How to get Comments

Over the last few years I have tried really hard to have visitors comment on my posts. Getting comments is surprisingly difficult when you are one blog out of a million. So now for my general advice on how to get comments on your blog.

1. Ask questions, always ask questions give people a reason to want to talk back to you, this usually ensures at least one comment answering your question. Usually though it is about asking the right question. What questions do you ask your visitors?

2. Cause controversy, people love arguing so if you cause a little controversy you will get comments. In fact you will probably get more traffic in the long run with just a hair of controversy. What do you expect though? People love to be in the middle of a fight and we might as well exploit it.

3. Piss people off. This fits in with the controversy comment but causes a little more...dangerous effects. If you think you can handle the people ripping you apart for a few weeks then this is the way to go for you.

Those are my best ideas for getting comments. If you think I am an idiot you should probably tell me...in the comments.

The Value (or Lack Thereof) of StumbleUpon Visitors

Almost everyone I know uses StumbleUpon in one way or another. StumbleUpon is a great way to find new content online and almost always reminds me of channel surfing the internet. I like using it. But I have a problem when I am Stumbling. I usually read about a quarter of the title of the post and then I am gone off to find usually a flash game or something to that extent.

StumbleUpon users tend to jump onto a website stay for, well on my site, an average of 11 seconds and then POOF they are gone never to be seen again. This same phenomenon seems a lot like the Digg Effect. You get a ton of visitors that really just take up bandwidth.

My hope on a website is to draw you in enough to read and comment. What type of user is the perfect person to bring in for that? What do you think about StumbleUpon users?

Oldie but a Goodie: Heely Shoes Must Die

This is one of my favorite posts I have written, and according to my old blog statistics, everyone else really liked it too. So sit back and enjoy!

Just so everyone knows, I hate those damn rollee shoes kids wear. You know the ones that have the little wheel in the heel so they can roll their lazy asses around? Yeah those pieces of junk, I think the main ones are called Heelys. They look like this:


Now these pieces of junk would not bother me so much if they were used properly. Say, hey, I am around this half pipe, but I don’t have my skates, dude. What should I do? Oh yeah! I got heelys! (roll away and break your leg) I guess that’s how I think they should be used; instead I think they are causing even more childhood obesity. That is right, rollee shoes are making fat kids.




How could this happen you ask? Isn’t it obvious?



So as you can see these Heely shoes are making the youth of America fatter than they already are. I think they should ban these nasty little shoes until parents can get some more sense. Do not haul your kids around on wheels if you do not want them to get fat!

I have a bit of a campaign to go on against these rolling shoes. I say we take action against them until they are banned. Start throwing pencils or sticks in front of these rolling kids and make them trip. Act like they have ran into you and yell excessively. Buy yourself a pair of these shoes and trip and hurt yourself in a mall or something. Eventually they will be banned everywhere and we will not have to put up with them. If anything tell some parents to get some balls and stop their kid from hanging on them.

Cameron

Oldie but a Goodie: The Great Squirrel Safari

I am bringing back some posts from old blogs of mine that I thought were hilarious. I tried to edit out more horrible spelling and grammar from the time but I can only do so much. So now for your reading pleasure, The Great Squirrel Safari.

Once upon a time in a distant land far, far away, in a land called Walmart there were two adventurous boys, named Chad and Cameron, who were wandering around. This usually is a very boring situation and is only what is done by these young men when they have absolutely nothing better to do. We had decided that it would be interesting to do a full walking lap around the Super Walmart. Now this is no easy Feat. That place is huge. But in the process of walking much was found, such as a really nice camera, some scary children and...a banana keeper.

We did almost mess up though. We rounded the corner by the produce and BAM! We took a wrong turn. Luckily we back-tracked, saw the banana keeper and then heard the interesting news that they were having a "crazy day" at Walmart, to us it sounded like they had a humping problem. We started to walk on and between the polish ham and the cookies suddenly it attacked.

Running down the hall is three Walmart employees with nets and one extremely panicked squirrel. We did not know what to do, our first thought was, "SQUISH THE BASTARD!" we then realized that squishing a squirrel in produce makes one bloody mess so, Chad punted it. This slightly stunned it and it ran back toward the net wilding employees. They missed, idiots.

It continued its escape under Speedy checkout Number 2, where seemingly no one could find it. We then noticed a large hole, where it very well could have ran away into the women's clothing. We all split into search parties and Chad and I went to the women’s clothing and asked personnel there if they had seen a squirrel recently, much to our surprise they said it liked to hang out in the purses. At that point I noted I could no longer name the squirrel Phillip.

We searched high and low among the purses and backpacks and found nothing and then got distracted by nice pants. We bought the pants. BUT THEN! We continued our amazing squirrel expedition. We found a friend among the workers named AJ, we knew him from school. He helped us search among the produce, we searched near and far, high and low, and by the banana keeper but no squirrel was to be found.

Then we back to where we last saw the squirrel, under Speedy Checkout Number 2, and saw that there was a soda cooler that something could easily hide behind. We moved the cooler slowly and had it surrounded on three sides. It moved slowly...and nothing came out. We sat and stared at it for a bit when I go, “Wow, that sure is a big lint ball, like a huge fuzz ball.” Suddenly all our thought processes did this. Lint Ball...Fuzz Ball...Big Fuzz ball...HOLY SHIT! It’s the squirrel!

And that it was, we then got our supplies, a large bass fishing net, a pair of leather gloves, a large stick, and a lot of spectators. AJ put on the gloves, Chad held the net, and I poked the infamous creature with the stick. For some odd reason it didn’t feel like moving, so I poked it again, then AJ got the idea of grabbing its tail, it did nothing again, but when he was holding the tail I poked it again and, it attacked!

Luckily we had the net it got stuck in it and we spun it around a few times so it was nicely trapped. Then squirrel in hand, getting applause the whole way we walked out of the store victorious. But feeling sorry for the poor bugger we let it loose into the great wilds of the Walmart parking lot, where hopefully it ran to 13th avenue and got squished.

Do you have any amazing Walmart stories? Post them in the comments!

Why You Should Not Have a Protected Twitter Account

There are many reasons not to have a protected twitter account. The point that people need to hear these reasons from somewhere but their own mind kid of disturbs me.

Community

Community is one of the biggest reasons to not have a protected Twitter account. It is very difficult to be a part of a public community when you won't let anyone hear what you have to say. In fact a large number of people will not follow you on Twitter if they can not see your account before hand. So if your account is protected, you are hurting yourself and the overall community of Twitter.

Communication

It is impossible for other people to communicate with you if you have a protected Twitter account. Some of the most interesting things that have happened to me on Twitter have been because I mentioned something and had people I have never met talk to me about it. A good example was I was complaining about reddit and the co-founder started talking to me about it. That could not have happened had I protected my Twitter account.

It's Not Facebook

Twitter is not Facebook. You do not have pictures from your drunken party on Twitter. You do not have enough information on Twitter for people to stalk you (unless for some reason you Tweet you exact location at all times). A good comparison is Facebook is the coffee shop where you know everyone, Twitter is the concert where you run into people and start talking to them. So do not think that you have to keep your Twitter account locked down like you do your Facebook account, let it be free!

Search Results

If you protect your Twitter account you can not be searched. Period. Twitter search is becoming a big deal. It's up to the second (depending on the day) information about what is going on in the world. Don't you want people to know what you are thinking about current events? Also if you protect your account you will not show up on Google. With your Twitter account you could be making free links to you or your friends sites so they show up even higher on Google.

My Personal Frustration

The last reason not to have a protected Twitter account is my personal frustration. I am sick of finding more and more people jumping on to Twitter and then not contributing. In fact I will also will not follow anyone if they have a protected Twitter account. So if you are going to join a community please be a part of it.

So after this if you haven't unprotected your Twitter account I do not know what will convince you.

Please unprotect that Twitter account and join the rest of us.

Once you join us send those other protected users here for their answer.

(None of these images are mine, Copyright respective owners, click images to see their sites)

Browserless 0.2.1

Hello Everyone this is a major update to the Browserless browser. I have added quite a bit such as:

-- Added auto refresh option
-- Added scroll command line options
-- Added corner menu
-- Added ability to save configuration
-- Added ability to enable/disable resizing
-- Added ability to enable/disable scrolling
-- Added ability to enable/disable auto refresh

Hopefully this makes Browserless better and easier to use for you.

To download go here

Go here for more information about Browserless

Browserless

Browserless is a quick .NET app that opens a browser with none of the browser decorations. All you get is information in a quick to setup application.

Personally I use it for Twitter visualizations covering my 42" screen. I also use it as a quick way to look at information floating across the internet in a quick glance. Here is a screenshot showing my use of Browserless for Twitter visualizations:

As you can see there is nothing but information on that screen (or as much information as Twitter can give you)

Click to download Browserless. Check out the readme file for instructions on how to set up Browserless.

If you have any bug reports or suggestions just send an email to me at fictoris@gmail.com

Twicker: The Ultimate Twitter Quick View

Twicker is a new contender in the Adobe AIR Twitter App arena. Which, by the way, is a huge playing field. Twicker caught my eye though because it gives me a quick way to check out whats going on with Twitter right now with whatever I have it set to search.

Twicker is a search based application that gives you updates every five seconds about what is going on based on your search terms. Personally I use fictoris, janana, l4x9, #sharepoint, #moss to give me an idea of what people are saying about me, my fiance, and sharepoint. Important topics right?

As long as you know how to use Twitter search Twicker is as easy to get a hang of as Notepad. Just type in your search terms and boom you have a ticker of all that is Twitter.

Now it does have a few issues as of this writing. But they do not harm the program. Well, as long as they get fixed they don't.

• It will not authenticate on Windows yet. (this is being worked on acording to it's creator, Dragossh)
• The Tweet view window will only go one way (also being worked on)

Those are my big issues I have been having and it sounds that they will both be fixed by beta 3.

Now I do have one big suggestion for it and you guys tell me if this would be a good idea. Have the ability to have multiple configurations and instances running so you could keep track of one or two things per Twicker bar instead of all in one. Again though tell me what you guys think about that idea.

So this is Twicker, a great application with just a few quirks that will soon be an awesome tool for Twitter users.

Step by Step Instructions for Setting up InfoPath forms on MOSS 2007

I did a lot of researching on this and never really found a great article that was straight forward and step by step on how to set up InfoPath forms on a MOSS 2007 site. So now without further adieu: Step by Step Instructions for Setting up InfoPath forms on MOSS 2007.

Step 1: Starting Up

• Open up InfoPath 2007.
• Click Design a Form Template. We want to start with a Blank Template so click Ok. Now you should have a nice open field of whiteness and possibilities.

Step 2: Beautification

• I like to make things pretty so first on the Design Tasks sidebar I click Layout.
• At this point let’s use the basic Table with Title layout. Click it and then hit the Back button to bring us to our original menu.
• Just to be fancy let’s center it. Click behind the table and push the Center button. Your form should now look like this:

  

Step 3: Titles Galore

• Add a title to your title by clicking and ty ping in your title. I am using Hardware Information.

Step 4: Adding your own Fields

• Now to the nitty gritty. Let’s add some fields. Click the Data Source link on the Design Tasks Column.
• Now click to highlight the myFields group. Once that has been highlighted click the now enabled Add a Field or Group… link. You should now have a dialog box.
• Fill in the Name (no spaces or special characters), the type (Field (element) for now), and the Data Type (Text (string) should be good).
• Click cannot be blank if you would like the field re quired (which I do).
• Repeat clicking Add a Field or Group… for as many fields as you would like. No worries, if you mess up you can right click and delete them.

Step 5: Adding Form Controls

• Adding the controls to work with your fields is now extremely easy. Click the field you want on the form and drag it into the table. Tada! It is inserted!
• You can add text if you would like anywhere on the form. Push tab to add another table cell. Once you have added all your fields it could/s hould look something like this:

  

That last one is a repeating field. They work just like a normal text field in Sharepoint.

Step 6: Compatibility Check

• Let’s make sure our non-InfoPath owning use rs can open up this form. Go back to the Design Tasks column (click back once). And click the Design Checker.
• If you have set up your verification server, good for you. If not click Change Compatibility Settings. Click the Design a form template that can be opened in a browser of InfoPath check mark. Then type in your MOSS site address, I usually just use the root address.
• Make sure there are no error messages. None? Great!

Step 7: The Initial Publish

• Let us now place the form on the MOSS site and create a list for it. First things first we have to push save. It will tell you when you want to show people you can publish! Awesome I know!
• Next go back to your design tasks and click Publish Form Template… Select To a Sharepoint Server and click next. Put your site address in. You should end with / not default.aspx.
• Log in to the Sharepoint Site. Make sure Enable this form to be filled out in a Browser is selected and Document Library is selected. Hit the next button.
• Create a New library, trust me it’s the easiest way right now. Name that library and give it a quick description.
• Now add the columns that are based on your form fields. Click add then double click the field you want to make into a column.
• Click next and then click the Publish Button. Close that dialog and lets add some more.

Step 8: The Data Connection

• Let’s add a Data Connection and a button to submit our form. First click the Controls link in the Design tasks column.
• Find the Button control and drag it onto your form.
• Right click said button and go to Button Properties. Change the label (I use Submit).
• Then click the Rules button. Click Add… Name the Rule and now let’s add the fun stuff.
• Click Add Action and in the dropdown menu select Submit using a Data Connection. Click Add.
• I prefer to Create a new connection, and then hit next. Click to a Document Library. Copy and paste the link to the newly created Sharepoint Document Library to Document Library Field. For the File name I am using the HardwareName Field. Click Next.
• Name it however you would like and click Finish. Click Ok. You can add any other actions you would like.
• Then Click OK. Click ok on the Rules Dialog. Click ok on the Button Properties.

Step 9:

• Republish the form and you now have a fully functional integrated InfoPath form.

Hopefully this helped you get started making InfoPath forms on Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. I know I had a lot of trouble finding information about it and now this should enable you to at least get going with the basics.

Free Ubuntu Stickers!

Ok, After that last rant I decided I needed something happy to cover it up.

So Here it is! Free Ubuntu stickers from Bauer Power. Personally I love stickers and will be sending my SASE to them right away. Man I love some Ubuntu goodness and I hope everyone gets these stickers and peels off their cruddy Windows sticker.

Check it out kids! Free Ubuntu Stickers!

The Walmart Experience

*** THIS IS A RANT DO NOT READ IF EASILY BORED ***

Today I went to Walmart....

And that's where the story should end. Seriously, going to Walmart should not be an event. Even though many times before it has been, well, I think the best term is crazy. Such as the squirrel incident which I will hopefully have up here at some point. Good memories...

Nonetheless today was a bad day at the Wally World. I purchased a Wii guitar hero controller and it sucked a big one. The Ginger and I went in on Wednesday and said, "Hey we are sorry we don't have the receipt is there anything we can do?" They said bring it in with a copy of the transaction from my debit card. I go Awesome! and move along my merry way.

Now today I decide to bring it in and the same lady is there. I think that this will be easy. Boy was I wrong. The lady flat out denied she said it. I mean full on, flat out, straight up lied to my face. So I stood there for about 10 minutes and argued as politely as I could.

Finally we get a manager and lo and behold they can do it, it will just take a while worth of searching.

30 minutes later...

The manager gets my number and says we will call you when we find it.

45 minutes later...

Ring Ring! We found it, come in, but we can only exchange the same guitar....

3 hours later...

I walk in and after a little shopping around decide to pick up a copy of World Tour. Bring everything back to the desk and the original lady won't even make eye contact and runs off into the back. Now the new lady has no idea whats going on. After all that it takes anouther 15 minutes to check out.

Either way, I came out with another controller that seems to be working and a copy of Guitar Hero World Tour.

*** END RANT ***

Protected Twitter Accounts

I have noted a strange occurrence as of late. Its seems that about 1 out of every 5 new Twitter accounts are protected. This scares me because isn't that part of Twitter? Being able to communicate with other people, learn from other people and their 140 characters of fame. What's the point of having a Twitter account that no one can search?

Some of my favorite applications online are based wholy on the fact of public Twitter accounts. One of my favorites right now, Visible Tweets. Is based on just showing a search string in a quite beautiful way. You can't even be a part of that if you protect your Twitter account.

So now I guess this is just a plea. If you are going to make a Twitter account or if you already have a Twitter account and it's protected. Unprotect that damn thing and let people see what you have to say! Let the world know what you are doing/thinking/saying. That's the point people and if you don't figure it out you are going to bring about the demise of Twitter.

Tell me what you think, do you think people should have public accounts or are you someone that thinks protected accounts are a good idea?