Network Manager by Day, Blogger by Night.
Archive for January, 2009
Madonnas Sticky & Sweet Tour goes back on the road summer 2009
Jan 30th
Madonna’s phenomenally successful ‘Sticky & Sweet Tour’, already the #1 Biggest Grossing Tour in history for a solo artist, will embark on another series of shows beginning July 4th in London. (Schedule follows this release). Stops will include appearances in never before played markets such as Werchter Belgium, Marseille France, Hamburg Germany, Oslo Norway, Helsinki Finland, Tallinn Estonia, Ljubljana Slovenia as well as stops in Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria it was confirmed today by Live Nation. Additional appearances by Madonna will include return visits after more than 15 years to Madrid, Gothenburg and Munich.
“This is a first for me. I’ve never extended a tour before. I’m excited to be going back on the road, visiting places I’ve never been and returning to places I love” commented Madonna about the new run of dates.
Raves around the globe for the tour include the London Times which remarked, “In the premiere league of song-and-dance spectaculars, the queen of pop remains unrivaled and undefeated.” “The choreography, visuals and live talent were world class and mind-blowingly well executed, intelligent and witty,” glowed The Independent (UK).
In 2008, the ‘Sticky & Sweet Tour’ was seen by 2,350,285 fans in 58 cities. With record breaking ticket sales everywhere, including 650,000 tickets sold in her series of South American dates, 72,000 tickets at Zurich’s Dübendorf Airfield – the largest audience ever assembled for a show in Switzerland, 75,000 tickets in London and four sell outs in New York’s Madison Square Garden (60,364 tickets).
“This new run of dates will further solidify Madonna’s position as one of the top selling touring artists of all time,” said Arthur Fogel, Live Nation’s Chairman of Global Music and CEO of Global Touring/Artist Nation.
Special Guest for Sticky & Sweet 2009, Paul Oakenfold has long been one of the most important–if not the most important–name in modern club culture. He has remixed The Rolling Stones, U2, Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dog, Muse, New Order, The Cure, Massive Attack and even Elvis Presley, and produced The Happy Mondays. The two-time Grammy nominee is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the biggest DJ in the world. His new artist album, Pop Killer, is due out later this year.
Madonna’s multi-Grammy-nominated CD, Hard Candy, debuted at Number One in over 37 countries.
Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 has now been released for download!
Jan 28th
Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 has now been released for download, please click here. If you have installed the IE8 Partner Build then you will not be automatically updated to this release.
RC 1 is short for “Release Candidate 1″. Release candidate software is ready to be evaluated by users while it undergoes final testing. You may experience minor bugs or compatibility issues with web sites while browsing. So the IE Team is urging you to still file them bugs with them on this build. For more information on what “RC 1″ means see below or IE8: What’s After Beta 2 blog post.
Before installing, please read the Release Notes and more information about features and developer docs can be found in the IE8 Readiness Toolkit.
What does “RC1″ mean?
Release candidate software is at a stage in the development process where it is ready to be evaluated by users while it undergoes final testing.Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 is now platform and feature complete and this is your opportunity to be among the first to try out the new browser before its final release. Install it today and take it for a test drive. If you find issues with IE8, please let us know by filing a bug. In addition, you can uninstall the browser at any time. Instructions can be found at our support page for Internet Explorer 8 RC 1.
To ensure your browser is up to date, all RC1 users will be automatically updated with the final version of Internet Explorer 8 via Windows Update so you’ll always have the latest version of the browser.
AVG gets five star rating
Jan 21st
AVG Technologies, a global anti-virus and Internet security software provider with over 80 million users in 167 countries, today announced that its Internet Security Network Edition (NE) solution has received the “Recommended” designation in the most recent Anti-malware Group Test performed by security publication SC Magazine. Eight companies participated in the test. AVG Internet Security NE received the highest possible overall rating of five stars.
The reviewer commended AVG for providing feature rich, full protection. He found the product very easy to install, and particularly complimented its centralized management capabilities. In addition to the overall five star rating, AVG Internet Security NE received five stars for features, ease of use, performance, and documentation.
AVG Internet Security NE provides businesses with powerful, easy-to-use protection against the full range of threats. It does this without hogging valuable system resources. The software works efficiently and unobtrusively in the background, around the clock. This enables employees to focus on their work and IT staff to focus on other business critical activities. . AV Internet Security NE delivers:
- Protection against viruses, spyware, adware, rootkits, hackers, phishing, and spam
- Real time analysis of web pages to prevent drive-by downloads
- Company-wide security for workstations, laptops, file servers, and SharePoint Portals
- Protection against infected file downloads, including over instant messaging channels
- Centralized installation, deployment, management, and configuration
- Small client footprint for low-impact performance
- High-speed, automatic updates
- Free support and service around the clock and across the globe
AVG Internet Security NE currently supports clients in 15 languages, with additional language support in development.
“Receiving SC Magazines’ anti-malware “Recommended” award for AVG Internet Security Network Edition is a real honor,” said Karel Obluk, CTO of AVG Technologies. “Internet Security Network Edition provides comprehensive protection for business networks that’s easy to implement and easy to use. We’re proud to provide a full range of defenses against 21st-century cyberthreats.”
Microsoft Live Labs Thumbtack
Jan 20th
Microsoft Live Labs Thumbtack is an easy way to save links, photos, and anything else you can find on bunch of different Web sites to a single place. Grab the stuff you want, put it into a Thumbtack collection, then get to it from anywhere you can get online. Share it with your friends, or just keep it for yourself. It’s way easier than sending a bunch of links in an e-mail, and even easier than setting lots of favorites in your browser.
Let’s say you’re trying to find an apartment and your roommate isn’t sitting next to you. You could send a lot of links in an e-mail, and even attach some photos. But that’s not going to show her everything at once—she’d have to click each link and go back and forth among the windows. Instead, you could save every apartment to a single Thumbtack collection— pictures, prices and your own comments about what you like about each one—and then send a single URL to her. She opens your collection and bam, all the information she needs is right in front of her, all in one place.
The Bookmarklet makes it even easier to add to your collections–you can do it with just a click. Plus Thumbtack has gadgets, like the address gadget that will automatically find the address of items in your collection and show you a map of exactly where that place is.
Access it at: http://thumbtack.livelabs.com/
Microsoft UK Partner Programme Videocasts
Jan 20th
Microsoft UK have just launched a new Partner Player to Microsoft UK Partners – a video hosting tool, providing another way in which to consume Microsoft-related information, alongside our e-newsletters, blogs and RSS feeds, designed to drive Partner satisfaction and grow Partner businesses.
Along with the launch of the Partner Player, Microsoft UK have also launched a series of videocasts to help partners understand how to get the most value from the Partner Programme. These videocasts are an online extension of the classroom Kickstart training course to provide ‘back to basics’ training to Partner. Partners can access the videos on the Partner Player, or follow the training path on the Kickstart portal page.
Partners can also find videos supporting the Windows Essential Server Solutions launch, a Sell The Stack video by John Noakes, and live footage from the Software+Services Steve Ballmer event.
Just visit the Partner Player and start watching the videos. Or if you prefer, you can filter the videos to your tier level (Registered, Certified or Gold Certified), your role or video type, or just pick a video from our recommended list.
Lycos Europe closing Email portal service and Tripod Web hosting
Jan 18th
The Well known (or less known for some) Internet company Lycos is shutting down its email portal service and web hosting service Tripod, both services will be discontinued as of February 15 2009. Bellow is a copy of the emails being sent out!
Email portal Service:
Dear User,
We regret to inform you that our parent company has decided to discontinue all unprofitable activities.
One of the activities that will be discontinued is our E-mail business division. For this reason, we are hereby terminating your account as of 15 February 2009. Currently, we are still working on finding a solution to provide you the service through another provider. If we should succeed to do so, we will inform you within the next 4 weeks. But as this is currently doubtful, we would like to ask you to assume the end of the service.
Prior to this date, you may continue to log in to your e-mail account and receive and send mail as usual. After this date, however, we will close your account and delete all content and access authorizations stored with Lycos in relation to your e-mail account, in accordance with legal requirements.
You will then no longer be able to receive or send e-mail under your e-mail address. The contents of your mailbox will also no longer be accessible. For this reason, we ask that you back up all important data from your Lycos e-mail account in the next few days and switch to another e-mail provider.
Should you still be entitled to services for any additional paid options, we will of course reimburse the balance to the bank account you provided.
We regret this measure and would like to thank you for the trust you have placed in us.
Kind regards,
Your LYCOS Mail Team
Lycos UK Ltd., 35 Vine Street, London, EC3N 2AA, UK
registered in ENGLAND AND WALES | Registration No. 03923511 | VAT number: 756796467Copyright © 2009 Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lycos® is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc.E-Mail: mail-support-uk@lycos-europe.com | Tel.: 0906 784 4 784 (1£/min.)
http://www.lycos.co.uk
And Tripod Webhosting:
Cancellation of your Tripod Account and your free Tripod Homepage
Dear User,
as announced on the 26th of November 2008 the portal and webhosting activities of the Lycos Europe GmbH will be discontinued. Unfortunately, the free hosting service Tripod is effected. For this reason we are hereby terminating your Tripod Account as of 15th February 2009.
Until the 15th February you can use your Tripod account and your Homepage as usual. After this date we will close your account and delete all your content which was stored on Tripod in accordance with legal requirements.
After this date it will be ímpossible to view your Homepage in the internet or to do a Backup using FTP from your page because the content will be unrecoverably deleted. That is why we advise you to to backup all necessary data in the near future from your Tripod Account on your hard drive and if wanted to upload it to another homepage provider.
Please keep in mind that we do not offer any support for the free homepages neither by phone nor by email for upcoming questions. Because of this reason we created a short description how to backup your data.
We regret having to take this step and we want to thank you for your confidence in the past.
Currently, we are still working on finding a solution to provide you the service through another provider. If we should succeed in doing so, we will inform you within the next 4 weeks. But as this is currently doubtful, we would like to ask you to assume the end of the service.
Despite the sad news we wish you and your family a successful 2009.Best wishes,
Your Lycos Tripod Team
Data BackupAttention:
We cannot guarantee and /or take over liability for the correctness of this “How To”. For the case that you lose your data because of following this “How To” you cannot claim Lycos for damage. You are alone responsible for the backup of your data. Because of this reason please import / upload your data to your new Web space, test it extensively and check if really all relevant data were saved.Step by Step “How To”:
1. Create a folder, in which you want to save your data.
Create a connection over a FTP-program:
FTP-Server: ftp.members.lycos.co.uk
Username: Name of the site (f.e.: username)
Password: Login Password of the site
Connection-Typ: passiv2. Mark all dates, that you want to save and draw them into the folder which you have created in point 1.
3. If you have data in your mySQL Database, you have to save it in an additional step. For this you have to login to www.tripod.lycos.co.uk and click on the left on “online tools” and after that on “open PHP4U”. A popup will open. Please choose under the point “Dump”, “Structure and Data” and press then on “Send”. Then press “OK”. You will get a SQL File, which you can save on your Harddrive.
4. Add-ons like Guestbooks, Polls, Statistices and Counters are not able to save and you have to save them manually, if you need that data.
Lycos Support UK, 1 Stephen Street, London W1TAL, United Kingdom
registered in ENGLAND AND WALES | Registration No. 03923511| VAT number: 756796467
E-Mail: tripod-uk-support@lycos-europe.com
Copyright © 2008 Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Lycos@ is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc.
And for any spanish readers out there, a copy in Spanish which I recieved a day before the UK one!
Cancelación de tu cuenta Tripod y de la página web Tripod gratuita (15.01.2009)
Estimado usuario:Como ya anunció nuestra empresa el 26 de noviembre de 2008, lamentamos comunicarte que vamos a suspender algunas actividades comerciales de Lycos Europe GmbH. Entre estas actividades se encuentra el servicio de hosting gratuito Tripod. Por esta razón, te notificamos la cancelación de tu cuenta Tripod con efecto a partir del 15-02-09.
Hasta este día podrás seguir utilizando como de costumbre tu cuenta Tripod y tu página web. A partir de esta fecha, cancelaremos tu cuenta y borraremos todos los contenidos y derechos de acceso relacionados con tu página web que hayas guardado en tu cuenta Tripod tomando en consideración las disposiciones legales vigentes. Desde ese momento ya no te será posible ver tu página web en Internet o hacer una copia de seguridad de la misma por FTP, ya que los contenidos se borrarán de forma definitiva y no podrán recuperarse. Por este motivo, te rogamos que guardes en los próximos días todos los datos importantes de tu cuenta Tripod y cambies a otro proveedor de páginas web.
Por favor, ten en cuenta que no podremos atender telefónicamente o por correo electrónico tus posibles preguntas relacionadas con las páginas web gratuitas. Hemos preparado para ti una pequeña guía paso a paso (véase más abajo) para ayudarte a guardar tus datos.
Sentimos tener que adoptar esta medida y te agradecemos la confianza depositada en nosotros.
Actualmente estamos trabajando para encontrar la forma de proporcionarle el servicio mediante otro proveedor. A lo largo de las próximas 4 semanas le informaremos en caso de éxito. Pero si esta posibilidad no se produjera, el servicio se dará por finalizado.
Pese a estas desagradables noticias, te deseamos a ti y a los tuyos un buen comienzo de año y prosperidad para el 2009.Atentamente,
El equipo de Lycos Tripod
Copia de seguridad de datosAtención:
No nos hacemos responsables de la exactitud de estas instrucciones. En el caso de que tus datos se pierdan por haber observado las mismas, no se podrá reclamar ningún tipo de indemnización por daños y perjuicios u otro tipo de reclamaciones a Lycos. Tú eres el único responsable de la copia de seguridad de tus datos. Por este motivo, te rogamos que vuelvas a copiar los datos guardados en tu nuevo sitio web y compruebes minuciosamente si se han copiado todos los datos importantes.Guía paso a paso:
1. Crea una carpeta en el ordenador para guardar posteriormente todos los datos de la copia de seguridad.
2. Establece la conexión a través del programa FTP:
Servidor FTP: ftp.usuarios.lycos.es
Nombre de usuario: Nombre de la página (p. ej.: nombre de usuario)
Contraseña: contraseña de acceso a la página
Tipo de conexión: pasiva3. Marca todos los datos que desees copiar y arrástralos a la carpeta creada en el punto 1.
4. En caso de que tengas datos en una base de datos mySQL, deberás hacer una copia de seguridad de los mismos por separado. Para ello, entra en www.tripod.lycos.es, haz clic a la izquierda en “Herramientas online” y, a continuación, en “Abrir PHP4U”. Aparece una ventana emergente. Bajo “volcado esquema”, selecciona “Estructura y datos” y “Enviar”. Seguidamente, haz clic en “Siga”. Recibirás un archivo SQL que deberás guardar en tu disco duro.
5. Los add-ons como libros de invitados, encuestas, estadísticas y contadores de usuarios no pueden guardarse y deberán ser copiados a mano en caso de que los necesites.
Lycos Support ES, Carl-Bertelsmann-Str. 29, 33332 Gütersloh
Inscrita en el Registro Mercantil de Madrid, Volumen 15.008, Secciõn 8a, Folio 130,
Hoja M-250243, Inscripción 1² | País de registro: España | CIF: B-82.571.092
E-Mail: tripod-es-support@lycos-europe.com
Copyright © 2008 Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Lycos@ is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc.
Happy 8th Birthday Wikipedia!
Jan 15th
Eight years ago today Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. Wikipedia has become one of the senior sites on the web, growing from a top 1000 site shortly after its creation to the fourth most visited site on the web in the last few months.
And on its eight birthday Wikipedia exists in 265 languages and well over 10million articles – with thousands and thousands of active editors.
This morning Jimmy conducted an interview on CBC Radio’s “Q” – a national morning show broadcast across Canada and on Sirius satellite radio. The interview will be ported to podcast a bit later today. Take a listen to hear the founder recount the history of one of the greatest projects on the web.
Congratulations to all the volunteers who have built Wikipedia from a grand idea to a truly grand project. Thumbs up to many more years!
The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets
Jan 13th
Check out this great list of Microsoft Windows 7 Beta Secrets by Tim Sneath. Here’s a few of them, so be sure to check out the full list here for the full 30 Windows 7 Secrets!
- Windows Management. By now, you’ve probably seen that Windows 7 does a lot to make window management easier: you can “dock” a window to the left or right half of the screen by simply dragging it to the edge; similarly, you can drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it, and double-click the window top / bottom border to maximize it vertically with the same horizontal width. What you might not know is that all these actions are also available with keyboard shortcuts:
- Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;
- Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes;
- Win+Shift+Up Arrow and Win+Shift+Down Arrow maximizes and restores the vertical size.
This side-by-side docking feature is particularly invaluable on widescreen monitors – it makes the old Windows way of shift-clicking on two items in the taskbar and then using the context menu to arrange them feel really painful.
- The Black Box Recorder. Every developer wishes there was a way that an end-users could quickly and simply record a repro for the problem that they’re running into that is unique to their machine. Windows 7 comes to the rescue! Part of the in-built diagnostic tools that we use internally to send feedback on the product, the Problem Steps Recorder provides a simple screen capture tool that enables you to record a series of actions. Once you hit “record”, it tracks your mouse and keyboard and captures screenshots with any comments you choose to associate alongside them. Once you stop recording, it saves the whole thing to a ZIP file, containing an HTML-based “slide show” of the steps. It’s a really neat little tool and I can’t wait for it to become ubiquitous on every desktop! The program is called psr.exe; you can also search for it from Control Panel under “Record steps to reproduce a problem”.
- I Want My Quick Launch Toolbar Back! You might have noticed that the old faithful Quick Launch toolbar is not only disabled by default in Windows 7, it’s actually missing from the list of toolbars. As is probably obvious, the concept of having a set of pinned shortcut icons is now integrated directly into the new taskbar. Based on early user interface testing, we think that the vast majority of users out there (i.e. not the kind of folk who read this blog, with the exception of my mother) will be quite happy with the new model, but if you’re after the retro behavior, you’ll be pleased to know that the old shortcuts are all still there. To re-enable it, do the following:
- Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar
- In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch - Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.
- Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.
If it’s not obvious by the semi-tortuous steps above, it’s worth noting that this isn’t something we’re exactly desperate for folks to re-enable, but it’s there if you really need it for some reason. Incidentally, we’d love you to really try the new model first and give us feedback on why you felt the new taskbar didn’t suit your needs.
- Windows Movie Maker. Windows 7 doesn’t include a movie editing tool – it’s been moved to the Windows Live Essentials package, along with Photo Gallery, Mail and Messenger. Unfortunately, Windows Live Movie Maker is currently still in an early beta that is missing most of the old feature set (we’re reworking the application), and so you might be feeling a little bereft of options. It goes without saying that we intend to have a better solution by the time we ship Windows 7, but in the meantime the best solution for us early adopters is to use Windows Movie Maker 2.6 (which is essentially the same as the most recent update to the Windows XP version). It’s missing the full set of effects and transitions from the Windows Vista version, and doesn’t support HD editing, but it’s pretty functional for the typical usage scenario of home movie editing. Download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 from here:
http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc - Hiding the Windows Live Messenger Icon. Hopefully your first act after Windows 7 setup completed was to download and install the Windows Live Essentials suite of applications (if not, then you’re missing out on a significant part of the Windows experience). If you’re a heavy user of IM, you may love the way that Windows Live Messenger is front and central on the taskbar, where you can easily change status and quickly send an IM to someone. the other hand, you may prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray where it’s been for previous releases. If so, you can fool the application into the old style of behavior. To do this, close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode. Bingo!
Anamigo: Pets and pet lovers unite
Jan 13th
Anamigo.com is an online community where you can find everything about pets and the people that love them. Aside from the tips and advice on pet care and the latest accessories, you will find adorable photos of member’s pets. If you’re into dog pictures, cat pictures, puppy pictures and pictures of all the other pets around the world, you’ll love Anamigo.com, your pets place online.
- Anamigo.com sponsors a PET PHOTO CONTEST
- Win up to $300 a week – Daily prizes!
- Anamigo.com launches a first of it’s kind social network for pet love.
An Animated History of the Internet
Jan 13th
The “History of the Internet” by Mehil Bilgil is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet. The history is told using voiceover accompanied by PICOL icons, a pictorial communication language created by Bilgil for his university thesis, these of which will be available for download soon. On blog.picol.org you can get news about this project and some Picol Icons are already downloadable.
You can see the credits for this movie on
lonja.de/motion/mo_history_internet.html
History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.
