Podbean’s New Podcast Statistics Feature is Broken
I've been using Podbean's podcast storage and feed service since late last year (2008). It is, quite honestly, the most inexpensive service I could find with the features and storage levels I wanted. In other words: They provide the best deal I have been able to find so far.
The recently changed their statistics reporting feature. I've been trying to convince them it is a broken user experience for me to no avail. One major change is that their statistics no longer reports near-realtime activity. It also no longer lets me display recent activity of all podcasts. Well, here's something I'm going to point them at: It is plain broken. I posted a new podcast (with Celio Redfly's marketing manager) on Friday night. As of Sunday morning, Podbean's chart for that podcast shows no activity.
However, if you look at the recent activity list just below the chart itself, you can see that this podcast is, in fact, actively downloaded through its iTunes feed or from the embedded web player in blog entry for it. I'm going to point Podbean's tech support to this blog item with screenshots in the hopes this will get them to at least fix this one aspect of this broken user experience.
FYI: My podcasts focus on mobile technology. The vast majority of these podcasts features guests from various mobile tech firms. You can find recent podcasts described at:
Regained 52.6GB Disk Space After Windows Vista SP2 Update: Also 45005 Registry Changes
After seeing this in PC World...
Windows Vista SP2: Readers Report Big Increases in Free Disk Space
...I decided to take some notes when updating the only PC I have running Windows Vista to Service Pack 2 (SP2). Here's what I found.
1. I had 74.4GB free hard disk space before beginning the SP2 update. I had 137GB free after the process and before rebooting the system. So, I recovered 52.6GB of disk space.
2. The SP2 update includes two reboots. The second reboot comes after the second phase of the three phase update process.
3. My screen went text-only during the second phase of the update and 45,005 registry changes were made during this phase based on the messages on the screen. You can see a frame grab above from a video I recorded during this process.
4. There was still 137GB of free space remaining after the second reboot from the third update phase.
Configuring VirtualBox to run Moblin 2.0 Beta
Moblin is a Linux distro developed by Intel and Novell that is tweaked for netbooks. I decided to test it out in a virtual machine first to see if I liked it or not. If you use the free (for personal use) VirtualBox 2.2.2 like I did, you need to make two simple configuration changes to the VM before starting to install Moblin. If you look at the screenshot above of the VirtualBox General-Advanced settings, you can see red arrows pointing at the two configuration options that need to be selected: APIC & PAE/NX.
The screenshot above shows Moblin 2.0 Beta running in VirtualBox. I'm not very impressed with Moblin 2.0 Beta so far and probably won't try it on a physical netbook. I think Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) is better suited for my netbook Linux needs.
Windows 7 RC Pushing Us to Go Green?
I mentioned a few days ago that migrating an old desktop PC from Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 Release Candidate seemed to result in a noticeably slower system. I think I know why now.
Taking a look at Win7RC's power options on the desktop showed just the "Power Saving" and "Balanced" settings visible. I had to dig into the Advanced Options to find the "High Performance" power setting. Selecting this seemed to restore the desktop's performance to what it "felt like" with Win7Beta (I haven't performed any actual performance tests).
I wonder if Microsoft is trying to force users to go green (or buy faster PCs) by thinking that Balanced is the faster processor performance option available after a quick glance?
If your PC seems slower after migrating from Win7Beta to Win7RC, check your power options and hunt for the High Performance power setting.
Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
YouTube video courtesy of OreillyMedia
I enjoyed Brian Jepson's YouTube video demo of an Arduino based on Massimo Banzi's book (from O'Reilly Media) so much that I ordered the book...
Getting Started with Arduino (Make: Projects)
Various models of the board have been produced over the years. You can see my Arduino Diecimila board in the photo above next to an Apple remote control for size comparison.
Windows 7 RC Installations: 1 Fast, 1 Slow – No Idea Why
I installed Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) on two computers so far.
The first was an Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook that had Windows 7 Beta installed on it. I performed a clean non-formatting installation where the Win7Beta and associated directories were moved to another folder that RC does not look at. This installation took, perhaps 30 minutes including moving the old Beta related files to an archive folder.
The second was an old desktop PC with an AMD Athlon processor. It too had Win7Beta installed. The Beta installation took about 30 minutes. The move to RC, however, took hours. It took so long that after about 90 minutes I had to leave to run some errands and simply left the PC on to continue the installation process. The update had finally completed while I was out running my errands.
Here's another oddity. Win7RC seems to be running as fast as Win7Beta on my netbook (Eee PC 1000HA with an Intel Atom N270 processor). However, Win7RC seems much slower on the AMD Athlon based desktop PC. I haven't run any benchmarks to compare the two yet. However, tasks like starting the Firefox browser seems much slower on the desktop running Win7RC compared to the same PC when it ran Win7Beta.
Patch Tuesday: Windows Update Brought my Quad-Core PC to its Knees
This is not news. But, I'm amazed every Patch Tuesday that Windows Update can bring a quad-core PC with 4GB of RAM running Windows Vista to its knees. You can see a typical Windows Task Manager performance chart snapshot above.
Will There be a Windows 7 Release Candidate 2?
I recall reading statements from Microsoft that there would be one Windows 7 Beta and one Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC). So, why does this Microsoft On10.net blog item...
Top 7 Things to Check Out in Windows 7 RC1
...mention "RC1". Is it a simple typo? Or will there be an RC2 that pushes Windows 7's release date a bit further out. I sure hope not. I ran Windows 7 Beta from January through the end of April. And, I downloaded and installed Windows 7 RC last week Friday (May 1). These installs were on the netbook I take nearly everywhere with me including two trips to Seattle and New York in March. It is a "production" machine and, quite frankly, has been running a lot better than the "production" version of Windows Vista on my quad-core desktop.
Windows 7 Release Candidate Clean Install Does NOT Involve Reformatting
I'm a bit behind in listening to the Windows Weekly podcast by Paul Thurrott and Leo LaPorte. So, I just listened to WW #104 a few hours ago. During the course of the podcast, Paul and Leo discuss Windows 7 Release Candidate and commented that the best way to install the RC is a clean install because it does not support upgrading from XP or 7 Beta (all true).
However, they then mention that a clean install involves reformatting the drive. This is not true for the RC or the previous 7 Beta release. Here's what happens.
If you are performing a clean install for the first time on an existing Windows XP installation, the XP folder is moved to Windows.old. If you, like me, are performing a clean install on a PC that had XP on it first and currently has 7 Beta, the old XP files remain in the folder Windows.old while the 7 Beta files are placed in Windows.old.000.
However, the former version of Windows is not the only thing placed in those .old folders. You can see that the Program Files, Perflogs and Users folders along with autoexec.bat and config.sys files are also placed there. The new Windows 7 RC files completely replace those folders and the files in them to create a clean install. So, you won't see your old software or configuration. But, they are all there in the old folders until you delete them.
I actually looked for an option to either low-level format the partition or simply format the existing NFTS partition but did not see it during the Windows 7 RC installation process.