Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A Playlist

BEVERLY HILLS, CA - FEBRUARY 10:  Singer Pink ...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Sometimes I just want to listen to some music. MyBloop not only lets you store unlimited files, you can also upload your music files and listen to them from any Internet-connected computer. Or check out other people's playlists and listen to their music, which is where I found this playlist. It's all Pink, all the time, and I really like it.



To protect copyright, MyBloop doesn't allow downloading of music files.



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Monday, January 26, 2009

Blogger Backup

Quite a while ago I mentioned that I used the import feature at Wordpress.com to back up my blog. I haven't been doing it regularly, like I should be, but I thought that would be good enough for blog backup. Today, though, I was trying to back up my other blog, after not having done it for several months. Right in the middle of importing, it just stopped, and wouldn't go any further. When I attempted to view the blog in a new tab to see how many posts had actually transferred, I got an error message telling me the blog had been archived or suspended due to TOS violations. Since I wasn't even really using the blog as a blog, merely transferring posts as a backup, I'm not sure what I supposedly did. If they don't want me to use it as backup, they shouldn't provide the import feature.

Whatever - forget Wordpress. I went searching for a better way to back up my blogs and found this handy little tool - Blogger Backup. It makes it really easy to back up your blogs. Sign into Blogger, and it finds all your blogs. Then you just select the blog you want to backup from the list, decide how you want your files named, whether you want each post to be a file or just one file with all posts. You can get the lastest 10, 25, 50, 100 posts, or just download them all, or you can specify a date and time and only download new posts since that date. Since it was my first time using it, I backed up all my posts, and then I can just backup all the new ones in the future.

There's also an option to restore posts, which worked on my test blog, but I keep getting an error message when I try to restore a post here. I noticed in the discussion that some other people have had the same problem, so hopefully there's a fix in the works. I'm wondering if it has something to do with using Custom Domain instead of a blogspot url, but that's just a guess.

Then, as I'm writing this post, Zemanta suggested the following article, and I found out that Blogger now has the option to export and import your blog, so I could have just backed up straight from my Dashboard. I guess I should look at it more, and read Blogger Buzz to keep up with things, huh?




What I'm really saying here is - no matter how you do it, be sure and back your blog up. Hopefully you'll never need the backup, but if you ever do - you'll be glad you did it.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Backup is Your Friend

Do it.
Do it now.
Do not pass Go.
Do not collect $200.

I've been meaning to back everything up for a while now. And then last week I had to reinstall Windows because my computer wouldn't boot properly, and it was too late.

Luckily, I had moved some things to my D: drive recently, so I didn't lose everything. Just the stuff that was still on C: - which was bad enough. The photos that hadn't been backed up to DVD are still on the SD cards, so I didn't lose those. It could have been much worse.

I plan to back my files up on a more regular basis now. I want to use a combination of online storage like MyBloop and Windows Skydrive as well as backing up to CD or DVD.

In addition, documents can be stored, edited, and shared with Google Docs. Actually, I've had some problems sharing documents with Google Docs, but I love that I can create and edit online, and the docments are available from any computer. Some of the documents I had stored there came in really handy when my computer was down. I just need to get busy and upload the rest of them I want to save.

I just signed up for Evernote, too. It's supposed to be a good way to keep track of everything and sync it between the internet and different computers. I wish I had been using this earlier because I lost some important information I had in my email - all the email I had on my computer is gone.

So, taking my own advice, I'm backing up everything as I go now.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Templates and Tools

This looks like the most comprehensive list of Blogger template sources I've ever seen. I'd heard of some of them, but there are a whole lot I hadn't, so I'll want to check them out. Do I need a new template? Well, I don't think so, but that doesn't mean I can't look!

If you're looking for a new template, I'd say this is the place to start.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Find Bloggers in Your Neck of the Woods

I just signed up for and added two of my blogs to a new directory. It's called Loaded Web, and they call it the first fully geo-based blog directory. When you add your blog, you also choose your country, state/province, and city. Add a description and some tags and submit your blog for approval. They don't allow sites that feature adult content (nudity included), promote gambling, promote illegal activities, promote hate, feature warez, and/or are not blogs, so your blog has to be approved before it can be listed. It was really quick though. I just submitted mine this evening, and they're already approved and listed.

Now comes the fun part - searching the directory to find blogs in your neighborhood! I already found one from a neighboring town. Of course, you can also search to find blogs in other areas, too. It's fairly new, so there aren't a lot of blogs there, yet, but I think it will be fun to see where blogs are coming from.

Loaded Web is currently available for blogs from Canada, United States and United Kingdom.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Me2Everyone - Free Shares for Joining

I just became a shareholder in me2everyone and I never had to pay a single penny for the shares! It can only be described as the gold-rush for 2009. This company is going to be huge and shares will soar in value over the coming months! You can register for free and it never has to cost you a single penny!

me2everyone is going to be a cool new virtual world where you can meet friends, chat, shop, play, watch videos, create an art gallery, open a virtual newspaper, play the free inworld lottery and make money from your own online store! You and everyone you know make the decisions, shape the world, create real incomes and share in the profits. It’s a new place where you meet new people or invite your friends. Learn new skills or expand your business. Find the love of your life or help the planet.

Membership is free and every member automatically becomes a shareholder in me2everyone Limited. I got 1000 shares just for signing up, and I am going going to increase my shares very soon. This is an excellent chance for all of us to make some real progress in 2009 and beyond! Please do not miss it. By 2012 they are predicting these shares to be worth real money.

If you are looking for something really good in 2009: something that changes your view on the world, then you really have to spend just one minute and look at this website. Sign up for free and get your own shares.

Advanced System Care

Probably because of the recent virus that installed itself on my computer, I noticed a link on Giveaway of the Day I hadn't noticed before. It says that Giveaway of the day is adware/spyware free, and if you want to check that for yourself they recommend - Advanced System Care - both free and pro versions are available.

It's supposed to prevent spyware, hackers and hijackers from installing malicious items on your computer and scan and remove any that are already on there. Besides that, Advanced System Care has a whole lot of other tools that are supposed to make your computer run better, and it's supposed to be really easy to use.

I haven't tried it yet. First I'll be reading the user reviews. The ones I've read so far are really positive. Have any of you tried this? What do you think? Good? Bad? The best thing since sliced bread?

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Leave My Computer Alone!

I left my computer alone for a few minutes last night and came back to find a mess. It's not like I've never left it alone before. I thought I could trust it!

My brother left a comment saying he had a similar problem recently. He downloaded a program called Malwarebytes, and that took care of his problem. So, I tried it. I downloaded the free version, installed, and attempted a scan. My computer shut down before the scan could complete.

Luckily, I had recently downloaded a program called WinUtilities from Giveaway of the Day. It has a tool to manage the startup files on your computer, so I looked through those and found something called prunnet.exe. That was the culprit, as well as some kind of advertising service that had installed itself. I couldn't just delete the file because it was running, but by disabling it in the startup files and then restarting my computer, I think I kept it from starting. Then I browsed to the file (in Windows/system32) and deleted it. I also selected all other files there that had been created at the same time, and by right-clicking them, I could scan just those files with Malwarebytes. It found the bad files and removed them. I also used Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the advertising 'service' that had placed itself on my computer.

Now, I'm crossing my fingers that it all worked. So far so good - no more annoying popups. Still, I'm irritated that people do these kinds of things. Don't they have better things to do with their lives? Thank you to the creators of Malwarebytes - I'm thankful you chose to use your powers for good. The rest of you - leave my computer alone!