Unfortunately, not in a good way.

For some inexplicable reason that only the Apple marketing team can probably explain to me, I was in a rush to install the new OS4 that promises to be the first step in making my phone obsolete. Don’t even get me started on the fact that it is just barely a year old. To be fair, iTunes happily tells me that it will take about an hour or so to download and update, so I leave it to do its thing overnight.

Again, the Apple marketing boys and girls have some explaining to do as I happily I bounce out of bed like its bloody Christmas. I can’t wait to get my eager hands on the goods only to be told that…. iTunes was unable to restore my iPhone.

Errr, okay (nervous sweat beginning to appear). Breathe, I’ll just do a restore… Apple wouldn’t let me down… I’ll just restore to a last restore point. Crap, no.. it’s an error telling me that the actual restore doesn’t work. (nervous sweat begins to turn cold as I realise that all my stuff on the iPhone has just disappeared into the ether).

To be truthful, it didn’t worry me as much as that since most of my stuff is in the much vaunted cloud. At worst, it meant that I would lose a few hours restoring my old apps and setting up my phone to be just right. Of course, I would have lost most of my SMS which I hate.

But needless to say I was pissed. I tried to restore again and again, each time failing as surely as the previous times I tried to restore. Interesting, Apple had now but me in an endless loop of recovery, denial, recovery, denial.

My solution, and this is what made me irked to the point of posting, is that the solution wasn’t found in a number of complicated fixes that explore the fun side of manual resets and by-passes, but it lies in the Apple Universal Dock. Error 2001 refers to third party USB peripherals mucking about on your Mac, so Apple recommends disconnecting them all. I had none except for my iPhone and its nifty new Universal Dock. So I tried disconnecting the USB cable from the dock and plugging it directly into the iPhone and voila¹, the iPhone resumes its recovery process.

You would think that Apple products play nicer together since the company is run by a bunch of control freaks. Evidently not. Did OS4 change everything? I can’t tell you since I’m still sat here waiting for it to complete the restoration. But maybe I’m being harsh, it did change plenty – my perception of Apple shifts a little further to the big evil empire feeling and as of writing, I have a very beautiful brick of a tech piece on my desk.

1. a nod to my embarrassed French friends at the recent World Cup knock out

Over dinner tonight I spotted a father who had an ingenious way to keep his baby daughter amused while he ate quietly – he sat her down in front of his iPod and played cartoons on it. It seemed to work quite well as the kid seemed to have that same plugged in look that I have had since I got my iPhone. The one where I am caught wandering around, iPhone in hand twitching for the latest shot of information. I was remarking to the better half that I wasn’t sure if plugging in a kid at that early age was a good thing or not.

On the one hand, I think the child needs time to just sit and explore the world, be restless, push the boundaries and well, cry and laugh as he or she tries, fails and succeeds to engage with things around it. It sort of feels like a much too simple way of child rearing to be entirely wholesome. Of course, not having kids myself, I might feel otherwise when I’m trying to grab a few minutes of quiet without a kid trying my patience. Still…

One wonders whether Mark Zuckerberg is a little concerned about Facebook’s plans for world domination when we see reports of a Facebook Lite (via Mashable). Who would have thought Twitter would be the FB killer? Then again, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Facebook’s usefulness for me has been condensed into the iPhone app which is a glorified Twitter with photos for me anyway.

I think everyone got tired of Facebook’s greed and attempts to do too many things with their constant design changes.

I am a fan of Flickr but one of the nagging gripes I had about the service was that it was a lovely Herculean task to try and upload my photos. I was simply unable to just drop a folder with photos¹ in the Flickr Uploader and let it upload away. It would always fail to upload all the files and it would need constant attention²

With the release of 3.0, I’m quite a happy bunny as I can now upload in fire-and-forget mode and am comforted that I don’t have to wait and supervise the upload of my images to backup. Unfortunately my MacBook fell ill and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to recover two memory card worth of photos. Luckily I have the high quality JPEGs but it is still upsetting to lose the RAW files.

Now, I no longer have to wonder about whether the 300-400 photos, constituting approximately 1 GB made it to Flickr. And, I’m up to date now as I have all my photos on Flickr³.

1. Approximately 3-4 MB in size each
2. To be fair, it could have been my Macs but both being unable to sustain an upload? I don’t think so.
3. Yes, yes, I will make some more public eventually.

In a country that can and has changed the actual timezone it exists in to make it more competitive with its Asian neighbors, I have often joked that Singapore’s next big project should be to control the weather. If you can control the time, why not bend the forces of nature to your will. There are indeed rumours circulating that the Singapore government has seeded the weather to ensure that today and tomorrow are not spoiled by a petulant Mother Nature spitting out some rain on F1 payday.

This is also apparently a trick they employ just before National Day¹. I doubt very much that Harry and company would employ such measures flippantly just to make Singapore look good. Weather seeding programmes are serious ecological tools to assist with sustainability in arid regions².

Of course, China, having the reputation for being the totalitarian regime that it is, has considered this for the Olympics³. Lucky for us, we in Singapore live in a responsible democracy.

1. Indeed, Malaysia and Indonesia are hardly going to be intimidated by Singapore’s pride and joy if they all look like wilting daisies in the
   rain.
2. Silverman, Jacob. “Can China control the weather?.” 19 July 2007. HowStuffWorks.com.
3. Beijing Games: China’s Olympic Forecast Calls For Clear Skies, Lots of Profits

Netvibes, for all its greatness, is at it again with my account and this time some of my modules are not saving their stored information.

Looks like this feed is not valid or currently not responding

This is mostly affecting my Gmail modules but it is affecting some of the pure feed modules. I have sent an email to the netvibes folks asking what’s up but if it is a widespread problem, I guess they will have their hands full. Right now it is a minor problem as it is affecting feeds I know where to find back the URL (or even what that empty module box was) but it will be a major hassle if it start affecting the majority of my feed modules.

Right now, I have tried my previous researched solutions¹ (including various cache resets) and just re-entered the feeds. This is a workaround though and not a solution if I have to keep repeating this.

1. See Blank Netvibes Screen.

What went wrong with Facebook? It grew rapidly as a popular site with fun features and cute little widgets that everyone seemed to like¹. I, for one, advocated it to as many folks as I could find just short of becoming a Friend Whore². With the redesign of Facebook (which incidentally, I do actually like), and with no way of going back to the old version, a lot of people are in uproar about the next generation FB.

I think this is symbolic of what Mark Zuckerberg is getting wrong with Facebook. Here’s are three reasons why Facebook is getting it wrong.

Brand Loyalty vs. Brand Bondage

In principle, Facebook performs a great service and we all have stories of reuniting with old friends, meeting new people and generally engaging in social porn. However, I suspect most folks Facebook gains as much negative brand equity as Microsoft. Social networks aren’t as locked as they were five years ago and with API tools available to facilitate an easy migration to another service available, moving over might not be a problem. Friendster found this out the hard way I think when Facebook came on the scene.

Ignoring Your Audience

Well, perhaps Zuckerberg doesn’t exactly ignore his audience with 4 out of 6 ever blog posts addressing issues that has users out with their knives for Facebook³. The point is that Zuckerberg and Facebook should realize that it really isn’t their Facebook anymore. Its the users. Sure, in terms of stock ownership, the data, the equipment, it’s all Zuckerberg’s. But the heart and soul comes from its users in the form of emotional investment, time commitment and experiential stories to tell. Users feel they are a part of owning the brand and spend energy on the site, giving them the feeling that they should be allowed to have a say in the direction of the brand and service.

Or at least they should be given the perception that they have that say. The greatest democracies on earth help to build that illusion quite well.

Selling Out Your Customers

All companies must make a profit or die. We all know Microsoft does it and we hate them for it. But even the well-loved brands do it. Google does it. Apple does it. So why not Facebook? It’s as much about handling who you treat your customer’s information and time investiture as it is about establishing trust. Grudgingly, we accepted ads in the sphere of Facebook. We accepted less the idea that every cute application that we signed up for required our personal information. And we definitely don’t like the Facebook terms of service⁴ that they force on unsuspecting users⁵, who often do not realise that by using Facebook grants the company an unlimited license to do anything with their content except claim ownership.

Mark Zuckerberg also didn’t score any points in a BBC documentary called Facehooked⁶ where when directly asked about corporate social responsibility issues, he looked rather sheepish and ran off stage, belying the immaturity of someone who comes into so much power at a young age.

On a final note, Facebook should be wary of its current brand equity with its users. I’ve mentioned Microsoft before as an example but I think it serves us well to remember it here again. While Microsoft may dominate the market, it is clear that many are switching to alternatives that might not be as good as the products the big M offers but it’s worth it, just to be away from them. And with each defection, the death of a brand comes closer as those pioneers of switching start the revolution going and you end up with viable (and profitable) alternatives being developed.

Zuckerberg should take note. That’s if he isn’t too busy working on Facebook: The Movie.

1. Although how useful some of them were is questionable. No, I don’t want a pet egg.
2. Friend Whore – To link excessively to people you have the briefest of contacts
3. http://mashable.com/2008/09/18/zuckerberg-responds-to-new-design-criticism/
4. For an alternative take visit http://www.legalandrew.com/2007/07/21/facebook-and-the-law-8-things-to-know/.
5. Okay, not completely unsuspecting since as I logged in today, I was presented with the full terms of service before I could enjoy the new Facebook
6. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7151690.stm

Here is a scary and cool thought depending on how you look at it – sociable face recognition. Imagine taking a photo of someone on your mobile phone and then some nifty bit of software was able to link it up to the right person on a sociable site like Facebook.

The technology is there and I am sure that it’s is just a matter of time before it becomes affordable and accurate. In fact Google have already set the ball in motion with face recognition in their latest version of Picasa.

I tried Google Chrome this week and was distinctly unimpressed. Firstly, I wasn’t too impressed that there wasn’t a version for the Mac but then perhaps Google didn’t think it’s browser was ready for an audience already satisfied with its access to the web through Safari or Firefox. It definitely smacks of going after Internet Explorer rather than Firefox.

On the whole, what I saw was at best a beta release of the Chrome software. Faster loading? None noticeable without benchmarking tests. Ability to customize look and feel? Nope, Google has pretty much forced its happy view of what the Internet should look like to you and I, which is blue and white.

But it does a nifty thing by remembering all your sites so it can display that in your most popular sites home page. Don’t want your porn favourites to be visible as your most visited sites when you load it up first thing in the morning? Easy, switch to anonymous browsing mode. Apparently each tab gets its own process so that when one tab crashes you don’t lose everything and only that tab dies. Nice idea but worth changing from Firefox to Chrome?

Not likely, I like my ‘Fox. Let’s see what Google makes of Chrome and if it will die the quiet comatose death a lot of its products are in (can anyone say Orkut?). Hopefully not, but then really Google, you are going to have to do better than Firefox because that can’t be beat at the moment. Perhaps if I was an Internet Explorer or an Opera user then I might have considered it.

I firmly believe that we all have cycles in our a bio-rhythm that disrupts all forms of technology that you touch. It is sort of like a reverse Midas touch where all gadgetry decides to play up. For me, it usually happens after I’ve configured everything to work perfectly (i.e. various gadgets play nicely along with various website). Perhaps my peak in technology is followed by a complete collapse.

So what were the incidents that led me to believe (this time) that I’m suffering from a tech blackspot?

1. Nokia N95 does some weird things like insisting on deleting a photo immediately after you have taken it. (This might relate to problem 3, ShoZu being down.
2. Opening a SMS message now takes many cycles of the moon.
3. ShoZu’s server went down which happened to include my account.
4. Facebook doesn’t play nicely with ShoZu or Flickr.
5. GoDaddy is having a pop by letting me know that cheap hosting entitles you to nothing.

I’m off to read a book.

One of the problems with me and mobile phone photos is getting them online. ShoZu.com seems to have a solution to that problem where it sits on your phone and enables you to upload them online in a breeze. There is the option to set a 1-click feature that automatically asks you after every photo taken if you want to send it to the service you specific (e.g Facebook, Flickr, etc). Then, to save you time, you can specify CC sites that enable you set services which automatically get sent a copy of the photo everytime you send a photo.

In principle, and when it works, it is great but the service is showing some reliability problems with my Nokia N95 8GB.

Last week, it failed to validate the Facebook account I had linked it to. The first 6 hours it worked nicely, but then rather embarrassingly when I showed it to my colleague, it failed to upload. I decided to try it out on Flickr. There have been no issues with Flickr as a service for ShoZu to upload to since. But having Facebook sync work would be nice if not essential.

However, today, it seems a new problem arose. When I took a photo, Nokia’s camera kept asking me if I wanted to delete the photo and the only option that worked was “yes”. I figured this might be ShoZu, and restarted my Nokia several times (with a soft reset).

Then a polite SMS told me ShoZu was having some problems in finding my account. I decided to log-in on their website but alas, it turns that my account no longer exists at all! Thankfully none of the photos are stored at ShoZu so I only really lose the synchronization history. Still, it is a little worrying from a service that promises so much.

I have sent an email to tech support. Let’s see what their reply is. The fight against tech complexity continues…

**UPDATE**

After posting up to their forums, got a reply from ShoZu…

http://forum.shozu.com/showthread.php?tid=1119

Turns out it’s not deleted but they are having a server outage. Probably the popularity of the service is catching up with them. Let’s hope it’s not too long.

**UPDATE**

ShoZu is back up and running as of 26 August. My account is still there and all seems to be well with the world.

**UPDATE**

Got the following from ShoZu regarding this problem:

Hi [Eshin],

Sorry for not getting back to you quicker.

I’m afraid that on Monday our service had what Fickr calls a ‘hiccup’, and that’s why ShoZu didn’t recognize your account. Sorry about that. It should all be fixed now – please let me know if that isn’t the case.

Cheers
Russell
Director, Product Management

Points definitely to ShoZu for a personalized response from somebody responsible – director level. Since their outage on Monday, the service has been working a treat.

Been trying out Flickr recently, backed up with ShoZu support on my phone as some of you may have noticed on my site. More detailed posts to follow but for now… I will be testing the WordPress Flickr Manager plug-in from Trent Gardner.

Right, let’s test privacy settings by adding a private photo.

Can see the above? Hmm, I guess the plug-in can override privacy because it knows you don’t care about privacy setting once you decide to post to your blog. But is it sending me to my Flickr page with private photos? Good, when you click on it, it sends you to Flickr login.

But what if I want to show the public a full image? Does selecting JavaScript Viewer address this concern?

Nice little lightbox effect. Shows the image but doesn’t lead to the Flickr page. What about different sizes? This one will produce a large image when clicked.

But the image generated in the post is a thumbnail size. What different sizes can we play with?

Square

Well, only Square size apparently since we are on a Free Account with Flickr.

But the test looks pretty good in any case. Only thing missing are nice little captions to add to images which WordPress’ native image handler does do or any alignment options.

It is a little annoying that netvibes hasn’t made the grade and has been excluded from Firefox’s default set of web-based browsers that you can subscribe to using Live Bookmarks. For netvibes users, there are two methods for adding feeds to netvibes easily in Firefox – install the Official netvibes Add-on for Firefox or tinker with the about:config file in Firefox.

Option 1 – Official netvibes Add-On for Firefox

The first option is the Official Netvibes add-on for Firefox provided by netvibes themselves and pretty much does what you would expect. You are able to publish both to your public universe and your private netvibes through the use of two buttons.

netvibes Add-on adds two buttons

What is cool about this add-on is that if there is a tab with Netvibes already open, it looks for that tab to add in the new feed rather than opening it on the tab that you are on.This is useful if you want to stay on the original page for whatever reason or if you are prone to bulk-add feeds where you suddenly end up with a whole row of netvibes tabs. Also, it ensures that all your feeds are added and are visible since netvibes can be lagged in updating your work area with new feeds if they are added in multiple tabs (and sometimes they don’t even arrive!).

Option 2 – Modify about:config

The second option is to play around with about:config in Firefox. Although this looks quite technical and Firefox displays an idiot-proof tongue-in-cheek disclaimer before you can play with it, it is really rather simple.

An RSS Icon shows in FireFox when there is a feed available.

Modifying about:config will add netvibes to your Live Bookmarks so that when you browse to a page with a feed, it automagically displays an RSS icon in your address bar which will let your subscribe with your feed reader service of preference.

Here is how to add netvibes to Firefox (via What’s the Next Action):

1. Open a new tab in Firefox and type in about:config in the address bar.
2. In the filter input box at the top, type in contentHandlers and press enter.
3. This brings up the default services used by Firefox (e.g. Bloglines, Google, Yahoo!). We want to add Netvibes to this. As you can see, this is in a particular order:
   • browser.contentHandlers.types.#.title (tells Firefox what to call it)
   • browser.contentHandlers.types.#.type (tells Firefox what to do)
   • browser.contentHandlers.types.#.uri (tells Firefox where to go)

   # represents the incremental number for each service.

4. You will now need to add three new strings. To do this, right click in some whitespace and select New > String. In each of the following additions, you will need to replace # with the next highest number in the sequence (in most cases, if you haven’t played around with it before, this will be 6).
5. Add a new string with the Preference Name of browser.contentHandlers.types.#.title and then call it netvibes.
6. Do a similar for the string browser.contentHandlers.types.#.type and add its value as application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed.
7. Lastly, you want to add in the browser.contentHandlers.types.#.uri and set its value at http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?url=Yes.

You probably should check that everything is correct by typing in contentHandlers again in the filter. You should end up with something that looks like the following.

Modified about:config for netvibes and Firefox

And when you finally click on the RSS icon in your address bar, Firefox should now include your netvibes as an option.

Netvibes is now added to Firefox Live Bookmarks

Conclusion

Personally, I think that the netvibes extension offers a slight advantage over adjusting the about:config file for the reason that it does search for an existing open Netvibes page. It makes subscribing to multiple feeds more manageable. The add-on takes 1 click while Live Bookmarks takes at least 3 clicks to add a feed to your netvibes.

What eventually would be nice would be a complete 1-click, fire-and-forget button for netvibes like Google’s Toolbar star, which adds your bookmarks instantly without needing to go the Google page where you are tempted to instantly manage where it goes and perhaps lose focus.

This is a second test post using Shozu to see how it handles larger photos. The original is 350k.

**Update**

1. I’m not sure I like the added advertising (but it’s free) and the fact that it sits on someone else’s server.
2. No tags added
3. No option to choose category to post in.
4. Facebook integration is playing nicely with ShoZu though.

Not less than 24 hours after I decided to give Twitter a go, I find that the great Zen Habits too is experimenting with Twitter. It’s clear and official, great bloggers and minds do think alike. Ahem.

This, of course, was shown to me by Trader Eyal in effort to dissuade me from the evils of Facebook some time ago last year but I never really got it. Yet Twitter has an interesting video on its website that sort of explains where Twitter exists in between blogging, emails and regular contact with folks. It’s the stuff between – the little bits in the day that you feel you need to communicate, like say, eating a donut.

I’m still trying to see the value to it. Twitter asks the very valid question – what are you doing now? To which you respond and voila, the world is updated on your every move. But then, Facebook, too, is curious like that with its status updates and asks the very same question. But Twitter lets you update as much as you want because, well, your day is probably filled with millions of useless tidbits of information. Facebook has a limit apparently.

Twitter allows you to update the world on your minutiae through a web interface or through your mobile phone. So technically, you can be smoking away outside and choose that this is what you want to share with the world. Of course, you can do that through Facebook through a browser-enabled phone but Twitter lets you do this via SMS.

The world is updated through your own Twitter page. Or alternatively, you can embed Twitter on your blog as HTML/JavaScript and have it be the filler in the day between blog posts. Or, you can embed it on Netvibes as a module and use it as a feed to the banality of your friend’s lives. Or, wait for this, you can even have Twitter control Facebook and let it update your status every time you twitter (because using Facebook’s own “What are you doing now?” status updates might be too confusing).

So now, in the interests of being completely geeky, I have this complex setup going on. Through Twitter I can announce to you that “I’m thinking of shooting myself” on my Netvibes module plugin, which in turn will update my status on Facebook and the nifty Facebook module for Netvibes, and then, through the power of Grayskull, Facebook will update my widget on my blog to inform you that I do indeed want shoot myself. Of course, I could update my Facebook profile and low and behold, it does the same thing just without the Twitter stage.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh since you actually need to know people on Twitter to give it a little bit of excitement. But since the Gmail contact import function is broken, I’m limited to following Trader Eyal and my own status. In terms of social updates, Facebook provides less functionallity potentially to update people on the little things in life but then perhaps that is a good thing.

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing and can lead you to trying to re-invent the wheel. I lost three hours last night figuring out how to install WordPress under two different domains with a GoDaddy Deluxe Hosting plan. I was expecting the setup to behave in one way and when it didn’t, I looked for a complicated solution to a very simple one.

Anyway, setting up multiple domains on a GoDaddy or affiliated server is relatively painless. You will have to upgrade or purchase a Deluxe Shared Hosting account to take advantage of running multiple domains (e.g. example1.com, example2.com) from one shared hosting account. I was upgrading from an economy plan to deluxe hosting, so expect some delay while they upgrade your account. I only had to wait 30 mins but in worst case scenarios this could be longer. Once your account has been set up, do the following (assuming you are in the Hosting Manager interface already):

1. Click Domain Management.
2. Click on Add Domain.
3. Type in the domain you want to add to the account.
4. Select an existing folder to serve as the root for your additional domain OR create a new one to house your sites (this post on organizing multiple folder naming conventions on one shared hosting plan provides a useful approach).

That’s it. You probably have to sit and wait for the DNS changes to resolve but I usually find this happen quite fast. Now you will be able to call example1.com and example2.com from the same shared hosting plan and make it appear they are independent of each other. I suggest copying the welcome.html file to your new domain folder for example2.com. You can then test http://www.example2.com/ to see if all is well and okay and avoids returning a 403 Error.

Of course, in principle, the folder you specified for example2.com should work like the root? This is what I assumed last night when I was trying to install WordPress onto the example2.com folder. I had a WordPress installation exisitng on the primary example1.com root and I had a WordPress install on sub-domain directory. Both worked fine. What didn’t work was installing another WP install on the domain folder I had set up for example2.com. Calling www.example2.com with the WordPress files present reverted to www.example1.com which is not what I wanted.

I will save you the three hours I lost last night trying to figure it out. I spent most of those hours believing it to be an .htaccess file issue since WordPress on the main root directory was rewriting permalinks. So, as I believed the theory to be, the WordPress install on example1.com could technically call example1.com/name_of_example2.com_subdirectory and not know that it should operate as a physical directory. An ugly workaround would have been to uninstall the main WordPress installation and stick it into its own directory on the root folder and delete the .htaccess file. But I’m reasonably sure I didn’t want www.example1.com/blog/ for my permalink structure.

Anyway, this clear article on setting up multiple domains for wordpress on a GoDaddy shared hosting plan provided the very simple solution – edit your wp-config.php file manually.

I suspect there is something preventing me from calling example2.com with a fresh install of WordPress to automatically run the famous 5-minute install. By editing the wp-config.php file yourself, you arrive on page 2 of the 5 minute install and everything seems to be running fine, including permalinks on both example1.com and example2.com. Further testing is needed to see if there are any issues in functionality with plugins on the different installs of WordPress.

All in all, this looks like a sweet solution to hosting one company’s various domains on one account.

In the course of my readings, I came to this post which showed some allegedly shocking behavior on the part of some off-duty GoDaddy support staff and former employees. Of course, there is no way to prove they are who they say they are but it does give an uneasy feeling about using GoDaddy – especially when a lot of the replies appear to be canned, generic ones. But on the whole I am happy with the service product itself although getting your hosting account to have the same functionality as other hosting solutions might take some patience and research, as they use different terminology, put things in different places, etc.

However, with total DNS control and essentially running a linux server, the functionality is there so long as you are prepared to invest time doing the research if you stray from the novice-level services and products the company offers.

Since yesterday evening I’ve been woefully blind as my netvibes account seems to have a problem. Every time I attempt to login, it seems to go through the motions but then thinks better of it and just returns a blank page. It does change the URL to something like a generic netvibes URL like http://www.netvibes.com/# or http://www.netvibes.com/#General (neither of which I have tabs named as such).

I am not the only person having a problem with the blank screen issue with netvibes, but apparently we are in a minority of two judging by the page and a Google search for the problem. Apparently his problem has been fixed, although mine remains a mystery blank page.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• Reset Cache, Cookies, everything
• Created a new profile on Firefox
• Tried on both a Mac and Windows
• Tried Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer in all their latest incarnationsR
• Resetting cache, etc and gone to this URL – http://www.netvibes.com/?reset=1
• Gone to this URL – http://www.netvibes.com/?reset=1 and reset cache, etc
• Reset cache et al and gone to http://www.netvibes.com/?clear_cache=1
• Gone to http://www.netvibes.com/?clear_cache=1 and reset cache

Still no luck. My whole overview of the Internet and the way in which I use it is currently crippled. I do like Netvibes (okay, I need Netvibes to get my fix and feel happy with the world). To be fair, I have informed them of the error. I hope they can give me a reply and fix it. Going back to Google Homepage isn’t really an option.

Anyone else have this problem with Netvibes?

**UPDATE**

Apparently I can sign in with another account which I no longer use which leads me to suspect it is not a browser issue. It can’t be for any violation of their terms and conditions but I pray that it is not because they’ve just lost the account.

**UPDATE 2**

The whole day I haven’t been able to log in on that one specific account at work. I tried just before I left. Now, trying it at my Apple at home, it magically works. Would love to have answer as to what the problem was. I tend not to like to rely on things that break without a reason. Dare I log out and back in again?

With an update heads up from Trader Eyal and a post from 43 Folders announcing a revamped del.icio.us to the latest version to Delicious, I eagerly jumped over to my favourite social bookmark site. Alas, I might have been too eager as I ended up with this message to my horror:

Don't be too eager with Delicious

Sorry, you’ve been temporarily blocked for accessing Delicious too rapidly. This could be the result of using a buggy, misconfigured, or malicious program. It could also be accidental on our part. Please hold off for a few minutes and try again later, in a gentler fashion.

If you think we’ve wrongly blocked you and it continues to happen, let us know. This link will bring you to a Yahoo website. When filling out this report, please ignore the Yahoo ID field.

Thanks for visiting, and sorry about the inconvenience.

-the delicious team

Still the same, it’s probably your fault attitude initially but at least they have the good grace to open up to the possibility that it might actually be their fault. Still, once the ban is off, I will be checking the new look more in depth. From what I saw initially (albeit two pages before I was enthusiastically blocked) was nicely laid out and more in keeping with Web 2.0. A much needed overhaul despite the errors.

Check out the new look Delicious.

Devlounge has an excellent article on using WordPress as a CMS. It is a great starting point for new projects and lists some good questions to take when you approach a new web design client or project. I wish that something like this was there when I first started using WordPress and CMS, in particular when faced with clients.

I tend to approach website building with a handful of scripts (e.g. WordPress, Joomla!, SMF) depending on what functionality I need. My preference is for Joomla! when it comes to community management as it has some nice functionality geared towards doing stuff whereas WordPress is definitely more content orientated and more pleasant to use in that regard.

Nowadays I tend to approach website building on an instinctual basis as it is more for pleasure rather than work. Nonetheless, the article by Thord Daniel Hedengren should be an essential part to project planning for web design.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my Coppermine and WordPress integration broke with the upgrade to 2.6 and using the defunct Coppermine plugin from stilglog. The question became how to easily embed photos from Facebook into my blog when I needed to. The Facebook Photos Plugin by Joe Tan seems to be one of the few contenders in this department, so here I am giving it a whirl.

Firstly, the plugin needs PHP5 which is annoying but inevitable as the GoPHP5 movement gains momentum. Thankfully, my webhost supports dual PHP4 and PHP5 installations. Reluctantly, I made a small addition to the .htaccess file in my WP installation folder and everything seems to be fine. The changes were:

AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php
AddHandler x-httpd-php .php4

Once configured in Settings (i.e. attaching it to your Facebook account, the plugin adds a nice little Facebook logo to admin interface.

Facebook Plugin adds a logo to the interface

Clicking on this link gives you a nice little embed screen. Your first choice is selecting the right album from your Facebook account through a drop-down menu. Clicking on the photo you want to embed, you have a choice in Small (max: 75×225), Medium (max: 130×130), and Large (max: 604×604):

A couple of limitations to the ease of use of the functionality of the plugin remain. Additional styling (borders, adding captions) to your photos can’t be done through the plugin although it drops the raw HTML code, so you can alter this by hand if you so wished. Another concern is privacy. Though the link takes you to a login page on Facebook before you can see the photo, presumably the image url can be made public by browsing through the source code.

Also, I seem to be getting this error:

Warning: call_user_func_array() [function.call-user-func-array]: First argument is expected to be a valid callback, 'media_admin_css' was given in public_dir/wp-includes/plugin.php on line 311.

Not to sure what is happening there but still the plugin works well enough. When I get time, I might see if there’s a fix to this problem somewhere out there.