HOWTO: Setup Google Public DNS on Windows 7

You may want to consider changing your default DNS server on your Windows 7 computer to Google Public DNS.  There are a few reasons why you’d want to do this:

You’re running Windows 7, so you’re either fresh off an upgrade or have a relatively new computer.  Either way, now is the time to switch over to Google Public DNS.

DNS (Domain Name System) is the Internet’s lookup system whereby easily remembered domain names are translated on-the-fly to cryptic IP addresses where the content resides that you’re trying to access.  In an effort to speed up the web, Google launched a free DNS service in 2009.

To switch over to Google Public DNS on Windows 7, please follow these instructions (or check out Google’s):

  1. Click the “Start” button
  2. Click “Control Panel” in the menu
  3. Click “Network and Sharing Center
  4. Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS (I recommend doing this for all connections)
  5. A prompt will open showing the connection’s status, click “Properties”
  6. Under the “Networking” tab, double click on “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” beneath “This connection uses the following items”
  7. IMPORTANT: Make note of the current settings (write them down!) and also write down Google’s Public DNS telephone support numbers which are 877-590-4367 (inside the USA) and 770-200-1201 (outside the USA).  You’ll need this stuff if you mess up.
  8. Select “Use the following DNS server addresses:”  (Note: do not modify the IP address section)
    1. Change the “Preferred DNS server” to 8.8.8.8
    2. Change the “Alternate DNS server” to 8.8.4.4
  9. Click “OK”
  10. Click “OK” again (on the Connection Properties window)
  11. Repeat these steps for all connections you wish to enable Google DNS for (wireless, LAN, etc.)
  12. Restart the computer

Network and Sharing Center Prompt

After this, you’re all good to go!  Remember, if you want to use Google Public DNS on future connections (at the office, for instance), you’ll need to configure it for each new connection.  Just remember to use the DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.   The steps above can also be roughly followed on other versions of Windows, but the prompts may be slightly different.

If you run into problems getting Internet access after making these changes, Google Public DNS telephone support can be reached at 877-590-4367 (inside the USA) and 770-200-1201 (outside the USA).

HOWTO: Search Twitter Without Username

Sometimes when using Twitter’s global search functionality (http://search.twitter.com/), the result set is sub par because  a user by the name of your keyword hogs all the results.

Let’s say I wanted to search for what people are tweeting about the popular deals site, dealnews.  But when I go to the aforementioned Twitter search, and use the keyword ‘dealnews,’ I get back a ton of tweets from the official dealnews Twitter account.  Given that I was looking for people’s opinions, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind:

Twitter search results for keyword 'dealnews'

So how do you get around this?

Fortunately, Twitter allows you to include search operators, so the quickest way would be to reform the keyword search to look like this:

dealnews -from:dealnews

The minus sign means to omit any matches that were sent from the user dealnews.  And there you have it:

Fixed keyword search for term 'dealnews'

Use this trick to filter your search results and remove any users junking up your search.  In this case, the result set was still poor, but that’s because not a lot of people wrote about dealnews in the past hours.  Just a lot of retweets.

500 errors with Magento upgrade / installation

I was getting 500 errors after an installation. After surfing some forums I learned that the permissions should be the following (magento/ being your root Magento folder).  For some reason, they weren’t necessarily correct by default:

777

  • magento/var/.htaccess
  • magento/app/etc
  • magento/var
  • all the directories under magento/media

755

  • magento/
  • magento/install.php
  • magento/index.php

644

  • all other files

Hope this helps anyone who may have been in the same situation.