Blankenthoughts

So I've heard the bad press. I've seen the pc vs. mac ads. I've heard my friends' complaints about crashing, security, and speed.

That's why I'm moving to Windows Mojave. It seems Microsoft finally got an OS right.

Check this out:

http://www.mojaveexperiment.com

Labels: microsoft, mojave, operating system, vista, Windows

Alternate Title: Why Do You Read Websites Anymore?

Have you ever seen that icon to the left? Ever wonder why almost every site has one? My question to you is this...why are you still visiting websites for their content?


I remember it like it was yesterday...I would get in to work each morning, and open my browser. I would then proceed to open 5 tabs. One for CNN. One for FARK. One for Scott Hanselman's blog. One for ESPN. One for my email. And then I'd spend 20 minutes reading about what was going on in the world. It used to really frustrate me when Scott didn't have a post. Why did I waste my time going to his site? I wish I could just get him to let me know when he posted a message!  (Note: I know I don't post every day, and I would hate to think that there are some of you coming to my site to see if I've updated anything...here's my RSS feed.)

Does this sound like you? Did you think that icon up above stood for Wi-Fi, or audio podcast, or maybe you just haven't noticed it before. It's the key to saving you time and effort on the Internet. There's no need to visit websites anymore. At least not the ones that have new content to publish. The icon represents the term RSS, which stands for "Really Simple Syndication." The general idea behind it is straightforward: Rather than go to each site that you want to read, why not have them "push" the content to you, like an email? 

Why I Hate Browser Bookmarks

There was a day when my browser's bookmarks could have been compared to the early versions of Yahoo's seach index. Hundreds of links categorized into dozens of subjects. All useful, but only when you're using that computer.  Once you get home, you don't have access to that information any more (unless you're using Live Mesh.) Then came browser toolbars, like Google's, to save the day (temporarily).

Why I Hate Browser Toolbars

Browser toolbars are a vast improvement over standard bookmarking, because you can store your list in the Internet cloud. But you still have to install the toolbar on your system, which at times can be intrusive (and requires admin rights). This also makes it difficult for multiple user experiences, like I have at home.  It's also a challenge when you're using a computer that's not yours.  Like at a friend's house, or at the library.  Now, since the data is stored in the cloud, we can still get to it relatively easily, but it doesn't ultimately solve the primary problem:  pulling data vs. having it pushed to us.

Why I Love RSS

Nearly every kind of published data can be exposed as an RSS feed.  At its core, it's just XML.  But the infrastructure surrounding this technology is so robust, it really doesn't make sense NOT to use it.  Each morning now, I scan through over 100 websites-worth of content, read the articles that peak my interest, and discard the rest.  And I only had to go to one place to do it:  my RSS aggregator.

Now, here is the place where I'm supposed to tell you that Outlook can do RSS aggregation for you, and actually, so can Vista (it's built into the OS).  But I don't use those.  Nor do I use the one in Live Hotmail, or any one of probably 10 other Microsoft products that will do it for you.  Nope, I use Google Reader.  And the reason is simple:  it works for what I want it to do.  There's probably well over 100 popular RSS aggregation applications out there for you to try.  Some are desktop based (I don't recommend this, because it brings you back to being stuck on one machine), and many are web based.  The reason I like Reader is because it simply and easily contributes to my social networking addiction as well.

Why RSS and Social Networking Go Together

After reading a post in my aggregator, it gives me the option to "Share" it.  What this actually does is add the article to yet another RSS feed that I can provide to people.  In this case, it's not what I have written, but what I have enjoyed reading.  Click here to see my shared items.  But not only that, there's also a widget that I can add to my blog.  You'll see it on the right side, titled "Stuff I've Read."  It gets better.  I've also added it to my FriendFeed, so that when I share something, people following my feed will know about it.

The Real Reason I Wrote This

Most bloggers really enjoy the statistics their blog generates.  There are two reasons I write these posts:

1)  I am super-passionate about technology, and I think my thoughts and opinions might expose someone to something they've never seen before.

2)  My ego absolutely loves the traffic spike a new post creates.

And I know I'm not alone.  There's a few statistics, specifically, that bloggers compare themselves with.  The first is just pure traffic.  "How many unique visitors did you have last month?" is a good example.  I had 1,668 in June 2008.

The second statistic is "How many comments, on average, do each of your posts get?"  This is a number that can vary greatly from post to post, but it gives you a decent measure of how impactful your posts are on the reading community.  My average is around 2.  Scott Hanselman, for example, is probably up near 20-25.

"How many subscribers do you have?" is the last. This one is important because it's an indication of the number of people that have added you to their RSS aggregator.  They are the people that want to hear what you have to say, on a daily basis.  I have about 260 subscribers as I write this post.  That means, in a month, there are over 1,400 people that come to my blog, but don't subscribe.  That's the reason I'm writing this post.

So here's my call to action for all of you new to RSS (or those of you that have been putting it off).  Find an aggregator, and subscribe to your favorite blogs.  You can always "unsubscribe" if someone gets on your nerves.  When someone writes something that you enjoyed, let them know with a comment.  If you disagree, let them know that too.  But participate!  That's the key.

Labels: aggregator, blogging, cloud computing, jeff blankenburg, RSS, scott hanselman, subscription

In giving my presentation on "Amazing Things You Have To See" in Toledo, OH recently, I realized that maybe everyone hasn't already heard about Live Mesh. Have you?

Live Mesh might be one of the coolest things I've had an opportunity to try in the past year. The basic idea behind it is simple:

I have multiple machines, and I want to be able to access my data ON any of those machines FROM any of those machines. Or even from a computer that's not mine.

It works in a very elegant way, too. It starts with a website. http://www.mesh.com. There, you can start adding devices to your personal device mesh. I started with my home desktop computer. This is where I do the bulk of my work, development, web surfing, etc. Adding a device simply means installing the Live Mesh Client, which just runs in the background, for the most part. Here's a screenshot of the notifier:



What that shows me are the devices that are in my mesh. My Desktop, my Lenovo laptop, my wife's laptop, and my Live Desktop. I'll get to the Live Desktop a little later in the post.

Now that my desktop is "Meshified", I notice several different changes to my operating system. The first is a new option in the folder menu, allowing me to add it to my Live Mesh:



By choosing to add this folder to my Mesh, a number of things start happening. The first one relates to my Live Desktop. The Live Desktop is basically 5 gigabytes of storage in the sky. Or in the cloud. Or on the internet. However you want to refer to it. But not in the way that SkyDrive or others work. In this Mesh scenario, the only way to get files to your Live Desktop is to add that folder to your Mesh. They are then automatically synched to your Live Desktop, and stored there as well.

Here's where the elegance comes in: When I add a new machine (like my laptop) to my Mesh, it automatically creates phantom folders on your desktop. There's nothing in them, yet, but they're there to help you. On each folder, you can change sync settings, even add which computers will sync with that folder, and which direction, as well.

Cool Feature Warning...

So great, you can sync your folders across multiple machines. I could do that with FolderShare a few years ago. With Live Mesh, you can also add your colleagues, friends, or family to a folder as well. So you could have a folder for the documents about a specific project. Or all of your family's photos.

Another Cool Feature...

Sometimes, I know I have a file on my desktop machine at home, but I never added it to the Mesh. This was one of the shortcomings of FolderShare. With Mesh running on my desktop machine, I can actually Remote Desktop into that machine, add that forgotten folder to my Mesh, and voila! I've got the file synched across the web. But it is true Remote Desktop at its core. I can use that machine just like I were sitting in front of it.

Yet Another Cool Feature

Sometimes, I don't have a computer available to me at all, but I need to get a file for someone. Thankfully, since my files are also stored online, I have the ability to get them from my phone as well. Just go to http://m.mesh.com to check that out!

Summary

In short, Live Mesh provides a simple way for you to access your files from anywhere you have an internet connection. This will soon include Apple computers and mobile phones as well. You can remote into your machines, and sync files across all of them as well. You can even share folders out to people you know, so you can collaborate on documents and projects easily. And the best part? It's all free.

Labels: jeff blankenburg, live mesh, mesh, remote desktop

According to their website, "TrueNorth is a contemporary new brand of 100% natural, great tasting nut snacks made by Frito-Lay". What their website doesn't tell you, however, is that they've got the next viral commercial on the web. I just saw this last night, and needed to share it with all of you.



Here's a link to the video if it doesn't show up in your RSS aggregator.

Speaking of RSS aggregators, that's what my "real" post today will be about.

Labels: extraordinary, frito-lay, nut snack, nutsnack, truenorth

So I've added a new feature to my blog today. And I'm pretty sure all of you are going to make me pay for it, at least initially.

I've added Windows Live Messenger to my sidebar. This way, if someone reads a post, and wants to ask me a question (and I'm online), they can. In real-time. I've also added it to this page, so you can abuse the privilege I am offering more conveniently. Exploit my effort at reaching the masses in 3...2...1...



Oh, and here's how to do it, if you're interested in adding it to your site as well...

http://settings.messenger.live.com/Applications/WebSettings.aspx

Labels: blogging, jeff blankenburg, live messenger

So I was wandering around the Microsoft Research site, and happened upon something I had not heard of before: Asirra. It's a new model for a CAPTCHA test, and it seems to be pretty simple to implement.

For those of you not familiar with the term CAPTCHA, it stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." You've certainly seen them before on sites like Ticketmaster, where you're asked to enter some characters that are all skewed and blurry in an image. Here some examples:



The basic idea behind it is simple. You need a test that a human can pass, but that software cannot. Imagine if Ticketmaster DIDN'T have a CAPTCHA challenge on their site. When baseball tickets went on sale, or seats to the Radiohead concert become available, a scalper could fire up his software, buy ALL of the tickets, and then re-sell them at a significant profit somewhere else. You wouldn't have a chance.

But, by enforcing a CAPTCHA challenge, that scalper is only able to buy tickets in small quantities (maybe 10) at a time, before he's forced to visually interpret some data that only a human can read. A computer has a serious challenge in reading text that has been skewed accurately.

Enter Asirra. While only a project of the Microsoft Research team, it IS available for public consumption. It also challenges the idea that a CAPTCHA challenge needs to be letters and numbers that are jumbled up to be unreadable by optical character recognition (OCR) software. Instead, it presents you with a set of 12 images. They're all pictures of animals. It's up the human to determine which ones are cats. With over 3 million images currently available, and a database that grows in size by roughly 10,000 images per day, there's a good chance you'll never even see the same pictures twice. I've included an example of it on this page, but it's not part of a form, so it's just for display purposes. A link to a working sample of mine is in the next paragraph.

Using some simple javascript and a few lines of C#, I have built a page that demonstrates this powerful tool for keeping your site from being exploited. You can see the Asirra CAPTCHA in C# action here. Also important to note is that they have also provided this tool with code samples for using it with Python, PHP, C#, VB, JScript, and Perl. This is not tied to any Microsoft-specific tools or languages. In fact, the web service that runs the challenge is actually written in Python. My sample code running in C# can be downloaded here.

On top of the technical problem that this solves, it's also good for the pet community. All of the images come from PetFinder.com, and all of those animals are unwanted, but perfectly lovable animals in need of a home. Exposing their pictures and profiles to a larger audience can only help to find a place for some of these needy animals to live. I think these kinds of solutions have a certain elegance that you don't see much in software.

Labels: asirra, CAPTCHA, jeff blankenburg, microsoft, microsoft research

I just took a look at my calendar, and I'm going to be busy for the next few months. Here's an overview of where I'll be. If you're gonna be nearby, make sure to stop and say Hi.

Ann Arbor Give Camp
July 11 - 13 (Columbus, OH)

Northwest Ohio .NET User Group
presenting "Cool Stuff from Microsoft"
July 15 (Toledo, OH)

Microsoft TechReady
July 25 - August 2 (Redmond, WA)

CodeStock
August 9 (Knoxville, TN)

eRubyCon
August 15-17 (Coumbus, OH)

DevLink
presenting on Silverlight 2.0 and Visual Studio 2008
August 22-23 (Nashville, TN)

MS Team Offsite
August 25-27 (Chicago, IL)

Labels: jeff blankenburg, microsoft, travel

Today, we celebrate our Contribupendence Day. A day when we can contribute to our colleagues and friends to improve their online standing. A day when we take advantage of those features of social networks that we always put off until tomorrow. You can read my full description of Contribupendence Day here.

Although I have posted my contributions this morning to Plaxo and LinkedIn, I thought I would share with you what I've written. Perhaps to inspire you to participate in this holiday of giving, or perhaps provide you an opportunity to connect with some of the people I have most enjoyed working with.


James Bender - James is one of the most passionate developer/architects I have ever worked with. He is constantly keeping himself up-to-date with the latest technologies, and still makes time to help others that need it. His development skills range from modern day .NET back to legacy systems written in VB6. He is an incredible asset to any technical team, as well as an active speaker at technical conferences. I look forward to working with James in the future.

Tim Wingfield - Tim is an accomplished software developer. No matter what the challenge, Tim consistently steps up and takes it on. His passion for web development is infectious, as evidenced by his speaking abilities as well. Tim is a natural leader on any team he's on, and is capable of contributing in a variety of roles and skillsets.

Philip Jordan - Phil is a software developer that continues to surprise and delight me. In the time that I had an opportunity to work with him, I saw him grow from a junior developer to an accomplished, experienced developer in his own right. He is determined to improve himself every day, and it's evident in everything he does. I would recommend Phil completely.

Tarah Gaa - Once in a while, you encounter someone whose talents astound, and whose personality is infectious. That is my impression of Tarah. She is a modest, but extremenly talented graphic designer, with a focus on web development. With each new project I work on, she is always at the top of my list for design talent. I would recommend her for anything I need design assistance with.

Wendy Flowers - Wendy is as detail-oriented as they come in the Project Management world. I've personally witnessed her take projects that were headed in the wrong direction and get them squarely back on the tracks. She is accomplished in both waterfall and agile methodologies, and builds strong relationships with her teammates. Wendy is one of those people I would want on every project.




Chris Woodruff - Chris is an incredibly passionate guy for technology, and his contributions to the Deep Fried Bytes podcast is perfect evidence of that. I am thankful to know him.

Jeff Hunsaker - Jeff Hunsaker is one of those people that I wish I had an opportunity to work with. He's a natural leader, and an all-around nice guy. I am looking forward to getting to know more about him in the future.

Joe O'Brien - Joe has an internal energy that is just infectious. Every time I talk with him, I leave with a passion for technology that I rarely feel otherwise. I am looking forward to getting to know him better in the near future, if only to bottle some of that energy for myself.

Josh Holmes - My experiences with Josh have made him both a friend and mentor. I have had an opportunity to learn so much about public speaking from him, but also how to make the most of the communities I am a part of. I am truly thankful to have worked with Josh Holmes.

Sarah Dutkiewicz - Sarah is, for lack of a better reference, a "diamond in the rough." When I first met her, she was quiet, reserved, but passionate. Since that time, she has started speaking on technology, started a blog, organized a technology conference, and become a force to be reckoned with in the developer community. It is that internal drive and passion that is creating her momentum. I'm looking forward to see what she has in store for the coming years...

Labels: contribupendence, contribupendence day, jeff blankenburg, linkedin, plaxo