WebSite - Updated Menu With JS Plugin Detection

WebSite Updates:

As promised MyTekki has updated the website to detect if the user has flash installed. If the user does not (or is using a mobile phone -- that supports JS) the standard HTML menu will load for the user. Check it out, http://mytekki.com. Please let me know if you have any further questions.


Thanks For Reading,
Mike D.
E. mike@mytekki.com
~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~
     ~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

MyTekki is going under some new construction

Many new things happening at MyTekki:

To all the fans that have followed the MyTekki site and the YouTube and the Blog of MyTekki thank you very much. Please note that MyTekki is currently forming a backend to assist the customers they encounter. This backend will help our customers find their current balance and pay for it if they want to via Credit Card. Please note that this will show all unpaid invoices as well as paid invoices in the past. So if you loose your copy MyTekki should have a copy of it. Due to the abundant time that is going to take to upload and organize and secure all the PDFs (invoices) MyTekki currently has please be patient as it might be another month before the backend is up and running in beta.

Unfortunately due to the abundance of requests and the availabilty of the technicians we will be removing live chat as it is just not possible with the current staff at MyTekki to have the chat up as often as we would like. We will be implementing a chat that will only show if technicians are available to speak. We will not be guarenteeing any further time ranges. Please e-mail support@mytekki.com if you have any further questions and one of our technicians should respond as soon as possible (normally within 24 hours).

But to end on good news there is another two good features that are coming to the WebSite. A mobile site is in production with a simple to use interface. There is also a full CSS/HTML/JavaScript site in production where there will be no flash animation for headers. As of right now the header is written in flash for a reason. We will be changing this and it will be your choice to have it animated or not. Not only this smart phones will now be able to see the website.

Thanks For Reading,
Mike D.
E. mike@mytekki.com
~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~
     ~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

You Tube and Blog Posts

So over the last several months MyTekki has posted more and more helpful / tip videos to help the users of the computer world. Unfortunately we have not been able to obtain the user extension MyTekki. So for now it will remain under my personal account. Although I have moved all of my personal videos to a different account and handed over the account to MyTekki. NOTE: Click Here for the Link MyTekki strives to inform the normal user of tips and or information that they may not already know about certain subjects. We try to create as many videos as we can in different subject matters. We would love feedback / ideas from anyone out there. Sign up as a subscriber to our youtube leave comments send messages like / dislike videos. Please do anything you can to let us know here at MyTekki what our videos are doing for you. Thanks for your time and I hope that you all have a wonderful day.

Thanks For Reading,
Mike D.
E. mike@mytekki.com
~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~
     ~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

SAD News - CS5 Flash iPhone Dev and HTML 5

So I downloaded the CS5 trial today. I was all excited to try out the development for the iPhone through the flash IDE. Apple so nicely placed a quick stop to this type development. Effective April 8th, 2010. Developers must develop all apps in objective C or in a native language that the SDK defines. Forcing less competition. I guess there could be one nice thing about it, Adobe will now shift their efforts to the Android platform. Here is a quote from Mike Chambers (product manager)

We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5, however, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature

Another quote that makes the shift evident: Mike Chambers

Android based phones have been doing well behind the success of the Motorola Droid and Nexus One, and there are a number of Android based tablets slated to be released this year. We are working closely with Google to bring both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 to these devices, and thus far, the results have been very promising

As an android owner it makes me very happy to read this news at the same time sad due to the excitement I had to the release of the iPhone library within CS5 the sadness set in as I read the news in depth today.


Another sad piece of news, as all browsers besides IE have introduced the support for HTML 5 and the bones of its development. Companies such as Google and Mozilla are working very closely with W3C to make HTML5 the standard that people use. Currently FireFox 3.6 and Safari 4+ and the latest edition of Opera and Chrome all support the bones of HTML5 which starts putting flash development in the past. YouTube has announced its focus and drive to the new technology. http://youtube.com/html5 . There are nightly builds for all browsers and a very heavy effort to get HTML5 to start being the leading language. Many JS developers are super excited about the news, due to the flexibility that HTML5 has. Open video, audio, vector drawing and many more features. Many flash developers are shifting to adobe air as many flash developers will start losing bids due to the popularity this upgrade/update in the web is going to gain (and is gaining).

Well this was more of a personal blog today, however I thought it was informational to anybody looking forward to the CS5 release of Adobe's products, specifically Flash CS5.

Thanks For Reading,
Mike D.
E. mike@mytekki.com
~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~
     ~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

Backuping Up your DVD or BluRay's on Mac or PC

I can guarantee that you have all sat down one night and been like man I have too many DVDs or BluRays. Well the only reason why you think that way is because you have like 5 piles of DVDs. What if they were all consolidated into, lets say a folder? Well now you can. In my video I will show you on how you can backup both your DVD's and BluRays on mac and pc. Keep in mind:

A DVD Size = 4 - 8 GB
A BluRay Size - 25-32GB

You can see the huge difference. now normally this application uses a really good profile to compress the bluray while encoding. If you only get the main film on the bluray (with all quality of audio). Then you can end up some where around 15GB. Same goes with a DVD on a 4GB DVD get the main film you will end up around 2.5GB on an 8GB somewhere around 5-6.5GB. So watch my video and and happy ripping.

MyTekki: Video Tips - How to convert DVD or BluRay to MKV


Thanks Again,
Mike D.
E. mike@mytekki.com
~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~
     ~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

mmKeys.dll iTunes multimedia keys fix

So you have done it for in the past I guarantee it. You have been playing something on your iTunes and you got a phone call or had to do something else really quickly and then you went to pause your iTunes with your pause key on your laptop or keyboard. O no it does not work. All because iTunes doesn't listen to universal keys unless it is the the app in focus. Well not anymore. If you watch my video on youtube you will see how to get around this and it being seamless and simple. No more complex scripting or anything like that.

MyTekki: Audio Tips - mmKeys.dll Multimedia Keys Windows iTunes


Thanks Again,
Mike D.
E. mike@mytekki.com
~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~
     ~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

YouTube Channel - Growing Quickly

As time permits I am posting many videos on my personal YouTube channel. Soon I will hopefully have the rights to the user name MyTekki. Someone took this user name a while back and I am going to try to work with that user to try to obtain it. I.E. http://youtube.com/mytekki. The current channel is http://youtube.com/xmikedanielsx

If you have any comments questions or thoughts about a video you would like to see please let me know I will be more than happy to post any video. I will be doing a video shortly on WEP security and WPA security. As well as my script I wrote a while back to back up a SQL Express database. I will be showing you how to implement it and the requirements for the script to function correctly. I aim to populate the YouTube channel as much as I can as well as the blog. Also I am personally going to be obtaining my MCSA and MCSE shortly. This is a personal goal of mine and will be starting the course shortly.

Thanks Again,
Mike D.
E. mike@mytekki.com
~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~
     ~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

ATTN Mac and iPhone users

On a normal MyTekki does not write about Mac stuff too much because our primary focus/target is not Macs but it is technology and we do support them. So as a Mac owner and as a technology enthusiast. I found a couple cool things this past weekend. Although I have known about letterbox for the past many years I thought I would bring it up one more time since it is such a great add on to the class Mail.app. I personally just bought a new mac and have to install all my little apps that I had on my old mac that I sold. Letterbox is definitely one of them. So fi you are/were a primary pc user you would note that if/when you used Outlook you had the option (Microsoft put it that way by default in 2007) of moving you mail preview pane to the right. Which with widescreen monitors and and machines now a days makes sense. It works well and looks good. However Apple still has yet to allow this nor adopt it. Here comes letter box to save the day.

Snow Leopard users (read the read me)
http://harnly.net/projects/letterbox/downloads/Letterbox-v0.24b5.zip

Another option that is really compatible for Leopard users is WideMail. Although they claim to be compatible with Snow Leopard I would still recommend letter box. Although there is a manual install process it is super easy and really nice.

http://www.daneharnett.com/widemail/

The other amazing thing I have found over the last week is called Square. http://squareup.com

Without going into a great bit of detail If you own a business or looking to just indulge by selling items. Square is looking/promising to be amazing. You can sign up for a free trial. Here is a link to a youtube video for a product overview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSzsFAJAKHI

I mean for larger companies it will not make sense. But it definitely makes sense for smaller companies or individuals.

If you have any questions please feel to contact our support team. http://mytekki.com/contact-us

you can use the live chat option on the page or if they are not online just leave a message.

Thanks Again,
Mike Daniels

Great Buys: HP Laptop and Dell Server

You ever heard of the term "I got such a good deal, I practically stole it." Well 2 deals just came up recently. One deal is for an HP laptop G60-630 and another for a Dell T110. Both great products at outstanding prices.

HP - G60-630 (staples) - best deal that I have found

http://www.staples.com/HP-G60-630-Laptop/product_848836

Dell T110 Tower Server - Many diff configs starting out really really low.

http://www.dell.com/us/en/business/servers/poweredge-t110/pd.aspx?refid=poweredge-t110&s=bsd&cs=04

Well here is all the deals that I have found as of today. Will post more as they come up, until then keep posted for either a great buy or a great how to.

Thanks Again,

Mike D.

~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~

~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

Fun Fact: Sunday Funday - Superbowl Ad Time *SURPRISE*

Now I know this does not have to do much with technology but I thought I would write a quick blog about it:

To all the football fans and Google fanatics. You will be even more surprised as some one has leaked the fact that a company (Google) who prides itself on not publicizing itself via advertisement has decided to release an ad some time within the Superbowl today. Rumor has it that it will be somewhere around the 3rd quarter. I hope everyone enjoys their Sunday, but remember MyTekki never stops. So if it is in the middle of the Superbowl and you are steaming it from your computer and something happens. **LET MyTekki HANDLE IT**

Thanks Again,

Mike D.

~ " From Computers to E-Commerce " ~

~ " I'll let MyTekki handle this " ~

How To: Write A .BAT file To BackUp your SQL Express and/or SQL Standard Databases

For my first how to article I thought it appropriate to come out with a blog I have been searching for, for a very long time. So here it is: First off I want to come out and state one thing, I am not responsible for anything that might occur on your system and or your data being completely secure. Please use an enterprise solution for guaranteeing that your information is secure and backed up. This article is being written for any tech that needs a bit of help for DBA.

First off I will post code bits and then explain them after I post.

First code bit:

@ECHO OFF

@REM Created By: MyTekki

@REM Last Updated: 01-10-10

@REM v1.0.5.0 Final

for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=./-" %%f in ("%date%") do (

set _today=%%f-%%g-%%h

)

Now what this does is basically 2 things. it goes through the default "date" variable object and gathers pieces of information out of them such as the day, month, year. Then assigns (sets) a new variable known as the "_today" variable. So now that we have this bit of information we can start setting some of our other variables.

SET CMD_PATH=%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cmd.exe

SET sqlServer=%1

SET sqlInstance=%2

SET saUsr=%3

SET saPass=%4

SET dbName=%5

SET tempBackLoc=%6

SET copyBackLoc=%7

SET logLoc=%8

SET deleteLocal=%9

Here we set a couple variables also we set to the cmd.exe (command prompt) file normally located on the system under C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe we use %sytemroot% instead of %windir% both are built in variables but one is supported in older versions as well as newer. So now that is done we can look at the other variables that are set such as "sqlServer" as you can see they all have a %1, %2, %3, etc.. This is due to the fact that we are going to dynamically take these variables in making this object more useful for further use (multiple databses for example). So in this case if we were doing a scheduled task it would look something like the following:

{PathOfBATFile}\{BATFileName}.bat {sqlServer} {sqlInstance} {sqlUser} {sqlPass} {dbName} {tempBackUpLoc} {copyBackUpLoc} {logLoc} {deleteLocal--BooleanValue Y or N}

MySample:

C:\Temp\SQL_autoBackUp.bat MyTekkiSrv SQLExpress2005 sa test123 Data2010 C:\Temp\ R:\SQLBackUps\ C:\Temp\Log\ Y

!!!!! BIG NOTES !!!!!

Many of you are probably wondering why I don't just copy to the final locaiton. The reason why I do not do this is because of 2 reasons. If for some reason you can not connect to the final location? Secondly if security changes in the final location? Also SQL Server can not back up to a remote location it has to be a local physical drive not a network location.

Another BIG NOTE note:

I do not Check for spaces any where in this script maybe a later version I will add it in. But for now you can not use spaces in anything folder names instance names passwords

Now we do a couple checks:

@REM ---- VARIABLE CHECKS

IF NOT DEFINED dbName GOTO defineDatabase

IF NOT DEFINED tempBackLoc GOTO defineTempBackLoc

IF NOT DEFINED copyBackLoc GOTO defineCopyBackLoc

IF NOT DEFINED logLoc GOTO defineLogLoc

Here we check to see if that we have defined a database name, temp backup location, final location, and a log location

@REM --- END OF VAR CHECKS

@REM Checks to see if the Directory for the temp BackUp Exists

IF EXIST %tempBackLoc% GOTO CHKCOPYLOC

@REM Creates the directory for the temp BackUp

MKDIR %tempBackLoc%

:CHKCOPYLOC

@REM Checks to see if the Directory for the real BackUp Exists

IF EXIST %copyBackLoc% GOTO COPYFILE

@REM Creates the directory for the copied file.

MKDIR %copyBackLoc%

Now we are going to see if some of the variables exist. For example the back up location exists if not we will make the location for them.

:COPYFILE

@REM -- Makes the back up using the sqlcmd exe Found in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Binn

%CMD_PATH% /c sqlcmd -S %sqlServer%\%sqlInstance% -U %saUsr% -P %saPass% -Q "BACKUP DATABASE [%dbName%] TO DISK = N'%tempBackLoc%%dbName%%_today%.bak' WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'%dbName%-Full Database Backup', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10"

COPY "%tempBackLoc%%dbName%%_today%.bak" "%copyBackLoc%%dbName%_%_today%.bak"

Now because the SQL Directory is within the the enviroment variables of the system (by default on install of sql) For those of you who do not know where this is I have posted how to check

--Windows XP and Server 2003. --

Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced Tab > Evironment Variables > System Variables > Path (the one that includes C:\windows\system32) In here if you hit edit you will see at the end there is a location posted. c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\

--Windows Vista and Server 2008 --

Right click Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings (left Side) > Evironment Variables > System Variables > Path (the one that includes C:\windows\system32) In here if you hit edit you will see at the end there is a location posted. c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\

Note: If you are using SQL Expres 2008 or SQL 2008 you will probable see the following:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn

Now because this path is in the System Eviroment Variables I can just call sqlcmd and it will automatically know what file I am calling. So this we pass all the variables as paramaters that the sqlcmd requires to run the query of BACKUP. We name the file with the tempBackLoc then the dbName then the _today.

@REM -- checks to see if the file successfully got copied. If not it goes to the copy bad

IF NOT EXIST "%copyBackLoc%%dbName%_%_today%.bak" GOTO COPYBAD

We now check to see if the database actually backed up. If it did not copy correctly we exit and log error to the log location.

@REM if the copied Existed. Then we write a log letting the person know (this will also append to a previous log)

ECHO #################### %_today% -- executed SQL_autoBackUp.bat #################### >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO -- >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO Copied file %copyBackLoc%%dbName%_%_today%.bak successfully >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO -- >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO ####################################################################################### >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO ----- >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

GOTO DELETEORIG

Here we write that we executed the batch file and that it created the following files successfully

:COPYBAD

ECHO #################### %_today% -- executed SQL_autoBackUp.bat #################### >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO -- >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO Copy failed >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO -- >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO ####################################################################################### >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

ECHO ----- >> %logLoc%%dbName%_log.txt

EXIT

Else we write to the log file telling them that it did not back up successfully

:DELETEORIG

IF %deleteLocal% == Y DEL "%tempBackLoc%%dbName%%_today%.bak"

EXIT

Finally we check to see if they want us to delete the local copy of the file. (tempBackLoc) If so then we delete it

@REM --- Messages to users who do not define params

:defineDatabase

ECHO Please Define a Database Name within your params

PAUSE

EXIT

:defineTempBackLoc

ECHO Please define a temporary Back Up Location within your params

PAUSE

EXIT

:defineCopyBackLoc

ECHO Please define a final (copy) Back Up Location within your params

PAUSE

EXIT

:defineLogLoc

ECHO Please define a Log Location within your params

PAUSE

EXIT

and as the comment says all these are, are messages that if the user does not define certain things I can tell them.

Please note that the tempBackLoc (temp back up location) must have SQL Security rights. This is a local security group that gets created on the server. Normally looks like the following:

SQLServer2005MSSQLUser$COMPNAME$INSTANCENAME

In my case I have:

SQLServer2005MSSQLUser$MyTekkiSrv$SQLEXPRESS2005

If you wish for the entire source of this file. Please use the following link

http://mytekki.com/public/scripts/bat/SQLExpressBackUp.bat

Google stops Supporting IE6

As it may come to no surprise to tech people google has announced it will stop supporting IE6. As of March 1st, 2010 google will no longer support IE6. Now you may think "well no big deal, people should be upgraded already." If this is your thoughts unfortunately although we would think most IT personnel would take care of this and have their client machines updated past IE6 you would be surprised at the number of users still using the browser. In just doing a quick google search on the current IE browser and versions, I found this graph which displays a shocking fact.

2009	IE8	IE7	IE6	Firefox	Chrome	Safari	Opera
December	13.5%	12.8%	10.9%	46.4%	9.8%	3.6%	2.3%
November	13.3%	13.3%	11.1%	47.0%	8.5%	3.8%	2.3%
October	12.8%	14.1%	10.6%	47.5%	8.0%	3.8%	2.3%
September	12.2%	15.3%	12.1%	46.6%	7.1%	3.6%	2.2%
August	10.6%	15.1%	13.6%	47.4%	7.0%	3.3%	2.1%
July	9.1%	15.9%	14.4%	47.9%	6.5%	3.3%	2.1%
June	7.1%	18.7%	14.9%	47.3%	6.0%	3.1%	2.1%
May	5.2%	21.3%	14.5%	47.7%	5.5%	3.0%	2.2%
April	3.5%	23.2%	15.4%	47.1%	4.9%	3.0%	2.2%
March	1.4%	24.9%	17.0%	46.5%	4.2%	3.1%	2.3%
February	0.8%	25.4%	17.4%	46.4%	4.0%	3.0%	2.2%
January	0.6%	25.7%	18.5%	45.5%	3.9%	3.0%	2.3%

Although over the years/months IE6 has grown less and less popular. You can see last month still 10.9% of people still use the browser.