Posts Tagged ‘Tech Help’

Chat History from Episode 10 with Comments

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Just for fun, we thought you might enjoy reviewing the chat history from Episode 10. If you have never been to a live recording of Farm Town Weekly, our friends and neighbors can join us while we record at Talkshoe.com. A chat room is available where you can join other Farm Town farmers in a chat while listening to the live audio feed stream over the net. (more…)

Farm Town Weekly Fans and Facebook Connect

Monday, December 14th, 2009

This week we added Facebook Connect to our website and quite literally our website is undergoing a transformation from WordPress powered blog to Facebook powered application. While the technical details may not interest you, there are some basics that we need to share with you here now and we’ll do our best to keep you updated on more changes to come.

Become A Fan – Again

Our fan page on facebook has become a great way for us to connect with listeners and for our listeners to connect with others in our community. First, let me share here what you NEED TO KNOW on this topic, then I want to share more insight on things that might be of interest to you as a member and/or fan.

What You Need To Know

We are moving from our current fan page to a new page at Facebook and are asking our friends and fans to “Become A Fan” again if you fanned the old page or if you are new, we hope you will Become A Fan of our new page as well.

We do regret having to trouble current fans to make the switch and want to thank you in advance for migrating to our new page at your earliest convenience. The current or Old Fan Page will be deleted soon and we don’t wish to loose you in the move.

There is a “Become A Fan” button located in the sidebar of our website visible only to those that are not already fans of our new page. You can also just go directly to our New Fan Page on Facebook.

Why The New Fan Page?

We had to add an application (our website) to Facebook in order to add Facebook Connect to FarmTownWeekly.com. Applications on Facebook have what is called a “Profile Page” which is the exact same thing as a “Fan Page” with all the same features. Therefore, our new Application Profile Page replaces our old fan page. To be clear, our website is now a facebook application and our application profile page on facebook is now our new fan page.

It would make no sense to maintain both pages as they have nearly the exact same features in terms of communicating with fans, but the new page does have a couple additional features. For instance, clicking the “Go To Application” button on the new page brings you straight to our website. Using Facebook Connect, you can easily return to your profile on Facebook by clicking your profile pic on our website.

Now mind you, not every feature will work for every user and we are still in the process of converting our website to use the Facebook Connect features that handle member registration and authentication. So far however, it seems to be working well for everyone that has created a Facebook Connect account on FarmTownWeekly.com

Add Farm Town Weekly to Bookmarks Another handy feature is you can add Farm Town Weekly to your bookmarks on Facebook to make it extra convenient to check our website for updates or listen to the latest episode. I keep mine right next to the Farm Town bookmark.

We will cover more about Facebook Connect in future posts and talk about it on the next show but feel free to reply here with any feedback, comments, or questions. One brief note to current registered members, to log into our website using Facebook Connect you no longer enter your username or password on our login form. Just click on the Facebook Connect button and if asked, enter your Facebook login information.

Background Information – May be of Interest

In November we noticed a slight decrease in our website traffic. There could be any number of reasons for the decrease and traffic on any active website will fluctuate from month to month. However, we considered this may be due to our making a fan page available on facebook, giving you the ability to connect with us there more conveniently and without having to leave the facebook environment.

What else we found interesting was that immediately after starting our fan page we seen an increase in the number of live participants at TalkShoe on Monday evenings. If you don’t know, Talkshoe.com is where we record the show during which a chatroom is made available where our neighbors chat with us and each other while listening to the live audio stream. Listeners can also call in and talk with us like traditional talk radio.

The point is that while seeing a slight decrease in website traffic, live participation in the show has increased. In fact, our show has made it on the TalkShoe Top 100 List for Live Participants for the fourth consecutive week. There is no real way for us to know, but it stands to reason that the addition of a fan page is somehow responsible for the decrease in site traffic and increase in live participation. Of course there are multiple other variables, but figuring out a way to make it even more convenient for farmers to connect with our content and share it with others has always been the task at hand and adding a fan page to facebook certainly had some impact.

In review, we believe that adding Facebook Connect to our website and inserting our website into Facebook as an application will have even greater impact. At the end of the day, it is just plain fun for us to be able to use familiar Facebook features on FarmTownWeekly.com

Farm Town Weekly Season II Episode 5

Monday, November 9th, 2009

A top notch group of farmers got together with Ms Kelly, Mountain Mamma, and myself. I offered some tech help info on an issue one of our neighbors was having with Firefox, talked about how to help a farmer that is just getting started, and told a little joke to pull start Ms Kellys giggle motor.

I want to say how much fun it was to have a great group of regulars, you know who you are, along with some new friends and first timers in our live chat. Thanks so much Rachelle and Shaggy ^_^

Click the arrow on the player below to listen now

 

iTunes | more episodes

How much RAM (random access memory) do I…

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

How much RAM (random access memory) do I need to play Farm Town

If you are running Windows XP, you need at least 1GB of RAM to play Farm Town. If you are running Windows Vista you will need 2GB. To check how much RAM you have installed on your windows system, click on My Computer, then “View system information.”

It may be helpful to know that some RAM is held in reserve for core system resources. Therefore, if you have 2GB installed, the system information on your computer may report only 1.75.

Check Your Version of Adobe Flash Player…

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Check Your Version of Adobe Flash Player

To play Farm Town you will want to have latest version of the Adobe Flash Player installed on your computer. The first step is to check which version of the player you currently have installed. The link to check this is provided below in this post and will take you to the adobe website. When you visit this page at adobe.com, look for the Version Information box. The box will say something like, “You have version ##,#,##,## installed.”

If the version number in the Version Information box does not match the current versions listed for your platform and browser which can be found on the same page below the box, then it is time for you to install an update.

http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

To upgrade your system to the latest version of Adobe Flash Player, you will need to visit the “Player Download Center” and download the install program to your computer in a location where it will be easy to find once the download is complete. Downloading the installer to the Desktop area is fine, but remember to delete this file when you are finished with your update.

Adobe does suggest that you uninstall the current version of the player before installing the new one. I have installed over top of the old one with no problem, but if you are using the Internet Explorer or MSN Explorer browser I would absolutely follow the uninstall advise from Adobe.

My goal here was only to assist you in determining which version of the player you currently have installed and to point you to more information. Please follow all advise and instructions provided by Adobe and SlashKey over any technical advise offered here or elsewhere.