TechLifeBlogged

A couple weeks ago I talked about Yahoo Pipes, the new service from Yahoo! that lets you mashup feeds and create your own subscription. So what if you don't want that happening to your feed? Feedburner to the rescue as usual.

Not sure how long it has been there but there is a feature on Feedburner under the 'Publicize' tab. Go the the bottom of the Services bar (left hand side) and you will see NoIndex. Here you can turn off indexing of your feed and indicate that you don't want your feed used in Yahoo! Pipes. Be sure to click 'Activate' when you are done.

Click to enlarge image

Interesting video about the transition from text to the current iteration of the Web. This was created by Kansas State University Cultural Anthropology assistant professor Michael Wesch.

 

 

FeedBurner has launched a new service to give its publishers the ability to organize themselves into networks, groups of folks who publish similar content and want band together to leverage the power of many to cross-promote their content.

This blog is now a member of the KBCafe Blog Network. Nothing will change for the readers of the blog. You can still stay subscribed to the rss feed.

This new network is a diverse set of blogs. You can check out the blogs of the rest of the members and subscribe to their feeds here: KBCafe Blog Network

There is also a single feed for all members of the network if you would like to subscribe to that: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KBCafe

 

Apparently the State of New Mexico is trying out a new program to try to stop drunk driving. They have purchased 500 urinal cakes ($21 apiece) and placed them in the restrooms of various bars. According to SiliconValley.com the cakes say things like "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."

 

I was just checking over on in the forums at PortableApps and I noticed the link I had put in to my Windows Live Writer Portable has been taken down.

 

I'm not redistributing the code from the original software vendor. The zip file I created only contains a launcher and not the code to the application. I left it to the user to download the free software from the software developers site and move to their USB device.

The software is free to download once and install on as many computers as you like. A gray area may be that the launcher modifies the registry and moves some files around before and after launching the program. Batch files and reg hack are as old as Windows.

 

Slashdot: One of the volunteers was able to track down his wife's stolen laptop using the IP address that SETI@home client reports back to the server. After getting back the laptop his wife said, 'I always knew that a geek would make a great husband.'"

Nice!

 

I'm still using Windows Live Writer Portable that I build a little while ago. I have discovered that there is an issue when you move the USB stick to another computer. When you try to publish your post you'll get a message box that an error was received and you won't be able to post.

I have tracked the issue down and it comes back to WLW storing your password in the registry. When it does this it creates some kind of hash. I believe takes some information from the current computer you are running on and encrypts uses that to create the hash. So, the password info is encrypted in the registry but is specific to that machine.

To work around this, before you start writing a post on a new machine you need to go to the menu bar and click Weblog - Edit Weblog Settings and enter in your password. Then click next through the series of setup screens. Note that it is just your password you have to redo. All your FTP and other settings will remain in tact.

If you restart the app on the same machine this isn't an issue as the information is stored back to the USB stick. Once you get used to it you'll know that you have to do it because when you start Windows Live Writer the editing screen won't show the style sheet from your blog.

You could actually have different, machine specific, reg files in the \PortableApps\WindowsLiveWriterPortable\

Data\Registry or your  USB stick but that wouldn't be ideal because of the other settings that might get changed and then other things might be out of sync.

 

More Daylight savings infor from Microsoft this morning. Developers received an email stating that there could be an issue with their apps:

Developers who use the .NET Framework may find their applications affected if the application uses the time zone information for historical purposes or if they have derived custom classes from System.TimeZone to provide custom time zone information. The standard System.TimeZone class provides a managed wrapper for the underlying Windows Operating System time zone functions.
In addition, developers who use Visual C++ may find their applications affected if they use the CRT time functions, or the TZ environment variable. Microsoft is currently working on a fix for this issue and will post information about its availability on the Visual Studio Support page.
Most applications that use these affected classes will not need to be modified as this update will ensure that the correct data is provided seamlessly to the application. However, applications that use these classes or the underlying Windows API to perform historical time look-ups will need to be modified.

More: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb264729.aspx, Preparing for daylight saving time changes in 2007, and KB928388: 2007 time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems.

 

Microsoft released Service Pack2 for SQL Server 2005. This is very important for anyone on or using Windows Vista and Office 2007 as this update is fully compatible with both these products.

Press Release

Virtual PC 2007 was released yesterday. Download (30 Meg).

• Support for x64 Windows as a host operating system
• Support for hardware virtualization support
• Support for Windows Vista as a guest and host operating system 
• Support for PXE network booting of virtual machines
• Support for the use of fullscreen virtual machines on multi-monitor systems (VM still stays on just one monitor though)

 

If you own or manage Blackberry devices you might want to have a look at this page.

Blackberry: DST 2007 Patches for BlackBerry Devices

 

You may have seen Hugh Macleod's Blue Monster cartoon around the net. Here is a little video explaining the back story.


I think the company name should be substituted with any company that should be serious about what they do.

You can now get the news from lake Wobegon as a podcast: The News from Lake Wobegon

I've been enjoying This American Life for a month or so now. Nice to mix in some other stuff with all the tech shows I listen to daily.

 

Proof that help desks and users haven't been able to get along for centuries.

Lifehacker: System Information for Windows is a freeware system utility that lets you view your system configuration in almost every conceivable aspect of your software, hardware, and network configurations.

Great program to keep handy if you need to troubleshoot machines other than your own as well.

SIW - System Information for Windows

 

***** Update 8 September 2007 *******************************

New Version available! Don't us this one any more.

Read all about the new version here:

Windows Live Writer Portable 2.0

**************************************************************

Starting to use Windows Live Writer more and more it becomes apparent that it would be really nice to take it with me between computers. If you have more than one blog it is tedious to set everything up every time you need to install again. You have all your blog settings, ping server settings and FTP settings to redo.

Over on PortableApps.com a lot of work has been done to get apps such as Firefox, Thunderbird even Open Office to run in a portable environment. So I figured WLW was a natural for this environment. It takes a bit to figure it out but once you do it works really well.

This is my first portable app! I've posted my Windows Live Writer Portable launcher here: WindowsLiveWriterPortable.zip

The zip file does NOT contain everything you need to run Windows Live Writer. This is simply a launcher which will run Windows Live Writer in a self contained environment so you can take everything with you between computers via your USB memory stick or other portable device.

To get this portable app to work you need to follow these steps closely:

1. Unzip this file to your USB or other portable drive
2. Download Windows Live Writer from: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com
3. Install Windows Live Write as usual. You don't even have to run it, just so long as it is installed.
4. Copy ALL of the files FROM c:\program files\windows live writer TO the new structure on your USB drive that looks like the graphic below \WindowsLiveWriterPortable\App\WindowsLiveWriter

5. You can now uninstall Windows Live Writer if you want

To use Windows Live Writer from your USB drive simply double click on WindowsLiveWriterPortable.exe and it will take care of the necessary registry settings and document paths. If you have used WLW on your computer before, the launcher will copy all your settings and files to the USB drive.

This is my first portable app so hopefully it will work well. So for so good for me in limited testing.

Yahoo! has a new product called Pipes. You use it to build your own custom RSS feed based on others. You can do all kinds of mashups.

As an experiment, I created a feed to monitor Life Hacker for any references to Firefox. You'll see the page and be able to subscribe to the RSS here: LH-Firefox

Pipes takes a little getting used to but it is basically a drag and drop interface. You can figure it out by looking at the examples but it would be nice if they had a tutorial. A big hit is to look at the debugging screen at the bottom as you add your nodes to the pipe.

Here is what the pipe looks like that I built for LH-Firefox:

Once you get one created, it is easy to create a copy, make some minor edits and come up with a new feed for something else like this on that monitors Lifehacker for stories about Windows Vista: LH - Windows Vista

[via: kbcafe]

 

I must say that Windows Live Writer is very nice. One thing I really like is the context sensitive sidebar. Normally, as you type, it is in insert mode (insert link, insert tags, etc). If you click on an image, it switches to image mode and lets you perform functions related to image.

Here are some of the features.

Editing\Posting:

* Edit your entries using your blog's standard headings, fonts, and colors.
* Switch between HTML source-code editing, WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get," which means that you can see the formatted page, but not the HTML code that creates the formatting.) editing, and web preview modes.
* Preview your post before you upload it.
* Compose posts offline.

Images:
* Insert photos, maps, and other graphics.
* Resize graphics, and add borders or other effects. Cool things like watermarks (see the image above) and some minor photo editing.
* Create thumbnail image links to larger graphics.
* Upload photos directly to blog providers who support the new Media Object API (An XML-based application programming interface that provides upload information about images, movies, songs, or other types of media when you upload media from your computer to your blog.) or to an FTP server.

Services:
* Compose posts for Windows Live Spaces as well as Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and many other services.
* Works with Really Simple Discoverability (RSD) (An XML format that makes it simple to set up editing or blogging software to use with blogging sites.) , the Metaweblog API (An XML-based application programming interface that allows other applications to interact with a blog site.) , and the Movable Type API (An XML-based application programming interface that extends the Metaweblog API.) .

If you are a blogger, give it a try!

 

I'm still testing. On a test blog I have, it still seems to be putting the posts in Draft mode. Not sure why yet.

testing thursday 6:27pm

arstechnica: Kodak has big plans to revolutionize the inkjet printer market by selling ink at bargain basement prices: $9.99 for black and $14.99 for color. Users sick of piratical ink prices (which Kodak estimates come out to $4,000-$5,000 per gallon on average)
Tags: kodak, printer, ink

I made a big mistake the other day. Back story: For those that don't know, Google has been beta testing a new platform for Blogger. Used to be called Blogger Beta and now know by most as the New Blogger. In addition to that, the New Blogger links in with the rest of your Google accounts. For example, if you have Gmail, you'll use that user name and password to log into Blogger.
So the other night I was approving a comment someone made on my blog and I saw Blogger trying to get me to merge my old account into the New Blogger. What harm could that be? So I did it. Ugh. See on the surface it appears not to be a problem until I tried to use my favorite blogging tool, Qumana. Blogger changed the XML-RPC endpoint for it's new Blogger so the current Qumana 3.0 doesn't work correctly.
I've been a long time user of Qumana. They even used a quote of mine in a press release back in '05. So, while I hate to do it, until they get it fixed I'm looking around for another blogging tool. Windows Live Writer looks like it is supposed to work but nothing I've tried has worked with the new Blogger.
Anyone have any suggestions for other tools?

UPDATE: Windows Live Writer appears to work...sort of. It creates posts but sets them as Draft.

Tags: blogger, qumana, xml, rpc

If you're going to run Java applications or anything that deals with Java, you are going to want to get JRE 6.
Tags: microsoft, windows, vista, sun, java, jre

Websense Security Labs has discovered that the official website of Dolphin Stadium has been compromised with malicious code.  The Dolphin Stadium is currently experiencing a large number of visitors, as it is the home of Sunday's Super Bowl XLI.
Tags: virus, spam, security, super bowl, xli

This guy's dad wanted to upgrade to Vista because he heard it was new and different. So the kid upgraded the computer to Ubuntu Linux while the dad wasn't looking. Dad now thinks 'Vista' is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Tags: ubuntu, linux, windows, vista, humor

Are your windows XP and Server 2003 machines prepared for Y2Day? Starting in the spring of 2007, daylight saving time (DST) start and end dates for the United States will change. DST dates in the United States will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November).
Even if you aren't in the US you'll want to be sure your computers are up to date if you do any business with people in the US. Microsoft has released KB928388 which covers the changes in detail and has links for the necessary downloads for Windows XP or Server 2003. Note that you must already be running Service Pack 2 for Windows XP before applying this update. Windows Vista already has the code needed for this transition.
I think I saw this as an optional item in Windows update. Not good. Patch your systems people.
Tags: microsoft, windows, xp, timezone, dst, y2day, kb928388