RobiNZ CAD Blog

My problems with CTRL+CLICK selection in scripted web applications cured!

Do you run NVIDIA graphics drivers and have a problem CTRL selecting multiple items in scripted web applications?

This is used for multiple categories in the TypePad Compose Category pop-up and had me stumped. I couldn’t select them and trying just triggered a new browser window. Single click selection or SHIFT+Selection of a range worked as expected.

I mucked around for ages with scripting settings in the Browser & ZoneAlarm with no joy. Then I found this suggestion from Dan on the IE Discussion Group and it worked. I’ve made a graphic version for those not familiar with msconfig. Thanks Dan!

CTRL CLICK Problem in IE7 microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general
Oh, I did find one reference to this occurring even with all add-ons disabled in respect of using multiple monitors with an nVidia graphics card, it seems that the nVidia drivers hook the Ctrl+left click handling to deal with allowing windows to be opened on a different monitor than the one IE is on. You can disable this by removing the following line in the system startup using msconfig.exe

rundll32.exe nview.dll,nViewLoadHook

However, this will disable all nVidia key shortcuts.
Dan

Tags: TypePad

A known issues blog for TypePad

OK, this post for me and other readers with TypePad blogs. There is a blog (and feed) with “TypePad Known Issues”(and resolutions) to refer to before you report unknown issues!.

Known Issues for TypePad - http://everything.typepad.com/knownissues/
Updates from the TypePad team about bugs and open issues that affect a large number of TypePad accounts

Six Apart are/have been doing some major infrastructure work on TypePad which must be fun when you have a large user base, always live*. It hasn’t been without problems but, hopefully, will result in a better TypePad. My tip for any blog platform is to use an off-line post editor as it insulates you from many performance hiccups. Should anything go wrong while posting you have a local copy to repost with just a click.

All this talk of known and unknown reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld’s:

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

— Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing  – via Slate, where there are more!

* Our IT team have been virtualising servers. Today they helped change the license server for CAD and a few related applications so transitioning “live” systems has been on my mind too!

Did you notice, I didn't!

Since it likely happened while I was at work I had no hint of any TypePad problems today. I found an email, as per the post below, I in my Inbox tonight. If you experienced any hiccups today, sorry!

Everything TypePad: Update from TypePad's CEO
This morning you may have experienced some downtime on TypePad. We know you rely on us to provide superior service and performance, and this morning we let you down. …

Weblog design changes - Work in progress

If you’re reading the feed you won’t have noticed but visitors to the weblog page will see some layout changes. I’ve changed the side-bars to a right hand layout and “de-cluttered” them:

• The media “I’m reading, watching, listening” side-bar lists are now only on my Personal Blog.
• The TypePad Photo Album links are gone:
  • I’ve uploaded all the existing images, and over 4000 others, to Flickr Collections & Sets which can be accessed via the Flickr “badge” in the "My Blogs" section of the R/H side-bar.
  • My future photo content will be on Flickr but if you want to see the old albums the links will remain on my Personal Blog.

Hopefully this should make things look a little cleaner and load a little faster. I welcome comment on these changes, better or not?, and any suggestions for more!

David's Design ReForm

David Fano’s Design ReForm is a blog with tutorials and explorations in parametric modelling using applications like 3ds Max, Revit, Maya, and Rhino. I hadn’t found it, until he emailed me, so I’m really glad he did.

Go have a look, I’ve subscribed!

Web: http://designreform.net/       Feed: http://designreform.net/feed/

Novedge Pulse, a CAD blog'gregator

I suspect, hope, I’m not the only blogger who uses a “vanity search” to see who’s linking/mentioning his content*. When I got back from holiday the feed showed a bunch of links coming from a new site. Pulse is Franco Folini’s, of Novedge, aggregation site which gathers a bunch of blog content (extracts only with links to the full post) into one “CAD, AEC & DCC Super site & RSS Feed”.

In addition to providing an overview of a wide range of content it also allows readers to vote on the worth, or otherwise, of content by registering a “Beat” (keeping the Pulse going I guess) or a “Burn”. Click on the “Bloggers” button and you’ll see a gallery with thumbnail portraits of all the contributing bloggers. Thankfully there’s no  vote on that page

Novedge Pulse™ Today - www.novedge.com/Pulse
The Pulse of the Graphics & Design Community

* If you're considering blog names having a "non-word" made up name, RobiNZ, makes this a lot easier!

Tags: Novedge

Blog Till You Drop?

A recent article the New York Times suggests blogging is a hazardous game. They cite cases of full-time Bloggers who have died and point the finger at the strain they’ve been under to maintain their new media presence. It is interesting that technology blogging, with it’s pressure to be first, seems to be the focus of the article.

In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home…

While any death is tragic, I can’t imagine blogging being more stressful than many other occupations and think it’s just sensationalism to it single out.

Consuming blogs, information overload?

An amateur like me doesn’t have the pressure to post for income there is one blog related hazard I’ve struggled to avoid. I read lots of blogs and there is a tendency to consume ever increasing amounts of information. A post leads to a new blog, grab the feed, then another, grab that feed, and one day you find yourself looking at a reader tracking nearly a thousand RSS feeds!

I’ve found three ways to deal with that problem;

1. Reading them all is one, but a hardly sustainable, approach.
2. Set a quota at the number of feeds you can handle and cull feeds. If you want to add one you must delete one but that limited the scope too much. The downside is you miss a lot of brilliant information.
3. If nothing is happening or you need to catch up just “mark all as read”!

I tend to combine all these using RSS Bandit’s “Review Flag” and my  own “Favourites”;

• I collect “favourite feeds” which are my prime sources in a category (1) such as Home, IT, News, CAD etc
• If I have time I’ll scan all the feed headlines (2) to find content I want to read. If the item is short I’ll read it in the “Newspaper view” (3), or maybe open a browser tab (4). For longer items I click “Flag” (5) to mark them “For Review”. It means all those feeds can be reviewed in less than half an hour. How much time I spend actually reading depends on what I find!
• If I’m short of time, or just want to catch up, I resort to my “Favourites”. By reading them the I can review about 50 feeds which cover topics as as diverse as CAD, Auto, Sport, Politics, Science etc. If one of those highlights something of interest I might still delve into the 10, 20, 30 , 100+ feeds relating to that topic. Otherwise I may just mark all the items “as read”.

I regard the feeds as a way to gather info rather than something which must be religiously read in full. You don’t feel obliged to read all the newspapers or watch all the TV News channels! However, they do provide rapid access to sources – either professional or personal – I regard as important to follow. 

Creating a blog – A choice, not a chore!

I’m often asked how much time I spend writing this blog and, to be honest, I’m not really sure. While it’s probably along the lines of 5–10 hours a week I don’t regard it as a chore and certainly don’t schedule time for it. My natural night owl tendencies mean posts are usually written late in the evening which is probably apparent from the writing & proof reading! It’s time I’d probably waste on TV so doesn’t impact on my “real life” whatever that is! Besides, it’s something I enjoy doing and if it ever becomes “work” it’s time to stop!

While items appear reasonably frequently that’s a bit of an illusion. I tend to write in bursts so a few hours writing may generate several weeks of posts. I then use TypePad’s forward posting feature to schedule these to appear at a reasonable rate. If “blog worthy” breaking news crops up I just bump those forward posts even further into the future. The funny side of this is I have been asked about a post, which just appeared on the blog, but was actually written so long ago I’ve almost forgotten about it!

There is more to life than blogging and I’m going off-line for a few, hopefully completely computer free, weeks holiday soon. Still, there will plenty to blog about when I return…

4th Anniversary!

It’s blog’iversary time again. Four years since that first tentative post. To everyone, everywhere, thanks for visiting and subscribing!

Why I like a hosted blog

Cost of hosting, minimal 

Having a host to worry about this sort of thing, priceless.

Doc Searls Weblog · Attention WordPressers
“Take it from somebody who lost at least one whole blog entirely from the consequences not upgrading WordPress: Upgrading your installation or patch is essential”

“What’s happening is: spammers are taking over blogs, posting link farm links on them, obscuring their human visibility with CSS tricks but the links are still visible to crawlers… 
  All wordpress users that haven’t patched or upgraded to v2.3.3 are vulnerable.”

Tags: TypePad

Is this a resume?

Seth Godin asks the question:

Why bother having a resume? ~ Seth's Blog
This is controversial, but here goes: I think if you're remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn't have a resume at all…

Although not “remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular” I’ve often thought you could reduce mine to just one line:

• Browse http://rcd.typepad.com/ and http://www.linkedin.com/in/robinz

Blog User Experience question, how do you expect a link to behave?

If you visit the site, rather than the feed, you many have noticed I’ve been tweaking the design a little. This is the first stage of a whole site make-over but it’s going take a while. I spent about 45 minutes just mucking around with link colours! * Sounds like a trivial thing, but what UX should a link provide?

• Should a link you haven’t visited be light or dark?
• When you’ve visited should it change state and/or colour.
• Should it be underlined? That’s the old standard but does it matter these days?

Looking around I found all sorts of combinations. I thought I had it sorted until I looked at the colours on an LCD screen, vs monitor, and started again. Currently all the links are Bold & Blue, when visited they go Grey, all turn Red when you hover and are not (changed that last night) underlined. Is this readable, does it make sense?

The other debate is “Open in new tab/window” vs the same tab. I have generally have links opening in the same window as it gives the user the option to Right Click > New if they choose. Is this what you’d expect/prefer?

Pity the poor souls who have application UX’s to finesse. I’m glad I didn’t have to make a Ribbon

* RobiNZ Blogging Tip: Have a little test blog for this sort of thing. I have one with enough content to get a feel for layout/UI changes but doesn’t require a 1200+ page re-publish every time you change something!

Journalists and Bloggers, what's that all about?

Recently, I was surprised to be asked if I was attending the Autodesk World Press Day. I responded: “No, I’m not Press, I’m just a blogger!”.

As the press and “deskers converge on San Francisco it appears Roopinder Tara has been pondering the whole question of Journalists and Bloggers;

CAD Insider: Journalists and Bloggers - Old School Meets New School
Major CAD companies have indeed recognized blogging as valuable. Has their treatment of bloggers given bloggers cred? Does the old school resent the intrusion? Do bloggers play by the rules -- or do they even have rules? I'll try to examine some of these issues in an ongoing series of posts. And as usual, I welcome you to chime in with your opinion…

It will be interesting to see how his series develops, and what emerges from Autodesk over the next few days.

Tech Tea!

Mike & Melanie (pictured at AU2007) have a new’ish blog which is theirs, as opposed to his (sort of) and hers. Something to do in their spare time? 

I found it after noticing Melanie's profile had changed on LinkedIn. Pop over, have a read, and subscribe like I just did.

Tech Tea - Mike and Melanie Perry

A technology-loving couple sharing about what is going on in the world of design and technology. If you like the Web, Engineering and Conservation, you've come to the right place. Have a nice cuppa tea and join us for some tech chat.

Indexed - Graphic Math Humour!

Indexed is math based humour and social comment drawn on an index card. A favourite blog which is about to become a book.

INDEXED - by Jessica Hagy - indexed.blogspot.com

This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.

A Bright New TypePad?

I like TypePad, used to create/host this blog, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Some great news arrived today in the form of a blog post from TypePad CEO Chris Alden. I’ve posted, OK moaned, about the lack of development at TypePad recently and in the past but it looks like that is finally about to change!

I had been considering a re-design but will probably wait and see what’s new from TypePad before I do.

Everything TypePad: A Bright NewTypePad in 2008
Dear TypePad members,
Since I became CEO of Six Apart back in September, we’ve been working aggressively on our strategy for the New Year and I wanted to share with you some of our plans for TypePad in 2008…

Yahoo!Xtra problems tonight?

I'm seeing a lot of this on any Yahoo!Xtra related site. More trouble at mill?

It's all about feeds, so here are 400 CAD related feeds

Take a deep breath, then read Shaan’s recent record length single sentence explanation of why you should use RSS feeds;

I still feel the same passion for the [his] blog and read about 300 feeds a day in my RSS feed reader which is something you could not do just browsing updated pages as the feed reader allows me to read the feeds a few times a day and scan for articles that interest me much like a newspaper as nobody really reads each article of the newspaper heck not many read newspapers today come to think of it.

It’s long but does explain the benefit of RSS versus normal web browsing. There’s a myriad of feed readers, both web based and local applications. Many web browsers and email clients will handle feeds but I prefer a separate local app. I use RSS Bandit (open source donor ware), as like it’s features, while Shaan has just switched from Google Reader (free on-line) to FeedDemon (also recently made free).

I’ve posted about how I use RSS Bandit before (see index). It’s currently allowing me to follow 1119 feeds, yes really that’s not a typo! Like Shaan I don’t read them all everyday but they allow me to monitor a massive volume of information which wouldn’t be possible any other way. While it may sound like information overload many only update infrequently.

The secret of RSS: You only get what’s new, meaning unread by you, and what you decide to follow.

As you collect feeds there’s is a tendency to try & read everything but it’s not necessary. For example I have about 20 Formula One feeds yet apart from race weekends only follow a couple closely. The others are there for review which only takes a few seconds except those weekends when the Formula One world bursts into life. I tend to have that approach with each topic and have a few “favourites” I read most days while still  monitoring many others. If I’m away I tend to catch up with the favourites then mark the rest ”as read”.

Whatever reader you choose, use feeds!

To help with that I have have exported the approx 400 CAD related feeds I follow into the attached zip file*. It’s in OPML format which can be imported into most feed readers with one note of caution. The feeds are structured including categories used in my own reader. I’m not sure how other readers handle the import so stress if you have an existing list back it up before importing this file.

File Attachment: RobiNZ CAD Feeds.zip (17 KB)

If you are unsure about this another approach is to open the .OPML file in a text editor and  just copy the feeds that interest you. If you look at each line:

<outline title="RobiNZ CAD Blog" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/RobinzBlog" type="rss" text="RobiNZ CAD Blog" htmlUrl="http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/" description="" />

Outline title is a Blog, or other feed source, the xmlURL is the feed URL, the htmlURL is the website's URL and “text” the description. Just add the feed or site URL’s of interest to your reader. Happy Feed Reading!

* If your CAD/BIM Bog isn’t listed let me know as it means I haven’t discovered it’s feed yet!

CAD related Blogging Highlights for 2007

I’ve posted my “Blogging Highlights” for the year on my other blog but a few are CAD related so excuse their repetition here:

RobiNZ Personal Blog: 2007 Blogging Highlights (Click for full post)

It’s time to do a Blog related review of the year so here goes…

Best Blog Event:

Well, it’s not really a blog event but Autodesk University probably brings together more bloggers than many dedicated events manage. I was fortunate to attend again this year and the real highlight is meeting fellow bloggers and readers. It was great catching up with old friends and meeting new ones  I won’t name names for fear of leaving someone out but to all I met at Autodesk University thanks for reading and saying hello. I’m constantly amazed people all around the world invest their time in reading this stuff

It’s for that reason Autodesk University is again, as in 2005 and 2006, the best Blog Event I attended this year.

Biggest Surprise?

A year later and I’m still called “the Paper Plane Guy” at Autodesk University!

Blog Related Concern:

I need to do more for CAD/BIM related posts on my “Cad Blog”. If you’ve got any ideas for things to cover email me or leave a comment!

Best New Blog Tool:

Last year it was Camtasia, this year it’s SnagIt. It’s not new but recent add-ins for Blog Platforms (like TypePad & Wordpress), Flickr and MindManager make it a tool I use for virtually every post, including this one!

Boring Blog Stats – Only here so I can look back at them

RobiNZ CAD Blog [2006 figures]

Posts: 1,157 [860] | Comments: 674 [390] | TrackBacks: 74 [67] | Pages: 3 [New in 2007]

Page Views: Total 405,974 [284,009] | Average Per Day 298.07 [220]

Subscribers (via Feedburner): Avg: 576 [312] Max: 707 [640]

Most visited post of 2007: DWG to [Google] Earth, do you read me? - Autodesk Labs AutoCAD Google Earth Extension (from 2006)

Most Popular Post from 2007: Align, the forgotten AutoCAD hero

Thanks for visiting during 2007, Happy New Year for 2008!

Click for post related Disclosure Statement

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays...

If you look at the time most of my posts are done, you’ll see why this brilliant xkcd toon made me laugh so much.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever, to all the readers who make this blog!

Six Apart dump LiveJournal

Well, there is a long press release but that’s how I read it. If it means more development for a rather neglected TypePad then it’s a good thing.

Six Apart - News and Events: Six Apart Announces New Home for LiveJournal
“While we’ll miss being LiveJournal’s home, this is a great milestone for LiveJournal and also lets us to focus on the core products invented at Six Apart: Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox,” said [Chris} Alden.

Ready to burst...

Brilliant!

Via eric-blue

Marc Orchant

UPDATE 10–12–2007: Sad news

Marc Orchant Updates and Information | StarrTrek
Update: 2:56PM Pacific Time December 9th, 2007:
It is with great sadness that I report that Marc Orchant, Husband to Sue, Father to Rebecca and Jason, and friend to so many, passed away just a short time ago. I was notified by Marc’s brother Craig…

I was shocked to read, via Betsy’s blog, that popular blogger Marc Orchant recently suffered a massive coronary. I haven’t met Marc in person but feel I knew him as followed his blogs, and exchanged a few emails, due to shared interests in MindManager, SnagIt/Camtasia and Tablet PC.

My thoughts are with Marc and his family at this difficult time. There’s a world of bloggers hoping for a speedy recovery and I appreciate the family and friends sharing progress reports on this page:

Marc Orchant Updates and Information - http://owstarr.com/marc-orchant-updates-and-information/

More bitten by the CAD blog bug...

Catching up, post AU, and I’ve found a few new blogs to follow:

David Harrington’s ( CADDHELP – http://caddhelp.blogspot.com/

Dwayne Ellis’ A 3D Life – http://a3dlife.blogspot.com/

Trisha found this one for me by meeting the author at AU. It’s not a new blog but is new to me:

Abbie’s Ab's AutodeskBuildingSystems – http://abbie-abs.blogspot.com/

I’ve also taken Mike Perry’s advice and added the BLAUGI Blog to my side-bar links. I thought it was there already, honest!

Humour or Horror: A Blast from the Past - Where were you in 1982?

Warning: The images below may require parental guidance for younger readers.

Scott Sheppard started this so direct all complaints to him. Inspired, if that’s right the word, by Lynn Allen’s 1982 AU photo he posted a image of himself in 1982 and challenged to Shaan Hurley, Melanie (Lynn 2.0) Perry and Myself to respond.

Why 1982?

AutoCAD is 25 years old and “Party like it’s 1982” was the theme of the recent Autodesk University 2007 conference.

Not only AutoCAD started in 1982!

Just before leaving for Autodesk University my employer, The Warehouse Limited, celebrated its 25th anniversary. While John Walker (& co) was creating AutoCAD in California on the opposite side of the Pacific, in New Zealand, Stephen Tindall opened the first “The Warehouse” store.

To commemorate this Support Office staff joined for a group photo outside our office (Store Development is the blue “stain” in the sea of Retail red uniforms). It’s funny that the software we use to design our stores is almost the same age as the company!

TWL Staff Photo Credit: http://www.kphoto.co.nz/

So where was RobiNZ in 1982?

I figured out I was 16 and still, just, at High School. This is the only photo I could find that is definitely from that year, scary eh! Although it looks like some sort of mug shot it was actually taken in my sister’s office (Don’t you love the 70’s fake wood partitions!). She worked for a camera retail company, in their head office, and it was to try a brand new high tech compact 35mm automatic camera. The Canon Snappy was also released in 1982 and I had a red one!

While searching for that I found this even earlier photo. It’s not really CAD related but shows me with Grandad's state of the art portable typewriter and, surely one of the first, LED digital calculator. This one is dated 1974…

Sorry about inflicting all this on you, it’s Scott’s fault!

Tags: au2007

RobiNZ @ Autodesk University 2007 - Meeting "The Mistress", or was it "The New Lynn Allen"

I’ve been attending Autodesk University since 2004 but somehow never managed to meet Melanie, “The Mistress of the Dorkness”, Perry. I met her husband Mike last year (he’s the English Gentleman in the photo right) but AU2007 was the first chance to meet Melanie. I’ve known her virtually for a long time via the Autodesk Discussion Groups, AUGI, My Feedback, email and her world famous CAD blog: Mistress of the Dorkness. Meeting fellow Bloggers and blog readers is a highlight of Autodesk University. No matter how often it happens to me there is genuine surprise, and pleasure, that anyone actually reads all this stuff! 

Last night, at the Subscription event, while Melanie & I were chatting one of her readers introduced himself. He was excited to meet her and said “I love your blog, you’re the next Lynn Allen”. Melanie was flattered and I was stunned when, with impeccable timing, the door near us opened and the current Lynn Allen walked in. I said “Melanie has something to tell you” and the story was told to an amused (real) Lynn Allen.

Mike has visited New Zealand before and I suspect Melanie is keen to see the land where they filmed “The Lord of the Rings” (which she loves). Maybe next time I see “The Mistress” it will be closer to home!

Mistress of the Dorkness
Melanie (Stone) Perry's [aka. Wanderer] CAD Blog! Well, this will mostly be dedicated to CAD/Technology (especially as it relates to Facilities Management [FM] and BIM), but, I'm sure other things will catch my fancy, and I'll share them here.

Why a hosted blog? TypePad Support Rules!

I had a layout problem with one of my blogs and must post about the excellent support response from TypePad.

They found a tag error in some of my posts, of my making, but the actual problem turned out to be an error coming from another service I use upsetting the TypePad template. It’s reassuring to have an expert to call for help, even better when the response is prompt, patient and helpful*. That’s one reason I’m happy to stick with a hosted service.

Thanks Jen, Laura, Kymberlie & the rest of the TypePad Support team.

* On unrelated matters I currently have been experiencing lousy response, as in none, to support tickets logged with Yahoo!Xtra (NZ), Flickr and Google Earth Pro…

Off Topic - Stephen Fry: Touring America in a London Cab

One for my many US readers. If you see a black London Cab with “Fry” on the roof it’s Comic, Actor, Writer extraordinaire Stephen Fry …

I Give Up - Stephen Fry
If you happen to be in America and you chance to see my cab … which as you can see is left-hand drive and proudly (or perhaps stupidly) bears my name …  … why not take a picture and tell me where and when it was taken. I shall devise a worthy prize.

Scoble meets Six Apart (TypePad)

Robert Scoble has an interview with Chris Alden, Michael Sippey and David Recordon of Six Apart. Their TypePad platform powers this blog so I was interested to see what they are thinking and planning. 

TypePad is great but has not really seen much core development recently. There have been lots of small refinements but things like it’s media features (photo albums* & library) need a big overhaul. It’s a little frustrating that Six Apart’s, newer, free Vox platform is currently better at this than “Pay to host” TypePad!

TypePad is a hosted solution running on 6A’s Movable Type (MT) platform. It was recently updated so maybe more of the good stuff seen in it will turn up in TypePad. I’ve considered using MT but, being lazy, prefer a hosted solution even with it’s limitations. A few of my TypePad wishes from 2006 have appeared but would be good to see more work on the platform.

The future of Moveable Type, Vox, TypePad, and Live Journal « Scobleizer
With who? Six Apart’s CEO, Chris Alden, and VP of Products, Michael Sippey, and Engineer David Recordon.NOTE: Robert has the full one hour interview & six minute highlights edit.

Six Apart - www.sixapart.com

TypePad Trivia: When I first found TypePad, via Shaan Hurley, I wondered why the company name was “Six Apart”. The name comes from the gap between founders Ben & Mena’s birthdays!

* I’ve considered moving all my photos to Flickr, which can be integrated with TypePad, but then face the nightmare of recreating hundreds of titles & comments from the TypePad albums.

Tags: Six+Apart, TypePad, Moveable+Type, Scoble

Remember that great blog post? Can you find it again? MindManager to the rescue...

There’s a huge amount of CAD related information on the web. Finding it once is getting easier thanks to tools like Search and RSS but often finding it a second time becomes a challenge. You’ll read something but weeks, maybe months, later actually need it. While many feed readers allow flagging, or tagging, of posts usually that just captures the title with no context. Search tools will look at all the post content but often the results are not that targeted. Recently I used an article about “CAD training approval” for reference. Google Blog Search returns over two thousand results for that phrase.

One method I use is to store the URL, Title and a few keywords for articles/posts I think maybe useful as I read them. While you could do this in any text editor I use MindManager as it has a few features which make creating & finding these references a snap.

As an example take this article from CAD Management Guru Robert Green. I read it back in September and knew it would useful for upcoming training proposals. A click on the MindManager button  in IE grabs the URL and Title, adding it to the current map. I added the author name as a callout with a link to his contact page (different to the article) and a few key words/phrases which summarise the content. This can be anything but Robert’s section headings work well for his articles.

So far you’ve got some text and hyperlinks which almost any text editor could do. Where MindManager works nicely is you can group posts in categories which collapse & expand for easy viewing. It also has a search function which can scan the current map, all open maps or folders of (closed) maps for key words returning the results in a search pane. This allows rapid searching and access to topics in a click irrespective of where they are stored. I’ll add relevant content from Blogs, Web-pages or Discussion Groups in this format to project, job or system documentation maps as they can all be searched if required.

I used Robert’s post, found thanks to this search, as a reference when working on approval for some team training. Thanks to Robert for the article, MindManager for helping me find it when needed!

Listen to a post in a click - Talkr FeedFlare!

Thanks for Mike Perry over on BLAUGI for letting me know a couple of features of this blog can merge to make every post talk!

I’ve had a feed for Talkr, which converts text to speech, available for some time. Thanks to FeedBurner Flare + Talkr you can now hear any post by clicking it’s “Listen to this” link. This relies on Talkr performing the conversion which seems to happen within a few hours of posting.

Talkr is pretty clever as tries to add appropriate expression to the sentence. It’s not just a boring monotone voice and also copes pretty well with “non English” technical terms. I think it pronounces hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism better than I can!

It does stumble a little with my made up name “RobiNZ” but I find “Robe-in-zee” quite endearing!

If you have a Blog and use FeedBurner learn how to make your own posts talk here.

Tags: Talkr, Feedburner

Websites as graphs

 This is a graphical map of my blogs structure generated by: 

Websites as graphs - an HTML DOM Visualizer Applet

See this image grow at Websites as graphs

See this image growing captured with Jing.

What do the colours mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

 

Tags: Jing

Google doesn't always help...

Searching for Kiwi Revit parking content today led back to a site I knew didn’t have any. The first two results were useless, I didn’t even have to vist the site to know that! The summary from the third, "Time to rev it up? Mobility Scooters", had me thinking about drag racing with mobility scooters!

Hello TypePad Development, is anybody out there?

Or are you all working on Vox?

Hey you! Don't Vox that! Vox THIS! - Team Vox
Last week, we pushed out Release 32 of Vox…

TypePad Pages are only significant new feature seen in the last year while Vox continues to evolve rapidly. I'll admit there’s been some nice fine tuning, hiding email addresses on comments was on my TypePad wish list, but no big “wow” features.

TypePad desperately needs something like the media collections seen at Vox. It seems the “free” Vox service is getting more development emphasis than the TypePad “pay” one. Is there more money harvesting the Ad income from Vox than TypePad Subscriptions perhaps?

However, one thing that hasn’t changed at TypePad is good news. A couple of support tickets I lodged last month, for minor matters, were swiftly resolved; thanks Kymberlie!

Tags: TypePad, Vox

Foreign language track-backs

I’ve recently deleted a few foreign language track-backs as can’t tell what sort of site they are coming from. I always have a look at the source site before deleting but if it’s a language I can’t read and there are no images that relate to the subject “tracked back to” then I have to assume they are spam. If you want a trackback accepted for a for a foreign language site please give me enough info to make a fair decision.

Just noticed, 1k posts...

This is RobiNZ CAD Blog Post: 1001

• Lifetime page views: 325382
• Average per day: 278.34
• In the past 7 days: 2356
• Today since midnight GMT: 290
• RSS Subscribers: 704

Thanks for visiting!

Tips for using TypePad & Feedburner

I’ve over the years I’ve people ask how I created a few features which are a combination of TypePad & FeedBurner. Reading this post on the TypePad Blog made me do something about sharing it. The other reason is it reduces a long winded explanation to “go & read this post” which is the motive behind quite a few posts on this blog

TypePad is my blog host and FeedBurner is an independent provider (recently acquired by Google!) of services for Blogs and RSS feeds. They take an existing RSS feed, in my case generated by TypePad, and enhance it adding features which make it easier to consume (various formats), re-use the feed content, allow you to see how your RSS feed is being used or, should you choose, generate income from advertising in your feed. FeedBurner offer their services and basic statistics for free but more detailed results require an optional subscription. Everything I’ll show you here only requires the free FeedBurner account and also will work with other blog platforms such as MySpace, Blogger, etc.

I had four requirements that FeedBurner fulfilled:

1. RSS feed “use” statistics, how many are reading what content.
2. A dynamic home-page index. I wanted a “landing page” with recent post headlines & extracts from both my blogs.
3. A way to publicise my blogs and allow people to switch between them easily.
4. Make it easier to share my content

Windows Live Writer, nice price but not for me

If you are serious about blogging an off-line editor is an essential tool. TypePad have a good on-line editor but I rarely use it as it’s still slow & cumbersome in comparison to a local editor.

As a longtime BlogJet user I was interested to read a burst of posts about the latest Windows Live Writer beta release. I tried it but in spite of the attractive price, it’s free or rather 100% subsidised by Microsoft, and some nice features I’m happy to stick with BlogJet as it still offers a better mix of tools for my work-flow.

Try them both, BlogJet has a free trial, and see which suits you. Either way you’ll be sure to spend far less time than typing & formatting in the web based editors and be able to work off-line which is great for mobile workers.

BlogJet – http://blogjet.com/

Windows Live Writer – http://writer.live.com/

Disclosure: I purchased my initial BlogJet licence, the update to the current release was complimentary after participating in the beta.

Google FeedBurner!

Wow, I’m just in the middle of a post on how I use the RSS Feed Management service FeedBurner with TypePad and discover they are they’ve been acquired being acquired by Google. Congratulations to the FeedBurner team, wise move Google!  Will have the post on-line soon.

PS: I echo Dare’s hopes for more complete historical stats as a good first move for Google FeedBurner!

UPDATE 02–06–2007:

It's True-gle!

Unlike the rumor that FeedBurner is nearly code-complete on a multiplayer Wii edition, the blog posts, phone calls and conjecture about our future as part of the Google family tree are now officially true.
FeedBurner has been acquired by Google…

Tags: FeedBurner, Google

Sorry I used Sitemeter, it's gone but has impacted you

Sitemeter is a free/pay webstats service I used to supplement the very basic TypePad page count statistics. It shows visit/page view counts and generic info about visitors like OS, Browser, resolution which was useful to fine tune the site. You can see the sort of information they provided in my “Anniversary Posts”. However tonight Sitemeter is gone as I discovered some disturbing news about their service. Sadly it isn’t new as dates back to April, at least, but when I found Michaels post (linked below) it was the first time I’d heard about this.

Sitemeter were happy to put news of enhanced features on their blog, even admit to some technical problems but did not, to my knowledge, say a word about a change which places a SpecificClick tracking cookie on your machine or sharing tracking data with another partner. They have responded via comment on other blogs claiming that the cookie is not spyware and is from a trusted partner. 

Even if that’s true it’s no longer relevant. Sitemeter know my email (I get a weekly email with summary stats) and I monitor their company blog feed but have not heard a peep from them about this change or their subsequent offer, again via other blogs, to opt out of the new “service”.

SpecificClick may be a trusted partner of Sitemeter, sadly Sitemeter is no longer a trusted partner of mine.

If you use Sitemeter; The Sitemeter code was removed from my blogs at 00:22:08 16–05–2007 (NZ Local) & their meter replaced by a link to this post and I’d recommend to anyone using their service to do the same.

To clean up your machine: The tracking cookie is from SpecificClick. You can read more about it here & will need to remove from your machine. I recommend deleting cookies via your browser and/or running spyware scanner and also blocking specificclick.net. Michael’s post has more detailed instructions if you need them.

Sorry for the hassle.

Things you should know before using Sitemeter « Michael Sync
It’s so sad for me to hear that SiteMeter, a well-known web stats providers, is pushing specificclick tracking and advertising cookies on to visitors of sites using their service.

Tags: sitemeter, SpecificClick

Listen via Talkr?

If you’re interested in listening to, rather than reading, this blog its being converted to an audio “podcast” by Talkr. It does a good job of reading the posts into an MP3 file. The speech conversion is pretty good even for strange technical terms. I like the way it calls this blog “Robe-in-zee CAD Blog”.

The feed is: http://www.talkr.com/app/cast_pods.app?feed_id=4261

Tags: Talkr

New Zealand Edge goes daily

New Zealand Edge have launched a blog to accompany their website and email publications. The New Zealand Edge aims to:

• Introduce metaphors and contemporary frameworks for NZers to articulate who we are (positively hammer some boundary poles of the self into the whenua).
• Articulate and leverage our difference through the edge proposal (landscape, location, attitude, history, Maori, Pacific, character, fringe innovation).
• Increase the prosperity of the country, in spirit and in pocket, by spreading the edge DNA thickly over the culture.
• Build an emotional connection with the global community of New Zealanders.
• Build the de-facto global brand for New Zealand by re-figuring a New Zealand identity based on high achievement in a diversity of disciplines - creative, technological, social and spiritual.

While the site, & now the blog, has a broad range of Kiwi focused content check out this feature “100 New Zealand Design Heroes”. An impressive array of talent from a tiny country.

NEW ZEALAND EDGE: New Zealand Edge goes daily
Greetings nzedge.com friends throughout NZ and in 86 countries.
After eight years of semi-regular publishing, we have moved daily.

Nzedge.com has enjoyed consistent and sometimes exponential growth in visitors and pageviews, and in the first part of 2007 we've experienced an acceleration of sign-ups.

The primary purpose of nzedge.com is storytelling about New Zealand and its role and initiatives in the world. Kevin Roberts and I started the idea of a New Zealand Diaspora (ie that we are a nation of five million people), and we have widely seeded the metaphor of “edge” to define our “reason for being”…

Blog – http://nzedge.blogspot.com/

Feed – http://feeds.feedburner.com/NewZealandEdge

Comments held, until I return

I’m currently travelling and unlikely to be on-line for a week or so. Feel free to comment/trackback but, to avoid spam pollution, they will be held for approval on my return. I don’t get a huge volume of spam but there is enough to make this hassle necessary.

UPDATE 01–05–2007: Comments back on

Hugh, Microsoft & the blue monster

I’ve been following Hugh MacLeod’s gapingvoid blog and his "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" since discovering them a year or so back. Recently Hugh has embarked on a “toonversation” about, with and now for Microsoft via his “Blue Monster Series”. Will Hugh change Microsoft, will Microsoft change Hugh? It’s interesting to watch…

Microsoft blue monster series archive - gapingvoid.com
The Blue Monster was designed as a conversation starter. To paraphrase the ongoing dialogue between Steve and I:

For too long, Microsoft has allowed other people- the media, the competition and their detractors, especially- to tell their story on their behalf, instead of doing a better job of it themselves.