Let me give you a little background on my experience with these games before I tell you how I feel about them.  The Tech department at my university is exploring the value of using Second Life as an alternative for classrooms.  I cant believe that they are even thinking about this.  My Networking class has regular (optional) meetings in Second Life.  I even have a friend that gets paid to play the game and help professors create buildings and other things in the game.  What is this world coming to?  Are we no longer able to interact with human beings any more?  All these games provide to the younger generation is a way to avoid human contact.

I personally think that these games are a bunch of crap.  People should interact with real people and not hide behid these “avatars”.  I refuse to install Second Life as a protest to my teacher.  He says that Second Life is the new way to interact with people.  I still hold my stance that all these programs do is hide us from any real social interaction.

Check out the article at CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/10/23/avatar.murder.japan.ap/index.html

I’d like to hear what you have to think!

Microsoft reported the other day that they will be able to let beta testers start using the new Windows 7 early next year.  The gears started turning on the new Windows 7 only months after Vista was released to the public.  Of course Microsoft says this one will be better than ever.  They say the Windows 7 users will be able to avoid those annoying security alerts and updates.  I assume that this means that the software will do this automatically.  Microsoft says that they have no time line on when Windows 7 will be released for sale but they have hinted at some date in 2010.

In all honestly i still believe that windows XP was and still is a solid operating system.  I have a Virtual Machine with windows vista for testing purposes but still prefer XP as the base OS on my main computer.  The reason that Vista failed was because Microsoft didn’t properly test it with novice computer users.  XP is simple and streamlined where as Vista is complicated to the average user.  I just hope that Windows 7 will be tailored more towards the novice user.  That will make our jobs as IT specialists a heck of a lot easier.

Check out the full story on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/10/28/microsoft.windows.ap/index.html

For those techno-geeks out there SupportSpace uses ActiveX controls to allow the experts to remotely control a user’s computer without installing any heavy software. For those of you who aren’t as tech-savvy this means that the expert you work with will be able to control your computer and fix your problem without you doing anything yourself (see the introduction video here).

What makes SupportSpace so unique is that you may review all of the experts online and choose the one that is right for you. As opposed to calling tech support and being given the next technician in line. The SupportSpace experts all go through a rigorous certification process and most have industry standard certifications themselves. The SupportSpace corporate site says this about their philosophy of choosing experts and personalized service “At the heart of the SupportSpace service is the understanding that no two customers are alike. We provide the answers you need to keep your technology running smoothly and efficiently and we let you choose among our expert to find the one who best understands your needs.” You can find this and other information about their business model at corporate.supportspace.com.

SupportSpace is still in its beta stages but seems to work quite well. They are constantly updating and revising their program to become the best it can be. Right now they are offering new customers the ability to test their program risk free with a coupon for a free session with any of their experts. And better yet, all sessions are protected by a 100% money back guarantee.

Now I have to put in that I am currently a SupportSpace expert. I found this company and decided to check it out. What an awesome program and business model they have! I have had so much fun testing it out that I will continue to support customers for a very long time. If you need support just click the SupportSpace button on the side of the site and you will be brought to my profile! Or visit www.supportspace.com to choose from the list of well certified experts!

Launchy is a small program that allows you to start any program by typing in the name. No more searching for the right file in your vast array of start menu options. This tiny program starts up with a customizable key stroke and is small and unobtrusive. Let’s take a look!

Launchy is interesting because there are no other programs, that I have found, like it. It allows you to launch any program by just typing the name in to its box. Not only that but Lanuchy allows you to navigate through your files, search Google, and launch your bookmarks. Launchy is a free and open source program and you can find the website with more tips and tricks at www.launchy.net. If you just want to download it go to: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=132975&package_id=146049. The latest version(at the time this article was posted) of Launchy is v1.25. Now Launchy only works with Windows XP, the creators say you can mod the source to make it work with Win 2000 but I’m not going to do that here. If you want me to do an article on it I will consider it, just leave a reply.

The Launchy installer is your basic wizard with no real issues. Just double click the .exe file and follow the instructions

The basic skin of Launchy is very simple. Your hot key buttons are automatically set to Alt and Space bar. Hit those two keys together and Launchy pops up in the middle of your screen. Now all you have to do is start to type a program name. I started to type “Internet e” and Launchy automatically figured I wanted Internet Explorer. At this point all I have to do is hit Enter and it will start Internet Explorer. Now just in case I didn’t want Internet Explorer, Launchy gave me some different options to choose from. All I have to do is scroll down and choose the program I want.

Launchy can also help you navigate through your files. If you have ever used Linux before you know how easy it is to navigate through the files in the command prompt. Launchy is very similar to that process. All I do is start to type “c” and hit tab and it shows the folders in the “c:/” drive. From there all I have to do is start typing the name of the next folder and hit tab. Once I get to the folder I want I just hit enter. Really simple!

Launchy has a cool build in feature called Calcy. It is a basic calculator so when you need to know what 3 + 3 is you just type it in to Launchy and it will provide an answer for you. Or you could just type in “calculator” and pull up the windows calculator.

Yet another cool feature of Launchy is the Google search feature. It’s really easy, type in Google then hit tab. Launchy will insert a spacer and they you can type what you want to search for. Then just hit enter, and Launchy will open your default browser and search Google for whatever you typed in. Yet another awesome feature is that Launchy also searches sites such as yahoo, Wikipedia, MSN and others. Just use the same process as searching Google.

One last feature of Launchy I would like to highlight is its ability to check the weather. Launchy can check the weather in much the same way it searches Google or Yahoo. Just type in Weather then hit tab. Notice the break Launchy has inserted. Then type your zip code or city, state then hit enter. Launchy will open up the weather forecast from weather.com.

All in all Launchy has an awesome set of features that allow you to work more efficiently each day. Launchy has a bunch of different plug-in’s available, if you find one that works well post it here!

In my last article which can be found here I showed you how to build an apache web server for windows. Now this article is going to go in to more depth. That server would only serve up HTML pages. This server will be able to run programs such as this BLOG program. You should have no problems running anything in PHP!

Let’s start with the server configurations. You’re going to be running PHP which is an intensive web language. It wouldn’t take much to run just PHP but you have to factor in the fact that you’re going to be running a MySQL database as well. My recommendation is to have a computer that is at least a Pentium 4, running XP and hopefully have 512MB of RAM. If you plan to have a lot of traffic coming to your site then you may want to just give up on following this article and pay for hosting. But if not here we go, let’s get started.

The program I found is really easy to use; it’s called a WAMP server. Now this name is a play off of the ever popular LAMP server. Lamp stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP; you can guess what WAMP stands for based on that. This awesome server can be found for download at http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php. Let’s Run through the Installation first and then I’ll go in to detail about the administration.

Step 1: The installation is very simple just open the wizard and follow the instructions from there.

Step 2: The only weird part of the installation is towards the end when it asks you what browser you use (see the screen shot below). Seeing as how this is my test machine all I had was Internet Explorer so you will need to find the .exe file for your browser. If you are running windows and use Internet Explorer the file is located in c:/Program Files/Internet Explorer. It is named Iexplore.exe.

There you go you’re all installed! Now why is this program so great? Not only does it make it easy to create a WAMP server, it makes it practically a no brainer to administer it. You can start, stop and restart all the services right from the little icon in your tool bar. The first thing you want to do is click this icon and choose “Put Online”, this starts all the services. To test it you can click the localhost button in the menu or open your browser and surf to localhost. You’ll see that the home page looks a little different than it normally would. This PHP page shows you all the installed modules and the status of all the servers. Now that we’ve tested everything let’s take a look at all the administration tools beginning with apache

Apache:

• · WAMP allows you to switch versions of apache easily. The good thing about this is that WAMP will tell you if the version of apache is compatible with your version of PHP and MySQL. The base server only comes with version 2.2.6 but if you click on the “Get more” button you can download newer or older versions.

• · WAMP allows you to easily add an alias to apache. Just click the “add alias” button in the server and it brings up a prompt that will guide you through adding one.

• · It allows you to easily add and remove apache modules. This can be a very tedious task without this program, involving editing lines of code and finding the right versions of all the modules.

• · It also gives you easy access to the conf file. Just another bright idea.

PHP:

• · WAMP allows you to easily view and edit the php.ini file and easily view the error logs generated by PHP.

• · WAMP also allows you to add or remove extensions to PHP simply by checking or un-checking them in a list.

• · WAMP also allows you to change the version of PHP just like apache. WAMP will also warn you if the version you choose in incompatible with the other servers.

MySQL:

• · WAMP lets you easily change the version just like PHP and Apache, and again it will warn you if the version you choose is not compatible with the other serves.

• · WAMP allows you to easily stop and restart MySQL as well as installing and removing services.

• · WAMP allows you to open a console to MySQL right from its menu. It also allows for easy editing of the my.ini file and viewing of the Error Logs.

As if WAMP didn’t do enough already it also automatically installs phpMyAdmin, which is a web-based program that allows easy and visual administration of MySQL. I’ll go over how to work phpMyAdmin in a later article and how to install it if you already have a WAMP or LAMP server.

So all in all this program does in 10 minutes what a network professional could do in almost 3 hours. This program has proved itself over and over with its rich feature set and advanced installation.

The setup of apache is really easy for windows; basically it is a wizard just like any other program that you install. Apache is a small program, allowing it to be run on very little system resources. I once ran apache on a Pentium 2 with 64mb of ram (this was back when I had no idea what I was doing, I had an old computer to play around with and decided apache would be a fun project). Now if you are planning on running dynamic content such as any PHP or CGI script or a wiki you will need a considerable amount of processing power. Much more than my old Pentium 2 processor. My recommendation based on my general knowledge is get anything greater than a Pentium 4, preferably anything over 1.5 GHz and anything over 1GB of RAM.

You can find more information on the apache web server at http://httpd.apache.org/ . When I wrote this article the latest version of apache was 2.2.6 (this is only if you want to build it yourself, I like it when they do the hard work for me so the pre-built .msi file is only in 2.0.59, sorry). They haven’t changed the install wizard much so it should be pretty similar to what I have here. You can download the server from any of apache’s official sources listed at http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/win32. The zipped file is only 9MB.

Step 1: Download the file apache 2.0.59-win32-x86-no ssl.msi:

Step 2: Open the .msi and prepare to install

Step 3: Accept the license agreement. This is an open source program so there is no real worry, unlike accepting agreements from Microsoft.

Step 4: This part of the screen is just some informational background, if you know nothing about apache it would be interesting to read, if not just hit next.

Step 5: This part is where all the real work is needed. The first box asks you for your network domain. This is where you put your .com address. Leave out the www in this part because you’ll put that part in the next step.

Step 6: Next it asks for the Server Name this is where you would add the www on to your server domain. Now if you wanted to use another prefix for your website you would do that here, such as if you wanted to host blog.superboatx.com instead of www.superboatx.com then you would do that here.

Step 7: Next you will need to put in an e-mail address that will be shown when the server shows a 404 error or any other error. Remember this e-mail address will at some point be made public so don’t use an e-mail address that you wouldn’t mind giving out to strangers. The next step is to use apache as a Service or choose to start it yourself. Choosing the first one will start apache once you start your computer and have apache listen on port 80. Now the second one will require you to start apache manually and have it listen on port 8080. If you are planning on using this machine only for a server then choose the first one. If you are just testing out the server project then choose the second one.

Step 8: Choose the typical installation. Once it is finished you want to open your browser and surf to localhost. You should see a page from apache telling you to replace this page in order to host your own page.

Great now you’re finished! Now let’s talk some administration of Apache.

The first thing we have to talk about is changing your web pages. Your home directory is C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs. The documents here are what you see when you surf to localhost. Delete those files and replace them with your website. Remember to name your home page index.html.

The next thing to talk about is the new icon in your system tray. If you double click on it you get an apache administration tool. Basically this is just to start and stop the server. You’ll need to use this tool when you make changes to the configuration files or if you want to shut down the server without shutting down the computer.

Now in order to make any changes to how apache works you will need to edit the httpd conf file. Now a lot of this file is going to be confusing. One very important thing to remember Apache reads ever single line of this file except the ones that have a # sign in front of them. The first thing I want you to notice is the line “Listen 80” (or “Listen 8080” if you choose the second option in step 8). This line tells apache to listen for requests on port 80 now if you want to change this so apache listens on another port just change the number, save the file, and restart apache using the last the tool in the last step.

The next line I want you to look at is the Document Root line. This line controls where Apache looks for your website files. We talked about this earlier; the default is C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs. Now you can change this if you feel it necessary just remember to save and restart apache.

There you have it! Open up your computer to the internet and see if it works. Make sure you point your domain name to your IP address. Then surf on over to your domain name. Now if it’s not working the first thing you need to look at is your firewall. You will need to open up the port you choose earlier in the article.