Jason Mauss' Blog Cabin

Firefox Support for WebParts & Atlas

2006-01-20T22:19:00Z

I just have to point to this, because of the "cool" factor. Some really awesome stuff being developed, and I'm really glad to see it supporting Firefox since it's been my main browser for about 2 years now.

Mix06 Content

2006-01-11T21:55:00Z

The people behind Mix06 just posted a bunch of new content on the Mix06 site. If you're thinking of attending it's worth checking out.

I found out about this from their RSS feed.

Project FAZR looking for people again

2006-01-11T04:50:00Z

Over on my Project FAZR Blog - I wrote about how we're looking for 1 or 2 people to join us. If you're interested - give it a look.

Messenger Beta, once again.

2006-01-10T00:49:00Z

From my last post it might seem like I'm harping on the Live Messenger Beta quite a bit. I'd just like to get some help on the latest issue, if anyone can help me out.

From the main window, if I go to Help > Beta Invitations it opens up a browser window where I have to sign into Passport. After that, it just takes me to this page: http://ideas.live.com/ErrorPage.aspx?ErrorCode=2

A bad url? Uh...hey messenger..YOU'RE THE ONE that sent me there!

A friend wanted me to send him an invitation but apparently, I'm not even allowed to do that anymore, either. I wonder how many other people are having this problem.

I guess that's why it's called 'Beta'

2006-01-09T01:20:00Z

I'm the type of person that leaves their machine running 24/7. So, the new MSN Messenger 8 Beta has been running for a while now..probably at least 48 hours or more. When I got a system notification area popup telling me my virtual memory was low, I opened Task Manager to look at the status of applications running, and sorted them by memory usage:

Yikes! I hope whatever does that gets worked out before it's released!

p.s. Speaking of Live Messenger 8 - I think I'm about ready to do what Russ Nemhauser did and just rollback to the previous release of MSN Messenger. It's that bad.

Newsvine Beta Invite

2006-01-06T07:35:00Z

Anyone else get an email invite to the Newsvine beta? My column is at http://jasonmauss.newsvine.com.

So far it seems pretty interesting. I've still got a lot of poking around to do, though.

2006: The year of "the DHTML"

2006-01-06T07:31:00Z

Various bloggers have already been debating for some time about whether AJAX/DHTML/Web 2.0 (whatever u want to call it) or Smart Client/Windows Forms/Thick Client/ is the way of the future. Well, I'm not debating it. I'm declaring DHTML the winner.

Maybe you're wondering why I think DHTML will conquer the smart client. Some might say it already has. Just look at how many applications are already using DHTML effects to drive rich web-based user interfaces.

More is on the way. Much more.

Am I just hopping on the DHTML bandwagon? Not really. I've reserved my opinion on this issue for a while. I've been standing on the sidelines watching both sides gain and lose momentum in the debate. Will Windows Vista be awesome? Yeah, for sure. But how much is Vista really going to change the way you use the internet? Transparent aero-glass and Flip 3D is only going to mean so much to users - and is really only part of the "wow" factor to me, not a reason to keep using it. To be honest, I spend much more time keeping an eye out for new Firefox extensions than I do for Windows apps. Am I the only one?

Another big reason DHTML wins - it feeds into our ever-increasing sense of instant gratification. I click a link to access a web app. Done. Not download a setup.exe|.msi|.zip|.wtf. Then run the setup. Then reboot. Then find a shortcut. Get the picture? Oh, and how's that ClickOnce thing coming, Microsoft? (Yes, to be fair, there is a workaround, but still...)

Deployment, anyone?. Ok, how many people (I mean people, not just developers) are forever scorned and jaded by DLL-Hell? I'm not sure Microsoft truly understands how much damage COM and the registry has inflicted (and still inflicts) upon their customers. The pain from DLL-Hell isn't going away anytime soon. In the meantime, DHTML is over in the corner chuckling at COM and it's siamese twin, the registry.

I keep hearing the argument from the smart/thick client side that it can work in "offline" mode. I'm being 100% honest when I say that has never been an issue for me with a web application, ever. What is there to argue beyond that? Faster response times? I'm not seeing the smart client advantages very easily.

So anyway, there you have it. Declared by me - a name and face in the crowd that really doesn't matter - that DHTML wins.

One of the most fine examples of sarcasm and humor anywhere

2006-01-06T00:39:00Z

I ran into this site about 4-5 years ago and just remembered the URL today so I thought I'd share it with anyone reading.

Acts of Gord

Running a video game rental store sounds like one of the most thankless jobs ever but, this guy has found a way to make it hilariously entertaining. Warning: you may end up spending a lot of time reading the stories on this site.

Light Blogging

2005-12-28T22:02:00Z

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here (about a month). To be honest, I have a legit excuse when I say "I've been busy". I've been doing work for Telligent, writing the documentation for the 2.0 release of Community Server. You might think that just "writing documentation" would be a pretty simple, straightforward job (like I did originally) but it's turned out to provide several challenges. Because Community Server has grown into such a robust product, there is a lot of stuff to write about. Blogs, Forums, Photo Galleries, File Galleries, RSS Readers, Security Settings, and on and on and on. I'm only about half-way done with the documentation so far and I've probably got 250+ screenshots of the product.

It's not enough to just "document" the product and it's features, either. I have to think about how to organize the content so that it can answer people's questions in as few clicks as possible. Then there's the glossary, and the index. The table of contents. Keyword indexing. Fortunately, RoboHelp makes most of it pretty automated but it's still time consuming.

The awesome side-effect of documenting Community Server is that I'd say my knowledge of the product has increased by about 2000 %. The guys at Telligent are kidding either when they say that 2.0 is going to be a major improvement over their 1.x releases. It keeps getting better with every week.

I definitely am not going to be able to make my Jan 1, 2006 goal for the DevCampus beta, either (unfortunately). I think once the work with Telligent slows down/stops I'll be able to take a "break" and finish up the site for beta testing.

Not all customer service is bad...

2005-12-09T22:16:00Z

I've seen many blog posts by people where they completely flame the customer support provided by a company like Dell, HP, Sony, Best Buy, etc. Well, I had a very good customer service experience today so I though, to be fair, I should share the other side of the story.

One of my LCD's at home (a 21" Samsung SyncMaster) started displaying some very thin (1 to 2 pixels wide) lines (about 7 or 8 of them) that ran vertically across my screen (from the very bottom to the very top). I paid pretty good money for this LCD so I wasn't about to just let this problem remain. So I called up Samsung's customer support and after providing a little personal information the Samsung rep gave me some troubleshooting steps to take in order to ensure it wasn't the DVI cable or the video card which, it wasn't. After that, things couldn't have been easier.

Since my LCD was still under warranty (3 years, parts & labor) Samsung is going to send me a replacement LCD, and they're paying for the shipping on the defective one I'll be sending back to them. 7 to 14 business days and I'll be back on a brand new LCD. Thanks Samsung!

Attended a course by Edward Tufte today

2005-12-09T06:19:00Z

I attended a one-day course by Edward Tufte in San Francisco today where he discussed his ideas about information display. It was very thought-provoking and he is an excellent speaker. As an added bonus, all attendees got to take home his 3 books, which I plan on digging into soon, they look really interesting. If you ever get the chance to attend his courses, I would highly recommend them. All I can really say is that he's changed the way I look at statistical data and data presentation in general. Definitely worth the time and effort it took to attend. Has anyone else been to a Tufte course? His PowerPoint discussion was just brilliant.

ASPSoft is looking for some talent

2005-12-01T03:02:00Z

You could be working for none other than the original "angryCoder" himself - if you're interested contact Jon Goodyear through his blog at http://aspsoft.blogs.com .

DevCampus Invitation-Only Beta

2005-11-30T19:05:00Z

One thing I failed to mention in my last post was that once DevCampus is ready for testing, I'm going to have a 3-week Beta period before I officially put it out on the net. I know that an "invitation-only" Beta probably smacks of Google-elitism but, the truth is, I'm just one person and can only handle beta testing feedback from a certain number of testers.

If you think you'd be interested in participating in the Beta, watch this blog in the coming weeks for instructions on how to get invited.

DevCampus and Technical Writing

2005-11-30T18:59:00Z

November has been quite a busy month for me and it looks like things are only going to get busier until the end of January.

For being something I only get to work on in my spare time, DevCampus is coming along pretty well. The last time I posted about my progress, I had just finished up building the admin tools that will let me manage the site through a web interface. Since then I've actually had to add a few more admin tools and have also finished about a dozen pages that will be publicly visible, including Login, Registration (and e-mail validation), Password resetting, and a spiffy contact form. The biggest pages to tackle are going to be the home page and the article (a.k.a "Lesson) page. I also want the site to have a severe case of RSS support so it's going to take a bit of time to get that all running as well. Anybody know of a component (dll library?) out there that generates RSS XML if you feed it some data? That would be a big time saver. If one doesn't exist (I'd be surprised) I'll probably open the source to the one I build.

On a related note, I'd like to publicly thank Jeremy McPeak (wdonline.com) for his assistance in adding some functionality to his XWebMenu DHTML Menus so that I will be able to do some really cool stuff with my content. That's in addition to his awesome client-side JavaScript xml-driven menu's and context menu that I'm also using for DevCampus, of course. :-) We've been trading e-mails about some ideas and I'm greatful that someone would take time out to help me. Thanks Jeremy. Oh, and Jeremy has an AJAX book coming out real soon. Check it out - I know I'll be ordering a copy.

In addition to DevCampus, I've started doing some technical writing for Telligent Systems to create some end-user documentation/guides for their awesome Community Server product that many blog (and other) sites out there run on. I'm excited to be doing this and hope my work will really be a benefit to those that run Community Server. If you visit Telligent's Community Server forums with any regularity you'll probably start seeing my name (or alias, I guess) pop up in there pretty often.

I am an "LOL" MVP for MSN Messenger! - and other graphics fun

2005-11-13T07:53:00Z

UPDATE: Based on comments I've added a few more images if anyone wants to use them - thanks for the feedback!

I was talking with Alex Papadimoulis on IM tonight and we somehow got on the topic of how (...hmmm...I know this is a sensitive subject so I'll try to be nice here) certain MVP's sometimes give out less than "great" answers on various newsgroups and forums. Now, I know at least a dozen MVP's personally so this is in no way an attack on them - just some attempt at humor. Please, nobody take themselves too seriously with this one.

Anyway - I told him that because of my efforts on the microsoft.public.msn.leetspeak group and through my efforts to bring 13375p34k to the masses, Microsoft recognized me by awarding me with the "LOL" MVP for MSN Messenger designation. All that time spent ROFLing, WTFing, A/S/Ling and OMGHI2Uing has finally paid off. Since I had IconWorkshop and Photoshop fired up at the moment I decided to make myself a little logo real quick. So, there you have it:

I'm going to leave this up my blog links under "flair" (Office Space reference). For all the other non-MVP's - feel free to steal it and use it on your blog, too. For Alex, he was awarded MVP for MS Paintbrush - so I made him a logo too:

If you'd like me to make you an MVP Logo for your blog (instead of using one of these) let me know and I'll see what I can do!