Tile Icon Fix

While I was trying to sort out a connection issue today I accidentally started MSN messenger. For some reason that one act changed the icon for a file type when viewing a folder in “tiles” and “icons”. Unfortunately the effect was on .htm files. These files before this showed a lovely Firefox icon, as they should. After said dreaded event these icons showed the icon for Internet Explorer. I can’t stand IE and I felt ill. It immediately became my mission to fix it.

The file associations were not screwed up, double click the icon and Firefox opened the page. I also checked the settings for the Folder options and selected icon for file types, nope all good there. But the damn icon stayed the same. I started searching and everything I found related to the associations and the Folder options that I had already checked.

By this point in time I was willing to change the view to “details”, which displayed the correct icon (go figure). But then that would mean working a bit different and I did not want to do that. I have my download directory as “Tiles” or “Icons” because I can then quickly see what type a file is and what is in it. I have a lot of images for web pages and such and this is the quickest way of identifying them for me. Plus the problem just plain irked me.

Then I found this gem of advice and it highlights something about XP that I did not know and I found my fix.

If you go to the desktop, right click and go to properties and go to the following menu:

→ Appearance → Effects

Select the check box for “Use Large Icons” then click apply. Now go back and change it back by unselecting the check box and then apply again. After this my icons were restored. So what the heck did that do?

Well apparently this “clears the cache” from where and how has me stuffed. But it worked. So I am just passing that on, just don’t ask me how it works. It supposedly fixes issues with the wrong program opening and other stuff, I can’t verify that though. The icon thing… worked a treat, still has me buggered as to how. I guess it is another example of a screwy Windows thing with an unlikely resolution, what’s new?

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WordPress Bug – They are Working On It

Everyone that has a WordPress Blog and uses WordPress WYSIWYG interface to write their blog enteries would have noticed that the guys at WordPress have introduced auto-save. Great idea but it has come with a bug.

Each time it auto saves during authoring it throws your cursor back to the top of your post. Just so people know, they know about it and it is a matter of priority that they fix it.

So while they are working on fixing it I suggest not planning any long posts! The other thing I suggest is not to flood them with support requests or bitching about it, that is part the reason that I have posted this :). So give them a chance and you will be loving the new feature in no time.

The only information that I have come across about it is in the WordPress Forum. No doubt they will blog about the new feature when it is fixed! Thanks for the hard work guys, this is one of those rare occasions on WordPress that the users are adversely affected.

UPDATE: Just got this reply via support from WordPress: great service once again, thanks guys – keep at it.

Hi, I’m really sorry for the problems. It is top of the list to be fixed as it was a feature requested by many and this bug was very unexpected. My apologies again. Podz

Trillian 4 News

At last the Trillian boys are sick of playing Quake and have given us some news!

One feature that has long plagued Trillian users is the poor file transfer capabilities, if it even works at all. Well they are working hard on it:

Been working hard on ensuring file transfers work even better in the next release of Trillian.

I just want it to work and well at that! In addition to working on it they are incorporating a lot more technical data about the transfer in order to diagnose any problems that might occur. They also express their commitment to getting the file transfer working and 100% right.

Great to hear in my opinion and long over-due as this has been a long term bug. Although the dynamic nature of the networks that you are plugged into my be a reason for the variance in it’s reliability and therefore not the fault of Trillian. We have on occasion got the file transfer to work but only spasmodically at best.
A small bit of welcome news from the Cerulean Studios Blog. It is slow but I think it is getting there. I hope that I have reason to renew my subscription to TrillianPRO. So guys when can we expect to see it? This year?

Odeo Respond, Download Link Returns!

As posted yesterday it appeared Odeo had decreased it's functionality of the "send me an Odeo message" by not allowing users to download the mp3 of the left message. Well there has been a great response from Odeo with emails and even a blog comment. All is restored in the Odeo universe.

Biz Stone who works for Odeo left a comment on the Rail yesterday that indicated that the omission of the Download link on the web page was a bug and implied that they were unaware of the problem until I had blogged about it. So great I found a bug! The emails that were recieved were also prompt and promised a resolution. The action by Odeo to resolve the issue has been excellent. When I logged onto my inbox this afternoon, the download link is now present and accounted for. Everyone breath a sigh of relief. I am yet to see if the enclosure in the RSS feed from the "inbox" has been fixed as well but I am assuming that it has.

I commend Odeo staff on their excellent response time and the fact that they responded at all. They could have easily just resolved the problem and pretended that it did not happen. Great work Odeo, we still love you 😉 (In a nice blokey type of way…).

In fact I am not really sure how Biz found my humble blog, and if he is reading this then I wouldn't mind knowing. The other thing that I was curious about was if the staffers at Odeo patrol the BlogOsphere looking for tags and posts regarding Odeo, to see what people are saying and suggesting. I know that one suggestion that I made in the past was implemented, so that was cool.

Thanks Odeo keep up the good work.

Ask.com Blog and RSS Feed Searching

I found this great search engine today. Part of Ask.com, you can now select to search Blogs and Feeds. It has also been reported on various blogs but there is a major error that I have not seen others post about.
There are a lot of feeds and podcasts out there now and finding what you are after can be a nightmare. Ask.com seems to make this process fairly easy. You also have the function of searching just the feeds. I also noticed that the addition of podcast in the search gets you on the right track as far as searching for podcasts.

You also have a number of options to use as a filter in your search such as Posts, Feeds, News as search areas. Then the option of displaying the results; relevance, most recent and popularity. As well as showing the results within certain time-frames such as hour, day, week and month. A nice touch is the “Top Feeds” that display on the right side of the search window. Nice because it can cut down your time in the quest for quality and the fact that I only got one result when I search for our podcast and it was there! Cool.

Once you find what you are looking for you can hover over the binoculars and get a preview of the feed or the site. One bug I have found in testing this is the fact that searched for Global Geek Podcast and sure I got the right podcast. But the preview plane was anything but correct, it was displaying feeds from I don’t know where. But some of the previews were from sites that linked to Global Geek Podcast. So that error probably has something to do with how the results are assembled. I hope they are going to fix this, they need to fix it.

Lastly there is the option to subscribe to the feeds through various mainstream feed readers such as Bloglines, Google Reader, NewsGator, but there is also a plain old RSS link as well. You can also post the result to a few services such as del.icio.us, Digg, Newsvine and Bloglines. The convenience is nice with an obvious slant towards the web based applications that are becoming more popular.

With time I am sure that we are going to see more search engines like this one with more options and intuitive searching, exciting. This is absolutely crucial to podcasters and the subscriber; to get what they want in a timely fashion. Otherwise the saturated choice that people are left with will be so baffling that they will not bother, or are we there already? Will this help RSS, Blogs and Podcasting to get out of the “Geek’O’sphere”?