What would we do without social media now that it has become such a big part of many of our lives? Here’s a look…

The Facebook Song

“Before the internet friendship was so tough. You actually had to be in people’s presense and stuff” ~ Rhett&Link

I have been having trouble playing videos in Firefox 3 lately. I would try to play a video on a site such as YouTube and many times it wouldn’t play properly. The video would sometimes get stuck on loading and wouldn’t play at all, it would play a few seconds and stop or it would play but hang several times throughout the duration of the video. I was able to play videos fine in Internet Explorer 7.

I just noticed that there is an update for Adobe Flash Player available. So I figured I would update my Adobe Flash Player and see if that would fix the problem. Sure enough, I can play videos easily in Firefox 3 now without a problem. The new version of Adobe Flash Player fixed the problem for me.

If you have been having the same problem playing videos in Firefox 3 you can check which version of Adobe Flash Player you have here: Version Test For Adobe Flash Player. If you don’t have the newest version you can update your Adobe Flash Player and see if this works for you too.

photo credit: John Griffiths

I have found it is best to use Adobe’s Flash Player Uninstaller before installing the newer version. Adobe’s flash player uninstaller does a better job of removing all instances of Adobe flash player than the Windows add/remove programs uninstaller (renamed “Programs and Features” in Win Vista) function does. Adobe has complete instructions on using the uninstaller so that it works properly to uninstall all instances of Adobe Flash Player. After using the uninstaller you can install the newer version and see if it works for you too.

Phil

I had tried moving a blog using the standard recommended procedures and didn’t have any luck with it. See Moving Wordpress .

So the last couple times I have moved a blog I used the shortcuts to moving a blog that I found at Move Your WordPress Blog to a New Host in 7 Easy Steps. This way, I didn’t have to mess around with any MySQL tables.

This method at Move Your WordPress Blog to a New Host in 7 Easy Steps worked fine for me. Though I have a small blog, with few posts, and I am not sure this would work for a large blog with a complicated configuration.

photo credit: ewen and donabel

If in the future, I do move another blog, I think I will try Matt Garrett’s tutorial video at Moving Your Blog .

Phil

I just learned that Straight No Chaser got a record contract with Atlantic Records! On October 28th they will be making their Atlantic debut with “Holiday Spirits”, a collection of Christmas Songs. Following that, concert performances, TV appearances and plans for a second album are in the works too.

Straight No Chaser is one of the best a cappella groups I have heard. For more news and information and to see more of Straight No Chaser’s extraordinary a cappella performances go to MySpace.com - Straight No Chaser .

If you haven’t seen the video I posted here back in December check out Happy Holidays - Straight No Chaser, men’s a capella and you will see what I mean.

photo credit: *~sTeRnDaL~*

Way to go guys! You deserve it…

Phil

I use Alvin Phang’s Atomic Blogging themes on two of my blogs. This is one of the packages that I bought that I have really got a lot of use out of. I like the easy set up and it’s a snap to use. Alvin provides tutorials, videos, updates and super customer service. If you are interested in taking a look click on the video below to start the player or click on the link below that to see what Alvin has to offer in the Atomic Blogging package.

Phil

Click on the video below to start the player

Comments and pingbacks are now re-enabled.

Everything seems to have gone well, despite the thunderstorm that knocked out my internet during the middle of the transfer for a few hours! I had just got the DNS transferred over to the new host and was about to check to make sure the site was still live, when the thunderstorm hit. So, I didn’t see that the site was not live for a few hours. With a few adjustments I had it up and running again after I was able to get online again and fix it.

I took some shortcuts so I had a little more tweaking to do than I may have had if I had followed customary suggested procedures for moving a blog. But, all in all, I am pleased with the results.

Phil

I am working on moving moving my blog to a new host. So I will be disabling comments and pingbacks for the time being. Hopefully the move will be successful and everything will be back to normal soon.

Phil

Since I got my Vista operating system I have had problems with a sluggish internet connection. And it kept getting slower and slower as time went on. For my Windows XP system I use the TCP Optimizer from speedguide.net. So I finally got around to going over to speedguide.net to see if the TCP Optimizer is available for Vista but, unfortunately, it’s not available at this time.

I did locate the article on tweaking the TCP/IP Settings for Vista there at the site, so I followed the recommended Vista TCP/IP settings at SpeedGuide.net: Windows Vista Tweaks to increase my broadband internet speed and my internet speed has improved significantly.

I set my TCP/IP settings as follows:

• TCP Auto-Tuning is set at Normal
• Add-on Congestion Control Provider is set to ctcp (compound TCP)
• ECN Capability is disabled
• Receive-side Scaling (RSS) is enabled
• Chimney Offload is enabled — mine was disabled for some reason. Default state is enabled according to the article. To enable Chimney offload, in elevated command prompt, I typed netsh int tcp set global chimney=enabled

(*Update: I have my TCP Auto-Tuning Set to normal for my system. The recommendation at SpeedGuide.net is normal, unless you are experiencing problems — See Windows Vista / 2008 Tweaks at SpeedGuide.net for more information on alternative settings)

I didn’t try the registry edits outlined in the article. Editing the registry can cause problems if you are not careful (and sometimes, I hear, even if you are careful) so I think I will leave those for now, unless I experience more problems with my internet speed. So far, it is much better than before tweaking the settings and I am very happy with the results.

Phil

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Phil

Foxit has released Foxit Reader 2.3 .

Foxit Reader 2.3 has a new multimedia player feature.

• Read multimedia ebooks
• Watch Videos and listen to audios that are in the PDF

I can now use left and right click functionality for navigating in full screen mode and the preference “Show Status Bar” now works with my Vista and my Windows XP operating systems with Foxit Reader 2.3.

There are many other new and enhanced features and bug fixes in the new Foxit Reader 2.3 release.

Phil