Your Computer Minute with Peter Kay

If you use WordPress and have found out that for some reason it is not automatically recognizing certain file extensions as enclosures (my personal experience was that it did not recognize .wmv files) it’s because your server doesn’t have the proper MIME-TYPE setting for that file extension.

The way WordPress automatically creates enclosures is that is queries the server with the URI of your linked file (e.g. an mp3 file) and then parses the server’s returned MIME-TYPE. If it discovers the MIME-TYPE is of either audio or video, it then creates the appropriate enclosure entry.

So, if you ain’t gettin’ your RSS enclosure automatically created, it’s because the MIME-TYPE is missing from the server. But how do you fix that? Every server is different so the fix below only applies to an Apache server with the .htaccess feature enabled.

Here’s the fix:

Just edit the .htaccess file on the local home directory of the Web server that is hosting the audio/video files and add the proper MIME-TYPE that corresponds to the file you’re trying to access. In my case I was adding a MIME-TYPE for WMV (Windows Media Video) files. I added the following line into my .htaccess file:

AddType video/x-ms-wmv .wmv

Here’s a table of other mimetypes. You can also of course Google around and find more.

CAUTION: you need to be careful/aware if you already have an .htaccess file and if so, make sure you edit that file and ADD the above line instead of OVERWRITING that file. Of course if you’re sure that file doesn’t exist then you should be able to create it.

My good buddy and patent attorney Leighton Chong wrote a good article on “An Alternative Business Model for Hawaii Tech Company Success” that I think any entrepreneur should take a serious look at. Leighton’s point is that instead of building out a traditional Silicon Valley (SV) tech company, Hawaii can be just as successful by licensing intellectual property (IP) instead.

The SV model requires many millions in venture capital, which is very difficult to come by in Hawaii. The IP model only needs about $500k in angel funds, which is not too hard in Hawaii if you have a good plan. Instead of building out a huge company with lots of overhead, staff, executives, and headaches, develop what he calls the “Three P’s” :

(i) Protecting their intellectual property rights; (ii) Proving that the technology works (building a functioning prototype, or contracting tests and studies to validate it); and (iii) Productizing their inventions (researching unique niches of demand in the markets and designing optimal products that people will buy).

And once you’ve done that, find a company that is wiling to buy your Intellectual Property via a licensing agreement. A successful IP company provides almost as good a return as a successful SV company except it can do it with far less capital. Throw in our state’s Act 215 tax incentive to develop and R&D company, and it becomes quite attractive.

I’ve been personally following this path myself for the past few years with my email privacy company, Titan Key Software. We just received a patent in March of 2005. I’ll keep you all posted on any major good news that comes our way.

Meanwhile, give Leighton’s article a good read and post some of your comments here. I’m going to see if I can talk Leighton into doing a podcast interview.

Eric Rice, a well-known podcaster and founder of the popular AudioBlog.Com is going on a (global?) Roadshow to demonstrate the use of both podcasting and VideoBlogging (kinda like blogging but with a video camera).

And of course, he was very smart to pick Hawaii as the launching pad for his journey. Check out what he produced and you’ll get a feel for what VideoBlogging is.

If you didn’t catch our previous post that introduces you to podcasting, you better do it soon because it’s gonna be huge-right-now.

I just caught on Podcasting News that at the D3: All things Digital Conference, Steve Jobs announced that the next release of iTunes 4.9 will have podcasting features built-in. This is GIANT news as it will effectively add an audience of about 27 million of users to the podcast community.

It will probably also mean that subscribing and downloading to podcasts will become dramatically easier as well if this follows Apple’s typically intuitive user interfaces.

I’m certain that Microsoft will soon follow with a similar addition to its Windows Media Player.

Folks, this is a tremendous yet natural development in podcasting. We are about to see an explosion of this new media.

Whatever you were going to do about Podcasting, you better do it now.

Want to see a video demonstration of this tip?
Checkout the video for a step-by-step demonstration!

Somebody asked me:

“I recently received an email notifying me that my account with Ebay had been suspended and I had to fill out a form to re-activate it. They asked for all kinds of personal information. Is this legit?”

I’m sorry to say that you’ve been the victim of what’s known as “Phishing” which is a new, dangerous breed of spam. This spam doesn’t ask you to buy anything, but rather warns you about having your account canceled unless you fill out a form. The official-looking form asks you the deepest, most personal information such as mother’s maiden name, social security number, bank account number numbers, bank card PIN access codes, and the like.

Of course what really happens is that this information goes to a thief who proceeds to take all the money out of your bank account and uses your credit cards to go on a shopping spree. Disclosing this kind of personal information gives someone else everything they need to completely steal your identity and perhaps cause a lot more damage than “just” stealing your money; for example, a criminal that gets arrested can use give out your identity instead. Suddenly, you have a criminal record!

How can you avoid becoming a victim of a Phish? Here’s a super-easy way: If you get an email that warns you of an account being canceled, don’t click on any of the links in the email under any circumstances, no matter how legitimate they may seem. Instead open up a new browser window and go ahead and log into your account using your known user name and password. If your account is truly in danger of getting canceled, the Web site will repeat the warning and tell you how you can recover from it.

Today’s Internet-connected world brings fantastic productivity but you must always be vigilant about scams like Phishes. It’s sad to say but you just can’t trust email these days, especially emails that “smell like a Phish”. But the good news is if you just don’t click on that link, and instead open a new browser window, you can easily avoid becoming another victim of identity theft.

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