As you may know, WordPress is a popular program that many people use to blog. It’s popular because it is easy. But what you may not know is that WordPress can also be a very powerful and affordable website creation tool.

(Confession: Two years ago, wanting to redo my own site, I received bids as high as $75,000. Sticker shock led me to rethink the project, and my assistant extraordinaire, Vivian, convinced me that we should use WordPress. It turned out to be a very smart business decision. I love WordPress.)

Creating a website with WordPress is surprisingly easy. There are literally hundreds of themes to choose from, and most are free. These themes can be completely customized and installed quickly.

“Why You Might Want to Redo Your Website Using WordPress”

@JamesGowan, you wrote:

FedEx will be dropping me off a new Mac Pro on Wednesday that closer to $7,000. It’s specs are the following:

Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon (12-core)
8GB (4X2GB) SDRAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Two 18x SuperDrives
Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad

This “margin of difference” confuses me and makes me hope I didn’t make a $4,000 mistake!

WOW, I dare say you made a $5,500 mistake. I have an Intel Core 2 Quad 3.0, 8GB, 2x1GB nVidia 9800GT Hackintosh that boots off 2x1TB Western Digital Black SATA’s striped Raid O and has a RAID 10 storage drive comprised of (4) Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB for 4TB of high speed data “warehousing”. I connect a 30″, 2 20″‘s and 1 15″ monitor to the setup and have 2 DVD drives. It’s the Lifehacker Hackintosh setup but I used all 6 SATA ports. $1500. I would love to hear your xbench score. Of course I own a MacBook Pro, but with an OSX system that xbenches at 250.45 and has 4TB of redundant storage and runs the monitors… How can I possibly justify torturing myself on a MacBook Pro 2.8 dual core at an xbench of 155 24/7? Even with both setups, I have spent ~<$4000.

I need my computer to answer me when I talk to it. The G5′s, even under Leopard were responsive… the Intel’s are simply way too slow, and it’s not a reasonable tradeoff when you have to pay the $7,000 you’re paying and all you’re going to get is a 195 xbench score….

I was this wasn’t so, and I wish Apple was listening.

Really, I do. Apple’s computers are so slow they should be ashamed… and they are guilty of form over function when they try putting things like expensive Flash SSD hard drives in to the systems. For example, when I run 10.5 on a G5 computer that thing responds like POP. On Intel Macs… it’s just not the same and never has been.

But I’m also not down with the whole all-in-one concept either, it’s ridiculous at this point, and it’s the most environmentally unfriendly thing that a company could be doing – it’s just wrong. Monitors, especially LED ones, are going to FAR outlast the computers inside… these LED displays should last at least 5-6 years, and the computers behind them… well, maybe 3!

The short explanation of DNS is that it is the phone book your computer has to use to find out where a website is actually located to connect to it.  Your internet connection has to connect to a DNS as a common and frequent task.

I switched to OpenDNS on my personal computer, which was quite confusing for me – it actually is pretty easy, but it’s just not straight forward if you’re not used to tinkering with those high level settings all the time.  After a while, I just felt like websites took too long to “catch” – for lack of a better word – so I found a DNS benchmark measuring program and I downloaded it and guess what?  OpenDNS, for all its virtues, was not the fastest DNS, my good ol’ Verizon DNS service was the fastest (free) DNS.

If you feel that your websites take a while to connect before pages start to load, I will post the information on how to run the benchmark test and you can see if changing your DNS is a good idea.

I am using OpenDNS at facility where children access the internet and it is spectacular – with a free account, we are able to block illegal and pornographic sites.  In addition, the system is automatically set up that if a site is blocked, OpenDNS will let the user send a request to the system administrator to unblock the site.  I would get such an email wherever I am, and I can edit the filter if appropriate.  It’s great to know I can service the user base this efficiently as well.  Additionally, OpenDNS has some kind of forum setup where people can nominate sites for certain classifications – there are many levels of filtering available and the community consensus will move certain sites into different filter levels.  If you want really great filtering, OpenDNS is really great!

And for whatever it’s worth, I have DSL which most people think stinks.  I don’t.  Why?  Because with an upload speed of 768kbps, it’s 50% faster than the 512kbps you get with cable, and for me, that results in an overall smoother and faster experience.  The download speed is faster than you need it to be anyway.  I have a feeling that cable modem users might find that OpenDNS would be faster for them in most cases.

I’ll check when I’m out and about and report back if I find out anything good!

Then I saw this doohickey, the Optibay, which really caught my eye, where you can add a second hard drive to a notebook computer! It requires you to forgo the optical drive (DVD), which I think I could indeed do.

I found much cheaper versions on ebay, even if you bought a case for the optical drive separately. From China though.

Can you imagine if you had 2 750gb hard drives in your computer? Wow!

The judge granted Google’s motion for summary judgment, saying the company was shielded from Viacom’s copyright claims by “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Those provisions generally protect a Web site from liability for copyrighted material uploaded by its users as long as the operator of the site takes down the material when notified by its rightful owner that it was uploaded without permission.

Dear Mr. Karmazin:

Your customer service is awful. I tried to sign up for Sirius Radio to listen to Rosie Radio.

Your website malfunctioned when I tried to register my account many times and I spent an hour on the phone with a representative who could not fix the problem nor could he register me via his system. I was told that nobody would contact me when the problem was fixed. I registered a few days later and listened to maybe 2 broadcasts.

A few days later I tried to sign in, and I could not! I figured the system malfunctioned again so I left it alone. Then I got billed for monthly service. I never used the service!

Then I called to get the service canceled and your rep offered me 50% off my NEXT month of service. Well, I never used my free trial month, so why would I accept that? I refused, then he offered me 70% off my NEXT month of service. I refused again, then he offered me something close to, but not a full month credit of service. I told him I did not want the service and HE REFUSED TO CANCEL MY SERVICE.

Then I got an email that Sirius could not bill my service on June 20.

I am writing for you to refund all of my service charges as I only used the service successfully on two days in the beginning of my free trial and not after that.

Why do you even charge more money for monthly service for people listening to your service over the internet than people listening to it via satellite? It should be half the price, not $3 more. How your system can be so badly broken that people can’t register and how your customer service people cannot call potential customers who want to give you business when the system is fixed? The harassment I was put through by your rep who refused to cancel my service — after being on hold for 25 minutes — was horrible, and I have no interest in doing business with your company ever again.

This letter is being posted on my blog, robthecomputerguy.com and I am sending a copy to the New York City Office of Consumer Affairs.

How to Fully Defrag System Partition with Kaspersky Installed

Given that Jason Chen promptly returned the lost iPhone when requested in writing, I’m apt to believe his story that the phone was quickly locked/bricked and therefore nobody was calling – it was locked – to get it back.  Some people commenting on this article have said otherwise, but I do not believe that taking a lost item with the willingness/intent to return it to the owner is a crime, and I don’t believe Jason Chen committed a crime here, nor is there probable cause to believe he committed one – and because he paid $5,000 for the phone does not mean a felony accusation could possibly stick, the retail value of the phone will ultimately prevail, thus making this a misdemeanor.  And you’ll notice that there is no checkbox on the Search Warrant for “it was used in the means of committing a misdemeanor”.  And bygosh, please do not debate me on the legal premise of the cost of the phone.

Apple has manipulated the law to the point of defrauding a Judge and law enforcement officers into violating the civil rights of a journalist.  This is a serious attack on the function of a democracy at the most fundamental level and is not to be made light of.  This is clearly revenge from Steve Jobs for violating the secrecy of Apple’s products.  I would bet my last dime that Steve Jobs directed employees to effect this attack on Jason Chen personally.  This is what people mean when they say people with money have power.  This is why our country is morally bankrupt on so many levels.  That a man who runs a company can call the police and have them break into a journalist’s home at night and steal his property is something out of Nazi Germany, not a free United States of America.  Steve Jobs and the people who worked for him to get this done need to know they crossed a line in the USA in 2010.

Who the heck was this guy going to call that would say “Yeah that’s our iPhone”?  Really, who at Apple was going to take that call seriously?  Apple had better be ready to prove that every employee of Apple was on the lookout for *that* phone call, email or twitter message!  Otherwise, if they’re not looking for the lost item, regardless of the law, it’s not Jason Chen’s obligation to track down the owner and return it at his expense!  Quite a few of you are making some analysis of his being in possession of lost property – he has to be *intending* to *keep* it – get real!

Only a handful of people at Apple could possibly have known this phone was lost, and to think that Apple would abuse their right to use law enforcement this way is abhorrent on every level and an nothing short of assault on democracy. IT WAS A JOURNALIST.  Steve Jobs should be so lucky next time he loses a prototype, this guy gave it right back!

The Judge and the law enforcement in this case should be on notice that journalists everywhere will make sure that we know who they are and that they disrespect and disregard the law.  Their future jobs will be limited to like-minded people who do not believe in the freedom of others.  What happened to Jason Chen is unacceptable in a free country.

I’m signing my name to this post because I feel it is that important.  Apple needs to withdraw and apologize, the least of which is because it was not stolen property and the state of California is bankrupt, but frankly those are valid reasons too.  Apple has not a leg to stand on since the property was returned when it was requested.

Rob Reale

I saw this program A Better Finder Rename and thought oh that’s just one of those quirky utilities… WRONG!  Look at this screen shot – how many times would I use this for a given set of pictures!  How many folders do I have with a list of files that are just in number order!?  This is very nice software; I like their stuff very much.  It comes available in Mac & Windows versions.  The Windows version is called Better File Rename.