Looking for a little help on behalf of a blog “newbie” who is using Google Reader and IE 7:

I am having a little problem with my Google reader. IE7 and the Electric City Weblog. Lately, every time I click on the Electric City Weblog to read it, I get an Internet Explorer Error that says that I have to shut my IE7 down – do I want to send an error report. Or course, I keep sending the error report. I have become a blog-whore of some kind and now have subscribed to 200+ blogs, groups, and other feeds. I have one other blog that has a bunch of pictures on it that if I go thru too fast, will lock up IE7, but no others give me the grief that Electric City Weblog does.
Any idea why this might be occurring? Really bums me out. I do not want to have to unsubscribe or go back to the manual way now that I am so spoiled!

The site in question, Electric City Weblog, is run by a friend of mine, and AFAIK it is just a standard Blogspot site — nothing that I know of that would cause IE 7 or Google Reader to crash.

OK, blog collective: put on your thinking caps and let’s help her out!

Popularity: 10% [?]

OK, after playing with my LG VX-8700 for nearly a week, here’s the verdict: HOORAY! I love this phone. Love love love love love it! Here’s a quick take on some of the features:

EXCELLENT FEATURES!
1. It is a beautiful and sleek piece of technology.
2. The picture quality of the screen is amazing.
3. Some editing features for pix (crop, rotate, etc)
4. Record up to one hour of video (w/ memory card).
5. Erasing pictures is easy - one button, no menus!
6. Speaker function via one-touch button while in a call; one touch, NOT push-n-hold!

TAKES SOME GETTING USED TO!
1. Speaker button too close to right soft-key.
2. “CLR” button on left side of keypad, vice bottom of pad.
3. Exterior screen is a bit hard to see in bright daylight.

About recording videos: you can shoot videos in either 176×144 or 320×240 resolution, but be careful - if you shoot in the higher-res, you can NOT e-mail the video! You can shoot a 176×144 video for up to 30 seconds - which CAN be e-mailed. Higher-quality videos can go up to one hour if you have a memory card installed, but you will have to either remove the card (located under the battery - awkward!) and load it to your computer via a card-reader, or else purchase a data-transfer cable (which I haven’t tried yet).

Popularity: 15% [?]

WOOHOO! Finally time for my “new every two” from Verizon: a suh-weet LG VX-8700!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Most of you know that my cell phone is my precious, sweet baby. With me at all times, used for calling, texting, reminders, pictures, videos, e-mail, surfing blogs, etc. But there is one feature of cell phones that I don’t use: ring tones. Well, that’s not true: I do have one downloaded ring tone - the theme from “The Green Hornet” which I use as my wake-up alarm.

But why do so many people - kids and teens, of course, but also adults to an increasing degree - have ring tones that are either stupid, annoying, rude, loud, or otherwise painful? Top 40 crap songs, bizarre sounds, screaming voices, and almost always heard at maximum volume. It is so annoying to be sitting in a restaurant, enjoying a nice meal or conversation, and suddenly the low-level background buzz is pierced by someone’s obnoxious, annoying ring tone. People, I don’t care how cool you think you are with your trendy tone - keep it to yourself.

Me, I try to be considerate: my phone doesn’t ring in public. It vibrates.

That’s right - my phone is kept on “vibrate” during my waking hours. When I hit the hay each night, I turn the ringer function on so that I can use the alarm to wake up; when I get out of bed, the first thing I do is switch it to vibrate, and it stays there until bedtime. I know that the people around me at work or in restaurants or the grocery store don’t give a rat’s butt about my ring tone, and I surely don’t want to hear theirs.

So why can’t everyone set their phones to VIBRATE when they are out in public?

Popularity: 15% [?]

The always-reliable Dan Hersam has some tips on how to draft an e-mail message without embarrassing yourself; he advises that you should (1) add the attachment to your message, (2) type the actual message, and finally (3) add the addresses in the TO: field. This will prevent you from sending an e-mail that is supposed to have an attachment but doesn’t (which usually results in a half-dozen replies from coworkers telling you how stupid you are and deducts a few tech-savvy points from your score).

I do something similar, but with a twist: whenever I draft an e-mail of any significance, I always type my own name in the TO: field and then compose the message and add the attachment. Then I send it to myself so that I can read it and see precisely how it will look, how the attachment fared, etc. If everything looks cool, then I will forward the message to the intended recipients.

That may sound like an unnecessary step, but it only takes an extra few seconds (if that), and allows me to “sanity check” anything before sending it on. One small measure of quality control!

Popularity: 24% [?]

A few days ago, there were quite a few chuckles at a Google Maps “driving directions” page that took a traveler across the Atlantic Ocean, sans vehicle. And whaddaya know, today, as I was trying to get some driving directions from Point A to Point B here in Great Falls for some visitors, I wound up with “swimming directions,” too! My visitors, had they followed those instructions, would have ended up traveling 6,337 miles, instead of 4.7 miles from their hotel to the restaurant. Heh…

Popularity: 14% [?]

UPDATE, Tue morn: GMail working fine now. Weird.

UPDATE, 9:07 pm: searching some GMail forums and found two workaround solutions that both have enabled me to access my GMail: the plain HTML version, or the Mobile version.

8:27 pm: Anyone else having trouble with GMail this evening? Every time I try to login, I get a long string of errors that make no sense to me. Full text of error in the extended entry.

Popularity: 13% [?]

After relying on my trusty cell phone for lo these many years, I finally took the plunge yesterday and purchased a real digital camera. I went with…

Popularity: 30% [?]