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Podcast tip: Special characters will break your podcast feed

There are times when I encounter an issue as I'm producing a podcast that can either make or break the feed. Being that I've received some requests to share these tidbits of knowledge with some of the loyal Buzz Out Loud fans, I'll go ahead and throw a few pointers into the blog as they arise. I don't plan on assaulting this blog with millions of posts, but if I encounter something that might be valuable to budding podcasters out there, I'd love to help out. Having said that, welcome to my first "no-duh" tip.… Read more

Bug.gd hooks up error messages with proven workarounds

Anyone who has ever yanked their hair at a maddening error message will appreciate the concept behind bug.gd, a Web app devoted to linking up error messages and user-contributed workarounds.

While the site has given the general public a head start by linking to Microsoft articles explaining common Microsoft error messages, bug.gd's role in providing distraught users with the right solution is a partial illusion. The database will grow most through user contributions. Bug.gd's team assumes that most users will figure out a workaround within two days.

If that's you, it means you enter … Read more

404 funnies: Making 'file not found' work for you

The dreaded "404 File Not Found" error page is one of the great frustrations of the online world. No doubt that it must be a close relative of the "no longer in service" recording for phone numbers.

While they are important for visitors already on your site, they are even more important to visitors coming in from other sites or search engines. These visitors may be entirely new to your site and haven't really "invested" in your site yet or realize what a great site you have. Without a good 404 page, the … Read more

Site down? Try Mr. Uptime

An unfortunate side effect of having your blog or Web site hit by sudden, massive traffic of the type you get when linked to on sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit, is downtime. While bad for the person who owns the site, it's also the pits for people who want to get at the content and can't. There are services such as Duggmirror, and Google's cache to bail you out, but otherwise you're out of luck. Mr. Uptime is a new Firefox extension from the folks at Pingdom that lets you earmark downed … Read more

New standard to curb data corruption on drives

The International Disk Drive, Equipment and Materials Association has finalized a standard that, ideally, will make it easier to find errors on hard drives.

The standard, called Long Block Data, essentially will compartmentalize data in blocks consisting of of 4,096 bytes of data rather than 512 byte blocks of data, the standard for years. The problem is that, with the rapid increases in density, the 512 byte segments occupy too little space on the surface of a platter of a hard drive. There are also way too many of them.

By quadrupuling the size of the segments, the errors … Read more