Digital Streets

Live Writer makes it simple to add maps and aerial shots to your blog when you want to provide driving instructions or pictures of a specific location to your readers.

To insert a map/aerial shot:

1. Go to the menu at the top of Windows Live Writer.  Click Insert and select Map.

   

2. Input the desired place in the Find location textbox.

   

3. Click the button with the magnifying glass on it.
4. A road map of the location will appear.  If you want an aerial picture of the area, select Aerial from the dropdown to the left of the map.

   

5. Depending on the location, a bird’s eye view may also be available.   This is a much closer aerial picture of the area.  If the option is available for the location, a large button will appear to the left of the map.

   

6. You can zoom in and out and move within the map by using the controls beneath the dropdown.

   

   You can also click inside the map and by holding down the left button on your mouse, drag the map to find the desired location.

7. When the map reflects the desired effect, click the Insert button.

   

A friend of mine needed to change the DNS servers for his site. Once he got to GoDaddy, he was totally confused on what steps to take next. To be honest, the interface could be a little more intuitive. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to GoDaddy.com and login to your account.
2. Go to the green horizontal toolbar, mouseover Domains and select My Domain Names.
   
3. Select the checkbox next to the domain that you wish to change.
   
4. Go to the toolbar and click the now unghosted Nameservers button.
   
5. Input the new primary and secondary DNS server names in the first two textboxes.
   
6. Click OK.

The request is then submitted. It may take up to 3 days for you to see the changes though, this is due to the time it takes for the change to filter through to other DNS servers on the internet.

By now, I’m sure that you’ve heard of Alexa when it comes to getting various information on the traffic metrics for a website.  I came across another useful site for checking out and comparing website metrics.  It’s always useful to see how you’re doing in comparison to your competition (and it’s interesting to check out how other sites are doing against theirs).

Go to Compete and input the address for your site (we’ll use Google for our example). 

After you click the Get SnapShot button, you will be taken to a page with a graph displaying the People Count (unique visitors) that have visited the site over the past year.

The purple buttons on the upper right portion of the graph can be used to display other useful information.  Here are the options:

If you wish to compare the site to 1 or 2 other websites, input them into the textbox(es) in the blue bar at the top.

After clicking the Go button, you will see a graph similar to the previous one, but with the statistics for the additional site(s).

If you register (for free), you can add two more sites to your comparison.  It is an easy and useful way for getting a quick picture of where a site stands against the competition as far as traffic metrics go.

Curious about what technologies was used to build a site or what type of advertising they are using?  Thanks to BuiltWith.com, by simply inputing the site’s url, you can find out things like:

(We’ll use Lifehacker for our example)

Analytics and Tracking

Javascipt Libraries

Frameworks

Other information included in the site’s profile:

• Advertising
• Content Delivery Network
• Aggregation Functionality
• Document Information
• Who is Hosting the site
• Server Information
• Site’s rankings according to Compete.com

Great way to find out about what’s under the hood of the popular sites (and even the not so popular ones).

 If you have become bored with U3 or if the U3 Launchpad doesn’t work on your  system, you can easily remove it.  The first step you will want to take is to copy all of your files from your flash drive and put them in a safe place.  When we remove the U3 Launchpad, we will also end up erasing the data on the drive itself.

After you have copied (and verified) the data from the flash drive, you will need to download the U3 Uninstall executable from the U3 site.  Make sure to note the location that you are saving the file.

1.  Connect your flash drive to your computer.  Make sure that it is the only flash drive that is connected.

2. Run u3 uninstall.exe .

3. When the U3 LLC License Agreement appears, select the Accept radio button and click Next.

4.  Check the I want to remove the U3 Launchpad and erase ALL data on the device checkbox and click Next.

5. The process for uninstalling the U3 Launchpad will begin.

6. Once the U3 Launchpad has been uninstalled, remove your flash drive and then reconnect it to your system.

Now copy the data you saved off of the drive originally back onto your drive.  Now your drive is U3 free and ready to use. 

As I am sure you know, daylight savings time has been lengthened and will run from March 11th to November 4th. Because of this change, if you are running XP or previous versions of Windows, you will need to patch your operating system. Additionally, if you run Microsoft Outlook, you will need to patch it as well (corporate domains can patch Exchange instead of having to patch each individual client).  Here’s some necessary reading and links to get your system ready for the new DST.

1. February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems. 
2. How to address the daylight saving time changes in 2007 by using the Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook
3. Windows Mobile Updates for Daylight Saving Time (PocketPC)
4. Windows Mobile Updates for Daylight Saving Time (Desktop Tool)

ProcessLibrary.com is a great resource for looking up comprehensive information on processes that you’re curious about. It can be quite helpful in identifying spyware and other malicious code. It claims to “list everything that should – and should not be – running on your computer.”