The LGBT Center at the University of Pennsylvania just launched a blog!  Actually, they took their periodic newsletter, OUTlines, and repackaged it as a blog.  And who programmed said blog?  Yours truly, that’s who!  I still have some work to do on it, but it’s there and it’s functional.

The launch of the OUTlines blog coincides with a soft launch of MyLGBTC, which is a portion of the web site where people can log in and update their information in the Center’s database.  When logged in, a person can also post a comment to a blog article.  It’s a humble beginning, but I’m pretty happy with it.

Off-and-on for a while now, I’ve been trying to find a good place to host my email.  See, I’m pretty darn happy with my web host as far as web hosting is concerned, but their email offerings leave much to be desired.  Their IMAP implementation doesn’t seem to jive with Windows Mobile Outlook (messages I delete on my phone pop up again the next time it synchronizes), their webmail client is pretty archaic-looking, and the only way to access the junk mail folder is through said webmail client.

Fortunately, a number of sites are offering email hosting, and sometimes other services, if you BYOD (that’s Bring Your Own Domain, silly!).

The first one I tried was Google Apps, which is by far the most user-friendly and pleasing on the eyes.  In addition to email, it offers Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.  You can have all the users at your domain share the same address book, which is pretty cool.  However, I don’t like/get the Gmail interface (so much for user-friendliness!), and they only offer POP access.  POP?  Hello?  What year is this?  Even AOL offers IMAP access!  Get on the ball, Google!

Next I took Windows Live Custom Domains for a spin.  This showed a lot of promise, but ultimately annoyed me.  You can only access your email through Windows Live Mail Beta, not through POP or IMAP.  I would have been okay with this if there was a cool little Windows Mobile app I could download for my phone to read my email there, but no such luck, at least not that I found.  The best I could do from my phone was read it using the web browser.  Yuck!  You had to pay if you wanted POP/IMAP access, and you had to pay PER ACCOUNT!  Double yuck!

Most recently, I tried out AOL My eAddress.  I know, I know… I shriek every time I see "AOL" too.  But their IMAP access is pretty zippy, so I thought it was worth a shot.  Everything seemed to be going well, until I couldn’t get my actual name to show up in the display name of messages I sent.  Instead, it would just show my email address.  It might seem minor, but it’s darn annoying.  It wouldn’t show my name whether I sent email through webmail (even after entering my name in the Display Name field) or through Outlook.  WTF, AOL?

*sigh*

So, I suppose my quest continues.  Unlike Google, Microsoft, and AOL, Yahoo! doesn’t offer a free service, but what they do offer is pretty cheap.  I think I can afford $9.95/year to try it out.  But if Yahoo! doesn’t give me what I want, then I think I’ve exhausted all the big players.  I hate being so picky and particular!

UPDATE:  It looks as though Yahoo! doesn’t offer just email hosting.  Instead, you have to have them host your entire domain.  Yuck.

Welcome to the first post in what I’m sure will be a long series documenting why I am a huge nerd.

I’m getting a Penn Alumni license plate.  I filled out the application and put it in the mail as soon as I received an email announcing it.

Sam Waterston and Sam the Eagle.  That’s all I’m saying.

My friend Rich shared this with me.

Hilarious.

Don’t you like braaaaaan muffins?

About a month ago, I posted about blogging from Word 2007. At the time, it seemed pretty cool. I quickly discovered, though, that blogging from Word was pretty limited. If your post consisted of anything more than text and pictures, you were pretty much out of luck. It seemed that there was no way of embedding Flash video, for example, because there was no way to get to the raw HTML code of your post.

Then Joe told me about Windows Live Writer, which is what I’m using right now! In fact, I’ve used it to create the last three or so posts. And I have just three words to say about it:

It. Is. Hot.

On its surface, it’s a WYSIWYG editor, similar to Word 2007. But the WYSIWYG environment is uber-enhanced by the fact that it pulls down the stylesheet from your blog, and uses it to render the editor, making it much more what-you-see-is-what-you-get than Word 2007. Lo and behold, there is also an HTML Code view, making it easy as pie to plop down code to embed a Flash video.

I haven’t tinkered around with any of the other features, but there are hyperlinks to insert maps, tags, and video. You can also extend Windows Live Writer with plug-ins.

It’s still in beta, but really, what isn’t in beta these days? Check it out!

I finally received my XPS M1330 laptop from Dell on Thursday of this week, and I rebuilt it while at work on Friday. This morning, I installed the last bit of software I use: Adobe Web Standard CS3. After installing it, I opened up Dreamweaver and prepared to activate the software, as I have done successfully a few times on my old laptop. (This software is also installed and activated on my desktop at work.) This time, though, it told me that I had no activations left!

Gasp! Horror!

Fortunately, it also told me that I could deactivate the software on another computer, and then activate on my new laptop. So I booted up my ThinkPad T43, launched Dreamweaver, and deactivated the software there. Then I was able to activate it on my M1330 without a problem.

So why am I so impressed by this whole process? Well, at first I assumed that I had a limited number of activations (say, 5) which I had blown through each time I rebuilt my old laptop, and it was simply bad timing that I ran out just as I tried to install it on my new laptop. But then I got to thinking… what if activation is smart enough to actually tie the software not to something at the OS level, but to the hardware itself? Then it would make perfect sense that I wasn’t able to activate it on my new laptop, because that would be the third unique piece of hardware on which this activation has been used. (Adobe typically allows you to install a copy of their software on up to two different computers.)

As it turns out, that’s exactly what Adobe does! So you can rebuild your computer ad nauseum, and activation should work each and every time. But install it on more than two unique hardware configurations, and that’s when you have to start deactivating in order to activate some more.

What’s the moral of the story? If you’re parting with a computer that had an activated copy of Adobe software on it, you should make sure you deactivate it first. Otherwise, you have to call up Adobe, and who wants to deal with an actual person?

I think this is the most elegant solution to software activation I’ve seen. It makes it very easy for people who follow the rules to use their software as they see fit (even freaks like me who frequently rebuild their systems).

Anyone know if Vista has a similar ‘deactivate’ feature?

Simpsons Star Wars

Add to My Profile | More Videos

[ Via Daily Cup of Tech ]