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Take Back the Beep

The New York Times’ David Pogue has launched the “Take Back the Beep” campaign aimed at making phone carriers end the anti-consumer practice of adding 15 seconds of babble to every voicemail message you leave or retrieve. Read on…

Over the past week, in The New York Times and on my blog, I’ve been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by American cellphone carriers: the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions.

Suppose you call my cell to leave me a message. First you hear my own voice: “Hi, it’s David Pogue. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you”–and THEN you hear a 15-second canned carrier message.

Do we really need to be told to hang up when we’re finished!? Would anyone, ever, want to “send a numeric page?” Who still carries a pager, for heaven’s sake? Or what about “leave a callback number?” We can SEE the callback number right on our phones!

Second, we’re PAYING for these messages. These little 15-second waits add up–bigtime. If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year. That’s your money. And your time: three hours of your time a year, just sitting there listening to the same message over and over again every year.

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WP-Syntax Code Highlighter Plugin

As a blog by and for web developers, many of the articles on DevSpot tackle some problem with HTML, JavaScript, or another markup/programming language. That means we frequently need to embed code snippets into our WordPress posts to help explain a solution. To make them easy to understand, code samples should be color coded and include line numbers for reference.

For WordPress blogs, that’s where the plugin WP-Syntax comes in. There are several to choose from (including the more powerful SyntaxHighlighter), but WP-Syntax the right combination of features and usability that we needed. It converts blocks of text wrapped with pre tags and a lang attribute into syntax-highlighted code. Continue reading “WP-Syntax Code Highlighter Plugin”

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WordPress post scheduling bug

If you schedule posts for future publication in your WordPress blogs, don’t just Set It and Forget It but remember to check frequently to confirm your posts actually go live. You could have posts still sitting in limbo that you thought had been published out days or weeks ago.

Various server configurations or temporary issues can apparently cause a scheduled post not to go out on time. When you look at your list of posts the status Missed schedule shows up in the date column (see the graphic at right) and once it’s scheduled time has past WordPress will not try again to publish that post. In order to publish the post you have to go in and very frustratingly switch the post status back to draft, change the time of the post, then and try to republish to get it onto the site.

We’re running WordPress 2.7 but it still appears to affect some sites running the current 2.8.1 version. Other than manual workaround mentioned above, there are a few other “fixes” you can try to solve the problem until a fix is in the official WordPress builds.

Please note the following workarounds have not been tested by MarketNet, use at your own risk:

  1. Modify the file wp-cron.php
  2. Replace wp-cron.php with a version from WP 2.6.5
  3. Install the Scheduled MIAs plugin

Until the issue is fixed, don’t forget to occasionally check your post lists for unpublished posts.

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Phantom cell phone vibrations?

Ever reach into your pocket because you think your phone is ringing only to discover you’re losing your mind? Check out this article from the USA Today on “phantom cell phone vibrations” to learn more about this 21st century phenomena. I constantly think I “feel” my phone and check to find out it’s only in my mind. It’s probably a sign of insanity, but might also be due to my many drives back & forth between Austin & Dallas to see my future wife with the jams up loud.

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Mozilla Jetpack? Utilize JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to build Firefox extensions.

Mozilla Labs, the people behind the Firefox web browser, have recently announced their newest project: Jetpack. Jetpack is… well it’s a little complicated. From an end user’s point of view, Jetpack will be another type of extension you can install to add features for your browser. For developers, it’s an API to write add-ons for Firefox (and maybe “more” according to Mozilla) using technologies you already know. Continue reading “Mozilla Jetpack? Utilize JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to build Firefox extensions.”

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New WordPress 2.8 release adds features, speed

WordPress 2.8 (codename “Baker”) hit the World Wide Web last week and it brought a slew of new fixes, features, and improvements to the reigning number one blogging platform. This version sees improvements to the theme browser (not particularly useful to our clients and their custom themes), sidebar/footer widget functionality, admin usability and functionality, and most importantly optimized code to improve speed and the overall blogging experience. According to the official WordPress announcement post, this version brings “cooler, smoother, simpler blogging” to the masses.