Archive for October, 2007

Broadband Speed Testing

Published on October 26, 2007 in Internet Related and Telecommunications. 0 Comments

It’s always a good idea to check the speed of your broadband connection just to make sure it’s as good as what you are paying for. To test your speed it is most ideal to use a test server provided by the ISP you use. Ask them if they provide one. Often it is an FTP server from which you can download a large file in order to check the speed of the download.

If your ISP does not provide a speed test system then check out the great list available at DSLreports and pick one or more of the test systems available in your country.

UPDATE: 28/11/2007

I have now found another system that is perhaps even better. Check it out at speedtest.net. It has a great looking interface, and it automatically shows you the closest server to where you are located. You can use it right here by clicking Start Test in the Speedtest Mini interface below (which requires your browser to have Flash v7 of above installed).

Speed Test requires at least version 7 of Flash. Please update your client.

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Optimize your Bittorrent download speed

Published on October 26, 2007 in Internet Topics. 0 Comments

If you are into download files via the P2P technology called Bittorrent you may want to make some changes to your system in order to get the highest download speed. There are many things one can to in order to optimise ones torrent speed. There is a great guide available at TorrentFreek. Also worth checking out is this link which is an article with many links to key topics for people new to bittorrent.

Free Network Monitoring and Management

Published on October 26, 2007 in Freeware Applications and Networking. 1 Comment

If you have a network to manage and / or monitor there are many options with regards to the software you can use. Prices can range greatly, and typically a relatively high investment of money is required. Relative, that it, to something like Spiceworks.

Spiceworks is free. What’s more the IT industry raves about its functionality and ease of use. When it comes to free network monitoring software and network management software, you may have to look no further than Spiceworks. Unless your network happens to have more than 250 assets on it, which is the limit Spiceworks can support. So for a small to medium sized business Spiceworks may be the perfect choice for network management. Did I mention it doesn’t cost much?

Check it out at www.spiceworks.com

Free Networking and Password tools

Published on October 23, 2007 in Freeware Applications, Internet Related and Windows XP. 0 Comments

The folks over at NirSoft have a fantastic range of free computer related tools. Categories include:

  • Password Recovery Utilities
  • Network Monitoring Tools
  • Internet Related Utilities
  • Command-line Utilities
  • Desktop Utilities
  • Freeware system tools

Whether you want to reveal passwords hidden behind ****s on your computer, recover passwords from files and email programs, get information on IP addresses on the Internet, retrieve your Windows installation key, manage your office add-ins, monitor data passing through your network adapter to the Internet and your local network, or perform a range of other similar tasks… NirSoft have the right tool for the job.

Wordpress 2.3 and Windows Live Writer issue

Published on October 17, 2007 in Wordpress and Wordpress Related. 2 Comments

I recently updated one of my Wordpress blogs to v2.3

All seemed to be going well until I tried to post a new entry using Windows Live Writer (v12.0.1277.816) and it had an issue. Live Writer would post the entry yet come back with an error. It would not know it had posted the entry and would therefore save it as a draft. Also, republishing the same (draft) entry would result in an entirely new copy being published on the blog. The error was this:

Invalid Server Response

The response to the metaWeblog.editPost method received from the weblog server was invalid:

Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server.

I hunted high and low for a solution. I did not find one. Then I thought perhaps there was an issue with my plugins. After disabling all plugins and then one-by-one reactivating them, I discovered the one causing the issue: Google Sitemaps v2.7.1

Looking up this plugin on the Wordpress 2.3 plugin compatibility list I see it is not compatible and that there is an updated version (3.0). I deleted the 2.7.1 version (just one file called sitemaps.php) and installed the folder and files for v3.0

After activating this new version I no longer get the publishing error on Windows Live Writer.

The lesson here is to check that all activated plugins are compatible with the latest version of Wordpress.

The Productive CAPTCHA System

Published on October 13, 2007 in Internet Related, Joomla, Tools, Web Applications, Web Design and Wordpress. 0 Comments

Looking for a CAPTCHA system to stop comment spamming on your blog or other web application?

It has been calculated that about 150,000 hours of human labor is spent filling out CAPTCHA requests on web sites wishing to reduce spam. Yet another waste of time and energy expended on dealing with idiots the persist in proliferating unwanted advertising material in this world.

The reCAPTCHA project doesn’t have the answer to eliminating website spammers but it does have a solution for putting the time spent filling out CAPTCHA questions into productive use. Every time the reCAPTCHA system dishes out CAPTCHA words it is in fact using this people-power to convert scanned copies of archived books into digital format. Click here to read more about it.

If you didn’t know about the huge online media archive over at www.archive.org you may like to check that out also. There you will find a vast library of free ebooks that are digitised copies of old books that are no longer under copyright protection. There are also many other resources at this site, including archives of millions of web sites.

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