June 29th, 2009

I think I’ve received one of these before..

The Maroon & White letter came in the mail today. It must mean one thing – that I’ve been accepted to UMass for the second time! This time I plan on finishing. A big thanks to the University Without Walls staff for helping me come up with a good plan for finishing out my degree.

June 25th, 2009

Welcome to the team Mark!

My brother started working here at CampusLIVE which is exciting. First project is getting him nasty with our new HD cam and editing suite. Here is his first work of art.

June 20th, 2009

Duplex Printing on HP 2605dn in Windows 7

I made the swtich from XP to Windows 7 because I was really impressed with the stability and new features in the OS. The only issue I ran into was that duplexing was not working with my HP2605dn Color Laser printer. I stumbled upon Phillip Blanton’s solution which thankfully saved the day.

To enable Duplexing

• Use the HP Color LaserJet 2605/2605dn/2605dtn PS driver that comes with Vista.
• Right click on the printer and select “Properties” from the context menu.
• Select the Device Settings tab.
• Scroll down to the Installable Options section and click the setting next to Duplex Unit (for 2-Sided Printing) to switch it from
  Not Installed to Installed.
• Also in the Installed Options change the following Hard Drive options…
  Change “Printer Hard Disk” from Installed to Not Installed
  Change “Job Storage” from Enabled to Disabled.

Save the changes and the next time you print, the duplexing option will be available and you will still be able to print in color.

June 20th, 2009

Entrepreneur Magazine Features My Ability to Look Fly

Entrepreneur came to my office about a month ago to take photos of the team and I for an upcoming article. It just went out online. Thanks to David Lang for the great photos.

Looking Fly on the Cheap: Here are some surefire methods for polishing your college startup’s appearance.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2009/july/202306.html

June 7th, 2009

Quantcast, we are not Quantified

I was browsing some competitor traffic stats today from the main players – Alexa, Quantcast etc. Although they are horribly inaccurate due to their guesswork. Just ask Matt Cutts of Google, Jason Calacanis or Grizzly.

A few months ago I tried out Quantcast’s tracking which gives you a Google Analytics like chuck of Javascript which is supposed to directly report your traffic to them. This appealed to me because I really hate when uneducated people comment about us “not having any traffic” when its really just a case of Alexa or Quantcast completely guessing our traffic. Niche sites targeting a demographic unlikely to install an Alexa Toolbar typically receive bad rankings on these sites.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the results of Quantcast (or loading another JS library) so I removed it. The funny part is that Quantcast still shows that our traffic is “Directly Measured” or “Quantified”, even though we haven’t had that code in there for months.

Subsequently we’re back to flat line on Quantcast. Alexa on the other hand keeps moving us up.

June 4th, 2009

Playing with TwitterFeed

I just setup TwitterFeed to autopost my blog posts to Twitter. We’re going to be using this for our Social Media work with many partner universities if all goes well. This post is the first test.

June 2nd, 2009

Verizon and Asurion worked out well

I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly my phone replacement went yesterday. After hiking Tuckerman’s Ravine on Saturday and getting hit by a rain/hail storm, it seemed that my Blackberry wasn’t happy about the hike. The main function buttons were nonfunctional.

I took the phone to the local Verizon store who let me know that my account was just over the 1-year warranty period from RIM, but that I could get a new phone overnight since I had insurance on it.

The process involve going to Asurion’s PhoneClaim website and filling out some basic information. After paying my $50 deductible online I received immediate shipping confirmation. This morning UPS delivered my new phone.

I’m really happy with the quick turnaround. Sometimes insurance is actually useful.