Blogging

Still Searching for a Good Mac OS X Blog Editor

Chris Haaker — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:37:57 GMT

I am writing this post using the ScribeFire Firefox plug-in. I am still on the lookout for a blog editor that come close to all the features and ease of use found in Microsoft's LiveWriter - but runs on Mac OS X. I have found some close ones -- MarsEdit and X -- but their big achilles heel is that they don't recognize SharePoint blogs running on MOSS 2007 (sp1 or otherwise). Natch Microsoft would build support in to its tool - no one else does though. And I will be damned if I can find a way to manually configure it to work. Grrrr

Technorati Tags: MarsEdit, ScribeFire, LiveWriter

My Shared Links Feeds From Google Reader

Chris Haaker — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:44:52 GMT

I have switched over to Google Reader (after being a long time FeedDemon user) and am loving the browser-based access anywhere experience. While FeedDemon had great offline reading abilities, if I switched computers I was out of luck. It also doesn't have a sweet Blackberry reading option as does the web-based Google Reader.

Part of this switch also means that instead of laboriously re-posting items I want to share to my blog I can SHIFT + S and easily add them to my shared feed. You can read it in a web view or subscribe to the RSS feed. Be warned: these are things I find interesting. Mileage may vary!

Aggreg8: Exchange Working Group

Chris Haaker — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:32:31 GMT

I have started for some time now an Exchange working group on the Microsoft\Culminis community site Aggreg8. It now has a decent amount of traffic and conversation with lots of questions posted that many in the Exchange community may find helpful. You may also be able to share your experience with others. Please stop by and take a look. I can also give out some invitations if they are needed. Leave a comment.

Update: Okay, so while traffic spiked I had been remiss in looking at post dates - nothing since 11/2006! Let's get the posting back up!

Need to Explain RSS to Your Mom or Dad?

Chris Haaker — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:55:09 GMT

Point them here. This is a great 2 minute explanation on how to set up a reader and subscribe to feeds. No computers were harmed in the making of this video.

River of Mail?

Chris Haaker — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:58:00 GMT

In the world of RSS and newsreaders there is a war of preferences going around over how people prefer to read their feeds. Categorized by feed, type of feed, or as a “river of news.” In other words first in, first displayed, in a long list and you simply scan top-to-bottom. I have tried both and IMO both have merit. River of news lets you see everything in an instant, and I find it useful for quickly locating important event. Then I read the “normal” stuff later on. When I am ready to consume all my news, I prefer to read by feed as I find it more efficient not having my brain change cylinders from sports to tech to music item by item. I can keep it focused as I read a whole collection of news at once.

Now that I am piloting Vista and Office 2007 with integrated Desktop Search support, I wondered if this approach can work for mail as well. For as long as I can remember, I created a hierarchal folder system in Outlook and sorted my mail manually or with rules in to “buckets” of knowledge. If I needed an email from my boss, I knew exactly which folder to go look for it in. Perhaps the days of all those folders are past? Why not just keep all of my mail in one folder and allow the powerful properties of search to help me easily locate a message? On an enterprise level, I have a feeling there is some power here as well. Why the need to memorize or bookmark obscure URL’s or UNC paths? Index the enterprise and search for it. This isn’t a new idea, but it is one that the technology can finally support. Why do so few use it. Is it such a shift – to feel that all your data is just out there – unorganized – willy-nilly? I can see search driving the control freaks crazy. How do you really know everything is as or where it should be unless you look in your neat little file folder system and see it sitting there?

So this is what I am experimenting with now. As an Exchange administrator, I know having thousands of mail items in my Inbox will eventually catch up with me. However, email archiving should prevent me from feeling the ill effects of this. I have already cast off my PST shackles and imported them in to the archive. My precious PST’s! Right now it is taking some getting used to seeing all my alerts, MOM messages, personal and business emails floating in one folder. I want to see where this goes however. No zero mail inbox here! I haven’t been disciplined enough to do this with my files yet on my laptop. That is next though. Even though I remember to use Vista’s awesome search capabilities when I need a document, they are all still neatly organized in their safe little folder in Documents - One thing at a time.

Windows Live Writer Wishes

Chris Haaker — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:48:00 GMT

I have been using Windows Live Writer since it was released (sorry BlogJet!) and have been generally very happy with it. I have two wishes for anyone on the product team that may be listening out in the blogosphere:

Add a way to export the blog account settings. This will allow me to easily get my accounts back in when I reinstall my OS. If you can export the preferences (and all my pings) that would be great too!
Add a menu entry to check for updates to the program. I hate having to depend on blog entries to find out when a utility has released an update. This software isn't major enough to hit the mainstream blogs and I don't want to track a blog for each piece of software I use on a regular basis. Let it check for me in the background when I fire it up.

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Live Writer

And Now Back to Exchange ...

Chris Haaker — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:55:00 GMT

A week out of the blogosphere feels good - and a refreshing way to recharge the batteries! Of course, now I have to wade through 700+ news items. I have not removed my laptop from its bag since December 22nd. It was hard at times, but I made it.

I noticed a lot of people are getting their blogs in a knot over Microsoft giving out some review laptops loaded with Windows Vista Ultimate to select bloggers. I wasnt selected so it is hard for me to be anything but envious. On the other hand, I find it hard to critisize the fruits of others hard labor. Will their view be influenced or slanted? Only time will tell. It would be extremely short sighted of them to compromise their blog's integrity for a laptop. In the long run reader's are savvy enough to tell posturing from the truth and then they will have no traffic or credability. Will they fabricate good reviews or old back on criticism? Again, I think no, they wont. I dont think (hope) they would trade a few not-from-the-heart blog posts for the next ~~gift~~ review unit to come down the river.

The week between now and January 8th when my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes will dismantle the University of Florida Gators seems like an eternity. Why the extra week? Why? You are only allowing more time for a student-athelete to do something ~~stupid~~ ill-advised and get themselves disqualified from the big game.

PS Notre Dame will continue its streak of losing in bowl games.

I have about five extra pounds to shed thanks to the holidays. My committment is to lose 45 lbs. by my birthday in June. I swear it! :) I have had success in the past, but I have also had success in putting it all back on. I have to be strong of mind and body to make this work.

And now Back to Exchange! Exchange 2007 is now available for download on MSDN and TechNet Plus Direct.

Technorati tags: Exchange 2007, MSDN, TechNet Plus, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Buckeyes, Acer, Vista, Windows Vista

Flickr Down and Out

Chris Haaker — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:39:00 GMT

Something weird is going on over at Flickr. Could just be a blip, perhaps something has crashed? All the photos in my blog linked to my Flickr account cannot be viewed and when I sign in I get the resulting screenshot . . . odd.

Technorati tags: Flickr, Flickr Outage

Goodbye RSS Bandit, Hello FeedDemon

Chris Haaker — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:10:00 GMT

Now that I have made the switch to Windows Vista full time I have had to re-think my RSS reader. I originally switched to RSS Bandit after being a long time FeedDemon user one day when FeedDemon pushed me over the edge with its activation. I work as a consultant and systems engineer and I love to beta test software and generally experiment. As such, I rebuild my laptop often. One to many times as far as FeedDemon was concerned. The first time it happened their support team was quick to clean it up. The next time it was weeks and in frustration I switched to a free RSS reader. I had heard good things about RSS Bandit and I wasn't disappointed. It is a fine reader and I loved it. Until I switched to Windows Vista. It has an annoying, and to its credit, documented bug that causes it to freeze every time you access a menu. Dare says it will be fixed in the next version code-named Jubilee. In the meantime, however, it is driving me nuts. If anyone has a meantime fix I would love to hear it! Otherwise, I am back to FeedDemon for now.

Technorati tags: FeedDemon, RSS Bandit, RSS Reader, Windows Vista

Another Blogging Tool - BlogMailr

Chris Haaker — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:22:00 GMT

Not too long ago there was only one blogging tool that I felt great about – BlogJet.

I used it for a long time and was very happy. There wasn’t anything I was especially displeased with. Then some more blogging tools made their way on to my radar. From Microsoft. Generally, I will give any product from Microsoft a shot. I use a Microsoft OS. I am a (largely) Microsoft-centric systems engineer and technical manager. The first was during the beta testing of the Microsoft Office System 2007. My favorite application, OneNote 2007, introduced a “blog this” feature. I enjoyed the fact that blogging from OneNote allowed me to keep all of my posts in a notebook. They were then searchable, reproducible and handy. Soon after, the Word 2007 team introduced the same functionality. You could define your blogging provider from within Word 2007 and compose a new “document” (blog post) and then post it to said provider. OneNote 2007 could even compose the entry and then pass it on to Word’s blogging engine for posting. Nice.

I used it and was happy. Then the Microsoft Windows Live team introduced Windows Live Writer.

This was the most complete blogging tool that Microsoft has released. It has a robust and active community of users developing plug-ins as well as all the features (once said plug-ins are loaded) that BlogJet had (previous to version 2.0). Now enter BlogMailr. This is a service that allows you to set up an account for your blogging provider at their website and in turn assigns to you a custom email address. Mail sent to this address goes straight to your blog as a post. Many providers are supported (except .text for some reason – please correct this) including Spaces and Community Server. So this blog comes courtesy of Microsoft Outlook 2007. Of course, I have Outlook set up to use Microsoft Word 2007 as my editor so I guess it really comes from there. But Word has blogging built in! Doh. Should I uninstall BlogJet and Live Writer finally? Only time will tell . . .