I love web applications because all I need is a connection and a browser to run them. When I have to install something on my computer, it better be worth it. Spotify, the newest music service to hit the US, has debuted with much fanfare and I think it mostly deserves the hype.

Spotify a great application for sharing music with friends and has a vast collection of songs. But will Spotify take-off in the US? Here’s some hurtles I think they may need to overcome first:

No Web Application

When Spotify first became available in the US I was unaware that it was an installable application, much like iTunes. Instantly, I was disappointed. I have multiple computers and am constantly using different machines. It’s a major drag to have to install an application on my buddies computer or on a business computers with watchdog applications on it.

Confusing Interface

I started using Spotify as a beginner and instantly became a bit overwhelmed and confused. Being a stickler for UI, I began fumbling through the menu items with frustration until I manage to hear music coming into my ears.

The UI should be simplified even further and not try to mimic the iTunes platform so much. What do you think? Were you confused or quickly adapted to Spotify’s user interface?

Higher Price Point

Before Netflix jacked up their pricing (must to the customer’s dismay) you could have gotten video subscription for the same price as Spotify’s premium membership rate. I’m pretty cheap when it comes to music, so $10/month seems rather pricey.

To be fair, there is a lower priced plan at $5/month with less bells-and-whistles. I’m assuming most people will sign up for the premium though since what the main grab is mobile capability.

Find out more about Spotify’s pricing »

Despite it’s shortcomings… Spotify is doing well

Everyone at my work is raving about Spotify. The main factors seem to be that they feel so cool that they got an invite and you didn’t (they did a great job with the invite-only system) and the social integration.

Spotify gains $70,000 user the first week »

IMO, Firefox is better than Chrome. Feel free to voice you opinion in the comment boxes below. Why do I like it? All the add-ons. For example, I don’t think I could live now without Firebug. I know Chrome has similar tools built-in, but I feel they aren’t as intuitive as Firebug. What do you think?

Firefox has definitely taken a page from the Chrome book with this latest release. You can see the browser window now is minimized to give more emphasis on the website content you are actually browsing. This is great, and I applaud them for “copying” Chrome on this UX enhancement. Also, I noticed they moved the “Open in New Tab” as the first option when you right-click on a link rather than being the second. This will take me some time to get used to, but again, a good move in the long run as it will save me .2 milliseconds when clicking now. Thanks Firefox!

Want to Download the Beta?

I hope you consider downloading the Beta version of Firefox 4: Download Firefox 4 Beta. You won’t regret it, Firefox is a great web browser for all users.

Adobe to the Rescue (Better Late than Never, Right?)

Sure this problem started at the initial release but hasn’t been addressed until now. But it’s probably a small percentage of overall users. I say this because there are several people where I work that use the same setup as I do and have not had the same problem. Although, one did keep losing all his saved sites… which would be terrible to keep replacing if you have more than 10+ sites you continue work and do maintenance on. Anyways: here’s the link to the download and article from Adobe.

• Adobe Article
• Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 Mac Update

How do I know this will fix my problem?

Depending on your case, this update could drastically improve your Dreamweaver experience or do nothing at all. If you are experiencing the DW menu appearing in your Mac menu bar, but other menus, such as File, Edit, and View, do not appear, this update will fix that.

How do I update?

Updating is easy. Simply double-click on the .dmg file and this will in turn run the Adobe Dreamweaver updater. You should see a window similar to the one below. Once this process is complete, restart Dreamweaver and enjoy your application.

Please Note: Updating my Dreamweaver Removed All of My Saved Server Passwords

Make sure that you have your password list backed up. I did not lose my server IP addresses or anything else, just the username and passwords. I’m thinking Adobe must have added this as a security measure. Please comment below if you have any questions about the Adobe update or if you experience anything you’d like to share.

Ok so you just finished downloading the latest Call of Duty: Black Ops and you’re all amped to get it booted up right? Now you get into your first multiplayer game after that tedious step of setting up your controls and by this time you’re gripping the mouse with much anticipation ready to get on that first kill streak. Oh wow, a new server browser. And what’s this? It actually loads the servers fast… nothing like that POS Bad Company 2 server browser that takes forever and looks like it came from 1999.

You’ve Joined and Now You’re Playing

Perhaps you’ve gotten down the first corridor and you’re just changin weapons when you see the first glitch. Just a little bit of lag, it’s nothing you say. But wait, there it is again. Another skipped frame, another chopped sound. Oh no, this is not good.

It Can’t Be My Computer

You’re rig runs everything tip top right? You’ve got BC2 installed and it’s running smoother than a greased monkey on a slip-n-slide and you’ve got your OS tuned to the sound of a songbird in the spring. You’re wondering what you can do to make it better. Quick, take a look at the game’s settings.

My Black Ops Setting Must Be Wrong

Fiddling with the settings over and over again may help. Perhaps on the lowest resolution you won’t experience such a major lag during multiplayer gameplay. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the case thus far. There’s been numerous threads on the forums about performance issues.

Forums Threads Mentioning Black Ops PC Performance Issues

Here’s a few threads I think may be helpful for you guys to check out if you want to see the latest developments on a resolution for the COD PC Black Ops performance issue.

1. Weird system resource usage = heavy lag
2. Is it just me?! Black Ops Memory Leak
3. Weird system resource usage = heavy lag

Is there a Fix or Solution for the Black Ops Performance Issue?

As of right now it seems everything is speculation. I’ve seen in the threads a variety of resoltutions that I will attempt to document through this posting. If you know of a resolutions that helped you fix your COD Black Ops PC Install then please post in the comment sections below.

Fixes for Steam PC Multiplayer

If you bought COD Black Ops on Steam for PC and are experiencing lag issues you’re not alone. The problem has been acknowledged by Steam and there’s already a few workarounds floating around the interwebs that might work for you:

Running Steam in Offline Mode and Closing the Process

1. Run Steam in Offline mode
2. Run Black Ops
3. When in the game CTRL+ALT+DEL and go to the Process Manager and turn off Steam.exe there.

Set Processes Priority via Windows Task Manager

1. Boot up the game via Steam like you normally would
2. Minimize the COD application using the windows button and open task manager
3. Set the COD application’s process priority to high in the task manager processes tab
4. Set the Steam application’s process priority level to low
5. Resume gameplay

Complete and Updated List of Current COD Black Ops PC Fixes

Have a ton of problems that you’re not sure exactly what the issue is? Check out this great link: Call of Duty: Black Ops Crashes, Freezes, Errors, and Fixes to find out how to fix your PC COD Black Ops problem…. hopefully. :]

Video on Black OPs PC Lag Issue

Want to see the issue for yourself? Here’s a good screencast that demonstrates a typical example of the issue PC users are experiencing when they boot up their new copies of Call of Duty Black Ops multiplayer games.

What’s this Comic About?

Basically all the ‘modern’ browsers are playing in the treehouse and poor IE6 is disgruntled that he cannot. He is sporting a 5 o’clock shadow and looks a little mean. Meanwhile, Firefox is pointing out that IE7 is indeed related to the banned browser. My question is this: why is IE7 still allowed in the treehouse? Or any IE for that matter. Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t even allow us to do anything cool with CSS3 or HTML5. Bottom line, die IE die!

First off, why would you want this? Let's say you have a blog and in the footer (or header... or sidebar) you'd like to have the facebook like button. Well, it really isn't very practical to have to insert this in the footer of your post everytime you create a new entry. Solution: let's leverage the power of PHP to make the Facebook like button dynamic!

Facebook Like Button PHP Code

 <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo rawurlencode('http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=275&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=dark&amp;height=35" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:275px; height:35px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Code Explanation

What the code above will do is allow you to insert a dynamic like button in a common place on your website and have that button's url change according to the page the visitor is on (hence why I say dynamic). For instance, on a WordPress site you could put the code in your sidebar.php file and the url to be 'liked' would be whatever page the visitor is on.

Extra Tips

If you don't want the url to change and only want the user to 'like' one url on your site (let's say the homepage for instance) then you could change the address to that static text. This is in fact how the Facebook like button creation tool works on their website.

Also: Don't forget the power of PHP and, if you're on the WordPress CMS then you can also leverage the built in functions like bloginfo('url'); and more! Simply replace

Hope you enjoy this snippet. Also, FYI... Facebook has changed 'become a fan' to just like... Questions? Leave a comment below or Contact DLOCC

Why do this? It makes it very easy to move over the WordPress database when it's time to go live. Developing locally is always in your best interest. This method is preferred over 'going commando' because you can keep better control over your code and it's faster to develop. Plus a whole slew of other reasons that you can Google if you feel like it. Let's get started on setting up your WordPress install to use XAMPP's virtual hosting capabilities.

1. Open your Windows Hosts file by clicking on My Computer and navigating to "\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\"

2. Add the following to the bottom of the hosts file by using your text editor of choice. Notepad will work just fine.

127.0.0.1 somesite.com
127.0.0.1 www.somesite.com

Note: Be sure to replace "somesite" with your actual WordPress website domain name

3. Now navigate to your XAMPP httpd-vhosts.conf by navigating to: C:/XAMPP/apache/conf/extras

4. Uncomment the following line:

5.Add the following at the bottom of the file and save the file before you close it:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot “E:/xampp/htdocs/”
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot “E:/xampp/htdocs/somesite”
ServerName www.somesite.com
ServerAlias www.somesite.com
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot “E:/xampp/htdocs/somesite”
ServerName somesite.com
ServerAlias somesite.com
</VirtualHost>

Wait! One last thing... Now restart Apache and MySQL (using XAMMP) and you should be good to go when you navigate your browser to the url you specified for your WordPress installation using the tutorial above (once you restart the services). If you have any comments or questions be sure to use the comment box below or the Contact DLOCC.

This method is useful if you are looking for a way to have either a print button for a specific image on a page. Please refer to the demo to see exactly how this can be accomplished. Remember to specify the image's width and height in the JavaScript onClick event.

<img src="http://www.dlocc.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/fluffy-kitten.jpg" alt="Print this Fluffy Kitten by Clicking Below" />
<a href="#" onclick='javascript:window.open("http://www.dlocc.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/fluffy-kitten.jpg","mywindow","width=322,height=323,left=650,top=-1"); location.href="javascript:window.print()"'>Click to Print the Image Above</a>  

If you want to see the demo please click through and we'll show you how to use JavaScript to print images by clicking a link.

Demo JavaScript Print Image Button: