A new beginning to editioning of Software releases?
I don’t know.
I don’t think every customer is gonna require a geek to tell them which Vista to choose.
Good for the geeks, either way.

Neobinaries.com just published my (admittedly longish) article on 5 Firefox extensions that I really think are required.

Ok, you’ve been asking for it, so here it is!

I’ve just finished creating, and testing the Social Bookmarking template for Blogger.

You can see it in action on dhigu.blogspot.com. Getting an available name on Blogger is really hard these days!

So you want it on your own blogger based blog? Read on…
The Social Bookmarking template snippet seems to be catching the fancy of quite a few people.

I guess that my initial assumption that the Wordpress users out there would be the geekier of the lot and want it more was completely wrong. Blogger allows for template customization right there in your template settings and that’s where you’ve got to go to install my Blogger template section. It’s easier and it’s possible to do it without actually having to go all the way to host (and manage) your own blog somewhere.

The Blogger Template snippet
Here’s the Blogger template snippet: dhirajgupta_socialbookmark_Blogger.zip

I’ve set up a working demo at dhigu.blogspot.com.

Edit: The basic template is available for download as well.

Requirements

You don’t really need much to have the Social Bookmarking section. A blogger blog, preferably with hosting outside of blogspot (choose the advanced option when you sign up).

Hosting of blogger files outside of blogger lets you have whatever other files you want along with your posts hosted as well. This does have some cost associated with it, but is cheap and well worth the money. Here’s some good hosts to try out. If you already host your blog, go straight to the How to Install section on this page.

You could however be one of the rest of the millions who have their blogs on Blogpot, the free Blogger.com hosting service. How do you get the template to work? Simple. Use one of the “free” hotlink file hosting services on the net. There are several, I tested out with FilesUpload and the functionality should work fine. You’re going to have to upload *all* the images in the images folder in the zip file. And the Overlib javascript library as well. After you’ve uploaded you’re going to have to change the template code to have fully qualified URLs for the images. Similarly the template parts where you add the Overlib library code according to the simple Overlib installation instructions, remember to change the src attribute to your selection of free files host. And if you don’t get any of this, you could ask for help here, maybe I (or someone else) could help you out.

How to Install?
Just like the Wordpress template section, You’ll need to be able to add the images for the template and also the Overlib javascript library.

The template snippet expects the images for the Social bookmarking block to be present in a folder called Images in your host root (/). Copy the images from the zip file to your Images folder.

Next you need to install the Overlib Javascript Library. This is what allows the template to have those neat tooltips on the hover of each Social Bookmarking site. This is usually quite painless and should not pose a problem. Get the Library and install it on to your blog template according to their instructions.

Next, it’s time to actually insert the template section into your template code. For this, first take a deep breath. Relax. We’re going to be editing some template code manually and while it is simple, it pays to be attentive.

Ok, first make a backup of your existing template. This is to make sure that if things go wrong you can revert back to where you were. First open up your blogger account and click on the big Template tab on top. Copy all the content in the big text box on the bottom. Create a new file and save the contents of that textbox in it. Give it a good name and save it safely so that you can get back to it if you need it.

Right. On with the editing. Most blogger templates have a section called or something similar. In this section you’ll find the Blogger template tag for the title of your post inside a section called . Just after the tag ends (), paste the entire contents of the blogger.html file, which you’ll find in the zip file download, above.

Save the template. Republish your blog. Your blog posts should now come up showing the Social Bookmarking section right under the title section of each post. Expand the section and check that the tooltips are working fine.

Place, lay the template out as per your wishes. Tweak as required.

If you have any problems, post a comment here.

Licensing?
I really don’t want to get into any
kind of licensing or that kind of stuff. So please consider it free of all restrictions, modify, use, do *whatever* you want to, with it.

If you’re feeling thankful, you could leave a shoutout on your site. Do tell me if you find it useful, here or by feedback.

Shoutouts
A big shoutout to Socializer, for inspiration on this.
A bigger shoutout to NEO Binaries for helping me find Socializer in the first place! I just clicked Bookmarks on the comprehensive category list.

A big shout out to the guys at Overlib too, you guys rock!

Respect to all the people who commented. Yes, that’s you, 3spots, Steven Wong, Pierre Far (Socializer), Matt Fausey (tagtooga), Kenji, techbee, TonNet, and Scott Rafer.

The biggest shoutout goes out to you, Dear Constant Reader, for egging me on to make this. Hope this fulfills your wishes.

I’ve been looking at Social Bookmarking sites and what kind of impact they’re having on the way the general Internet populace finds news, tells the world about their discoveries and in general increases activity on a particular topic of interest faster than any search engine ever could.

I recently modified the blog template on my site to include a “Click to Social bookmark” section below each post title as you must have noted.

Want the same section on your site? Read on…
My Social Bookmarking section seems to have gained some sort of audience and I thought I’d go
ahead and give it off to anyone who was interested. So I made a
Wordpress template for everyone to use. If anyone’s interested I could
make a Blogger template as well. Ask for it if you want it.

The Wordpress template snippet

Here’s the Wordpress template snippet: dhirajgupta_socialbookmark_wordpress.zip

How to install?
This will currently only work for people who host their own Wordpress blogs with someone other than Wordpress. This seems to be a requirement for you to be able to edit your Wordpress theme - they don’t let you edit it right there.

You’ll need to be able to add the images for the template and also the Overlib javascript library.

The template snippet expects the images for the Social bookmarking block to be present in a folder called Images inside the folder where you have the Wordpress template. This is the norm and you should already have it. Copy the images from the zip file to your template’s Images folder.

Next you need to install the Overlib Javascript Library. This is what allows the template to have those neat tooltips on the hover of each Social Bookmarking site. This is usually quite painless and should not pose a problem. Get the Library and install it on to your blog template according to their instructions.

Next it’s time to finally insert my Social Bookmarking template snippet into your actual Wordpress template. To do this, open up the wordpress.html file from the zip file you downloaded from my site. Copy all the contents from this HTML file into the correct place in your “The_Loop” section. Normally you would paste it right under your title header area. Save and refresh your blog; you should see the Click to Social Bookmark link come up.

Place, lay it out and tweak according to your preferences.

And in case you have any problems, do let me know.

A word of caution
I’m not quite an experienced Wordpress user, any help / assistance / feedback on the working of the template snippet would be quite appreciated.

This template snippet will end up increasing the page download size of your blog for first time visitors, a little bit. The stuff that gets added (Overlib JS, image) should be cached by the browser well, though. Your Mileage May Vary.

This is not really a full blown template yet, it requires you to already have a template ready. If any of you’ve got a cool template and would like to share it with the rest of the Internet along with the Social Bookmark section incorporated, do drop me a line.

Licensing?
I really don’t want to get into any kind of licensing or that kind of stuff. So please consider it free of all restrictions, modify, use, do *whatever* you want to, with it.

If you’re feeling thankful, you could leave a shoutout on your site. Do tell me if you find it useful, here or by feedback.

Shoutouts
A big shoutout to Socializer, for inspiration on this.
A bigger shoutout to NEO Binaries for helping me find Socializer in the first place! I just clicked Bookmarks on the comprehensive category list.

A big shout out to the guys at Overlib too, you guys rock!

I think Google’s Notebook offering is just another confused attempt at market acquisition in one more idea that’s been abused heavily on the Internet - bookmarking and notes. This, along with their recent string of application releases has really brought my kettle to a boil.

“Google Notebook Labs” has just released a firefox extension (whatever happened to the just plain, good old, Google Labs is a mystery). This extension’s download page is where you get taken to when you signup on Notebook - if you do it with Firefox, that is. The perception that I got as an end-user when this happened to me is that the whole Google Notebook concept is a Firefox extension and just that! I don’t know if that is the intention that Google has, really, but that’s what it looks like to moi.

Anyways, on with my review of Google Notebook and why it sucks.

Read more…

The Extension
Let’s start with the Firefox extension. Here’s a list of things that I dislike about it:

1. Architecture: Google created a single sign-on architecture quite some time back. This, is what lets you sign in to all (well… most - Adwords is a notable exception) of google’s offerings using the same “Google account”. The architecture is based around storing of a central cookie that is used by all of Google’s services. This works well in most cases but is quite problematic when you take the same architecture and apply it to a rich interface, like the Notebook Firefox extension.

   The problem is the extension depends on this cookie for its functioning. The Google Notebook Firefox extension has no way for the user to specify their Google account username and password. So the only way you’re going to get this Firefox extension to work is by logging into your google account in your Firefox browser. Clicking on “Open Notebook” simply opens a small popup window which fetches the google single sign on web block when you’re not signed in. This is the first login-required Firefox extension from Google and I had expected better.

   This problem is especially compounded for users like me, who are forced to use more than one google account. Even more so, when you are not logged in and try to “Note This” and the login box pops up; even after logging in correctly, the extension doesn’t go ahead and complete the Noting operation. You’ve got to do it again.

2. Usability issues: Most functionality appears to be happening inside a web block, actual rich functionality is mostly absent in the extension. This makes the extension a bit slower in response compared to what one would expect. Yes, it’s web based, it’s cool, but what’s the point if it’s not really lightning fast; especially when I’m using it to take Notes.
3. Bugs / Problems

1. Installation: Upon install it asked me to restart Firefox (this is a bother that I’ve become used to), and on restart it emptied out my session. All my pages that were stored in my session by Session Manager came up saying (Untitled). This, I’m definitely not used to.

   Everytime I sign in to google notebook, it asks me download the Google Notebook firefox extension. I don’t think that’s a good thing to do to your users. I don’t know if this is caused by them or my Fasterfox has cached the Google Notebox first time signin process, your mileage may vary on this one.

2. “Note this” wipes out site formatting: Noting anything from a website by the advertised select and right-click operation works abysmally as per my expectation. It’s slow, and it wipes out all, yes all formatting, CSS styling, pictures that are not URLs and applies a standard googlish look to it. Not desirable, not expected and extremely tacky. My grabbed notes should look the exact same as they were when I took them.
3. “Note this” adds bookmarks: Right clicking on a page without selecting anything and saying “Note This” just creates a bookmark note. Content on the page is not copied. Makes me wonder what the point of it all was? I could have just added a bookmark on to Digg or Del.icio.us, right?
4. “Note this” doesn’t always work: So what does one do, if he wants to copy the entire page into a note? Ctrl + A, right click and say Note this? Nope, nada, zilch, not working either. I tried it on a NEO Binaries page, and all I got was an extremely innocent error saying, “Error creating note.”. I hate error messages that don’t have the courtesy of telling me what the actual error was. I suppose that goes along with the whole Google spiel of “It’s simple, and it just works!”. Well it doesn’t, not for me.
5. Clicking on maximize in the extension opens a new tab in Firefox. Clicking on Help opens a new window. They’ll probably say it’s by design. I think it sucks!

The Google Notebook Service

As for the the actual Google Notebook offering, it’s got it’s own set of problems as well:

1. Publishing: So I can publish my notes. And what’s the point of that when I get a URL that looks like this: http://www.google.com/notebook/public/06758462020617548695/BDRdQSwoQ6qDM6LMh. What? I’m supposed to remember that? Or send it to someone? Aside from the fact that it looks like the most lame page ever created, I think exposing pseudo blogging features without actually providing any, is just a waste of time, effort and marketing might.

2. Usability Issues:
1. It’s slow. That’s what it feels like when they don’t tell me what’s happening in the Ajax. Show me something, some sort of progress or activity.

2. It’s not attractive to look at, at all. The way it functions leaves a lot to be desired. Compare it with Google Reader for example.
3. The My notes and the other notebooks move up instead of the tab shifting down. Why create a tab bar effect in the first place?
3. Missing features

1. Search!: Google is a seach company. Whatever they do, whatever offering they launch, however much money they make, they must remember this: they are a search company. And when they show messages saying “Search will be available in a few days”, they’re asking for it.

2. Tagging / Categorization: So I’m supposed to search, and only search for my notes in my Google Notebook. I’m not supposed to label, tag or categorize them. No fair. I completely agree with Michael on this.
3. Blog this???: Shouldn’t I be able to create notes and then easily publish them to my blog on Blogger? Especially when they are services by the same company? Doesn’t it make sense? I mean, c’mon guys, get your act together. Fine, you already have that store, edit and publish interface in Blogger. But I’m creating notes here. I want to publish these notes on my blog (and not on your lame URL with weird numbers and symbols).

   Did nobody actually think of this at all?

4. Email Integration: In published Notebooks I can email a link to whomever I want to. How? By using my offline mail client. I don’t know how that makes sense to any person who uses GMail. I use Gmail. I have a Gmail account. I use the same account to login to Google Notebook. And yet, I must use (insert favorite rich email client here) to send a link from my Google Notebook as email. Sounds crazy to me.
4. Confusion?: First Google bought Blogger. Then they came out Google Bookmarks. Then to top it all of they released Google Pages. Now they release Google Notebook with functionality that has bits and pieces of everything. It totally confuses me as to where they’re going with all this. I only wonder how the casual user is supposed to comprehend all of this.
5. Competition is better: The competition is way ahead Google in almost all aspects as regards Google Notebook.

   Take a look at:

   Scrapbook: A top pick Firefox extension, it is something which beats eSnips, OnFolio and now Google Notebook at their own game. And it’s free, fast and respects the way my notes look.

   Del.icio.us: Yes, the true-blue original bookmark sharing service. I think it’s way ahead of Google’s attempts to enter the market.

   SyncNotes: Yup, our own SyncNotes is way ahead of them in the actual Note taking, publishing and sending departments as well.

My point?
Google Notebook is definitely not the robust and kick-ass kind of offering that we’ve become used to come out of the Google stable. Instead its a confused attempt to enter late into one of the most heavily crowded spaces on the Net. That too, Sideways.

Are we looking at the first chinks that are beginning to appear in Google’s shiny armour?

I’d love to integrate with coComment. 

They’ve actually gone ahead and executed an idea that I’ve been kicking around in my head for quite some time now, but never got around to discussing with anyone (forget putting down on paper). There’s only so much that one can do, I guess.

So should one join with an already existing service which seems to have no commercial model at all (is that good or bad?), at least currently,  or re-create one’s own wheel every time with the exact custom circumference, spokes, rims and material that one wants?

I vote for joining in.

This site has been created off a custom code base from Amieo. The blog (what you’re reading) is pretty much customized from / for the same platform. I think integrating with the coComments javascript based meta-attributes platform shouldn’t be that tough. I guess we’ll give it a shot the next time we’re looking at that particular part of the codebase.

I love the fact that coComment has walked the extra mile in creating a Firefox plugin that integrates awesomely with the service. It provides full status bar indicators for whether your comments on this blog will be tracked and even will tell you when any of your blogs have new comments.

Very recommended for Firefox users. And if you don’t use Firefox yet, then what the heck are you waiting for? Get Firefox from the link on the right bar of my site. Now.

Shoutouts go out to Chrono Cr@cker for recommending coComment.

If you’ve been using computers and Outlook for as long as I’ve have, you probably have had occasion to need to migrate from one computer to another and take your entire Outlook with you. You’ve spent a lifetime configuring and getting Outlook to respect your tastes.

One of the things that happens when you migrate to a new computer and setup Microsoft Office on it and start up your Outlook for the first time, it goes and creates an empty “Outlook profile” for you. There is no simple way (at least from a UI perspective, IMHO) to go and stop this. Outlook will always go and create an empty profile for you, the first time you start it. This is basically the reason that you actually get the duplicate contact folders problem in Outlook.

The typical prosumer / geek way of backing up Outlook for moving it to a new machine involves finding the profile’ PST file (typically in C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUserName\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook) and copying it over to the new machine. Suppose you do manage to attach the old data file to your new Outlook and get your basic email / tasks / calendar working again, the one thing that typically screws up is the Contacts. Outlook retains the old data file that was created (at least the Contacts part) and shows it to you in various parts of the UI. This can become most irritating especially when Outlook still retains the Contacts from the data file that it default-created as your default Contacts repository even though you have no contacts in it. All “To:“ button clicks, address book lookups, etc. will default to this Contacts repository with a UI option to switch repositories via a drop down list box which displays a stupendously amazing list of two items, both showing the single, innocuous word, “Contacts”, leaving you to figure out which-is-which.

Now for the good news: It’s a pretty simple matter to eliminate this problem. Just use the “Tools – Email accounts” option and instead of selecting the normal Add / Change email account option, notice the bottom portion that you have become trained to turn a blind eye to, “Directory”. Use the “View or change existing directory or address books” option to receive a heretofore undiscovered dialog that lets you figure out a way to set Outlook’s address book selection preference and optionally even delete an address book. Yup that’s what you want to do. Only, you’ve got to figure out which particular “Contacts” book you’ve to delete, they are both named the exact same thing.

So, if you’ve been following me so far, I think it should be a simple matter for you to figure out the correct address book and delete it. The other address book quickly becomes the default and Outlook starts looking up contacts correctly again.

Or you could take the 0.5 probability chance to just delete the repository that shows by default. Is it the first
item, could it be any one of the two, if you’re willing to take the gamble, you have a good 50% chance of success. I took it and was rewarded suitably enough to write this. However, I *do* recommend a full backup of your PST file if you’re actually going to go ahead and try this. DO NOT come back to me and tell me, “What you asked me to do ended up with me losing ALL my contacts.” You were warned.

Do tell me if you’ve ever experienced this problem, and your experiences with above solution. I’ve not taken the time/effort to create screenshots and upload them yet, but I will, if anyone finds it necessary. Do post a comment if you want this.

While listening to: Juno Reactor - Contact

A laptop / notebook computer really has the potential to change your life. At least your digital life, for sure. If you’ve been a long time desktop-only computer user like me (I keep saying that, don’t I? ), with 1 or more computers at work and 1 or more computers at home, then, like me, a pretty substantial portion of your life has been spent shuttling data between these computers; an account of my travails follows:A laptop / notebook computer really has the potential to change your life. At least your digital life, for sure. If you’ve been a long time desktop-only computer user like me (I keep saying that, don’t I? ), with 1 or more computers at work and 1 or more computers at home, then, like me, a pretty substantial portion of your life has been spent shuttling data between these computers; an account of my travails follows:

I have had a primary computer at home and a primary computer at work for a long, long time. The home computer is just about continuously downloading all sorts of goodies (we’ll go into what-I-do-with-my-bandwidth later. Maybe.). The office computer is my primary “work” machine, where most of my corporate communication, project related files and research lies. I often carry a lot of work home and this must include all the files that are being worked on. Similarly, a lot of my colleagues at work want the goodies I download at home and these must be carried to work ever so often as well.

A major complication in all of this is email. I’ve got several email accounts, some related to work, some private / personal that got made over the years. All of these email accounts get downloaded into Outlook email at both locations. A lot of my work is corporate communication, I send out and receive *important* email. If I send a mail out from home, I must have a copy of it at work as well. This usually means emailing a bcc copy of the email to myself while sending it out from home and then picking it up manually from the inbox and moving it to Sent Items at office, later. So I’ve got slightly different email stores at both my locations.

Over the years I’ve regularly tried several different routines to get some semblance of sanity into this whole soup. For files I’ve tried out:
Emailing / online storage:

Pros: “Ubiquitousness” of files

Cons: Internet is required at each location

Large files take looooooooooong to transfer, at both ends.

“Thumb” usb flash memory drives:

Pros: Miniscule physical footprint,

Cons: Large files are generally not possible.

Plug-play-copy functionality.

Rewritable CDs:

Pros: A more “hard copy” of your files that you can carry around with you

CDRWs go bad often – reliability is low.

Decent file size possibility.

Cons: Need to have a writer to write files

Rewritable DVDs

Pros: A bigger file size possibility

Cons: Same as Rewritable CDs with one added complication, not everyone has a DVD ROM drive yet, so you might be stuck with a “How do I….?” issue.

USB IDE hard disks:

Pros: A much bigger file size possibility

Standard IDE hard disks can be used – a typical “cheaper-than-ever” starter hard disk is easily purchased

File transfer is f-a-s-t!

Cons: A lot bulkier (and heavier) than a CD or a thumb drive

Power is external to the device – not only do you have to hunt for a power point everywhere, you’re forced to carry a stiff power cord with a bulky, heavy power adaptor brick in it.

USB 2.0 “Laptop” hard disks

Pros: Quick plug-copy/play alternative.

Single, thin USB 2.0 cord required, powered by USB

Transfers are fast enough that you can access content direct from the drive.

This is currently my transfer device of choice.

Cons: None that I can think of!

So what does all this have to do with the usage of a laptop computer being a life altering experience? Read on. I’ve recently had the opportunity to finally “move into” a brand spanking new laptop over the past 2 – 3 weeks. This, if nothing else, has been a consolidation drive for me as I’ve now only have ONE primary computer now!! I’ve managed to consolidate all my email accounts onto the new laptop, all the important files are always present, and I can completely avoid the embarassing / publicly humiliating spectacle of me emailing myself that business proposal document that is yet half done and must be continued to be worked on from my “other” computer, because the file is *already there*. On my laptop.

Of course, having a laptop with you has many other different life alternating consequences. Your primary computer is *always* with you. Wherever you go, it never leaves your side. Once you get settled into using a laptop all the time you start consolidating the rest of your digital experience *around* this laptop! You start accumulating gadgets that you carry around with you and can plug into your laptop at will. This includes that must-have portable wireless mouse, extra disk storage, perhaps an extended battery, a headphone / headset and a webcam for all those voice / video calls that you can now easily make over the Internet, anywhere! Everywhere you go, you frantically hunt for wireless Internet connectivity and are disappointed if you can’t find it.

All-in-all it’s been a pleasant experience shifting my digital life over to the new laptop and I’ve seen quite a productivity increase just because of this not so humble machine. If you’ve been thinking of going in for that laptop that you’ve been eyeing for quite some time and didn’t know whether it would actually work out or not or whether the “extra” laptop would ever end up being useful or not, trust me and go in for it, once you do get it, there will be no turning back. And laptops are continuously delivering more bang for a much lower-price so look around for the best deal possible.

If you’ve gotten so far, then you must definitely have identified with at least some of the problems / solutions that I mention. Do tell me about your own experiences. Just pop in a comment if you’ve got something to say, I assure you I read *all* comments.

This weekend, I had planned to finish off a lot of work that’s been pending for quite a bit now. Yes, work. On a weekend. You know, the kind of stuff that requires a set amount of concentrated amount of time and effort that never actually gets done during the week because you’re too busy doing the stuff that your daily work routine dictates. Contact Client X, draft document Y, get project Z completed, that sort of thing. So, I decided to take some time off on the weekend and finish off moving my site to our Amieo portal framework. While this is usually pretty much a trivial task (I could have simply handed it over to the Amieo implementation team), I planned to develop a couple (or so) modules for some custom functionality that I wanted to have on my site, at home, in the (relative) peace and quiet. I’ve always been the “Be Prepared” types, so I took a backup of my current site, an Amieo deployment, all the dev tools I needed (and some I didn’t ) and got it all home on my way back on Friday.

This weekend, I had planned to finish off a lot of work that’s been pending for quite a bit now. Yes, work. On a weekend. You know, the kind of stuff that requires a set amount of concentrated amount of time and effort that never actually gets done during the week because you’re too busy doing the stuff that your daily work routine dictates. Contact Client X, draft document Y, get project Z completed, that sort of thing. So, I decided to take some time off on the weekend and finish off moving my site to our Amieo portal framework. While this is usually pretty much a trivial task (I could have simply handed it over to the Amieo implementation team), I planned to develop a couple (or so) modules for some custom functionality that I wanted to have on my site, at home, in the (relative) peace and quiet. I’ve always been the “Be Prepared” types, so I took a backup of my current site, an Amieo deployment, all the dev tools I needed (and some I didn’t ) and got it all home on my way back on Friday.

My home box is pretty much an entertainment / general file storage machine so setting up the development environment would require quite an effort. I decided to finish off all the required installations on Friday night itself, so I could start off fresh on Saturday morning, bright and early.

First things first, even before I began to install Visual Studio.Net, I would need to have my IIS up and running so that VS.Net’s ASP.Net components would install properly. So I proceeded to install IIS from my Windows XP Add / Remove Windows components control panel. I did the required checking and un-checking in the add components dialog and pressed Finish. As expected, it required me to insert my Windows XP Pro installation disk, which I did. To my surprise, the installer refused to recognise the CD, saying that it required staxmem.dll which was definitely present on the CD, but the installer kept saying that it
didn’t! Thinking that the installer probably needed files from the Windows XP Service Pack 2 installation, (my CD is a vanilla XP installer), I extracted Windows XP SP 2 onto a folder and pointed the installer to the required file, fully expecting it to pick up the file from there and continue the install. To my further surprise, even this failed, that too with the same error. Fine. Now, I was frustrated. I punched in the error message into Google and landed up on this page. Wokay. So it seemed to be a “known issue”. Fair enough, I ran the cryptic command line “esentutl” command and found out the problem was not there. Next step: Create an integrated Windows XP SP2 install image. Following the procedure to the letter, I did just that and now had a supposed “integrated” Windows XP install folder. Yay. Right, back to the IIS installer, I pointed it to the required file in the new, integrated, folder. Nope, no dice. It continued to give the same error. Aaargh! +

Running out of options at 3:30 am on a Friday night can be pretty painful to most people, I was pretty much in a hair pulling frenzy by then. I decided to call it a night and look at the problem in the morning and save my remaining hair from imminent destruction by my own two hands.

Friday morning, I slaved at my computer all day, attempting all sorts of things to get IIS to install on my
non-cooperative machine. But it was not meant to be. I had come to realize that there were only two solutions to this problem.

Solution 1: Give it up and reinstall Windows XP from scratch, this time taking care to install IIS before installing the accursed (but much required) Service Pack 2.

Solution 2: Give it up still further and get a “pre-integrated” installer of Windows XP pro with Service Pack 2 built into it and install Windows XP from scratch.

Both would require me to totally nuke my current software setup and redo everything, including months of setting up of various software that was installed in bits and pieces. While I have done this sort of thing before, like setting up a complete new installation at just a whim in a matter of half a day including all critical software, there was no way that I was going to do this over the weekend. No waaaay.

Because I had a Plan B.

Organisation. If you’ve had a computer as long as I’ve had and have collected as much files as I have (ha!) then I can bet you anything you want that your files are disorganised. And though I do perform maintenance every once in a while (read: Once in a blue moon! ), my spanned volume was pretty much a mess. I decided to take this even-more-long-pending task up and finish organising my stuff.

So there you have it. I now have a much cleaner, leaner storage facility.

I’ve organised my videos, collecting them all under a centralised folder and eliminated. I’ve organised all
my music. Yes, I finally did it! I deleted all the random stuff that was present in my semi – sorted folders; keeping only that which was at least mildly interesting.

Next up: I’m going to check out all the desktop search engines, namely, Google, Yahoo, MSN and maybe even Coppernic and X1. I want to be able to search my stuff, fast.

I’ll keep you posted on which one I finally select. Keep watchin’.

Posted while listening to Poe - Hey Pretty (Drive Remix)

I was just fooling around on the Gmail website when I saw a link to check out their new features. Check them out I did, and boy was I surprised! Google is now giving complete access to their service through POP3. Not only that, they even support SMTP so that you can send your mail out directly from your client itself! Both SMTP as well as POP3 are protected by SSL. Note, you have to enable POP3 access from your Gmail settings for all this to work. Check out how to configure your client from this page.

Sometimes I really wonder on how Gmail does all this and that too for free. First they broke into the free web mail market by giving out 1 Gb of mail space and now this! I can hardly wait to see how the other free email service providers move to tackle this latest feature on Google’s email service.