Published on
June 30, 2006 in
Google.
Trackbacks are a good way to alert other bloggers that you citing them on your blog. It also helps to drive traffic to your own site (if your comment was insightful or tempting).
Unfortunately, some blog hosts like Blogger, Skynetblogs do not automatically send a trackback ping to all the blog URLs in your blog post. So how do you send such a trackback from your blogspot.com site to other blogs (provided they support receiving them, obviously)?
- put the following code in your Blogger template (e.g. below the actual post):
http://web.forret.com/tools/trackback.asp?title=<$BlogItemTitle$>& blog_name=<$BlogTitle$>& url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>
- write your blog post with some links to trackback-able blogs
- go to the post page (typically /2006/06/this-is-my-title.html)
- open the trackback wizard by clicking the link that should now be below the post (in a new window)
- for each of the external trackback-able links: open it in a new window, find the trackback URL that is announced on the page and copy/paste it into the “Cited Blog – Trackback URL” of the trackback wizard
- find the relevant piece of text in your blog post concerning that link (typically the text right before and/of after the link) and copy/paste it into the “Citing Blog – Excerpt” field.
- Click “Submit Trackback” – you should get an “OK!” if the trackback was accepted
If the trackback was not accepted, it could be for one of the following reasons:
- the cited blog does not support trackbacks: nothing you can do about it.
- the trackbacks are closed (article is too old or too spammed): nothing you can do about it
- caught by spam control (security is very strict): if you feel strong about the topic, contact the author
- caught by spam control because you are a spammer: get a life
Published on
June 29, 2006 in
Belgium.
To say we were well received at the Microsoft Blogger’s Event yesterday would be an understatement. We were extremely well received. The occasion was: showing the progress of Windows Vista Beta 2 and Office System 2007 Beta 2 and networking with the Belgian bloggers.
First surprise: Vista on a Mac
The presentation of Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 were done on a Mac (MacBook Pro)! Tom (”Developer Audience Marketing Manager”) did his intro, and when David (”Development Platform Advisor”) flipped up the screen of the laptop, there was that bright brash apple right in our face. Looks like Bootcamp didn’t have to wait too long to find its way on Microsoft desks.
The demo went flawless, with as high points: “Flip 3D”, “Live Icons” and a vivid discussion on security (unsurprisingly, it’s better now). Some people in the crowd had been testing Office 2007, and could easily ask the hard questions (”Ok, you can blog with Word 2007, but can you include pictures?” Coolz0r) As one could expect, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook are better than before, but my heart bleeds knowing that people with bad taste have now got even more tools to make despicable designs of even the most mundane documents.
After that we got a short speech of the person in charge of “Windows Genuine Advantage“: the anti-software-piracy initiative of Microsoft. There we learned that they typically go after the ISV (shop), and not as much after the single end-user with a not-actually-fully-legal version of Windows/Office that he/she is typically not aware of. Phew.
Continue reading ‘Lobster and Vista on a Mac’
Over on the brand new, freshly painted Winadmin scripts site:
waSendKeys.wsf 1.0 was just released.
This one will start a program and send keystrokes to it. Use it to automate programs that only have an interactive user interface and do not support command-line parameters: defrag tools, export to CSV/HTML, … You can also use this script in a scheduled task!
Examples:
waSendkeys D:\foo.exe /wait:20 /keys:"{F9};^R;test;{ENTER};%{F4}"
:: will send F9, CTRL+R, “test”, ENTER And ALT-F4
I have a blog called Sample Spotters that talks about whose songs have been sampled by whom. With the help of sites like the-breaks.com and datraxer.com, I make a list of an artist’s songs and where they were used: e.g. Roy Ayers, Patrice Rushen or Labi Siffre. I also did it the other way round once (what songs were sampled BY George Michael), and for some pivotal songs, I dedicated a whole blog post to just 1 song: Funky Drummer and the “Amen Break”.
On that last post I just got a comment by someone who seems to be the original copyright owner of the song: Richard L. Spencer:
I am thoroughly disappointed at all of the comments that I read from decent sounding young people who are not appalled that works by artists such as Greg and the rest of us in The Winstons can be ripped off by hundreds of artist and they do not protest.I am the copyright owner of The Amen Drum Break which was created by fellow Winston Greg Coleman and neither of us have ever received a penny for our product.
Continue reading ‘Owner of the “Amen Break”’
Published on
June 28, 2006 in
Google.
Just so I don’t forget, this is how to put a Google Site Search (search within your domain) in your Blogger template:
<FORM METHOD="GET" ACTION="http://www.google.com/search">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="num" value="10" />
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="hl" value="en" />
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" value="<$BlogURL$>" />
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="as_q" style="width: 100px;" />
<INPUT TYPE="submit" value="Search!" />
</FORM>
Copy/Paste into your Blogger sidebar and off you go!
Statistically improbable, but there you have it: both my machines (Laptop – Windows XP, Desktop – Windows 2003) are swiftly breaking down at the same time. The following things all happened in the last week:
- DESKTOP: Upgraded to iTunes 6.0.4 (I think), and the program hasn’t started up at all ever since. No more ripping my CDs, no more podcasts. I’ve gotten a pop-up to upgrade my iTunes on the laptop too: erm, no, I don’t think so.
- DESKTOP: inserting a DVD in the drive halts the machine. Like, mouse freezes and everything. Power button is the only solution
- DESKTOP: upon booting, the machine now gives me between 3-5 error messages. iTunes, obviously, but also Firefox (multiple times). Those popups with a “Send a message to Microsoft?” You bet I’m sending!
- LAPTOP: couldn’t get a VPN connection going. Errors at different stages, but always an error. Seems to have been solved by upgrading my ZoneAlarm firewall, but loads of other stuff has gone wrong since that install
- LAPTOP: Power management went belly-up. I can’t shut down properly (PC hangs on wall paper or just after), I can’t suspend nor hibernate (neither with the key combination or via the shutdown menu)
- LAPTOP: USB stopped working. No more sync with the N91, no more sync with the iPod (doesn’t even charge), no more transfer of my pictures. Couleur Cafe is coming up and I’m going to take hundreds of pictures to post (some) on Brussel.blogt.be. Joy!
I always gathered that one PC would break down before the other, and I’d go through the work of moving all data to the good one, reformat and reinstall Windows on the first and go from there. As it is now, I’m not sure which one I can consider to be the ‘good’ one. I need a good working portable for Friday (Couleur Cafe), but I’m in the middle of finishing a project on that machine and I hadn’t really calculated an OS reinstall in my Gantt chart.
Wednesday is Windows Vista demo time @ Microsoft Belgium headquarters. That might be an option …
(No “switch to MacOSX” comments please. Not gonna happen.)
While searching for something really innocent on Google (honestly!), I got the following warning:
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (”DMCA” – 1998) criminalizes production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. OMG, what kind of illegal practices had Google just protected me from? Clicking the ChillingEffects link shows the DMCA complaint in question: the Perfect 10
Continue reading ‘Google and Perfect10: DMCA at its best’
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