charonred.com

Some may have heard of this, but I suspect many wouldn’t have, and I didn’t know about it until I found that I could login to my YouTube account with my Google ID.

Put simply, you register for an Open ID account , and then you can access sites like Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Live and many more with just the one username and password – much easier than having separate account access at each site.

You can get an Open ID from any provider listed here http://openid.net/get-an-openid , and with a central Open ID profile you can also link all your sites, as well as search friends/contacts from all your Social Networking sites and much more *.

As for security, I don’t think all the ‘big guns’ of the Internet would use it unless they knew it was a secure service; in fact many of them are sponsors of the Open ID Foundation, as well as having representatives on the Board of Directors; so it seems relatively secure in maintaining some of your personal information.

* the above is purely my summation of the Open ID service, please check with individual Open ID providers for exact usage,  features and benefits available.

Well, I finally had delivery of my new Samsung Ultra Touch mobile phone from 3 on Monday last week, and have spent the past fortnight getting use to it.

It’s certainly not been a trouble-free move from both Nokia and Telstra; the latter being of concern as the 3 network is way behind Telstra in terms of network coverage and reception. I am experiencing regular ‘dropped calls’ and am keeping a log of them for 3, and if they can’t rectify the problem, then I may have to opt out of their contract and return to Telstra.

The Ultra Touch certainly is an interesting piece of technology with its large AMOLED screen and touch navigation. (continue reading…)

Eagerly awaited, cause it’s looking so good in the beta version – and if it is as good as it promises to be, then I’ll update my OS to the 64 bit version from my 32 bit version of 8.04

Damn, yesterday was long, especially the afternoon/evening. The home network was dragging it’s feet, I couldn’t upload files properly, so I rebooted the Modem (ADSL) and Router, only to lose internet/network connection completely.

Settings between the two were wrong; MAC address being reported for the Router was one digit out, DHCP was limited to 2 PCs,  and other settings just didn’t seem right. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t keep the correct settings; so after hours of stuffing around, I ended up resetting router to factory defaults, then re-entering all previous correct settings to get the whole wired & wireless network functioning again.

Maybe someone hacked into the Router; apparently some of the Linux powered routers like the WRT54GL are susceptible to exploits, although it’s running a Firewall and is behind the Modem’s Firewall too; or maybe it just got corrupted due to a power outage/spike or something, but that shouldn’t happen either as Modem, Router & VoIP ATA are all on a UPS – don’t know, but it’s working now, and I’ve backed up the configuration file to the PC, and a thumb-drive; if it goes wrong again, then it’s an easy fix.

And the Router now has a stronger 14 character alpha/numeric/symbol password, so any hacker should have a difficult time trying to get in.

Well, finally decided to do a make-over on my design and hosting website WAWebHosting. It’s basically been languishing for about a year since registering it, I’ve really only used it as my re-seller hosting domain for my own websites, and a few others I also host.

I’ve decided that I do know enough of website design to actually go into the business of designing & hosting sites as an income source, rather than just using it for my own sites.

So, I nuked the RV Site Builder install, then installed Wordpress; it’s work in progress, so there’s not much content there yet.

A bit of tinkering with Wordpress today; I downloaded and installed a couple of plugins (and there are lots to choose from).

• Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button – plugin site – Help readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites.

• Wordpress Navigation List Plugin NAVT – plugin site – The WordPress Navigation Tool (NAVT) plugin is a powerful tool designed to provide you with complete control over the creation, styling and contents of your web site’s navigation. The plugin gives you the ability to create unique site navigation from your pages, categories and users using a Drag ‘n Drop Interface

The ‘Add to Any’ plugin is dead easy to install and configure; but the ‘NAVT’ takes a little more effort. I needed to temporarily change permissions for its folder in plugins directory, then back again once it had created the wp-root.php file; and instructions for use could be a bit clearer, but I have it running and will make use of it, just need to study it a bit more first.

I thought I’d try some video editing. First I recorded my desktop and effects using a JVC miniDV, then used ‘Kino’ to capture the footage (and I didn’t have to install any JVC software or drivers either).

Next I managed to edit out some of the dodgier scenes (as I’ve not used Kino before, I managed to crash it a few times). I then used ‘Sound Recorder’ to record a voice over, and saved it as a .wav file, and then dubbed it onto video using Kino. But when playing it back, I sounded like a ‘chipmunk’ … don’t know what happened there, I stuffed something up, so I went back and removed the sound track – now it’s just a silent movie.

Finally I exported the video as a mpeg1 file, and uploaded to my Youtube channel – while  the upload was happening, I downloaded and installed the video plugin for Wordpress so I could embed the video on this page.

Below are Forums / Blogs/ Wikis that I subscribe to or participate in as Charonred

• Ubuntu (linux)
• Whirlpool ADSL
• Envirogeek
• SMF- Simple Machines Forum
• CMSMS (Content Management System)
• Port 80 Forums (Australian Web Industry)

Below are others, but not as charonred;

• Mandriva (linux)
• Club CD Freaks