Last week I deployed a small update to Geekswithblogs.net based on a blogger suggestion to get the last version of the Admin Blog Editor’s input control on the server so he could do some cool stuff he wanted to with syntax. I published that update and then fixed some of the annoying CSS issues we had on the server side to make it a little cleaner looking UI. I need to do more work for sure, but I fixed the majority of the issues. Another area I put some time into was the long standing request for ......
Seriously why do new bloggers insist on placing a test post with the word “test” as the entire body? This is just a weird concept to me. Please stop. No one wants to see you introduced to a community as “test”. Rather we would like to see you say, “Hi, this is my first post. My name is [Insert Name] and I am [Insert Interests and Bio]”. This is a blog community so why not try out a blog post for a test? Anyway, I am very sorry for the number of test posts we have been receiving lately. I will add ......
With the popularity of twitter growing, we wanted to enable users to have the possibility to have a shorter URL for posting. To complete the idea, we purchased http://wblo.gs and http://geekswithblo.gs, and you can selected which ever you prefer. Once the request is made it will be redirected to the page under that http://geekswithblogs.net domain, but it will shortcut the amount of characters needed. Here are some examples: http://wblo.gs/jjulian http://geekswithblo.gs http://wblo.gs/jalexander/r... ......
It looks like we have an issue with community-credit.com integration using Third-Party Metablog API tools. For now if you are a hard core CC blogger, try using the old approach of adding the post separately and using WLW or create your post from the admin section of your blog. As we really like the service CC offers, we will get a fix out for this issue in the next round of upgrades ......
I first need to start this post with a thank you to Lance Robinson for submit all the required work and the idea of a Geekswithblogs.net search provider. Now when you visit the Geekswithblogs.net Homepage, if you drop down your search providers list you will see a “Geekswithblogs” listing as well as a highlighted link to add the Geekswithblogs search provider to your browser. With this, you then can use the Geekswithblogs search for finding answers to the questions you have. Our search is powered ......
It looks like someone (probably search engine bots) were a little more excited with these servers than they were with the last and made over 10,000 requests in a minute, causing IIS to shut down. I up-ed the limit and am going to keep an eye on concurrent connections for awhile. If you see any issues with GWB, please
@jjulian message me on Twitter or email me at jjulian AT geekswithblogs.com. Thanks!!!!
Wow, that took a long time but it is finally ready. This morning I released the Geekswithblogs.net 3.0 will all the new features we could finish before PDC 2008. This is definitely not the end of 3.0 features, but it needed to get out the door. The first change you will notice is the GREEN MONSTER has been replaced. This theme has been in the works since the springtime as most of you with shirts know. Keep an eye on this blog and the tutorials section of the site throughout this week so you can learn ......
OK, I have heard you loud and clear, the comments suck in SubText and on Geekswithblogs.net. I agree, but I don't have near as many problems with people being able to comment as others do. This leads me to believe the problems lay in two places, the skins or the custom HTML code fields. Most of the time when I am debugging a blogger with comment problems they are due to some javascript they have embedded into the news section of their blog. However, this is a problem so we need to get it fixed so ......
After popular demand, we finally implemented "Read More" on the
Geekswithblogs.net homepage. If you have concerns or thanks, please let me know via comments. I think the homepage is definitely easier to navigate now.
We track statistics and demographics for Geekswithblogs.net using Google Analytics and I am very impressed with this product. However, due to the nature of our blog system, several bloggers want to track their information independently as well. To make this happen, I used a modification to the original Urchin code Google offered, but that recently quit working as they upgraded the codes they offer. So the upgrade of codes will most likely cause you to upgrade your code. Here are the steps to do it: ......
As part of an effort we are doing at AJI Software to better instruct our bloggers on how to use the software, we will be launching a series of Screencasts, using Camtasia Studio from TechSmith, to help with a few areas of site. The first screencast is on Tagging using Windows Live Writer and Geekswithblogs.net. If you experience difficulty with the audio making weird blips and beeps, check out this post from TechSmith. On my MacBook Pro, running Vista Business, I had to go back to revision 39 of ......
I wanted to let all the Geekswithblogs.net members who read my site (and readers as well) of some of the new features we have on our skins for the Twitter and Tag features released last week. If you integrate your Twitter account with your Geekswithblogs account, not only will you be part of a new Main Feed for Twitters, but your blog will show your 10 latest Twitters on the skin. Here is a view of what this looks like. Additionally, when you use the Tagging feature, a new Tag Cloud will show up ......
Recently Geekswithblogs.net turned 4 years of age and around the same time we reached 30,000 posts! This is awesome! Soon we will be at 1600 bloggers and the community keeps getting bigger and better. I look at the feed (constantly) and I am just amazed by the source code and information each blogger is adding to the community. I wonder if we could estimate the amount of hours and days that Geekswithblogs.net members have put into producing content. I am sure the number would scare us. On another ......
Get it while it is hot!!! Today Microsoft announced that Popfly, a mashup tool built on SilverLight 1.0, has been released for pubic beta consumption. During the HDC event that kicked off today, we recorded a show with Denny Boynton and Javier Lozano about the technology. Listen to the show and learn more about Popfly Here are some very useful links to use during the announcement to find out more information about Popfly and learn how you can interact with the product: http://slickthought.net http://blog.lozanotek.com ......
Thanks to the wonderful support team at FullControl.net, we are back up with all the missing images. Not sure what happened, but we resolved it with restoring backups of the images. Only 10 minutes lapsed from the time I alerted them to the problem to the time everything was back up. On a related note, if you need dedicated hosting with great uptime and very responsive hosting, check out FullControl.net. Chuck and the team are the best hosting providers I have worked with, and I have dealt with several. ......
If you are in the area of NE and you don't have your seat for the HDC 07, they just added 25 more seats. These seats are first come first serve and will only be available until Wednesday, so act fast if you want to go. Not only is this my favorite conference (3rd year in a row), but John, Jerod, and I will be there doing a lot of podcasting and you will have an opportunity to record your own show while you are there. Not an interview with John and I, but your very own show! Technorati tags: Heartland ......
One of my best friends since childhood, Justin Hall, has recently become famous with his build your own diet plan. He calls it the Chipotle Diet and he detail the plan here on Geekswithblogs.net. Check out his post and make sure you watch the video on FOX 4 in Kansas City. He has lost 43lbs to date so it is interesting to see what geeks can do when they put their mind to it. Technorati tags: Chipotle, Dieting, Justin Hall, Fox 4, Kansas City ......
With Windows Live Writer, there is no more need for Flickr, or hand rolling galleries to get pictures in your posts. If you have a post and you want to add a picture from your hard drive to it, just drag it on and publish. Metablogger and SubText will take care of the rest. Don't believe me? Check it out below: Brandon can't get away from computers ......
Tonight I had to do a few fixes to the performance of SubText and Geekswithblogs.net. The big fix is an addition of 6 skins and David Douglass can have his blog back (issue with .NetOnMyMind name) Thanks to SubtextSkins.com for keeping a list of the SubText skins and location to download. Here is a list of them. Back in Black Day Dreaming Dirtylicious Informatif Minty Terrafirma Some of them still need tweaking, but they have promise for the custom CSS guys out there. Technorati tags: Geekswithblogs.net, ......
This post will update my original post of configuring Geekswithblogs.net with Windows Live Writer (previously using .Text). In this version, I will discuss how to a SubText blog with Windows Live Writer to get the most out of writing blog posts. I can't emphasis enough that external blogging tools are important to your day-to-day blogging activity. Unlike browsers, these tools allow you to write, stop, and come back and write some more. You can leave the window open all day and just come back when ......
If you use Windows Live Writer on Geekswithblogs.net, you will need to update your settings. If you edit the settings on your blog, it will run through the wizard and should find that we are using SubText and autoconfigure your blog. That should be it. I will update the knowledge base article on how to set up your blog from scratch using Windows Live Writer soon. Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Geekswithblogs.net | Current Weight: 261.0 ......
We did it! It only took us 6 hours too. Dru, John, and Myself have been busting some tail to get this migration completed before everyone wakes up. However, we do know of some bugs, including the skin needing some tweaking. Those will get fixed in due time. Here are some pictures from tonight, enjoy. I am in the top right corner. If you think I need to shave, that is because I spent 3 hours sleeping on the floor of our office last night and have been here working since Thursday morning at 6:00am. ......
Wow, why did I decide to deploy on Friday the 13th? Anyway, do you want a sneak peak at Geekswithblogs under SubText? Here it is!!! http://beta.geekswithblogs.com Check it out. The emails are wired up so if you test comments, do it amongst friends or your own blog. Let me know if you find any issues at support@geekswithblogs.com. We are really excited to get this project launched tonight at 7PM CST ......
Take a good last look at Geekswithblogs.net on .Text because tomorrow night, we are doing a major upgrade to SubText 1.9.4. This upgrade will most likely take 4 to 5 hours to ensure the software is converted and stable. I really want to thank Dru and the SubText team for all their work with us during this process. After quite a bit of testing, we have very high confidence in this product and the migration should be seamless. ** IMPORTANT ** If you find any issues with the site after the upgrade, ......
Well, Rob Foster, Murray Gordon, John Alexander, and Myself have all been working on competitive SharePoint 2007 books this past Fall/Winter and they are all being published around the same time. Personally I would suggest purchasing MINE first, but then definitely support the other guys. Honestly, these guys are my friends and I communicate with them frequently so I hope their books sell well. Rob and I have vented to each other via IM about SharePoint when we ran into issues serveral times. Hopefully ......
*** Request For Participation *** As we are pushing the next version of Geekswithblogs.net closer to the door, I was wondering what features you would like to see on the main page of a community blog site? I have some ideas (including the removal of the green monster) but I would like to get your opinions on the topic. What I would like to see is a "portal"-style homepage that would allow readers to register with the site and customize what they would like to see. Also, since ASP.NET 2.0 has a great ......
Dru Sellers, one of our faithful bloggers, is working for AJI Software on the conversion to SubText again. We had to pull him away for a few months as he was working on a client project, but he is now dedicated to adding the features we need to SubText for a smooth migration with current functionality. Everyone wish Dru luck during the long days and nights he is pulling to get this site updated as soon as we can. One of the items I would like to change near the launch of the site is a new look and ......
I can not attend CodeMash myself this year, but when I got wind that Josh Holmes will shave his head if they receive 500 posts about CodeMash, I had to participate. The reason is simple, Josh would look funny with a shaved head. Not just funny, but hilarious (and it is a good event). Why do I want Josh to look funny you might ask? We at TechEd 2005 in Orlando, Drew Robbins (Microsoft's Dancing DE) and I decided to have a private competition of Dance Dance Revolution. Well Josh and his video camera ......
...here are my answers anyway. I think it is a fun topic. [Update: Or maybe I just can't read well...Chris Haaker (can't believe he isn't an MVP yet) tagged me last year and I just didn't see it.] Geekswithblogs.net was created because I was kicked off of dotnetweblogs.com (A.K.A weblogs.asp.net). The back story was, a few of us were discussing the differences between VB and C# and we can just say the conversation started to get heated. Toward the end of the conversation, Cory Smith and I were the ......
I have found a great new hobby, disc golf. Here are my Top 5 Reasons why more geeks should start playing: Disc are only $10-$15 and can be found at your local sporting goods stores or Disc Golf Online Stores. Courses are FREE!!! You just walk on and start playing Shorter courses, like Executive Golf Courses, can be found offering a great lunch break. Wow, what a workout! (hint hint D'Arcy) I am in pain from playing yesterday. Great sport that everyone on your team can enjoy. Maybe if we can start ......
With John and my contribution to an upcoming book (more detail later) and client load for Alexander & Julian Inc., we have been very busy lately. Tonight, I am hoping with the hosting update we will be doing will help stabilize the site and get us back into high performance. The new support system we launched on Geekswithblogs.net has been pretty successful, but not everyone is using it yet. If you have any problems with the site or content of the site, please email support@geekswithblogs.com ......
Man these servers are smoking fast! If you are experiencing any problems with the site or just want to tell me if it is fast or not, email support@geekswithblogs.com. The move went very smoothly and SQL Backup from Red-Gate Software is awesome! Technorati Tags: Geekswithblogs,Servers ......
I have confirmation that we will be able to move the sites tonight.
Due to a scheduling conflict, tonight did not work for the move. I am as disappointed as you as I am still in the office waiting on the hosting provider. Hopefully we will get this thing going by this weekend.
Whenever you guys need support, typically you dig around for my email or using the Alexander & Julian Inc. site to contact us. Well this is hard for you and hard for us to manage. For that we now have support@geekswithblogs.com and a support tool suite to help us manage this process. Please use this email for any issues or questions you may have about the site. support@geekswithblogs.com ......
I will be taking the site down tomorrow at 8PM CST for most likely 4 hours to transfer files from one farm of servers to another. The majority of the leg work has been done, now we just have to move files. The new servers are loud, and fast....raaaaaaaaaaaaa.....but they don't sound good because they are free, because that they are not. (Capital One Commercial Reference) It is very cool to see 4 graphs on the web servers for processors, makes me drool. SITE DOWN THURSDAY OCTOBER 12, 2006 - 8PM-12AM ......
Such a wonderful smell isn't it?
I am now in the configuration process to get the boxes up, but we are probably looking at a move tomorrow evening so the site will be down. I will confirm that however before I do the transfer.
P.S. Dual Core Xeons are amazing!
The new servers will be hosted at FullControl Networks here in Kansas City. Currently they are being setup by their staff and should be available for me to configure soon. Yesterday I visited their facility here in KC and I must say I am very impressed. They have everything you would want in a hosting company and they are local for us. Something comforting about knowing your sites are hosted just a few miles from where you are. If you are in the market for dedicated hosting, I would highly suggest ......
DiscountASP.NET has been amazing to us. The hosting is excellent and we can't be happier with their service. That said, our site has outgrown what they have offered us as the original solution. Since they do not provide dedicated services, we will be moving the site to another hosting firm that does. This means more power and more control for us. I haven't finalized the server configuration and purchase yet, but it should happen within the next 48-60 hours. We will then announce a date and time the ......
Wow, it is hard to believe it has been three years as a real community. Sunday marks the three year anniversary of the site as a community, not just my blog. I had written a blog engine that worked for my own, but after a few months of trying to build the admin tooling, I contacted Scott and got this site working with .Text. Hard to believe it is still running the same engine, with a few tweaks. That said, we really need to move into the future. We have started designing the strategy of GWB 2.0, ......
Today our hosting company had an outage. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I added OPML this morning to My.Geekswithblogs.net Alpha I have been working on. http://my.geekswithblogs.ne... Next step, I want to add a few of you to this testing, if you are interested, send me a quick email with the bloggers you want in your feed and will try to get you setup for testing. ......
If you visit the main page of Geekswithblogs.net, you will notice the del.icio.us, digg, and reddit link at the bottom of each post. This is a quick feature I added and plan to add to the feeds and blogger sites. Do everyone like this? What other sites do you use like this?
At the South Carolina Code Camp, John and Dru interviewed Chris Williams and Doug Turnure and discussed what it took to organize the event. If you are thinking of doing a Code Camp in your area, or want to learn from the experience of any tech events, this is a good listen for you.
MP3: http://download.podcaststudio.net/18.mp3
Geekswithblogs.net starts going Deadlock crazy. Sorry guys, I am working on the problem now and I hope this will fix these issues permanently. Bare with me this morning if you see the site go up and down.
When I heard D'Arcy received the ubur Mac today, I just kept thinking of this video. This video does have some bad language so be warned: Today I was suppose to take out my old macs to a gun range (field) and go to town with a shotgun and glock, but bad weather stopped that. Maybe next time I am at my inlaws we can do it again and I will have a nice video for the mac users to cry about ......
We just need a few more signatures on the charter and we will have the guild ready to go. A few Microsoft people are joining as well, this is what helped us get over the hump. If you want to join, I will be online tonight after 7pm CST and whisper me with your location and we will find a place to get your signature.
[Update: My characters name on Duskwood is Darthnode]
Here is the list of all the podcasts were recorded in the car on the way to and from the South Carolina Code Camp: Day 4: Thank you for your messages (Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:41:09 GMT) Day 4: The Casualty (Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:02:40 GMT) Day 4: A Stop at Dave Ramsey's offices (Sun, 17 Sep 2006 12:55:13 GMT) Day 4: Saying Goodbye to John (Sun, 17 Sep 2006 12:40:40 GMT) Day 4: Back Back Seat Podcast (Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:32:56 GMT) Post Code Camp Interview (Sun, 17 Sep 2006 09:26:15 GMT) Reality Check Podcast ......
A year ago, if you told me I would listen to only News Radio from 5am to 5pm, I would tell you that you are smoking crack. I couldn't comprehend how in the 00's, people would still listen to AM radio. Well then I started listening to the Dave Ramsey Show on XM because on a project with 5 people in one room, it is hard to compromise on music, so it worked. Well early this year, John insisted we listen to Laura Ingraham, who I personally don't like but I started getting into the concepts of news radio. ......
Well I guess it is time to finally try Internet Explorer 7 again. With this release being a release candidate, I feel more comfortable installing it ON A VPC! Beta 3 destroyed my machine! During the installation of Beta 3, something messed up seriously. I tried reinstalling but no go. I tried uninstalling, but no go. I tried installing 6.0 again, but no go. So then I had to try rebuilding the machine, and that worked. I will be evaluating the Geekswithblogs.net templates and administration utility ......
I created a new wiki topic today for publishing events your are hosting, speaking at, or attending. This will let other members know who will be at these events from this site.
If you haven't checked out the wiki yet, I would highly suggest it.
[Update] - This is post number 400 for me!
Now that editing a post is possible with Third-Party blogging tools, I thought I would write my views on editing a post. If you don't use and aggregator, then you probably aren't aware of what happens when you update a post. The majority of aggregators will add that item as a new post and if you don't highlight the updated portion, it may irritate readers. I know it irritates me. If you must edit, do it as quick as possible from the time you publish. If you think you will update a post when writing, ......
We have two major problems with Geekswithblogs.net, well more but these are short time development problems I can fix quick. Here are the problems I hope to have fixed tomorrow. MainFeed flakes with Pheedo link Casting error when editing using MetaBlog API (Live Writer) These problems should be easy to fix and I should have them ready for tomorrow morning. If you have other site issues, use the Site Problems wiki page to publish your issues. [Update] Edit with MetaBlog API (Live Writer) will work ......
I am getting signitures for the guild tonight so if you are online, ping Darthnode and I will get to you somehow. Please be in a level 25 safe place.
After the event Tuesday at the .NET User Group of Kansas City, Tim and I convinced Dru Sellers to attend the drive to the South Carolina Code Camp. He will be attending sessions and helping us with PodcastStudio.net and a soon to be added feature I hope you all will enjoy. We are picking up some new equipment today to help us along with these features we are adding and are recommiting to the project now that Alexander & Julian Inc. is running full speed and we have Joseph to help with recording ......
Since Live Writer (Beta) was published, I have noticed the main feed is more colorful and full of images. I definitely love the new step-by-step approach many of us have started to take in our posts, so keep it up!
Ok, so we all know that this site used .Text still. We haven't converted to CS and we are now looking into the design of the next version (I know you have heard that before, but we have our developer now). This may cause you guys some headaches when it comes to publishing photos using Microsoft Live Writer (Beta), but here is the solution. Flickr4Writer! As I did yesterday, let's walk through the steps needed to setup and use this tool with Live Writer. I would like to thank the authors of this project ......
Live Writer is another great tool for posting blogs offline. I used to use w.bloggar, but the site is down and who knows what is going on with the writer. Configuring Live Writer is very easy to do, here are the steps you need to take to configure it with Geekswithblogs.net. (Sorry for the long post, but people are asking for this). Start the Installation File: Agree to the terms (or don't install and stop reading): Decide if you want the toolbar, you can see my decision here: Go to Start, Programs, ......
Today is the first day of employment for Joseph Calhoon, who will be dedicated to working on Geekswithblogs.net. His first task with be designing some new skins for the site, since the ones we have a pretty old and bad. After that, he starts working with us on the new blog engine we will use for GWB 2.0. I am sure he will blog today so join me in welcoming him to the community ......
Looks like we had some outages last night due to traffic, we are looking at the logs to determine if this is a one off or if we need to start throwing servers are the site.
Another big mile marker on Geekswithblogs.net with 18,000 posts! Thanks to everyone who helped make this community successful!
Running a consulting practice and maintaining this site is very difficult to do even with two people. We need new skins, some features, and a new blogging engine to be coded based on what I have designed for the next generation GWB, but I just don't have the time. So what are we going to do? Sell the site to another large publisher? I think not! Instead, we are adding employee #2 (I like to claim I am #0 like Jobs) to work on these tasks as well as some others. Today we will be sending our offer ......
We still have a bunch of stickers left so send your address to us if you want one (or two) (don't worry we don't sell it to spammers) and we will flip you a sticker as quick as possible. If you are not in America, don't worry, send your address as well. John and I ordered some 3 footers for our cars, seen here in horrible camera phone photo, but we only have 8in white ones left for your cars if you want one of those too ......
TodayIStartedTheGwbWiki.... Oops! Today I started the GWB Wiki several of you asked about a few weeks ago. This wiki is almost straight out of the box so we can work with it to find what direction you guys would like to take it. I plan to add some help pages on getting started with GeeksWithBlogs and some history of the site, but you guys can go where you want with it. http://wiki.geekswithblogs.... ......
...and the evals are there to prove it. About 90% of the attendees gave him all 5s and there were several comments like "best user group presenter I have seen". This isn't good for me since I have spoken several times for the UG, but Miguel is a very polished presenter and he knows how to relate the materials he has produced to all types in the audience. The presentation covered Server Controls and even with 4 people in the audience of 40 raising their hands when Miguel asked the question of who ......
Saturday 8:30PM CST - This past week I was in Vegas with a client demoing some products we have been working on and the show went great. Saturday night the show wrapped up and we were planning a night of fun with some gambling. I cracked open my first beer sitting is a very nice suite at the Wynn and my phone started ringing. I noticed it was my wife so I thought it was our normal evening call we have when I am out of town. I answered and I could immediately tell from the sound of her voice something ......
Hey everyone, long time since I have posted, but things have been a little crazy. The good news is the stickers are back!!! We ordered a 100 this time to cover demand so if you want to get one of these let me know what color (black or white) and your address. Send them to this address, and I will get them mailed shortly.
This is from the anonymous "El Stevo" via my blog post about the game contest results. Er, I don't get it. Is this some kind of joke? Bob The Fish is just bad. I don't care what the code is like, the finished product is very very amateurish. It's just a collection of poorly made clones of old games that have been done (better) a million times before. How on earth could you say it had great gameplay? I've only played one other of the entries, but it was far superior to Bob. If I were one of the other ......
Congratulations is in order for George Clingerman who produced Bob The Fish and ultimately winning the Geekswithblogs.net Game Design Contest. George's game had great game play and the code is of very high quality. Congrats George and your XBox will be sent out shortly. However, this was the hardest contest I have ever judged. John and I split the judging up into different categories we were both having a tough time picking a winner. These games are awesome! Aside from George, John and I want to ......
John and I have bought the rights to a guild we are forming on Duskwood for Geekswithblogs members who play WoW. My character is Darthnode so ping me if you are interesting in joining.
As John Stated.... Midnight Tonight CST is the deadline for the GeeksWithBlogs Game Design Challenge. Who will win?? Time is ticking... CONTESTANTS: Make sure if you haven't already done so, send an email to gamecontest@geekswithblogs.net so we can get you a ftp site to up load your entries! Good luck to all ......
I just wanted to post a friendly reminder that the game contest ends next Friday! All submissions must be received by 11:59pm on Friday Evening Central Standard Time. Email your game in a zip file to gamecontest@geekswithblogs.net and we will start judging the next week. Good Luck!
We have 1 sticker left, who wants it?
[Update - All Gone, we will print up some more soon]
After TechEd we have 13 stickers left for you guys to have. If you want a sticker, send me your mailing address and blog url to jeff@techliteracy.net and I will get them mailed out. Here is the current list of bloggers I have stickers mailing to, so if you aren't on the list, email me your mailing address quickly. We plan to print more soon, but this first batch will go quickly. Chris Haaker Tim Hibbard Jason Olson David Christiansen Chris Williams ......
Tim Hibbard is coming into the GWB HQ today to talk about our usage of Team System and hopefully to tag his laptop and car with GWB stickers. He should be leaving soon so if you want to track his progress, watch the Where's Tim site. Tim will be the first visitor of our office after the move a few weeks back. We were in a 12x14 room with 10 machines booted up, so the average temperature was 78F. Not to comfortable. Since we had everything on wheels, we upgraded our lease and moved everything down ......
Geekswithblogs Members at TechED Boston, we are tagging laptops today in the Regional Directors booth through out the day so come by and we will get you tagged. The booth is located in the TLC area in the right corner near the company store (lower level)...
Update - COME BY HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With a bag full of stickers, I decided to Tag my XTerra tonight.
TechEd 2006 Boston is NEXT WEEK!!! John and I will be arriving Saturday afternoon for a week of TechEdBloggers.net Aggregation, which means we will read over 1000 posts each in one day and pick out quotes from the ones relevent to the event. We have started a blog called Editors' Thoughts to let everyone in on what it takes to maintain the TechEdBloggers.net site during the week of TechEd. We will also post helpful tips to get your post on the site fastest and to help drive readership based on those ......
Scott Miller, one of our GWB bloggers since August of 2005, has joined the competition with the graphics help of his daughter. This is definitely one of the coolest events of this contest because I really think for us software developers, designing code with our kids involved let them know more about what we do and how the process works. My son is only 15 months so I have not been able to put my theory into practice, but John and his son Nathaniel write software together and he seems to love it! ......
Jason starts his game and talks about the Express Products: "My renewed impressions of Visual C# Express? After being used to using Visual Studio 2005, it is truly striking just how much of the same functionality the Express Editions truly have. So far, I have yet to truly miss a single feature. With the work that Jamie Cansdale has done getting the TestDriven.NET add-in working with the Express Editions, I have nearly everything I need." Now that we have started the contest, here is a list of the ......
Yeeeehaaaaaaaaa(thanks Howard Dean)..... GeeksWithBlogs has reached the 1,000 blogger mark! This is great news. I know most of these guys have stop posting regularly, but to know that we have over 15,000 post here is amazing. For you members, thanks for being part of this community and I can't wait til we can announce 2,000 bloggers.
I have heard this question a lot since announcing the contest so I thought I would clear up the reasons. Here is a list of reasons why we are picking Express: We are working with Microsoft to promote Express (Big one) The contest is about the game, but also blogging your experiences with .NET 2.0 and Express (Bigger One) Everyone who wants to see the code and compile the game entries can download Express for Free!!!! (Biggest One) Does.... Express run side-by-side with other versions of Visual Studio ......
I forgot to tell everyone when the contest ends! June 30th will be the last submission date for the game contest. On a side note, if you are like me and think a game is going to take forever to write and you just don't have the time, I have to let you know that it is easier than you think. With the huge amounts of resources available, it is very easy to find solutions to your problems. When I .NETified Escapa, definitely an addictive game, it took me 6 hours to port the logic and most of that time ......
Ever wanted to try your hand at Game Development? Been itching to play with .NET 2.0 but needed motivation to get started? Then you need to take the Exclusive GeeksWithBlogs Game Design Challenge!!! *** Only open to GeeksWithBlogs members!!! *** (Note: It's really easy to become a GWB member... Click Here) What do I need to do? Check out the game we recreated using Visual Studio Express called Escapa Download the free Visual Studio Express HERE (Doing this also gets you signed up for the Upgrade ......
Last year we had an adhoc GWB meeting at TechEd that was a little less than successful. This year I want to organize a meetup before the event and try to get everyone together in Boston for a meet-n-greet. Many of us know each other through our blogs, IM, and email but very few of us have ever met in person. Let's change that and try to make it a reoccuring event at major Microsoft events. If you are going to be at TechEd 2006 in Boston and are a member of Geekswithblogs.net, then send a email to ......
Wow, 900+ members! We are so close to the 1000 marker. I want to thank all our members and encourage you to bring your friends into the blogging world and have them join our community. As we keep growing, the content is getting better and better. I love the mix of IT Pro and Developer we are getting because we all wear different hats and it is great to keep up on both sides of the wall. Entrepreneurs with blogs is taking off pretty slowly like Geeks with blogs did, but I can see a benefit to that ......
Inside of my consulting firm announcement yesterday, I discussed us launching Entrepreneurs With Blogs. As a small business owner myself now, I know there is a definite need for a site like Geeks With Blogs in this area. Running a business is hard. If you have done it before, I am sure you can agree. One of the big issues is an understanding of what you have to do to make sure you are paying your taxes correctly. Another issue is marketing your firm. All of these problems can be discussed in a forum ......
One thing I have been seeing more of on Geekswithblogs.net is a number of extremely large posts. By extremely large, I am talking 2 pages or more. This does frustrate community readers and your own blog readers because you can't always get the description without reading too much. There is hope however. Inside the system, we have entry types called Articles. This is where I like to send people after large post because they are technically articles at that time. So the preferred method of posting ......
Last night, John and I had sushi with Scoble and had a great conversation. The dinner took place right in the middle of his brrreeeport experiment, which is a word he made up and was not on Google or MSN to see how quick the engines (Technorati, Google, etc.) would pick up on it. Living in the midwest we don't have the best sushi, so anytime I can get to the west coast, I have to go get some. This was my first experience at "I Love Sushi” in Bellevue and I have to say it was very good. Tags: ......
Tonight we will have Tim Hibbard, from the "Where's Tim" fame, on the show talking about GPS software and where he sees his technology going. Tim has been a Geekswithblogs member for awhile as well as a great local resource to the Kansas City .NET User Group. I hope to have the show editted and published tonight ......
Episode 14 finds us in a great discussion with Billy Hollis on smart clients and Visual Studio 2005!! We talk about some simple and complex scenarios, the state of data binding and some useful tips and patterns. This wouldn't be complete without ending with some thoughts on how WinFx (Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation) fits in moving forward. MP3: http://www.podcaststudio.ne... ......
If you are subscribed to this feed, you have probably noticed the duplicate post in your aggregator when it updates (but not every time). This was a problem with .Text caching the host and since we have more than one (www.geekswithblogs.net, geekswithblogs.net, and blogs.ineta.org), it became a problem. I have placed a correction to this on the server, but need you to let me know if it solved on your machine. This will probably take a few days to funnel up, but I hope what I have done fixes the issue. ......
We reached the 700 member mark on Geeks With Blogs. That is awesome!!! Thanks to everyone who has joined and made this community so successful.
After some time of living with the logout issue in .Text and after the nth bug submittion from new bloggers, I decided to fix the issue. If you still see the problem, please report it. Now back to building the new system.
Hey everyone, we are 2 years old!!!
Check out what we looked like when we started:
Internet Archive
It has been some time since this was posted, but I have to say this is one of the coolest wallpapers I have ever seen. If you are a Geekswithblogs member, you should definitely place this as your wallpaper! Thanks a lot David! Links to the available full resolutions: 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 ......
Last week we did the Introduction to Blogging - IT Pro Perspective on TechNet Webcast and it went over very well. Today we are doing the Introduction to Blogging - Developer Perspective for MSDN Webcasts at 11AM PST. Go register and join in the fun. The session is very interactive and is driven by a conversation between John, Robert, and myself covering topics like What is Blogging?, Aggregation 101, Communities, and Corporate blogging. If you have any questions during the presentation, feel free ......
Well I have grown tired of the way the main page looks on Geekswithblogs.net. So over the weekend, I have been working on a new design and I like what I have came up with. Green is my favorite color, and after you look at the site, you will probably realize that. Let me know what you think, because the design is definitely not RTM, consider this a CTP. Might be too much green though, let me know if you think the items should be white like the advertisement in the left corner. Update... I went ahead ......
We just finished Podcast Studio Show #3 with Steve Loethen and also release a new blog for the show. With the telephone hybrid we are using, we don't have the ability to adjust the volume of the caller directly, so John and I will be working with the Mackie recording setup using independent channels instead the full stream out of the mixer. Along with that, we will be rewiring the connections to place the caller inline with the microphones to give them a separate channel. If levels are lower than ......
If you are interested in being interviewed for PodcastStudio.net, don't forget to email podcast@geekswithblogs.net. However, to make the show audio quality go up, we do suggest you get a good headset phone, like this Plantronics one, or a good computer headset and we can use Skype for the show. This will give you the ability to adjust your volume and free your hands from holding the phone for 30 minutes. There are also several phone systems that have headset jacks if you don't like the all-in-one ......
Thursday June 9th, at 2:45pm, John and I will be holding a quick meetup of Geekswithblogs.net members outside the Registration Booth. If you are at the event, please join us so we can meet each other and talk through some of the direction Strategery will be taking us this summer. We want to get your feedback on our ideas as well as meet each of you and thank you for your contribution. P.S. Jason Olson, you are invited :D ......
Our community reached 300+ bloggers which is extremely exciting. During TechEd, we will be making a big push to bring more on, but I want to thank all the new and old members for the quality of content we have had on the site lately. If you have some friends that want to get started, please invite them to join or if you are attending TechEd and are reading this, but don't have a blog, join today and sign up for TechEd Bloggers once you have been approved ......
Geekswithblogs.net was down for some amount of time due to network issues at our hosting provider last night, than after they rebooted the machine, the date was set to 2002 and threw caching issues this morning. These errors should be fixed and everything is back to normal. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Well if you listened to Podcast Studio Show #2, you might have noticed the poor audio quality. Chris takes some credit with the phone he was using, but a lot of it was due to the setup we had with the Yamaha Mixer and Sound Blaster Input Device. First, for a sub-$100 mixer, the Yahama is great for only studio recording. So if you want to start podcasting, or need a small mixer to travel with to events, this is a good choice. On the other hand, the Sound Blaster Extigy we were using said it was 24bit, ......
In this episode, we talk with Jason Olson and Chris Williams about the Portland Code Camp, Microsoft Meltdown, and Game Development. The sound from the phone is quite low, but we are replacing the problem immediately. Headphones or iTunes should be used to get the best sound. File: http://www.podcaststudio.ne... Feed: http://feeds.geekswithblogs... ......
John and I have launched the PodcastStudio.net Show!! To find out more about the show, listen to the first episode. Our next two episode will be coming soon. http://www.podcaststudio.ne... ......
Well you have probably guessed by the title that DiscountASP.NET is our hosting sponsor for the site. They have been very generous to John and I with the equipment we have dedicated to the site and are now offering a great deal for our members and readers. If you sign up for a annual hosting plan with them, THEY WILL GIVE YOU 6 MONTHS FREE. Visit the site for more details, but this is a great deal. Also, look into their ASP.NET 2.0 Beta 2 hosting details for those of you interested in jumping into ......
We recorded out first show yesterday and will be releasing it very soon. I am putting the final touches on out new feed system for the podcast show. We are using ASP.NET 2.0 and I am loving it. Here are some photos of our equipment and setup. Welcome to our podcast studio for PodcastStudio.net. John Alexander's view where he does the recording and editing of the shows. Jeff Julian's view where he makes sure all the levels are ok, plays the intro and outro music, and connects the callers. JK Audio ......
Our new server is up and running. Everything is moved and running smoothly. Thanks for your patience during the down time we had tonight.
We have successfully moved the web site to our dedicated server, but we have one more thing to move. If you notice some issues with logging in or other quirky things, please email me at jjulian@geekswithblogs.net and let me know. Thanks and man, we are getting a lot of hits. I will share the data with you as soon and I compile it. UPDATE: We are moving one more this tonight at 8PM CST to 8:30PM CST. The site will be down during this time and this should be the last thing ......
GWB Users,
Tonight we will start the moving process and will be down for 30 minutes at 10pm CST. This should be the only outage we experience during the move.
Due to traffic and load, Geekswithblogs.net will be moving to a dedicated server for the site. We have truely enjoyed the experience with INETA and are very thankful for them hosting us during our initial growth period. This move will take place later this month, but I wanted to give you a heads up. A formal announcement will be made before the move letting you know more details. Also, shortly after the move we will launch some new components for the system ......
If you are at TechEd and a Geekswithblogs.net member, please join us in front of Registration at 2:45 today for a quick hello to the members of this site.
After John and I recorded a Podcast yesterday with the Podcast Team at TechEd, we found out they only have an RSS feed for their videos, no site. As many of us bloggers know, people like to view post outside of an aggregator as well. So I created a list of the Podcast that you can view from your Media Player without using a Podcast Aggregator. So check it out and watch for John and my Podcast soon. http://strategery.geekswith... ......
First off, I am sorry I pulled Jason to the front of the class with my previous entry; I was just trying to make a point. As far as the main feed goes, this has been under review for some time because we know a lot of good information comes out of this site and feel it could be filtered better than we have done with one feed. We still want to offer the non-”Greatest Hits” feed, so you will still be able to get all the content from this community, but with our growth into other realms ......
Jason so graciously demonstrated yesterday why a main feed like ours must be monitored before users can view it. We all have great post, but every once in awhile, bloggers go off on a tangent or “test in production”. These post cause us to lose readers. Because of this, my next tool for Strategery is to redesign the mainfeed by monitoring post before they reach the global user. This will not effect your individual readers, so you don't have to worry about that. With registration going ......
Before, as many .Text community owners know, to add users to .Text you could either use a Console application or Query Analyzer. The Console application was just a pain for me to use so every time a blogger made a request to become part of the community, I was in SQL then manually creating an email welcoming them with their username and password. This process was very time consuming and frustrating. However, with the new Strategery application we are working on, I have released the registration module ......
As this community keeps growing as rapidly as it has been, we decided to create an blogger registration form and an administration process for creating new users. Before it was a completely manual process and I generated all the welcome emails. This new system will allow us to add users more rapidly and spells out the guidelines of become a “Geek with a blog”. So tell your friends and co-workers to visit the site and register ......
Let me know if you guys have any problems using this. I hope it helps out.
Lately Geekswithblogs.net has been getting more comment spam than normal. If you go to “Advanced Options” on the posts that are getting a lot of spam and uncheck Allow Comments, this will solve some of the problem. Lately, spam has been come through trackbacks so I am fighting it on the data end to help lighten the load. Please be patient with us and keep your ear to the ground for something new coming later this summer.
Since Geekswithblogs uses .Text, it is only proper that if we want to upgrade, we have to use Community Server. I don't like the idea of forums for this site, but Galleries and Blogs are a good fit. Since we have a lot of changes to worry about, I aim working on our version on a separate site, http://www.julian-family.com. This site for my family where I will have blogs and galleries. Once I make all the changes to Community Server we need, I hope to release it to GWB. This is going to take time ......
Last week/weekend John and I were in Redmond for a summit. There, we met up with fellow Geekswithblogs blogger, Jay Glynn. We did several Podcast and are now editing them and preparing for the launch of our system. Here is a picture of Neil, Jay, John, and Jeff of Geekswithblogs.net. On Saturday we decided to jump in our Expedition we rented and drive down to see Mount Rainier. Little did we know, the largest mountain in the continental United States would be the hardest thing to see from up close. ......
Last night we received 1000+ comment spams from the same group, so I went through and deleted all of them. CS came out today so I will be looking at a launch sometime in the next few weeks.
Dear Jemimus, Not so easy! Since this is one of the largest .Text multi-blog site, it is pretty well assumed I have a very customized version of .Text to fit the needs of a site that gets 4.5 million hits a month. This includes HTTP compression on your feeds, subdomain access to your domain (http://jemimus.geekswithbl... and blogs.ineta.org. You solution assumes I have not made a single change to an open source project that hasn't seen an updated drop since January. Well that would be incorrect ......
I added the Lux-Dark and Lux-Light .Text Skins today for members of Geekswithblogs.net. Enjoy.
I met Jason Olson last night at the Portland .Nerd Dinner. This was the first time I have met a GWB.net blogger that I didn't know before they started blogging. It's definitely weird to see a personality in a blog and this put a real-time conversation in-person with blogger. I am going to name this concept "Handshakecasting", where you actually meet in person and then syndicate thoughts. Any takers?
Alright, no one said that, but they should be. You might have noticed the flaky galleries after the move to
INETA.org servers. It is caused by redundant servers without redundant uploads. So in other words, you unload an image and only one of our servers has it. I hope we can find a solutions soon, but if you know of some good file replication software or how to use the existing stuff with W2K3, please contact me.
I started Geekswithblogs.net as an alternative to weblogs.asp.net. We would promote Geekiness which is 50% technical / 50% personal. The service is free and has been pretty successful. However, lately the blog request I have been getting are rude and demanding. An example from ONE REQUEST is "Hence I request you to provide me a blog here" and "expecting a fast and positive reply". Now come on. This is a free service, but I am not your bitch. I suggest to individuals who want to request something ......
Back when geekswithblogs.net was my own personal blogging system :D, I used jjulian.geekswithblogs.net as my blog's home. Well when I decided to move over to .Text I lost this sub-domain functionally but have always wanted it back. Well now we do. If you are a blogger on geekswithblogs.net, you can now reference your blog with "your-blog-name.geekswithbl... and it will redirect it to "geekswithblogs.net/your-bl... Pretty cool, eh? So now all the old links that pointed to my original RSS ......
We seem to be having some issues today with the redundant servers and this site. It will be fixed real soon, but I wanted to announce this before Colin does.
Update: We should be GO again, moves us back to DEFCON 4.
Today,
Devin Rader and I are moving this beloved site to the
INETA.org servers. Cross your fingers and hope everything goes successfully.
I just pushed a new skin for
Geekswithblogs so tell me what you think. This is about the extent of my graphics skills so don't be too harsh.
I finally got around to fixing the issue with the SMTP server used on Geekswithblogs.net. Sorry about the delay, but it should be fine now.
Thanks to the excellent people at INETA, we are moving Geekswithblogs.net to a better place, not that Webhost4life is bad. Tonight we are doing the db, then the site. If I lose a post or a comment, I am sorry. I will keep you up-to-date will more details.
Sorry if you experienced an outage today, something was going on at Webhost4life. In the following weeks, we will be doing the transfer to INETA, so we should have better performance and a larger amount of uptime.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone updates an item of an RSS feed. I understand if it is really necessary, like a fundamental problem with the sample or your information, but if it is a spelling error or something very small, LEAVE IT ALONE! Most news aggregators will announce an edited item as new. If you didn't know this or edit your items whenever, I suggest subscribing to your own feed and set the interval to 10-15 minutes. That way you can feel the pain you are inflicting on everyone ......
Ouch, since when did the Hotmail mentality of advertising host at the bottom of an email reach blogs? I have recently seen “This Blog is hosted by:” around blogdom and didn't like it much. I don't know why communities much reach out this way. Doesn't the domain name kind of give that away? Anyway, I just want to reassure the bloggers here that this won't happen. I don't feel this sort of marketing will make our community grow anymore than it has. You kind of have to go to Geekswithblogs.net ......
After some testing (thanks DonXML), I feel the syndication compression for .Text is ready. However, if you have any issues, please email me at jjulian2@mac.com. I have included the source, binaries, and compiled changes from the latest release of .Text. I have been very impressed with the HttpCompressionModule integrated into .Text. My bandwidth is down even though the hits are up. As always, please backup your binaries and config before upgrading. With out further ado, here it is. http://www.geekswithblogs.n... ......
Dude, I'm getting a Dell :D Actually a Dell Insprion 8600, and it's about time. Some of you may remember my run in with my backpack and laptop with the wireless card hanging off the side. Running in and out of sessions, I just put it in the wrong way and crack, no more wireless card. Since then I have went through another with the same results. This one has integrated wireless (centrino rules!) and a pretty hefty processor to boot. I ordered it originally online, but for some reason it considered ......
After my previous post, I decided to take the approach I took with Geekswithblogs.net HTTP compression for the syndication feeds and re arch it a little bit. Originally, I changed the HttpCompressionModule's source to get it to work. This time, I used the downloaded binaries so it would have better compatiblity with the great tool. This should work with .94 and .95 but I have only tried it with .95. If you would like to check it out, please let me know. I want to have a few more people play with ......
After reading Scott's post on the HttpCompressionModule, I decided to check it out. The MainFeed of this site is about 65k. With the compression tool, the compressed file size is about 15k. Not bad! The compression has also been added to the individual RSS feeds as well. Let me know if you see any issues ......
Right now I am adding some new features to .Text. The main feature is the ability to use and XML data store instead of the SQL database. This will make it possible to get the 4.95/month account for
Webhost4life and run a personal blog. At the same time, it will support multi-blogs. This is probably going to take some time to finish, but let me know if this is interesting to you.
Let me know if you have any issues using Galleries.