Author: Zealus

Categories
Review

Windows Live Writer Blog Editor

windows-live-small Next in our blog editor review is Windows Live Writer. Not sure what’s the version I am still downloading five minutes after launching a setup, but I hope it’s the latest one.

(5 minutes later) It’s the version 1366, which have to be updated to version 1367 via Microsoft Update. Downloading patch separately isn’t possible. You have to watch out for these things, you know!

The installation of this blog editor software wasn’t even close to the simplicity of previous packages. First – you have to download the installer. Then installer searches for Windows Live Writer installations on your computer and then downloads and installs updated core version. Then you have to go through Windows Update to …emm… update Writer to the latest version. Obviously, Microsoft doesn’t look for simple ways of doing things.

During the install process I noticed that Microsoft, being an innovator everywhere, uses the term ‘weblog’ instead of more common ‘blog’. Guess it makes some sense to people at MS, but it totally escapes me. While installing the Writer itself, the installer offered to poison my laptop with Messenger, Mail, Toolbar, Photo Gallery and Family Safety modules. I politely declined. Upon finishing the installation, the setup program decided that now it has powers over my machine and opened Windows Live homepage without even asking. But I expected that anyway.

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Categories
business

Learn To Fly

For as long as I have been working in IT industry, there were two types of people – those who knew how to do the job and those who had proper certificates. At one of the jobs I held there was this Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer guy, who passed all exams. I remember that someone on our team was teaching him how to troubleshoot a networked printer in real life. I taught him how to hook hard drive to the cable to the motherboard and how to install drivers for network cards. Someone else explained how to set up Novell network on Windows NT workstation. We had fun.

This was awhile ago and since then employers have learned to distinguish certified knowledge and real-world knowledge. Recently, I spoke with a friend of mine, software developer and team leader. He stated that they do take into account if the candidate has Microsoft Certification (they are all-around Microsoft shop), and what kind of certification it is. It matters to them because most of those candidates are self-learners and having certification assures that they at least know the basics of technology. It saves time on the interview since candidates are being asked complicated, full-blown interview questions, not wasting time defining what “abstract class” is and how to build an inner join select in SQL.

I guess there is some progress to the IT management as well, not just technology itself.

Categories
blog

Blogging Away

At the earliest convenience registered myself at some other paying services such as ReviewMe, Smorty, Zookoda, TNX. Research shows that you have to have established blog with good pagerank if you really want to get any real money off of paid posts. However, links in those posts matter much more then actual content. The real problem, of course, is that Google doesn’t like paid links. So, there is a real dilemma – how to get good writing gigs without damaging your Google score (that is PageRank).

Some interesting ideas have been flowing through recently. We’re designing a software utility that will automate certain things in blog management, as well as create some unique opportunities in Search Engine Optimization. More on that later.