Work

Work and the beginning of the football season, have kept me busy lately. My group at work also grew by two today.

Revoked Sales Tax Licesnse

The Missouri Department of Revenue put up a page today that allows one to search for businesses that have had their sales tax license revoked.

I would guess that the hope is similar to that of the deadbeat dad lists that have popped up over the years. Basically shame those owing money into paying, so that they can get their name removed from the list. We'll see how it goes.

Another file location.

Have you tried Windows Live SkyDrive?

After a quick glance it looks to be similar to ThinkFree and Drive Headquarters. Of course, it is tied to your Windows Live ID.

Info from site:

Store files for yourself
Using multiple computers? No problem. Store and access your personal files from any Web-connected computer.

Share files with friends
Sharing files with friends, family, or co-workers is easy when you can all add and update files in a shared folder.

Share files with the world
Some ideas are too good to keep to yourself. Share them in a public folder that only you can update.

Windows Skydrive Team Blog

Paint.NET 3.10

Paint.NET v3.10 was released on 8/23/07 with several fixes, some improvements, and a few new enhancements.  You can see the release changes here.

Did you also know that Paint.NET has a blog?

Zimmer

I had a Zimmer Golden Spirit parked outside my window at work the other day. Not a car you see often.

Lotus Notes/Domino 8

How about that. Lotus Notes and Domino 8 are out.



We have migrated our Intranet and our Internet to newer environments in the past couple of weeks. We are waiting for the new version of Windows SharePoint Services to get installed so that we can get our old sites migrated to it, and we are also working on upgrading our outdated version of Magic Help Desk 7.53 to BMC Service Desk Express (SDE) 9.x. We have a committee reviewing needs of our Call Center, so that we can consolidate down from the 3 different solutions we have tied together as well as add additional functionality. Now it looks like we need to start testing Notes/Domino 8 so that we can look at what it will take for us to migrate to it.

I guess our motto for this year might be, "Year of the Upgrade".

Show IP

Here is a Firefox extension by Jan Dittmer that can come in handy when you are going through a move and making DNS changes. Many of the IP extensions for Firefox show your IP address or what your external IP address looks like, but this add on shows the IP address of the site you are hitting. Rather handy when you are swithing to a new server and trying to test things out. You can see if the pages that you are hitting are actually on the new site and not somehow linked or resolving back to the old site.

Migration

This evening we migrated our agencies main website. Considering the magnitude of such a move it really went rather smooth.

Blogger Profiles

Blogger use to give one the ability to click on links within an individuals profile which would display a listing of related profiles. I don't know exactly when, but this feature went away. Well it is back now.

A reworked version of a Blogger Buzz post.

August 07, 2007

Browse Profiles! Find new blogs to read!
Say you live in Jefferson City, count Tom Petty among your favorite artists, and like Chinese and Mexican Food. Starting today, we’re making it easy for you to find other bloggers who share your interests.

Now you can go to any Blogger profile page (start with your own, or perhaps another popular blogger’s) and follow any of the links on the page to get a list of other bloggers with the same industry, occupation, location, interest, or favorite book, movie, or music.

I guess I should update my profile, as it has been some time since I was a manager. It should say supervisor now as basically all of management was knocked down a level when we consolidated. We now have a single CIO for the consolidated IT Division and an IT Director in support of each agency.

For more on profiles you can see Blogger's FAQs on Profiles.

Portable Apps

I have mentioned it before, but thought it was worth another mention. If you have a USB drive, it might be worth your time to check out Portable Apps. Similar to U3 software.



From the portable apps website:

What is a portable app?
portable - carried or moved with ease
app - a computer program like a web browser or word processor
A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind.

No Special Hardware - Use any USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod/MP3 player, etc

No Additional Software - Just download the portable app, extract it and go

No Kidding - It's that easy

There are a number of Portable Apps that are free. You might want to start with the Portable Apps Suite.



You might also want to check out Snapfiles and the Opera USB browser (I have used the portable version of Mozilla Firefox, have not tried Opera's USB browser yet).

Tab Theft

Is tab theft a real concern. I would say so. I was able to take my old tabs off without a problem. They were still plenty sticky too. They are shown above on a piece of paper. I did alter the tab number in the photo.

Stats for July

It appears for the month of July that the usage of Internet Explorer and Firefox by those accessing my site was close. 49% IE 45% Firefox.

Looking at stats at work as well it does appear that Firefox has been gaining in the browser market.

Drafts

You might notice some old posts popping up. I worked on some post that have been in draft stage for some time.

Polls

Polls are out of draft, but evidently there is an issue with them today. I added a poll to the JC Sports site and it is still working fine, but when adding one to this blog I get the message:

Oops... Polls are currently not available, please come back later.

I simply added one to this site asking Blogger Users visiting the site if they have used the new poll feature. What one sees right now is:




The sad part is that I made a typo on the poll and I can't edit that element to correct the typo or even delete it.

Update: I started to look at the issue further and found that they are already aware of it.

We are aware of this issue and currently working on a fix. In the meantime, as a workaround, you can remove the poll's code from your Template | Edit HTML tab, which will delete the problematic poll from your blog.

Removed via Edit HTML.

Government Blogging

Did you see, "The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0" from the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

Some excerpts:

"Whether it is termed by analysts as Web 2.0, user or consumer-generated media, or social networks, there is a sea change occurring wherein the web has become a truly participatory media."

"There aren’t too many blogs on government websites, and few politicians or administrators engage with constituents using these techniques"

Many in government, including those in IT, are just beginning to ask questions about it.

"One of the key lessons to be learned from this survey of blogging in the public sector is that it does take dedication"

"It is highly important that once you engage in blogging, you continue to do so on a regular basis."

“without comments, a blog is ‘just a glorified press release’ ”

"Finally, whatever blog strategy a public official may choose, even if it is not to blog, one thing is essential today: to monitor the blogosphere for what is being
said about you, your agency, your area, and so on."

“You have to assume there is a recording device of some kind on you at all times—that is what I am telling all of my people”

Not so nerdy.

I'll follow the Blog addiction with one from Richard, which was via Lance.




So, how nerdy are you?

Addicted to Blogging

98%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Okay, if I actually answer truthfully the survey states that:

78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Click the pic if you would like to take the survey to see how addicted you are.