greg hughes - dot net

Coudal.com has perhaps the most useful PDF file of the year available to download…

Do you ever get tired of those idiot people who suck up all the ambient quiet while talking on their cell phones about things that they – well – should probably just keep quiet?

Take action now:

“After reading a story in the NYT, Jim's wife Heidi decided that maybe there was a way to fight back against the obnoxious cell phone users that we all have to deal with in stores, restaurants, trains and pretty much everywhere else. Can design ride to the rescue? Jim and the incomparable Aaron Draplin think it can. So, as a public service, we introduce the reasonably polite SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing.”

Download this PDF, get out your exacto knife or scissors, and start fighting back (NOTE: The PDF contains a few choice profanities, so if you’re easilly offended, don’t click).

(via Engadget)

For the past few months now I have had Google AdSense ads (four of them in a vertical stack format) way down deep on the page in the right-side nav section of this weblog. You’d be safe to say they were buried, way “below the fold.” In other words, the worst possible place to stick ads that you want people to click on.

I put the ads there after Chris Pirillo pontificated on the wonders of AdSense - on his site, to me in person, to me in email, to me in instant messaging conversations. He groks the stuff.

Yesterday I got a “hey here’s some new info about your AdSense account” email from the AdSense people, which reminded me of that fact that I even had the ads on my site at all (yeah, they were that far down on the page). I’m a little lazy about that kind of stuff. In fact, I had not checked on the stats for my AdSense account in some time, and so I was a bit surprised to find I had almost $80 worth of ad revenues in my account. Hmmm…

So, being the smart guy I am, I decided maybe there actually was something to this AdSense stuff. Late last night I changed my ad layout design from four ads to just two, made it a horizontal layout, and moved them to the top of the page - into a much higher-profile placement.

The results? Well, just today, I had nearly $10 in click-through revenues – and today was a (relatively) slow traffic day on the site. In other words, by simply moving the ads and making them fit in a little better, in just one day I brought in about an eighth of the total ad revenue from the past four months. That’s hard to beat, no matter how you look at it:

• Click-through Rate:   3.4% today     0.2% per day average
• Click-though Count:   36 today       1 per day average
• Daily Earnings:       $9.42 today    $0.43 per day average

Of course, I emailed Chris and told him about my little experiment in ad placement and the results, and his reply was what exactly I expected:

“Told ya so.”

Heh. Yeah, he sure did.

Eric’s feeling pretty smug ‘cuz he posted about the Zoomquilt before I did. Okay, Eric – you win. I didn’t get around to it. 

Zoomquilt is pretty cool. Let it load, follow the simple instructions.

Be visually amazed. Marvel at the detail. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Seriously - it’s hella-cool. Enjoy.

Well, for those who have followed (for some reason) my back ailments here, an update: Surgery will happen on December 22nd.

So, Percutaneous Discectomy it is – removal of some of the material inside the disc at the L5/S1 space to relieve pressure on the nerve root there. The doctor will remove some of the material from inside, the bulge moves back toward the void left by the removal, and the pressure is reduced. Hopefully.

Nice thing is, it’s outpatient day surgery – I’ll walk out and go straight home within a few hours of arriving there. I’ll also be wearing a back brace for a while and will have to do several weeks of physical therapy (whoopee), but in the end I am hopeful it will all be worth it.

I’ve done pretty much everything I can in order to try to make things work without surgery, so this is pretty much it. While I am not big on the idea of surgery, I am very much looking forward to the possibility of some relief and maybe even getting back to where I can physically do the things I used to do.

Most any blog that’s been Googled, Slashdotted, or Engadgeted – or for that matter pretty much anything that drives traffic to a site – has seen the effects of referral spam. It SUCKS. Porn and marketing sites create a fake link to your blog entry, which results in a link to their web site (usually and unpleasant and unwelcome one) showing up in your referral list for that entry. Your readers click a link and get porn tossed right in their faces. Ugh.

With dasBlog, the only way I had to effectively battle this (I am a victim of referral spam for sure) was to turn off referral displays on my blog. I don’t want that, but this is a family-friendly site for the most part, so keeping the nasty out was important.

But last night Scott Hanselman, a friend and co-worker, sent me a new little C# 2005 Express project ZIP file, told me to compile it, and to try it out. He just built it for himself, and passed it on for me to use.

No more referral spam!

UPDATE: While I was able to kill the nasty referrer links, I have again removed referral listings from the blog for a while, because I have one particular weblog entry that has so many hundreds of referrers, it will crash the browser when you try to load it with referrers showing… But that’s a whole different issue…

Since then, Scott has posted the project source file on his blog, too, so any dasBlog users that need it can take advantage. He plans to make it a little more elegant in the future, but this is a great start!

Scott Hanselman, YOU’RE MY HEEEROOOO.

Tariq’s new SharePoint Tools Galore list is a great resource for people who work with WSS and SharePoint Portal Server. He lists a ton of third party and other tools for use with SharePoint. Check it out:

http://geekswithblogs.net/tariq/archive/2004/12/02/16655.aspx

Also – Joris Poelmans updates the list:

http://jopx.blogspot.com/2004/12/sharepoint-tools-galore.html

Not sure if or where this will actually “live,” but it’s a great start.

For my part – I can tell you that TeamPlate for .NET is very powerful and interesting when plugged into SharePoint and elsewhere, and they have a new version about to come out.

I have neglected posting SharePoint links and info recently. Bad me. Good thing there’s other people out there keeping us up to date. For example, Amanda Murphy recently linked to a few interesting nuggets of SharePoint gold, and I thought I would consolidate a couple of the ones that I find most interesting here, as well. Thanks, Amanda!

Nigel Bridport’s SharePoint User Manager v1.0
http://weblogs.asp.net/nigelbridport/archive/2004/11/30/272173.aspx

“Not sure about other people, but I find it quite time consuming when trying to manage users inside of Windows SharePoint Services sites, especially when the sites in the hierarchy have their security inheritance broken.  A number of customers end up breaking security inheritance at every opportunity and then hit this problem.

“So, I am in the process of writing a SharePoint User Manager Windows Application in order to help out in this area!”

Stramit’s Granular Backup Manager for WSS v1.0
http://blog.spsclerics.com/articles/434.aspx

“Granular Backup Manageris a tool which allows you to create back up file and/or .bat file to make this file for a global hierarchy of WSS site. Its internal is based on the sMigrate.exe of the SharePoint system. the back up file are just Web Package. Each sub site of a WSS collection can have its own web package directly with this tool

I made this tool to make easy the back up operation in the case in large WSS collection with document library. Using granular back up file allow you to restore just little site for recover a document instead of the all collection (less time, less space, just the site).”

Jan Tielens’ Smart Part for SharePoint v1.0.0.0
http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/11/23/268644.aspx

Finally I’ve managed to finish a new release for the SmartPart for SharePoint; version 1.0.0.0. This release has some really cool new features, but I'm really excited about the first one: connectable web parts with ASP.NET user controls!

• Create connectable web parts
  In SharePoint you can connect web parts, so they can exchange data. For example you could create a web part that displays a list of invoices, and another web part that displays the details of the selected invoice (master/detail view). Normally you’d have to create your Invoice and InvoiceDetails web parts by hand, implementing the ICellProvider and ICellConsumer interfaces (see Patrick’s excellent article about this topic). With the new version of the SmartPart you can do the same, but instead of coding everything by hand, you can create ASP.NET user controls! Just implement the ICellProviderUserControl or ICellConsumerUserControl on your user control, and you’re done.
• CAS Optimization
  Maxim Karpov did a great job on fine-tuning the Code Access Security for the SmartPart. For running the previous versions of the SmartPart, you’d had to increase the trust level in the web.config to WSS_Medium. In this version this is not required anymore. Of course if your user controls require a higher trust level, you can raise the trust level as usual.
• Hiding the user control selection
  Once you’re finished building your user controls, maybe you’d want to ship the finished web parts/user controls to a customer for example. In that case you don’t want the user to select the user controls from the dropdown listbox of the SmartPart, or filling out the user control name by hand. With the new version of the SmartPart you can create a DWP file which contains all the settings for an instance of the SmartPart showing a specific user control. The nice part is that you can hide the dropdown listbox or textbox for selecting the user control by adding the following node in the DWP after you’ve exported an instance of the SmarPart:
  <ShowUserControlList xmlns="SmartPart">false</ShowUserControlList>.

Got Windows XP and/or Media Center 2005? Then you’ll probably want to get the new Holiday Fun Pack for Windows XP.

There’s lots of cool stuff in there. Note that one thing Microsoft does not make very clear up front is any of the details about the Tweak Media Center 2005 power toy that’s included. Check out this article on Sean Alexander’s digital media blog for some more info in that regard.

If you’re visually motivated and into the winter thing, I don’t see why you would want to skip this download…

Download the Winter Fun Pack 2004 now! Spice up your music, photos and more with amazing holiday visualizations, skins, powertoys and other fun add-ons. There’s something for the whole family!

The Winter Fun Pack 2004 includes:

Stunning Holiday Vizualizations for Windows Media Player 10
Ring in the holiday cheer! Give your desktop the Holiday touch with three cool seasonal Player Visualizations. Enjoy the HOT new WhiteCap Holiday Viz with nearly 20 holiday images that explode in vivid color including a snowman, candy cane, shooting star and more. Cool down with the chilling Ice Storm Viz, then warm up next to the fire place with the Yule Log Viz.

Amazing Holiday-Themed Skins for Windows Media Player 10
Give your Media Player a wintry makeover with 5 skins for Windows Media Player 10 including Frostbite, Ice, and Ginger man and Ginger woman skins. Also, take Windows Media Player 10 to the next level with the hot new Halo 2 skin, which is sure to be one of the hottest selling games this Holiday season. [Ed: Halo 2 skin and Holidays? Uhhh… Ok…]

PowerToys for Windows Media Player 10
Let Windows Media Player 10 take the pain out of your holiday parties with Holiday Auto Playlists (including Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas). Personalize your email or blog by showing the song that’s playing on your desktop. And for power users, easily export your media library information into Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access and others.

Photos, Media Center and More!
Get into the holiday spirit and transform your desktop into a winter wonderland with new captivating desktop wallpaper images from Corbis. Get more out of Media Center 2005 with the new TweakMCE 2005 powertoy. Download Kris the Holiday Dancing Elf, Photo Story 3 for Windows, and more!

(via Sean Alexander)

Eric Rice is thinking hard, pondering what it will take to make Blogcast 1.0 happen, and posts his thoughts over on his weblog.

What will Podcasting’s future hold? What about video? Other forms of multimedia communication? Delivery methods? How can it be made more usable and accessible to new and experienced users alike?

I’m in. Multimedia communication by individuals online is just barely getting started, and this is the place to be for those who are interested in what the future will hold.

And besides, Eric’s a cool guy and a conference he drives is sure to be a hit. Plus he already made up a cool logo.

Don’t know that I can make the drive from Portland to the Seattle area for it (I may try), but if you’re a Windows MCE nut, there’s a Media Center Geek Dinner set to be held on Thursday the 9th in Bellevue, Washington.

See Michael Creasy’s blog for the details.

(via Eric Rice)

According to my just-arrived daily Google News Alert, Robert and I were both quoted (semi-syndicated, actually) today in the Boston Herald, with regard to our comments on MSN Spaces.

Funny, I didn’t actually think the two of us were at opposite ends of the spectrum, opinion-wise. In fact, I actually tend to agree with Robert, in that I would not use MSN Spaces as my primary blogging tool.

(Not that what I think matters all that much, but hey, it’s an honor to be quoted. And I’m a bit embarrassed – for Robert, that is – that I was quoted in the same breath as Scoble. He deserves better company, really.)

Sidebar: I find it fairly interesting that I am essentially blogging about tools that are used for blogging, then the newspaper quotes me in a story talking about blogging tools, using my blog as a journalistic source, and I am now back on the same blog, posting about the fact that this blog was (in a small way) used as a news source. Blogs as sources. Brain freeze. Ouch.

But I do like MSN spaces, not so much for me as for someone like my mom or a friend who’s maybe not quite so… computerified. It’s great for someone not quite so geeky as me, and who has no real desire to get any nerdier. I run my weblog on dasBlog, a .NET application that I installed, customized and run on my web host. My mom can’t conceptualize that, let alone actually do it.

Uh, sorry Mom – You’re terrific. I just needed a good example.

And it looks like that’s what MSN is thinking about with this product. From the Herald’s story:

"We think what we'll do is attract people who maybe have heard of blogging but never would have gone out and created their own blog," said Brooke Richardson, lead product manager for MSN Communications Services. "What we really focused on was making it easy to set up so newbies could get into the space."

So – for the average entry-level user, MSN Spaces is a pretty darn good thing.

For the record, so are other online hosted services like Blogger. And there’s the community-oriented Livejournal, which is actually where I started blogging back in the day. They’re a Portland-based company and a pretty darn cool group of people.

The other day, Research In Motion (RIM) announced the release of Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) v4.0 to their customers. The told us about it back in September, but it was not actually released until just recently. Exchange and Domino versions are available now.

What’s the big deal? LOTS.

Of primary interest to IT-types and end users alike is the fact that with the new version of the BES software, end user basically no longer need the Blackberry Desktop software at all anymore. All synchronization can be done wirelessly, or over the network with a small, easy to distribute application.

That means fast, easy setup of handheld devices. It also means that all handheld data can be backed up the the server, and that users can be given a passcode to type on any handheld along with their corporate email address to wirelessly provision and configure their Blackberry device.

There’s a bunch of improvements and enhancements, from security changes to better data access to more programmer tools... I’ll be doing an upgrade from v3.6 to v4.0 here very soon, so I’ll be sure to post my observations and thoughts when we are done with that little project.

One thing’s clear: RIM is getting things right. I’ve been working with BES for a number of versions (for four years now), and with each release the bar is raised significantly.

Now, in order to fulfill my gadget dream, all I need is a Windows Mobile device with a keyboard and the Blackberry Connect software installed. Hey Motorola, where’s that MPx???

More about MSN Spaces... Robert Scoble pointed out a couple of videos they posted to the Channel 9 web site showing the MSN Spaces people and technology:

• Michael Connolly and Jim Horne - Talking about MSN Spaces
• Michael Connolly and Jim Horne - Demo of MSN Spaces

Robert (in his typical and valued own-worst-critic style) also points out that while Spaces does what it does pretty well, it's not really the tool for him. I think I agree, but I also believe, similar to Livejournal, that MSN Spaces is great for non-technical people looking to communicate online in this form.

A friend of mine, Chris Cook, who has his own computer support and technology business, just created his first blog on MSN Spaces. Looks like I need to add yet another feed to my RSS reader... Cool!

I have been running a beta version of this app for several weeks now (and I really like it), but it looks like Microsoft/MSN has just published MSN Messenger v7 BETA to the general public.

So, if you’re a MSN Messenger user, you’ll probably drool over the new features. You can get it here.

(discovered from pretty much every other blog on the planet)

MSN Spaces has just been launched. It’s pretty darn cool, and essentially it’s a fairly complete blogging tool from Microsoft/MSN. You’ll need a Passport account, but other than that, you just sign up and go for it.

In less than 10 minutes, I created and configured a weblog, posted to it, changed a bunch of setting and the layout, posted to it from my mobile device, and added a picture or two via the MSN photo upload control. RSS 2.0 syndication is included (but no standard RSS orange button, or use of the term “RSS” – interesting).

Not a bad start, will be interesting to see it evolve!

Within a fraction of a second after I submitted my request to create my Space, this email arrived in my grungy little Hotmail in-box:

Spaces

Congratulations! You have created your own space on MSN Spaces. Here is the web address for your space: http://spaces.msn.com/members/greghughes/ To go to your new space now, use the above address. To help protect your privacy, do not include any personal information (for example, your address, phone numbers, Social Security number, or credit card information) on your space.

Go to MSN Spaces Go to your personal space

The layouts are about what you'd expect (nothing earthshattering, but solid and works well), and a number of standard templates are available: