The blog

RSS + TiVo = ???

Thomas Hawk points to the announcement that the TiVo guys have come up with Bloglines On Your TiVo.

I’ve never understood this one. Why would I want to read normal RSS feeds using my TV? I can’t imagine trying to read this site on a TV – or, for that matter, any site with posts more than a sentence in length, which describes about 90% of the feeds I subscribe to. Trying to read even a tiny subset of the 240 feeds on my Bloglines list would result in a terrible experience, regardless of whether I subscribed using TiVo or Media Center.

Now, I can totally understand why I might want to subscribe to media-specific feeds with a specialized RSS reader that can play video and audio enclosures on my TV. The ability to capture video blogs and podcasts and random multimedia content delivered through RSS feeds would be a cool addition to any TiVo or Media Center. But Bloglines isn’t optimized for those types of content, and I have a hard time imagining how it would work, except to think it would be kind of a mess. In fact, that’s exactly what the sample screens look like.

Props to the developers for taking a stab at this. But really, someone needs to think about an intelligent marriage of the two media. Simply forcing them into a shotgun wedding is a mistake.

Add an SATA drive to your 8300HD DVR

Ah, I love the Internet! I especially appreciate communities that are made up of people who use the same toys I do and are committed to making those toys work better. This post is a perfect example. A poster at AVS Forums discovered the secret that allows you to plug an external SATA drive into an 8300HD DVR and magically increase your storage capacity:

I plugged the unit in as described in the 8300HD manuals found online, and the 8300HD recognized the external drive and asked me if I wanted to format it. Once this was done (it did this very quickly) the remaining disk space on my existing 8300HD increased accordingly.

I tried this months ago, with no success. The secret, it turns out, is to get a cable with a standard SATA connector on one end and a SATA II connector on the other. (A standard SATA cable will not work.) I searched extensively, and I can confirm that only one vendor appears to have this cable available for sale. Will I order it on Monday? Oh, you betcha! And then I will quadruple my high-def storage capacity. Woo-hoo!

(Now, if only someone could figure out how to activate a 30–second skip function for the execrable SARA software. Anyone?)

Update: When I wrote this item, SATA II cables were nearly impossible to find. It appears now (late August 2005) that they’re a little more common. If anyone has tried this and succeeded using a standard SATA II cable, leave a note in the comments, OK?

Reader David Adams reports: “I found the following link to a company that prepackages all that’s needed to hook up to the SA Explorer 8300HD. They definitely indicate the sata 1 to sata 2 (esata) cable is required. Their prices are decent, but I can do better by purchasing the individual components off eBay and online stores.
But at least their site is very helpful for this and you can refer anyone else who inquires to it. Thanks again for your help.

“Link

“PS: cheapest place to find the cable is here.”

Thanks, David!

Defining spyware and adware

The Microsoft security team has published an exhaustive white paper on the definitions of spyware and adware:

Unlike other forms of software, which tend to either be “good” or “bad,” spyware often exists in shades of “gray.” With the exception of malicious behaviors, many of the behaviors could have legitimate purposes. The potential for harm and disruption to the user’s PC experience depends on the specific behaviors demonstrated by a given program.

As a result, software classifications in the definition library for Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) not only capture the type of program (e.g., “adware,” “software bundler,” “browser modifier,” etc.) but also the degree of risk posed to the user. This is then communicated to the user, along with a recommended action. In Windows AntiSpyware (Beta), the user always has the ability to choose for themselves whether they want to “Always Ignore,” “Ignore,” “Quarantine,” or “Remove” a given program.

This is very, very thorough. I’ll read it more closely for sure.

(Thanks to Larry Seltzer and Alex Eckelberry for the pointer.)

Should bloggers accept free equipment?

Thomas Hawk picks up on the news that TiVo offered a special “journalists only” promo for its hardware:

I can see where TiVo would probably be frustrated and use this to try and push their message. They probably have the best PVR on the market. When you poll consumers everyone loves their TiVo but it’s a chicken and an egg thing. In order to know that you love it you need to try it. And you can’t try it until you buy it. By pushing these units out to the media TiVo probably hopes to better communicate their marketing message. Still a questionable strategy but probably done in a serious way to build awareness of their products with influencers.

For what it’s worth, no one at TiVo offered me any special deals. I wouldn’t accept a discount on a piece of hardware for my personal use, although I would gladly accept a loaner unit that I could use for review purposes. It’s unreasonable to expect a blogger to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for evaluation equipment. If I did, of course, it would be fully disclosed here.

These are basic journalistic standards. You shouldn’t get a special deal that isn’t available to the public. If you get an accommodation from a company to facilitate a story, disclose it, and don’t accept anything that would create even an appearance of a conflict of interest.

How to troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death

Update: If you’re puzzled because you’re getting STOP errors (the Blue Screen of Death) and they scroll off your screen before you can read the details, here’s the solution: Get details about the Blue Screen of Death.

Trying to figure out what’s causing a Windows STOP error (more commonly known as the Blue Screen of Death, or BSOD) can be a challenge. One likely candidate is bad hardware; if the error messages are random and the shutdowns appear unpredictably, you should suspect a faulty power supply or bad RAM.

Another common BSOD cause is a faulty device driver. Typically, you should be suspicious of any installed drivers that are not digitally signed, especially if they were written for an earlier version of Windows.

Windows XP includes a powerful troubleshooting tool called Driver Verifier (Verifier.exe). It’s a terrific way to identify flawed device drivers. It’s also a surefire way to screw up your system if you use it incorrectly. Read on for the details and important cautions.

Continue reading “How to troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death” →

Microsoft and security: Giving credit where it’s due

Dana Epp has a fascinating post about Microsoft’s security development lifecycle:

In the past decade it has been easy to slag Microsoft for their stance on security. It has appeared that the drive for profits have always trumped the safety and security of the code. When Microsoft decided to STOP development and retrain the ENTIRE development group about secure programming, many in the industry brushed it off as a PR stunt. But as I pointed out early last year, if we look at what Microsoft has been doing as of late, we can see that they have made significant changes to build a foundation for a more secure computing experience.

Read the whole list, and bear in mind that Dana Epp knows security issues better than just about anyone. His perspective is a fascinating one here. I’m not a slavish Microsoft booster, and in fact I have been critical of some recent decisions they have made that are not consistent with their stated security goals. But anyone who thinks that Microsoft hasn’t made huge progress on security in the past four years simply isn’t paying attention.

This is the main reason you can expect that Internet Explorer 7 will be a very big deal and not a simplistic bunch of cosmetic fixes. Just watch…

How this blogger does it

Phil Rodemann has some kind words and a question: How do bloggers do it?

What tools should a committed blogger use? If you are committed to drawing traffic, what helps keep the workload to a manageable level?

I have two tools that make my life easier. One is NewsGator Outlook Edition, which bringsin my favorite RSS feeds automatically. Phil, be sure you sort your feeds into folders. I subscribe to 200+ feeds, but there are only a handful I consider indispensable, and they go into an Essentials folder. When I subscribe to a new feed, it goes into a New Additions folder, where I can monitor it for a while to see if it’s a keeper.

For posting, I use a wonderful little utility called BlogJet. It acts as a universal front end for Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger, and about 20 other bogging packages. (I especially recommend it as an alternative for the horrible Blogger editor.) Its best feature: You can save drafts of posts locally and work on them when you feel like it.

Those two tools make me efficient. I’ve also found that anyone can be more confident and prolific by writing more often. Short posts are fine and useful.

And keep an eye on your referrer logs to see who’s linking to you. You can find someinteresting stuff that way.