Rob Dolin's space

Technology



Beginning asp.net by Chris Hart

The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper

HTML 4 for the world wide web by Elizabeth Castro

Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen

Foundations of Ajax by Ryan Asleson

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

Syndicating Web Sites with RSS Feeds For Dummies ® by Ellen Finkelstein

Writing Secure Code by Michael Howard

Look Both Ways: Help Protect Your Family on the Internet by Linda Criddle

Strategy



Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim

Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

The Outfit by Gus Russo

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

Boss by Mike Royko

Trading Up by Michael J. Silverstein

As many folks know, I'm about to complete a trip with H to Brazil. I've really enjoyed meeting many of H's family and friends from her time studying in Brazil and I~m looking forward to keeping in touch. Give the distance (even with my parents in Chicago or family spread across the USA), it's not always easy to kep in touch with extended family, distance friends, former classmates, colleagues, etc; but when you share your experiences on Windows Live (USA) (Worldwide), there are a number of ways your family and friends can keep-up:

Email

The Windows Live Alerts functionality built-in to all public Spaces makes it easy to get an email every time a new blog entry, photo album, or list is posted on a space. When visiting a space, just select "Tools" ("Ferramentas" in Portuguese) from the top right and then "Sign-up for alerts" ("Inscrever-se para alertas" in Portuguese)

RSS

Public Spaces also have RSS feeds. If a space is http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/, then the RSS feed will be http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/feed.rss. There are even individual feeds for just blog entries, just photos, just lists, and just blog entries from a particular category. More on this in a future blog entry.

IM "Toast"

The WL Alerts functionality also lets you subscribe via IM. If you're on IM frequently, you'll get a "toast" popping-up in your lower right to let you know that the person you're getting Alerts from just added new content.

Text Message

WL Alerts also let's you subscribe via text message so you get a brief text letting you know that there's new content.

What's New

Finally, my personal favorite way to stay in touch, is via the "What's New" functionality. You can see newly posted blog entries, photos, lists, (shared) SkyDrive flies, and profile updates from your Spaces friends and Messenger contacts.

Thanks for reading; especially if you're someone from the trip, I hope you'll Sign-up for alerts or subscribe to my RSS. Obrigado--

--Rob

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8/8/2008

Video: RSS in Plain English

I've recently become a fan of CommonCraft, a two-person video production team from Seattle that makes very simple videos that explain social media. Since I think RSS technology has the power to change electronic communication from a push to a pull system, I'm especially fond of their RSS in plain English video: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english.

8/2/2008

Windows Live for Windows Mobile

In addition to the web-based mobile version of Windows Live (ex: http://robdolin.mobile.spaces.live.com/), I'm trying-out a new program on my (Windows Mobile) Treo 700w: Windows Live for Windows Mobile. I'm probably going to get a bunch of use of it on the bus commute this coming week, but if there are folks currently using it (or interested in trying), I'd be all ears for some tips.

If you want to try-out Windows Live for Windows Mobile, you can download the USA version from: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mobile/wl/download-en-us.mspx and you can find a bunch of other markets/languages at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mobile/wl/languages-en-us.mspx

Enjoy--
--Rob

Windows Live Tags: clubhouse, How-to, Mobile, Hotmail, Spaces, Windows Mobile, MoSoSo

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7/23/2008

Just posted: Additional ways to clean-up comment spam

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

7/20/2008

Windows Live Messenger for Blackberry?

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.

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7/19/2008

Hard drive getting full? Check outlook.ost

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. :)

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7/12/2008

What do Robert Scoble and I have in common?

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

7/9/2008

Gigapixel Image of Obama made-up of Supporters

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.

6/30/2008

Lack of career path at Google?

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.

6/23/2008

RIP George Carlin; thanks for "Seven Dirty Words"

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.