Finally, finally, finally got Windows 7 on my home machine. After much waiting for Lenovo’s final drivers for Windows 7, I finally had quality time with my T400. Done with the installation I had no problem getting the correct drivers as Lenovo has a very nifty tool on discovering your machine. This will then download and install the necessary components. So in case you didn’t get your Windows 7 pre-installed, just look for ThinkVantage System Update.
Onto Zune! Hey! Finally got me one of the Zune players from one of my colleagues. Shout out to Chewy for that! Not the Zune HD but a Zune none the less. Comes with all the syncing goodness and podcast madness.
So, what’s up with the title you ask? If you read my previous post on the Zune here, you’ll know just how much I love it. With Windows 7, they made some cool features just for the OS, harnessing the power of that amazing taskbar. And can I say I just love that taskbar (and Windows 7 in general)
I opted for the none-iconish task bar. Best of both worlds if you ask me
Jumplists FTW!
For the Windows 7 uninitiated, jumplists is a new introduction to the Windows family. Making the taskbar more functional, jumplists is a fast and easy way to access common tasks on the application without having it on focus. This makes things much easier and faster to do. So far a bunch of apps already has it and more on the way. (Saw some Firefox jumplists a couple of days back). If you want more nerd rave on jumplists, check out Aimee’s blog on making your own jumplists.
Aero Peek
Another taskbar productivity addition is the aero peek. Now all these terms confuse me but I don’t care as long as it works. Essentially on the Zune, it allows me to have access to the basic functions just by hovering on the icon. Hover, some control pops up, click next then boomz! (lol)
That’s it for me and hopefully you guys have tried out Windows 7. I’m so happy that one of my non-techy pals enjoys her Win7 so much that she became an informal evangelist. That’s you RainWalker!
Are you a frustrated PowerPoint user? Do you wish there’s a better alternative aside from Keynote? Want to make your presentation better even if you suck at presenting? Well say no more! pptPlex is for you!
Developed by Microsoft Office Labs, pptPlex is a play on how you can extend PowerPoint and how a different way of presenting your slides can affect your whole presentation. This is achieved by deviating from the normal linear way of showing your slides. Whenever you are presenting in PowerPoint it assumes that whatever content you have is just linear, meaning you go from slide one to slide ten just like you are counting. PptPlex deviates from this by giving you the flexibility to jump from one slide to another while still maintaining an overall flow. Check out my short video below
I’m using the slides made by my friend Sile covering Windows Azure (http://innovativesingapore.com/blogs/mic/archive/2009/07/28/getting-on-windows-azure-in-3-days-day-1.aspx learn it here). Notice that you make your slides in the normal way, you then go to the pptPlex tab to use its features. From here you can then arrange your slides in sections. Using pptPlex’s slideshow, easily navigate between disconnected slides without having a disconnected experience when presenting.
I found this very useful especially for slides that has a lot of sections. If you need to skip one section you don’t need to move forward a lot. Just unzoom and double click on that section then proceed with your slides. PptPlex shows offs its capabilities with the different backgrounds that it has built-in. From timelines to flowcharts this is where pptPlex really shines.
This can be really helpful for those drill-in slides. Students out there would love this as it provides another dimension to your presentation.
Some cons though as some PowerPoint objects disappear when you use pptPlex. (Inking for one) None the less, if you want to spice up your boring slides, this can just be the thing you are looking for. But always remember not to overuse it. Use it to complement your slides rather than be the center of it. If your presentation is simple enough, then a linear presentation might be the best rather than making a complex zooming in and out type of slides.
So stop reading and give it a shot. Never hurts to try out something new especially on things you present in and out. You might even get a better reception using this one.
Launched early June ‘09, the IIS 7 SEO toolkit is designed for web developers and administrators maintaining huge websites. A module that easily installs to you IIS 7 this toolkit gives you the ability to check your website for inconsistencies regarding SEO.
The toolkit has three main components:
Site Analysis
Sitemaps and Sitemap Indexes
Robots Exclusion
Of the three, I have only used Site Analysis so far. Even though being a third of the toolkit, the Site Analysis alone will give you enough insight into your website with considerable action on your part. If you don’t know anything about SEO, this toolkit will definitely overwhelm you. The Site Analysis will be going through every link in your site and evaluate it based on a number of SEO criteria. A quick analysis of my site would show you how many SEO standards I have already broken. Strange considering my site is small and I try my best to fill up every detail that I can with my Platinum SEO toolkit plugin for WordPress.
Let’s see how a standard Site Analysis would look like.
Running the analysis on my site would give you the initial Site Analysis Report Summary
These are basic SEO knowledge that everybody with a website should know. By the looks of it I’ve been skipping a lot of details when I’m putting up new posts.
You can then drill down to a specific entry to see how many of times you violated it.
The best part is when you don’t know that specific error, you can drill down and it will give you a description so that you won’t make the same mistake again.
And it will even show you where in the code your error is. From here you can then base your next steps to resolve this “problem”. I found this really helpful especially since I assumed everything would work out fine since I’m using WordPress and a number of its plugins. Apparently you still have to check some of the code within. So far I haven’t dissected it and I still rely on the plug-ins as I found this enough for my blogging needs. Obviously, the toolkit is designed for more than just blogs.
More screenshots of the SiteMap and Robots Exclusion
Sitemap
I’m satisfied with WordPress sitemap plug-ins and thus I don’t really care about this one.
Robots exclusion allows you to tell where the crawler should go to. WP has the same feature and I don’t know much about site crawlers yet to care.
Well that’s a quick intro to IIS 7 SEO Toolkit. Given more time I would definitely like to explore how they define the SEO criteria. There’s probably a document for this but as of now I can’t find any within the MS sites.
Again, this tool is not for everybody as not all has access to their IIS but for sure website admins would definitely benefit from this.
For all Windows junkies out there. (and for those loving Mac fans) this is one feature that I’m really excited about. Working with tons of PCs and a lab environment, having one base image for you VHD is quite powerful. This saves time and energy from doing things over and over again. Yea yea, there are existing tools you can use to do this but this one is just better. There’s VMWare, VPC, and other virtualization technologies that you can use but booting from VHD!? Hell yea! (I’m not sure if VMware has something like it though)
This topic has been discussed in several blogs and I’ll be adding to those and linking the ones I found very useful.
Two main steps to get your VHD a bootin:
Prep your image via ImageX
BCDedit to make it show up upon boot.
This is not really a daunting task, the only problem is it would take quite some time. Installing Win 7 via copying the .wim file, Disk Management, getting it prepped via Image X. These steps are quite time consuming but! after you have set it up, you basically have a VHD that you can boot on and install all the stuff you want in it. This is really helpful for me as rather than having to install the common dev tools (Visual Studio, SQL) you would just have to copy your VHD to the host OS and bcdedit (just four lines) your VHD. The amount of time you’ll save is just amazing.
Follow the two blogs and you shouldn’t encounter any major problems. I’m looking at automating the BCDedit but the guid every VHD produces is unique. My simple workaround is just a batch file that has a variable for the guid. Quick and easy.
Attended my first “social media” event last Monday. It was more of a convenience as the event was held just a level down.
A lot of us has been hearing social media events where everything is organized via Twitter or Facebook. Marketing in the Social Age is one such event.
With main speaker Willy Foo (a renowned photographer in SG) we were up for a night of informational “marketing in the social age”
Speakers were
Willy Foo (@willyfoo)
Joe Augustin (@JoeAugustin) <- wasn’t present
Keith Nakamura (@Sillikat)
Derrick Koh (@derrickkoh70)
Willy Lim (@willylim)
Quite a diverse crowd and I was excited to hear what they have to share.
Willy Foo started with an overview of social media and how it is affecting us. Numbers from different social media sites and countries were also presented. Then the agony began. It was off to a good start but I think Willy talked too much about Facebook and it’s small intricacies. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who felt it as others were tweeting about the bad experience and you can see some of attendees leaving early. I did gain a lot of insight from his experiments and would like to hear more. Willy is such an inventive guy as he does a lot of experiments with Facebook (and for sure other social media outlets). Other than that I wish he didn’t take the whole session as he spent more than two hours talking (quite unbelievable if you ask me) but you can really feel his passion and I hope to hear more talks from him.
Up next was Keith Nakamura from Microsoft, I personally know Keith and it’s interesting how he did his talk. Microsoft being portrayed as an evil empire isn’t always bad and he used this to his advantage. Good work Keith! You won a few fans that night! You can check out what he shared during that night here: Singapore Windows 7 Experience Group
Derrick Koh from Lenevo shared their experience with social media and how it his helping some of his sales people. Quite interesting how social media is helping big companies such as Microsoft and Lenevo.
Willy Lim from NetProfitQuest shared how they are helping SMEs engage social media engines. Some reactions were quite negative but I learned a lot from him. Fundamentals is the key!
The night was topped off with a panel discussion and some questions were raised. A good ending for the night as people tweeted their reactions and questions with the use of TwitterFall.
Overall, the first event of Marketing in the Social Age wasn’t that spectacular but for sure they will improve in the next one. I’ll be there and would be happy to here from you guys again.
Are you a frustrated PowerPoint user? Do you wish there’s a better alternative aside from Keynote? Want to make your presentation better even if you suck at presenting? Well say no more! pptPlex is for you!
