DragonStyle

Google Reader Shared Items

When I first started blogging on Typepad, I actually mostly reposted stuff from the internet that caught my eye. Lately, of course, this blog has served mostly as a test best for new things that we’re doing in Windows Live Writer. But I haven’t forgotten that it is useful to have a lightweight way to track interesting stuff.

Enter Google Reader. I’m now marking stuff shared, and you can head over to my shared items page if you’re interested in knowing about what I find interesting…

 

Technorati Tags: Google Reader

IPhone

Are you jealous yet? Last weekend I headed out to pick up an iPhone, and it really was a good investment. I was rolling with a Razr prior to the iPhone, and I definitely didn’t feel the need to pickup a ‘Smart Phone,’ but I was right to invest in the iPhone.

There are 2 categories of impact that the iPhone has:

The Internet in your pocket

This is impactful in exactly the same way it was impactful to have the internet running to your house. Anytime anywhere access to email, maps, Google, and all that.

Obsolete the laptop

I mostly used my laptop for checking email, surfing the web, and playing a simple game or two. Of course in a pinch I could also develop on it, write documents, and more. While I won’t be dealing with a spreadsheet, a word doc, or Visual Studio on my iPhone anytime soon, it is awesome for email and the web. My laptop has come out of its bag once in the last week. Once.

Technorati Tags: iPhone

Writing Plug-ins Article in CoDe Magazine

Scott Lovegrove put together a good article describing how to writer a plug-in for Windows Live Writer. Make sure you check it out!

ContentSource plugins are very basic plugins and will only insert text into the blog entry. You can edit SmartContentSource plugins’ content again at a later time.

From CoDe Magazine.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Plug-ins

Page Support in Windows Live Writer

A feature in Writer that not everyone knows about (yet :) ) is it's support for publishing pages. This support is (to my knowledge) currently limited to Wordpress and Typepad. Writer does use the Wordpress API for publishing pages, so any other providers out there that would like to add support just need to implement the page portion of the API and then use the Writer Provider API to notify Writer that pages are supported.

If you are using Wordpress or Typepad today, you are in luck- here is a quick tour of pages in Windows Live Writer.

Firefox 3.0 Beta 2

I've been playing with Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 at home. The feature list that I saw circulating on the yet was actually kind of a yawner, IMO, but I have to say there are a couple things that I absolutely love about it.

1) It is really, really fast. Pages render extremely quickly and the application itself starts extremely fast. This feature alone makes me stop using old versions of Firefox.

2) When you start typing a URL, you are greeted not by a lame combo box style drop down of your URL history, but with this excellent piece of UI:

Once again, it is a little tiny thing, but it is really a huge improvement over the old style combo box. It is much easier to pick out the URL that you are looking for, and as a result, what used to be a useless distraction becomes a useful shortcut.

3) It is currently called 'Minefield', but it is really pretty darn high quality. I have had very few problems using it as my everyday browser. It downloads an update seemingly every day, which is also great, since I am beta testing.

 

Technorati Tags: Firefox 3.0

Google Charting API

How cool is this?

The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts. To see the Chart API in action, open up a browser window and copy the following URL into it:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chs=200x125&chd=s:helloWorld

Press the Enter or Return key and - presto! - you should see the following image:

 

Very cool. In fact, just from reading the documentation, twiddling the URL, and using an IMG tag, here is a readymade graph for this post.

 

It's joke, in case you don't get it. [Originally from here]

Windows Live Maps

I was recently playing around with embedding Google Maps, though in all honesty I was really looking at a bug that had been reported in Windows Live Writer. Now that I'm through that, I can express my unabashed love for Windows Live Maps. I work at MS, yes, but Windows Live Maps is simply a product that is good, no matter where you work. Here's a few of the things I really love about them:

1) The Single Box Address UI
Ok, I am expressing love for doing something incredibly obvious, but sometimes MS can be a little stubborn about the obvious :).

2) The new UI for controlling the map
The new controls consume _way_ fewer pixels, leaving more for the map itself. Nice.

3) Choose route based upon traffic
The fact that the traffic info which I already use a lot, now includes the ability to alter the recommended route based upon traffic is righteous.

Thanks Windows Live Maps!!!

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Maps. Google Maps

VMWare Continuing to Rock

In my life before Microsoft, I was a regular VMWare user. When supporting our product, it was always a pain to try to find a machine with a specific configuration (Windows 2000, IE 5.5, .Net 1.1), so we ended up just making a library of virtual machines (we even had some configuration preloaded with Visual Studio and Perforce so you could simply fire up the VM, sync, and start debugging a problem that only occurred in a specific environment). VMWare was simply a fantastic product. 

As I was surfing around to catch up on the writings about Windows Live Writer, I stumbled across a post describing a switch to Mac, and a VMWare application that will let you keep using your favorite Windows only products. Wow, does this look awesome.

The cool thing about Fusion though is something called Unity. Unity makes the virtualized applications appear as though they were part of the OSX desktop. Instead of a window showing the Windows desktop and its applications, you get the Windows apps running as part of the regular desktop.

VMware Fusion :: robteix.com

Technorati Tags: VMWare, Unity

Intel has gone stark raving mad

At the top of my list of things to do when I have a bunch of extra money laying around? Upgrade my home desktop PC. And here, my friends, is the CPU that will be installed (among other things). 

Quad-core for $299! If you’ve been waiting to upgrade your computer, now is the time!

Intel has gone stark raving mad
Joe Cheng
7/20/2007 8:33 PM

FTW

This might be Bonnie's first time being referred to as a Rogue Ninja, but this is my third. I can't talk about the other two, though. 

This weekend? Ninja BBQ

Technorati Tags: Ninja, Writer