ManiacD

I was talking to Darren Neimke in the Melbourne Qantas Lounge on Friday afternoon while waiting for my flight back to Brisbane about the coolness of the Shared Item feature in Google Reader for creating a Link Blog of interesting posts.

Some of the reasons why I like the Shared items Feeds or Link Blogs are

1. They allow you to see what the person you have subscribed to is interested in.
2. They are a great source of finding new blogs to subscribe too.
3. You can use Google Reader Trends to see what blogs you find the most interesting and use it weed out any blogs that you find are not relevant to you anymore.
4. It is so simple and easy to use

To create your own Link Blog is easy as it automatically set up if you are using Google Reader. To find the location of your Shared Item or Link blog is as easy as clicking on the “Shared items” on the top left hand menu.

The Yellow box at the top of the page as you can see shows the URL and RSS feed locations.

Adding items to your Shared Item Feed or Link blog is as simple clicking on the Share button at the bottom the post or if your a keyboard person using Shift+S.

Not shared

Shared

If you have a Shared Item Feed or Link Blog please leave a comment here with a link to it and the type of information you are likely to share so I can subscribe to it.

You can check out my Share Items or Link blog here at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/14406416809126036932 from which you can subscribe to RSS feed. I primarily share items about Software Development (.NET, SQL, Coding, etc.), Web 2.0, Tech News, Geek Stuff, etc.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Reader, Link Blog, Shared Items

The pictures say it all really.

Before

After

Technorati Tags: Hardware, Modem, Speedtest

Google Reader now has the ability to be able to read the last 2000 recent items offline with the release of the Google Gears Plug-in.

Now if only I owned a laptop I could use this to read my feeds to and from work.

Technorati tags: Google Reader, Google Gears

I just received an email from Joost™ tonight saying

We’d like to share some good news and celebrate the launch of the new Joost beta - Now For Friends. This means you can now invite as many friends as you want to try out Joost.

So if you are looking for an Joost™ invite leave me a comment and I’ll send you one.

Don’t know what Joost™ is? Check out the “What’s Joost” promotional video

What’s Joost, QuickTime (9.79 MB)

Technorati tags: Joost, TV, Invites

I’ve had a bit of a look since my last post on the whole setting the default window size for Windows Explorer in Vista and found that what is happening is that Vista saves the window size against the last folder displayed when you close Explorer.

You can test this out yourself by doing the following.

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Navigate to another directory
3. Change explorer’s window size then close the Explorer
4. Create a new shortcut on the desktop by using the following command
   • %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n, /e, <Insert the full path of the folder in step 2>
5. Double click on the shortcut and you will see it opens as the size it was closed.

To make matter worse there are 3 4 main ways of opening Windows Explorer that most people use and each has a different start directories.

1. Right Clicking or double clicking on My Computer
   • My Computer
2. Right Clicking on the Start Button (or Start ORB) and selecting Explore
   • C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
3. Running Windows Explorer shortcut from Start, Accessories
   • C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents
4. Windows Key + E
   • My Computer

So therefore to set Windows Explorer default window size in Vista you will need to do the following for each of the above ways of opening

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Set each window size to what you want
3. Close Explorer.

UPDATE: Added Item 4 “Windows Key + E”

Technorati tags: Vista, Tips, Explorer

Ever since I switched to Vista the one thing that really annoys me is that when windows explorer is run, either via the shortcut or from the right click, it would always default to this small window which I had to keep enlarging to the size I want and after closing it would default back to that small window the next time it opened. Unlike XP which re-opened explorer as the size it was when it was last closed.

So anyway I was doing a search on the net for something completely unrelated last week and I came across a forum post (can’t seem to find it now to link to) that mentioned in passing that holding down the shift key and clicking on the close button [X] would set the size of the current window to be the default size. So I gave it a go and what do you know it works and all my explorer windows now open as that size.

Sweet

UPDATE: Please see my later post on the steps to set the default window size

Technorati tags: Vista, Tips

If you read my blog by visiting it and not through a RSS reader you may have noticed that I have changed my blog address late last week to blog.maniacd.net instead maniacd.wordpress.com.

I’ve done this so that if in the future I decide to change blogging platform or host it myself it will make it an easier transition to the new location. So if you can you update any links you have pointing here to use the new domain address blog.maniacd.net that would be greatly appreciated.

Technorati tags: Blogging

This was my second time at Code Camp Oz and it was a great weekend as I caught up with some interstate friends and listened to some good presentations.  Now all I need to do now is to digest the information that was handed out and put it to some good use.

Here a couple of shots I took

Inside the Theatre

The lunch line for Pizza

Side shot of the lunch line

Wine tasting

Technorati tags: CodeCampOz

It’s 6.45am and I have my bags packed ready to call a cab and head out to the airport to catch my plane to Wagga Wagga via Sydney for Code Camp Oz 2007 being held at Charles Sturt University.

Code Camp Oz is a .NET developer community driven event which allows people with interests across the .NET platform to come together in one location and see speakers (including many expert presenters) present on a wide range of developer topics.

I went to it last year and it was a fantastic weekend!! I’m looking forward to catching up with some of my interstate friends while down there so if you are going I’ll see you there.  I’m taking my camera so I’ll see about posting some picks when I get back.

Technorati tags: CodeCampOz

Last week I finally was giving the go ahead to upgrade my Work PC from Windows XP Pro to Windows Vista Business. Everything went find with the install but it wasn’t until a couple of days ago I needed to open a .hlp file when I received this message.

Clicking on the “The Windows Help (WinHlp32.exe) program is no longer included with Windows operating systems starting with Windows Vista” link takes you to KB Article 917607.

In the article it says says that

The WinHlp32.exe technology is officially obsolete, starting with the Windows Vista release. The WinHlp32.exe technology will not be supported in its current form in future Windows releases.

The funny thing is that the 16bit version of Windows Help (Winhelp.exe) is included with Vista. You would have thought that it would have been the program not included.

The WinHelp.exe program is a version of Windows Help that is designed for 16-bit .hlp files. The WinHelp.exe program is included with Windows Vista.

One other thing to note is if you are creating .hlp files with your application

Also, third-party programs that include .hlp files are prohibited from redistributing the Windows Help program together with their products.

But you can can download WinHlp32.exe from the Microsoft Download Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82148.

Which is what I did and after installing the update I went back and tried to open the .hlp file. Now I received the following error message not just once but actually 6 times.

The reason being is that by default you can’t access .hlp files which reside on network shares. All that I needed to do was to add the following (DWORD32) key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WinHelp\AllowIntranetAccess = 1 to the registry.

Opening up the .hlp file from windows explorer works a treat but when I try to use the help file in a program to be able to jump straight to a topic the following error message pops up.

This is due by default macros are not enabled by default so to enable them I needed to go back into the registry to add the following (DWORD32) key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WinHelp\AllowProgrammaticMacros = 1.

So after all that I can now use my old offically obsolete 32bit Help files in Vista.

Technorati tags: Vista