Great Free Web Link Checker

In addition to being President of Smart Box Design, I am also responsible for maintaining the Web site. After a long day, I find it relaxing to tweak the pages and try out new ideas.

I had not checked for broken links in a bit and being unsatisfied with my current tools I went searching on the Web to find something new. The FREE program Xenu quickly rose to the top of my list. It is a small and specific tool only designed to check links. I downloaded and installed it and to my surprise it worked great. Why was I surprised? Free programs rarely work as advertised.

Xenu quickly checks each page and displays if each link is successfully linking to another HTML page. To my surprise there were over 15 broken links. I quickly discovered some of them were from graphics, while others were links to reviews on external sites, but still, I had a few broken links that needed my attention.

Xenu provides a very long and detailed list on all the links of the web site entered in HTML form. The program will even post the results to your Web site if you have the correct FTP information. After about 40 minutes I made the corrections and retested.

If you are looking for a free and simple broken link checker I highly recommend Xenu.

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Britney Spears should Play Farkle Dice

Britney Spears should play Farkle Dice as I think it would improve her life immensely. Although Farkle Dice is primarily designed and developed for entertainment purposes it has a lot of education built in. These Farkle Educational Features can help her.

Educational Feature 1 – Statistics / Play the Odds
Each roll has fewer and fewer dice which decreases the odds of a successful combination. For example, if you are trying to get the 2 to appear, rolling 5 dice has better odds then just rolling 1. If Britney Spears played Farkle Dice and compared it to her marriage she would have learned early on what the odds are for success. She could have assigned each dice side with a trait, such as, happy, sad, anger, bliss, divorce, envy, and jelousy. Then roll the dice to see which ones are coming up more often. If divorce is appearing often, perhaps it would have been better not to marry. But perhaps she was hoping to beat the odds.

Educational Feature 2 – Risk Management
Each roll risks all points earned. The player needs to weigh the risks of earning more points to getting a bad roll. A losing roll results in all points earned being lost for that round. When Britney Spears chose a husband she needed to apply this lesson as each husband is like a roll, should she keep him or roll again? It appears this time she should have rolled again.

Educational Feature 3 – Others Influence Behavior
In Farkle Dice, if another player is way ahead or way behind you behave differently. If you are behind, you need to take more chances or you may never catch up and win, if ahead you can take it easy. Britney Spears should have compared her success with her husbands. Since his career was so far in the rear she could have predicted that he would start taking chances to catch up with her success.

I do wish the best for Britney Spears. By all accounts she appears to be a very hard worker.

When you are playing Farkle Dice, remember these three educational lessons and try to apply them to your life at work or at home. Play the odds, take risks, and remember how your life influences others. But most of all, remember that life is a game to be enjoyed.

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Shaun McGill All Around Gadget Guy

Technology enthusiasts come in all types. You have the cutting edge technofile, the must have the latest no matter what it is, the slow adopter, and others. Each group has it’s own opinions and reasons for using and loving their devices. Every now and then you come across a person who really understands these groups and reaches out to them. Shaun McGill is one of those people.

Shaun runs several Web sites and contributes to many. If you have not yet visited these Web locations you are in for a treat. Take the time over the next few days to check them out. My favorite is WindowsMobile24/7.

Writer- PDA Essentials: http://www.pda-essentials.co.uk/
News Editor- Palmtop User: http://www.palmtop.co.uk/
Palm247: www.palm247.com
WindowsMobile247: www.windowsmobile247.com
Symbian247: www.moremobile247.com
E61 Blog: http://stmcgill.wordpress.com/

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Palm Addict Supplies Great Palm Info


I love my Palm device. I am excited about the Treo 680 coming out this week at Cingular and I plan to be one of the first to buy. But how did I learn that Cingular will be selling it this week? Palm Addicts. Where do I get the latest news? Palm Addicts. Where can read rumors of things that might be? Palm Addict.

Purchasing a Treo is not cheap which is why I want to take full advantage of it. Palm Addicts is reviewing and discussing software, hardware accessories, and tricks on a daily basis. For me, my day is not complete without reading their articles.

I subscribe to their RSS feed using Yahoo.com news reader. That way I can glance at the latest postings, which change constantly. I encourage you to visit them. It is worth your time and will help you take full advantage of your Treo.

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Porting Word Monaco to Windows Mobile – Part 3

There are 4 key areas that need to change when porting Word Monaco Solitaire from Palm to Pocket PC / Windows Mobile devices. These areas are critical as the audience is used to navigating and interfacing differently than the Palm.

Menus – Window Mobile OS displays a universal menu at the top of the screen for global navigation and a menu at the bottom of the screen which is controlled by the launched application. Many games take over these areas to gain back precious screen real estate. Microsoft provides links to third party developers who have published code to take control of these areas. Plus a developer can create their own code. I saw two risks in taking over the menus. The first is as new devices are released there is no guarantee that the application will be compatible once you stray from Microsoft official code structure and second, many Pocket PC owners are professionals and we wanted to make sure the could quickly navigate away from our games and back to work without anyone noticing. 🙂 Thus, all of our games leave the global navigation at top alone and create an appropriate and helpful menu on the bottom of the screen.

Help – Windows Mobile OS supports a reduced version of HTML. Which I think is fantastic. This means the WM users can easily and quickly navigate my long and thorough help. Plus I can then post the same help file on my web site.

Different Orientation – With the exception of a few square Pocket PC’s most of the devices running Windows Mobile are rectangle while most Palms are square. This new ratio results in additional real estate for our players and I think Pocket PC players expect gamers to take advantage of the space. On Word Monaco Solitaire we will allow users to make longer words and my tips can be slightly longer, if necessary.

Fonts – Windows Mobile has a greater variety of fonts and sizes than the Palm. Pocket PC players are use to this variety and expect information to be presented clearly. In Word Monaco we were able to fit more information into a smaller area because of this. For example, the tips that pop up use a smaller font than on the Palm, this resulted in a smaller dialog box, which means more of the game can be viewed when the tip is being read.

These four areas were the ones the rose to the top for Word Monaco Solitaire. Other games will have different concerns. If you have a question or comment, please feel free to contact me.

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