Tech

Google recently released an Android Studio. Developers have been wanting this for sometime now.

I was super excited to try it out and after installing it wouldn’t open. I did some searching and some people are having problems with it detecting the JDK installation path and the system environment path.

It’s a real easy fix.

First, make sure you have the JDK installed on your machine.

Secondly make sure you have a system variable JDK_HOME set to your JDK install folder

After those two steps have been completed Android Studio should launch.

This post on XDA developer forums help me fix my issue.

First you’ll need a Netflix account. If you don’t have a Netflix account and want to sign up, but can’t because you’re overseas this is where Spotflux also comes in.

Secondly you’ll need to install and run Spotflux. Your internet connection might drop for a minute after installing. Spotflux needs to makes some changes to the internet connection which temporarily disrupts the connection.

Spotflux routes all of your traffic through it’s servers in the U.S. tricking Netflix into thinking you’re in the U.S..
Allowing you to watch Netflix overseas for free, assuming you have a Netflix account.

Your connection might be slow for two reasons.
One, geologically the distance between you and Spotflux servers is great.
Two, your connection is already slow.

Not only does Spotflux encrypt your traffic to keep it safe from prying eyes, but it also removes ads, tracking cookies, and other malware.
According to their site:

The location and identity of your devices are concealed. Your connection to the internet is safe, more private, and unrestricted.

Spotflux is also useful if you’re using public WiFi because if your traffic isn’t encrypted anyone on the network can see what sites your browsing and potentially username/passwords.

You can download Spotflux here.

In this tutorial I will explain how to fix the SoapClient error and why it happened. My server threw this error after enabling the FedEx shipping option in Magento running 1.7. I isolated the issue to the FedEx shipping option because every time I enabled FedEx the shopping cart. The next step was to check the Magento error logs which gave me the errors below.

2012-10-19T03:57:53+00:00 ERR (3): Warning: include(SoapClient.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory  in /var/www/vhosts/www.domain.com/httpdocs/lib/Varien/Autoload.php on line 93
2012-10-19T03:57:53+00:00 ERR (3): Warning: include(SoapClient.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory  in /var/www/vhosts/www.domain.com/httpdocs/lib/Varien/Autoload.php on line 93
2012-10-19T03:57:53+00:00 ERR (3): Warning: include(): Failed opening 'SoapClient.php' for inclusion (include_path='/var/www/vhosts/www.domain.com/httpdocs/app/code/local:/var/www/vhosts/www.domain.com/httpdocs/app/code/community:/var/www/vhosts/www.domain.com/httpdocs/app/code/core:/var/www/vhosts/www.domain.com/httpdocs/lib:.:')  in /var/www/vhosts/www.domain.com/httpdocs/lib/Varien/Autoload.php on line 93

First I’ll explain why it happened. The reason for my SoapClient error was the php-common and php-soap extensions were at a different version than my PHP installation itself.
PHP was at version 5.3.3 and php-common and php-soap were at 5.3.17. So it’s important to make sure that the PHP extension versions are compatible with the PHP version.

Secondly I’ll explain how to fix this issue. It was extremely easy.
*Note:  There is always the potential that an update may break your site make sure you have a backup in place and ready to go before completing this process!
I simply ran the following command. I knew the PHP version was old compared to the extensions so this updates the PHP installation.

yum update php

After updating the PHP restart Apache by running the following command.

service httpd restart

Refresh the website and verify the checkout works properly.

If you have questions feel free to email [email protected] or leave a comment below.

In this tutorial I will explain how to upgrade the Magento ecommerce solution from 1.6 to 1.7 using Magento connect.

First login to the Magento admin page.

Hover over System then hover over Magento Connect then click on Magento Connect Manager.

On the right side of where it says “Manage Existing Extensions” click on “Check for Upgrades”.

After it finishes scroll through the list of extentions and find “Mage_All_Latest” the entire extension should be yellow and in the actions drop down select the latest stable release.

Scroll to bottom of page and click commit changes this will start the upgrade.

Some people may get a timeout if the php execution time takes too long. If this happens make sure to adjust in the php.ini file the max execution time to something longer than default. I set mine to 300 seconds.

If you have any questions use the contact form or email me at [email protected].

I wrote some code to dynamically generate an email message based on the names of form elements being sent through post.
In this post I’ll describe how it’s done.

The foreach loop grabs the keys from the post array. An example key for this  $_POST[‘Name’] would be “Name”. It’s important to put in the name of the field how you want it to show in the email. So if you want uppercase letters or spaces put them in.

The $keywos (key without spaces) gets the current key in the foreach loop and replaces the underscores that are automatically put in if the name from the HTML form elements had spaces when posting and replaces them with spaces.

Copy the post array to values array

If the current value for a particular key doesn’t have information in it don’t add it to the email message. This means the user hasn’t typed in any information in the input or selected an option.

If the key isn’t equal to submit then add it to the email messages. The submit button doesn’t need to be added to the email message.

Have questions? Email me at [email protected].

In this guide I’ll show you how to use one JavaScript function to slide any HTML element up and down with JQuery by simply sending the JavaScript function the id of an element.

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I’m starting a new series  “Mobile App of The Week”.

Each week I will review a Mobile App.
The new series will feature many different types of mobile applications.

App Name: Google Voice
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Google+ invites who wants one?

Leave a comment with your Gmail to get an invite!

US Cellular has released the Android 2.2 (Froyo) update for the US Cellular HTC Desire Read more

Connecting to WPA2 Enterprise even if Android doesn’t officially support it.

There isn’t a lot of documentation on this for Android so I thought I would make a step-by-step how-to.

Here’s how to connect your Android phone to a WPA2 Enterprise wireless network.

Click on any of the pictures to enlarge them.

Step One: At main screen hit the menu button and select settings.

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