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Rob Dolin

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If you know me personally, you can add me as a Messenger contact to see more of my contact info.
Beginning asp.net
The Inmates are Running the Asylum
HTML 4 for the world wide web
Designing Web Usability
Foundations of Ajax
The Long Tail
Syndicating Web Sites with RSS Feeds For Dummies ®
Writing Secure Code
Look Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
Sometimes it's all you can pick-up driving through cornfields
Keg in the Closet

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11/8/2009

What I installed on my home Windows 7 PC

As someone who works in the software industry (see disclaimer), I often get asked questions like "Do you recommend Windows 7" (Heck YES!) or "What is your favorite web browser?" (tie: IE8 and Flock.)  One of the things I've learned from volunteering in politics is not to ask for a candidate's opinion, but to ask what the candidate actually does (ex: NOT "Do you support public schools?" but "Do your kids go to public schools?")
 
Now that Windows 7 is out, I've decided to expand on my December 2008 blog entry Recommendations for a Clean PC.  Here's what I recommended (and installed on my wife's laptop):

This past week, I finally got sick of all of the pre-installed crap on H’s laptop so I reformatted the hard drive and did a complete re-install.  Here’s what I installed to get a base PC configuration that she could use for her professional and volunteer work as well as something I could do the occasional web development on when she is on my desktop PC:

Now that we bought a new desktop PC, here are the additions or substitutions that I've made now that some new software or versions (including Windows 7) are available:

  • Windows Vista -> Windows 7 (included with most new PC's) - Windows 7 is just straight-up awesome.  My favorite feature is the window docking so I can easily dock one window on the left side of my monitor and another window on the right side.  Thus, a single widescreen monitor can be used as if it was two. 
  • Firefox --> Flock (free) + Chrome (free) - Since Windows 7 already comes with the the (IMHO) best productivity browse in IE8, I like to also install Flock which has great social features like a "People" column that connects to Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.  (Hey Flockers, please add Windows Live.)  Flock also uses the mozilla engine so it renders web pages like Firefox.  I also installed Chrome because I've annecdotally noticed that it seems to render JavaScript games like Mafia Wars slightly faster than the IE or Mozilla engines and I've become slightly addicted to Mafia Wars after doing some research on online gaming. :)
  • Microsoft Security Essentials (free) - I always hate how some of the pre-installed anti-virus software seems to be overly cautious and constantly trying to up-sell me to some paid version.  I like that Microsoft came-out with a basic, free anti-virus / anti-spyware program that doesn't try to up-sell you to a paid version.  When Microsoft Security Essentials came-out, I installed it on H's laptop and it was part of what I added when setting-up my Win7 PC (and removing the free but up-sell laden included anti-virus program.) 

Happy computing--
--Rob

Updated ~6pm PST on 11/8: Added a mention of Microsoft Security Essentials

10/11/2009

Introduction to GroupTweet

I'm helping a few non-profits set-up Twitter account that multiple people can post to and we've been using GroupTweet so I decided to post a basic overview as more folks start using this:
 
Exec. Summary: When the group account receives a direct message from a group member, GroupTweet converts it into a tweet that all followers can see.
 
Details:
 
To generate this tweet:
SVPSeattle: via @WillowrSVP Off to the Communications Network Conference #comnet09 next week. Can't wait to see what folks are doing around the country!
 
WillowrSVP send a direct message to the SVPSeattle account. 
 
As prerequisites: The SVPSeattle twitter account was set-up with GroupTweet and was following WillowrSVP.
 
I hope that helps give some background, please leave a comment (or at-reply to @RobDolin :) ) if you have questions. 
 
Thanks--
--Rob
9/25/2009

Three Screens and a Cloud should be Five Screens and a Cloud

I've been hearing a bunch of people mention "three screens and a cloud" in reference to having experiences for PC, mobile, and TV and I've been thinking about how this should really potentially be "five screens and a cloud." 
My reasoning here is that there's a huge difference between a native PC (or Mac) application and a web-based one.  As much as the Office Web Companions or GoogleDocs have evolved, on my home or work PC, I would always choose the native MS Office application over the web-based one.  Same for web-based email vs. Outlook. 
Similarly, native mobile apps are a big step-up from the mobile web.  The Bing app on my Windows Mobile phone is much better than http://m.bing.com/ but I'd use http://m.bing.com/ on my partner's iPhone.  Similarly, I prefer the FourSquare iPhone app to http://m.foursquare.com/
If you're developing an application out there, I hope you'll consider the potential of supporting the appropriate set of five screens for your app.  FWIW--
--Rob
9/12/2009

How to add Bing to the Opera web browser

Bing is my preferred search engine, but working on web development, I usually install many browsers on a given machine.  (IE8 and Flock are my current favorites.) 

So, this morning, I tried to add Bing to a new install of Opera 10.  When I went to www.bing.com as you can do in Firefox, there was no link at the top right to add Bing, so I did a bit of bing’ing ;) and found this blog entry from the Bing team: http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2009/06/11/bing-and-your-browser.aspx?PageIndex=3 that described how to add Bing to Chrome.

I found that similar instructions work with Opera:

1. In Opera, select Tools | Preferences

2. Click the Search tab

3. Click the [Add] button

4. Enter the below info:
image
(It’s up to you if you want to check the “Use as default search engine” box.)

5. Click [OK]

You may need to close and re-open opera for your default choice to take, but I was pleasantly surprised that this was so easy.

Happy bing’ing--
--Rob

9/6/2009

Does politics belong in online reviews?

As I was reviewing a restaurant on Yelp, I got to thinking about factors that affect purchasing decisions.  Of course the quality of the goods, food, or service is a primary factor, but I would guess for many folks, a secondary factor is: Do the values of the retailer or producer align with mine?  For example, I've heard people frequenting Molly Moon's Ice Cream in Seattle because it's owner is a former progressive political organizer.  Or when I visited the Lake Chelan (WA) Starbucks, they had a board highlighting their community involvement.  Or Seattle Coffee Works and their Obama Blend.  And of couse, we've all seen the "Made in USA" labels. 
 
It seems like businesses have realized that their politics, community involvmenet, and/or supply chain affects consumer purchasing decisions.
 
If these are factors in consumer purchasing decisions, should they also be included in online reviews?
9/5/2009

Windows Live Embraces the Activity Streams Open Standard

On Thursday, I posted on the Windows Live team blog about Activity Streams as an enabling technology for users to share activities between services like Facebook and Windows Live.  My post got picked-up by the Port 25 blog which is "Communication from the Open Source community at Microsoft":

Windows Live Embraces the Activity Streams Open Standard
by Peter Galli on September 04, 2009 11:52AM

More good news with regard to Microsoft's embrace of open standards, this time out of the Windows Live group.

The Windows Live team is using a developing open standard called Activity Streams - an extension to the Atom feed format - which kicks in when users add Web Activity for Facebook and bring their status, photos, shared links, and more from Facebook into Windows Live to share in Messenger, Hotmail, and on their Windows Live Profile

As Windows Live Program Manager Rob Dolin notes in a post on the team blog, what you may not know is that when you add the Facebook Web activity, the data is passed from Facebook to Windows Live using the developing Activity Streams open standard.

"With hundreds of thousands of users since release a few months ago, the Windows Live web activity for Facebook might be the largest implementation of Activity Streams today ... Just as many of our other web activities leverage community standards like RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0, and MediaRSS, I'm hopeful that Activity Streams will be a powerful enabling technology so users can bring their activities like status updates, posted photos, or shared links, from one service to another. We look forward to working with other partners to enable our mutual users to share their activities between services," Dolin says.

Choosing a text search engine for the pictures

At a friend's birthday party a few days ago, a (non-engineer) was telling me why he chose Bing over Google for web search: The pictures.
 
He really liked the pictures that show-up every day when you go to http://www.bing.com/.  On one hand, I can totally appreciate this as they're really a nice, warm touch and often lead me to some ad-hoc exploration of the photo.  On the other hand, I would ideally think that people should choose a search engine based on the quality and relevance of the links. 
 
Well, I've been using Bing back since it was called Bing and I've been happy that what I'm looking for is nearly always either the first hit or the first five hits; and the pictures are a nice touch.  I've even set bing as my default search engine in Firefox.  (I use multiple browsers regularly, but that's another story.)
 
Anyways, kudos to the Bing team on both great pictures and great search results--
--Rob

Dear comment spammer: Please leave a comment ;)

I just set-up Windows Live Alerts for comments on my blog.  I'm now alerted whenever there's a new comment on a recent blog entry.  (You can too by selecting "Tools" | "Sign-up for alerts") on the top right of your Windows Live Space or any space.) 
 
Now, I'll get nearly instant notices when there are new comments, and if they're spam, with a few clicks starting with the "Report Abuse" link at lower right, I can report the spammer. 
 
So please comment spammers, please leave a comment.  ;)
 
And fellow users, please help to report spam comments using the "Report Abuse" link at the bottom right of the page. 
 
Thanks--
--Rob
7/30/2009

Firefox: Well, this is embarrassing.

I got the below error when Firefox could not restore a previous browsing session that I had.  I appreciate the friendly and apologetic tone of the message:

image

7/26/2009

Local (Seattle) Political and Advocacy Groups on Twitter

I've noticed an increasing number of local political and advocacy groups are starting to get active on Twitter. 

I've blogged in the past about King County Executive, Seattle Mayor, and Seattle City Council candidates that were active, and it's also great to see grassroots activist organizations reaching-out to their members / fans / constituents:
There are probably some more great organizations that I'm missing; and hopefully organizations that are not currently online with Twitter will soon come online.  As you notice this happening, please leave a comment.  Thanks--
--Rob ( @RobDolin Smile )


Updated: 2009-07-26: Added CascadeLand, CivicCal, SeaTransitBlog (Thanks @BenSchie), WAIDF (Thanks @Hihankara), and WCVoters

 

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