Two Replacements for Windows XP for Old Computers

Update: Apr 2015
After further testing with a bunch of distros on live CDs and by installing them on some Pentium 4 era test computers I have found I like LXLE and Mint XFCE the best. Both of them have lightweight desktop environments. LXLE seems faster and has had the best hardware detection on the test computers. It hasn't choked on SiS video cards or old Broadcom wifi cards, like the others, and it looks really nice and runs very fast.

Recently Microsoft stopped updating Windows XP. This means no more security patches, and no more bug fixes.
Without security patches and bug fixes your Windows XP computer will become increasingly obsolete, and increasingly vulnerable to viruses and web page based hacker attacks. It also means that the whole ecosystem of programmers who program for Windows are going to stop updating their apps for Windows XP.
So, you need a new operating system. Notice I didn't say, "A new computer."
While you may feel that you'd rather just get a newer (not New, necessarily) computer, you don't have to. You can update your old Windows XP computer with a new operating system that will still be maintained. Doing this could allow you to keep using the same computer instead of paying hundreds for a new one.

The computers I have been testing all have at least 512 MB of RAM and are all Pentium 4s.
For really old computers (Pentium III, less than 512MB of RAM), here are what seem to be the best two choices for new operating systems;
Lubuntu
and
Peppermint.
 

Salt in the lake

An ageing master grew tired of his apprentice’s complaints. One morning, he sent him to get some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master told him to mix a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.

“How does it taste?” the master asked.

“Bitter,” said the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.”

As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”

“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.

“No,” said the young man. At this the master sat beside this serious young man, and explained softly,

“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

Most Popular Ecommerce Shopping Carts

I have for years been wondering which ecommerce carts are the most popular, and therefore have the most staying power and will likely continue to be a viable option for clients to build and maintain a business on. Being popular also means that they likely have a thriving third-party developer ecology. (Third-party developers are programmers that aren't employed by the cart company, but make add-ons, modules, themes for the cart.) Popularity also means that most glitches will have been sorted out, and that there will be a method of implementing most business process needs. Oh, and it means that the community of users will be a valuable resource for figuring out how to solve your particular implementation problems.

I've never seen an authoritative list of the most popular shopping carts, until now.

http://trends.builtwith.com/shop

This is a f-f-f-fantastic tool because it shows cart popularity by business size. The needs of a top 10000 website are going to be a lot different from the needs of a top 1 mil website.

So now we can see that for small businesses, Magento really has risen to the top. Virtuemart and Yahoo Stores are looking pretty good too.

I am still on a quest for an integrated commerce solution for small businesses, but Builtwith may have provided me with a shortlist of contenders.

 

Here's another good shopping cart comparison article: CPCStrategy Ecommerce Platform Comparison

After Using Photorec: A strategy for sorting through the recovered file mess

Note Apr 20, 2015. Since UniqueFiler seems to be returning an error page, perhaps VisiPics might work.  http://www.visipics.info/index.php?title=Download

Also, HowToGeek has an article about finding and removing dupes for Windows, Mac and Linux.

---

I used Photorec under windows to recover several thousand family photos from a dead external hard drive for a client. Photorec does an amazing job at recovering images from hard drives that won't mount, seem to be dead, or images that were accidentaly deleted. That being said, it's not like using a professional hard drive recovery service. If you use Photorec, or my instructions, you are taking matters into your own hands and you are responsible for your own data. I may have missed an important step, so be careful and smart.
Photorec stacks the files it recovers, in the order it finds them, into recup folders. Each folder is full of images, docs, videos, exe files, html files....whatever photorec finds that it thinks is a file. So in this case I ended up with 7000 files in 20 folders.
What I wanted was all the image files sorted into folders by date, renamed according to the date/time they were taken, with no duplicates.

1. Use Photorec Sorter to sort the files out of the recup folders and into folders according to their type.
2. Use Unique Filer to find and delete duplicates.
3. Use Amok Exif Sorter to move and rename all the image files.

Step One. Photorec Sorter. It's very simple. Just follow the directions on the page.
Step Two. Unique Filer. Download the .zip of the program and run it from the directory where you unzip it.

Stage One: I looked in the JPG folder and saw that there were a gazillion 1KB files. These were all little tiny play buttons, blocks of color, 1 pixel files, etc. All junk. I deleted them all, thus saving me a bunch of time on the next step, which involves comparing potential duplicate images
Stage Two: Compare File Size and Contents. A welcome box pops up. Choose the Wizard. Then, since this is your first scan, skip adding a folder and click Next to go on to the next step. Now add your JPG folder which was created by the Photorec Sorter. For Scan type choose Compare File Size and Contents. This stage will remove all the files that are exact duplicates. Same file size, same dimensions. You can confirm this by clicking on the images in the left-hand pane and noting that the images displayed in the right hand panes are all the same.
All the dupes are marked by a red bar in the top pane on the compare side, and when you click File Management > Delete All Marked it will get rid of all the perfectly matched dupes.
Stage Three: Compare Images. Click on the Wizard button, and go through again, skipping the Base Files step again. This time on the Scan step, check the Compare Images button. Now Unique Filer will go through the images and try to find similar images based on contents of the images. It's pretty good at it. You end up with a list on the left of images that might have dupes. Again, click on them on the left, and on the top there will be a list of the images that might be dupes. The top one in that list will show up below as the image on the left. Compare that image to the other ones in the top pane list. Mark the ones you want to get rid of by clicking on the image and hitting the space bar. Then, when you have gone through the whole list on the left, click File Management > Delete All Marked.
Now you are de-duped.

Step Three. Sorting images with Amok Exif Sorter. Download the .zip of the program and run it from the directory where you unzip it. It runs based on which version of Java you have(32 or 64bit). If in doubt, download the 32bit version. Extract the .zip contents and double click Exifsorter.exe.

Click on File > Add Directory and add the JPG folder.
Choose "Move" for Sort Method. Click the edit button next to Directory and remove %day% so that your photos will be sorted into folders by month (unless you want them in folders according to the day of the month)
Choose a target directory. I made a new folder inside my JPG folder, but you can put them wherever you want.
Then click Start and away you go.

Happily, I ended up with almost all the photos in folders arranged by year - month - day. There were a pile of pictures in a folder for the day I did the Photorec recovery because they were scanned images and didn't have Exif data, only a file creation date set by Photorec.
Be sure to go through the other folders that Photorec Sorter made, to look for any other files that are valuable. In my case there were a few movie clips from the camera, and the rest was junk. You may find .doc files, or .pdf files or a bunch of other goodies.
Are you happy to get your photos back? Donate to the guys who made it possible!!

Optimal Proportions for Google Shopping Images

What are the optimal proportions for images used in Google Shopping data feeds?

Well, if you look at the images of products in Google Shopping, or images in the search results page, you will see that they are all square.

So if you want to maximize the area that your product images show up in Google Shopping results, think inside the box. Be a square.

The way I make product images for the datafeed is to make a new blank square image in Fireworks at 500px by 500px.

Then I take my optimized and color corrected full sized product images and drop them in the 500 x 500 Fireworks doc. I re-size the product image until the product uses the square space to best advantage.

Then I export the 500px image and save it in the folder I've set up for datafeed images.

Then I take the next full sized product image and drop it in the 500px datafeed image doc and size and position it, too, and export again.

I keep doing this until I have all the images I want to include in the datafeed all ready to go.

Maybe you've already made square images for your shopping cart, in which case, lucky you. Just link to those, as long as they are over 400px.

LinkedIn for the very shy internet hermit.

LinkedIn isn't like fishing, where you throw out a lure (your profile). It's for connecting with people you've met.

My sister just called me and told me, "I love the networking that happens automatically at a university. I just got another job offer to be a coordinator for a biodiversity project." It was from someone she knows who has worked in her professor's lab.

Meeting people face to face is still the most important aspect of networking. Then you connect with them on LinkedIn. And then when you publish on LinkedIn, they will see your thoughts.

When people know you, they will pass along opportunities that seem to suit you. They will pass you along to other people that can help you.

That's the main thing about professional networking. Gotta squeeze some palms.

This is how I have gotten ALL my clients. None of them have come to me from my website (my lure).

So, I guess this is bad news because it means you have to go out of your comfort zone.

If you have any good professional networking tips for the terminally introverted, I will pass them along to my friend, the shy internet hermit

Where to find and get a domain name?

Someone asked me where I go to look up domain names to see if they are available

For FINDING a domain name I use two places.
www.bustaname.com puts together endings and beginnings for you and checks to see if they are available. Very handy.

www.dotster.com has a ...well I used to use the bulk search feature at dotster but they redesigned and it's not there any more. So, yeah...bustaname.com

I guess, for you, since you don't have any domains I'd start REGISTERING with www.1and1.com

Update: well, I guess 1and1 is not a good option, because this. Apparently name.com went over and above the call of duty here, and I loves me some good customer service, so you might give them a look, too.

Make sure you always get private registration so that spammers can't grab your email addr from the domain records database and start spamming you. (Gmail is also very handy in this regard). Also, you'll get junk mail at the address that you use to register the domain unless you get private registration.

I have almost all my domains registered at namecheap.com. I moved them there from Dotster, and I moved them to Dotster from Hostway. Dotster was a fine registrar but they jacked their prices way up.

Alternately, if you want to go totally free, you can get a blog at blogspot.com or wordpress.com. I've seen people use these for their local businesses, and my professional opinion is that this is totally okay. So you might be able to get janesclothes.wordpress.com

Did I tell you that someone wanted to buy one of my old domains for $300...too bad I had already abandoned it. I guess you have to hold onto them for a while. I still kick myself for missing the domain boat. Gah!

Update May 14, 2014: Edited out recommendation for 1and1, and Hey! I sold a domain for $4000! Need to find me some more like that!

My Favorite Android Apps

A friend asked me which smartphone I thought he should get, and here's my response, edited for a generic audience and more specific information.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S. It's a couple years old.

There's a new version out, the Galaxy S2.

I guess a lot of people have had problems with the one I have. It freezes up and then they don't get txt or phone calls and they don't know it's frozen. I haven't had that problem, but I'm not using it as a phone. It's just a more modern Palm Pilot for me. It has Wifi, so I access the internet with its Wifi.

I'm still using my old phone for a phone. The main reason I still use my old phone, a Palm 755, is because it has buttons instead of just a touch screen. I find the touch screen to be impossible to type on. I did find a new app for the Android that uses the old Palm Graffiti style text input system, and that has made it a lot easier to use. But I like having a button for the camera, button for phone, button for email, button for home screen, button for voice dial. It's much faster to pick up the phone, hit one button and get the screen I want right away rather than turn it on, unlock the screen, find the app, and touch its icon.

The Android has a much better camera though, and I have a whole bunch of camera 'apps' that allow you to take images that look like polaroids, or sketches, or old box camera photos, which is fun. I like Paper Camera, and I have every camera app I could find. I haven't used Instagram because it forces you to sign into some sort of account when you start the app. I don't want an account, I just want to take a picture.

Here are some other totally cool apps you can get for an Android or iPhone.

The Night Sky is the most amazing app I have. It shows you the constellations in the night sky in the area of the sky where you are aiming the phone, and as you pan the phone across the sky the constellations on the phone slide along with you. It's amazing. It's like magic.

I also got the Audubon bird guide, by Green Mountain Digital and Audubon, and not only does it have pictures of every bird, it has several recordings of each bird's calls. I just got it two days ago and I've already identified a snipe and a Swainson's thrush (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpLnRUnoJNQ)

I also have NASA Space Weather app that has pictures of the Sun and charts of solar weather so I can see when Northern Lights might be coming out.

And I really enjoy playing a scrabble game called Words With Friends with an old friend from Wisconsin.

It's an MP3 player too, and I go for walks and listen to Internet marketing stuff.

It has an Amazon Kindle book reading app. Amazon gives away a free kindle book every day (some random book). Amazon also gives away a free Android app every day in their app market, which is how I got the Audubon field guide app.

It has a GPS in it and I can look on Google maps and see exactly where I am, and which direction I am headed.

I also use the GPS with a wardriving program called Wigle. Wardriving is an activity where you map Wifi and Cell networks. It doesn't have anything to do with war, nor necessarily driving. It's just locating wifi networks, and for some reason I really like go for walks and collect new wifi network locations. Oh, well, anything to get some excersise.

Of course it has email, and calculator, and calendar.

My daughter uses it to tune her Ukulele because it has a string tuning app that shows you how far off your strings are from the correct pitch. She also has a Uke music app that allows her to download sheet music for the Uke (In tab format)

It has a meditation program called Insight Timer that plays the sounds of tibetan singing bowls, on a timer, six different types of bowls.

It has a go-to-sleep app called Sound Sleep that plays sounds of rain, the shore, crackling campfire, etc, and also peaceful music, and embedded in the sounds are sound waves at the frequency of brain Alpha waves, which are the waves that your brain runs at when you're asleep. I was having a really hard time sleeping after my mom got cancer...not any longer...

I have a couple apps that shut down other apps. For some reason every damn app wants to run all the time. Advanced Task Killer and Task Manager help keep the weeds from growing.

Oh, and one last thing...a secure password keeper. I use DataVault. There are a lot of password keeper apps out there and you want to make sure you get one that allows you to get your data back out of it. If you move from Android to iPhone you don't want to have to manually type in all your passwords again. It's also nice if you can sync your data between phone and computer. And in this situation I have a password file that I share with two colleagues and we can all get synced up with DataVault.

But I still don't know which phone would be the best one for you to get. I haven't done any research, so I don't even know if mine is more stable, or more powerful or anything than any other phone. I think the iPhones are probably a really good product. I've played with a colleague's and it was nice. You can just talk to it and it'll try to do what you wanted. I don't know how well the wifi access point functions, either.

System Cleanup Tips for better performance

I just read an artcle on the Windows Secrets site about a test a guy did where he installed the 20 most popular programs from cnet and then uninstalled them. They slowed down the boot up time of his computer a lot even after being uninstalled.

He used three different cleaner utilities to try to help the situation and they all worked quite well.

so, for future reference, here's a short how-to.

He used CCleaner’s file and Registry cleanup routines in their default settings and it worked.

Without even downloading anything, you can use Windows cleanmgr to cleanup. Click Start, type cmd and click the icon to start a DOS prompt. Type cleanmgr and enter. This should run the Disk Cleanup util. You get more functionality if you start it this way. You should be able to delete most of the items on the list that Disk Cleanup gives you. I uncheck Hibernation, Recycle Bin (I sometimes have things in there I end up needing), and setup log files (useful -for me- diagnostics in there)

There are also two uninstall programs you can use to clean up. Revo Uninstaller, and there is a Microsoft Fix-It that will help uninstall crap at http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall

I've used the Revo Uninstaller in situations where the Add Remove Programs control panel applet is blank. I was able to remove programs even though the Add Remove Programs wouldn't work.

Microsoft used to offer the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility, which can still be found for download if you search. I found it on the MajorGeeks website. But this utility is no longer compatible with current versions of Office. But I've used the utility to uninstall other programs, like the remnants of the VZAccess Manager for Verizon Wireless data connections, and the drivers for the tethered device.

Modulus mismatch, key file does not match certificate

Modulus mismatch, key file does not match certificate

I got this error message when trying to install an SSL certificate in Webhost Manager, the Cpanel hosting administration interface.

This error comes from not having the .key that matches the cert you are trying to install. When you go through the SLL certificate creation process, you have to generate a Certificate Signing Request(CSR). Your Webhost may do this for you, or you might have done it in Cpanel or WHM. In any case, the CSR contains the .key that matches your SSL cert. It's the Private Key.

Copy this and paste it in the box below the SSL certificate.

Note: When you paste in the SSL cert, as soon as you click outside the SSL text entry box, or <Tab>, the server will fill the key box with something. You have to "select all" in the second box, and then paste your key instead.

Solve Media's CAPTCHAs won't solve the problem that CAPTCHAs need to solve

Updated May 14, 2014

CAPTCHAs are needed in order to keep spammers out of your web site. Solve Media's CAPTCHAs won't do that, and here's why.

Location is everything, right? All the good locations for ads on web pages are already saturated, right? There is a post on Tech Crunch raving about a new advertising location. Solve Media uses the CAPTCHA as an advertising platform. Apparently they are having great success and Tech Crunch certainly seemed enthusiastic in their writeup.

But as a webmaster who has NEEDED a captcha I can tell you that their captchas are a waste of time.

One of the purposes of a CAPTCHA is to prevent bots from registering, and this CAPTCHA may work for that, but what about humans?

All of Solve Media's captchas can be solved by anyone who can read English.

You need something different to keep out the spammers.

There is a whole industry in India based around solving CAPTCHAs in order to get accounts on websites for spamming purposes. They register users on forums for hire. They advertise based on how many thousands of captchas per hour they can solve.

The only thing I have found that works to prevent the spammers is to use something like this: Sortables Captcha Plugin and load it with questions that only people familiar with your topic will be able to answer.

I have used this CAPTCHA on several video game related forum style websites, and it's easy to set it up using terms from the game. People who don't play the game, and who are getting paid to solve THOUSANDS of CAPTCHAs per hour won't be able to solve it, or take the time to figure it out, and bots can't solve it at all. How does it work for the people that want to register for the game related forum? Fine, just fine. I have never had anyone complain, and we get plenty of registrations, and zero spammers.

I think the Sortables CAPTCHA will work well for this purpose whenever your website pertains to a niche topic, which is very common. I'm sure you could think of a way that would also foil foreign culture CAPTCHA solvers even if you had a general interest site.

As far as I know, this CAPTCHA only exists for phpBB, and I wonder why, since it has been so amazingly effective. I hope that someone will take this idea and make a plugin for some other CMS types.

Websites that have contact forms won't get spammed by forum posters, but lead forms, sample request forms, or contact forms do get hit by spam bots a lot. For those types of user forms I use the Hivelogic Enkoder to obfuscate the form HTML. The Enkoder scrambles the form HTML into a bunch of crazy Javascript. Browsers decode the Javascript and display the form to a normal person using your site, but all the spam bots see is a...well, nothing. Bots don't decode it. They don't even know a form is there.

You may get a few actual humans that submit the form and ask you to help with transferring vast sums of cash from a former African dictator's bank accounts, but for my users this has been rather uncommon.

Note: I see that I have failed to capitalize CAPTCHA consistently throughout this post. And I don't care. I am lazy. What can I say?

Googlebot doesn't see embedded product descriptions from Netsuite

Googlebot doesn't see the content on your page if it comes from embedded javascript.

So if you embed your product description from Netsuite into static pages, Google will never index those descriptions. So it doesn't matter if you use SEO keyword terms in the descriptions. And it doesn't help to use keywords in the Netsuite descriptions. And it will hurt your product's search engine rankings unless you include a fair amount of keywords in other places on the page.

This isn't just about Netsuite. Any content that is embedded in a page using javascript is invisible to Google. I just discovered it while testing product pages with the descriptions embedded using the code from Netsuite WSDK.

At least according to the Webmaster Tools "Fetch as Googlebot" in Diagnostics.

Netsuite sucks: let me count the ways

Embedding the Add to Cart button in a static page. The embed code that Netsuite provides? 49 wc3 html validation errors in 44 lines.

Three good CSS and Javascript resources

Whilst writing HTML this week I ran across a couple nice resources

http://css-tricks.com/specifics-on-css-specificity/
For understanding CSS cascade - which CSS rules will apply when the document is rendered.

http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/mega-drop-downs-w-css-jquery/
Soh Tanaka has a bunch of great tutorials on CSS and jQuery javascipt.

http://css-tricks.com/downloads/css-stuff/
Also has a bunch of CSS goodness and javascript goodies.

"Good, Free Antivirus" question

Question from a reader:

Is there a good, free antivirus software I can download? I have the Verizon security suite, but I'm quite sure it's not catching everything. Barring that, what's the best way to clean the viral crap off my computer?

Are we talking about a program that runs all the time and tries to catch virii before they get installed, or one that removes them after?

For prevention, Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast seem to be the best free options.

Whatever VZ is using is probably pretty good too. None of them are perfect...paid or free.

For removal I would use more than one scanner to remove virii. Eset.com has a free online scanner. MalwareBytes offers a free scanner that you download and install.

In all post-infection cases, you want to make sure that the scanners are not identifying false-positives. Set them to notify but not clean (or delete or quarantine). That's why we use multiple scanners. If they agree that a file contains a threat, then we quarantine (remove...delete) it.

If you are talking general computer cleaning, CCleaner is good but it will help you remove things that you really didn't want removed. WinDirStat will show you what is taking up all the space on your hard drive.

Update on Fake Alert Virus Infections

Seems like everyone I know has been getting hit by this malware. Sophos reports that there are over a half million variations of this attack! Thus far, Malwarebytes and Combofix have been successful in removing it, followed by scan with multiple anti-virus programs using their free online scanners. I've had to boot the computers into Safe Mode (press and hold F8 while the computer boots up and choose Safe Mode with Networking) in order to be able to even run Malwarebytes but it works. Also, rebooting into Safe Mode has re-enabled the previously installed anti-virus programs to be able to run as well, such as Microsoft Security Essentials. MSE was also able to remove the fake alert virus in Safe Mode.

Combofix, while effective, just removes things and makes changes without asking you. It removed my custom Hosts file, which I then had to replace.

Fake Alert Attack and possible prevention

Computer was attacked TWICE today by Fake Alert virus while searching for pictures of art from Mali.

The first time, I clicked the X on the box that popped up to tell me that I supposedly had a virus. I got virus files in my computer this way.

The second time I just used the Task Manager to kill the browser without clicking anywhere in the browser window. No virus files made it into my computer.

It was interesting to have it happen to me. I've removed several of these infestations from client computers this year and I thought they were being infected because they weren't savvy enough to avoid the attack. But, it doesn't matter if you are tech savvy or not. I was using Chrome, had Flash and Java updated, and I have Windows patched. You just have to click on an unlucky link.

My advice is Don't Click on ANYTHING after the first fake alert pops up! Use the task manager (ctrl+shift+escape) to end the browser process without touching(clicking in) the browser window.

Confusing Analytics Duplicate Profile Instructions

So this looks confusing to me. The first paragraph mentions that we might not want to affect the data in our main profile, and the second paragraph says that the tracking code is identical and data will be imported simultaneously into both profiles.

in reference to: How do I create a duplicate profile in my account? - Analytics Help (view on Google Sidewiki)

Building Trust With Web Design 101

A link is a promise, the text of the link tells the user what they are being promised.

Palm 755p reboots whenever I access a memo, part three.

Alright, so the Palm 755p started rebooting whenever I accessed a particular memo. Different idea this time. Instead of deleting MemosDB-PMem from the internal memory space and then restoring all my memos, I just fixed the one memo that was busted.
I did a regular hotsync first.

1. I copied the contents of the memo from the Palm Desktop into a temp Notepad document. I deleted all the trailing spaces at the end of the memo in Notepad.
2. I deleted the memo from the Palm Desktop.
3. I performed a hotsync, Hotsync settings: Memos - Desktop overwrites handheld. This removed the corrupted memo from the palm. In the hotsync settings I only enabled Memos, in order to save time. 
4. Then, I copied the contents of the memo from my temp Notepad document, pasted into a new Memo in the Palm Desktop. Another hotsync, (set to Synchronize, or Desktop overwrites handheld), and the memo is back on the Palm. Now I can access the Memo and the Palm doesn't reboot.
5. Don't forget to return your sync settings to synchronize Palm and desktop, and to re-enable all the apps that you want synced.

This is by far the easiest way to recover from the problem where your Palm restarts whenever you access a memo.