I'm back after having a virus of some sort knock out Windows. I had to reinstall it. I started having problems on Friday. It got worse over the weekend and I went to a website called Bleeping Computer as it became obvious I wasn't going to be able to fix this myself. Richie was very helpful and I used Hijack This and it looked like it got cleaned up. But on Wednesday it started rebooting by itself every fifteen minutes. Richie was going to have me do some more tests but I couldn't stay active long enough to do anything. So I decided to reinstall Windows and now things are OK.
There's so much stuff out there even if you think you're protected, you're not. All of your virus scanners and spyware scanners aren't perfect. That's why many people run multiple applications. I was using AVG for viruses but it didn't catch this. It was a very good product three years ago but Grisoft seems to be more interested in upselling these days. So I went to this site http://users.telenet.be/bluepatchy/miekiemoes/prevention.html to see what was available. I decided on Avira because it scans for rootkits in addition to viruses. You can only have one virus scanner on your system but there are online scanners such as Bit Defender. For spyware I decided on Spyware Blaster. I've used Spybot & Ad-Aware in the past and I also have Microsoft Defender but I've heard good things about Spyware Blaster. I've also added the Comodo Personal Firewall. The Windows Firewall isn't adequate. Some software firewalls are overly intrusive. I used Sygate a few years ago and it was OK for a while but it slowed down my computer so I got rid of it. Comodo seems OK so far. Just remember you have to train the firewall. I'm going to add links to the appropriate sites to the blog.
I'm making a couple of changes to the blog. I will no longer write about NASCAR races. Based on my blog stats, no one comes here for that and it was taking up too much of my time. I also have Google AdSense now and the ads are based on content, not stats. So I will occasionally comment on NASCAR news but you can read about the races anywhere. The slideshows are a good idea but they are time consuming to produce. MixerCast is a good service but I would be interested in a less time consuming service. The song of the day will continue but I will add the artist to the header. The song of the day does get a lot of hits and folks like the videos. I haven't reviewed any films lately because there hasn't been anything I wanted to see. Ratatouille is coming and I'm interested in that. The joshi news will continue of course. Please click on the ads. I can use the money.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI am one of the engineers of Mixercast.
> MixerCast is a good service but I
> would be interested in a less time
> consuming service.
I would love to hear your experiences with Mixercast. How can we improve it so that you find it less time consuming and productive?
Please feel free to suggest or give feedback. If you are comfortable with sending email, please send to both of these addresses: [abdul.qabiz at mixercast.com, mail at abdulqabiz.com]
I would, however, revisit this blog entry to follow up..
Thanks,
-abdul
My last slideshow consisted of 161 photos. Adding pics one at a time takes way too long. I suggest you find a way to add multiple pics. I don't think it's set up to handle a large slideshow. Perhaps some adjustability in the player would be good. I'd like to use my own background instead of your template. It's actually pretty decent. Some of the other similar websites are clunkier and Flickr made a huge error in not offering embeddability in their recent upgrade.
ReplyDeleteHi Frank,
ReplyDeleteThanks for feedback. I understand some of the widgets are slow when there are loads of media items are added. We are fixing it and it would be faster.
We are also adding ability to add individual images and some improvement in workflow.
I would pass your feedback to team, we had a facility where you can upload your backgrounds, we might add it again.
One question, did you try the Mixercast Wizard or Designer tool? There are more features and flexibility in designer, f.ex:
1) You have canvas, so you can drag and drop items and place as you wish.
2) You can choose a tile, color or background-image (only predefined list but upload would be there) for background.
3) There would be text support soon, it was there but we removed because of some issues.
I would love to hear more specifics and anything particular you would want to have...
Thanks again for your feedback, I hope you start using Mixercast again.
-abdul
I used the Wizard. The Designer doesn't have enough additional functionality to justify using it.
ReplyDeleteHi Frank,
ReplyDelete> I used the Wizard. The Designer
> doesn't have enough additional
> functionality to justify using it.
Sorry that you had this experience, we would try to make it better. I would, however, an opportunity to list down some differences:-
1) Designer has canvas, where you can change background (color, image, tile)
2) Designer allows you to link any widget with a YouTube, Flickr, Google Video, Metacafe, DigitalMotion, Blip.tv etc RSS feeds.
3) Designer allows you to place objects (on canvas) the way you want to. You can rotate, resize and might also add images for branding..
4) Designer also allows you to add a separate audio-widget, in-case you don't want sound in slideshow (alike) widgets.
You get UNDO/REDO, GRID, SNAP-TO-GRID etc, so you can edit freely and revert back changes...
I am sure, there are many usability issues and we can make it more intuitive...
Thanks, your every feedback helps us to think about things... I hope, we would be good enough so that you start using it again...
Thanks a lot..
Regards
-abdul