SimpleClix Studio

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) today. It is fully featured with a lot of plugins and enhancements. Its setup is so easy with just a few clicks. Because of its popularity, its getting quite a bit of attention from hackers. If your Joomla site is getting hacked, fixed, and getting hacked again the next day, then you may have forgotten the last step of installing Joomla.

Htaccess.txt

When you upload the Joomla files to your web server, there should be a htaccess.txt file included in the root directory. If you open up this file in a text editor, you should see that it contains some rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. However, leaving the file as htaccess.txt won’t put it in effect. To put it in effect, you should rename the file to “.htaccess” without the quotes. Note that there is a period at the beginning of the filename. This indicates that the file is a hidden file. You should also make sure that the file is read only.

After you have completed the last step of the Joomla installation, your website should be more secure and less likely to be a target to the hackers.

It looks like microsoft will be launching a markus fenix gears of war version of the 120gb zune. It is due to release on the same launch date as the video game. Pictures are to come!

Finally, EFI-X is sold to the public. In case that someone doesn’t know what’s that about, I will tell you a bit more about this device.

A while ago, I wrote a comment about a “war” between Apple and Pystar. Since 2005, when Apple decided to move their platform from PPC to Intel, the raise-up of OSX86 project has never stopped nor slowed down. Lots and lots of people devoted themselves into the OSX86 community and contributed uncountable efforts to make this “was-impossible mission” real and many people can taste a bite of Apple on regular PC.

Apple kept silent through all these years until Pystar Tech was opened up and announced to sell Hackintosh to the public. This event was introduced in the previous post, so I am not going to say more about it.

As I browsed around today, I was surprised that EFI-X was sold in the US already. And the are having a special price right now for $155 USD, please check “EFI-X sold online“. This device is like a USB device that has a 10 pin internal USB port that connect to certain models of motherboards, for more information, please check Hardware Compatibility List. When you boot up your machine, it will ask you whether you want to boot into Mac OS or Windows. If you select Mac OS, then it will take 2 mintues to prepare and you will eventually get to a Mac OS system. Well, 2 minutes might be a bit too long but once you get into the system, it will run smoothly; I have checked online and people have feedback that the Bench score for a Hackintosh with below $1000 USD hardware is not much difference as a real Mac Pro and sometimes will have even higher score.

You may ask, I can use a modified Darwin bootloader and use vanilla kernal to install a Mac system on my computer with more choices of hardware, why do I want to pay extra money for such a device? Yes, it’s true that this device is NOT for anyone who wants to save money in building up a Hackintosh; let me ask the following questions first:

1. Can you get everything functioning just like you do on Windows using the same hardware?

2. Do you have to download a modified DVD online withouth purchasing a Mac OS?

3. When there are updates, will you be brave enough to grab those updates and install just like the other Mac users do?

EFI-X is a device to allow you install Mac on your PC without changing anything on the Macintosh Installation DVD and at the same time you can update just like on a real Mac.

To me, there are both sides that I need to look at:

Advantages:

1.Easier to install Mac;

2. Can update directly from Apple’s office update site;

3. BootCamp-like interface bootloader

4. More stable than other Hackintosh.

5. Ensure the compatibility on the list.

Disadvantages:

1. Price is still high

2. Boot time too long

3. The range of choices is still narrow<– I guess this can’t be their fault becasue Apple didn’t really develop their system to fit in any hardware.

Yes, I am a hard core Mac user. Will I give it a try? Yes I will if I have a chance. Do I think it’s illegal? I don’t know, it’s obviously different with the Psystar’s situation; and I am NOT a lawyer so I am not going to argue.

To me, this is interesting; at least, more and more people will be willing to try Mac OS. Apple will get more market share, why not?

[UPDATE]: By reviewing the picture above, I found that the data was not that accure since for the EFI-X Mac Pro, it has 3GHz CPU and 4GB RAM, while the real ones have relatively lower specification.

Once in a while, you may have to repair your Windows due to system file corruptions. Windows repair is useful in some cases where you are stuck in a login loop or you receive some error messages at startup. Windows repair is done by booting from the Windows installation disc and choosing Repair after the installation process searches for existing OS on your hard drive.

IE Shortcut Duplicates IE Shortcut

However, after repairing Windows, you may experience difficulty starting up Internet Explorer from the shortcut icon on the desktop. When you double click on it, it will simply creates another shortcut icon instead of launching Internet Explorer. This problem is probably due to the installation of different version of IE during the repair process. Before the repair, you may have already updated your IE to version 7. When you repair Windows, it is IE 6 that overwrites it. This will give you the problem mentioned above.

To resolve this, you can manually download Internet Explorer 7 from Microsoft’s website and reinstall it. Once it’s done, you should be able to fire up Internet Explorer from you desktop again. You can download Internet Explorer from the link below:

Download Internet Explorer 7

One of the most important data to backup before formatting your hard drive is the downloaded emails. If you are using Outlook (not Outlook Express) to check your emails, then there is a simple way to backup your emails, calendar, contacts, tasks and notes. All you need to do is to make a copy of the .pst file which is usually named Outlook.pst by default. This .pst file contains all the information you have downloaded and created inside Outlook, except for the email account settings (which you can write them down and re-enter them for your new installation).

Where is the .PST File?

The .pst file is usually stored under your user account’s directory. In Windows Vista, it would be like this.

C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

If you are unsure, you can always check in Outlook by clicking “File”, then “Data File Management…”. You should find the path under the filename column.

So copying the .pst file is a safe way to keep your emails and if your Windows is not accessible, you can simply plugin your hard drive to a working machine and copy over the .pst file.

Restoring .PST File and Fixing Your Contacts

Restoring your emails is easy. Before you do that, make sure you have run Outlook once so that it creates the Outlook.pst file first. Then you can copy over the .pst file that you have backed up and replace the empty one. The next time you start Outlook, you should be able to see all your old emails. Remember to add your email accounts to Outlook since the .pst file doesn’t contain your email account settings.

However, there is one flaw to fix. Assuming that you have saved some email addresses in the Contacts, if you try to compose a new email and insert an email address in the “To” field from your address book, you will receive an error. To fix this, all you need to do is to re-create the address book.

Click on “Tools” > “Email Accounts…” > Select “View or change existing directories or address books” > Click “Next” > Remove the current “Outlook Address Book” and add a new one > Click “Finish”

After completing the steps above, you need to restart Outlook and then click on “Contacts” once. After that, you should be able to insert email addresses from your contact list when composing an email.

It’s not officially shown up on Apple’s website yet; but this “rumors” is almost “near to be true” already, waiting for the verbal announcement of Steve Jobs.

Engadget confirms that there is an Apple media event for September 9th.

Apple will be holding a special event called “Let’s Rock” on September 9th where the new iPod Nano is expected to be released.

It’s slimmer and probably thinner. It’s got a ‘widescreen’ probably for the movies. To me, I accept this one more than the 3rd generation– it was a short fat one to me.But to be honest, no big changes to me and I still love my old iPod Nano.

Well, we will wait till it’s announced officially. When they are sold to the public, we can pop up to big stores like BestBuy and Futureshop to have a try.

Now, let’s take a look at the history of iPod Nano:

First Generation

Second Generation

Third Generation

We’ve got the picture to confirm that there will be a Microsoft Zune coming out in Blue. For us Canadians, it is said that the Blue Zune will go exclusive to Best Buy Canada. Specs are pretty much the same as the 2nd Gen Zune coming in 8GB.

Blue 8GB Zune

Today, it’s not hard to see this “Google Chrome” on most IT websites. Well, if you have not yet taken a look, click this site:

Google Chrome, Google? Browser Project

My first thought was, OH NO. Does that mean as a web designer, I have to take care of one more browser since tomorrow? Right now, Microsoft’s IE has 79% of the market, FF 12%, Apple’s Safari 6% and Opera 3%. Chrome is said to be the browser that Google pushes out to fight against Microsoft’s IE. Will that happen? Who knows. There is no doubt that Google is very successful online; but, don’t forget Google has failed a lot too.

When I took a deeper look at the brief descriptions and the comic of Google Chrome. I found the interface very interesting as well as some unique features.

I will definitely try it out when Google releases this new baby for the digital world.