Dude, Where's My Phone (or Tablet)?

Earlier this week Google released Android Device Manager, an online tool to locate misplaced Android devices.  This handy little tool will let you: locate your phone or tablet on a map in real time  (if you think you left it somewhere), ring it at max volume (if it’s misplaced - yes, you could call it from another phone, but this will override ‘Silent’ or ‘Vibrate Only’ so it will ring , or erase it (if it's been stolen or ...

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Going Hands-On with Google Chromecast

OK - let's start with the basics: Chromecast is a $35 dongle that you plug into an HDMI port on your HDTV and it allows you to use your phone, tablet or laptop to stream (cast) content to your TV screen. It will cast content from Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, and Google Play Music. Google promises more apps, like Pandora, coming soon. Something that Google doesn't mention is that almost anything that plays natively in a Chrome ...

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Google+ Hangouts Adds Remote Desktop

Google has added a couple of new enhancements to the Hangouts.  You can now connect to another user's computer and control it with their permission.  (Think remote TA) They've also increased the number of telephone connections to a Hangout from 2 to 5.  So now there's more space for people that are away from their connected devices, but have a phone and want to participate.  More details on the Google+ Daily bl ...

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The Twinkies are Coming!!

Okay, so a bit off topic from my usual posts, but you've got to acknowledge the important things in life. The new Hostess company announced last week that it is going to reopen bakeries in Kansas and Georgia.  They announced today that they'll also be opening bakeries in Illinois and Indiana.  They're starting to staff up now and might have bakeries open by the end of May.  The goal is to have Twinkies, HoHos and all the rest back ...

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Hotfix for CF Admin Console Vulnerability

Adobe has released a hotfix to address a vulnerability in ColdFusion 10, 9.0.2, 9.0.1 and 9.0 (for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX) whereby an attacker could impersonate an authenticated user and potentially gain access to a secured website/application or ColdFusion’s administrative console. Take a look at Adobe's Security Bulletin, and  the Tech Note for more information and to download and install the pat ...

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Deleting a Printer that Just Won't Go Away

Have you ever had a problem deleting a printer? I'd physically gotten rid of an old printer, but I couldn't delete it from my Windows 7 computer; no matter how many times I tried, it just wouldn't go away. If you're having a similar problem, here's how I cleared it up. There was a document in the queue that I'd cancelled, but it wouldn't drop.  That was holding the printer.  I needed to force the print spool to release the document, ...

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Need to Open Up Space on an iOS Device? PhoneClean 2.0

I was doing some Groundhog Day cleaning on my iPad, you know, moving photos, videos, and such off to get back a little storage space.  When I was done, I saw that I had nearly 5 gig of space being eaten up by 'Other'. Some of that space usage is legit.  Application data, contacts and the like. But devices can accumulate quite a bit of detritus just from day-to-day usage; temp files, caches, off-line files, cookies, scripts, and corrupt ...

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CFIMAP, SSL, and CACERT

I was working on a little ColdFusion project the other day.  Something rather uncomplicated actually.  We needed to write an application that would: automatically check a mailbox for messages parse information from valid messages into a database move those messages from the Inbox to another folder delete any other messages from the box Simple enough to do; now time to test. I kick-off the process and - An exception occurred when setting up mail server parameters. This exception was caused by: javax.mail.MessagingException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX ...

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Finding Empty ntext and varchar Fields in SQL

Just the other day, I ran into another one of those little ‘slips your mind until you need it’ items. In SQL, when checking for empty (no, NOT null, empty) fields with data types of ntext or varchar, querying for >’’ is not valid. So, how can I find the records with empty fields? The test here would be to check for ANY string. Well, LIKE ‘_%’ would be the way to do it. For example, looking for records with an empty 'description' field (data type ntext) in a table with 200 entries: SELECT * FROM widgets WHERE description IS NULL OR description NOT LIKE ‘_%’ would return the 17 ...

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Price Increase on Windows 8

If you're interested in picking up a license for Windows 8 now's the time to do it. Microsoft has announced an increase of $160 that will take effect on February 1st. The retail price will jump from $40 to $200. Here's the breakdown: The Windows 8 Pro upgrade edition will be available online and at retail for $199.99  The Windows 8 upgrade edition will be available online and at retail for $119.99 MSRP  The Windows 8 Pro Pack will cost $99.99 The Windows 8 Media Center Pack will cost $9.9 ...

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