My new URL Shortening Service, named 5PL.US arose from my want of a free, simple, clean, and otherwise uncluttered url shortening service. You can get a free shortened URL from 5PL.US quickly and easily within seconds. After choosing a custom alias or getting your uniquely generated link alias, you can paste this shortened url into your webpage or document and link to the same original page, except with a much easier to remember link. You can also easily track the statistics for your generated link by adding + to the end of the link. (eg. http://5pl.us/c which links to Cha2e.com, http://5pl.us/c+ for the statistics of the link)

I hope you’ll check out the new free URL shortening service and consider using it for your url shortening needs. At only 5 characters long, and still a fairly new service, the URL generated is going to be extremely short, even if it is randomly processed.

The benefits of a shortened url, above and beyond the obvious convenience, tend to be extremely useful for people trying to brand the look of their urls. With custom aliases, you can choose a catchy name for the link alias and produce memorable and unique links for your company or online presence.

Hope to hear some feedback about this one!

The BuddyPress scene is a bit barren at the moment. To help the development community out, I’ve added another project to the mix, the BuddyPress Resource.

It will feature many of the more popular buddypress files as well as active and growing buddy press resource community forums.

I’ve been working with BuddyPress a lot lately, and seen firsthand that there is a demand for a good BuddyPress resource to really take advantage of this powerful platform. There are a couple nice Premium BuddyPress sites out there offering their Premium plugins and themes, but while that makes them some nice pocket change, it doesn’t help the BuddyPress community out much in the long run.

The aim of this project is to grow a thriving community of Wordpress MU and BuddyPress developers that shares, expands, and ultimately improves the BuddyPress scene. Hope to see you on there!

Behind almost every successful web application, there is an easy-to-use & feature-rich API as they simply help the main application to spread into others & reached by more users.

Also, an API-enabled application can be easily developed further using the API itself.

In order to create an API for your web application, here are 10 tutorials to get you started. But before that, you may want to checkout the video: How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters by Google.

http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/how-to-create-an-api-10-tutorials/

If you run into this error:

cp: cannot stat `compile/svscan’: No such file or directory

Look in the src/ directory of the Daemontools folder. Open the file called error.h.

In that file, look for the line…

extern int errno;

Change it to say…

#include <errno.h>

Now go back to the Daemontools folder and run package/install to install.

If it’s successful you should see:

Creating /service…
Adding svscanboot to inittab…
init should start svscan now.

Problem/Symptom:

No attachments in Simple Machines (SMF) 2.0 RC1 after upgrade. No captcha images in the registration area of SMF 2.0 RC1 after recently upgrading.

Solution:

Find and replace the code snippets below..

Find:

Replace with:

My Personal Experience:
After recently upgrading my 1.1.6 version of SMF to 1.1.9 and having issues with that upgrade, I decided to just go ahead and upgrade to 2.0 RC1 since I’ve been running it on several forums with great success. After a successful upgrade, I tried testing the registration process and the captcha images were not showing. A few minutes later I tried a test post with an attachment and the result was a blank page. I posted another test post without an image and tried modifying it afterward and loading an attachment. That resulted in another blank page. After searching around, I found this code snippet that cured both issues.

Solution referenced from:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=312047.msg2073091#msg2073091

FOX12 in Oregon decided to do a little investigative reporting on computer repair shops. Unfortunately for the Geeksquad, someone exposed their habit of “over-diagnosing” and over-charging their customers. Check out the video below for the full report. The Geeksquad missed the mark pretty badly..

http://www.kptv.com/video/19513766/

As a web guy, I’ve been using Mozilla’s Firefox web browser for several years, pretty much since it was released. Back in the day when I used Windows 2000 and right when I started using Windows XP, I began removing Internet Explorer from my person systems to prevent possible malware attacks and browser vulnerabilities. I’ve used several methods over the years to uninstall internet explorer, but this is by far the easiest utility I’ve used.

I opened Nero to burn a CD today and was faced with a windows error report screen. Every time I would try to open Nero it would crash just past the loading screen. When the error report came up I clicked more info to investigate the problem. I found bcgcbpro730.dll was the cause of the crash and began searching for a solution.

Now, mind you, just because Nero Burning Rom didn’t work, didn’t stop Nero Express at all. Which for me, quickly ruled out any serious underlying issue, it was probably gui related or a simple display issue. After digging through a few forum threads, I found the solution I had been looking for.

A registry setting handling various window display position and other interface-related settings was the culprit. Simply go into RegEdit (Start > Run > Regedit) and search for the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Ahead\Nero - Burning Rom\BCGWorkspace

Delete the key and all subkeys and BAM! no more Nero Burning Rom startup issues.

Alternate solution:

- Right-click Nero Start Smart and select properties
- Select Compatability tab
- Select Windows 2000 as the mode and hit Apply.

I’ve had customers who have either bought a Mac system used or forgotten their login credentials. I was able to reset the user accounts on the system by booting the system into Single User mode (boot system while holding down APPLE+S) then using the following in the command line:

/sbin/fsck -y [Enter]
/sbin/mount -uw / [Enter]
rm /var/db/.applesetupdone [Enter]
reboot [Enter]

Problem/Symptom:

Adobe’s new CS3 (Photoshop and Illustrator mostly) experiences slow performance and lagging when opening or creating files regardless of size or type.

Solution:

Check your printers. this error is related to the default printer and print service. If you have an offline or unconnected printer, this is most likely your issue. Remove any offline or old/duplicate references to networked printers. If the printer is timing out, you will experience lag in Photoshop and Illustrator even on fast systems.

My Personal Experience: After installing the Adobe Photoshop CS3 Trial and using it for a little bit, I noticed it bogging very badly whenever I would create a new image or open an existing file of any type or size. After searching around for a while, I caught wind of it being printer related, more specifically the printspooler service in windows. I had recently moved and not hooked up one of my networked printers. After removing the offline printers (and printer that was trying to connect but would time-out) Photoshop opened files and created new ones with a snap!! I’m very glad to have resolved this issue, it was getting very annoying having Photoshop lag on a Dual Core system running 4gb of DDR2 on a Rapter! Anyways, glad to have it cleared up! For anyone out there having this same issue, check your default printer and also remove any offline printers or ones that cannot connect!

Note: If you decide to repost this solution on your site, please reference my post above by linking to me somewhere on your page. Thanks!!! Hope this information helps!

UPDATE: If you missed this one, the ability to view PSD files in Windows Explorer is always nice!