D as in duh…

I am feeling more than a little foolish right now and the reason is simple… I’m kicking myself for completely forgetting a lesson I learnt not so long ago.

I have been in between computers using both my acer laptop and macbook (it’s a long story). When on the windows-based machine I like to use Windows Live Writer (WLW) to blog as I don’t have to be online to do so and it is pretty easy to save a draft when I’m unable to complete a post in one sitting. So I decide to set up an account in WLW for this blog. All goes well until I need to submit the remote posting url for Wordpress 2.2+. I hit a snag.

“The server reported that the following URL can not be found: http://victoire.za.net/onmydesk/xmlrpc.php. Please ensure you have a valid URL”.

I struggle with the same error for 2 days. I search the net and come across some very helpful sites. Finally I remember that I had the same problem the last time I used this machine, and even blogged the solution on the now defunct victoire.za.net! What was the solution? Uncheck the proxy setting in Internet Explorer… Voila… I’m posting this post from WLW.

Tags: desktop publishing, error, fix, proxy, remote blogging, windows live writer       316 views

Mac PR: both hands clapping

I just received an email from Apple. The message: “Go beyond Vista. It’s time to get a Mac.” Apple is known for it’s innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, so this instance is no real exception, however I still love the way they have taken the opportunity provided by Vista’s launch, as blogged by Paul earlier this week, to promote themselves. [1]

Here’s a screenshot of the email, the link is http://www.apple.com/getamac/

[1] For the record, I do not own a Mac, neither do I run any Mac products beyond iTunes.

Tags: apple mac, mac, apple, windows vista, vista, microsoft, mac os x, leopard, tiger

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

      21 views

Lessons learnt from an installation

I have just completed a manual installation of drupal 5 on my personal server. I decided to blog about it as I went through the process - as my own personal mission - with the aim of providing some guidelines to anyone else wanting to manually install drupal themselves.

i am a geek on a mission[1]. mission drupal 5 to be exact.

the tactic:

• read INSTALL.txt word for word.
• try to understand it.
• you will do well young one.

the frontline operation:

• download, extract, and copy the resultant drupal 5 folder into a directory within your root directory. check - using ftp program.
  
• create the drupal database. umm. where? how? oh… i finally found it on cpanel’s MySQL account maintenance, no need to delve into phpMyAdmin.
• create the drupal user. check - easy once you know where to look, similar to creating the db.
• link the user to the db. check! now the db configuration looks like the configurations for the other db’s i already have installed.
  
• run the install script. install script? i must run it? but when i point to the folder it doesn’t do anything. it gives me an access denied. *help* go back to the beginning…
  
  • “move the contents of the directory”. hmm. maybe i shouldn’t have moved the whole directory, but only it’s contents.
  • ha! it works! but now to give access to the settings.php file. also helps if you take note of the location of the settings file
  • voila! see how it runs!
  • remember to restore the access permissions on the settings.php file

• configure drupal. *tears fill my eyes*… it worked! i can see the config screen.

the outcome:

• i win!
• drupal 5’s so pretty!

[1]actually, the use of the word geek when referring to me is very liberal. considering i haven’t done much *real* programming in yonks… i am an enthusiast…

Tags: drupal, drupal5, lessons learned, victoire

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

      24 views

Make a Point of Sharing

In October chilibean invited you, the numerous South African new media companies out there, to be part of the chilibean hotness? by opening up and exposing your new media stories, secrets, and dreams¦ something, anything, you’re doing related to new media.

Well, Martin Hattingh of bSOLVe jumped at the opportunity of spreading and sharing the joy of what his company is up to, and provides an invaluable insight into what an innovative South African organisation can achieve.

Sharing with bSOLVe

Back in 2002, a group of three University of Stellenbosch students decided to jump straight from the commerce degrees they had completed into starting an IT business. With one client and one project, bSOLVe began its life.

With it’s core business centered around Microsoft solutions, bSOLVe is these days recognised by both its clients and the Microsoft Partner community as an expert provider in technologies such as SharePoint, which is an organisational collaboration and information centralisation platform. bSOLVe states its primary mission as “implementing and developing software to help knowledge workers make sense of an increasingly information-rich environment”, and does this by finding innovative ways to streamline how information flows and is used within businesses.

The bSOLVe team is very enthusiastic about the possibilities around SharePoint, and see it as a great way for individuals and teams to work together. Martin Hattingh has the following to say: “With such incredible amounts of documents and files being generated in even a small business these days, it’s becoming really hard to efficiently store, find and use all this information. Often, there is a ton of knowledge contained within the business, but no-one knows about it because documents lie hidden away on individual PCs. SharePoint goes a long way towards helping create a central ‘home-base’ from which to work while keeping everyone up to speed.” This home-base is the power of SharePoint, which is in essence a collection of websites which enable people to do things like upload documents, share them with others, track who’s changing what, and create shared tasks lists and calendars to manage what’s being done. SharePoint can be used internally or extended onto the web, and can even be used as an engine to manage content for a corporate website, with full control over aspects like how and when documents are published to the outside world.

The SharePoint way of working integrates completely seamlessly with Microsoft Office, enabling the typical executive to easily share a document she’s working on with her colleagues via what’s called a “workspace”. Sharing can be done with a few clicks from within Word or Excel, for example. (Note that in the screenshot below, Word 2007 also enables publishing a document to a blog directly).

When the document is uploaded, everyone in the team is automatically notified via e-mail or RSS Feed. Documents can be organised in libraries and folders according to their purpose (in the example below, the Marketing library is shown).

SharePoint does more than documents. It also enables teams to create shared task lists and calendars, and notifies selected individuals when tasks are added, assigned to them or completed. In the view below, the user selects to only view tasks that are due today.

Seamless interaction with MS Office was mentioned earlier, and the system really does shine in this regard. SharePoint can be synchronised with Outlook to make content available offline, even when the user isn’t connected to the network/internet.

SharePoint is also not just about sharing documents¦ It can be used to automate routine processes through its workflow engine: For example, automatically creating a task for someone to complete if an e-mail with a specific subject is received, and alerting a manager if the task isn’t completed within a specified time.

As a business, bSOLVe believes that technology exists only to make everyday life easier. As Martin says, “Technologies like SharePoint help us to really streamline how people deal with massive amounts of information, and as a team we’re constantly excited by the possibilities this offers.” Always innovators, the bSOLVe team have created an offering targeted specifically at businesses who want to find their feet with SharePoint. Dubbed “SharePoint To-Go“, it’s a structured project package which includes all the basics needed to get up-and-running: professional needs analysis, setup and configuration, site look-and-feel customisation, and training to help everyone within the business make the best of what SharePoint has to offer. The whole package is pitched as “a take-away intranet”, priced at R7999.99, and designed to satisfy beginner appetites.

This is something to take into account if you run a Microsoft office, especially when one weighs up the benefits of having a truly connected, knowledge sharing organisation, and consider that the cost of the SharePoint To-Go package is roughly equal to the cost of an average two day training course - per person!

So now you have an idea of the hotness that bSOLVe, a small innovative South African company, has fired up - and I am sure we’ll be hearing more from them in the near future!

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

      22 views

Latest Feedreader Shows Proxy Images

I have been using Feedreader ever since I was introduced to Feeds many many moons ago. I find it just right for my feed needs… just as most people have a preferred email client, I have my Feedreader (although I have to admit that I am looking at the Google Reader, based on Paul’s article, as I type!) Be that as it may, I have found one fault with Feedreader… when I am viewing my feeds at work, from behind a proxy, I cannot see any of the images embedded in the feeds. Of course I just wrote this down to “proxy issues” and forgot about it (I don’t have the time to read each of my feeds in a browser, simply to view the images!)… Ah but wait. I downloaded and installed the latest version of Feedreader, version 3.06, today and viola! I have images. I don’t know how this issue was resolved… but that is the beauty of new media, you don’t need to understand the how’s, all you need to do is appreciate it… Just as I’m appreciating my feeds, especially those chilibean ones, with all their images!

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

      18 views

Blogging platforms

Anyone heard of the blogging platform iUpload? I hadn’t heard about it myself until I read this preview to Forrester’s paper titled “The Forrester Wave: Blogging Platforms, Q2 2006″ published in June 2006.

Forrester evaluated leading blogging platforms across 54 criteria and found that iUpload leads the market with its robust blogging capabilities and its strong strategic vision of a blog as a lightweight content management system (CMS), a collaboration and knowledge management tool, and even as a foundation to form communities of customers. When choosing between a full-featured suite like iUpload’s Customer Conversation System or strong blogging-focused solutions like Movable Type and WordPress, companies should have a well-developed vision of how blogging will be used within the enterprise and then select a vendor that shares that vision.

Forrester conducted in-depth evaluations of nine blogging platforms: Drupal, iUpload’s Customer Conversation System, Roller, Six Apart’s Movable Type and TypePad, Telligent Systems’ Community Server, Traction Software’s TeamPage, UserLand Software’s Manila, and WordPress. To further enhance our analysis, we conducted client reference interviews with 30 user companies, including 3M, CNET Networks, General Motors, IBM, In-Q-Tel, McDonald’s, Oracle, SAP, Time, Wells Fargo, and Ziff Davis Media.

http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/46-iUpload-casestudy.htm

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

      24 views