While attending BlogHer ’10 last week, I had the opportunity to check out the sponsors area, which is basically a large hall (or in this case, two of them) where companies and sponsors set up booths that promote their products and such. BitDefender was one of the companies present, and they were promoting their new group, BitMoms, which is a mommy blog group that has the opportunity to try out BitDefender and related software. I applied today to be a part of the BitMoms group, as I think they would be a good fit for my lifestyle, seeing as how between my husband and I we have five computers, with children who access them regularly.
Last fall I started having performance issues with Mozilla Firefox. The problem was duplicating itself on both of my computers, so after several weeks of frustration, I gave up and switched to Google Chrome. It was noticeably faster, and did everything I wanted it to do (for the most part; it still needs a lot of development and improvement for extensions and such, and the handling of Flash and Adobe Acrobat/Reader), so I stuck with it.
Then I went to BlogHer ’10, and checked out the Rock Your Firefox suite. I got a tote bag, a t-shirt, cute stickers, and a sneak peek at Firefox 4 beta. So guess what I’m running now? :)
I have an issue that I’m having trouble figuring out. Essentially, I have a Linksys WUSB54G that I want to make work with a computer that is running Windows 7. I managed to get this to work last fall, but it took some manual downloading of drivers, older software, and a lot of hunting around. Silly me, I didn’t take notes on exactly what I did. Now I’m trying to replicate what I did, and I just can’t figure it out. I think I would have better luck assembling an airplane from aircraft parts and supplies or selling mens wedding bands door-to-door than getting this to work! So I’m posting here in the hopes that someone may have a working solution! For what it’s worth, I want to install the Linksys WUSB54G on a computer that is running Windows 7 32-bit. Thanks in advance!
At first glance, the HP 8 inch Smart Wi-Fi Display seemed very promising. A digital photo frame that also has wifi and is able to stream media and social network updates? Sweet! Only… the interface is a bit clunky. And slow to respond. And not displaying any Flickr content, or even acknowledging that I connected Flickr to it via the online My Frame Manager.
So I don’t know… I WANT to make this frame work, but so far it is not cooperating! As of right now its application performance management kind of sucks. :/ Grr!
For my 25th birthday my friend gave me a digital photo frame — the Pandigital 10.4″ Digital Photo Frame, to be exact. I love it, but I’m ashamed to admit that I have neglected to update it with any new photos for about seven months! Now I have seven months worth of photos to go through, and so far I’ve only made it through about two weeks and I have 20+ photos (none of me in plus size swimsuits, thank you very much!) from a variety of parties and themes to add. This is definitely going to be a long, drawn out process, but it’ll be worth it. :)
Oh, and once I get done adding all of the photos to the Pandigital photo frame, I then have an HP digital photo frame here in the bedroom to add photos to. Flickr and I will be going crazy for the next few days!
My mother is a prime example of a person that should never be allowed access to the internet. For years she has used very simple, easy-to-guess passwords. We’re talking names, real worlds, no numbers, symbols, or even letter variation. *sigh* Well, she couldn’t get away with being so lax with her passwords forever: two weeks ago, her Gmail account was hacked. More specifically, hackers accessed her Gmail account, changed her password, then sent out emails to every single person she ever contacted, requesting financial assistance because she was stuck in London without money or passports. Furthermore, they set up a filter that forwarded a copy of all incoming mail to another email account (one of theirs, presumably), and deleted the originals. We were able to get back into her account, with the help of Google technical support, and I changed her password and deleted the filter, but I still cringe when I think of the information they may have been able to access. Though knowing her, it was probably forum updates about Yorkshire terriers, the occasional email from me, advertisements for baby shower games and mobile home shingle grinding, and maybe billing statements from her auto insurance company. Nothing too exciting or revealing. Whew!
People, PLEASE, pick strong passwords. Here are some tips:
- Use a combination of letters and numbers.
- Throw in a few symbols (such as @ or ! or #) to help strengthen your password.
- Don’t use the same password for all of your accounts. If you can’t keep track of 100+ passwords, at least use different passwords for different “types” of accounts; ie one password for email accounts, another for bank accounts, another for social networks, etc. This way, should one of your passwords be compromised, you won’t give the hacker(s) access to everything.
- Change your passwords regularly.
Personally, I opt for 12-16 character passwords that use uppercase and lowercase letters, a few numbers, and 1-3 symbols. Good luck cracking that one!
The Philips DVP 5990 DVD player offers, in addition to HDMI playback and 1080p resolution, the ability to connect flash drives and external hard drives to it via a handy front-panel USB port. There’s only one catch: without the right format, the Philips DVP 5990 won’t recognize that you have a flash drive or external hard drive connected, or it will report the drive as being empty with the annoying “The card is empty” message. It’s quite annoying when you know you have movies and digital baby shower games loaded up and ready to go.
The fix? Quite simple, actually. Simply download Swissknife ($9.95, and worth every bit of it, in my opinion) or a similar program and format your drive to FAT32. Be sure to set an active, primary partition! Then load that sucker up with media, and you should be good to go.
I fixed my issue with two of my three computers reporting the “You might not have permissions to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The network address is invalid.” error by first making sure that all three had the same username as well as the same password. I then set up a homegroup (no, I’ve never bothered to use the homegroup functionality before) and joined it on all three of the computers. Now I can see and access files again! Yay!
It’s kind of lame that I had to “fix” the problem like this, but hey, whatever gets the job done, right?
I have a desktop, a laptop, and a netbook. Up until two nights ago they were all seeing each other quite nicely. I could easily go across our network to access any of the PCs’ files from any of the PCs.
Now all of a sudden I can access the laptop from the netbook and the netbook from the laptop, but the laptop and the desktop cannot access one another. The laptop reports that there are network problems with the desktop and offers to diagnose them (with no resolution, of course — thanks Microsuck!); and the desktop reports that the network address is invalid. Now all of a sudden the same thing is going on between the desktop and the netbook — though the netbook can still access the desktop.
Minus the network problems error, the exact error message I get when trying to access the laptop from the desktop, the desktop from the laptop, or the netbook from the desktop, is:
You might not have permissions to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The network address is invalid.
Any suggestions? No network settings/sharing settings/anti-virus/firewall settings have changed, so I have no idea what the problem could be!
Update #1: As of 05/17/2010 at 6:00pm EST Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post blocked my home IP address. They also blocked my email address. Too bad they don’t know all of the IP addresses I use (mobile wifi ftw!), and hello multiple email accounts?
I was able to use an alternative wireless network connection to login to my Blog Advertising Store account, take more screenshots of the opps I have taken and have been approved for. I also copied down the URL of every advertiser that is currently working with Blog Advertising Store. I am going to contact them tomorrow to inform them of the shady business they are dealing with, since in the end scammed, pissed off bloggers will yank down their written posts, which will ultimately hurt the advertisers themselves.
Update #2: As of 05/18/2010 at 10:00am EST I have sent all of the advertisers listed in Blog Advertising Store’s aka Paying Post’s Open Opportunities page the following email:
To whom it may concern:
I am writing to give you a head’s up about Blog Advertising Store (http://www.blogadvertisingstore.com) aka Paying Post (http://www.payingpost.com). They have a disturbing trend of not paying bloggers on time, or paying them at all, for opportunities that were written by bloggers and accepted by the company. I, unfortunately, am their latest victim. I am contacting you because as the advertiser, you are the one that is ultimately being hurt by Blog Advertising Store’s despicable behavior. Like other bloggers, I will soon being pulling down the posts I have written for you and other advertisers; therefore you are paying Blog Advertising Store for a service that is not being fulfilled, except temporarily. Furthermore, I am sure that some of the other bloggers that have been scammed by Blog Advertising Store are now not only avoiding them, but you and the other advertisers as well, despite the fact that you personally have done nothing wrong in this situation.
For the good of the blogging community and for your bottom line, I would strongly suggest that you cease doing business with Blog Advertising Store. And since they are not using the money you have paid them to compensate bloggers such as myself, you may also wish to consider contacting them and getting a refund.
FYI, Blog Advertising Store owes me $109 for posts written between January 2009 and February 2010. I have been waiting for payment for over two months now, and two weeks of emails have gone unreturned. Additionally, as of yesterday evening, Blog Advertising Store blocked my home IP address from accessing their website (this was confirmed when friends of mine on other connections were able to access the site; I was also able to access the site using a work IP address), and also blocked my emails (also confirmed when I sent them an email from an alternative address).
Here is a detailed, organized blog post I put together explaining the situation and calling for action from the blogging community: http://www.blogging-girl.com/2010/05/17/blog-advertising-store-aka-paying-post-is-a-scam/
Thank you for taking the time to read my email.
Jenn
Well over a year ago I signed up for Blog Advertising Store, though at that time they were calling themselves Paying Post. Between then and this past February I have written $109.00 worth of opportunities. I followed the instructions on each opportunity, included the required links, wrote relevant, high quality content, and submitted each opportunity on time. Every opportunity that I did was approved, and as of April 2010 I was eligible to receive payment, as my balance had rolled over $100 (that is Blog Advertising Store’s / Paying Post’s minimum payout amount).
Only… I didn’t receive a payment in April. I didn’t receive one in May, either, despite Blog Advertising Store’s / Paying Post’s dashboard stating that I would be paid $109 on May 1st, 2010.
Screenshot of Blog Advertising Store’s / Paying Post’s Account page
Screenshot of Blog Advertising Store’s / Paying Post’s My Posts page
On May 6th, 2010, I sent the following email to support@blogadvertisingstore.com and support@payingpost.com:
To whom it may concern:
As of May 1st, 2010 I was due for a payout of $109.00 to my PayPal account x@jenn.nu. It is now May 6th, 2010 and I have not received anything.
I have been a bit wary completing posts for your company, as in the past I have read some unsavory things about your business practices and the handling of payouts. Please ease my anxieties and compensate me with the money I am rightfully owed. Again, the balance due is $109.00, and my PayPal account is x@jenn.nu.
Thank you very much.
I forwarded the email to them on May 8th, 2010, and again on May 9th, 2010.
As of May 11th, 2010, I still had not received any kind of response, so I sent the following email:
I will continue to email every day until I receive payment. I will continue blogging on multiple blogs about this issue. I will post on Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter. I will contact the Better Business Bureau. I am also going to contact all of the companies that bloggers have written posts on behalf of in order to let them know that while they are paying you, you are not doing your part in paying your bloggers.
Please, prove to me that you are not the scamming, fraudulent company that the majority of bloggers who have worked with you claim you are. Pay me what is rightfully owed. The balance is $109.00, and my PayPal address is x@jenn.nu.
I forwarded the May 11th email to them on May 12th, May 13th, May 14th, May 15th, May 16th, and May 17th.
Last night I sent the following email:
If I do not receive a payment of $109.00 to x@jenn.nu by 5pm EST tomorrow afternoon, I will be blogging about your company and its scamming practices on the following blogs:
http://www.blogging-girl.com
http://www.heytechgirl.com
http://www.in-my-bag.com
http://www.jenn.nu
http://www.kitty.nu
http://www.mamahood.org
http://www.thatfatchick.com
Additionally, I will be posting about your company on the following forums/public groups:
http://www.payu2blog.com
http://www.lavish.nu
http://www.ning.com (every single product review/paid blogging/mommy blogging community I can find)
Finally, I will be spreading the word on at least a dozen social networks, including:
Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, StumbleUpon, TwitterPlease, take the professional route and pay the money that is RIGHTFULLY OWED TO ME.
I sent yet another email this morning:
I will also be contacting every single company that I have written a post on behalf for through your company, as well as every company I find listed in the open opportunities list.
It is now after 5:00pm EST on May 17th, 2010 — over two months past the date I should have been paid $109 for the opportunities I wrote and had approved by Blog Advertising Store and Paying Post. Interestingly, I suddenly am unable to access blogadvertisingstore.com or payingpost.com, though the few people I asked on AIM reported being able to access it with no problem.
Summary
Blog Advertising Store aka Paying Post is a scam. Do NOT take any of their opportunities, as you will not be paid for the work that you do. Essentially, Blog Advertising Store aka Paying Post and the advertisers that they work with will be getting free advertisement on your blog(s).
Unless I am paid the $109 that Blog Advertising Store aka Paying Post owes me, I will stand firm in my belief that the company is a SCAM. They collect money from advertisers and turn around and provide opportunities to bloggers, only they do NOT hold up their end of the bargain and pay the bloggers for their work.
Spread the word
Spread the word about the SCAMMING COMPANY that Blog Advertising Store aka Paying Post is! Please don’t let them continue to get away with this behavior! We can effectively shut them down by refusing to work for them. With no bloggers to blog about their company and the companies and products of the advertisers they work with, Blog Advertising Store aka Paying Post will eventually go out of business.
If you have a Twitter account, please spread the word by tweeting about this post:
Blog Advertising Store AKA Paying Post is a scam! http://bit.ly/basppscam #paidblogging #scam
Hi! I'm Jenn, aka Tech Girl. I'm practically chained to my computer, and I love all things technology. I may not be an expert, but I certainly have interesting posts and tidbits of info to share! Psst... you can find my personal blog at 
