Garmin’s GPS’s are great, however many people are finding out that after a year of enjoying their GPS’s that they eventually stumble upon a screen that says to update your map data and before you know it, you are being asked to pay up to $100.00 or more or sometimes less, in which either case not many are willing to do so. The system can be manually updated without having to pay this amount and you can find out how here!

This is the 2010 Garmin map update, I have heard that 2011 map updates are out but at this point this the one I have running on my trusty Nuvi 200 but I’m pretty sure these steps could also work for 2011 map updates, which I will sooner or later put here when I get a chance to update it. Anyway, this is by far the easiest way to update the map and so here is the way I did it.

• Download the 2010 map update: http://freetexthost.com/td4op4lge3 (all 4 parts)
  password: haklabs
• Connect your device to the computer.
• Go into the Nuvi files and backup the file named “gmapprom.img” to your computer.
• Delete the “gmapprom.img” file from the device.
• Copy the unlocked “gmapprom.img” file that you downloaded into the device.
• Restart your device and check your map info.

Note: All four parts of the download need to be compressed into one file called “gmapprom.img”, you can compress these 4 files with WinZip or WinRar.

If you don’t want to get rid of your original map in the device you can buy an external SD card and insert it into your GPS system and rename “gmapprom.img” to “gmapsupp.img” and put that file on the SD card, but be sure that once you do and that the SD card is fully inserted in your GPS while it’s off and once you turn it back on to go onto the map settings in your GPS unit and enable the new 2010 map and disable the old one.

That’s it, enjoy your new free map update!

So it’s been a while since I actually posted a blog, and well sometimes I tend to wonder if anyone really cares. Considering the huge lack of comments and support on this site, I mean I do notice a spike in visitors and music downloads and activity but not a single word out of all those digits? That’s a bit outrageous if you ask me, so make a change and actually comment on something sometime.

One thing I do need a comment on is if anyone is actually interested in me posting further web site templates, it is currently empty and the void seems dead silent without anyone actually even asking for any so I tend to think, why spend the time? Anyway, anyone who needs some let me know and I will post a few up I just need to know it is actually even needed!

Life overall is doing alright, I can’t complain and I mean a lot of things have changed throughout the past. It’s incredible to look back and see how much and how fast things can change in a short to long periods of time, and well I tend to welcome change because being stuck in the same position for long really does get boring. So for such changes, I found love two years ago around this time and it ended almost two months ago, though it was rough at first I stepped back to see that I have learned a lot from it, good and bad and well only God knows why things happen the way they did. I also know that nothing is the same as it used to be anymore, and that nothing could ever be the same no matter how I look at things, but that is life as we learn to let go and move on. I am happy though that I am allowing myself to recover, meet new people, and move on too. I’m also happy that my company has been getting more attention, happy that I finally moved out on my own, and that I am wiser and stronger as well.

I used to be taken advantage of before but I learned that there are times when I have to step my foot down and actually speak out how I feel and what I want instead. Don’t let yourself be stepped on and taken advantage of, there are too many greedy people out there that love to do just that and hurt others for their own well-sick-feeling.

Summer is here and I am looking forward to a couple of things, I’m kind of limited on what things I can do due to work and my company but for the most part I am looking forward to going to the beach sometime this summer, going partying, clubbing, hanging out, going to the movies, play bowling, maybe a theme park somewhere in between, should be fun, and that’s what summers are for too right?

And oh by the way, I have added more affiliates, changed some content around and I believe I will be getting some web awards sometime throughout this month so I am looking forward to the types of awards I may get.

Well that’s pretty much all I can think of writing so maybe I’ll throw some more updates down the road, feel free to send me a message sometime, especially about the web templates or new mixes!

I personally don’t have a GoDaddy account but some customers I build web sites for do and eventually I ran into an issue where my forms went completely dead on their servers. So if you use GoDaddy one thing you may eventually end up noticing is that certain forms you create may not work or find yourself having a hard time trying to fix the issue. Let me shine some light on this subject that not many seem to understand or be able to fix.

GoDaddy has a limit of up to 1,000 emails at any given time on any forms you may create, so that’s something to keep in mind. And like Yahoo and other picky web hosts, GoDaddy does not want you to mess around with the headers of a PHP mail form.

To start off, your form can be as big and/or as complicated as you’d like. The tricky part is to submit that data through to the next page and actually send the data. So here is a code for a simple contact form, please note the form method = post and where it’s being sent:

contact.php page

Okay so that’s easy enough, now you need to create the page that submits the data and so here is a code that WILL work under your GoDaddy web site (of course this entire form and code also works on any other web server/host just as easily):

send_message.php page

It’s a simple, yet effective way to send forms in GoDaddy. Don’t forget, you cannot use any headers on the form otherwise it will bounce to either an error page or to the success page but without actually sending any data to the e-mail address specified. Thanks for reading!

It’s come to my attention that people that use Wordpress on their web sites have come across the well-known Akismet plug-in that basically gets rid of most spam submitted via comment forms.

However, some people are confused when it comes to Akismet’s statistics. If you are one of those individuals that sees your Akismet statistics sky rocket to double or even triple digit “spam caught” yet have no idea where to actually see all this caught spam then one option is to go into your Wordpress control panel and click on “Comments” and then click on “Spam”, it’s possible that within the past 15 days, if any spam bots tried to flood your site with ads they’ll be there for you to edit, approve or delete. What, you tried that already? Then keep reading.

Here is where the big confusion comes in; a lot of people have reported that even though Akismet seems to be catching spam on a daily basis they are not able to see any of the “spam caught” inside the Comments section in Wordpress. What some web site creators fail to note is that Akismet also catches spam from any forms created within a site, even those that contain captcha systems (which you really shouldn’t have since Akismet does such a good job). So if you have even one form, whether it’s a contact form or some type of request form then Akismet will also monitor that form and catch any spam that is attempted to be submitted through it. This is where Akismet reports to its statistics but does not show the “spam caught” inside the Comments section in Wordpress since most forms send data to an e-mail address rather than post it on a site, and neither does Wordpress have a specific area for submitted data through forms anyway.

For instance, I noticed a spike in “spam caught” on my site and yet I didn’t see any of it inside the “Comments” section, so I decided to do some tests. But first, see my Akismet statistics, click on the image to enlarge:


First I tried to send myself spam through my contact form, which was easily blocked and reported in Akismet’s statistics. Nothing showed up under Comments, surprise? Not really, because it wasn’t a comment. Then I tried to submit a comment inside one of my blog posts with some funky info and a link to viagra.com and that was easily blocked as well and reported to Akismet’s statistics and finally posted inside the Comments section under Spam. So there you go, no more confusion as to why Akismet keeps reporting all these high numbers of spam caught and yet not seeing most of them, a big thanks to Akismet’s creators for such a great plug-in!