Peter Vatistas

All cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies tomorrow (02/29/2008) and you will start to receive sale calls.

…..YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone:

888-382-1222 - National DO NOT CALL list.

It will only take a minute of your time and it blocks your cell phone number for five (5) years. You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

Do it now and save yourself from annoying sales calls and paying for the minutes to listen to their sales pitch.

The other night I was organizing all my files, pictures, and music on my computer and I realized if I were to lose even one folder I would be screwed. Normally I run backups every night using an external drive but I never really checked it. I decided to check my backup drives to make sure everything was working properly and the data was there, it wasn’t.

Now just so you know, at one time or another my backup drives were working properly and when I needed to restore any data it was not that hard. For some reason my main backup drive had failed and then data was lost but fortunately for me I still had everything on my main drives. That got me thinking, what is the best and easiest solution out there for backing up my data without worrying about replacing hard drives or making sure everything is running properly. I am an IT guy by day, I don’t want to be an IT guy at home.

A few hours later I found the solution I was looking for and it was a bit overwhelming. I posted my question for a remote backup solutions in many forums, blogs, as well as emailing my IT friends and colleagues; almost everyone said “Mozy“. So I went to the Mozy website and signed up for their MozyHome Free account, 2GB’s of storage! Here is a few features Mozy offers to all their customers, free and paid:

* Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
* 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
* 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
* Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
* New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
* Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
* Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.
* MozyHome currently supports Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4
* MozyPro supports Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista.

Those are some pretty slick services and support for no up front or monthly charges. Whats really cool is their software that is installed on your computer. The application itself runs in the background and has a very small footprint with regards to your memory (RAM) and CPU utilization. Another cool feature is how you can set the amount of bandwidth you want it to use during backups. Because I have a cable modem I set that puppy as high as it can go but for anyone out there who has DSL or less you can throttle it to whatever you need.

Whether your looking for a backup solution or not, Mozy is the only free, full-featured remote backup service. Get peace of mind - click here to try Mozy today.

More and more people are emailing me, annoyed at popup windows in Firefox that cannot resize and are the wrong dimension (this becomes an issue when you can’t see a damn thing!). It never really bothered me until today when I visited 2 websites where this issue occurred and I was forced to use IE7 to see the popup. So, here is the solution:

1. In Firefox, type about:config in the address bar.
2. Scroll down to dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable and double-click it (changes to bold and value changes to true.)
3. Done. Just restart Firefox and have endless ability to resize all popup windows. Wow.

As you all know I am an avid user of Web CEO for my SEO/SEM solutions company. Although there are a few other tools and applications I use, Web CEO is by far the most powerful and stable application I have ever used in this field. I easily spend the majority of my day using Web CEO for just about all steps of my search engine optimization for all my clients.

Become an expert in SEO quickly and easily:

* Web CEO software package consisting of 12 potent tools to organize your efforts
* Professional Training Course in Search Engine Marketing to learn all the best practices

Web CEO is a full-range search engine optimization software with advanced site troubleshooting and web analytics functionality. Here are a few facts about Web CEO:

The choice of 440,000+ businesses.
Web CEO stands on guard of the rankings of IBM and Motorola. These companies have no right to make mistakes. What about you?

Simple and user-friendly.
Packed with powerful features, Web CEO still can boast an ultra user-friendly interface that turns a novice into an SEO expert right away after installation.

Completely Safe.
Employing Google API and cutting-edge human emulation techniques, Web CEO makes the optimization process absolutely safe for you and your site. Some of the important tools you will find in the package will help you:

* Get suggestions for new keywords relevant to your business and research your own keywords
* Get optimization advice and tweak your Web pages in friendly editing environment
* Create link partnerships
* Keep track of your site’s rankings and links
* Get comprehensive real-time visitor reports

I’m sure your looking at this like I just wrote a sales pitch but if you’ve read my blog before you’ll know I don’t sell a damn thing. In addition to that fact - WebCEO is free! Just download, install and get your rank on.

Download the free edition of Web CEO and get access to the Training Course now!

In addition to Web CEO’s awesome application and training program I totally recommend that you grab the latest copy of SEO Book by Aaron Wall. It doesn’t matter how much you know about search engine optimization/marketing, SEO Book is by far one of the best (if not THE BEST) reference and training materials available today.

That. Just. Happened.

If you read the comments from “How to Install OS X Leopard on a PC - iATKOS v1.0i Tutorial” you’ll see the issues I had when I tried to install Microsoft Windows XP after removing Ox86 Leopard from my Compaq laptop. When I booted the Windows XP Pro installation CD I was getting the error message “Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer”. After trying several times to partition and format (with no luck) I decided to try a very neat tool out called nLite.

nLite allowed me to configure my Microsoft Windows install CD by adding drivers and applications. I downloaded my laptop’s sata controller driver from Compaq’s website and added it and to the driver configuration portion of nLite as well as selecting “Bootable ISO”. After a couple minutes I had a new bootable Windows XP installation CD and no more missing hard disk error.

From what I found this error is quite normal for people that have sata hard drives, who have installed Microsoft Windows Vista and decided to downgrade back to Microsoft Windows XP.

Click Here Download nLite

Dell Drivers | HP Drivers | Compaq Drivers | Gateway Drivers | Sony Drivers | Asus | Toshiba

Now here is a common issue I see all the time for many Ubuntu laptop users. After installing Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on a laptop the ability to control the volume using the laptop’s keyboard keys does not work (often times).

To fix this you’ll need to determine the device’s track the volume is actually adjusted on; by default I notice this is set to headphone and from my experience the correct one usually is PCM.

Open the volume control and press the volume up/down buttons to see which level moves. Once you’ve found the correct track (whether is be PCM or PCM2) you need to set it from within the sound preferences menu.

Go to system > preferences > sound and look at the bottom of the device tab. Select the correct track here and test; everything should now work properly.

A couple years back I signed up for Microsoft’s free beta version of Office Live which at the time I thought was pretty slick. Now after seeing what else is out their in regards to an online “Office” environment I knew that Office Live was not anything special. Google Apps is definitely the way to go for an online office environment and its very compatible with many general application including Office 2007/2008 and Mozilla Thunderbird (using IMAP).

I chose to migrate everything from my Office Live account (email, calendar, chat) to Google Apps (email, chat, calendar, docs) and host my domain at GoDaddy. I quickly found that the reference material available to do such a migration was non-existent and I had to find my own way. Now that I know exactly how to do it and have successfully done so several times, here is my step-by-step on how to cancel Office Live and transfer your domain to another registrar.

First off, go to here and fill out the information to receive your cancellation email with domain registration key.

1. Now go to http://www.melbourneit.com.au/cc/godirect/
2. Enter your domain name and registry key and click on continue.
3. Click on ‘create a new account’ below the text box where you are prompted for my account password.
a)     Fill up all the information needed:
i)      Contact Information
ii)     Login Information
b)     Other Information:
i)      The Country Code is “1″ for United States (for UK it is 44)
ii)     The email address you enter must not be related to the domain you are attempting to transfer/manage.
4)     After filling up all the information, check the box that says I have read and understood the Sign up Terms and Conditions. I agree to abide by the terms and conditions, as stated there in.
5)     Click Create.  Now your account is created.
6)     On the My Account Console page, click Logout on the right side of the page.
7)     Now you will be redirected to the Melbourne IT web site.
8)     Click Manage Domain Name on the right side of the page.
9)     Type your domain and registry key.
10)  Click Enter Management.
11)  Click Transfer management to Melbourne IT.
12)  Sign in using the username and password for your Melbourne IT account using the username and password, which you created for your Melbourne IT account.
13)  Click Continue after you have verified all the information on the page.
14)  Click on My Account console.
15)  Click on the link “View/Manage domain name” under the Domain Names.
16)  Click on your domain name (customer domain name) under the Domain Name section.
17)  Click on the Unlock Domain Name.
18)  To change name server, click on Change Delegation Details under Name Server Details on the right side of the page. Here, you can change the domain name server settings for your new service provider.
19)  To obtain new authorization code in order to transfer your domain, click Retrieve Domain Name (auth info) Password (on the same page on point 17).

Now you have all the necessary information and your domain is unlocked and ready for transfer. Log into your favorite domain registrar and begin the transfer with the credentials provided using the steps above.

From here I transfered my domain to GoDaddy which took about 2 or 3 business days; when the transfer was complete I pointed all my cname & mx records to Google’s names servers. Since then I have never been happier with my email solution and full online office experience.

Good luck!

A few days ago I installed OS X Leopard on two different PC’s, a Compaq laptop and a SuperMicro Dual Quad-Core Xeon powerhouse with 8GB ram. Both machines run OS X Leopard perfectly and the installation process was just as straightforward and easy as installing OS X on a Mac, only a few extra steps!

So how did I install OS X Leopard on my PC? Simple: iATKOS v1.0i

Do a quick search using your favorite torrent search portal for “iATKOS v1.0i” , download it, burn to DVD, pop that puppy into your test computer’s DVD drive and reboot**. During the install process there are a few extra steps so I will list what you need to do below:

# When the Welcome screen pops up click Continue

1. At the Terms & Conditions screen do not click Agree yet, click Utilities on the Apple bar at the top of your screen and then select Disk Utility from the drop down menu (Utilities > Disk Utility).

2. Select your hard drive’s partition on the left hand side then select the Erase tab on the right.

3. Now click the Erase button on the bottom right and click Erase again on the pop-up. When this is complete close the Disk Utility.

4. Now go back up to the Apple menu bar and select Utilities > Darwin_Boot

5. Type Y (yes) to continue, 1 for your HDD number (if your using the main HDD), and 1 again for the partition number OS X will be installed on (if your installing on a different partition enter that partition number instead of 1).

6. Type Y (yes) to install boot efi and type Y (yes) again to confirm. Once it this process in complete it will display [process completed] and you can now exit out of Darwin_boot.

7. Please read the Terms & Conditions for iATKOS v1.0i and click Agree (if you agree).

8. Now your ready to install OS X Leopard on your PC, just follow the on screen guide and your good to go!

Best of luck!

** I will not be held liable for any damage that results from this tutorial. If you attempt to install OS X Leopard (iATKOS v1.0i) onto your computer it is at your own risk.

UPDATE (June 19th, 2008): For your questions and/or comments go to the Peter-V Forum and post here: How to Install OS X Leopard on a PC - iATKOS v1.0i Tutorial - Forum Style

This is actually quite a simple task yet I’ve received several emails recently about how to burn an ISO to disc in Leopard OS X. I totally understand the reason for this question from the general OS X user because to do this you have to know the tool to use and normally it is used by the intermediate/advanced user.

So, how do you burn an .iso image to a CD or DVD in OS X?

Insert the CD/DVD into your Mac, locate your .ISO image and follow these very easy steps:

Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities and run Disk Utility (Disk Utility.app)

In Disk Utility, go to File > Open Disk Image and select the .ISO you want to burn to disc

Now click Burn

Thats it! Now you should see a little box pop up with the status of your ISO image being written to the disc.

Come and get it! Beta 1 of Community Server 2008 is now available:

* Web Installer: http://get.communityserver.org/download/cs2008b1web
* Windows Installer: http://get.communityserver.org/download/cs2008b1msi
* Upgrade Tool: http://get.communityserver.org/download/cs2008b1up

Below is a brief list of what you’ll find in this Beta:

* Groups. We’ve added support for private and public groups that support their own membership, blog, forum, gallery, and pages. You can now easily create mini-communities for friends or for your team.

* Web Services APIs. Community Server 2008 includes a complete Web Services layer for working with Community Server. This makes it even easier to share data from within Community Server with other applications or tools. The Web Services implementation is a RESTful implementation and we also include a client library to include within applications that need to talk to Community Server.

* Friends. We’ve completely overhauled the friends functionality to make it easier to both manage and add friends. You’ll find the friends behavior much more like FaceBook’s friend functionality.

* Media Gallery. We’ve merged the Photo/File Galleries into a single Media Gallery application. The Media Gallery includes viewers for rendering images, audio, video making it even easier to share content in your community.

* Message Streams. New to Community Server is a message stream application that enables multi-user conversations (formerly private messages), social streams (similar to FaceBook), profile comments, and more.

* Enterprise File Storage. We’ve completely overhauled file storage so all files are in a Centralized File Store (includes both a File System and Amazon S3 provider).

* Widgets. Community Server now support shareable widgets in all sidebars.

* Simplified Permissions. We’ve tried to simplify the rich permissions functionality that Community Server has always been known for. All the previous permissions capabilities still exist, but we’ve added some tools to make it even easier to manage and apply permissions.

* User Experience. We’ve started to introduce some new user experiences in both the Control Panel and other aspects of the site. When Community Server 2008 ships you’ll find a much friendly and beautiful experience for both running and managing your community.

Many, many additional new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes.