Google has released a new feature for GMail called Priority Inbox Beta. It works by analyzing your email and filtering it out what it thinks are the important messages and giving you easier and quicker access to those. It does this by seeing which emails you read, and which ones it applies to. So, it’s customized for each individual user. At first the filters won’t be very accurate, but by seeing your patterns over the course of time, it will become increasingly more accurate. You can even tell Google that a certain email is “less important” or “more important” to help out it’s learning curve.

I’m excited to try it out. I’m a big fan of just about anything Google. I’ve been using GMail quite heavily for the past two years. I’ve completely replaced every other mail system on my computer with GMail. I think I have about 8 different email addresses redirecting to my GMail. I’ve got things organized by priority, and labels. I keep all my contacts in there. It works seamlessly with GChat, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Voice, and Google Tasks, all which I also use on a regular basis.

Google is constantly improving, and adding features to their applications. I think they really understand their users and are constantly trying to show them that they care about each user, and they will always be there for us. At the current time there isn’t much indication that they will turn into big brother as the unofficial Google motto is “don’t be evil”, but one can never tell where things will turn in the future.

I really suggest that you give GMail a try if you haven’t already. Here is a video about the new Priority Inbox Beta feature.

I happen to be a user of both WPTouch (a plugin that makes my blog mobile friendly) and Webcomic (a plugin and theme that allows you to organize comic series). The problem lies in that webcomic uses a custom post type for displaying the images associated with each comic and WPTouch has no idea how to display a webcomic. Thus, when someone visits my site on a mobile device, they can see any text that I post for a webcomic, but they can’t see the image associated with my post. Today I resolved to fix that problem and I was successful. While it’s not the most elegant of solutions, it at least works for now and I hope it can help others.

The solution is to modify your WPTouch plugin to manually link to the images associated with your webcomics. Now, I ended up buying the WPTouch pro version, because it is more updated, and it gives you themes. I’m hoping that it will be worth it for me since 50% of my sites traffic is from iPhones.

Once you’ve installed WPTouch Pro, edit the file wp-content/plugins/wptouch-pro/themes/classic/iphone/single.php

Add the following code on line 45

<?php
$categories = get_the_category();
$category = $categories[0]->category_nicename;
$webcomic = get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), ‘webcomic’);
if ($webcomic){
echo ‘<img src=”‘.get_bloginfo( ‘url’ ).’/wp-content/webcomic/’.$category.’/’.$webcomic[0]['files']['full'][0].’” alt=”" />’;
}
?>

Here’s what it does. First it grabs the category slug that the post is in. This is needed because that’s how Webcomic organizes your images. Second, it gets the webcomic metadata for the post. If the metadata exists, then we echo out the full sized image. That’s pretty much it!

If you have questions, I will try to help you out as best I can.

I’m going to try and nip this one in the bud. For those of you who don’t know what Facebook Places is you can read about it here. It is a new service by Facebook that allows you to “check in” at a location to let other people know where you’re at and who you’re with. I saw someone with this status today:

Facebook launched Facebook Places yesterday.
Anyone can find out where you are when you are logged in. It gives the
actual address & map location of where you are as you use Facebook.
Make sure your kids know too. TO UNDO: Go to “Account”, “Account
Settings”, ………”Notifications”, then scroll down to “Places” and
UNCHECK the 2 boxes. Make sure to SAVE changes and re-post this message

That advice is very misleading, and here’s why.

1. Places only works when you manually “check in” at a location. This advice assumes that Facebook is just grabbing your location every second you’re using it, and the broadcasts that information to the public. No, it only works when you voluntarily choose to share your location.
2. The term “undo” implies that there was something that was done in the first place. It’s like saying “to undo the status update feature” or “to undo the picture upload feature”
3. Going to the notification settings does absolutely nothing, but allow you to specify if you want an email or a text message when someone tags you at a location. So, basically… if you turn notifications off, you’re just telling Facebook that you don’t want to be notified when someone tags you at a location. I for one, want to know when someone tags me at a location, so I can then go ask them to remove my information if I don’t want other people to know when and where I’m at.

Now, if you really want to not share where you’re at, or be selective about who sees where you’re at, there are two things you can do.

1. Never use Facebook Places. Plain and simple. If you don’t use it, people won’t know where you’re at.
2. If you do want to use Places, but limit who sees where you’re at, change your privacy settings.
   1. Account > Privacy Settings > Customize Settings
   2. Change the settings for Places
   3. I set the permissions to my safe list (which you can read about setting up here)

What is your opinion on Facebook Places? I think it’s fine. There have been applications for over a year (four square, gowalla) that have used the same concept and it’s worked out well. When it’s a services based on users volunteering their information, then I don’t personally have any problem with it. What do you think?

This blog is a chronicle of my adventure with Adobe in trying to get support for Flash Builder 4. You see, I purchased the premium version of the product 5 days ago, and one of the key features for the premium version is a “profiler”. Now, I got the application installed fine, and everything works EXCEPT for the “profiler”, the one feature that I paid $700 for. What follows is how Adobe chooses to conduct support for a $700 product.

Friday – 08/13/2010

• called tech support
  • they said support is only covered under a support contract
• talked with someone on chat support
  • they said they would escalate the case to tier 2 support and they would contact me

Monday – 08/16/2010

• No contact from tier 2 support – case shows as ‘withdrawn’ on Adobe’s website
• used online form to schedule a callback, got a message that callbacks weren’t working until Tuesday
• chatted with chat support (transcript in email)
  • they ended up scheduling a call back from tech support for me
• on the meantime was on hold with tech support
  • spoke to someone who said Flash Builder 4 required a contract for support and they gave me the number
  • 800-585-0774 to purchase a support contract
• callback called me back 12 times
  • several times I chose option 9 to cancel the call back
  • finally used option 1 to speak with person to turn off the call backs
  • the person said he would close the case to stop the callbacks
• 2 more callbacks
  • used option 1 to speak to another person to turn off the callbacks
  • stayed on hold for over 5 minutes and ended the call
• 1 more callback
  • used option 1 again, no one answered within 5 minutes. I ended the call
• contacted @adobe on twitter
  • they referred me to @adobe_care
  • they attempted to find out what my issue with the profiler was
  • they said they would check with the flash builder team and get back to me
• called 800-585-0774 (direct sales) to see why I needed to purchase support for a $700 product that doesn’t work
  • she said that the issue should be handled by tech support without a support contract
  • transferred me to Flash builder tech support team
• speaking with tech support
  • he told me i need a support contract and this is not the right tech support for flash builder 4
  • he also told me he is the same person that I’ve spoken to twice today already (Abhishek)
  • he told me that direct sales was wrong and that if I had purchased a support contract then I would have gotten the right support number to call.
  • I asked to speak with his manager
  • he said he would transfer me to his manager
  • he again advised me that I needed to purchase a support contract
  • the manager came on the line (dsandeep)
  • he confirmed that I needed a support contract and that there is a dedicated flash builder team
  • I told him to put me in touch with that team.
  • he said he would transfer me to that team after documenting my case.
• I was transferred to direct sales (Rueben)
  • he said I should have two incedents covered within 90 days of purchase
  • he didn’t know the proper team to support the product
  • he tried to sell me one incedent for $34, I told him he just told me I had two icenddents to use
• he transferred me back to Abhishek at tech support
  • I related the story to him
  • he asked if I had a support contract #
  • I tried to clarify that direct sales told me I had two free incedents and all I have is an email with serial numbers
  • I gave him the serial number from my email
  • he gave me the number for flash builder support team 888-649-2990
• called that number (enterpise solutions)
  • they hung up on me after I tried to get the name of the person I was speaking to
• called back
  • told her my issue with the profiler and gave her account info
  • she said she is tier 2 and that I should have never spoken to tier 1 (I could have told her that)
  • she said I would be contacted back within 24 hours to do a webex session for the assistence
  • we went through the troubleshooting that I had already done and she confirmed that I would need a webex session to get any further

Tuesday – 08/17/2010

• I was contacted by Bruce on Twitter
  • he asked some basic troubleshooting, then wanted to have tech support contact me
  • I gave him my case number
  • he said he would escalate the case to tier 3 and I would be contacted
• I was called by someone on tier 2 support (I think)
  • he said they are still looking into the problem, but he found information that it could be a bug in flash player 10.1 and to try installing 10.0 and see if the profiler would work
  • he sent me a link with information on the 10.1 problem
  • I installed version 10.0, but the problem still persisted
• I emailed the tier 2 guy back and told him I still had the problem
  • He said they were continuing to look at the problem and would stay in contact with me

Wednesday – 08/18/2010

• Got an email from someone saying they would continue to look into my case

Thursday – 08/19/2010

• Finally got a call from a technician that wanted to remotely connect to my computer
  • He was able to connect and worked on my computer for about 45 minutes until I had to leave
  • all that was accomplished was that he could recreate the problem in a completely sterile environment, thereby determining it wasn’t something that I was doing wrong
  • We agreed to pick it back up again on Monday when I would be back in the office.

Monday – 08/23/2010

• No contact from Adobe

Tuesday – 08/24/2010

• Updated my case online saying I hadn’t heard from anyone on Monday like I was expecting
  • No response
• Contacted Adobe_care on Twitter saying I hadn’t heard anything from them since Thursday
  • Got an almost immediate response to my case asking me to do a couple more trouble-shooting steps
  • All the steps had been done by the tech last week when he was remotely connected to my computer
  • I updated the case with the results from the trouble-shooting and that the problem was still not resolved
  • No response yet from Adobe

Wednesday – 08/25/2010

• Updated my Adobe case with “Hello?” after not receiving any response
• Got an email response 6 hours after updating the case
  • They said that since the mm.cfg file didn’t exist on my computer to create it and put the following contents in it, then relaunch Flash Builder 4 and see if the profiler will work.
    • ErrorReportingEnable=1
    • TraceOutputFileEnable=1
    • TraceOutputEnable=1
  • The suggestion didn’t fix the problem and I updated the case with that information

Thursday – 08/26/2010

• Sent @adobe_care a DM to see what I needed to do to get my case escalated and a resolution
• found this guy’s article which sounds like he’s having as much fun as I am http://iconnectdots.com/2010/08/adobe-gets-1st-prize-for-worst-customer-service-ever.html
• Received an update to my case in which they are trying to convince me that they won’t support it on 64bit Windows 7 referencing the system requirements at http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/systemreqs/
  • OS Requirement: Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit running in 32-bit mode)
    • Ok, so you do support the 64 bit version, if the apps running in 32 bit mode
  • According to this article (which is just a better way of proving my point) http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-windows7-vista64-support-32bit-applications.htm if the application is installed in Program Files (x86) then it will always run in 32 bit mode.
  • This is nothing but a poor attempt at prolonging the case

Friday – 08/27/2010

• Got a message from @adobe_care on Twitter that the case had been stuck with tier 2 support and they were escalating it to tier 3
  • They said the 64-bit issue was still on the table

Saturday – 08/28/2010

• I installed Adobe Flash Builder 4 Premium on a second computer running Windows Vista 32-bit operating system
  • I also made sure that Flash Player 10.0 was installed
  • Verified the the profiler would still not launch
  • Updated the Adobe case saying that it still didn’t work with a supported OS so they couldn’t use the “not supported” defense
  • DMed @adobe_care and let them know that I confirmed it didn’t work on 32-bit windows Vista

Monday – 08/30/2010

• Got an update on the case this morning saying “I am escalating this case to my
  Senior, so that a collective research and response mechanism be
  generated.” We’ll see how that goes.
• I asked them to update the case on a daily basis with status
• Got a call from tier 3 support, a guy named Kurt Mossman @kurtmossman.
  • He is my hero!
  • In 5 minutes he had my profiler fixed and the case closed.
  • Below you will find my solution and the short amount of troubleshooting that we did

Conclusion

After almost 2 weeks, and probably 10-15 hours of fighting with Adboe support, we found a resolution to my problem.

Here was the solution:

1. open a command prompt
2. run the command: netstat –ano | find /i “9999”
3. In my case I had an output that showed TCP    0.0.0.0:9999           0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
4. After identifying that port 9999 was already in use, it was a simple matter to change the port that the Flash Builder 4 Profiler uses
5. Launch Flash Builder
6. Go to Windows > Prefrences
7. Go to Flash Builder > Profiler > Connections
8. Change the port number to something that isn’t being used according to your test.txt file (we used 9997)
9. Click Apply > Ok
10. Close Flash Builder
11. Launch Flash Builder
12. Launch the Profiler
13. WORKS!

I have to say this is one of the worst support cases I’ve ever had the luck to be involved in. If I didn’t have bad luck. I’d have no luck at all.

In order to set a parameter on a Doctrine object that doesn’t exist from your database, use the mapValue() method:

$record->mapValue(‘name’, $value);

Strongmail is a mail delivery company that we began using about a month ago. They’ve got an amazing delivery platform and are a very world class company, except when it comes to their API. With a lot of the stuff that we do, we needed to have a mail auto-responder, and unfortunatly that’s one feature that Strongmail doesn’t provide. The solution is to code the auto-responder yourself and then use the Strongmail API to send the emails on a transactional basis.

I wondered “how hard can it be?” I’ve worked with Authorize.net’s API, Twitter’s API, Facebook’s API, Paypal’s API, you name it. When it comes to working with an API, it’s not that challenging for me… Until Strongmail came along. They sent me the documentation, and I was immediatly lost. The API is a SOAP based API (not that untypical), but their documenation is horrible, so I asked if they had any sample code to implement it with PHP (not that untypical). They provided me with some sample code and it immediatly game me errors.

Turns out it was meant to run on a PHP server that doesn’t have SOAP compiled in with it… well, that’s a problem I tell them. I try to get their help on the errors I’m getting, and with such little documentation on how the API works, and what options are needed for each call it’s pretty much like throwing a rock at a bucket in the dark from 50 yards away and trying to hit it. I was in desperate need of help. I finally got one of their professional service members to take me seriously and start providing some actual help, but even then it seemed futile.

Last night I finally cracked it. Everything began working! I ran into a couple of small errors, but they were easily solved and it began working! After two long weeks of sending code back and forth, reporting error codes, deciphering documentation I finally figured it out on my own. They bill us thousands of dollars a month for their service, and I had to show THEM how their own API works.

If anyone out there finds themself in the same situation, I’m providing you with the sample code that I rewrote for them. I asked them to make it available in their support site, but I don’t know if they will or not. I really hope this sample code can help someone out there that’s trying to do the same thing.

SAMPLE CODE

I got a couple of speakers from a friend on mine to put into my Corolla. It’s a 2005 S model, and this is only my second time replacing speakers in a car. I tried to look up some info online about how to do it, but there wasn’t a whole lot of info and there certainly weren’t any pictures to go along with it. I will show you how I replaced the stock speakers and if you have any questions at all, just post them in the comments.

Tools

Tools:

• flat head screwdriver
• philips screwdriver
• wire strippers
• wire cutters
• cordless drill
• 1/8″ drillbit

Remove arm rest

The arm rest comes off fairly easy just using your hands.

Remove electronic panel

Removing the electronic panel was a little tricky. Use the flathead screwdriver to pry up the top (closest to door hinge) side first, then slide it forward as you pull it out.

Hidden screw behind door handle

Remove this hidden screw and the two screws under the arm rest.

Door is removed

Pull off the tweeter cover to make removing the door panel easier. I just started at the top of the door and worked my way down, there are little plastic snaps that hold it on and the whole door came off really easy.

Close up of stock speaker

They decided to use rivets to hold on the stock speaker, so I got out my drill and drillbit. Drill in the center of the rivets about a quarter of an inch. Using your flat head screwdriver you can now pry off the flat part of the rivet that you can see. Now you have to wedge the screwdriver into the sides of the speaker mount to pry it off the door. It will give you a little trouble, and don’t worry too much about the rivets deforming the holes.

Holes drilled for new speaker mount

With the stock speaker removed, I had to drill two new holes for the new speaker mounting. I still just used the 1/8″ drillbit.

White to Pink, Black to Purple

I’m not an expert on wiring… but I do know you should never cross wires. Unfortunatly Toyota does not label which wire is ground. My reasoning was to pair up the lightest colors and the darkest colors. The speaker still works and sounds good, so I hope that’s how it’s done. Good luck with that. I had to manually wire it because the car harness was different than the speaker harness.

Finished installing new speaker

Wrap the wires in electrical tape and I’m done! I had to mount the speaker upside down to give me a little more room for the wiring. Now you just have to snap the door back on and screw in the three screws!

If you have any questions at all, I’ll try to answer them. I’m by no means an expert, but hopefully this will help you out a little.

If you have a computer that has a damaged CD-ROM or no CD-ROM at all, then you’ll need a DOS bootable USB Flash Drive. I recently had to make one for myself and while there were a lot of articles about it on the internet, they were either out-of-date or very confusing. Here is what you need before you get started:

1. USB Flash Drive that is capable of being bootable (nearly all USB Flash Drives made in the last 2 years have this capability).
2. Computer with a mother board that supports booting from a USB device (again, virtually all modern mother boards support this).
3. HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool here
4. Windows 98  boot files here

Step 1 – Preparing Files

1. Download and install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
2. Download and extract the Windows 98 boot files to any location on your hard drive. I extracted them to C:/bootdisk

Step 2 – Formatting USB Flash Drive

1. Launch the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
   

   It will look disabled at first

2. Insert your USB Flash Drive. In this case I’m using a 512 mb Cruzer Mini, and the program comes to life.
3. Select FAT32 for the file system
4. Check Quick Format
5. Check Create a DOS startup disk
6. Cick the three dots and browse to the location that you extracted the boot files to (C:/bootdisk)
   
7. Click on Start
8. It will prompt you that you will lose all data on the Flash Drive, click on Yes.
   
9. Once it’s finished you’ll get a report that looks something like this:
   
10. Click on OK, then close the application
11. Open your USB Flash Drive and you will see that there are no files on it
12. Copy all of the files from the C:/bootdisk folder to your USB Flash Drive but DO NOT OVERWRITE ANY EXISTING FILES (there should be 2 files it will ask you if you want to overwrite)

Done! Now all you need to do is restart your computer and interrupt the startup process so that you can choose which device to boot off of (or manually change your BIOS to boot off of the USB Device before it boots off of the hard drive) and boot off of your USB Flash Drive. You should see a quick Windows 98 splash screen then a DOS prompt. You should have all the cool tools like fdisk, smartdrv, and format, plus quite a few others.

Microsoft has released a tool that will let you compare different versions of IE side-by-side. It’s super nice being able to test how a website looks in IE 6 without hunting down an old Windows XP machine or setting up a local virtual machine.

Download