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Twitter is “stressing out” aka not working properly

Here’s a new one (to me)- Twitter’s “Find People” function is not available, so we see the following message:

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Twitter is stressing out a bit right now, so this feature is temporarily disabled.

How cute.  Who doesn’t get stressed out when a hundred million friends are asking you questions all at the same time?

comment on this | posted in: 404 News Webdev

How To Setup Facebook Chat Protocol In iChat

This week, Facebook opened up their chat service to an industry standard protocol- XMPP, otherwise known as Jabber.  This means that Facebook chat can now be used directly from within iChat. 

Here’s how to set it up-

Go to iChat’s Preferences

Click the “Accounts” tab and add a new account

Select “Jabber” from the options

Type your screen name (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) and password.

Set “Server Options” to chat.facebook.com at port 5222 (do not check SSL)

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Facebook also has instructions posted now on their site.

comment on this | posted in: Mac News Tips

Two methods for making files invisible

In MacOSX, there are two simple ways to make files invisible from the command line: (both methods do require the installation of Apple’s Developer Tools)

Method 1:

Make invisible:

/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V ~/Desktop/MyDoc.txt

Make visible:

SetFile -a v ~/Desktop/MyDoc.txt


Method 2:

Make invisible:

chflags hidden ~/Desktop/MyDoc.txt

Make visible:

chflags nohidden ~/Desktop/MyDoc.txt

comment on this | posted in: Mac News Tips Unix

How to avoid sending Apple-Tab in Apple Remote Desktop

In Snow Leopard, Apple modified the behavior of Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing to send system level commands to a remote computer by default.  This change has made working with remote computers much more difficult for me. 

At long last “MacNoggin” has posted the solution over on MacOSXHints.

Quit Remote Desktop or Screen Sharing, then open Terminal and paste the following codes to toggle these hidden preferences:

defaults write com.apple.RemoteDesktop DoNotSendSystemKeys -bool YES

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing DoNotSendSystemKeys -bool YES

If you would like to reverse, re-enter the code, but change YES to NO at the very end.  And of course, you can always send these “System” commands while in fullscreen mode.

comment on this | posted in: Mac News Tips Unix

Thanks for the Christmas Card, Google

The Google doodle today is a set of Christmas cards.  I say, “Merry Christmas” to you as well.

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comment on this | posted in: News Webdev

Bing Took a Bomb

It’s not every day that a major search engine takes a nosedive into 404-land.  I have to say, I’m surprised this isn’t a default IIS error page.

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This webpage is not available.
The webpage http://bing.com might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new address.

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Oops

This isn’t the page you wanted.

Try this

Refresh the page.  If you get this message again please check back later.

comment on this | posted in: Clients News Webdev

Sweet Firefox Crash Recovery Screen

While not technically a 404, I’m lumping it into my collection as a clever browser error message. 

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Well this is embarrassing.

Firefox is having trouble recovering your windows and tabs.  This is usually caused by a recently opened web page.

Gotta love a team that has a sense of humor.  Thanks to Howie for the screen grab.

comment on this | posted in: 404 Mac News Webdev

ODBC Administrator in MacOS 10.6

Apple has ever so helpfully removed ODBC Administrator from MacOS 10.6’s Utilities folder.  The software is now a standalone download from Apple’s website-

http://support.apple.com/downloads/ODBC_Administrator_Tool_for_Mac_OS_X

From Apple:  The ODBC Administrator Tool for Mac OS X enables database administration of ODBC-compliant data sources.  Features include connection pooling, trace log creation, and ODBC driver management, among other administration features.

comment on this | posted in: Mac News Tips Webdev

The Chromium Experience

As expected, The Chromium Experience on VMWare is really just a web browser at this point. 

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It did boot in about 10 secs. and I could see how this would be very nice on a NetBook, but for now- it’s just a overhyped browser running in a VM.

The Chrome task manager reveals a few details about what’s going on.

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And of course the “Stats for Nerds” shows quite a bit more including Zygote & Sandbox helper.

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comment on this | posted in: News Webdev

Bummer, Basecamp is down for emergency maintenance

Just when I had 10 minutes to review my projects, the project management system is down for emergency maintenance.  With the link going to a description of timezones, I found this error to be pretty weak. 

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The system is down for emergency maintenance

It’ll be back by 3:00PM Central time.

comment on this | posted in: 404 News Webdev
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