InnoShare Blog

R2-D2 Projector Coming to a Home Near You!

Mon, 5 May 2008 11:17:56 -0400

R2-D2 was originally a multi-use Android. His many uses throughout the movies have been Fighter Pilot Navigator, Mechanic, 3-D Projector and even covert ops (watch the movie, you'll see). Everyone likes R2-D2 for different reasons, I just liked his personality amazing what they could do with just beeps and squeaks to give an inanimate object a personality right? Well, this little guy could be yours for the low cost of $3000!!!

R2-D2 is in your Home!

R2-D2 Home Theater Specs

Now, I'm sure you are asking, well, what does it do?!!? Does take my dog for walks? Drive my Car? Fix the Beer Fridge - or mix drinks for me?

After all of his special uses in the Star Wars Movies, R2-D2 can now be yours to Project your Movies! Yep, thats right, they stuck a projector in his head, gave him about a dozen different kinds of inputs, including IPod dock, HDMI and USB ports. Now he can move around your house by way of a Millennium Falcon Remote and project your favorite games, movies, songs, and family pictures!

And if you have to see it to believe it, watch the video!

Check Out Their Site to get more information on this DVD Projector:
http://www.nikkoamerica.com/nhe/

InnoShare NHRA Drag Races Company Trip

Thu, 1 May 2008 10:31:00 -0400

Its April again and that means its time for the Annual InnoShare NHRA Drag Race Trip! Since our Atlanta Web Company has been expanding we literally had twice as many people going this year, so the more the merrier. Last year we had a great time in Downtown Asheville, NC, but this year we wanted to do something a little different. We called the Drag Strip and found out that we could CAMP out at the track. Think about it, waking up at 9am to the sound of Top Fuel drag cars tearing up the strip and engine tests sounded too good to pass up. We plunked down the $250 to reserve our 20' x 60' camp site, threw our tents and grills into the truck and headed to the track.

As soon as we made it to the track, they turned us away...

Here we are 1 truck 1 SUV and 7 people driving into the camp site, the security guard waves us in and we notice this sign:

Expand Image

Of course this made us a little nervous when we were about to pitch two 6-person tents into the middle of this place. We then proceeded to inquire about the sign to the closest guard, who upon noticing that we did not in fact own an RV told us that we could not pitch our tents in the campground! WHAT?!?!!?!?!? How do you have "camping" without tents?!

Now, we might not be rocket scientists or anything of that nature, but we always assumed that the word camp did in fact entail tents. I broke out my phone and did a quick search on dictionary.com and found this definition:

Camp
1. a place where an army or other group of persons or an individual is lodged in a tent or tents or other temporary means of shelter.
2. such tents or shelters collectively: The regiment transported its camp in trucks.

In other words, by very definition, to camp includes a tent, so wouldn't "NO TENT CAMPING" be an Oxymoron? If they wanted only RVs, shouldn't they call it RVing? Remember the ad "Go RVing" that ran a couple years back? After much argument with Atlanta Dragway about whether for $250 we are entitled to pitch 2 tents, we actually found a REAL camp site across the track. A family there was using their huge property to let people pay for close parking and also as a campground for both tents and RVs. They gave us a spot THREE TIMES the size of what Atlanta Dragway was going to give us and closer to the entrance, for only $30!!! To say one good thing, Atlanta Dragway was happy to refund our money to us, which basically meant that we saved $220 and used it for drinks in the track - we scored both ways!

After that the trip went very smoothly, we did worry for a bit that it would rain all weekend. Weather.com and others were saying that it would rain the entire weekend, but we totally lucked out. Saturday was perfect drag race weather all day and it did not start raining until about 2am Sunday and then rained for the rest of Sunday, but we were leaving on Sunday anyway.

I never get tired of watching the races and the new guys we brought along were equally impressed with the amazing speed these cars launch at. Its basically like watching fighter jets launch off the deck of a battleship again and again. Line up another car and it goes from a dead stop to 300+MPH again and again, how is that not completely mind blowing?

For dinner Sam did not disappoint cooking steak, swordfish, salmon and the BIGGEST shrimp I have ever eaten in my life, they were like eating small lobsters.

Grilling Out

HUGE Shrimp

All-in-all the trip was again a complete success and we want to thank everyone who came out with us, NHRA, and Atlanta Dragway (for the refund). We, of course, will be going again next year for anyone who wants to attend, like I said the more the merrier.

Check out the gallery of our trip:

Packing ice into the truck

Fully Loaded

Campground

InnoShare Tent

Military Tent (circa WWII)

Atlanta Dragway Entrance

SAMSUNG Spinpoint HD753LJ (I want to like it..)

Wed, 9 Apr 2008 14:57:00 -0400

I recently purchased two of these drives and installing one in my media center PC was the biggest pain I have ever endured from any hard drive manufacturer. So it began around 6:00 p.m. last night, I stuck the samsung in the case and booted up. I checked the bios and the drive detected fine. I fired up windows went to my computer, no drive. This didn't hurt my feelings too bad as the drive didn't come with a disk so off off to the samsung website I went. I downloaded the utility, burned to disk and did a restart. Once the utility fired up I selected the "low level format" option as I did not see a quick format.

A stir fry dinner and a couple hands of uno later (11:45) the computer had finally counted to 100,000 (100% complete format). I figured I was in business for sure now and rebooted. Well, once again My computer did not display the drive. Tired and weary I set off searching for answers as to why I might be having this problem. First stop was Neweggs product review page for this drive. After reading a-lot of the reviews it became fully apparent that this drive has issues with nvidia sata controllers. The most prevalent suggestion said to turn the "enable command queuing" setting off in the bios. Now this is fine and has apparently worked for some but my ASUS A8N5X did not have this setting (it is possible my tired eyes neglected to see it but doubtfull). My ASUS mobo is a 939 socket AMD board that is showing it's age a little but has been trouble free and an all around great board. Certainly it never had any issues with any of the other hard drives I have used (maxtor, western digital, seagate).

I spent a lot of time making bios setting changes to no avail. I finally hit pay dirt when I saw a post recommending using the windows install disk to format it. I inserted my windows MCE 2005 disk one and started the install process, there was the elusive samsung. I started the install process like I was going to install windows but when the first part was done I removed the install disk and let the computer boot on the C: drive (western digital) windows installation. Windows started and finally the drive was visible in my computer. I selected the drive and did another format to remove any installation files it had on it and rebooted. I finally got an empty samsung (drive G:) to put some data on. So far it seems to work ok and is stable.

Here is the deal, there are plenty of players in the hard drive market. Now that this drive is up and running it is whisper quiet and it was a good deal if you measure by price per GB. However, in hind site if I was aware of the nvidia sata controller compatibility issues or the fact that I would waste 5+ hours of my life trying to get a hard drive working I would have spent $20 more and got a western digital that takes 5 minutes to install. Not to mention I have had great luck with western digital. I have to ask samsung a couple of questions.

1. Are you aware that nvidia sata controllers are a large market share? If so do you plan to remedy this issue? From what I have seen on your site you fail to acknowledge and provide support for this issue that a lot people are having.
2. Are you tired of RMA's on this drive yet? The average end consumer of this product will not jump through the hoops I did to get this drive to work. The "enable command queuing" bios setting is not a fix . Even if it's an available bios setting it could conflict with existing system performance. While tech savy people feel like that you should read 100 pages and fix the problem if you want it to work, I feel like consumers buy things with the hopes of it just working. It takes time to deal with a product that's flaky and to expect them to deal with it is flawed. It is the equivalent of selling a car and saying "well, you will need to take the cylinder heads off and replace the faulty gaskets but aside from that it's a great car". People want to get in and drive it, not spend time under the hood.
3. Do you plan on providing a genuine fix for this? I like to endorse newcomers to a market and encourage a competitive marketplace. If you are selling a flawed product I will even give you the ability to fix it after the fact and still sing praise for doing the right thing. Will you give me the reason to write an addendum to this article and say "hey, samsung has good support and good drives, buy them."? I hope so.

In short my conclusion on the SAMSUNG Spinpoint HD753LJ is this, it's a cheap drive that you could be very happy with if you're not using nvidia sata controllers in your machine. For now, If you are using nvida spend the extra 20$ on a western digital, seagate or maxtor and save yourself the trouble. As of now it is working for me and I have my fingers crossed hoping it stays that way. After reading all of the reviews I get the feeling that even though it is working now it could pancake one me, it has happened with others shortly after the same issues. It certainly was not worth the money I saved in relation to the problems I had installing it.

tags: SAMSUNG, Spinpoint, HD753LJ,

Dresden Elementary Career Day

Fri, 4 Apr 2008 18:24:19 -0400

Today was a very interesting day for InnoShare, we were invited to the Dresden Elementary School Career Day where my wife teaches. I was a little nervous at first, Isaac and I had to tell 6 different classes what we do on a day to day basis and why we love our job. But not only that, but we had to do it for a full 30 minutes for each class. I was nervous, what in the world do you tell kids about web design? We do so many things that I have honestly never done the same thing twice in the 6+ years I have been in this industry. Now, these are 3rd, 4th and 5th graders and mostly what I do on a normal basis is work with clients, design sites and program. I don't even want to begin explaining the logistics of programming to a 3rd grader. I can literally see their eyes closing even thinking about it.So, I did the same thing I do every time I work with kids, I think back hard to the days I was in their shoes and i think "what would I want to do if I were them?". After much self reflection I put together a solid list of topics to touch on and decided to show them something fun, Photoshop! What kid doesn't love to see a faked picture of themselves in Egypt or in front of the Taj Mahal? So, I shot a couple pictures of their teacher "Mrs. Woods" at the house,then Photoshopped her into some well known locales and even the new Horton Hears a Who Movie. I then showed them off for the class to see with a few SpongeBobs and the Mayor of Whoville. They loved it and had a BLAST! Afterward, we took their class picture in front of a curtain and put them into one of the backdrops I was using, in only a couple minutes, which they really got a kick out of, seeing themselves in front of the Pyramids and in New York, was a perfect activity for the kids and kept them awake.

After that, I taught them how to play a great designers game that my dad taught me called Scribble. The first person draws a scribble and the second person draws an image from that scribble. We played that and they all wanted to draw on our Wacom Tablet so they could see it on the computer and the projector.

All-in-all we want to thank Dresden Elementary for letting us come out and show off some of our work and have fun with the kids. We had an amazing time and the people who ran it were on the ball. Everything ran amazingly smoothly and I have always loved all the Faculty and Staff there. They are such a great group of young teachers who are just itching to be their best and help anyway they can.

Check out the pictures below to see a few of the career day pictures:

Teaching - Expand Image

Kids Love SpongeBob - Expand Image

Mrs. Curtis Class - Expand Image

Mrs. Woods Class - Expand Image

Plogger with lightbox!

Thu, 6 Mar 2008 19:59:34 -0500

If you are looking for a good, light weight photo gallery look no further than plogger!

I have used quite a few photo galleries in the past (coppermine, gallery, and others) and was never very happy with the "backend" administration side. There were other things left to be desired but this was the main kicker for me. In pursuit of something better I came across plogger. Plogger is hands down the best PHP based image gallery I have ever installed and used. Light weight, super simple administration, bug free (at least for me) and good load times set it apart from the crowd.

After installing it and taking it for a test drive I found that there was no "easy" way to implement Lightbox. For those of you who don't know about lightbox it provides a nice flash-like effect using javascript and CSS. I figured it would be something nice to add to a already awesome gallery program.
First things first the demo gallery can be found here. It is nothing fancy just a demo.

This is not and add-on or just a couple of files it is the whole zip archive that will install and work properly as far as I have tested with firefox, IE6, IE7, and Safari. If there are any problems license wise with me offering this please let me know, you can email me here. I make no warranties implied or otherwise and provide this as-is to use at your own risk. If it works for you great, if it does not sorry. All that being said you can download the zip here.

Plogger3b_lightbox.zip

Starting off the install is the same as it ever was,
1.create your mySQL database.
2.FTP the unziped archive to where you want it.
3.Run the _install.php (I personally like to chmod permissions to 777 prior to this because it makes installs simpler most of the time. *make sure you go back and check your file permissions after install especially on your plog-config.php and admin directory. Removing the _install.php after is a good rule of thumb to.)
3.Go through the install follow directions and when done login *Remember the generated password to make things easy! It can only be changed later.

Now that it's installed lets move onto the settings. Under the options tab it will be the same as plogger by default with one exception. You will see a lightbox options with a checkbox.

Make sure you have this checked.

Under the themes tab there is a lightbox_Classic, you will have to set this to active for lightbox to work.

Lightbox_classic is the only theme in this package that has the lightbox functionality. Perhaps later when I have more time I will set it up to work in all themes but this is it for the moment. Classic was written by Mike Johnson and is a nice clean and simple theme. It makes a good place to start if you want to customize with CSS and for that reason, I selected to use for lightbox.

As you will see if you have the lightbox box checked in the options you loose the picture page with comments. I personally don't care for keeping up with the amount of comment spam that you will get now-a-days anyway so for me it didn't matter. There are a couple of things to keep in mind.

1. The lightbox will display the image caption in the box. Nothing more.
2. It will automatically load all the images on the page into the array so it has the "slideshow". This is advanced with either they keyboard or by mousing over the left and right side of the image.

That's about it. I hope is is usefull to the people who don't want to mess with the php code to get the lightbox to work. If anyone finds any bugs or wants to develop more themes etc. feel free to contact me by email plogger(at)innoshare.com.

tags: plogger, lightbox

Lunar Eclipse!

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:28:41 -0500

I was up watching The Godfather: Part III for the thousandth time (and giving thanks that Sofia Coppola is now directing and not acting) when I jumped outside to snap a quick shot of the lunar eclipse. Pretty cool.

February 20th, 2008 - Lunar Eclipse

Job Opening - PHP Programmer

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:04:31 -0500

THIS POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED
We want to thank everyone for submitting their applications.

Junior Level PHP Programmer

InnoShare, an Atlanta, Georgia-Based web marketing and hosting provider, is expanding and we are looking for a highly-motivated web application programmer with a little experience and a lot of energy. We are a small, but well established company offering any and all web solutions to a wide range of clients from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Successful applicants will be able work closely with a small team to complete web application projects.

Applicants must be outgoing, driven to succeed and have a strong understanding of PHP Applications and development. A solid understanding of web-based applications is a must. The InnoShare environment is laid back, with reliable employees that are always learning.
Work Environment:
� Small Business Environment
� Employees work hard and are reliable
� Applicants should be laid back with a good sense of humor
� We have no real dress code � business casual is perfect

Required Skills:
� Personal Motivation � We don�t believe in micromanagement!
� Good communication � You will be working with a project team
� Computer Skills � PHP Application Development, Clear understanding of server technologies & Web-based applications
� Must enjoy learning new things � we are constantly learning in this ever changing field

Helpful Skills:
� Web Programming Skills � CSS, XML & JavaScript
� Understanding of Search Engine Optimization
� ActionScript Application Development
� Working Knowledge of Linux
� *Personal laptop is a plus

Position Details:
New hires will be employed on a temporary basis for the first 90 Days, and will be evaluated on work performance. New hires will become permanent employees after successfully completing this evaluation period.
� Compensation includes Base Salary + Work Commission
� $25,000 � $40,000 first year expected earnings
� Sick and Vacation Time

For More Information About This Job Contact Brandon Woods @ 404-303-7404 x208

tags: Jobs, Internet, Company, News, InnoShare

Naked Short Sales... The Counterfeit Stocks

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 23:26:46 -0500

"Big business for big business"

There is a large portion of America's middle class that turns to investments as a means of retirement. A lot of people like to keep tabs on stock they have invested in, or receive as benefits. Some might receive shares of a stock as an incentive to take care of the company they work for insuring they and the company are profitable. Then one day the moment in the spotlight comes and the company goes public on the market. The glitter quickly fades to gloom as the company you and so many worked so hard for falls in value %15-%35 in the first month continuing the trend over the next year. Someone must be to blame but not who you might think. Welcome to the realization you have been the target of "naked short sales" of your stock. Small cap companies are at the greatest risk. While there are efforts in place to regulate it, there are still many investors and companies paying the price. To bring you up to speed here is a interesting piece Bloomberg news did on how and why it is happening.

So, the DTCC, the company behind all wallstreet transactions processes $1.4 quadrillion in trades per year and by the way here is what that number looks like $1,400,000,000,000,000! The SEC stated that %1.5 of trades per day are not settled now in small amonts %1.5 might seem like a drop in the bucket but when that much money is changing hands it is a more than substantial sum, $6,000,000,000 in trade do not clear every day. But is that really all that does not clear? There is also something called the continuous net settlement system or CNS. To explain it simply let�s say that Morgan has 100,000 shares of IBM that they owe Goldman Sachs, and Goldman Sachs on their side has 96,000 shares of IBM that they owe Morgan. Rather than 100,000 flows from one side and 96,000 flows from the other into the DTCC. The CNS says there is only a difference of 4,000 share that need to trade hands here and that is all that gets sent to the DTCC. The DTCC has said that the continuous net settlement system takes care of 96% of the trades.

There is also what is known as an "ex-clearing". Say The FTD's (failure to deliver) between two companies have been outstanding for a long time they can say lets settle it amongst ourselves. This is basically a contract outside the jurisdiction of the DTCC and SEC. If both companies made millions by bankrupting a company who's to say they don't just call it default?

One would think there would be some stiff fines and punishment for this sort of thing but the truth of the matter is that if you did it before it made SRO's threshold securities list you are "grandfathered" or in other words off the hook, don't take my word see what the SEC says. Even when you are on that list (that dictates FTD's should be settled in 13 days) you can let it run 400 days no problem.

Perhaps the SEC could be a little stiffer on this. Well lets give them some credit they have handed out some fines here and there...

In March 2007, Goldman Sachs was fined $2 million by the SEC for allowing customers to illegally sell shares short prior to secondary public offerings. Please! $2,000,000 to Goldman Sachs is a joke when there is $6,000,000,000 a DAY up for grabs. Not even a slap on the wrist.

In July 2007, Piper Jaffray Cos. was fined $150,000 by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Piper violated securities trading rules from January through May of 2005, selling shares without borrowing them, and also failing to "cover short sales in a timely manner", according to the NYSE. [24] At the time of this fine, the NYSE had levied over $1.9 million in fines for naked short sales over seven regulatory actions. They are sweating now... in the cayman islands.

Also in July 2007, the American Stock Exchange fined two options market makers for violations of Regulation SHO. SBA Trading was sanctioned for $5 million, and ALA Trading was fined $3 million, which included disgorgement of profits. Both firms and their principals were suspended from association with the exchange for five years. Hell yea, weak fines and a five year vacation to boot. If they ever get board I'm sure they can find a broker.

In October 2007, the SEC settled charges against New York hedge fund adviser Sandell Asset Management Corp. and three executives of the firm for, among other things, shorting stock without locating shares to borrow. Fines totaling $8 million were imposed, and the firm neither admitted nor denied the charges. $8,000,000 now we got something.

In short you can be sure of one thing, these firms will keep taking fines happily as long as they can go about their business. Meanwhile a lot of hard working people and good companies pay the price. If you ever get to question a political candidate in public, please ask them what they plan to do about this. It will draw some attention to the matter. Why not go the extra mile and tell the people in office before they go up for re-election that if they do not act on this matter you will find a candidate that will and they will get your vote. Without jail time this will continue to happen, help put an end to the legal racketeering on wall street, or a part of it at least.

tags: Naked, Short, Sales,

Green Tip: Get a Bath Bucket

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:42:26 -0500

Bath Bucket

Lately, Georgia has been in a little bit of a water squeeze, and we've been trying to think of ways to reduce our water consumption to help out. One of the easiest and best ideas we've come up with is to keep a bucket in the bathroom. When you're running the water for your bath or shower and you're waiting for the water to get warm (it usually takes a couple of minutes), shove a bucket under the faucet and collect all of that water that usually goes down the drain. You'll find that you magically have plenty of water for all of your household plants, hanging baskets, and even some of the stuff in your lawn or garden.

Unprofessional Letters

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:20:14 -0400

Recently I have been working on purchasing a house. As some of our clients know I just recently got married and the next step in my life is to purchase a house. While working on the financing though I found out I have a big pet peeve and its unprofessional letters in professional circumstances...What you have to understand is that we correspond regularly with owners of companies and people who lead entire marketing departments to help them with their business hosting, web consulting and website designs. We work hard to be as professional as possible while having a really great time at our job. While working on purchasing a house, I got a letter which really drove me crazy. The amazing thing is that it came from the person who is handling my financing!!! This honestly made me a little nervous, getting an unprofessional letter from a person who is supposed to be considered as professional as possible. So, what could a professional write to me that basically made my nerves shot?

Here are the basics of the letter:

We have received you're Conditional Loan Approval. Our lender is requiring the fallowing items prior to you're closing. I will need all items turned into me by 8/24 12:00 to keep you're closing date of 8/30.

-Contact name/number so I can order an employment verification for your wife.
-Proof of money transfer
-Proof of payment plans
-Clear-Clean copy of your SS card
-Contact information for you're home owners insurance. I'm having my agent give you a call tomorrow with a quotes to help you compare quotes.

Thank you,
Anonymous (I removed the name)

Now, lets pick this thing apart for a second. I can almost forgive the spelling errors like "fallowing", but I know that even Hotmail has a spell checker - please use it...

But that is not at all my biggest gripe at all. The real problem is that she wrote this entire letter using the font "Comic Sans". This is a real issue that I see more and more with some people. I wish everyone would get a memo that says "DO NOT USE COMIC SANS" It is NOT professional and honestly it makes your professional letters look like a 12yr old girl wrote it. I know the problem is that these people want to "cutesie" up their e-mails, but Cute is NOT professional. Honestly if she was not working under a much more competent broker, I would never have used her company for this reason. It might sound harsh, but it gave me a feeling that the company she works for is not professional enough to be handling my future Home Loan. Home Loans are very important and need to be handled as such. Using "Cute" fonts for your e-mails reflects poorly on your company and makes people think twice about working with you.

So, Here is the Memo for anyone who needs it.
"Do Not Use Comic Sans" I know its cute... But thats the problem!

Note:
As amazing as this sounds, this is a real e-mail from a very reputable company here in Atlanta. This is not one of those African Scams or anything. The person who wrote this is a Loan Processor who works under a major broker. This is totally legit, and yes I made my concerns known to the broker. I honestly think this girl is new to the company, but her boss says she isn't, which makes me more nervous because either no one told her or no one had a problem with it but me. I really doubt I am the first person to have a problem with it.

tags: Cutsie, Cute, Fonts, Comic, Sans, Profession, Letters, Unprofessional