Bessemer Venture Partners is incubating the startup and put in most of the original $900,000 in seed money. The company has raised a total of $1.4 million to date and works out of the Bessemer offices.

We first wrote about MashLogic in October 2008 when it went into private beta:

MashLogic is a more direct approach. Users must download a Firefox plugin to use it, but there's no toolbar. Instead, you simply change the settings to tell it what kind of information you'd like to have included on web pages. Links to Wikipedia is an easy one. But it also has company links to LinkedIn to show you people there you might know. And a currency converter. Etc. It's like a frickin Swiss Army Knife for hyperlinks.

One setting I like - the ability to remove all links on a page, and then only MashLogic links appear. For a lot of sites, the user experience is vastly superior. You can also create blacklists of domains that won't show up in links on the page, even if the original publisher put them there.

Once you've got the tool configured, smart links will start popping up all over the place. Professional Athletes get their playing stats, Politicians get a real time poll of their progress towards the White House. Currencies are *zap* converted. You can even see a map for any street address.

Their goal is to save you from having to go back to the search engine to find the next thing you're intersted in but isn't linked on the site.

The site has evolved since October. It's now available for Internet Explorer in addition to Firefox. Also, any topic trending up on Twitter is highlighted and linked (at the user option), with additional information on who's tweeting about that topic. And if a Twitter username appears in the text of a web page (as they do in our comments), clicking on it brings up a box with that Twitter users information. Users can also post to their Twitter accounts. Here's how it looks:

MashLogic works with publishers to create slightly customized versions of the product that pull information from that publisher first. Users can customize away from those changes, but most don't. We've been distributing a version of MashLogic since last October and it drives a fair amount of traffic to us from people seeing TechCrunch and CrunchBase content linked from around the web.

It's one of the few products I've tried that I've stuck with over these last months. It definitely makes browsing and research easier. Try it, I think you'll like it.

Here's an interview I did today with founder/VP Ranjit Padmanabhan. After I butcher his name we see how it all works:

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Samsung's Pixon 12: a dozen megapixels of cameraphone nonsense in June After failing to show at the Mobile World Congress event in February, Samsung's rumored 12 megapixel cameraphone has finally arrived. Meet the Pixon 12 and its 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen with a Sammy promise of fast shutter speeds and quick browsing.

Several years ago it seems like having a full flash website was all the rage, but since then lots of great web technologies (javascript, ajax, etc.) have been utilized to make highly interactive websites that often outperform their flash counterparts in both performance and utility. These days it seems like the majority of flash content comes from flash video players, and of course the king of all flash video players is YouTube.

When you upload a video you YouTube, by default, is it transcoded to a format playable by most modern smartphones (using built in media players, not flash). I couldn't tell you for certain, but in my experiences, it seems like the majority of YouTube's content is available in this format. The iPhone already has a dedicated YouTube application which makes it easy to browse YouTube's library and play videos. For phones that don't have a dedicated application, there is the www.m.youtube.com site for browsing the library and doing many of the things you would do on the full version of the site like rating and commenting on movies. Once you get past YouTube as the majority of Flash content, you start to break it down to other video players. Sites like Hulu, Netflix, and many others offer video through flash players as well, but don't offer nearly the amount of content as there is available on YouTube.

After videos players, I would argue that the second most common flash content is flash advertisements. These things are scatter all over pages these days, and unfortunately, those that design flash ads are not usually concerned with the efficiency of their animations, they just want to animate enough motion and colors to capture your attention. What this leads to is poor performance on the flash content that you actually want. For example, a website like Gametrailers will have a flash banner ad, or a box on the right of the video that plays a flash ad while you are trying to watch a video through a flash player, and flash generally splits the available resources between the two. I've seen the framerate on videos drop so low because of other pieces of flash content (like ads) playing on a page at the same time that they are unwatchable, and that is on a full computer. How do people expect mobile phones to handle all the flash content on a page these days, in addition to watching a flash video player? It is important to realize that if you are asking for full flash support, you are also welcoming all the resource sucking advertisements that plague websites. These ads aren't usually a performance concern for full computers (except the situation I provided above), but on low powered hardware they could be a serious performance ditch and that always leads to reduced battery life.

Aside from flash video players and flash ads, the remaining flash content doesn't seem to be in high demand (unless I'm missing something important). For example, there are lots of flash games out there, and they are lots of fun. But even if we did have full flash support on mobile phones, I don't feel like phones are equipped with the necessary control schemes to be able to manipulate that content. Do people expect to be able to play Desktop Defense with the navigation ball on their Blackberry Pearl? I don't think that it is realistic to expect mobile phones to be able to interface with flash content that was designed with a user, using a mouse and keyboard, in mind. Do people expect flash developers to adapt their flash content to function with the myriad of phone control schemes that are out there?

It all seems rather ridiculous to me, and I still don't understand what content there is that drives people to ask for flash on their phones. Flash videos players are great, but the majority of content (ie: YouTube) is already available to most modern smartphones. If other flash players want to bring their content to mobile phones, they could do so much more efficiently (for the phones) by following YouTube's approach. I don't quite see it being necessary to provide full flash support on mobile phones; what would be the benefit of doing so? Maybe providing a familiar programing environment?

One potential option that I see for the future is that phones begin using a Flash Lite' standard which provides programmers with a familiar programming environment, and makes it easy for popular flash player sites to create simple flash applications (like video players) that will launch from a link on a website into a Flash Lite application on the phone.

I don't think we'll see full flash support (ie: flash players, apps, and ads embedded directly into websites) in mobile phones for a long time because it just doesn't make sense when you weigh the content gain against the performance and battery life concerns, and isn't practical when you consider the logistics of controlling that content with various phone control schemes.

I've been using an iPod Touch/iPhone 3G for nearly a year now and I can't say that there are many times while using them that I've said to myself Wow I wish this thing supported flash. Sure, occasionally there is a video I want to watch that isn't hosted on YouTube, but on another flash player instead; is that justification to ask for flash on phones? In my opinion, the answer is no, but I want to hear the thoughts of others. When you are using your mobile phone for web browsing, what content do you come across that makes you wish you had full flash support?

Notebook Magazine have just done a full set of battery life tests on the NC10 Netbook and it looks like Samsung have once again worked their magic. The tests included continuous Wifi-on web browsing in battery saving mode which is a very reasonable test to be doing. Far better than the misleading 2001 Jeita test and much more real-life' than the Battery Eater Pro turn everything and and run it at full-steam' approach. The NC10 returned

• 12% screen brightness: 7hrs 34mins representing an average drain of about 7.6w which is just a little bit more than what I saw on the Q1 Ultra.
• 50% screen brightness, the duration dropped to 6hrs 30mins which is an average 8.7W.
• 100% screen brightness, the test result reduced to 4hrs 38 minutes which is 12.3 watts drain.

More after the break

What it highlights is something I've been saying for years. The CPU power drain is not the most important element in determining a devices overall efficiency. In these 10" screens, even the latest LED technology backlight can take a lot of drain. In this case, nearly 5W at full power which is nearly 50% of the total power drain of the whole PC! Obviously, as screens get smaller, the LED power required drops and when you get to a 4.8" screen, you'll see 1-1.5W average drain. If you were to attache that Samsung battery to the Aigo MID, you would see close to 20 hours battery life under similar conditions as the Wifi-on drain is about 3W.

As we move to lower and lower power processors, screens and other components need to follow and the OEM that has access to the best components and the best engineers is always going to have an advantage. Samsung keep proving that.

So how's the rest of the NC10? I was watching a live session at EeePCnews.de a few evenings ago and it was clear that people are really interested in this one. 3000 people watched Sascha, the lead guy there, do live testing and as the session went on you could almost sense people hitting the buy button as Sascha reported positive comment after positive comment! LaptopMag calls it their netbook of choice' right now. From what I've seen, I have no reason to doubt it.

Samsung NC10 links and info in the product database.

The Cartoon Network LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., No. 07-1480-cv(L) & 07-1511-cv(CON) (2d Cir. Aug. 4, 2008)

The Second Circuit has issued an interesting and potentially important ruling that Cablevision's DVR as a service does not infringe copyright law. This ruling reverses the district court's summary judgment for the plaintiff and opens the way for Cablevision to roll out its DVR service offering in the Second Circuit.

The good news is that the opinion eliminates the odd regulatory distinctions between DVRs as a device and DVR as a service. The bad news is that to reach this conclusion, the Second Circuit has to override a lot of adverse precedent, and I'm not sure that other circuits will find this panel's arguments entirely convincing. As a result, it will be interesting to see if Cablevision interprets this opinion as a greenlight for a national rollout.

Thus, while the opinion is good news for DVR service offerings, the opinion leaves open a lot of questions that will have to be answered in the future. I think it's safe to say that this opinion is hardly the last stop in our journey.

Buffering Isn't Infringement

Cablevision's DVR service splits a broadcast feed into two streams, including a "buffer" copy that goes to a router where it is stored for no more than 1.2 seconds as the router looks to see if any consumers have asked for the program to be recorded for them. If yes, the data goes into their private storage areas; if no, the stream is discarded. The court holds that this buffer copy isn't fixed because it's not embodied "for more than a transitory duration."

To reach this conclusion, the court has to fight against a lot of precedent, especially the MAI v. Peak holding that a copy into RAM is fixed, even though that copy may be embodied for even less time than the buffer copy at issue here. The court says that MAI v. Peak stands for the proposition that these short-duration RAM copies can be fixed but are not automatically fixed. The court says that in MAI (without citing any actual facts from the MAI case), the software surely was resident in RAM for "at least several minutes" while in this case the copies exist for only 1.2 seconds, and this factual difference explains the different conclusion regarding fixations.

There is a major slippery slope problem with this conclusion. Is 3 seconds fixed? 10 seconds? I could keep going, and the court deftly side-steps this problem. Nevertheless, this holding offers some promise for certain types of web activity. First, this ruling might excuse copies made by scrapers/robots who download copyrighted pages to extract unprotectable information on the page. This case suggests that the copies made to download the page and perhaps to process it are not fixed, at least so long as they are flushed really quickly (1.2 seconds or less would be good). Second, this case seems to provide another defense to the otherwise problematic argument that web browsing is infringement; so long as the user hits the back button (and kills any local cache) really fast, no fixation of the web page. The opinion deliberately limits itself to Cablevision's system of overwriting the data, so that may limits its overall applicability, but this case creates a new category of copies that are embodied in a medium but are not fixed, and this offers some hope for defendants.

Users, Not Cablevision, Make the Other Copies

Even if the buffer copies aren't fixed (and therefore cannot support an infringement claim), Cablevision still stores a copy of the broadcasted works in its storage area, where users can download the programs. There's no fixation problem with these, so plaintiffs challenge these copies as both impermissible copies and public performances. The court rejects these arguments, concluding that Cablevision is a sufficiently passive entity that the users and not Cablevision are doing the legally significant activity. Thus, Cablevision is at most exposed to contributory liability for these user activities. Because the plaintiffs had waived allegations of contributory infringement, Cablevision gets summary judgment.

To reach this conclusion, the court ignores Cablevision's active role in setting up its systems and providing ongoing services, including selecting which broadcast channels are DVRable in its system. Instead, the court sees this fact pattern as identical to DVR as a device, where the DVR manufacturer isn't directly liable for how the DVR is used. This is consistent with the uncited Field v. Google case, but it conflicts with numerous copyright cases where the service provider's hosting of files gives the provider more legal responsibility over the system usage than a device maker would have. Similarly, the court distinguishes the coursepack cases on the basis that a human employee of the copyshop presses the "copy" button, because here the system works automatically without manual intervention from Cablevision.

Note, of course, that the court didn't discuss contributory liability, which also raises the ugly and risky question of whether Cablevision users are directly infringing by using the DVR as a service. I think there is helpful language in the Sony Betamax case about DVRing as a fair use, but I doubt anyone wants to see that battle relitigated.

Similarly, with respect to the argument that the distribution of the files from Cablevision's storage area is a public performance, the court says that Cablevision isn't "transmitting" as required by the statute because the user is making the legally significant action.

Further, Cablevision's delivery of the file isn't "to the public" as required by the statute. This latter conclusion is totally fine with me as a matter of common sense interpretation of those words, but it runs contrary to numerous messy and analytically questionable precedents regarding the central serving of copyrighted works to private spaces, such as Redd Horne and On Command. The court deftly tries to evade those, but after 2 readings I still can't figure out what the court said. Maybe the third time will be the charm. I think it has something do with the fact that Cablevision encoded each file delivery to its consumers so that each file delivery could be consumed only by a single playback machine. Let me know if you can figure out what the court was saying here and how it might apply to anyone else. Because the ruling seems to let Cablevision freely broadcast third party content to potentially all of its subscribers without constituting a public performance, I think there may be some exploitable holes here.

One more open question: this opinion makes me wonder if the MP3.com opinion from SDNY is still good law. I'd need to go back through that opinion, but as I recall, a lot turned on the fact that MP3.com tried to act as a proxy for its users. Here, the court treats such proxy activities as passive, and perhaps that analysis would fit the MP3.com facts as well.

Conclusion

I'm excited about this opinion because it eliminates some of the legal anomalies between DVR as a device and DVR as a service. In many situations, DVR as a service will be a better consumer experience, and it is unquestionably better for the environment, so I'm happy that this opinion tries to get copyright law out of the way to enable this result. At the same time, the appellate court set up enough conflicts with other precedent, and sufficiently caveated its opinions to address the narrow facts in Cablevision, that I expect this case resolved nothing definitively. That will have to wait the many cases in our future.

Even so, I remain amused (in a cynical way, not a funny way) that the broadcasters are still fighting against giving consumers what they really want, which is to consume their content at the time and place of the consumer's own choosing. Eventually, broadcasters are going to have to bite the bullet and post their content onto the Internet for viewers to enjoy at their convenience. There always will be consumers who want to consume the content upon first release, but after that, content that's unavailable to consumers is just wasting away instead of continuing to make money for the broadcasters.

Wide Variety of Mobile Phones Supported

Zimbra is already available on a host of mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry. Their latest support for the iPhone 2.0 platform will help to increase their market share. While the iPhone has progressed with its support with email, documents and more, Zimbra is looking to make it easier for its users to stay synchronized regarless of the platform.

Enteprise Capabilities

Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 software provides users with enterprise class features including OTA synchronization of e-mails, calendar and contacts. Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 software will allow iPhone users to maximize their business functions on the iPhone. Additionally, Zimbra Mobile for iPhone will enable OTA photo-sync, so photos associated with iPhone contacts will sync with the Zimbra address book as well.

Zimbra has provided numerous ways for uses to access the Zimbra Servia via the iPhone including:

• IMAP / POP - Standards based access to email only
• Connectors - Use Zimbra's Connector for iSync (Mac) or Outlook (PC) to sync address book and calendar; combined with IMAP email it is a completely native UI solution. (Network Edition only).
• Mobile Web Browser - Zimbra Web Client is optimized for Safari on the iPhone; you can take advantage of iPhone's unique browsing capabilities to access your email, address book, calendar and more.

The users interface for accessing Zimbra's services via Safari on the iPhone is gorgeous and efficient. Zimbra makes great use of the screen real estate by providing a plethora of options right from the start. The new interface for the iPhone gets even better with a navigation menu at the top of the screen and important information right below it. This minimizes the number of finger tapping you'd normally have to do with the previous design.

Off to a Good Start

Zimbra is now approaching the same area territory Google is dominating at this point. However, the new Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 is looking to be off to a good start with more than enough features available from the iPhone to keep its users happy. Users can test Zimbra Mobile for iPhone by heading to Zimbra's Hosted Demo page.

That said, I still really like the looks of these. There will be four models of Es. The standard E is their 8.9-inch contender, while as the E Slim is a 12.1-inch MacBook Air challenger, only 0.8-inches thick. Then there's the E Video and E Video+, which offer more RAM, flash storage, webcams and bluetooth in the 8.9-inch chassis. The operating system will be Windows XP, apparently, but with an instant-on Linux-on-a-chip solution for rapidly booting up and checking your email or doing some browsing. And I'm still guessing that Ubuntu's Netbook Remix OS will at least be an option on these, given Canonical's past history with Dell.

The Dell E will be released in August in a variety of colors, starting at $299.

Dell and E Slim revealed [Engadget]

I would wager that most of the people who know they need an SSH tunnel also know the Terminal commands to make it happen. But if those people happen to be Mac users, it's quite likely they wouldn't be averse to having menu bar access, Growl integration, Bonjour capability and a nice GUI to handle their tunnels. And to those who just know they want secure browsing, email and other network activities but aren't SSH ninjas, such things might be even more attractive.

Code Sorcery Workshop's Meerkat is a handy application that provides all of the above tools and offers setup wizards to provide the right settings for the particular tunnel you need. It turns setting up a quick SOCKS proxy for web browsing into a 2 minute task. Setting up a tunnel for Mail is just as simple. Whether you're already using tunnels or looking to get some protection while browsing at the coffeehouse, Meerkat may be able to help out.

You can try Meerkat out for free with a time-limited demo. If it should become something you can't (or don't want to) live without, you can register it for $19.95.

Thanks, Mark!

ASUS has announced that the Express Gate distro a version of Linux by DeviceVM shrinky-dinkified into a small BIOS chip to give your PC a fast-boot alternative for non-intesive tasks will now be installed on all of their motherboards.

Express Gate allows you to boot up your PC within five seconds and access Firefox, Skype and media-playing apps. This quarter, ASUS will release four new Express Gate motherboards: P5Q Deluxe, P5Q-WS, P5Q3 Deluxe and P5Q-E.

Honestly, I could care less about this on a desktop: who turns them off besides ecologically-conscious hemp-huffing hippies like Joel? The environment? Never heard of it! But a laptop with this would be fantastic.

Asus to embed Linux into all motherboards [ZDNet]

Previously on Boing Boing Gadgets:

SplashTop Instant-On Web Browsing and Skype

Look out, Facebook slackers: Your information-technology department now has a way to ensure you're using Facebook for work, not play.

No more of this in the office

Facetime Communications, a Belmont, Calif., firm that makes software for monitoring employees' use of Web browsing, instant messaging, Skype and other online applications, on Monday announced a new feature in its Unified Security Gateway appliancehardware with software installed on it. The new feature will let companies allow workers to use Facebook and other social-networking Web sites but block them from using specific applications (translation: online services) within those sites.

In other words: Goodbye, Scrabulous. (For the uninitiated, Scrabulous is an online version of Scrabble that Facebook users can play within the Facebook site.)

Facetime Chief Executive Kailash Ambwani said the inspiration for the new feature came from chief information officers who said they had a problem: They didn't want people, say, playing Scrabulous on social-networking sites when they should be working, but they also couldn't block the sites because certain employees said they used them for workfor instance, human-resources types who wanted to screen job applicants using Facebook.

We don't know who is more impressive: the employees who persuaded their bosses that they use Facebook for workor Ambwani, for actually making the new product feature happen.

Asus EEE PC, originally uploaded by Josh Bancroft.

There's a new Intel marketing blog launching next week. I'll post a link when it's ready, but I've been working with the folks doing it, trying to help them do it right - get other bloggers in the community involved, get stuff into the hands of bloggers to use and live with, so they can write real opinions of it, rather than just doing it the standard marketing way. Good stuff.

Anyway, as part of these activities, I've got an Asus Eee PC on loan for a week or two to play with. It's a very small laptop that runs Linux, has a 4GB SSD (solid state - no moving parts) hard drive, wireless, a webcam, an SD card slot for expansion, etc. I've been on the fence about actually buying one of these for myself, since they're so popular (people who have them almost universally love them), and cheap, too (the 4GB model with webcam is under $400).

I've only had it for an hour or so, but it's already caused quite a stir in my cube neighborhood. As soon as I showed it to someone, people materialized out of thin air to come check it out. We were all geeking out, drooling, plugging it into and external monitor (which it handles beautifully), and putting it through its paces. Testing YouTube videos, web browsing, the web cam, Skype, etc. It was a moment of concentrated collective geek joy, and soon, we were all pretty much convinced that we needed one for our own. One guy even started shopping for one, right then and there.

So, it's going to be a fun weekend. I'll be putting the Eee PC through it's paces, seeing where it works well and where it doesn't. It's not a laptop replacement, but it's far more capable than, say, my iPhone, so it will be interesting to see how it fits into my gadget lifestyle.

Of course, I'll be taking photos, maybe even video, testing out the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), seeing how my 4 year old daughter Emma likes it, etc. And I'll have more news about that new Intel marketing blog next week. Intel is making a big push around mobile devices like the Eee PC and MIDs, and I'm lucky enough to have a front row seat.

The best part is, they WANT me to blog about it all. Sometimes I feel like I lead a charmed life

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Long before Apple's iPhone, another Silicon Valley-based company pioneered the consumer-friendly smart phone. That company was Danger Inc. best known for its T-mobile branded Sidekick (the Paris Hilton smart phone of choice) and its user friendly mobile OS and Internet applications.

As of today, Danger is no more. Instead, the company is being gobbled up by Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, responsible for overseeing the Zune, XBox, Windows Mobile and Microsoft TV product lines.

Of note, Danger was founded by Andy Rubin, Google's recently appointed Director of Mobile Platforms, following the search giant's acquisition of Android.

How will Microsoft utilize Danger's technology and expertise?

Consumers

Although successful in penetrating the corporate world with its Windows Mobile-powered smart phones, Microsoft hasn't, until now, shown much interest in developing a consumer-friendly offering. There has long existed the misguided notion that non-business folk aren't interested in doing much more with their mobile phones other than making calls, sending SMS or listening to music and taking photos. With the introduction of the iPhone, companies including sleeping giants like Microsoft are finally waking up.

Microsoft's press release describes Danger's customer base as young and enthusiastic, Internet-savvy and socially inclined, and that the team at Danger has a deep understanding of consumers and a hold on what people want from mobility.

Integration

Furthermore, the Entertainment and Devices Division is all about what Microsoft calls connected experiences, and it's in this context where the acquisition has the most potential. Microsoft cites Danger's mobile Web browsing, instant messaging, games, multimedia, and social networking applications, which in combination with MSN, Xbox, Zune, Windows Live and Windows Mobile technologies, it hopes will give the company a leg up in delivering industry-leading entertainment and communication experiences.

Zune phone?

How this will translate into tangible products is yet to be seen. While many are already predicting something along the lines of a Windows Mobile-powered Sidekick, alternatively, might we see Danger's technology and expertise used to deliver a Zune-branded mobile phone? Although fulfilling the company's connected experiences vision, the latter would imply that Microsoft is getting even more into hardware. Currently, the company sells its Windows Mobile smart phone OS and platform to various hardware vendors (which now includes Sony Ericsson) but doesn't produce handsets of its own. Likewise, Danger is pitched as a software and services company and offers a hardware reference design to partners including Motorola and Sharp.

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This is more than a cultural phenomenon, I think social media will soon become something that is integrated into our everyday life, as much as browsing the web or writing an email. As professionals, we must recognize this shift and develop our skills to stay relevant and close the gap between younger social media marketers and older PR pros.

The combination of this question and then reading the post made me think more about my current social media state and in general where we are heading in terms of our ability to process all of the different content. I believe that not only, as Larissa states, must we learn how to use all of these tools, but we must also learn how to better balance our input and output within the social media landscape.

Perhaps it is just me, but in the past few weeks I've found myself struggling to keep up with it all. Each day I find another blog to read, someone else to follow on Twitter, another friend on Facebook, one more social media tool to use, five more beta invites, another social media gathering (hey, I'm guilty here too). Yes, I know, you can choose not to follow/friend/subscribe/attend people/blogs/communities/events, and I do, but overall there is just a marked increase in social media content and with this enormous growth comes a needed moment to reflect on how it will be managed.

I have two questions for you before I talk tomorrow about what I've been doing lately to create my social media balance:

1) Have you gotten to your personal social media tipping point?
2) When you do, what do you do?

/kff

FUCK NEW ENGLAND

I've been spending too much time browsing shorpy.com's old photographs; even new pictures like this one are starting to look like fragments of time long past. Render this in sepia and these kids could be ruckus-raising juvies outside of Ebbets Field in 1920.

I have been slacking a little over the last month on the updates, so time to play catch up.

First of all some big news, Blogcatalog has now surpassed MyBlogLog in traffic levels, if you believe Alexa data. They are in exactly the same niche, and share plenty of users, so whilst I don't trust Alexa data extensively, this is a significant achievement considering it wasn't long ago when people had trouble differentiating the two services.

If you switch to a 7 day view, you will see that Blogcatalog overtook MyBlogLog 24th January.

The observant will also note when looking at a 3 year chart that MyBlogLog had much more explosive growth over a short 3 month period, were purchased by Yahoo, and since that time has been a little bit in decline which is a shame because I still love MyBlogLog, and if I have a choice between MyBlogLog and Google Analytics for stats checking, I am more likely to have a glance in MyBlogLog than Google Analytics.

BlogCatalog has had a much more gradual growth, working to differentiate themselves by introducing lively discussion forums and member groups, and bringing bloggers together to support good causes with Bloggers Unite.
The growth has been viral, "grass roots" growth, with from memory one mention on Mashable, one mention on Marketing Pilgrim, and very little if any coverage on large technology blogs. Blogcatalog would be a great example of what Guy Kawasaki was talking about yesterday.

Forget A-list bloggers. Lousy reviews by them cannot tank your product. Great reviews cannot make it successful. Focus on big numbersany Technorati 1,000,000 blogger can be a channel to reach people. If enough people like your product, the A-list bloggers will have to write about you.

Some key recent enhancements (click through to see working examples on some of these widgets)

Blogcatalog Discussions & Groups

Discussion Forums and Groups

There are frequent enhancements to the features in the various discussion areas, the latest one being a new widget for the discussion groups you have joined - other features include practical enhancements to the discussion features, in many cases making them more useful than Facebook, where it is very hard to track discussion in the groups you join.

BlogRank Buttons (just released)

This was announced just a few hours ago

BlogCatalog ratings are based upon various metrics including votes using a widget on your site, voting on the site, visits from Blogcatalog to your blog, and overall Blogcatalog activity in various forms.

Communities Widget

This is a way to display your profile on other social media sites introduced in December. Quite simple, and useful if you don't want to give juice to the sites for reputation management.

On this one I am not sure who got there first, as MyBlogLog also launched a similar widget in December

There actually seems to be some bugs in the code generated, or maybe it is just my laggy connection, but I couldn't seem to get a version that displayed both the names of a service, and icons next to them.

BlogCatalog API

I am not that great a programmer but I have managed to play around with the Blogcatalog API and create some simple applications (still to be released) by combining data from Blogcatalog with data from other APIs. Blogcatalog has had their API available for some time.

MyBlogLog should have had their API launched months ago by my reckoning, and it finally entered beta a week ago. It seems like it might have more features than the current Blogcatalog API, but once you have opened up, opening up a little more isn't too difficult.
With wider adoption (the tech bloggers have been wooed by MBL in the past) the new MBL API is being greeted as the possible saviour of Yahoo.
Sure, it is possible MyBlogLog have more data stored, I am not sure what data Blogcatalog collect, have a wider audience, and MyBlogLog have the "social starfish" available via API, but it isn't much more work for Blogcatalog to allow access to that data.
MyBlogLog have however been working on infrastructure heavily for the last 12 months - I would hope their API is now ready for some heavy usage.

I would love to have seen some cool apps made with the Blogcatalog API by now

Support For Wordpress.com, Myspace, or Yahoo! 360 Blog?

This is something that MyBlogLog have had for some time, Blogcatalog announced support for Wordpress.com, Myspace and Yahoo! 360 yesterday.

Who knows, maybe you can even see my recent visitors in a feed reader, in fact that would be an interesting addition.

Tagging & Reading

Quite a few months ago I wrote about Blogcatalog parsing tags from your feed itmes and then listing your content on varous tag pages, just like Technorati. At the time they only offered support for a few blogs, using a specific format for tags and categories. I noticed a couple of months ago that they now have my blog being picked up and fed into tag feeds

In addition on your profile pages it is now possible to read the feeds of the blogs you have added to your neighborhood

Ok now for the big one

Blogcatalog SezWho Partnership

Blogcatalog today have just announced a partnership with SezWho, who provide special plugins to integrate with Plugin Systems on various blogging and discussion forums.
The good things from my perspective:-

• SezWho doesn't require any form of browser plugin
• This doesn't replace the existing comment system, thus a blog owner retains the content on their site, and if they choose, can remain dofollow. That isn't true of other replacement comment systems with similar features.
• No browser plugin is required - I often had problems using various browser based comment tracking with incompatibilities, and I also had problems with their plugins, though I must admit I haven't retried with cocomment recently, maybe that situation has improved. Comment tracking that required me to click a button was always awkward, and subscribing to RSS feeds for comments on individual posts just became a chore - we will see how this works in the long run
• Comment ratings - this could be likened to the thumbs up / thumbs down on SEOmoz where you gain points, but this is a distributed rating system that means you gain in reputation for leaving high quality comments across multiple blogs - I am not sure whether this gets gamed heavily, but Ihope that it will encourage better commenting, especially on dofollow blogs.

Warning:- I may be more inclined to just delete a URL from a spam comment rather than deleting them totally, so that other readers can also vote your comment down
yes, sometimes there is a little evil in me

Negative points?

• Only support for Wordpress self-hosted and Moveable Type - in many ways I would look on this as a plus, as it might encourage more people onto their own hosting, though I hope they can come up with a solution for my many blogging friends on Typepad.
• Installation is a little complicated for a novice, though there is a WordPress widget (regular readers know I don't like Wordpress Widgets though for SEO reasons)

I should also point out that as I am writing this I haven't tested the integration on this blog with the threaded comments, but I don't expect there to a problem, and by the time many people read this I will have everything up and running.

Setting Up SezWho

Log into Blogcatalog, go to your account and manage your blog

You will see just after the feed management section a big button to create an account on SezWho. |Click it, wait a moment or 2, and you will be issued an API key, and you will be given a link to click to download special versions of the SezWho plugins.

Goodbye MyAvatars

I have been using the Wordpress plugin MyAvatars for over a year now, but it is time for it to be retired.

MyAvatars uses images from MyBlogLog, and unfortunately on popular content it is starting to cause me problems on page loading times. This isn't something that was a major problem for me before, because I had a very fast connection, but it has started to cause me real problems, maybe because MyBlogLog switched over to the Yahoo image platform, or maybe it is a problem that always existed.

This doesn't prevent people viewing my content quickly, because avatars and widgets are generally loaded in parallel, but on a slow connection it can start to hurt a little.
When your total page sizes can reach over 1MB, and most of that is avatars on comments, it is time to reconsider.

One caveat, I am not sure if the SEZWho Blogcatalog plugin will add avatars to trackbacks, I will have to take a look.

Benefits

Big immediate benefit for Blogcatalog is press coverage, as SezWho are in California. I think it is a good match as both are heavily aimed at promoting discussion between bloggers, both on blogs and off them.

I am also not a fan of applications that try to do too much - SezWho seems to do just enough to be worthwhile whilst leaving me in control of content left on my blog, and commenter ratings will certainly help in making the decision on whether a commenter is generally well behaved. I don't mind short jokey comments or great post Andy if it is from someone legitimate, it is when someone comes in as a first time commenter, you rarely know if they are genuine.

About Blogcatalog & SezWho

My blog has in the last 9 months grown into quite an in depth resource on all things "Blogcatalog". I first started writing about them when they relaunched around April 2007 with an initial investment of $40000 to purchase the existing property.
Full coverage of Blogcatalog can be found by browsing my Blogcatalog tag.

Primary competitor for Blogcatalog is Mybloglog

SezWho when they received $1M investment from KPG Ventures back in October 2007 were given quite a luke warm reception on Techcrunch.

Competitors to SezWho include Disqus, Intense Debate and coComment

Specific Disclosure - I do some consulting with Blogcatalog on a very much low key, part time basis, though I also give coverage to their competitors and try to remain impartial - I have given MyBlogLog extensive coverage as well, most recently in a joint interview with Ian Kennedy on Collective Thoughts

Further coverage no doubt on the Blogcatalog blog though the press release isn't posted yet.

Related posts

• Wordpress 2.1 Launch date set (1)
• Traffic Or Topical Community - What Comes First? (28)
• Supporting Your Most Valued Communities Without WIIFM (24)
• MyBlogLog vs Blogcatalog - Differentiation (41)
• MyBlogLog Spam Hack Update & Widget Performance | Linkbait Idea (2)
• MyBlogLog API - How Far Forward Are You Thinking (3)
• I Bet You Missed Some of These (March 07) (4)
• Exclusive: Blogcatalog vs Technorati? - Sharing The Love & Tagging (nofollow removed) (20)
• Blogcatalog
  Blogger Social Networking Hub (9)
• Blogcatalog Slam Dunks MyBlogLog? (29)

Check If Your Router's Supported

Upgrade Your Router to the Tomato Firmware

Now you'll need to log into your current router to upgrade. This process may vary slightly depending on what router you're using and the firmware it's running, but for the most part it's very simple. You can go through the old DD-WRT step-by-step here if you're using a Linksys router with the default firmware (just replace DD-WRT with Tomato and quit after step 2). Below I'll describe the simple update process from DD-WRT to Tomato (which is virtually the same as it would be for any other router with one small difference).

First, point your browser to 192.168.1.1/, the default admin page for your router. If your router has a username/password set, you'll need to enter it to continue. Next you need to navigate to the firmware upgrade section of your router's admin panel. In both DD-WRT and the default Linksys firmware, you'll click the Administration tab followed by the Firmware Upgrade tab. Now just click the Browse button and direct your router to the appropriate firmware file for your router in the folder you unzipped earlier.

See the README file included in the Tomato_1_13 folder to determine which version you'll need to choose at this point. If you're using the same WRT54GL router as I am, pick the file named WRT54G_WRT54GL.bin. Now just click the upgrade button and wait. Be sure not to turn off your router during this upgrade.

When it's finished, you're ready to start using Tomato. (Pretty simple, right?) Point your browser back to 192.168.1.1/ and log with "admin" (without quotes) as both your username and password. If you upgraded from DD-WRT, this may not be working for you. If the login isn't working off the bat, you've got one more thing to do: Perform a hard reset on your router. To do so, just find the little Reset button and the back of your router, then press and hold it for a few seconds. When your router comes back online, the "admin" username and password should work.

Boost Your Wi-Fi Signal

Tomato is a little low on documentation on this subject (okay, so it's low on documentation all-around), but the DD-WRT documentation suggests that an increase of up to 70mW would be "suitable for most users." A boost much above that could cause heat issues and considerably decrease the life of your router.

I can't attest to the certainty of damage beyond what the DD-WRT documentation says, but here is what I can tell you: I've been running my router with DD-WRT for over a year transmitting at 70mW, haven't seen any hiccups in performance and so far have seen no smoke. Even better, my Wi-Fi signal easily reaches to every corner of my apartment.

Track Your Bandwidth Usage, Set Quality of Service Rules, and More

A few weeks back I showed you how to set up Quality of Service rules on your DD-WRT router to ensure you don't drop Skype calls, lag on Xbox Live, and generally get your bandwidth when and where you need it. Tomato does all the same while providing even more granular control over how much bandwidth goes where... and, like the bandwidth reports, it graphs it all.

If you've assigned a domain name to your home server (like adam-lh.homeip.net), Tomato can send alerts to the service if you've got a dynamic IP address so that the domain will always point to your computereven if your external IP address changes.

For a few other worthwhile uses, check out these videos for setting up Tomato's Access Restriction rules (allows you to set up rules to block browsing of certain topics at certain times, for example), using the Bandwidth Monitor, and putting your router into Wireless Client mode.

As I said above, documentation on Tomato is slim, but this Tomato wiki is a good place to start if you want to figure out a feature.

So Which Is Better, Tomato or DD-WRT?

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who can't get enough of a good router. His special feature Hack Attack appears weekly on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

The latest issue of Wired Magazine has a great article on the iPhone: The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry. Very interesting behind the scenes details and analysis. Here's the summary:

The hosannas greeting the iPhone were so overwhelming it was easy to ignore its imperfections. The initial price of $599 was too high (it has been lowered to $399). The phone runs on AT&T's poky EDGE network. Users can't perform email searches or record video. The browser won't run programs written in Java or Flash.

But none of that mattered. The iPhone cracked open the carrier-centric structure of the wireless industry and unlocked a host of benefits for consumers, developers, manufacturers --- and potentially the carriers themselves. Consumers get an easy-to-use handheld computer. And, as with the advent of the PC, the iPhone is sparking a wave of development that will make it even more powerful. In February, Jobs will release a developer's kit so that anyone can write programs for the device.

From The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry
Referenced Thu Jan 10 2008 08:53:16 GMT-0700 (MST)

Last month a Net Applications survey put iPhone browsing share--that is, how many pageviews on the 'Net are from an iPhone--is at 0.09%. That may seem like a small number, but keep in mind that that means that almost one our of every thousand pages viewed on the 'Net is seen on an iPhone. That's 50% more than all Windows CE devices combined--which have been on sale for a decade.

A ComputerWorld blog by Seth Weintraub put it this way:

Obviously this doesn't translate to handset marketshare. We know there are much more than 20 million Windows Mobile devices out there. The reason that Apple's browser marketshare is higher while its unit sales are much lower is explained easily by the oft-touted Mobile Safari browser and unlimited AT&T data plan. No guilt, pleasurable, full-browser surfing.

It's not just just Windows Mobile that is getting killed by iPhone. PSP, Playstation and WebTV combined don't even come close. The Sidekick, also, only has 1/5 of the browser marketshare. Symbian? About 1/10th.

And it doesn't stop there. Desktop platforms are starting to come into the iPhone's blast radius. Windows 95 has less than a quarter of the marketshare of the iPhone. And all of the Linux variants combined, just over five times (.57%) the market. Broken out over Red Hat, Novel, Ubuntu, etc, someone is losing to the iPhone right now. At this rate, the iPhone/iPod platform should be the third largest computing platform by the end of next year. Remember, the iPod touch is only three months old. Oh, and it is Christmas.

Not a bad first five months for Apple's new handheld OSX devices.

From iPhone browsing marketshare closes in on .1% | Computerworld Blogs
Referenced Thu Jan 10 2008 08:42:30 GMT-0700 (MST)

I'll say. These numbers are evidence of the fact that the iPhone is a better mobile browser than anything that's come before. This despite the slow network (and, frankly, the slow browser).

Imagine what these numbers would look like if the iPhone were a business device!

Tags: iphone apple wireless

This is not news, far from it.

Still, many marketers will discredit the efficacy of search marketing in lieu of more in your face technologies such as video or mobile. Furthermore, search marketing is generally no longer bucketed with other technologies we refer to as emerging, hogwash!

We have only seen the tip of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to search engines. We are still in the stone ages of search as far as I am concerned. I am not saying that I am not satisfied with the current state of search engines, but in an exponentially growing world of content, there is only one thing that is certain; we will always need a way to find what we are looking for.

Online video and audio search engines are obviously what is top of mind for many technologists and media/marketing professionals, but what happens when the wealth of content available online becomes available on our set top box (and eventually everywhere where media can be consumed)?

What happens when browsing the web via a mobile phone becomes as common as browsing from your PC? You may not care right now how well your WAP pages are optimized for search, but you will soon enough!

Tags: search, video search, audio search, WAP, mobile, search engine

Comcast has entered the world of IPTV, officially launching Fancast today at CES in Las Vegas. Following a soft launch in August, the site now features full-length episodes of many popular TV shows, as well as the existing features the site had for browsing TV listings and purchasing movie tickets through Comcast-owned Fandango.

As for the selection the most important part of any IPTV offering in my humble opinion Fancast isn't bad. There look to be episodes from more than 100 different shows, many of which are currently on the air, such as Heroes, CSI, and Power of Ten. There are also 22 vintage episodes of Miami Vice for you Don Johnson fans, plus 32 episodes of Arrested Development.

The viewing experience features pre-roll advertising, sound controls and the ability to rate the video. At this point, there don't appear to be options for viewing in full-screen mode, or for embedding videos elsewhere. Fancast has also used tagging to help organize videos, for example, being able to see all videos that have been tagged drama or sitcom.

While it is missing a few features of NBC/News Corp competitor Hulu, Comcast's online viewing catalog has the advantage of including shows from all of the networks (minus ABC apparently) plus cable. Then, since it's integrated with Comcast, you can find out where to watch it on television if the episode you want isn't available online. You can also order DVDs via Amazon if that's your preference.

As the company says in a press release issued this morning, Fancast looks to provide an easy way to manage their entertainment experience as the number of viewing choices that are available across platforms continues to grow rapidly. For serious TV addicts, Fancast does appear to be on its way to being an excellent starting point, assuming you're a Comcast subscriber.

In addition to the launch of Fancast, Comcast made several major announcements regarding its cable service. Project Infinity is a plan by the company to exponentially expand Comcast's Video on Demand (VOD) offerings, for which there are already 275 million monthly views. Additionally, Comcast announced an expansion of their HD catalogs for both movies and TV shows.

Share This

Several different image replacement methods have been proposed, each with their pros and cons. Some methods create accessibility problems, while others place restrictions on the type of image you can use or force you to use extraneous markup. No method that I am aware of is perfect.

What surprises me a little is that I still see people using image-based techniques that do not work at all for people browsing with images off. One of the tests I perform when checking sites for accessibility and universality is to simply turn off images in my web browser. In some cases that makes text disappear because an image replacement has been used that does not account for people with CSS on and images off.

In most cases you can and should use an image replacement method that avoids that problem. On the few occasions when I need image replacement I turn to either the Gilder/Levin Method as described by Dave Shea or, if the replaced text is linked and CSS support for IE/Mac is required, the Gilder Levin Ryznar Jacoubsen IR method.

A drawback that both methods share is that they require adding an empty inline element to the markup, but that's a small price to pay for making the text available to everybody. Another drawback they have in common is that they don't work well with partially transparent images, so if you have to use transparency you'll need to decide whether to adjust the design or hide the replaced text from people with images off.

In the end it's your call, but I hope this has at least made you aware of one problem image replacement can cause as well as a couple of methods that eliminate it.

Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites.

Posted in CSS.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

1. meebo. Nice AIM implementation. No frills, just function.
2. PocketTweets. Until we get Twitterrific for the iPhone, I'll use PocketTweets. It looks nice and works.
3. Leaflets. A portal for several useful iPhone-optimized pages. I especially like their Newsvine, Flickr and Major League Baseball implementation.
   
4. JiWire. Quickly find public Wi-Fi in your neighborhood.
5. Tomatometer. Find reviews on nearly any movie.
6. MoviesApp. Somehow, pulling up movie times on an iPhone impresses people more than anything else.
7. PopTakeout. Browse top headlines from Digg, Newsvine, Delicious, more. Plus, the Chinese takeout box icon is cute.
8. MyPhoneFootball.com. No frills, just speedy updates on NFL scores and standings.
9. Fumbleview. Real-time, java-powered play-by-play on your favorite NFL games plus chat. I love it.
10. Weather Underground humiliates the iPhone weather widget.

Today we shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. You can download the final release using one of the links below:

• If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download your copy from the MSDN subscription site.

• If you are a non-MSDN subscriber, you can download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here.

• If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here.

• If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here.

Quick Tour of Some of the New Features

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 contain a ton of new functionality and improvements. Below are links to blog posts I've done myself as well as links to videos you can watch to learn more about it:

VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

VS 2008 enables you to build applications that target multiple versions of the .NET Framework. This means you can use VS 2008 to open, edit and build existing .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 applications (including ASP.NET 2.0 applications using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0), and continue to deploy these application on .NET 2.0 machines. You can learn more about how this works from my blog post here:

• VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support

.NET 3.5 has ASP.NET AJAX built-in (no separate download required). In addition to including all of the features in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, ASP.NET 3.5 also now includes richer support for UpdatePanels integrating with WebParts, ASP.NET AJAX integration with controls like <asp:menu> and <asp:treeview>, WCF support for JSON, and many other AJAX improvements.

VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 also now have great support for integrating JavaScript and AJAX into your applications. You can learn more about this from my blog posts here:

• VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense
• VS 2008 JavaScript Debugging
• VS 2008 ASP.NET AJAX Control Extender Support
• VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense for Silverlight

You can watch some videos that discuss ASP.NET AJAX and Visual Studio 2008 support for it here.

I also highly recommend the excellent ASP.NET AJAX in Action book to learn more about ASP.NET AJAX (both client-side and server-side).

VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support

VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a significantly improved HTML web designer (the same one that ships with Expression Web). This delivers support for split-view editing, nested master pages, and great CSS integration. Below are some articles I've written that discuss this more:

• VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support
• VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support
• VS 2008 Vertical Split View Support
• VS 2008 Support to Treat CSS and JavaScript Validation Issues as Warnings instead of Errors

ASP.NET 3.5 also has a new <asp:ListView> control that provides the ability to perform rich data scenarios with total control over the markup. It works nicely with the new CSS support in VS 2008. You can learn more about it from my article here:

• ASP.NET 3.5 ListView Control

You can watch some videos that discuss the new Visual Studio 2008 web designer features and the new ListView/DataPager controls here.

Language Improvements and LINQ

The new VB and C# compilers in VS 2008 deliver significant improvements to the languages. Both add functional programming concepts that enable you to write cleaner, terser, and more expressive code. These features also enable a new programming model we call LINQ (language integrated query) that makes querying and working with data a first-class programming concept with .NET.

Below are some of the articles I've written that explore these new language features using C#:

• Automatic Properties, Object Initializer and Collection Initializers
• Extension Methods
• Lambda Expressions
• Query Syntax
• Anonymous Types

Here are a few additional blog posts I've written that show off some of the new VS 2008 code editing support and some cool ways to use these new language features:

• VS 2008 Code Editing Features
• Tip/Trick: Building a ToJson() Extension Method using .NET 3.5
• The C# ?? null coalescing operator (and using it with LINQ)
• Using LINQ to XML (and how to build a custom RSS Feed Reader with it)

The Visual Basic team has also created some great free videos that cover LINQ. You can watch them here.

Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL

LINQ to SQL is a built-in OR/M (object relational mapper) in .NET 3.5. It enables you to model relational databases using a .NET object model. You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete data from it. LINQ to SQL fully supports transactions, views, and stored procedures. It also provides an easy way to integrate business logic and validation rules into your data model. Below are some of the articles I've written that explore how to use it:

• Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL
• Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes
• Part 3: Querying our Database
• Part 4: Updating our Database
• Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control
• Part 6: Retrieving Data Using Stored Procedures
• Part 7: Updating our Database using Stored Procedures
• Part 8: Executing Custom SQL Expressions
• Part 9: Using a Custom LINQ Expression with the <asp:LinqDataSource> control

I think you'll find that LINQ and LINQ to SQL makes it much easier to build much cleaner data models, and write much cleaner data code. I'll be adding more posts to my LINQ to SQL series in the weeks and months ahead (sorry for the delay in finishing them earlier - so much to-do and so little time to-do it all!).

Scott Stanfield is also working on creating some great LINQ to SQL videos for the www.asp.net site based on my article series above (all videos are in both VB and C#). You can watch the first 4 videos in this series here.

Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio

As I blogged a few weeks ago, we will be releasing a reference version of the .NET Framework library source code as part of this release. Visual Studio 2008 has built-in debugger support to automatically step-into and debug this code on demand (VS 2008 can pull down the source for the appropriate .NET Framework library file automatically for you).

We are deploying the source servers to enable this right now, and will be publishing the steps to turn this feature on in the next few weeks.

Lots of other improvements

The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming. For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support. ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox. WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data.

Office development is much richer - including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon, and with Outlook. Visual Studio Tools for Office support is also now built-into Visual Studio (you no longer need to buy a separate product).

New WCF and Workflow projects and designers are now included in VS 2008. Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS). Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS. AJAX web testing (unit and load) is now supported in the VS Test SKU. And there is much, much more...

Installation Suggestions

People often ask me for suggestions on how best to upgrade from previous betas of Visual Studio 2008. In general I'd recommend uninstalling the Beta2 bits explicitly. As part of this you should uninstall Visual Studio 2008 Beta2, .NET Framework Beta2, as well as the Visual Studio Web Authoring Component (these are all separate installs and need to be uninstalled separately). I then usually recommend rebooting the machine after uninstalling just to make sure everything is clean before you kick off the new install. You can then install the final release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 on the machine.

Once installed, I usually recommend explicitly running the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu option, choosing the "Reset Settings" option, and then re-pick your preferred profile. This helps ensure that older settings from the Beta2 release are no longer around (and sometimes seems to help with performance).

Note that VS 2008 runs side-by-side with VS 2005 - so it is totally fine to have both on the same machine (you will not have any problems with them on the same box).

Silverlight Tools and VS Web Deployment Project Add-Ins

Two popular add-ins to Visual Studio are not yet available to download for the final VS 2008 release. These are the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio and the Web Deployment Project add-in for Visual Studio. Our hope is to post updates to both of them to work with the final VS 2008 release in the next two weeks. If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development using VS 2008 Beta2 you'll want to stick with with VS 2008 Beta2 until this updated Silverlight Tools Add-In is available.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Browsing through the countless news stories being written about this issue, I was struck by a comment from a news source:

Click to continue reading...

File Sharing

Both OS X and Windows can see each other's shared drives over the local network. To mount a Mac's shared drive on a PC, it's a simple matter of enabling Windows Sharing in System Preferences and browsing to the shared folder the way you would on any other PC. Here's a step by step rundown for accessing a Mac's files on your PC. Update: Reader Jeremy writes in with more information on how to get Windows Vista to see Mac-shared folders. Thanks, Jeremy!

By default, OS X shares only your home folder. To share out another location on your Maclike, say, an external drive that houses all your media filesuse the free SharePoints System Preferences pane to configure advanced sharing.

To go the other way around and see your PC's files on the Mac, use Finder's built-in support for Samba, a network file-sharing protocol. Here are the details on mounting a shared Windows folder on your Mac.

File and Application Compatibility

But while you're unlikely to run into filetype compatibility issues, Mac newbs should know that applications are not compatible across operating systems. That is, if you buy Microsoft Office for Windows, you've got to buy a whole new package/license for Office for Mac. Same goes for Photoshop and other utilities like text editors or FTP clients. Some Mac-only apps can export files that work on PC, but won't run on PC'slike iPhoto, for instance.

File Sync and System Files: Thumbs.db and .DS_Store

Printer and Fax Sharing

To go in the other direction, simply share your Windows printer as usual and use the Mac's printer browser to find it.

Running Windows on your Mactel

• Dual boot Windows on your Mac using Boot Campforces you to partition your hard drive into two sections and choose which OS to start when you turn on your computer, but runs Windows natively (read:fast)
  
• Run Windows inside OS X with not-free virtualization software like Parallels or VMwarelets you move files back and forth between each OS's drives and open any file on either system using a Mac or Windows app. (You can even set a Mac or Windows app to open for a filetype by default from either system.)
  
• Virtualize your Boot Camp partition to get the best of both worldsmake your choice every time whether you want to start Windows natively or within OS X, based on the task at hand

A few things to keep in mind when you set up Windows on your Mac: If you choose Boot Camp, you'll have a choice to format your Windows partition as FAT (which has a 32GB size limit for Boot Camp) or NTFS. NTFS is more secure and has no size limit, but OS X cannot write to NTFS drives, only read them. That means that you cannot save files to your Windows partition while you're booted up into OS X, just like you can't write to your Mac drive in Windows. (If you do opt for FAT, you can write to your Boot Camp Windows partition in OS X.)

If you go the virtualization route, when Windows is running inside OS X, you can easily copy files between your Mac and Windows drives. In fact, Parallels mounts your Windows hard drive and displays it in Finder like any writable external drive (pictured.)

Remote Server Access

Most commercial remote login services like LogMeIn are Windows-only, but the cross-platform VNC lets you remote control your Mac or PC from either OS. Likewise, the free VPN software and network which lets you stream your iTunes library over the internet and access shared drives, Hamachi, is also available for Mac with HamachiX.

Instant Messenger, Email and Outlook/Entourage

There's no Microsoft Outlook for Mac, but Entourage (included in Office for Mac) can talk to your Microsoft Exchange server. Mac's Mail.app is also not available for PC but supports your standard email fetching and sending protocols, like POP/IMAP and SMTP, so it can download and send mail from Gmail or your ISP just the way Outlook Express can on your PC. Update: Mail.app can also work with Exchange server. Thanks, Byslexic!

iTunes, your iPod, and Other Incompatibilities

You can, of course, share a library on a Mac or PC and listen to it in iTunes on any other machine regardless of OS.

Likewise, you've got to choose between formatting your iPod for Mac or Windows. An iPod formatted for one will not work with the other. Update: Two readers report that a Windows-formatted iPod WILL work on a Mac, but not the other way around.

Along those same lines, an external hard drive formatted "Mac OS Extended" can't be plugged into Windows and just work. However, USB drives formatted "MS-DOS" (for Windows, that is) can be recognized, read and written to by both Windows and Mac OS. So a thumb drive sneaker net will work between Mac and PC.

Making the Switch

How do you negotiate Windows and Mac OS in your computing life? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, has one foot in each OS on a daily basis. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.