MacBook Overheating on Shutdown with Leopard

I shut down my MacBook Pro yesterday and several hours later returned to find it over heating in my carrying case in my backpack. It had seemed to shut down when I put it away - but then it kept running down the fan and battery for several hours.

It happened very much like this user's post:

Unknown to me was the fact that the MacBook had not actually shut down. I boarded the flight to Paris, all the time thinking that my "electronic device" had properly powered down for takeoff as required by international flight rules. Then in Paris, while going through security, I noticed that my case was quite warm. Pulling out the MacBook to pass through the x-ray scanner, the laptop was hotter than blazes (overheating from being in the closed carrying case). It was so hot, I could hardly hold it. When I powered it up, I noticed that the battery had gone from 99% to 5%. The MacBook had been running the entire time of the flight to Paris - even after doing a shutdown and closing the lid.

There are a whole bunch of similar posts on the Apple forums regarding Leopard shutdowns and overheating.

AppleCare is probably a good idea so you don't get burned. Fire coverage is probably a good idea as well.

Trying Revenue Direct for Domain Parking

The folks at Active Audience suddenly began cutting my revenue 80% with only a curt explanation. I had the same traffic to my parked domains, they just started filtering out revenue much more dramatically.

Now, I'm giving Revenue Direct a try. So far, the user interface is a lot simpler. They allow the first page of your parked domain to show clickable ads - which should improve your revenue. And, the service is a lot faster than Active Audience - especially when updating.

You can see an example parked domain at CommonTunes.org.

Firefox Extension to Copy as HTML

I use the Extended Copy Menu extension in Firefox for blogging pretty regularly. It allows you to select text on a Web page and copy the selection as html to the clipboard.

A couple of funny voice mail messages

Sometimes citizen activists visit the ActionStudio website directly (instead of through an organization's petition) and get confused. Sometimes the activists who visit the ActionStudio website are stoned:

My friend Kerry left me this great birthday message last month (Thanks for being a sport and letting me post it Kerr!)

Technorati Tags: funny, voice mails

Network for Good's Processing Fees Are Super High

I just made a donation for a friend's charity at Network for Good and was surprised to see they charge a 4.75% transaction fee. That's about double typical credit card fees. Pretty disappointing. This makes PayPal and Google a better option for online donations.

Technorati Tags: network for good, credit card processing, paypal

CrystalTech has a major network outage today

ActionStudio's online advocacy is down today because our host CrystalTech is completely down today with a major network outage. Their phone number rings busy. This is the worst outage I've ever seen in my five years as a CrystalTech customer. They must have lost net access completely.

Technorati Tags: crystaltech, web hosting

ActionStudio eAdvocacy Launches Web Services Option

ActionStudio has added Web Services support to allow groups to send emails and faxes to elected officials from their own Web sites. This gives groups complete flexibility in managing the presentation of their campaigns and collecting data.

In this first iteration of our Web Services, groups must be a full subscriber to ActionStudio ($49.99 per month). And, you must set up your petition in the ActionStudio Web site with all of the features and delivery options that you are used to.

Then, use SOAP or download our sample PHP class, to post submissions from your members to our site via our Web Services.

Now, you aren't limited to the ActionStudio petition form, you can build your own form system on your own Web site and just call our Web Service with the data from each user's submission. The great thing about this system is that ActionStudio will process each submission as if it had been received through our form, with all of the processing rules and features that you are used to with your account still in place.

Download our sample form and PHP class or email us if you have further questions.

If demand exists, we plan to add support for a less expensive lightweight service that would allow groups to send emails and faxes to elected officials without all of the extra ActionStudio processing rules and features. Please email us if this interests you as we are trying to assess demand for this service.

If any groups are interested in building Plone or Drupal modules to support this Web Service, please let me know. This is one of our goals.

Technorati Tags: actionstudio, online activism, online advocacy, webservices

Congressional logic puzzles restrict communication with citizens

I thought Congress represents us - American citizens - but apparently they seem to want to make it harder for us to contact them.

ActionStudio's eAdvocacy uses Kintera's Web solution for the delivery part of our service, this is from Kintera's Web site:

Background: The Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives recently introduced ”logic puzzles” to the “Write Your Rep” Web forms currently used by many House members. This new feature, adopted by about 40 House and Senate offices, requires users to complete a simple puzzle before an email can be sent, and is designed to weed out mass emails and spam. Many advocacy organizations view this as an additional communications barrier because it will be more difficult to send email to representatives, and will fundamentally alter the way organizations facilitate communications between their grassroots network and decision-makers in Congress.

Kintera believes logic puzzles do not benefit the organizations and citizens trying to get their messages heard, or our representatives, who want and need to hear from their constituent base.

Kintera supports the use of technology by Congressional offices to streamline constituent communications and believes that using tools to capture constituent concerns in an efficient way will result in House and Senate staffers better understanding their constituents’ positions, having more time to devote to legislative business, and ultimately create a more effective democratic process.

I agree - I'm going to guess the CAO for the House is appointed by the leadership party - the GOP. This is another thing that requires a more thoughtful enlightened approach.

Technorati Tags: congress, online activism, electronic advocacy, eadvocacy, emails and faxes, legislators

Web service for sending letters to legislators in Congress

I want to ping the online advocacy community a bit to get thoughts on whether they'd be interested in using a Web service to send emails and faxes to Congress rather than our ActionStudio eAdvocacy service?

A web service solution would allow NGOs to build contact services into their sites in a more flexible manner without having to use the ActionStudio application service directly. It would have more flexibility but would require more development skills on the part of NGOs. I am wondering whether there would be enough demand to make this successful.

One option would be to build modules for CMS systems like plone that would support the capability. This might make it more useful to groups.

There would be a charge for the Web service but it would be less than the ActionStudio monthly fee of $49.95.

Please post your thoughts.

ActionStudio Online Advocacy Trial Special

Although ActionStudio's $9.95 per month three month trial expired last month, a few people have asked me to extend it through the end of the week. If you email me, I will honor the trial through this week only (Sep22 deadline).

The regular price is $49.95 per month with no set up fee.

ActionStudio provides comparable services to GetActive, Convio and other higher priced advocacy services that offer form-based legislative contact solutions.

ActionStudio's eAdvocacy is an affordable, online Web service for leveraging the power of your organization's members with elected officials and decision makers.

eAdvocacy helps you manage and implement contact campaigns between your members and Web site visitors and their representatives. eAdvocacy can be especially effective with the city and county officals in your local communities as well as state legislators, Congress and the President.

eAdvocacy's ease of use and features are usually only available from more expensive service providers beyond the reach of small to medium-sized non-profits.

Technorati Tags: online advocacy, actionstudio, convio, getactive, democracy in action