IT Answer Guy

I will be attending Abacus I.T.’s next Dave and Busters Technology Seminar. Here is the link for registration. http://www.goabacus.com/news-a-events/events.html

I have a Ford Fusion with Microsoft SYNC technology. Over the last two weeks, I was experiencing issues using the voice commands for both music on a USB drive and dialing phone book contacts. The system would no longer accept voice commands to play songs on my USB drive and said, “The device does not support voice commands.” The phone error was, “The requested contact is not currently available in the phonebook.” I took it to the dealer and they explained that it should “fix itself” and other people had similar problems. After some searching on the internet, I found the fix. REBOOT IT! In order to reboot it I had to crawl under the steering wheel area and locate the passenger fuse box. Opened it up and pulled fuse #13 (a 5 AMP fuse – see your manual for the SYNC fuse in your car). After 30 seconds, put it back in and presto, I was again able to use the voice commands.

Facebook has tightened up security by offering the ability to encryption via HTTPS. Check out this link http://t.co/tdzqQVe

I have recently spent some time working to rejuvenate my blog. The first order of business was to update the overall look and feel of the site. I found some great resources available and settled on this theme. WordPress is my blogging tool of choice and it is very easy to change themes on the fly, but they do require tweaking a line or two of code here and there. I have also been working to integrate my blog with other social networking sites (facebook, linkedIn and twitter). The idea is a single post on my blog can reach a variety of contacts and friends as well as to allow visitors of this site to connect in other ways. I’m still exploring the use of other “widgets” and tools to use with the site. I’m sure there are more changes coming, but for now… here it is!

Just put together a new system for the house. Running windows 7 64 bit on an AMD Phenom II 3.4 GHz with an 6GB/S SSD drive for the OS. Boots in about 12 seconds from post and it’s just really fast. I’m also experimenting with the newly redesigned windows backup software and although I haven’t had to restore anything yet, it seems much better than the old NT backup. I would recommend my build to anyone – very pleased!

Installed Windows 7 x86 Ultimate on a Samsung Netbook NC10 this weekend.  It resolved all  of the issues I was having with XP Home and hibernation / standby failures.  The new OS is running smoooooooth…  no problems to report as of today.  I have not tried the new auto share features in windows 7 for printing and media, but I will explore at some point.  In order to install on the netbook with no cd, I had to convert a USB stick to a bootable drive, extract the Windows 7 ISO and install.  The entire process was painless.

I have been using windows 7 since the “release candidate” version was available. I installed the 64 bit version on an HP laptop which is a few years old now. This is by far the most stable Microsoft operating system I have ever used. It’s clean and just runs (sounds like Mac OS, huh?). I have not had many issues with compatibility either. Just one tip from me today – when you need to run a telnet session or route add statement from a command prompt, you need to first right click on the command prompt icon and select run as administrator – that will save you some gray hairs!  Enjoy Windows 7… I do!

Building a technology website is a challenging task.  Some of the things we had to keep in mind included; highlighting “featured” services and solutions rather than trying to release a site that lists EVERYTHING we do.  An effort was made to keep it simple and clear – Identify the target audience and speak to them.  So often people will ask what it is I do, to say that “I work with computers.” doesn’t always get the point across   It was important to show upcoming events and make whitepapers available to visitors.  Additional changes will be made to the site in the very near future… it’s not the FINAL product, but we are pleased with the new look.   Click here to check out the site!