Rob Dolin's space

Just posted: Additional ways to clean-up comment spam

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:41:10 GMT

Thanks to one of my commentors for pointing-out that you can delete recent comments using the mobile interface.

Details are in: Faster ways to clean-up Comment Spam on Windows Live Spaces

Cheers--

--Rob

Windows Live Messenger for Blackberry?

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:21:49 GMT

I was IM'ing last night with the head of Live Sino (LiveSide China) and PicturePan2 mentioned that was using WL Messenger on Blackberry. Even though I'm a Windows Mobile user, I was intrigued as I have a bunch of friends (mostly from outside the tech industry) who use Blackberries and it would be great to IM with them.

Conveniently, LiveSino just posted screenshots of the Blackberry experience and I've included a few below. Check out the full post for the rest. Cheers--
--Rob

P.S. If you've used functionality like this in the USA, please let me know what you think.

P.P.S. If you're on the team that makes this application, leave a comment (or send a message) and I can try to get you the list of codes for the I'm making a difference campaign for *komen, *red+u, etc.

Hard drive getting full? Check outlook.ost

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:22:15 GMT

I've been wondering why my 40 GB hard drive on my laptop was nearly full when I only have ~27 GB of system files, pictures, and documents.

Then Outlook hit an issue that helped me to figure out the problem. One of my Outlook files got corrupted and I got this message:

This led me to open the C:\Users\robdolin\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ folder and find that I had an outlook.ost file that was nearly 10 GB. I guest that's the 27 GB --> 37 GB difference :)

I ended-up deleting this file and in the process of re-sync'ing my email with the Exchange server, I deleted a few GB of old email.

The laptop feels like it's running a bit faster, I've got more free room on the hard drive, and the Outlook file corruption is resolved. I guess I'm sort of glad the file got corrupted. :)

What do Robert Scoble and I have in common?

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:09:37 GMT

We both Like Dare's blog entry that "Giving Sh*t Away is not a Business Strategy."

Gigapixel Image of Obama made-up of Supporters

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:49:54 GMT

Donovan West put together a really cool Gigapixel (1000 Megapixels) image of Barack Obama that's made-up of the faces of Obama's supporters. They talk abou this being a people-powered campaign and this is a cool representation of that idea. Check it out at: http://www.deepzoomobama.com/. If you're interested in the technology behind this (or doing it for your favorite candidate, check-out West, Donovan West.

Lack of career path at Google?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:49:11 GMT

My colleague Dare Obasanjo has an interesting post on The GOOG -> MSFT Exodus that I think uncovers some interesting issues with Google's system of tons of individual contributor developers and extremely flat organization hierarchies.

I'm not the biggest fan of a ton of career levels (it's nine promotions from starting individual contributor (59) to partner (68) at Microsoft); but having levels and offering opportunities for advancement is nice when you're actually planning to stay at a company for more than a few years.

RIP George Carlin; thanks for "Seven Dirty Words"

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:09:52 GMT

Earlier this evening, I got a twitter from one of the founding members of the Spaces team that George Carlin just died. I was surprised that the MSNBC article did not link to an actual transcript of the routine and thanks to Live Search and Justin R. Erenkrantz: http://www.erenkrantz.com/Humor/SevenDirtyWords.shtml.

Carlin, like Lenny Bruce, pushed the boundaries of comedy and free speech. To this twentysomething, in addition to hearing and reading the "seven dirty words," my two key memories of Carlin are as Rufus in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and as the Cardinal (right) in Dogma.

Organizing on Facebook 101

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:01:05 GMT

You may have heard that Facebook surpassed MySpace as the largest Social Network in the world. If your political organization or non-profit does not have an outpost on Facebook, now is a great time to get started.

Two of the biggest reasons to use Facebook (or other Social Networks) to promote your organization are:

Virality features - features like the "news feed" and "status updates" provide mechanisms for passive sharing so when user A joins your group, (some of) the friends of user A get a news item
Contacts built-in - many users already have hundreds of contacts in the social network so it's easy for them to invite those contacts to your group or event (rather than having to look-up emails or phone numbers for those contacts.)

So what should you do? It depends on the scope of your organization or event:

A) One-time Event - If you're just doing a one-time event:
    1. Create the Event
    2. Update your Status with a link to the Event
    3. Invite Friends to the Event (see right)
    4. (Wait a few days then) Ask attendees to Invite their Friends

Note: Be sure to make your Event Global so anyone can participate.

B) Local Group (<1,000)- If you're building a local group that you expect to be less than 1,000 folks, you can use a "Group" in Facebook. Similar to above:
    1. Create the Group
    2. Update your Status with a link to the Group
    3. Invite Friends to the Group
    4. (Wait a few days then) Ask members to Invite their Friends

If your group is likely going to have many events that you would want to invite people to, these two suggestions may be useful:
a) Create a Friends List for your friends potentially interested in the Group for easy invites
b) Create Events for the Group as opposed to stand-alone Events

C) Large Group - If you expect a massive group (ex: targetted Congressional race), you will likely want to use a Page instead of a Group. Pages cannot message their members using the standard private messages, but they can push "Updates" that their members see. Most of the same suggestions as B) apply to Pages.

I hope folks found this helpful. Please leave a comment if you have other suggestions. Thanks much--
--Rob

P.S. Kevin Bondelli has a great related article on how to find potential members for your Facebook Group.

Windows Live Spaces - Frequently Asked Questions

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:35:24 GMT

Kudos to my colleague Chris who compiled this lengthy FAQ: Windows Live Spaces - Frequently Asked Questions

Get paid for product placement in your YouTube videos

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:27:08 GMT

It looks like the first 1,000 people who post a YouTube video with Sprint's new Instinct phone will get $20 for "product placement" in their movie. IMHO, this seems like a great long tail play by Sprint; and for $20,000 it's probably a drop in the bucket for both the movie and the phone's marketing budget. I'd be interested to see if the marketers find this promotion to have a strong return on investment.

Faster ways to clean-up Comment Spam on Windows Live Spaces

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:13:28 GMT

Windows Live Tags:

One thing that really bugs me is comment spam. I hate when some random spammer or black SEO artist attempts to drive traffic to their site by leaving jibberish on my blog. One way that I try to fight this is the bulk delete functionality in Windows Live Spaces:

0. Sign-in :)

1. Go to your blog (ex: http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/blog)

2. Click "Summary"

3. Click the "Comments:" or "Trackbacks:" links to list comments or trackbacks for a given blog entry

4. Check the comments or trackbacks that you want to delete

I've heard a rumor ;) that folks on the team are brainstorming additional comment improvements too; so if you have suggestions, please leave a comment. Thanks--

--Rob

Updated 2008-07-24

Thanks to http://myrpsh.spaces.live.com for also pointing-out that you can clean-up recent comments:

0. Sign-in :)
1. Go to your mobile space (ex: http://robdolin.mobile.spaces.live.com/)
2. You can see the "Delete comment " link below every comment
3. Click "Delete comment" for comments you want to delete

Windows Live Tags: clubhouse, Spaces, how-to

Does the Associated Press (AP) not understand Page Rank?

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:13:15 GMT

BetaNews reported that the Associated Press is going to start attempting to charge bloggers for excerpting their articles. IMHO, this move exposes either massive ignorance about both Search engines (particularly page rank algorithms) or a business model inconsistent with their website (www.ap.org.)

Page Rank and similar algorithms are used by search engines to determine relevance of a particular web page by looking at the inbound hyperlinks to that page. Thus, if a web page representing a news story gets a bunch of inbound links (like from bloggers) then the story will rank higher in search engines like Google as well as in news and blog search engines like Technorati.

If the AP wants their content to be the content that is as the top of the list when a major story breaks, the should let bloggers excerpt quotes (and link to it.)

Alternatively, maybe the AP sees itself as a news sharing network for traditional media outlets. If so, that's totally cool; but then they should not be posting content on their websites as it under-cuts their news agency customers.

If the AP is a news source catering to newspapers, TV networks, and other mainstream media, then they should not post their content on their own site so that the primary content source (and link destination) is the websites of their customers.

I hope someone at the Associated Press wakes-up and smells the web 2.0 before they alienate either their likely most avid readers (bloggers) or their customers in the media industry.

Social Network Wars Video

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:32:54 GMT

Thanks to one of my co-workers for sharing this video. I enjoy the personifications of the Social Networking services.

Can Vote Pledges go Viral?

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:59:56 GMT

You've of course seen viral video like the diet Coke and mentos or Vote Different. Yesterday afternoon, I participated in a both real-world and online scavenger hunt to get people to make a vote pledge for the 2008 election.

There was a face-to-face component of teams with clipboards walking around downtown Nashville, but there was also an online component where people were Emailing, TXT'ing, Facebook Messaging, and Twittering their friends to complete an online version of the vote pledge form. I was really impressed that the organizing group had implemented the complimentary online component to the offline; but it makes sense that both virtual and real-world components are important for organizing young people (whether it's politics and activism or advertising and consumerism.)

The question that this raised in my mind was what would be necessary to push something like this to go viral. More specifically, what additional tweaks would be needed on the vote pledge system to get the cycle to self-perpetuate. I've got a few thoughts, but I'd love to hear what other folks think too. Please leave a comment with your ideas or suggestions.

Thanks--
--Rob

Technorati Tags: Politics,YDA,YDANashville,Social Networking

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Weekend Projects: Twitter for Politics and SiteMap improvements on TestMash

Sun, 25 May 2008 03:07:48 GMT

As a way to break the week and recharge, I try not to do any work for my day job on Saturdays; but I really like technology so I find myself playing around with "weekend projects." Two things I've been messing-with today:

Twitter for Politics

My friend Kevin has been talking a bunch about twitter for youth organizing. I'm curious if Twitter (and opt-in SMS blast services in general) will be useful for political organizing. I've created a Twitter account for the 43rd District Democrats in urban Seattle: http://twitter.com/43rdDems and cross-posted about it to the 43rd LD Dems (Windows Live powered) blog and Facebook group. If you're curious to see how this is working-out,
send a TXT message of "follow 43rdDems" to 40404.

SiteMap improvements on TestMash.com

Given the number of people who use keyword search as one of their primary web navigation mechanisms, I've been interested in the area of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or how to optimize content for crawl by search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live Search, etc. as well as how to increase page rank and improve display of content on search results.

Over the past few days, I've re-written the SiteMap (and SiteMapIndex) generation code on my experimental site: http://www.TestMash.com/ with a goal of improving coverage of some new view "item" pages that I've created like:

I've put some special MetaKeywords on these pages and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact. Cheers--
--Rob

Live Search MetaKeywords and TestMash.com

Fri, 09 May 2008 23:26:10 GMT

Back in October 2006, I wrote a blog entry about how the MetaKeywords functionality from Live Search can be used to filter a people search query on Windows Live. IMHO, support for these MetaKeywords is one of the coolest features of Live Search and I'm not aware of anything like it from Google, Yahoo!, Baidu, etc.

I've been playing around with this idea on a small (personal) test site: http://www.testmash.com/ to build search results pages that pull together content from Windows Live. For example:

So as you probably noticed, the site is a pretty rough prototype, but if you think the idea is cool (or is lame), please leave a comment. Thanks--
--Rob

For students: FREE Visual Studio, Expression Studio, and win2k3 Server

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:13:41 GMT

Back in 2000, I was a student rep. for Microsoft at the University of Illinois and they wanted to make sure students had access to the latest dev tools so they shipped me something like ten cartons of Visual Studio to distribute to folks in computer science and computer engineering.

At the time, it was probably a reasonably efficient system, but it was a bit awkward. Not only was having thousands of dollars of software stashed on the loft in my room in the fraternity house a bit awkward, but moving these over to the CS building for distribution at events like the WinDevils (Windows Developer ACM SIG) meeting was a bit of a logistical pain.

It's nearly eight years later and things have indeed improved; and not just the software; but the distribution mechanisms. The folks at Channel 8 from MSDN are offering FREE DOWNLOADS of:

Visual Studio 2008
Expression Studio
Windows Server 2003
XNA Game Studio

All of this is at: https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

To whoever the folks are running the student outreach programs, kudos on a much improved software distribution system. Cheers--
--Rob

Mobile-friendly listing of Microsoft Prime Card Restaurants

Sat, 03 May 2008 16:50:54 GMT

I've personally always wanted to be able to browse the listing of prime card restaurants on my phone but the prime card site does not seem to be mobile-friendly; so I've written my own at http://wuxx.com/prime.

The page is of course really simple so it loads fast on a mobile browser and in addition to seeing all of the restaurants by name (so you can check if the restaurant you're at takes teh Prime Card), you can also browse by cuisine or by neighborhood.

For Neighborhoods, I've build support for a few of the downtown Seattle neighborhoods and the neighborhoods near Microsoft main campus. The site includes restaurants from a few other neighborhoods but I haven't explicitly added filters for these. If you'd like a filter added for your neighborhood, please comment.

For Cuisine, I've added restaurants for American, Asian, French, Indian, Italian, Japanese, and Mediterranean. If there's interest, I'll add Mexican, Steak and Seafood, Thai, Other, and possibly fast food.

Please check-out the site at http://wuxx.com/prime and leave a comment here with your feedback. Thanks--
--Rob

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Technorati tags: Food, Restaurants, Dining out, Seattle, Redmond, Microsoft, Prime Card

Eight Quick Thoughts on Email Politeness

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:05:51 GMT

In the course of cleaning my personal email box this weekend, I realized there are are desparities in email customs people follow. I've tried to compile some of what I see as best practicies below. If you have other suggestions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks--

--Rob

1. TO and CC have meaning

Please take a few seconds to consider which recipients of an email might need to actually reply to the email and for which folks this is just FYI and they are carbon-copied. If someone is in the TO line, there should be an action for them like replying, adding an event to thier calendar, etc.

2. Reply on the same thread

Many folks (particularly users of Outlook or Gmail) have the option for their email to group by subject. Be courteous to these people and reply to the original thread.

3. Always include the thread in your reply

I've noticed some people, especially AOL users, don't include the previous email. For gosh sakes, don't just send me an email with "yes", include what you're replying yes to.

4. Use BCC (or email merge) to send announcements to a large list of individuals

If you're sending an announcement to a large group, please put folks on the BCC. Disclose your recipients' email addresses and you'll soon have fewer recipients.

5. Use BCC to trim the individual recipients

If there are folks who don't need to be on the thread, especially if they are traveling without access to email, when you reply, move them to BCC. You should also let the thread know you have done so intentionally so folks don't re-add them. For example, I'll often use a first line of (Mike --> BCC) when I'll cover an email thread and my manager is traveling.

6. Don't use BCC to trim a listserv recipient

Many folks have email processing rules for mail to listserv's. Respect these and don't BCC the listserv email address. Instead, let the thread know that you are working with the appropriate folks off-thread and you will circle-back to the thread with a resolution.

7. Don't attempt consensus via Reply-All

If there is something controversial or requiring a bunch of input from a group, instead of attempting to reach consensus via everyone replying to the thread, one person should send a mail announcing the question, recieve and coallate the responses, and then circle-back to all participants with the results of the thread / discussion. This does require a bit more work on the part of the coallater, but it makes it easier for all of the participants so they only need to reply with their vote / perspective / availability instead of also attempting to parse all of the responses.

8. Use your real name

Unless you're intentionally sending email under a pseudonym, please set-up your email program to use your real first and last name. While I might know who mickymse or lechayim are, it's not easy for email recipients to keep all of their contacts' nicknames straight.

Talking about YouTube - BARACKY: THE MOVIE

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:43:15 GMT

I'm really impressed by whoever put together this video merging Rocky with Campaign 2008:

YouTube - BARACKY: THE MOVIE

Photo Album: Beau vs. the Octopus

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:28:58 GMT

Beau vs. the Octopus

1 OK lets try Octopus

2 See - Im ready

3 I can do it

4 Closing eyes

5 In it goes

6 Its kinda chewey

7 Can I spit this out

8 This was a bad idea

9 I have have to swallow; Are you serious

Photo Album: Blog Images

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:44:01 GMT

Blog Images

Photo Album: What's New

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 15:20:24 GMT

What's New

wn0

wn1

wn2

wn3

Photo Album: Searching Spaces

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 23:46:29 GMT

Searching Spaces

Use the search box at the top of the page (where I have entered "cheese" to invoke a search of Spaces, People, and Blogs

To do an Interests Search, replace the word "cheese" with an interest you want to search for or click any of the links in the tag cloud

Advanced People Search is available on the homepage and many of the other "front door" pages

Music List: Chillin'

Thu, 22 May 2008 10:14:31 GMT

Chillin'

Music List: Country

Thu, 08 May 2008 01:42:30 GMT

Country

Kenny Chesney: Keg in the Closet
When the Sun Goes Down

Book List: Strategy

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:54:24 GMT

Strategy

Blog list: Spaces PM's

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:42:27 GMT

Spaces PM's

Custom List: Top Posts

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:39:06 GMT

Custom List: Top Spaces Posts

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:52:45 GMT

Movie List: Favorite Movies

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:21:28 GMT

Favorite Movies

The Departed
Johnny Dangerously
Airplane!
Primary Colors
Transformers
Yeah there are plot holes, but this was awesome on the big screen. I hope my parents haven't thrown-away Optimus Prime. :)
Eight Men Out
National Lampoon's Animal House

Book List: Technology

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:17:57 GMT

Technology

Chris Hart: Beginning asp.net
How I learned ASP.net
Jakob Nielsen: Designing Web Usability
Ryan Asleson: Foundations of Ajax
Elizabeth Castro: HTML 4 for the world wide web
My favorite guide for learning HTML and my personal reference
Linda Criddle: Look Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet
My co-worker Linda wrote this book on online safety. This is an excellent, sucinct guide that I highly recommend.
Ellen Finkelstein: Syndicating Web Sites with RSS Feeds For Dummies ®
A great introduction to the technical details of RSS (and Podcasts.)
Alan Cooper: The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Chris Anderson: The Long Tail
Michael Howard: Writing Secure Code
Before you ship broadly read chapters one and two.

Book List: Fiction

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:00:27 GMT

Fiction

Keith Thomson: Gus Openshaw's Whale Killing Journal
Keith Thomson: Pirates of Pensacola
Test empty book
test description

Custom List: Welcome

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 15:44:40 GMT

Welcome

Disclaimer
The statements I offer represent my own personal views. I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of any organization with which I am affiliated.
Guestbook
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Creative Commons
All original content is shared for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and should be attributed with a link to http://blog.robdolin.com

Book List: Sports

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 20:06:29 GMT

Sports

Red Auerbach: Let me tell you a story
Fabulous stories from legendary Basketball coach, Red Auerbach
Jane Leavy: Sandy Koufax
A detailed portrait of Sandy Koufax interspersed with scenes from his perfect game against the Chicago Cubs :(

Blog list: Blog list

Fri, 05 May 2006 05:58:34 GMT