Archive for December 2004

The finalists in Arts Project Moving Image Contest have been announced. The contest asked entrants to create short films demonstrating some of the tensions between art and intellectual property law, and the intellectual property issues artists face, focusing on either music or documentary film. The judges are selecting three winners from among these finalists, and the winners will be announced on January 15, 2005. You can pick your favorite entry.

Despite growing up playing TV video games, computer games, and handheld electronic games, I still love the old fashioned board game. The newest addition to the Snave family cabinet is Carcassonne. Haven’t played it yet, but I look forward to it. Thanks to my Secret Santa (Hanukkah Harry?). This was a wonderful and generous gift. Thank you, Secret Santa in PA! I will think of you whenever my family gets together and plays the game.

I think family games night is one of the best ways to spend time together as a family. I have memories of staying up past midnight working on puzzles during winter break from school. One year, a friend of mine came over to help and we stayed up till 3am working on a Coca-Cola puzzle only to find a one piece was missing. That’s OK, the fact I still recall it with a smile is worth it.

What are your favorite board games? I like Scrabble. I enjoyed playing Careers. Though it’s not a board game, I liked Electronic Detective, but I got scared of it because I didn’t like the gunshots at the beginning of the game. I was young and thought something bad was going to happen.

The wireless network in my house went haywire. It worked on three PCs, one had a horrible connection, and one can’t connect. Between Paul and me, we spent a lot of time researching and trying to figure out the problem. We narrowed down the possibilities few by doing tests. Paul is the network king in our house and I learned a bit in working with him. In fact, I solved the problem… temporarily.

I believe the wireless on the router is bad. It works fine when we hook miles of cable to it (I’ve tripped over them, knocked things down, and chased after a toddler who grabbed one.). I’m tired of looking at the cables, so we’re contacting the maker of this router as well as hunting for deals for a new wireless router with g (as in 802.11g).

Here are some of the tricks and troubleshooting tips I’ve learned in playing with the router:

* Look at how many computers can connect and how many can’t. This tells you a story. If all of them don’t work, then the problem is most likely the router itself. Maybe it needs a simple hard reset. Try a soft reset first (turning it off and back on). If that doesn’t do it, do a hard reset following the instructions for your router. Mine required holding the reset button while turning it off and back on and not letting go until about a minute after turning it back on.

* If no computer wirelessly connects to the network, check to see if the router still works by connecting to it with a cable. If it works here, you know the router is still alive. It doesn’t necessarily mean the wireless is dead. Obviously, if your router is strictly wireless and not dual like mine (cable and wireless), this won’t work. Instead, you can test by bypassing the router and plugging your LAN cable directly into the DSL/Cable modem.

* Do a little pingin’. It could be the ISP is down and not a router problem. Open a command prompt window (Start > Run > type “cmd” > hit Enter) and type “ipconfig /all” and you should get a response back with your IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and other items. What you are
looking for is the IP address of the “Default Gateway.”

At the command line, type “ping XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX” where XXX = the numbers listed as the Default Gateway. For example, my default gateway address is 192.168.1.1, therefore, I would type “ping 192.168.1.1″ If you get a response, then your router is working. Next, try to ping a site. You don’t need to know the IP address. You can ping by Web address. For example, type “ping www.marqui.com” and you should get a response with the ping times from an IP address. That IP address is Marqui’s. How did your computer know this? Through DNS (Domain Naming Service), but that’s another topic. If you can’t ping a site on the Internet, the problem is most likely with your ISP.

* Have a cordless phone? Some cordless phones disconnect wireless connections while you’re using it. Stupid, but it happens. I have one that does just that and another that doesn’t mess with it. Aggravating. I wanted to return the phone, but it was a “no return” phone. If I had known it would mess with the wireless, I would have never bought it. So I learned that the next time I buy a phone, to check to see if it will kill the wireless or not.

* Ensure configuration is correct. Check the router’s manual to complete this step.

* Try changing the channel. If that doesn’t work, change the SSID (aka name) and the channel. If your wireless’ SSID is “Wireless” and is on channel 5. First, try changing the channel to 11 or anything other than 5. If that doesn’t work, then create a new SSID like “Router” and pick a channel, any channel. It never hurts to reboot the router after each change, although when making changes to it, it resets itself. This step is what got our network working again.

The process for changing it depends on your router. For mine, all I had to do is enter its IP address (200.200.1.1, for example) in the browser, enter the ID and password, and I am in. It’s similar to a software or application screen. Enter info, select drop-down boxes, and click buttons to change / save.

* Another good thing to know is to point your mouse over the wireless icon in the system tray. It provides basic information about your wireless connection. It provides information on the SSID, speed, and strength. The blacked out part in the image is where the SSID is located. Also, get more information by right-clicking on the icon and selecting “View Available Wireless Network” or “Open Network Connections.”

* You may have WEP turned on. This secures others from using your wireless because it requires a password. If it’s on, verify each PC has it enabled and the correct password or passphrase.

This is a handful of what you can do. Other options are more detailed and complex. But this is a good start and will help eliminate a majority of possibilities.

Stephen King, President and CEO of Marqui, asked about BzzAgent and how is it similar / different to Marqui’s blogosphere program.

Like Marqui, BzzAgent is controversial, but it is all deemed a new approach to marketing. Bloggers have said good and bad things about both. Marqui’s program is new, so it’s too early to determine its results. However, it has increased “the company’s visibility online from 1048 Google hits in August, to 244,000 (in one November week).”

BzzAgent has helped create hits for its clients’ products including QBQ! (which I love), Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Unstuck, and non-books like Ralph Lauren Blue. Most of the books (as far as I know) have become best sellers, but a couple of them were best sellers before they arrived at BzzAgent. For instance, Eats, Shoots and Leaves soared the charts in England. Before it hit the US, it received a lot of attention even with well-respected newspapers and magazines.

Another is Seth Godin‘s Free Prize Inside. Seth is already a word of mouth hot shot. Was there any question that he wouldn’t make the best seller list? QBQ! is not a brand new book, but a re-release. Hey, I’m glad word spread about it otherwise I would’ve never known about it. Then there is Al Fresco Chicken Sausages. A New York Times article (free registration required… duh) mentioned BzzAgent indicated Al Fresco was a bzz product. I read the article and I wanted to know more about this product. I found the company’s Web site, and of course, there isn’t a place near me that carries the non-pork product (I don’t eat pork). Miracle of miracles, I accidentally came across the product at Target yesterday. So I bought it. Haven’t tried it yet. No one buzzed me about this product, but it obviously caught the newspaper’s attention and I learned about it there. On many occasions, I’ve read about a product in a newspaper and magazine and put it on my shopping list.

OK, back to the subject at hand… the difference between Marqui and BzzAgent. Here’s the BzzAgent Code of Conduct for reference. BzzAgents are not paid a set fee or even in cash. The only thing they get are the items they review and points for prizes. For every quality review reported about a product, BzzAgents receive points. They can use those points to get prizes—not just any prize… prizes from the list of stuff they have for each campaign.

Like Marqui—they can say good or bad things. After all, bad buzz is still good buzz. BzzAgents can buzz it anywhere and anytime. It does not have to be weekly or in a blog. There are no rules. It could be in person, stores, phone conversation, and online. The company’s risk comes in sending products to BzzAgents. Some may not be honest agents and never buzz anything so they can keep the products or they submit fake buzz to build up points. But the company watches for this.

What do you think of such marketing tactics? Would you say one is better than the other? Why? My opinion? I think they’re both effective as the word is getting out. It’s tough to compare their successes because Marqui sells a communications management system while BzzAgent markets tangible products ranging from five bucks to fifty bucks. Selling a CMS is hard because it is technically involved and it’s not something you can immediately understand and start using like reading a book. CMSes are important applications and it’s a matter of matching an organization’s needs to the CMS. David Suzuki Foundation uses Marqui’s CMS.

I’ve been looking for a spell checker to use with all of my programs, but have yet to find one I like. Read more…

I’ve been looking for a spell checker to use with all of my programs, but have yet to find one I like. IE Spell is great, but it only works with IE and I don’t use it much. Mitch wrote about a spell check for Firefox (it also has a Mozilla version). Spell Bound works nicely and applies only to where you’re entering text (forms and emails). It doesn’t check for spelling on a general page. Not a big deal unless you’re checking for errors on your Web site or your enemy’s

I also tried Free Spell. This one checks spelling in all applications, not just a browser. It drives me nuts for several reasons:

* It doesn’t go into system tray yet and I don’t like having another item in my task bar.

* It opens a DOS-like window, which is clunky.

* It requires selecting the text to have it spellchecked.

As-U-Type (this is refers to v2.2) sits in the system tray and checks everything you enter. It works in Mozilla e-mail and Web site forms. It’s transparent as it makes corrections while you work.

Once I forgot As-U-Type was on and was trying to type “gid” (a file extension) in Google and I kept seeing it changed to “did.” When I realized it was As-U-Type, I clicked once on its logo in the system tray to turn it off and proceed with the search. I wish there was a faster and more simple way (by right-clicking rather than a keyboard shortcut) to tell it to add it to its dictionary and leave it alone rather than having to temporarily turn it off and back on.

I type a lot of non-dictionary words, abbreviations, and acronyms. It’s annoying to have things corrected all the time. It’s a good program, but I rarely use it.

I like how IE Spell works and if it worked with most applications, I think it’s my ideal solution.

I’ve posted a list of geeky and wacky gifts that I’ve seen around the ‘net.

I’ve learned a lot from Tom Peters especially from The Pursuit of Wow! Compared to this and past books, Project04: Snapshots of Excellence in Unstable Times is disappointing.

In it, he shares 60 TIBs (This I believe). According to the publisher, “The overarching message in Project ’04 is that your job, and life as you know it, is not stable, predictable, or secure. Project ’04 is a narrative on finding your own personal excellence.” It also states one of its targets is job seekers. I live with a person who has been searching for jobs as his full-time job. I didn’t see anything in the book that would help him.

Peters, as always, gives it to you straight. No beating around the bush, and I like that. This book is no different. It just doesn’t motivate, empower, or encourage you to take action. To me, it’s about stating the reality of today’s environment. The way it is written doesn’t make you want to go out and change or try something. When I finished reading it, I felt like I gained little from it. I picked up a few excellent quotes, but that’s all. I was surprised.

Maybe I missed something. You can get a good idea of what the short book is about at ChangeThis. The free download has the 60 TIBs, which constitutes over three-quarters of the book. He has a blog and other resources on his site. If you disagree, comment away.

I went into Marqui’s communications management system this morning and played with it for a couple of hours. Right off the bat, I discovered it won’t work with anything but IE-based browsers. It works fine with Maxthon, an IE-based browser.

In trying to load Web Trends, it stated I needed to turn on Javascript and told me how to do it in IE and Netscape 7. I was using Mozilla 1.7.2, which as you know uses the same engine as Netscape. It didn’t like it. Switching over to Maxthon, all worked fine. Folders won’t expand in Mozilla either. However, upon entering the CMS, it does recommend using IE 5.5 or greater for optimum performance. I wanted to see how it worked in Mozilla. You can do a couple of things in Moz, but it’s limiting.

Though the number of IE users is falling, a majority of businesses are still using it. Marqui isn’t the only business whose application best runs on IE.

Aside from that rough start, the CMS interface is clean and simple. I’ve seen some CMS interfaces that would scare users upon first glance. The major tabs (for administrators) include:

* Console

* Web Pages

* Calendar Events

* Media Files

* Control Panel

Easy to figure out which does what. I ran into a problem and support responded quickly—how do I find previously submitted stories (news releases, in this case) because I found a typo in one of the releases? I checked the help file and looked at every folder, tab, and link available. No such luck. I tried signing on as a User and as a Writer, didn’t find the stories there either.

The answer: Calendar Events tab. I assumed this info would be under Web Pages tab thinking it was for all pages including templates. Since the news release was dated July and no events were entered for December, I didn’t see anything in the Calendar when I first looked at it. I’ve submitted a suggestion to clarify this in the help file. It would be helpful to have a list of pages under the Web Pages tab by title because a user may not remember the date an article or release was published.

Once I find the release in the Calendar, editing is a breeze. Just make the change and submit it. Then, the person with approving authority approves it and the release is immediately updated on the Web site.