Podcast Thursday - 11/19

Got around to it, finally. This week, I discuss the Office 2010 Beta, Modern Warfare 2's sales, a possible move to Wordpress, and why I've been kinda late with the posts and podcasts recently.

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Podcast Wednesday - 11/11

I'm going to start doing weekly podcasts every Wednesday here on the Cold Boot website. Despite my current sickness, I do (try) to touch on podcast submissions to iTunes, Blogger vs. Wordpress, and a few Windows 7 tips and tricks. Soak it all in.

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Trying Out New Technology

Over the last week, I’ve decided to make a few upgrades to the site. Upgrades that, hopefully, will make it a little more attractive and accessible to those searching for information in the technology realm.

I already had established an RSS feed through Blogger, but I decided to go a little further by using Feedburner. Feedburner, which, like Blogger, is now run by Google, gives me the ability to track RSS subscriptions, make podcasting easier, and add sharing options to my Blogger page. One of the purposes of this post is to test the sharing options, such as Facebook and Digg, and see if they appear at the bottom of this post.

In terms of podcasting, that’s been a bit more difficult. First, it was tough finding file space that allowed direct linking to the .mp3 for access to the podcast. It took a while to figure out how the direct link works, but Windows SkyDrive actually provides a TON of space (25 free gigs), and it’s quite easy to upload files (not folders, however, unfortunately).

After finding space, setting up a podcast through Feedburner was easy, but submitting it to the iTunes Store for availability through their podcast directory has been impossible, literally. iTunes is constantly giving me a “We are experiencing technical difficulties. Try again later” message, despite the feed address working perfectly fine when I manually subscribe to it through iTunes myself. Hopefully I can get that rectified though, and podcasts can be a regular feature here on Cold Boot.

Finally, you may notice that I was able to put up a new address bar logo, also known as a “favicon,” up on the site. That actually takes a bit of manual HTML editing, but the unique site logo in the address bar makes it all worth it.

Using Windows Live Writer – A Windows 7 Experience

I woke up this morning still not feeling great (I’ve had the flu in one form or another for the last 8 days or so), so I thought I’d make a slideshow to music of a recent trip my girlfriend and I took to Leelanau County, Michigan. For those of you not from the Mitten State, the upper portion of the lower penninsula is generally referred to as “Up North” by us Michiganders, while the upper penninsula is the “UP.”

When deciding to make the slideshow, I realized that Windows 7 doesn’t natively come with an application capable of making such a thing. The application you would see Kylie using in the Windows 7 commercials is Windows Live Movie Maker, and is available through Windows Update. I went onto Windows Update, and also noticed another

application when choosing what Windows Live programs to install; Windows Live Writer.

The description mentioned that Windows Live Writer was primarily a blogging tool, that allowed you to more easily insert photos, videos, tables, and other more “advanced” items into your blog. I went through the simple setup of telling Live Writer about my Cold Boot blog, and now I’m using it to write

this column. It’s more of a test than an actual article, but it seems to be fairly intuitive. I’m not as limited as to where I would like to insert a picture, or what size it’s going to be, and the “preview” tab at the bottom of the program does a great job of giving an accurate portrayal as to what the blog post will look like once finished.

Windows Live Writer doesn’t add a ton over what I have available to me through Google’s Blogger, but it’s just user friendly enough for me to continue to use it for at least the next few posts. It still drives me kind of crazy that there’s no native support for a “caption” underneath a picture (how hard is that?), but there are ways around it.