There’s been a great link to an article forwarded to me today to a Newsweek’s Apple PR division Technology columnist Steven Levy. Where he claimed that he has lost (although he is not sure (LOL) ) his MacBook Air. blogosphere is throwing their hands up in the Air ;), but really… it’s so funny on so many levels that people are all about the story (ironically so am I with this post). The article is such a great example of the Apple hype machine at its best. Let me elaborate

Let’s start with the heading to the article:

There will be a lot of desperate searches for lost MacBook Airs. And can you really blame a guy for losing something called Air?

Oh really? I have a newsflash for you Steven: 90% of everything is SMALLER than your Air. Over the years people have learned to get a hold of their credit cards, cell phones, money, keys. When was the last time someone made a stink about them loosing a PDA? All of them are by far smaller and lighter than the Air.

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Posted in Apple, Blogging, Lifestyle, Mobile, Rants
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Episerver’s brand new blogger

I’m really glad to notice that Marek is getting into blogging about EPiServer. Marek is a really bright developer and a colleague at Cognifide with a number of successful EPiServer projects in his portfolio, we’ve worked together on Faceted Navigation (he’s the brain behind all the nifty editors in it) that I’m working on open sourcing of currently, and on the Setanta Sports Portal and the Setanta corporate site projects. Now he’s out in the wild writing about it. Go ahead and read his analysis on the performance of Episerver 4.x versus CMS 5. It appears that the CMS is getting… nah… I won’t spoil it for you… Read all about it on Marek’s brand new blog!

Posted in ASP.NET, Blogging, EPiCode, EPiServer, Faceted Navigation, Open Source, Software Development
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Our friends at EPiServer AB has just let us know that they are in need of EPiServer CMS specialists that might be looking forward to working with them directly, so if you’re an EPiServer professional and meet the requirements specified on the recruitment page give them a shout!

If you’re not already familiar with EPiServer you’re probably not going to make it this round, but then again I suggest you start looking at it now. EPiServer AB is a really dynamic company recently expanding aggresively on the international markets – and rightly so. EPiServer is deserving every credit it can get. I can say that my journey with it so far has been really smooth and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. So if you’re not up to it, get ready for the next round, in the mean time, grab yourself a login – download a copy of the documentation from the Knowledge Center, a demo license and join us on the Developer Forum.

It’s a great bunch, really fun to work with.

Posted in Blogging, EPiServer, Software Development, Web applications
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New week, new toy

I’ve just found this cool app that allows you to post to blogs, including our own one.

http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

go ahead and try it! I’m writing this article in it! As cool as WordPress is, it’s writing editor sucks. I don’t tend to write often, but when I start, my articles usually take more than a page and if in the process I accidentally press the shortcut for the browser go-back… I’m crying! I also wonder if you’ve ran into the 1000 miles long line bug in the WordPress editor? It seems to sometimes make all spaces in the line non breakable, there is a solution to this, which is to press enter and then go back to the line again and delete and re-insert all the spaces again… which makes me cry some more! I am also just not a big fan of Web interfaces for something so interactive as creating documents or calculations (hint, hint Google). I think Web is more suited for presentation whereas desktop is for creation.

It has a spell checker and all the cool stuff the app that I’m writing has, and it’s free. It’s in beta but seems to work pretty well so far.

As a side note… It’s written in .Net, which is soooo… expected (but nice).

ok so if you want to use it in our blog use this:

http://blogs.cognifide.com/adam/xmlrpc.php

as your blog URL, naturally, replace adam with your blog name, fill in the user name and password and enjoy!

Last final test – let’s see how does it deal with images from disk…


(c) Mother Goose and Grimm by MIKE PETERS

Posted in Blogging, Lifestyle, Software, Web applications
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Is everything going to web based?

Yeah… Mr. Obvious, am I not?

Check out this web Word processor. Neat toy… not sure why would I use it but still…

http://www.writely.com/

One of the gazillion Google web apps.

Let me remain sceptic – editing belongs to desktop if you asked me.

Posted in Blogging, Software, Web applications
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Put your Blog Navigator on a stick!

On how to make Blog Navigator store it’s data on a USB dongle or wherever you want it to be.

Originally posted on Wincustomize.com

I’ve seen some requests recently to make Blog Navigator run from a flash dongle or any mobile drives in our newsgroups lately. I was not quite comfortable with the inability to change the storage path by the user myself for a while, not to say that the data is stored in a wrong place, on the contrary, this default behavior does not change. But to make it confined to a Local Application Data folder was a bit too harsh. for my taste.

So, for Blog Navigator 1.2, I went ahead and made it totally customizable for the user to define where does he/she want to store the files. Currently there are 3 definable folders in Blog Navigator:

  • <repositoryFolder> is the place that Blog Navigator stores its repository to it’s the file that contains all the knowledge and articles stored in your Blog Navigator
  • <keepSafeFolder> is the folder that will be the default folder for keepsafed articles, unless the user defines differently globally in the Blog Navigator preferences or locally for a particular folder, and finally
  • <temporaryFolder> this is pretty much where all the dynamically generated stuff goes, it’s the Blog Navigator working folder.

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Collect, Manage, and utilize the knowledge you’ve acquired with ease and grace.

Originally posted on Wincustomize.com

What we really intend to make for you with Blog Navigator is to create a robust and efficient way to manage all your on-line knowledge. You know how hard it is to actually find something useful on the Internet at times, right? That’s where our “Web Search Folders” come to help. You could already organize your knowledge into baskets, but we’ve decided that it’s not enough. While baskets were a great way of organizing your findings and keeping them for later reference, there were a couple of deficiencies of baskets.

To address that we’ve added two things to 1.2 version of Blog Navigator:

  • you can easily put one basket into one another to make your knowledge more hierarchically organized, just like you can organize your Internet Explorer favorites.
  • you can manage Internet Explorer favorites within Blog Navigator! (Firefox users, consult the final paragraph to learn how to import your bookmarks into Blog Navigator).

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Posted in Blog Navigator, Blogging, Web applications
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Did you know that…

A few of Blog Navigator tips

Originally posted on joeuser.com

I really find the “Did you know that…” dialogs showing when an application is running quite hilarious.

They provide no solution or enrichment whatsoever, because some random tip at the program startup is highly unlikely to help me with the task I am about to perform with the software. It also is completely stripped off wider context and random as it is, serves exclusively as an annoyance and the first thing user has to turn off in the application.

That said, user still may find some tips and tricks usefully, if provided in a proper form and time. So here are some of them to read at a time of your convenience…

Did you know that….         ;)

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The Stardock Blog Navigator feature tour – Part V

Blogging with Blog Navigator Proffesional – writing articles with images

Originally posted on JoeUser.com

The fourth part of the article already available here…

If you have used any mail program supporting HTML there is really not all that much new I can show you here. Writing blogs with Blog Navigator is a breeze. Simply select New Blog Article from the File menu from the main menu or:

from the main toolbar and Blog Navigator will create a new editing windows for you where you can edit your article in a WYSIWYG manner. Let’s take a screenshot of this article being written… Ok, the screenshot is taken, but how do you insert it into the article. Well… for the screenshot to be available for your blog readers it has to be online somewhere, available from a web server. How do you put one on a web server? You can upload it manually with an FTP client or… let BlogNavigator do it for you.

Blog navigator allows you to add picture already available online by clicking the hand pointed tool button on the right of the lower toolbar. It will then ask you for an address and will make use of it. But! The real time saver is the button pointed at in the middle of the top toolbar. You can configure your FTP settings once and let Blog Navigator do the tedious job of uploading pictures for you. So I’ll click the button now… since it’s the first time I’m using it and i did not configure that option in the previous article, Blog Navigator informed me that I need to do it now. I clicked OK on the message box and configured it as specified in the table.

FTP server configuration

The first four fields are pretty self explanatory, you need to specify the address of the server and the port it’s using for for the FTP protocol. The username and the password are needed for the server to let you in. The “folder on the FTP server” you specify is the folder you want your file to be uploaded into. This folder needs to be available online through a web server and that’s what you specify in the last field – it’s the URL that represents the folder for browsers.

Let’s say I configured it like shown on my screenshot. If I’ll choose to upload a file from say… C:\BlogNavigator.gif – that file will be uploaded to the server ftp.skinstudio.net and will be put in the /blog_bin/bn/ folder on that server. After that I know (since I specified that in the last field) that it will be available as  Link .

Once the account is configured, and you will only have to do it once, you get the very dialog that allows you to upload the file:

The OK button will stay disabled as long as an existing file will not be chosen. You can enter the name directly or click on the Browse button and select the image you wish to upload. And we’re required to choose from between the three options.

  • The first one is the one I use to upload thumbnails I enter into this article. Just as it says in the dialog – it uploads the image and uts it in the article like you would paste an image into a Word document.
  • The second option I use for images that you get after you click on my thumbnails. I just make sure the thumbnail is selected before pressing the “Upload file” tool button in the article editor.
  • The third option has absolutely no effect on the article and simply puts a file on a server without doung anything else afterwards.

The editor features most of the elements you may need in your blog.

You can insert and edit links with “Link” option availavle in the “Insert” menu as well as from the toolbar. The “table” menu in the editor also allows you to insert and edit tables. and so on… most things can be done in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) way. But for the most advanced options you may want to edit the code directly and for that you have the “Code” tab. If you want to make sure how will your code look and behave in Internet Explorer then the “Preview” tab is there for you.

Most of the WYSIWYG editing options is available from the lower toolbar also most of them are available with a handful of shortcuts. You will find the most important ones here.

Depending on the service you use for your blog the top pane fields may differ in number or flexibility. Blogger 1.0 does not allow for title. Only JoeUser offers a link, subtitle and subcategory in addition to regular category. Not all blogging services support categories at all. But that’s not your problem really. Blog Navigator knows those things and will only provide you with the fields the service allows you to specify.

I’m done! I want them to read it!

Now after the article is written here come the 3 important buttons:

You’ve got that very important message for the world you want them to read it. And here come the three, probably the most important, buttons in the editor:

  • post – put the article on the blog server but do not make it available to everyone but just me. It’s a hidden article that will become visile once you publish it
  • publish – put the article on the blog server and make it available to for everyone. Alternatively update the article and if not available to the general public, make it available. Not for every service it’s possible to hide the article back so make sure the published article is ready for the general audience.
  • postpone – keep the current version locally. If an article was never uploaded the article is just local. if however it was already published, do not change it on the server, but keep the changes on user’s computer for later update of the online version.

That’s it. That’s all you need to know to use Blog Navigator as your publishing tool and even that is pretty detailed since in most cases you will not even need the file uploading.

Have fun, and

Stay tuned for more soon!

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Article editor shortcut summary

Originally posted on JoeUser.com

Stardock Blog Navigator Professional offers a host of keyboard accelerators while you edit your articles.
Here you have a short summary of the most important keystrokes used by the article editor.

Formatting

Description (Command) Key
Toggle bold formatting CtrL+B
Toggle italic formatting CtrL+I
Toggle underlining CtrL+U
Increase paragraph indent CtrL+T
Decrease paragraph indent CtrL+SHIFT+T

Posting and file operations

Description Key
Save the edited article into a locally stored file CtrL+S
Post the edited article to online blog (make it visible for the user butnot to the general public) ALT+S
Publish the edited article to online blog (make it visible for the general public) CtrL+SHIFT+S
Upload a file/image to an associated FTP account for use in the edited article ALT+U
Insert Image CtrL+SHIFT+I
Insert Horizontal line at the end of the edited article CtrL+SHIFT+H
Print edited article

CtrL+P

Movement

Description Key
Move one character to the right. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element one pixel to the right. RIGHT ARROW
Move one character to the left. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element one pixel to the left. LEFT ARROW
Move down one line. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element down one pixel. DOWN ARROW
Move up one line. If an absolutely positioned element is selected, nudge the element up one pixel. UP ARROW
Move right one word CtrL+RIGHT ARROW
Move left one word CtrL+LEFT ARROW
Move to the end of the current line END
Move to the start of the current line HOME
Move down one paragraph CtrL+DOWN ARROW
Move up one paragraph CtrL+UP ARROW
Move down one page PAGE DOWN
Move up one page PAGE UP
Move to the beginning of the document CtrL+HOME
Move to the end of the document CtrL+END
Cycle selection through block-level elements within the control TAB
Reverse-cycle selection through block-level elements within the control SHIFT+TAB

Selection

Description (Command) Key
Extend the selection one character to the right SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW
Extend the selection one character to the left SHIFT+LEFT ARROW
Extend the selection right one word CtrL+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW
Extend the selection left one word CtrL+SHIFT+LEFT ARROW
Extend the selection up one line SHIFT+UP ARROW
Extend the selection down one line SHIFT+DOWN ARROW
Extend the selection to the end of the current line SHIFT+END
Extend the selection to the start of the current line SHIFT+HOME
Extend the selection down one page SHIFT+PAGE DOWN
Extend the selection up one page SHIFT+PAGE UP
Extend the selection to the end of the document CtrL+SHIFT+END
Extend the selection to the beginning of the document CtrL+SHIFT+HOME
Select all elements in the document CtrL+A

Editing

Description (Command) Key
Delete the selection or, if there is no selection, the character to the left of the insertion point BACKSPACE
Delete all of a word to the left of the insertion pointer, not including the space before CtrL+BACKSPACE
Copy the selection to the Clipboard CtrL+C
Paste the contents of the Clipboard to the current location CtrL+V
Cut the selection to the Clipboard CtrL+X
Delete the selection without placing it on the Clipboard DELETE
Toggle between inserting and overwriting text INSERT
Undo the most recent formatting commands CtrL+Z
Re-do the most recently undone commands CtrL+Y
Find text CtrL+F
Display the Hyperlink dialog box if the insertion point is within an <a> element CtrL+L
Toggle absolute positioning for the selected element CtrL+K

absolute positioning

A CSS feature that allows elements in a Web page to be positioned using style attributes that function like x and y coordinates. Using CSS styles, absolutely positioned elements also support a z-index that allows them to appear in front of or behind other elements on the page. Absolute positioning is a DHTML feature implemented through various style attributes.

Partially copyright ? 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Posted in Blog Navigator, Blogging, Web applications
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