Recommended Auto Favorite Tools on Twitter

I have been looking for a way to growth hack my websites for business. One thing that worked really well for me was to Auto Favorite and Auto Retweet using tools. While shopping around for these tools I finally selected Tweet Full - Twitter Auto Favorite and Auto ReTweet Tool. This is by far the most advanced tool that I have seen in a long time. No other tool even comes close to it when we are talking about automating marketing on Twitter. The tool allows you to customize your search for potential customers on Twitter. Tweet Full uses Twitter's API to find Tweets that are written by your potential customers. It then engages with those people by means of either Favoriting their Tweets or by RTing those. This piques their curiosity and they come to visit your website. Thus, Tweet Full can find you qualified leads from Twitter. Tweet Full does not simply search for a Tweet with certain keywords in it. You can control if you want the Tweet to have positive sentiment, negative sentiment or neutral sentiment. You can even control how strong the sentiment should be. Because of this you are more likely to find the right customer at the right moment. You can also control the frequency of automated Favorites and ReTweets using this tool. People have reported getting great results with Tweet Full within few hours of using it. The founders claim that if a user does not see significant increase in their Twitter activity they will offer full refund. You can manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single Tweet Full account. This makes it a good choice for marketing agencies as well. Tweet Full plans start at $10 and go up to $30 based on how many such promotions you need. You can try any of their plans for a single buck for the first month. All plans come with a 60 day money back guarantee.

The number of WaitHandles must be less than or equal to 64

I am working with an Azure project that has contributed a few posts in the past too. Today, I ran into this error where my application would not run locally. Before I push it to cloud I always run my application locally to make sure everything is fine and especially to ensure that no silly mistake will make me push the application to cloud again. 

Everytime I try to run the application it would throw this error "The number of WaitHandles must be less than or equal to 64". I tried to remove parallelism where I used waitAll from my code. Tried setting hard coded values rather then reading properties and stuff but to no avail. 

Microsoft Azure One of the request inputs is not valid

I am working on a Microsoft Azure project and ran into the error "one of the request inputs is not valid" when I tried to extract multiple messages from the queue. I did some searching around to see if I could find a solution to this problem but nothing helped.

Microsoft Azure Server failed to authenticate the request

Microsoft Azure cloud platform is gaining popularity in leaps and bounds. I was one of the fortunate people to try my hands early on this platform. Although, the coding is a breeze with Microsoft Azure there are sometimes some silly errors that will make your head go crazy thinking about it. There are some issues with development environment vs cloud environment too that make you wonder if there is something wrong on your end or is it the Azure itself causing bugs. The error that I got was "Server failed to authenticate the request. Make sure the value of Authorization header is formed correctly including the signature.". It took me a lot of time to figure it out. This post is dedicated to that problem.

NAS as a time machine gives error - backup disk could not be mounted

If you are here I understand how frustrating it is. I had a Maxtor Central axis 1TB NAS hard disk that I used as a Time Machine with my Mac OSX 10.5.8. You can read my post on how to set up a NAS as a Time machine if that is what brought you here. If you are past that stage and stumbled on the error "backup disk could not be mounted" I might be able to offer you some help because I just recovered from that error.

How to Install WD Lx TV B-Rad's firmware on your WD TV Live Plus

I bought a WD TV recently and wanted to hack it using B-Rad's firmware. It seems there isn't enough material on internet for this procedure. Therefore, after I figured it out for myself I wanted to share it with everyone who would want to do it.

1) Dowanlod the appropriate firmware from B-Rad's website. Make sure you download the right firmware. The firmware for WD TV Live Plus should only be installed if you have WD TV Live.
2) If it is a zip file unzip it.
3) Copy all of the files from that folder to a USB stick - at the root location, that is not under any folder.
4) In order for your device to recognize the WDLxTV firmware you need to change a file. Open the .ver file and change the version to something newer than what you have on your drive. You get the point right? If the version is older than your current version the device wont bother installing it.
5) Plug in your USB device into your media player and you are done.
6) Stuck at 0%? just remove the USB stick and reconnect.

That is it. You have installed B-Rad on your WD TV. Let me know if you have issues. The username and password both are wdlxtv.

qsub error - /bin/sh :no such file or directory

I was working with intel MTL Linux cluster recently and ran into this error. I had a shell script that would run another shell script which in turn runs my executable files. I created a script called batchjob to run my shell script.

Invariably, it kept throwing error at me. It said bin/sh no such file or directory. I took me a while to figure out what was wrong. In my first script I used something like

sh exe.sh args1 args2

There is one issue with this. The file exe.sh is under a folder called project and the batch server does not know the location. So the first change was to add the directory path. So it became:

sh $HOME/project/exe.sh args1 args2

Although, it did help the program still had errors. I was passing a data file as input to my program as args1. I had to do apply the same trick there too.

sh $HOME/project/exe.sh $HOME/project/data/exe.dat args2

The other change I made was to remove the line #!bin/sh, you don't have to do that if you are sure the script runs without qsub.

Another issue was to set the compiler variables. So I added the following command:

source /opt/intel/bin/iccvars.sh intel64

 After these changes the script runs just fine. Hope this will help someone.

Transfer iTunes Music between two computers or laptops

In a recent visit to Apple Store, I figured out how to move your iTunes music from one computer to another. If you want to transfer songs from your home computer to your work computer it is possible. Also, if you already bought songs you can transfer them to other computer without breaking the law. Follow these simple steps and you are good to go.

No upgrade option in Update Manager in Ubuntu 9.04

While working on a project recently, I had a need to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu. I followed the following steps mentioned at the Ubuntu help page.

• Start System/Administration/Update Manager.
• Click the Check button to check for new updates.
• If there are any updates to install, use the Install Updates button to install them, and press Check again after that is complete.
• A message will appear informing you of the availability of the new release.
• Click Upgrade.
• Follow the on-screen instructions.

Mac SSH stuck after password

I love my Mac for the fact that it comes with better built in SSH client in terminal. You can just SSH from the terminal without downloading any software. I use SSH everyday for many hours which tells you how much I depend on it. Today, strangely my Mac stopped connecting to the remote server. It would ask me for the password and then do nothing. That means, I am able to connect to the server but can not use the remote shell.

Drupal warning: table Semaphore doesn't exist.

If you recently upgraded your Drupal installation you might have landed at this error. I was working on the website Relationship-talks.com and I stumbled on this error. I tried to solve it at my own but it was a dirty work to see exactly where that table was missing. A lot of searching on internet finally revealed the working solution. The reason as specified by the error message is that the table Semaphore is missing.

iPhone Battery Symbol and then stuck on Apple Logo

If your iPhone shows a battery symbol when you turn it on and then gets stuck at the apple logo there is nothing more frustrating than that. Because in that case your iPhone will not even be detected by iTunes for you to update it to the latest firmware.

This usually happens if your iPhone was left somewhere and the battery got discharged to a level that it had to turn itself off. That is why you see the battery symbol.

To solve this problem you need to follow these steps. These steps are DIFFERENT FROM DFU mode.

1) If your iPhone is connected to the computer disconnect it.

2) Hold the power and home button together and keep holding it. You will see the apple logo and then after some time the screen will go black again. This might take 20 seconds to 5 minutes but do not lose patience. When it comes back you will see the iTunes logo.

3) If you know how to jailbreak it go ahead, if you do not want to jailbreak just restore it and you will have the latest version of iPhone firmware.

I hope this will be helpful to some people. If your iPhone is rather stuck on iTunes logo try steps to recover from iTunes logo.

SVN repository MKACTIVITY error for Google Code

If you use Google Code and trying to commit for the first time it might fail. The reason being your credentials are not ok. You will get an error that says svn: MKACTIVITY of '/svn/!svn/act......

There can be two problems that can cause this.

1) You did not checkout with https option. If you made that mistake just check it out again in the same directory with https option this time.

2) The username that you are using (your current username for linux) is not the same as your Google Code (or any repository) username. When this happens all you need to do is to force SVN to use your own username.

Internet Explorer is slow on Windows 7

If you installed or upgraded to Windows 7 you might have noticed that the internet is very slow. It takes a few million hours (may be little exhagerated) to load a page. I recently installed Windows 7 on a computer in my school and to my dismay the computer was very slow. It took me little time to figure out the problem but it is not very intuitive.

The problem that makes internet so slow

The problem is with a service that tells the other resources on your network, about your resources. You do not care if people do not use the resources that you own, what is usually the case. The service is called "Function Discovery Resource Publication" and it starts when you boot up your computer. This way it is always runnign giving you a degraded performance experience.

How to set Maxtor Central Axis as a Time Machine or Time Capsule

If you read my last post, you will see how did I set up the drive on Mac, so that I can access it, even though it will not appear on your system as a mounted drive. If you are now able to access the folders the next step is to set it up as a time machine.

There are crude ways of doing it and then there is a very easy way of doing it. I will list the easy way first but if you want to do it the hard way you can do it. All you have to do is to download the automator script and run it. When it asks for the size of the time capsule, just specify the capacity that you want to use. For instance, if your hard disk is 1 TB and you want to use all of it you can definitely use it. This script will create a file (sparsebundle) on your desktop. You need to copy this file to one of the folders on your network drive. To access these folders go to "Go -> Network" and copy this to any of the folders.

Seagte Maxtor Central Axis drive icon does not appear on MAC OSX

I recently bought a maxtor 1TB central axis drive from Seagate outlet to use it as a Time Capsule. I unwrapped it the day I received it and connected it to my router; installed the software and everything worked fine. I created users and set up security and everything that the manual said. However, I was supposed to see icon for a new mounted drive but I do not see it. It took me a little while to figure out what was wrong. Actually, I was not able to figure out what was wrong but I was able to access it to copy files back and forth from my computer and this new network storage server.

If you are at the same position as me, what you need to do is to go to the "Go->Network" menu and you will see your network drive. Open it and you will see the folders; folders are nothing but the users that you created. You can use any of the folders to copy files to and from over wi-fi. I will explain in my next post how to set this drive up as a time capsule.

If this was useful please share this post on your social media. 

Get AT&T $30 iPhone unlimited Data Plan or Get Rid of one

After the newer versions of iPhone was launched people were hesitant to switch to it as AT&T no longer offered the unlimited data plan for $30 per month. All you could do was to go for $15 per month plan which lets you use 200MBs or the $25 Pro Data plan that lets you use 2GB of data per month.

If you already had $30 data plan then you are still good as you can continue with that. If not than you can still follow the instructions below and get $30 unlimited data plan (This method can also be used to get rid of data plan):

1) Find an ordinary phone or buy it off craigslist or e-bay for few bucks. Note down its IMEI number.

2) In the general settings of your iPhone see the ICCID which is the sim information.

3) Call AT&T and talk to a representative. (You might dial 611 and then press 1, 0, 0 to talk to a rep without listening through the recorded messages)

4) Ask the representative to change your data plan to $30 unlimited plan as you are no longer going to use your iPhone.

OR

4) Ask them to take the data plan off as you are moving to a non-smart phone.

5) If they say that you can not use your iPhone sim on any other phone tell them that you have a sim adapter that works on your non smart phone.

6) They should confirm the changes to you now and you don't have to do anything. You might receive some texts from AT&T but in a few hours you will be good with unlimited data plan for $30 a month or no data plan.

For more applications and similar hacks visit Free Calls Hub.

Learn Latex in 20 minutes - Latex Tutorials for beginners

I had tried to learn Latex from books, tutorials and websites but nothing has ever worked. Finally, I found John and he helped me learn Latex starting at the very basics and then taking me to the advanced features of Latex. Lest I forget I have it recorded in Video and I feel all of us can benefit from this video therefore I am putting it up here. Hope you all will like it. 

Drupal crashed after update.php run

I recently had an issue with my Drupal installation. After I run the update.php script my installation crashed. I only installed a few modules but then that should not have crashed it as the modules run fine on my other websites. Being an optimistic person I did not have a backup of my database to fall back on. I was totally royally screwed as that was a website for school and it should not have gone down at any cost. 


It took me some time to get back to my senses and think calmly as to why Drupal will behave so erratically. I tried running the update.php script again but the error would not go away. I tried deleting the module and updating but even that wouldn't help. 


Then I looked into the settings.php that resides in sites/default folder. I changed my memory limit for php by changing the line ini_set('memory_limit', '32M'); to have 64 Megabytes of memory for my installation. I ran update.php again and the website worked fine. 


Here, I would like to tell you that the update.php script was running fine every time I tried it but just that it wouldn't let me access my home page or any other admin page for that matter. Hope this will help someone.  

No sound in SUSE Linux

It took me 1 hour to fix this problem. I hope this will come handy to you. To fix this issue you need to have the superuser/root access to your system. Because the file which needs be changed is a read only if you are not the super user.

Let us see what solves this issue:

If you are a new user follow the commands. If you arean advanced user pardon the details.

1) xx:~>su

On the prompt Password: enter your password

2)your su username:~> vi /etc/modprobe.d/sound

This will open the file using vi. If you are not comfortable with vi use any of the text editors.

press "dd" and this will delete all the lines.

Now press "i" and type following lines.

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel

options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1 model=hp-m4

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

Try your sound now. Chances are more that this will work now.