greg hughes - dot net

In an earlier post, I manually attached a linked OneNote audio recording to the OneNote HTML email, which was then sent to my mail server in order to auto-generate a blog entry. I had to manually attach the audio file, because (I assumed) OneNote would not do it. (I've been playing more and more with OneNote's sharing capabilities both on the SharePoint platform and by leveraging the emails it can create, for Blogging or otherwise...)

I was wrong in my assumption: While it's true that the out-of-the-box settings don't attach a linked audio file, you can turn that ability on in one of two places - either in OneNote's Options/E-mail section, or you can use Windows Group Policy to set it for an entire organization (along with literally hundreds of other common settings).

To do this via group policy, you just enable the policy, and then activate the setting. Once you do this, the policy is propagated to all clients on the domain to which that policy applies:

If you don't have group policy (or if you have it but just don't use it - in which case see below), you can go to the OneNote Options dialog, choose the E-mail section and just check the appropriate box.

SideNote (pun intended): Practically ALL of OneNote's options can be controlled though group policy, along with a huge number of settings for the rest of the Office 2003 System family of applications - not to mention Windows domain policies. If you are running Group Policy and Office 2003, you need to take advantage of this - it makes things consistent and fast, two things IT groups love and need. Remember - group policies are not just for operating system settings - they are also available for a number of other applications.

I added a link to Chris Pratley in my blogroll, because his is one blog I find myself re-reading recently. Chris is Group Program Manager for Office Authoring Services, and is one of the main forces (among several I am sure) behind OneNote. Microsoft employees have started public blogging like mad recently, and Chris is one of the new additions - thank goodness! It's great to see program managers and other non-programmers blogging now (not to discount the developers - that's great too!).

Side note: It was a discussion on Chris' blog and similar discussions elsewhere concerning OneNote and blogging that made me realize you can blog from OneNote, if you want to. So, I figured I would just try it and see - and it worked for the most part. And now it seems to be catching on a little bit - which is kinda cool. While it's far from a complete list due to Google lag, it will be interesting to see if the results of this search change much over time (assumes people will leave the OneNote footer in there of course). Already several bloggers have started using OneNote to post blog messages, and hopefully some of them will make the Google index eventually.

Now, for what it's worth, this is far from perfect, and may not even fit the semi-purists definition of “good.“ And I know DonXML and Phillip Rieck would call it a “kludge” (and would be absolutely correct in saying so), but still, it's a valid “coolio” option for some. My vote is to open up OneNote's publishing features to include true XML output capability, as well as a cleaner email format - and do it in a way that would enable the code purists as well as the multimedia people to do their respective things. Maybe even a plug-in sort of capability? And when I say publish, I mean publish text and images to the blog, put the .wma audio files on the Windows Media server with the matching .asx file on the web server, ship it to the Wiki, and on the SharePoint server, and on and on... I have a specific list of what I mean, feature-functionality-wise, and sometime soon I might just need to put that onto paper.

Er, I mean into Ink.

Audio recording started: 11:21 PM Monday, February 02, 2004

 

 

Download: Blogging One note and Audio.one
Download: Blogging One note and audio.WMA

Note: Seems to work - added the windows media file as a second email attachment, and dasBlog seems to handle posting that just fine - so now I know from actual experience that more than one attachment definitely works for the MailToWeblog functionality in dasBlog. :)

Oh - and I think I have just reached a new plane of geek existence - recording the same lame thing I type, and them posting it as an audio recording to the web - heheheh... /me is sooo lame.

Ummmm, there are times, despite my underlying conservative sensibilities, when I have to wonder if we shouldn't just pass a couple more new laws. Case in point:

HOLLAND, Michigan (AP) -- Tacking Jr. or II onto a boy's name is too common, a new father decided, so the self-described engineering geek took a software approach to naming his newborn son.

Jon Blake Cusack talked his wife, Jamie, into naming their son Jon Blake Cusack 2.0.

You've gotta be kidding me. I cringe to think how many jokes this kid will be the butt of. Middle school is going to be rough kid - you have been warned... But that's okay: While everyone else in your grade is trying to convincingly blame all their problems on their parents, you'll be able to do so with complete legitimacy. So hey - hang in there.

Well, as mentioned earlier, was having some problems getting blogged .one files to work, and guessed it might be a MIME type issue. Turns out that was the case, so it was a simple fix, and now any blog entry made with OneNote will include the attached original .one file on the blog entry, so people can load the original file in OneNote if they like. COOL!

It just took Allen, my friendly neighborhood web hosting provider (I recommend them highly and the price, my friends, is right), to patiently point me in the right direction as far as setting up the new MIME type (turns out I was able to do it myself, and for the record it's “.one” mapped to “OneNote” in IIS).

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/winfeb04.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-004.asp

Don't skip this one - get updated. Please. Now. Don't wait.

AAAAAAGH!! Something about Kid Rock in a cut-up American flag, preceded by the lamest set of artists they could possibly think up, that just further affirms my prior belief that CBS sucks. Only in Houston. Really. Think about it...

And wow, what perfect timing: Janet Jackson. Gee, wonder why? Justin Timberlake certainly seemed to enjoy being on stage with her, though.

Oh, and here I am, watching the Superbowl with our entire youth group at church. And there's Justin and Janet, gettin' it on. And hey, quite the ending there - wow.

Great. Just great. The game means nothing, but suddenly halftime is the most important thing on the face of the planet. These kids are all over it. We've got twelve year old boys hollering for others to get out of the way just in case there's more Janet Jackson on the screen. No such luck, kids. Maybe next year.

Download: Very Interesting - more one OneN.one

Blog entry directly from OneNote

Saturday, January 31, 2004

5:16 PM

So, I have seen a number of people wishing in various blog comments here and there that they could create blog entries directly from OneNote. So, I am trying that here, not knowing whether it will actually work or not. :)

In theory, it should: I am typing this in OneNote (will have to try handwriting next if this works), and I'll do just as I have in the past as far as posting directly from the TabletPC using inked content: I’ll use OneNote's Outlook 2003 integration to convert automatically to HTML and send a properly-formatted to the dasBlog software on my server.

Will be interesting to see what happens!

Download: Blog entry directly from OneNote.one

Mary Jo Foley of Microsoft Watch asks us the most important question of the week:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and presidential-hopeful Howard Dean: Separated at birth? "Monkeyboy" Ballmer and "Ranter" Dean have more in common than meets the eye.

True. True.

Looks like Mikerowesoft has resolved its complaint against...

No, wait...

Looks like Microsoft has resolved its complaint against 17-year old Mike Rowe. Well, that's good. I mean, it was such a confusing name and all. Sheez. Gimmee break. Plz.

Overheard: “TriMet's a great system if you live next to it.”

Uh, yeah.

It's snowing again. No, wait sleet. No, now it's rain. Oh no, now it's snow. Sheez. Ol' Ma Nature must be concerned these days because all the snow from the recent storms melted or something. Luckily, this won't be enough weather to cause a problem, or likely even enough to stick around.

Even IT pro's have home computer problems sometimes, only ours are usually more complicated because we tend to really challenge our computers. So anyhow, I got home yesterday, found my user profile (among a number of other things) in Windows was completely shot. I had to do some fancy maneuvering to even get into the system, and once things were close to being back to normal, so much data was lost I had to almost start like it was a new computer as far as set up goes. Not literally start new - none of this reinstall Windows crap. It needed to be fixed.

In the process of a lot of repair steps one of the things I had to do was to fight an unhappy hard drive and it's file table. I was certain I had lost some critical data, but suspected it was still in a recoverable mode on the drive. So, I decided to register a copy of Active @ Undelete Pro, which helped me in terms of getting a large number of otherwise lost, deleted and unassociated files on the drive back. While the files and directories in question were no longer associated with their original locations (that file table was pretty screwed up), this program still allowed me to browse them and recover every file I needed (like email dbx files, application profiles, some docs, etc.). That software is worth it's weight in gold. The version I bought (Pro) is $49.95, and allows removable disks to be worked with, but if the only locations you want to be able to recover from are your local hard drives (most home users), the standard version is only $29.95 - and well worth it. BTW, for $99.95 they also have an enterprise version that I will be purchasing for work when I get back to the office next week. It allows you to recover from other computers over the network - very cool.

There's one lesson here worth learning for the paranoid among us (yes, that's you, Steve ). Anything you store on/in your Desktop, My Documents, My Pictures, My.* (etc.) folders is stored under your user profile. So, if you want to make sure a Windows glitch is less likely to cause you heartburn, consider relocating the folder(s) or simply store your files elsewhere, not in the Documents and Settings tree.

Press Release: 

IF NASA FINDS CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE OF AN OCEAN ON MARS, AMERICA EATS FREE GIANT SHRIMP

"We have closely followed NASA's recent exploration of Mars and all of us are rooting you on to find ocean water on the Red Planet," Davis wrote. "The 'Free Giant Shrimp' offer is our way of saying NASA's exploration of Mars and the discovery of ocean water would be 'one small step for man, one giant leap for seafood.'"

Riiiiiiight... Hey, ya never know?