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Will Cuil kill Google?

cuil Yesterday (7/28/2008) all media were talking about a new launched search engine called CUIL (pronounce cool). Does it really become a threat to Google or other search engine? I say no, at least now. The conclusion was based on my own tests and comparisons. What is Cuil anyway? Cuil was founded by a former Google employee named Anna Patterson along a few other former Google engineers. Instead searching keywords in web pages like Google is doing, Cuil is trying to analyze the contents of all web pages and give the search results. The following is what it says about itself.

About Cuil

Cuil (pronounced COOL) is a search engine that combines the largest Web index with content-based relevance methods, organized results, and complete user privacy. The company’s next generation approach to search is the result of proprietary breakthroughs in search architecture and ranking algorithms. Cuil’s employees have extensive experience in search, having worked at Google, IBM, eBay, AltaVista, Stanford University, the Internet Archive and other technology companies and research centers. Cuil is located in Menlo Park, California and has received series A funding from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners, and series B funding from Madrone Capital Partners. Cuil derives its name from an old Irish word for knowledge, reflecting the background of co-founder and CEO, Tom Costello, who hails from Drogheda, Ireland. For more information, please visit www.cuil.com.

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How to remote connect to Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005

Challenge: By default, the SQL Server Express 2005 was not installed for remote access. Which means networking protocols are disabled by default in SQL Server Express. Thus, if you simply installed Express and chose all the defaults like I did, SQL Server Express will only be able to have connections originating on the local machine where SQL Server is installed.

That is why I got the following error message when I tried to connect to one SQL Server Express instance installed on another server from my desktop’s SQL Server Management Studio Express.

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server.  When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: -1)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=-1&LinkId=20476

And this is the screen shot I have.

sql_remote_error

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Fix a bug in YetAnotherForum version 1.9.1.8

YetAnotherForumAs my previous post said, I installed Yet Another Forum v1.9.1.8 on my server, then I created a board/forum. In my first and only one forum, I turned on the moderate mode which means that any post topic will not show till the forum administrator approves.

Then I went ahead to create the first new topic, and later on a few replied have been posted. Everything was fine but a few days ago the front page could not be seen. I tried a couple of times, only saw the error messages (There has been a serious error loading the forum. No futher information is available…) as the following screen shot. And funny thing was I still could access to other web pages include the administrative portion.

Error Message

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Have I been hacked or something else…

1and1_cclogo Since this late noon, all of my domains on the Microsoft Windows Hosting server at 1and1.com could not be accessed. I called the tech support and was told all A records of my domain names have been pointed to an external IP address (82.165.204.153). Even I swore to the tech support that I did not make any changes on my DNS setup, but she insisted that only the owner of my account (of course, me) can do such changes. And I asked whether they could do some investigations to see who and when made such changes from logs, but I could not get any satisfied answer from her. Anyhow, the important part at this moment was to get all my domains back. So I had to manually change all A records back to my hosting server’s IP addresses. I was glad I only host less than 20 domains on this Microsoft platform, image I would have to change my Unix hosting domains (Shhhhh).

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IT guy knows the difference between American woman and Indian woman

Please click the +Audio MP3 button below to start.

I could not help but laughing when I heard it first on the wenxuecity.com web. Seriously, if you are younger than 18 years old, please do not listen especially the end of the conversation.

Download Audio American Women and Indian Women
(click Audio MP3 above to play this humor audio now)

Indian Woman
v.s.
American Women

Disclaimer: Again, this is only an interesting audio clip I got from the Internet, which I believe was recorded from a radio show. All characters mentioned in this audio clips were not verified by me or anyone on this blog yet. So please do not reflect to your personal life and do not take it up to the whole India national level. Just enjoy and have a laugh. Just is it!

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Street View, a cool feature from Google Maps

Google MapsHave you recently used Google Maps? Maybe you already noticed its new feature from the maps, yes, it is called Street View. What can it do? well, when you browser the maps (of course, on the website of http://maps.google.com) and click the Street View button on the map. You will see a little man icon on the map, and some street view photos will appear when you drag “you” (the little man) on some blue line highlighted roads. These photos just like what you can see when you walk or drive on the road of the Google maps.

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Yahoo Opens Search Technology To Third-Party Search Engines

By Scott Morrison
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) is hoping to boost revenue and steal market share from rival Google Inc. (GOOG) with a new plan that opens its search technology to third-party developers who want to build their own search engines.

The initiative lets partners tap into Yahoo’s back-end search technology - the algorithms and infrastructure that power its search engine - as a Web service, but allows them to control the presentation and ranking of the search results. Those partners, in return, would be required to run Yahoo search ads on their pages, with the two sides sharing revenue.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., company announced the program, dubbed Build Your Own Search Service, or BOSS, early Thursday.

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Get FCKeditor work on Oscommerce 2.2 release 2a

OSCommerceToday I downloaded All In One FCK Editor WYSIWYG Editor Oscommerce add-ons since I needed to add a WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor on one of my client’s Oscommerce Shopping Cart site.

After I did all uploadings and changes according to the Readme document, I got the following errors after I refreshed the back-end page.

Warning: Failed opening ‘fckeditor_php4.php’ for inclusion (include_path=”) in /var/www/html/catalog/admin/fckeditor/fckeditor.php on line 75

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How to disable/remove/uninstall incompatible add-ons in Firefox

firefox-extensions_thumbnailJust wanted to explore some add-ons after I installed the final version of Firefox 3.0 today. I found this add-on named TwitterFox in Get Add-ons Tab after I clicked Tools –> Add-Ons option. Excitedly installed it since I am using Twitter accounts now. But after the TwitterFox installation, my firefox 3.0 acted very wired. I could not bring the Firefox screen focused. It always hid in the taskbar, and the left/right click of my mouse did not even work at all on FireFox in the taskbar.

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Official Firefox 3.0 download site is down

I really tried to help Mozilla to make the Guinness Record for the most downloaded software within 24 hours. But unfortunately the poor preparation of Mozilla made it very difficult for me to even get on the website. I tried from 1:40pm (Eastern time, 40 minutes after the official release time) to 2:40pm and could not connect to the website. I am sure it was because too many people were connecting to the website at that moment, but Mozilla should have known better before it put such statement as Make Guinness Record on its website to promote Firefox and lure everybody.

I put some available screenshots below and hope the poor website will be back soon.

Mozilla Error

Mozilla.com which hosts Firefox and Thunderbird was down with “Service Unavailable” error message

Firefox Guinness

And the FireFox could not connect to the download page of Firefox 3.0 on Spreadfirefox website

Finally, I even tried the Firefox Check Updates… feature and no luck at all.

[Updated: the website is back now, it is not too late to download the firefox 3.0 and make the Guinness Record now before 18:00 EST 6/18/2008]

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Get Firefox 3.0 final and make the record

Download DayIf you like FireFox browser as I do, then I would suggest you do not miss today’s event: to download Firefox 3.0 final and to make the world record since today (6/17/2008 10 PDT) is the official release time for FireFox 3.0 Final.

But the final build of Firefox is now available for download on the FTP server. I could not resist and already grabbed my download and installed. (I will download again as soon as its official release becomes available because my downloading will help Set a Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software in 24 hours)

IMPORTANT: Downloads from FTP server and direct links will not count towards the Guinness World Record attempt for the most software downloads in a day. If participation in this event is important to you, wait for the official release.

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Fix wp.getusersblogs error in Windows Live Writer after upgrading to WordPress MU 1.5.1

I have been using Microsoft Windows Live Writer to update my blogs for a while, but today I got some errors when I tried to publish a post to my newly upgraded WordPress MU 1.5.1 blog. After this error message, I got a prompt windows to ask my blog logon user name and password. I thought the upgrading changed the user information anyhow, so that I updated my logon password, and re-typed it in Live Writer. When I re-published, again saw the same error. I stopped, and then tried to view the web blog within the WLW. The same wp.getusersblogs error popped-up as I encountered during the publishing.

The following is the detailed error message:

log Server Error - Server Error -32601 Occurred server error. requested method wp.getUsersBlogs does not exist. You must correct this error before proceeding.

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Make a free auto get/put files schedule with FTP scripts in DOS environment

Challenge:

msdosI need to pull over a file from our FTP server every minute to the database server. I do not want to install any FTP schedule utilities on the database server. So I decided to use the FTP.exe comes with the Windows server OS. I brought up a DOS prompt, type FTP and hit Enter. I got some prompt screens, what I needed to do is to provide the remote server IP (host name) and user credential information. After I logged on, I then can use some UNIX like commands as LS and GET to download files. Great, it approved that we really do not need a fancy FTP client program.

But how can I make the above process automatically, since I could not put user logon credentials into a DOS batch file.

Research Results:

To overcome the challenge above, I need to come up an FTP “script” which can work together with FTP in DOS, since FTP.exe supports scripting with the “-s:” option.

For example, if your plain text FTP script file has a name of FTPSCRIPT.TXT (assume you put the same directory as you type your DOS command), then you can use the following command to execute FTP script:

ftp -s:FTPSCRIPT.TXT

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Can not start a workflow from a survey response in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (MOSS 2007) with "Failed to Start" error

Challenge:

sharepoint When I was approached by a co-worker to come up a quick solution to design a training registration application. The requirement is to display all upcoming training events in calendar view and allow users to register to each training. And upon the registration is submitted, the training department and the user’s supervisor should receive notifications immediately (although not required now, but might need the approval from the supervisor in later development). The deadline is very…, how to say it, … how about this afternoon. Well, while the co-worker asked how to design the database tables and asp.net coding, I suggested why not giving the SharePoint a shot. Since I am the one proposed, then I had to create it for her.

Well, that was what I came up so far. In our Microsoft Office SharePoint Server System (MOSS) 2007 with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS), I created a calendar list to display training events; in the calendar item there was a link to another new created survey list acting as a registration form. Then I added a workflow to the survey so that emails will be sent out whenever a new response is added into the survey (or register list).

Everything is working fine, but however, the workflow does not start. Instead, the status of the workflow appears as Failed to Start.

Trouble-Shootings:

I searched this issue on Google, and I found out a lot of people had the similar errors before. Someone pointed out the cause was the user of application pool who should be Network Services instead of a user with administrative right; Someone suggested to re-active the workflow feature in SharePoint Application server; Someone asked whether it was done in SharePoint Designer  2007.

Continue reading ‘Can not start a workflow from a survey response in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (MOSS 2007) with "Failed to Start" error’

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