Blog Template Update

Well, after close to four years of using the same template that we modified for our purposes when we first started out on this endeavour, the blog now has an updated template using one of Blogger’s defaults.

The links and such are now where they belong on the left hand side of the page and the restrictions on images seem to no longer be applied. They can actually be _seen_ at whatever size they were screenshot at.

So, enjoy the new look and feel. It should be easier to read for those of us with eyes starting to show their wear and tear too! ;)

And again, thanks to all of you for your ongoing support and contributions to this blog. Without the comments and encouragement over the years the blog would have died a death a long time ago.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Business Opportunities

There are always ways for us to develop new avenues for revenue in our business.

Over the last year or two since starting this blog, anything that came across as a possible revenue stream for our company was categorized as a Business Opportunity.

• Blog Category: Business Opportunity.

Have a look at some of the posts in the above category to get those creative business juices flowing.

The category has also been added to the list of categories to be found in the right hand column of the blog.

Thanks for reading! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer – Indenting Bulleted Lists or Numbered Lists

While working on the previous post, there was an accidental discovery. To indent (Wikipedia) a bullet or numbered bullet once the button has been clicked on, click on the Quotes button.

To outdent (Wikipedia) the bullet or numbered bullet just click the Bullet button.

• A single click on the Bullet button gives us a bulleted list.
• The indented bullet list after clicking the Quotes button.
• Indented again, after the Quotes button.
• The outdented bullet after clicking on the Bullets button.

This is good to know since we have been manually changing the HTML code to introduce the needed indents or subsequent outdents.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

RSS Icon Post

This post is to get a new RSS Icon into Blogger’s image stash. The FeedBurner one is seemingly broken from here as all we get is a red X for the image.

Thanks for reading! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Blog: SnapShots is gone ...

We put up a poll on whether to keep SnapShots or let it go: Blog Poll: Should we keep SnapShots?

The responses to the poll put SnapShots out.

While the feature can be handy, we try and make a point of labelling any link with a short (italicized) description of where the link will take you.

The breaker for us, and one of the main reasons behind initiating the poll, was the occasional underlined word with an ad tied to it that did not fit in with our blog and its gist. The other reason was some of the ads placed around the screenshot of the page the link was leading to. There were a few other little things that grew to be irritating from a blog management point of view too.

Suffice it to say, SnapShots is now gone!

Thanks for your input! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Blog Poll: Should we keep SnapShots?

Just as the title asks, should we keep the SnapShots feature?

The service was originally thought to be something that would be helpful.

We have added a poll near the top of the right hand column on the blog.

Please take a moment to click through and let us know what you think.

Thanks for reading and for your input!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Test Post - Please ignore

We are figuring out a new aggregator system ... please ignore these posts.

Thanks,

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Blog - Label-Tag Cloud for Blogger

While reading through Chris Rea's Blog I noticed the "Label Cloud".

Since a label/tag cloud is a good way to indicate what subjects are popular on a blog, it seemed like a good feature to add to this one.

It wasn't too difficult to find the Label Cloud code after having a look at Chris' source code.

The source code can be found here: phydeaux3: Code for New Blogger Tag Cloud/Label Cloud. The instructions to setup the code in the Blogger template, along with the code itself, are linked in the post. They are pretty straight forward and provide a number of customizations for the look and feel for the Cloud.

Check it out if you need a Tag/Label Cloud for your Blogger based blog!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Blog Questions

We have been receiving a growing number of various types of questions via our company Web site (which is soon to be changed over to Windows SharePoint Services 3).

So, we have added an email link to the blog sidebar to simplify the question asking process for now. Please leave the default subject line so the email would not be filtered out by our spam filters.

We have also added some clarification as far as the time involved in answering any questions that come our way.

We are more than happy to answer any questions that are posed. However, because we are a full-time I.T. shop with client support needs, we do need to draw the line at what questions will be answered and whether we would charge a fee for them.

Why? Because, if we spend more time answering questions via the blog for free ... then we would be spending less time we on our client's needs that pay us to do so.

In the end our clients, you our readers, and us and our families would lose.

Thanks for understanding! :D

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Blogger is choked today :(

Can't seem to upload images. It has been that way since this morning.

Hopefully they get it fixed.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Windows Live Writer Experience

We couldn't get Windows Live Writer Beta (WLW) to install properly on the first number of runs at it.

Whether we were logged in as a domain admin, a user with local admin rights, or as a restricted user that had the install program elevated and the install would not finish.

The initial error was: There was a problem downloading this product.

Now, why would that be? In this case, we are trying to install the product onto a system that is on a SBS domain, with WSUS managing all updates.

In our wisdom, we don't normally approve updates such as the Windows Live Betas. So, it seemed to us that this may be the source of our problem.

We logged in to the SBS box, went into the WSUS 3.x MMC and approved the Beta updates required.

On the client, we then ran the following via Start-->Run--> wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow [Enter]

We then reran the product install and the downloads proceeded normally and the install completed successfully.

Once we were into the WLW and setup our Blogger profile, the first time we tried a test post, we received the following error upon clicking the Publish button:

Server Error 0 Occurred

java.lang.Exception: RPC handler object "blogger2" not found and no default handler registered

In the WLW Account properties we found that the provider was: Blogger (Legacy). So, the setup routine did not detect the new version of Blogger for some reason.

What we did to get the proper Provider "Blogger":

1. Tools
2. Edit the Blogger account
3. Update Account Configuration Button
4. Make sure the URL, Username, and Password are correct
5. Next
6. Detect Weblog Settings dialogue will run
7. Yes
8. Name the blog account
9. Finish.

Upon detecting the correct settings, we now have the correct Provider: Blogger.

The Test WLW Post 1 was flashed by in your RSS readers and gone! :D

Given that this product is in Beta, here is one very important suggestion to the WLW team: Please give us signatures that can be tailored to each blogging account we use in WLW.

Other than these hiccups to start out, this looks really neat!

Oh, and a caveat ... WLW will not install on Vista x64. :(

UPDATE: The picture did not publish properly when embedded via WLW for some reason. The links in the HTML code looked really different to any other embedded picture links in previous posts. WLW works pretty neat, but if pictures are going to be difficult, then it may not be used until they do embed properly. The image above was embedded again manually via the Blogger editor.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Blog - Blog Links Update

It sure pays to check one's links! Holy Smokes!

One of the links, which has now been removed, was to a blog on security: Info Security Sell Out.

There was a point where the blogger posted about some vulnerabilities in Apple's Safari browser. Well, all heck broke loose for them and the blog was hacked.

The blogger managed to get their blog back, at least for a while it looks like.

After clicking the link to the blog that was available in our Blog Links section, there was definitely a not family friendly bit of content there.

Please accept our deepest apologies for not being aware that our link to that blog should have been removed! We will be a lot more diligent about our links!

Thank you,

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Blog Feature Addition... Snap Shots

We have added the Snap Shots to our blog because it looks like a pretty neat feature.

Hover the mouse over the little icon that appears after a link to another site, and you can see a preview of that site, RSS feed, and more.

Looks like a time saver for you and a winner as far as browsing efficiency is concerned.

If you don't like it, please leave a comment to let us know why!

If enough people say they don't like it, then it will be removed.

BTW, Snap has a pretty straight forward Terms & Conditions page before signing on. That is something that always gets read.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists