Last week out of nowhere all 6 of my motherboard’s USB ports died. Windows will no longer recognize any device attached through any of the ports. Power will be given to the device for a couple of seconds, windows will display and error about how the USB device is unknown, and then the device’s power is cut off. I’ve been searching the internet for the past week or so for a solution. It seems as though I’m not the only person on the internet with this problem; and it just so happens that my dad ran into a client with the same exact problem. No explanation and after a few days of work, no solution. And again, today I ran into a kid in my school who has the same problem, suddenly none of his USB ports will recognize any devices. He suggested that it was a virus and he’s been using a PS2 mouse/keyboard to get by.

While browsing with my PS2 keyboard and Mousekeys (Alt + Shift + Numlock for those in Windows), I found that the only easy solution would be to buy a new USB 2.0 PCI card. There were many suggestions to check the BIOS USB settings, reset the BIOS, uninstall and reinstall USB drivers, reinstall Windows and even format the hard drive and replace the motherboard. I had tried everything up until formatting and replacing with no success. Two trips to BestBuy and a PCI USB 2.0 card later I have a semi-functioning computer.

So the easy solution is to buy a new piece of hardware, but it still bugs me that I’m not able to make use of the 2 convienient ports in the front, and 4 ports in the back of my rig. It is very odd that this same situation has happened to 3 people within the same week. If you’re stuck with this problem yourself, again, the only way to solve it for now is to go out and buy a new USB PCI card.

If you have any information about as to why this happens, or how to solve it, please shoot me an email or leave a comment below!

So much for the Flock browser. I’ve been experiencing a lot of crashes lately, too many for me to deal with. I’m not sure weather its the loaded browser or my own hardware problem, but it’s just unbearable. It was fun while it lasted, thanks Flock.

Thanks for trying Flock; stay tuned for our 1.0 release. We’d love to hear your feedback about the browser. If you’re game, please send us a brief comment using the form below. It’s totally optional. Thanks again!

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

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While wondering around the tubes the other day I came across the service called Jott. Jott allows you to call a number, and leave a note on a virtual “to do” list. You’re asked who you want to Jott, then you leave a voice message. The message is translated into text, and sent to your lsit. Not only can you leave yourself a note on your list, you can leave notes on anyone else who uses Jott as well. Can’t get everyone to sign up for Jott? Jott also allows you to send email to friend as well as text messages just by speaking. As of now Jott is completely free.

And even if thats not enough, Jott allows you to blog in a hurry using your phone via Jott Links. Jott Links is an extemely easy format to allow anyone to interact with the internet via their phone. In a couple of hours I was able to create a program that would allow Jott users to recieve the weather by speech.

• You can add Jott Weather by adding the link “http://supplycrate.com/jott/weather.php” to your Jott Links page, give it the name “Weather” and your done.
• Call jott, ask for Weather.
• When prompted for a message, say your area code slow and clearly.
• Jott will ask you if you’d like to send without transcription or wait.
• WAIT! Jott will tell you something like “Message Sent.”
• Wait another minute and you’ll be texted with the area code’s current weather conditions.

Jott has even released a small desktop application to allow you keep track and create notes on the fly. It’s currently a little buggy, although Adobe AIR may be to blame.

I have no relation to Jott, this post is purely my own experience.

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Giveaway of the Day is a “woot” like site where one game and piece of software is given away free each day, The software is normally priced over $20 according to the site. Today they feature the game Master of Defense. Master of Defence was a hit last time it was featured Giveway of the Day.

Master of Defense is a wonderfully-crafted game that lets you hone your strategic skills in a variety of combats. Assuming the role of the hero, you must ward off relentless attacks of monsters and protect people taking refuge in your castle. Build towers that meet unwelcome guests with a barrage of fire, upgrade them to improve the firepower, fire speed and range.

Game Giveaway of the Day

Basically, it’s a tower defense game entirely in 3d and is loads of fun. Last time GotD featured it (months ago), I played through the entire game in one sitting.

Master of Defense is a wonderfully-crafted game that lets you hone your strategic skills in a variety of combats.

Assuming the role of the hero, you must ward off relentless attacks of monsters and protect people taking refuge in your castle.

Build towers that meet unwelcome guests with a barrage of fire, upgrade them to improve the firepower, fire speed and range.

The totally addictive game play is complemented by superb visuals and animations.

Game Giveaway of the Day » Master of Defense - Flock

Remember that this is only free today, the software requires internet activation. You can only install it today, but you’ll be able to play the game anytime after.

If you missed the link up top, download Master of Defense.

While on the topic of eyestrain, I found a great color picker (eyedropper) application yesterday. Upon installing Flock, my colorzilla color picker extension ceased to work. Now I’ve got Colorpic, and eyedropper tool on steriods.

Ever tried using a color picker on a high resolution monitor? It’s impossible. That’s why this color picker has a magnifier attached. Control it from the keyboard and grab up to 16 colors at once. See your color in RGB and HSL and get websafe info. Consistantly the most popular free color picker on the web, the latest version offers more choices to easily and effectivly create color palettes.

ColorPic

For those of you who don’t know, ClearType is part of the IE7 bundle. It’s not your fault though, Microsoft never told you ClearType was enabled. ClearType “smooths” all your on screen fonts, so they appear more visible to people on LCD monitors.

With Windows XP, ClearType delivers improved font display quality over traditional forms of font smoothing or anti-aliasing. ClearType improves readability on color LCD displays with a digital interface, such as those in laptops and high-quality flat panel displays. Readability on CRT screens can also be somewhat improved.

ClearType Tuner Step 1: Turn on Windows XP ClearType

Rather than just rant about how horrible Microsoft is (you already hear enough of that), I’d rather just quickly provide a solution to everyone out there who might have thought their text started to look a little blurry.

For starters, you can tune the ClearType settings over at the Microsoft site. Note that you must be using IE and it will prompt you to install an Active X control.

If you want to get rid of ClearType all together do the following. First right click on your desktop. Then hit Properties. Select Appearance, then hit “Effects…” Finally, deselect the checkbox next to “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts:”

All hail the pixelated font!

I’ve been convincing myself not to, and now that I’ve set up my blog, I’ve decided it would be a good time to make the switch over to Flock. Flock shares the same name with my photoshop resource “22Pixels Flock.” I build this program, created all the icons and installer files for it, and then BAM there’s a new browser sporting the same name.

Anyway, Flock is a “social web browser,” which is probably the best way to make use of the tons of social media applications out there today. Flock is based off of the gecko engine, but even more so just a tricked out Firefox. Think of it as FF preloaded with extensions. It allows you to sync your bookmarks with del.icio.us, upload things to youtube, flickr, and photobucket with a click or two. You can blog right from the brower, and drag any video, picture, or paragraph of text right into the blog post. This kind of media is automatically blockquoted and cited saving loads of time.

Flock is a consumer Internet business which has developed a free, next generation web browser. The web, and the way people engage online, has evolved dramatically over the past decade. But web browsers - the application that fundamentally enables online experiences and services across ones’ connected life - have not kept pace. Flock is focused on fundamentally evolving the browser, bringing a refreshing new approach to how people use and participate on the web and simplifying social and web-based applications by bringing them one step closer to the user and integrating them directly into the browser. When using Flock, people can easily discover, access, create and share videos, photos, blogs, feeds and comments across social communities, media providers, and popular websites. To learn more about Flock, click here.

About | Flock

Although it sounds like flock is a dream come true, theres a few things they won’t tell you. For starters, Flock doesn’t support most of the smaller extensions. It will handle adblock and me.dium fine, but if you’re packing on the FF extensions, Flock is not for you. It also takes a few good minutes to set up and figure out.

They’ll be more to write, but as a first impression the switch has been pretty seamless. Then again, I don’t rely heavily on extensions

Blogged with Flock