Published .
Tags: blog, blogging, google, Internet, microsoft, msn, Personal, Search, sitemap, sitemaps, yahoo.
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all agreed on a standard specification for sitemap files. Information about the new standard can be found over at sitemaps.org. If you’re not sure what a sitemap is, sitemaps.org has a nice explanation:
Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
Fortunately for me, there’s really nothing I have to do to take advantage of this new spec. I’ve had a sitemap file for quite a while, and it gets updated dynamically with every new post I make. My sitemap xml file is quite large.
Joseph Scott brings up an important aspect of this new spec, pinging. Pinging basically means that when you make an update to your blog or site, you can ping Google/Yahoo/MSN to let them know you’ve made an update. That way they can crawl your site sooner to index your new content. Pretty neat.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Firefox recently released Firefox 2.0. There was a little slip-up with that release though, it hit some FTP servers earlier than it should have.
Anyway, the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft sent a cake to the Firefox team, congratulating them on their release of Firefox 2.0. Pretty weird huh? One would expect the cake to be full of poison, but that’s not the case. It’s simply a “job well done” present from the IE dev team to the Firefox guys.
It’s nice to see archenemies sending such nice gifts, even if it is Microsoft that’s involved. Can you feel the love?
Popularity: 5% [?]
The Internet Explorer development team has posted a list of CSS changes made in Internet Explorer 7. There’s lot of good ones, lots. My favorite of all of them is PNG transparency. Transparent PNG’s will now show up correctly in Internet Explorer! yay!!
Other major changes include :hover for all elements and the implementation of position:fixed. Super. Welcome to the 21st century Internet Explorer.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Published .
Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, live, microsoft, microsoft-windows, news, os, software, tech, technology, tools, windows, windows-live, windows-live-writer.
Microsoft released a fresh and shiny WYSIWYG blogging tool today. It’s called Windows Live Writer. Microsoft needs to hire some new people to choose names for these new products. The name alone makes me not want to use it.
Now, the stupid name aside, the tool actually looks like it could be very useful. Paul Stamatiou has a very lengthy review, from installation to actually publishing a blog post.
Windows Live Writer is still in beta, so expect some issues if you’re going to be using it. Apparently it’ll play nicely with pretty much any blogging platform. Rather than me writing more, just go read Paul’s review.
Want more reviews? Head over to to Elliot Back’s blog or Pro Blogger.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Techcrunch has some exclusive screenshots of OmniDrive. OmniDrive is an online storage medium, similar to those thought to be in development by Google and Microsoft.
Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch has been using OmniDrive. Last week they released a client interface for those on Windows systems, in addition to their web-based interface. OmniDrive sounds pretty neat, although it’s still in beta. Apparently they’ll be sending out a few hundred invites each day until they’re open to the public.
They’re also going to release an API to developers, which is really cool:
With the API a developer can either build applications that existing Omnidrive users can use, or they can create their own users and use Omnidrive purely as a backend. The API extends to being more than just saving and retrieving a file with user management, payment management, media handling and the ability for the users of a partner application to use their desktop tools to store, retrieve and access files.
Go head over to Techcrunch to have a look at the screenshots.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Published .
Tags: blog, blogs, kill-switch, microsoft, ms, news, operating-system, tech, technology, WGA, windows-genuine-advantage, windows-xp.
Last week, there were reports of a “kill switch” being built into Windows Genuine Advantage. Ed Bott, the guy who first got word of the “kill switch”, got an email from Microsoft saying there will NOT be “kill switch” technology built into WGA.
No, Microsoft anti-piracy technologies cannot and will not turn off your computer. In our ongoing fight against piracy, we are constantly finding and closing loopholes pirates use to circumvent established policies. The game is changing for counterfeiters. In Windows Vista we are making it notably harder and less appealing to use counterfeit software, and we will work to make that a consistent experience with older versions of Windows as well.
Hopefully this is true and MS won’t just start disabling PC’s found to be running illegal versions of its operating system. And if they do, so what? Switch to Linux.
Popularity: 3% [?]
