http://www.literatur...atte.com/scapple.php

I LOVE this program.  For me, it is the perfect brainstorming tool I've always been looking for.

It's easy to change the look of each element.  It's easy to put background shapes around a selection of elements.  It can export easily as images, pdf, whatever.  You don't need a "center" like most mindmaps.  It's easy to link things together with lines or arrows.  It's easy to do simple alignments of elements.

I've been looking for something like this for years.  I tried a whole bunch.  Things like Personal Brain are too fancy and complicated.  Mindmaps never worked for me at all.  Visio is too much and too hard to do simple things.  I settled on Edge Diagrammer (thanks mouser!) for a while because it was the easiest of those flowchart tools to use.  Regular notetakers and outliners are not freeform enough for brainstorming.

 

I've found out that my email client on my desktop computer is doing something like breaking up the mail message headers prior to downloading.  This is causing a problem with my spam detection, and since the antispam plugin is seeing blank headers, all my emails are going to the junk box.  I can't seem to find where the issue is.

Here's my setup:
The Bat! client
Antispam Sniper
Bitdefender Free Antivirus

Now, all this started happening 2/17.  At first I thought it was Bitdefender, because previous to that I was using MSE.  But I installed Bitdefender on 2/19, so that's not it.
Other than that, I can't tell what else I could have possibly done on that date.
Antispam Sniper is flagging everything as spam because it triggers the blank From.  But it's not ASS's fault, it is doing the right thing.  Something else is causing the headers to break up before it even gets to ASS.

I haven't changed any windows firewall settings.

Any suggestions?

I know most people don't care and are satisfied with their addressbooks and have much more important things to worry about in their lives....BUT, not me.  So after months of research, this is the best I've been able to come up with.

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[coming soon]

I want to create a private forum to do research with friends and stuff (no more than 5 people or so).  I want to quickly set it up on my site, a la softaculous or something like that.  I also want to use tapatalk or something similar for mobile use.

What is a receommended software?  My favorite forum software is this one here, just for my personal preference.

Tapatalk compatible forums:

Q: Which forum system does it currently support?
phpBB3, vBulletin, xenForo, IPBoard, Simple Machine, MyBB, bbPress, Kunena and Vanilla are supported. Other forum system might also support Tapatalk with plugins developed by third party developers using Tapatalk API.

Ever since getting an Android phone, I've become obsessed with properly syncing all my contacts.  All the comapnies are fighting each other for properietary control of your life, so they just aren't playing nice with each other.  I've been trying all sorts of apps, hacks, imports/exports, desktop software, plugins.  I'm like 70% of the way there, but still a long way to go.

The goal:
Have a central place where all your contacts are managed.  This place sends (syncs) the information to wherever...Android phone, google contacts, outlook contacts.  All information...meaning profile photos from facebook, business numbers from linkedin, normal contacts from google, etc.

Here's the issue:
Facebook has the best profile photos.
Linkedin has business info other places don't.
Google contacts needs to get the final version of all the info because that's the most reliable way to get it on your phone.
Outlook is a good place to manage things centrally since it's on the desktop and has a rich featureset.
Problem with Outlook is that the scoial connectors to facebook and linkedin aren't really working.
So maybe you can get a third party tool that works with all of them, set it up, sync it to outlook, and outlook syncs it to google.

There's a good google-to-outlook sync.  So if I can get everything in Outlook, that would be great.  This is where I'm currently stuck.

Another more difficult option is using an app on the phone that will sync things, and then getting that information back on the computer, fixing little details there, and sending it back to the phone.  The problem with this is that the apps that do this, do it in a weird way.  They don't necessarily sync the details...it's more like they allow you to see them on the same screen.  In other words, the google contacts still shows just the google contacts info, but on the phone it looks like you have more info because it's reading things from the facebook app.  It's just a trick.

Anyway, ugh.

So I've been using the lumia 920 for the past year.  I have my posts on it here in the forums.  Overall, it has a couple of nice features but very underwhelming.

So the nexus 5 came out and i got it.  If anyone is interested in comparisons, let me know.  Here's what I've noticed so far:

Of all the interfaces, I like the Windows one the best with the tiles because they have a lot of interactivity to them.  However, hardly any apps take advantage of them in any kind of helpful way.  The best is probably facebook with the grid of pictures it shows.  But it would be nice to get more useful stuff there.  Windows also has the best integration of contacts of all the other phones (ios, android).

But Android as you all know is the one that lets you do the most with the phone, and just they way you want it.  Android has widgets which is what tiles do in windows.  The widgets are not as smooth as tiles, but there are so many kinds that you'll find something satisfactory.  I can also use all sorts of apps, transfer files, root, customize...way more than other phones.

The Nexus phone is fast and light and awesome.  The biggest headache so far was spending hours getting all my contacts organized properly with all the services.  After that, this thing is a joy.  Windows is far too locked down to have fun with it.  Iphone is the same, but still much more open than windows.

Anyway, that's the update so far.  It's a nice phone, I don't miss the lumia at all.  in fact, it's quite liberating.  MS needs to get it's ass in gear, cmon.  Android is providing the windows experience that we are all used to, and MS has gone completely the other direction in making the most restrictive, over simplified phone operating system on the planet.  Geez.

I find this very interesting from a business analysis perspective.
Windows Phone 8 has been out for nearly a year.  One major complaint has been there are no apps.  yes, the app store has thousands of apps.  but 99.9% of them either don't work, are buggy, are for WP 7, etc.  So really, there are no apps.  What's worse is that a lot of major apps, like Instagram, never came.  But now it is here, or will be in a few days.  I find it a remarkable coincidence that this happens the exact same time Instagram will implement ads for the first time.

So what's going on behind the scenes here?  let me know.  What is the real reason why the major apps have not implemented anything for WP8?  It for sure can't be because they don't have the resources. 

I want one, i don't want to have to do anything.  Possible?

Lately, roughly about the last year or so, flash is crashing all the time.  firefox, chrome, doesn't matter.  At least multiple times a day for me.  All different computers...work, home, laptop, etc.  ESPN...like every day I think.

I've come back around to toying with this idea.  I need help thinking through the technical details.  The first thread I did on this last year is here:
https://www.donation...x.php?topic=29624.50

I know that the online hosts like ustream are very good, very easy to use, sign up and forget it.  But...as usual, I want to know how to setup an independent solution.

Bandwidth:
Any bandwidth experts?  Please describe the bandwidth requirements needed.  I'm almost certain that a typical residential ISP can't provide the bandwidth.  Even the best residential services like FIOS only offer about 5 Mbps (~600 kilo-BYTES per sec) which is not enough for high quality video streaming.  So I'm assuming, bare minimum, I need a company to host the server for me.  But I want to know how to judge whether a host can provide the bandwidth I want.  For example, let's say I have a video podcast that 30 people are tuning in to.  Which companies can provide that best bang for the buck?  I already use a company for websites, and the easiest thing would be to upgrade the service to make up for the necessary bandwidth.  Then, I would compare that price to the price of actual hosted podcast sites.  My guess is that the ustream pro services (which are crazy expensive....like $200-400/month) are still more expensive.

Once I've figure that part out, then I will have to search for the best portable setup for this.  OS, software, etc.

One of my computers has a pre-2011 motherboard on it.  That has certain implications regarding drives larger than 3TB, and maybe other hard drive issues.  I am now having a problem (which has occurred a few times before) which is this:
If I disconnect any drives in the system, then it stops booting up.  This has been explained as some kind of effect of the MBR being distributed amongst the several drives, and if one is missing, the system can't boot.  It is supposed to be repairable using the windows boot disk, repair option, repair startup option.

The problem I'm having is that I've disconnected all the extra drives, and now the OS won't boot.  Furthermore, the BIOS doesn't even see my OS drive.  I can't do anything.  I can't repair it with the OS disk because it doesn't see the drive.  I've tried messing with AHCI settings, RAID settings, no luck.

What is the deal with the Intel Rapid Storage Technology?  I had to install it at one point because I added 4TB drives to my system, and until I installed RST, WIndows 7 couldn't see the drives with their capacity.  But now I realize that RST is more for RAID situations, so I don't get what is going on.  I don't like it.  Ever time I've had to add or subtract a disk, I've had this problem.  But now, I can't fix it anymore.

How can I make the disk bootable again?  I can connect it to another computer and do stuff there if necessary.  And if anyone can help me understand RST and why I need it, that would be helpful too.  Last time, this problem was solved by rearranging my boot priority settings in the BIOS.  But now, the bios can't see the drive so that setting is empty.  And the drive is not broken or dead, either.

As the local techy guy in the crowds I run in, I often am pulled into this debate of "recordings these days just don't sound as good as analog".  And it's true in a lot of ways, but also difficult to really understand the details of why that is.  First, there's way too much BS in the recording industry with their gold plated plugs and stuff, so that doesn't help, it turns any kind of inquiry into a needle in the haystack thing.  But there is something to it.  Check out this article:
http://www.engadget....05/john-vanderslice/

And I've read several like that.  If anyone can post informative articles that can shed light on this debate, I'd really appreciate it.  The goal for me is, how close can a home studio get for mimicking this analog sound that is often preferred by the people in the know?  Part of it (but which part?) is not even the equipment or analog vs digital, but just people want it to sound bassier or louder, etc...so that's something that can be fixed.  but if there is truly some quality that can't be replicated going on in a tape vs. digital, then i'd like to figure out those specific points.

i have a book by bob katz or something dealing with mastering, but i'm not sure if it talks about this particular issue.

my assumption is that i should be able to get pretty close to the "right" analog sound with digital equipment, at least close enough where people wouldn't complain too much.  but i could be way off.