Tech Help Site

Hi all

Just a quick post to tell you I have updated the website. If you receive these notes via email only then I encourage you to click the link and go through to the webpage for a look.

www.mulligrubs.miltonulladulla.com

I have simplified the page style/theme quite a bit and given us a new header logo – the style probably looks a little familiar

The cool thing I added is called a revolving Tag Cloud. It’s on the top right hand side and it’s hard to describe so just go to the website and see. If you move your mouse over the ‘jumble’ of words they spin around. Click on any word to read the articles we have written on that topic/subject.

I have also tweaked a few settings for things like the commenting. You can read any article on the page and then click to leave a comment. Comments can be anonymous or you can leave details. If you use Facebook the comments system can even access your details and link it to your Facebook account and the comment will then show up as an action/activity on your Facebook profile.

And last but not least the Chat gadget is back too. If you are ever stuck on a problem then just go to the homepage and scroll down on the right hand side to the ‘Ask For Help’ section. If I am online the green light will be on and you can send me an Instant Message immediately. If I am awake I will reply immediately – well probably.

So check out the new page and please leave me a comment on what you think of it. Even if you don’t like something or you think it is too complicated or loads too slowly or whatever – fire away I want to know. Thanks

Don’t know what RSS is? It stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it lets you read all your favourite blogs and news sites from one place by pulling content from them. That means you don’t need to keep visiting tons of websites to check for new content.

RSS Feeds have rapidly replaced the old ‘email newsletter’ as a way to communicate with people who are interested in your website. And they work as an update announcement every time you add or change something on a site – For that reason they work particularly well with sites that have content in small chunks like blogs etc

Here is a short video that explains RSS in plain English and helps you get started:

RSS Feeds have rapidly replaced the old ‘email newsletter’ as a way to communicate with people who are interested in your website. And they work as an update announcement every time you add or change something on a site – For that reason they work particularly well with sites that have content in small chunks like blogs etc. Really savvy operators, like say the Mulligrubs website, offer a way to subscribe to updates via either RSS or email

Subscribing to RSS feeds will be discussed at this weeks Mullies meeting along with lots of other items of interest plus the usual Q&A – See you there

Notes:
Idea for the post and initial text and video link found at the Digsby Blog

A more technical description of RSS from Wikipedia

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video – in a standardized format.^[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed",^[3] or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favoured websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based or desktop-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s URI into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats: "Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)", "RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)", or "Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)".

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999,^[4] the RSS icon ("") first gained widespread use in 2005–2006.

G’day all. Ross and I agree that Thursday night was a really good Mullies meeting for those who braved the cold windy night! Note from Ross:

Hi Matt
thanks for the help and for bringing along your laptops…great stuff.
I was wondering do you still have the article on how to repair XP without having to lose all the info on your hard drive?
I think it was on one of those newsletters that you get?
Can you help, thanks.
What shall we do next month, someone suggested SL ?
Oh and your Mulligroup email address is not working?
Regards Ross Johnson

To answer the questions in reverse, yes the old email address for the group changed slightly when the website address changed. The details were sent through but for those who missed it the new address is:

mulligrubs@miltonulladulla.com

You should receive an email of this post from the above address and now the website is all set up it shouldn’t change again. Please update your address book and if necessary add the address to you ‘whitelist’ so it doesn’t get blocked as spam. Remember if you ever want to subscribe to our emails, change your email address or unsubscribe then please just send a note to the same address.

What does everyone think about a topic for next month’s discussion? Ross suggests a discussion of Second Life game. Does anyone have any other ideas, suggestions or requests?

I am an early apology for next month’s meeting as I will be on stage at "The Entertainers" that night. If you have never been to Entertainers before do yourself a favour. It’s a great live show with a 2 course dinner for less than $40 with all proceeds going to charity – not much wrong with that.

OK now on to Ross’s question – yes we have discussed a few ways of repairing Windows XP. All the questions and stuff we write is posted to the website which is at:

http://www.mulligrubs.miltonulladulla.com

There are 2 ways to find information on our website.

Website search

I use Blogger to host our page and Blogger is owned by Google. So it is no surprise that the default Blogger page includes an integrated search component. The search box is in the banner at the top of the page – refer the picture below. Type something in the search box and you can quickly see if we have discussed it before.

So for example if we type in Ross’s query "repair XP" and this page comes up.

If we look down the list we can see that back in November 2006 we posted some details about Four ways to repair Windows XP. One of the ways referred to here in the article is the The No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option which is probably what Ross is after.

The other thing you may have noticed is the "Topic Index" on our Blog page (refer the picture above again). Recently I have been using Blogger’s ability to ‘tag’ each post with topics or details of what it is about. Blogger tallies all these up and keeps the Topic Index. As I have only been doing this for a few months it doesn’t link to all the posts but I hope to go back and tag the older posts too. So if you would like to catch up on any particular topic just click on the topic in the list and away you go.

Last but not least there is a Blog Archive link at the bottom of the page that lists all the posts by the month. So if you want to search by date this is your best bet. It’s really amazing how easy all of this stuff is. I just write the details and send it to Blogger and the rest takes care of itself.

So please take the time to look back on where we have been. We have already touched on a lot of worthwhile information. And remember this is a group effort -  I will gladly post anyone else’s writing -  and Ross and I will and all our members will try to answer any question or help with any problem you may have. So send ‘em in!

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I use WLW for all my blog posts now and hosting via Blogger using a custom domain. So easy it’s ridiculous! MATT

Chances are, if you’re a blogger, you’ve heard about Microsoft’s free blogging tool, Windows Live Writer (WLW).  In case you haven’t heard about it, WLW is an offline WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) blogging tool that integrates very nicely with most blogging platforms, allowing you to create and edit blog posts from your desktop. Although it is usually great fun to mock Microsoft’s efforts, as it happens WLW is really very cool.  If you regularly write for several different sites, it can really help to simplify your blogging life!

Unlike a lot of Microsoft products, WLW makes a strong effort to work with a variety of non-Microsoft services and products.  So while it gives Microsoft’s own “Live Spaces” service pride of place in the setup dialogue, WLW works well with a variety of blogging platforms, from hosted services like Google’s Blogger and Wordpress.com to Wordpress and other blogging programs hosted on your own servers — it even works with non-mainstream platforms like Drupal, albeit minus a few of the bells and whistles.

Setup is pretty easy, as WLW works hard to auto-detect your website’s settings.  You might need to tell WLW where the interface is on your host — it’s usually a file called “xmlrpc.php”, and I’ve found that if I just assume it’s at “www.[domain name].com/xmlrpc.php”, it usually works. Once you’re set up, WLW will download the stylesheet and post template, so as you write your posts you can see exactly how it will look when it’s posted.

WLW is pretty straightforward, but here’s a few pointers to some of the intermediate and advanced features that WLW offers:

1. Categories: WLW reads the categories from your site, so click “categories” at the bottom of the post window and check off whatever categories you want your post to go in.  If you use tags as categories, a list of all your previously-used tags will come up — useful if you want to avoid using multiple variations of the same idea (e.g. “e-book”, “ebooks”, and “e-books”).
2. Set Publish Date: If your blogging software allows you to schedule posts to go “live” in the future, you’ll find a drop-down calendar at the bottom next to the categories field.
3. Tagging: Hit the double up-arrow at the bottom of the post window (or press “F2″) and a range of other options will open up, including a tagging field.  List your tags just like you would if you were editing online.
4. The “Read More” tag: For blogs like Wordpress, where you use the <!–more–> tag to mark the end of the excerpt you want on the front page of your blog, the same thing is accomplished by placing your cursor where you want the “Read More” tag and selecting “Split Post” from the “Format” menu.
5. Remind yourself: If you’re the kid of person who forgets to add categories, tags, and titles to your posts, open the “Options” (in the “Tools” menu) and under “Preferences” check off “Remind me to specify a title before publishing”, “Remind me to add categories before publishing”, and “Remind me to add tags before publishing”.  When you go to publish or save a draft to your site, WLW will check that all these are present and, if not, ask you to add them.

   While you’re in the “Options”, go to “Spelling” and check “Check spelling before publishing”, too — this will launch the spell-checker automatically when you go to publish your post.

6. Use templates: If you use snippets of text, code, or other material regularly, you can use a plugin to save and insert templates.  I use Joe Cheng’s Dynamic Template Plugin, which is the most flexible: you can create templates with several fields and containing any kind of text or code you want, even interactive fields (though I admit I’m not enough of a programmer to understand how this works, but watch the demo on the site).  Then you select “Insert Template” from the “Insert” menu (or the sidebar) and select whichever template you want to use. Boom! Instant text.
7. Insert pictures: You can use the built-in “Insert Picture” dialogue to add images from your hard drive, but you can also use a variety of plugins to add images from services like Picasa and Flickr.
8. Round-up links from del.icio.us: The del.icio.us bookmark plugin will collect your links from del.icio.us, convert them into HTML, and insert them into your post. Coupled with the template plugin above, this is a pretty handy way to do almost instant daily or weekly round-ups of links you want to tell you readers about
9. Blog This: “Blog This” plugins are available for both IE and Firefox users, allowing you to highlight some text on a webpage, hit the “Blog This” button, and open a new post with your elected text already inserted in WLW. If you’re using IE, you can add the ‘blog it!” button to Windows Live Toolbar; Firefox users use the Firefox plugin.

I have a few minor quibbles with WLW, like the fact that I can change the date a post will be published but not the time — which forces me to use the “Post Draft and Edit Online” feature instead of just publishing directly.  But by and large, WLW works the way I blog, and because it integrates into so many services I can a single tool on my desktop instead of logging in to half a dozen separate websites and using half a dozen different interfaces.

9 Ways to Get More Out of Windows Live Writer – lifehack.org

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RSS is the way of the future for distributed content like newsletters, podcasts and such. in case you don’t now anything about it here’s some information, Also check out the Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS. Rather than a separate program like Feedreader or Thunderbird to use as a Feed Aggregator I just use Google Reader in my browser. I find this the easiest to use and you can access it from any browser. http://www.google.com/reader/view/

RSS is a tool that lets you select the kind of information you need and have it displayed on your desktop – as soon as it appears. The most widespread use for this is to follow the latest news of your choosing. But in addition to news, RSS can be used to keep track of all kinds of useful things. If it’s information and it gets updated, it’s probably available via RSS.
First, an introduction: RSS is a family of web feed formats, and stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s an XML-based tool that lets you to subscribe to feeds from your favourite websites and receive hot-off-the-press, customised information.
But it’s not just for news. Any information source that can be split into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS, and this is where it really shines. TV guides, auction items, job vacancies, flight schedules, product releases, blog updates and French lessons – the list is endless, and setting it up is as simple as adding the right feed to your aggregator.
Feeders, Aggregators & Co.
Programs known as feed readers or aggregators grab RSS feeds from various sites and display any recent articles they find.
With thousands of sites now RSS-enabled and with more on the way, RSS has become a visible success story. HP sees a real value in being able to deliver fresh content too. Press releases, feature stories and special offers can be sent directly to interested readers via RSS feeds.
Communication made personal with RSS
At HP.com, RSS feeds are identified with a small orange button that says either RSS or XML. Although RSS/XML readers will soon be part of every browser and e-mail client, for now you need a separate reader, or a browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 7.0 (which both integrate RSS). A variety of RSS readers are available for different platforms. Some popular aggregators include Amphetadesk (Windows®, Linux®, Mac), FeedReader (Windows) and NewsGator (Windows – integrates with Outlook).
The benefits of RSS
The benefits of using RSS are relevance, speed, completeness, convenience and privacy.
Speed: RSS feeds send notifications whenever new material is available. There’s no need to trawl numerous websites in search of information you require, saving you time and effort.
Relevance: RSS content summaries contain summary information without overwhelming you with details. Simply click on the item in the feed to access more information.
Completeness: RSS ensures that you are always up to date on topics that interest you. Every new development is reported directly in your feed, and you don’t miss a thing.
Convenience: With RSS, you control the flow of information by specifically selecting content. If the quality of the content declines, you simply remove the feed from your aggregator.
Privacy: RSS eliminates the risk of receiving spam and avoids the need to join each site’s email newsletter.
Regardless of how obscure your interests or profession are, RSS is a fantastic time-saver and a convenient way to get the information you need, when you need it.

RSS: The most underrated tool on the net

This is a brief introduction to some of the aspects of what people refer to as Web 2.0 (or Web version 2). It is really amazing what tools are available via the Internet for free

We’ve all heard of Web 2.0, but what does it mean? I think of it as the Interactive Internet. It encourages collaboration between users and is driving the trend towards more interactive websites.

The Internet as we have come to know it has been around for over ten years now. To date it has principally been used for searching, browsing and reading static information.

Now it is evolving into something quite different. We are now in what is being coined the “Web 2.0 era”, where the Internet is now about interactivity.

No longer do Internet users want to just look at and read a page they want to interact, leave comments, upload music or photos and be involved in the Internet community.

The Internet is no longer solely the domain of the technical expert. With the increase in user friendly interfaces, it is now possible to get involved even if you have limited technical knowledge.

What tools make up Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 can be defined as the set of technologies which enable collaboration and sharing between Internet users. These can be web pages, web-based communities or hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs and podcasts.

These tools, such as blogs, make it easier for anyone to get their material online, even if they have no knowledge of HTML.

Blogs are online diaries or journals created by individuals or companies and stored on the Internet. Blogs generally consist of text and images appearing in chronological order with the most recent entry shown at the top of the page.

Wikipedias are online encyclopedia maintained by users. They allow people to contribute to and add definitions or topics.

Social networking include sites like MySpace and Facebook. Here, people put up a public profile about themselves. They can add their favorite photos, music and website links and choose to share these with friends only or the general public.

Podcasting. A ‘podcast’ is an audio file or series of audio files that can be shared with others. You can subscribe to a podcast in much the same way as you subscribe to an email newsletter.

Interactive websites: Web 2.0