Tech Support

Need help registering a domain name, setting up cheap web hosting, or figuring out how to export from Palm to Outlook? Whenever I figure something out I post it here for the common good. Hope it helps.

09
Mar

Hauppauge WinTV USB2 and Windows 7

A few years ago I bought the WinTV USB2 device from Hauppauge so that I could connect a DVD player to my laptop. At the time, I was running Windows XP, and it worked beautifully. But when I upgraded a few months ago to Windows 7, this was the one piece of hardware I couldn’t [...]

12
Nov

WordPress “500 Internal Server Error”

You just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress for your blog, or you just updated a plugin, and all of a sudden your entire site is gone and you’re freaking out because all you get when you try to login, or go to the homepage, or access any page on your blog, is an [...]

10
Nov

Twitter Tools Bit.ly Link Not Working?

Ah, sometimes it’s the little things that get in the way. I use the Twitter Tools plugin on this blog and others so that whenever I create a new post, it automatically posts it to my Twitter account. Twitter Tools also allows you to enter a Bit.ly username and API key so that when your [...]

09
Nov

Canon PowerShot A620 Drivers / Software

You bought a Canon A620 digital camera a few years ago, installed the software that came with it, and never thought about it again. Until you had to switch to a new computer, or you reformatted, and you realized “Oh yeah, I guess I need to reinstall the software for my camera.” Only you can’t [...]

21
Oct

Blackberry Error: Cannot connect. Call in progress.

Solutions to the “Cannot connect. Call in progress.” error on the Blackberry: 1. Soft reboot (alt + right shift + del) 2. Hard reboot (unseat and reseat battery) Today was the first time I’ve had this problem. I’ve had my new Blackberry Tour with Verizon for about two months now, and today I was on [...]

11
Jun

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 encountered an error during setup.

I’ve been using Office XP Professional for several years and haven’t seen any reason to upgrade. Anything that was sent to me in a newer version of Word or Excel could be converted to work with Office XP. That is, until last week when a client sent me an Excel spreadsheet that had drop shadows [...]

11
Jun

WordPress Automatic Upgrade Fails

Between my own websites and those of my clients I manage about 12 blogs, all of which are running WordPress. Today I’ve been upgrading all of them to WordPress 2.8.  I use the automatic upgrade process that WordPress provides because it makes upgrading quick and easy…at least for my clients who aren’t on Mediatemple’s servers. [...]

18
Dec

Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0 – “Unknown Recorder Error”

I just bought Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0 and I love it! Or at least I assume I would if it worked the way it’s designed to work. But instead of working, I’m having two major problems: 1. While capturing video from my DV camera, I get frequent errors that say “Unknown Recorder Error” at which [...]

10
Nov

How to Add Your Blog Feed to Facebook

Ever since I figured out how to do this I’ve had a mountain of people asking me how, so here it is–how to add your blog feed to your Facebook profile, so that every time you publish a post on your blog, it will show up as a posted item on your Facebook Wall, and [...]

10
Sep

WordPress Tip – Different Number of Posts for Categories vs. Homepage

I can understand why WordPress doesn’t build in this functionality, after all, they can only do so much and they rely on the community to created plugins for this kind of thing, but I don’t understand why nobody has created a simple plugin to allow WordPress users to specify that they want a different number [...]

21
Jan

Does Cable Service Follow the Address or the Box?

Contrary to past tech-support posts, I’m asking you a question, rather than answering one. I have Comcast high-speed Internet service at my home. We recently moved, and so I called Comcast to transfer the service to the new address, which happens to be about 100 feet away from the old one. Of course Comcast wasn’t [...]

17
Jan

A Dummy’s Guide to RSS Feeds

You’re here because you’ve heard one of the following terms–RSS, RSS feeds, subscribing to RSS, subscribing to feeds, subscribing to blogs, blogs, blog feeds, etc.–and you’re interested but don’t know where to begin. Well, you’ve come to the right place and we’re going to help you out. Useless Lesson #1 – RSS stands for “really [...]

05
Jan

How to Export from Palm to Outlook

Believe it or not, I like to use outdated technology. Why? Because it’s good enough for what I do. My cellphone is a free Nokia giveaway that I’ve had for three years. I’ve been using Outlook Express for years rather than converting to Outlook. But enough is no longer enough, and I’m converting. This week [...]

14
Nov

How to Set Up a Web Hosting Account

My last post told you how to register a domain name for your website. But a domain name, URL, or website address isn’t a website any more than a street address is a piece of property. If your domain name is a street address in a phone book and your website is a house then [...]

14
Nov

How to Register a Domain Name for Your Website

In running a web design firm I find myself explaining some things so many times to our clients and then I thought “Why not just set up a page on the blog explaining in detail how to do it and then just send them the link?” Then I think “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” [...]

11
Nov

iTunes Freezing Up

I recently downloaded iTunes 7.0.2 for Windows XP because I got a new iPod and in order to use it you have to have 7.0.2. That was a few days ago. Yesterday iTunes started freezing up within ten seconds of starting, and although whatever was playing on it would continue playing, I couldn’t access the [...]

30
Oct

Download Old Version of FireFox to Prevent Crashing, Freezing Up, Stalling in 2.0

FireFox Release 1.5.0.7 for Windows, English. You, like me, were excited to upgrade to the FireFox 2.0 browser last week. You installed it, and then you quickly found out that it freezes up regularly. For me, it’s so regular that I’ve been forced to make a decision–install the older version of Firefox, or switch to [...]

20
Oct

How to Uninstall / Rollback Windows Media Player 10

So you’ve installed Windows Media Player 10, and now some of your video plays upside down, or doesn’t play at all. You’ve realized you had it better with Windows Media Player 9, but you’ve tried everything to uninstall it, or reinstall 9, but you just can’t get it to work. Yep, I was once like [...]