bar with the password as required in the readme (READ the README)
  4. I liked the SiteUp website checker for windows, and use it to check for the hash.  In fact, I have it setup to run the websitecds.php script with the expected hash.  (Other die hards use cron and a script)
  5. Remember to update your hash everytime you change or add things to your website.  Otherwise you will be getting error messages and/or emails.
  6. Rest easy that you’ll know if you’re hacked.

Good luck.  And I hope your ISP is quick on the patches.
–Ben
References:
Webdigi – Web Development Company in London
Google Code – Website CDS (Change Detection System)
Xequte.com – SiteUp -Check if your website is up, even if you aren’t

Fix Dell SoundMax to Record Streaming Audio (ie what you hear) in Vista

21
17 years
by in Helpdesk

I was trying to record an internet radio show (that my friend appeared on) today and discovered that Dell had nicely “removed” the feature to record what was going through my speakers.  After some searching and driver install hacking, I got it to work.  Here’s what I did:

  1.  Download the latest drivers from Dell
  2. Run the EXE, but once it gets to the license screen I cancelled (but you do want it to unzip to a folder)
  3. Go into the folder and into the i386 folder (for you intel users)
  4. Go into the vista folder
  5. back up the ADIHdAud.inf file
  6. open up the ADIHdAud.inf file and make the following edits:
  7. change:  HKR,AD1983\\Disable, OutR, 1, 01
  8. to:   HKR,AD1983\\Disable, OutR, 1, 00
  9. change:  HKR,AD1983\\Disable, MonR, 1, 01
  10. to:  HKR,AD1983\\Disable, MonR, 1, 00
  11. change:  HKR,AD1984\\Disable, MonR, 1, 01
  12. to:  HKR,AD1984\\Disable, MonR, 1, 00
  13. By changing these values you will now have a fresh install that includes the stereo mix feature (I believe the 1->0 change told it to no longer disable the feature)
  14. Save the file
  15. Go to your device manager in your control panel
  16. Go to sound, video and game controllers and select soundmax
  17. hit the delete key on your keyboard
  18. tell it to delete the drivers (check the box)
  19. reboot
  20. go to the directory where you dumped the drivers from the exe (the main directory that was above the ADIHdAud.inf  file)
  21. run the setup program
  22. now go to the control panel and select sound
  23. right click in a blank area in the box and select the “show disabled devices” option
  24. click on the recording tab
  25. right click on the stereo mix icon (faded icon) and select enable
  26. download audacity (free) – you may want the LAME encoder as well, if you prefer MP3 audio
  27. install audacity and run it
  28. select edit -> preferences -> audio i/o tab -> recording box -> device drop down box -> stereo mix
  29. hit OK
  30. hit the big red circle button to record (although I suggest that you have the stream running first)

Phew!  I just hate when companies break fully functional hardware.  In any case I hope this helped you as it did me. 

Here’s the references that I used:

 Helm of Disintegration

Gec Living

What is Your Message? – Wrong Answers

0
17 years
by in Business

One of the most important things you can do is decide what your value statement is to your market.  Once you have a value statement, you have an idea of what you want to communicate to your customer.  Each message should support that statement.

Apparently, these people didn’t get it:

1.   “They’re more than lawyers. They’re people!”

You’ve got to be kidding me!  You just told everyone that your industry is a bunch lower life forms that will slime you if they get the chance.  Now, why would I believe one of these slimy lower life forms that says its not really a slimy lower life form!  These people did such a good job that they took their industry down a few notches with them.

What they wanted to say is that these attorneys looked beyond the legal resolution to a personal tailored solution for the client.

2.  Diorshow Iconic Mascara – The patented angled brush is replicating emblematic couture techniques: oblique lines and the bias cut, an art of fabric cutting that magnifies curves and amplifies spread.  In one quick stroke, with no special application method necessary, the brush acts like a brushing on lashes.  Enriched with a unique lifting formula, Diorshow Iconic sculpts, stretched and curves the lashes with extreme hold and high definition.

What in the world is “emblematic couture techniques: oblique lines and the bias cut, an art of fabric cutting?”  Oh, this is mascara, not a pair of scissors with a side of BS?  If the consumer cannot understand it, the consumer is going to have the red flag of BS rise up the mental flagpole.

Seriously, they just wanted to say that it gives a beautiful curve to your otherwise pitiful lashes, just like every other mascara.  However, they just said so much junk that the BS association has stuck.

 Seriously people.  Consider your message.  Ask yourself if your message talks about your basic value to your customer.  Ask yourself if it is consistent with your prior messages.  Branding is about building an all-around image.  Anything that cuts against that by denigrating yourself, your industry or is inconsistent with your prior message is likely a problem.  The rare exception is humor – and that can even backfire.  I’ll follow-up with that in a future post.

Organizational Knowledge – Are you dead in the Water?

1
18 years
by in Business

If one of four people didn’t show up, projects would stall at my previous employer.  One guy ran the back-end/operations, another constructed the prototypes, I did programming and IT support, and my boss did programming and sales.  All the passwords and network configurations were located in the operation’s guy’s palm (I didn’t set-up the network, I just inherited it and would write down stuff as I worked with it).

I soon discovered that we could live without a programmer for weeks, without an IT person as long as the infrastructure didn’t break down, without a prototype person for days, without a sales person for a few days, but never without operations.  The operations guy had probably only taken a handful of sick days and even fewer vacation days in the 10+ years he worked at the company.  Every time he was gone, due dates got moved back, customer orders were late and we lacked the passwords and information to fix IT issues.  It was insane, and very stressful for the operations guy when he returned.  It’s almost as if he had to make up on nights and weekends, the hours he took off.

As I look back on the situation, I note there was a lack of Organizational Knowledge.  Every person had their fiefdom and when someone was gone, the people who covered had to make it up as they went.  Organizational Knowledge is the howto of the business world.  It is the time saver and organizer of the company.  It’s the encyclopedia of how things get done around here.

My friend, who was the operations person had to order supplies and parts, gather production kits from inventory, ship orders and debug prototypes.  Not only did this require knowledge of the production planning software and store, it required knowledge of SED’s (export declarations) lead times, parts distributors, channels of contact for the distributors and a process to complete each task.  It was overwhelming to jump into his shoes for a day (and I was next in line!).

The problem was that we never took the time to write down the process.  There were so many other things to do.  Yet, we would have been far better off, had we known how to cover for him.  The hour of process mapping would have saved at least a half day of thinking through it (and still getting it wrong).  We need organizational knowledge.

Some companies take it to the other extreme.  A handbook/manual is only as good as it ability to communicate.  I’m not going to read 200 pages of how exactly something was done unless its a project that requires significant investment.  Give me the guiding principles and bullet point summary.

When I google on how to fix something, if it is a multi-page article or string of text, I skip it.  The knowledge of how to fix the problem has to be clear, concise and organized.  The company Organizational Knowledge should be the same way.  The better the access, the more people in the organization will use it. 

Think of Organizational Knowledge as the path of the least resistance.  If it is accessible, understandable and digestible, people will use it.  Most people do not like to reinvent the wheel unless they think there is a better way.

We make Organizational Knowledge by giving the people in the know the tools, the motivation and the time to create it.  The tools can be anything from a blog to a content management system.  The motivation can be monetary, recognition or both.  The time taken must be encouraged and rarely, if ever, punished as a bad decision.  What’s more is that a content review before publishing can be given as a positive because the company cares about what is being written and cares enough to read the organizational knowlege before publishing.

Organizational Knowlege gives employees the tools to succeed, be recognized and feel good about their legacy.  Organizational Knowlege gives employers an increased productivity and employee satisfaction, when implemented correctly.  Sounds like a win-win to me.

Consumer Psychology – Differentiating without Change

0
18 years
by in Business

One of the most interesting and scary courses I took during my JD/MBA career is consumer psychology.  I learned a great framework for describing how I interact and reinforce my purchasing habits.

One of the points that really hit home to me is about differentiation.  It seems like a lot of my entrepreneurial friends work hard to make new points of differentiation that the consumer can see between themselves and others.  My education hammered home the importance of differentiation avoiding commoditization.  My friend Stormy started Maoomba.com with such differentiation in mind.

The strange piece is that the consumer only need perceive a difference between you and the competition (think store-brand vs. brand name medications).  That difference need not be tangible or apparent.  It can simply evoke a feeling.  And the crazy part is that consumers want you to reinforce that difference.

What this means is that a company can take an internal look at itself, an external look at its competition and then look for differences.  These differences can be thrown at a panel of people and see which ones don’t stink (ie which ones people see as smoke and mirrors).  These differences can be highlighted in marketing campaigns to consumers.  The more (frequency and length) this message reaches consumers, the more accepted it becomes (familiarity breeds acceptance).

I see this play a lot in ads that play on the past.  Ads in this category often use trust, parent’s habits and experience.  Consumers value these ideals, but the organizations didn’t change to get them.  They’ve just communicated them to the consumer as part of their offering.

Following this recipe, the company has now taken an intrinsic part of its product or organization — without change — and turned it into a competitive advantage because the consumer sees it as such.  I was shocked not because I knew a good marketer could do this, but because the recipe was so easy.

Be careful what you plug-in, you may get what you ask for

0
18 years
by in Life

So I had this friend that told me about the rabid stealing of rss feeds on sites that would claim credit for your work.  He encouraged me to install a plug-in to give notice to people about the stolen content.

 That was great when I was just posting to my own blog.  However, when ConnectBlogs offered to syndicate me (and I accepted), the copyright infringement accusation came through as well.

In short, please ignore the trailer to the last post.  ConnectBlogs has full permission to syndicate me and my ramblings.

Mac 10.3 and iPod Classic Fix

9
18 years
by in Helpdesk

Although I am not a mac owner, my uncle is and he just got an iPod classic for his son.  As it turns out, if you have Mac OS 10.3.9 and an iPod classic, iTunes refuses to sync to the new iPod and gives an error requiring an upgrade to 10.4 or later.  The Mac boards are some help, but it took piecing together a few things to get the iPod Classic to work with 10.3.9.  Here’s our outline:

  1. Have someone format your iPod through iTunes (we went to the SLC apple store)
  2. Find out your fwid (the SLC apple store was helpful there as well)
  3. get yamipod and install
  4. plug in ipod
  5. tell yamipod that you have a ipod classic
  6. tell yamipod the fwid
  7. add songs!

If you don’t have an apple store nearby, I’m not sure what to tell you.  Google shows that getting the fwid might be difficult.  You also need to have a friend with 10.4 to initialize the iPod.

I can only think of a couple of reasons for the restriction for 10.4.  None of them make much sense.  Apple wants people to upgrade their OS; Apple worries about the user experience of people taking days to sync their library over USB 1.X and won’t allow it; Apple programmers use a function available only in 10.4 and apple is too lazy to add it to 10.3.  With my uncle’s iPod classic playing music and syncing to yamipod running in Mac OS 10.3.9, the restriction is obviously not a hardware problem, but a software restriction put in by apple.  Not cool.

Edit: 1/8/2008:

yamipod has a faq on how to find the fwid.

Shoreline Web – A Business Plan

0
18 years
by in Business, Life

How many of you have visited shoreline ridge’s website within the past weeks?  Despite our difference in space and time, I can tell that the answer is 0.  The reason is that someone had a few “good ideas” and put up a website without a plan.  Unless you’re lucky and stumble upon the right idea, you need a reason, a mission to get the job done.

 That means that you need to start with purpose and an idea of the “squishy” words of how you want your users to feel.  For shoreline, the answers are “community,” “fun,” and “friendship.”  Everything that we put on that page should be relevant to those words.  So if I have a widget, let’s say a calendar, I need to make sure that my calendar has the capability of forming community, fun and/or friendship.  If my calendar events relvove around when rent is due and fees go up, I’ve probably missed the boat.

 So where do the ideas of what we need come from?  The target market!  If you are connected, you can run ideas past them, and get an initial impression.  For instance, the Shoreline community wants a classified section.  People are not only motivated to get rid of stuff they don’t have room for or don’t want to move (especially the international students), but also residents that are looking for cheap stuff.

 Keep an eye on shoreline.utah.edu.  You’ll be able to judge how well I follow my own advice and target my market.

Marketing – Its not what you sell, its what they want

0
18 years
by in Bateman IP, Business

Its fun to have a boss that is willing to brainstorm and expand outside the zone of comfort.  Bateman IP is doing just that with its marketing presence.

For those of you who saw the title and said, “duh, fundamental principle.”  You’re right.  And yet, new businesses don’t seem to get it.  Even old ones put on the stupid – see Johnson & Johnson suing the Red Cross (if you don’t see how selling products that heal people and suing healers conflicts in terms of marketing, ponder awhile).

Business fulfills unmet needs.  Those needs are latent or active, which means that either people seek you out or you have to convince them to seek you out.

If consumers seek out your product category, then you have to convince them that your best attributes are the most important attributes.  Remember that Charmin toiletpaper is cuddly soft.

If your consumers don’t know that they need you, you have to convince them that life is better as your partner.  Pessimists call this creating a need.  Optimists call this discovering a need.  Its probably somewhere in between.  Think about anything that gets “buzz.”  Remember the need to watch American Idol, Survivor or Harry Potter?  Its sure not a need we just have at the forefront of our brain.

Pretty fundamental, eh?  Well what happens if you mix it up?  You fall flat on your face.  Sending consumers info about how your washer/dryer/toaster combo has all the great features and long-lasting does nothing to create the need (I’m not sure I want my carbs tasting like laundered underwear).  On the other hand, if you convince more people to buy toiletpaper instead of using bidets, then you’ve just worked hard to increase the market without helping your bottom line.

Take some time to notice the ads around you.  Ask yourself if they are activating a need or steering me to their attributes.  Then ask yourself if that is the correct strategy for you.  The more you think about it, the more you’ll be able to leverage it in your own life.

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