Adam Kinney posts tagged with 'blogging'

Enhancing the blog: Hello FeedBurner

Adam Kinney — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 05:38:00 GMT

I've been dreaming for awhile about useful new features that I could add to my blog. Not just new features, really, more like what a blog could be. How could it be more useful to the reader and to me as the author. A lot of my ideas center around visualizations, and what could be done with data. (Yes, I am a big fan of Tufte.)

I most recently gleaned some good ideas to go along with previous thoughts from Scott Hanselman's blogging tips post.

His post made me finally register and start using del.icio.us. Now after using it for just a little bit, I think its crazy to think I've been saving and juggling links all over the place before. Welcome to Web 1.2, Adam. And they are "open". They don't specifcally have an API, but the content you save there is exposed in a variety of ways making it useful to reuse.

This "openess" has become a very important factor me and how interested I am in using a website.

Anyways, one of the other small steps I made was using FeedBurner for my rss feed. You give them your generated rss url and then they consume it and resyndicate it. This gives you analytics for your rss feed as well as offering plenty of interesting optimization or enhancements for your feeds. Yes, we've stumbled on to another api like manifestation, the FeedFlare Developer Guide.

One of the FeedBurner features has already saved a bit of time and frustration.

After deciding to make the change, I updated my site, checked everything was working, subscribed to my new feed and ran off to the feed management section to see if I would see the subscriber count go from 0 to 1.

Nothing had changed.

I did see this FeedMedic thing, though.

Click.

Error getting URL: 400 - Recursive feed redirection error: Are requests for your 'Original Feed' address — the feed that FeedBurner is checking for updates — being redirected to your FeedBurner feed? Make sure your Original Feed is provided from a web address that isn't redirected to FeedBurner.

Ah ha! In good form, and matching item #27 on Hanselman's list, I had added a redirect to my previous rss feed url, but I had not taken into account that the url was also the one in use by FeedBurner to create the feed.

Luckily it was an easy fix, I just created a special url for feedburner to consume, but I thought it was an entertaining bug. Recursion in itself is entertaining.

More enhancements to come.

UNIQLOCK

Adam Kinney — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 22:50:00 GMT

This is a fun way to sell polo shirts. The music is turned off so as not to startle you (this isn't MySpace), but it is worth listening to if you're not sitting in a meeting or a library. You can get your own customized UNIQLOCK here.

Too bad the small version is too wide to be a Sidebar gadget.

Back in the Saddle

Adam Kinney — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:15:00 GMT

MIX07 was awesome. I was involved in supporting the VisitMIX site, posting an array of Silverlight screencasts on Channel 9 and a few other community events. I was lucky enough to go a few sessions, including the WPF Comics session which impressed me enough that I had to blog about it right away. I have notes on a few of the other sessions I'd like to share, but those notes would be about month late so who knows how useful they would be.

After MIX07, I pretty much dropped off the Internet. No blogging, no Ch9 forums, no IM, no email. After the conference I flew from Vegas to Indiana to visit my ailing father. After I was able to spend 6 days with him, he passed away. I was very grateful for the chance to be there with him and my family for the last couple of days and there with my mother during the last few minutes.

This is the beginning of my third week back at work after being "offline" for almost two and a half weeks. I feel like I've caught back up now, took a little to get back up to speed which was not surprising (out of the office three weeks including the conference trip). I wanted to start this week out right and one of the things I've been wanting to do is write more. I have so much queued up to write about and a large amount of art and experiments to share and I just haven't taken the time. Or I think I have to get everything perfect before doing it. But I can tell you that with the mind set I am now, no need to wait or hold yourself back. Live life now, because now is the only time you can be sure you have.

Stepping back in with a non sequitur

Adam Kinney — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:46:00 GMT

For a few reasons I have been absent from the online world as of late, the online world meaning Channel 9, IM, blogs I read and more importantly in this context, the blog I write. So rather than spend time writing an "I'm back" message, why not come back with something unexpected.

I certainly didn't expect this to happen.

Catching up on blogs, I ran into my pal Rory's feed and was pleasantly greeted with 3 new posts. After reading his Comic - Interrogation post. I was struck by how much I enjoy his art and his creativity. Still thinking through the "Mars-witch leopard with a stinger" concept...

The story was vivid enough that a visual popped in my head of Rory's creations turning the tables on him and "drawing" him. I grabbed my sketchbook and a pen. I never draw straight with a pen and always prefer using pencils first, but I admire those who can ink without sketching and thought I would take on the challenge. Once the image was drawn, photographed, resized and cropped in Photoshop, I added a stylized portrait of Rory on to the stick man's canvas.

Dang, I just realized I forgot the stinger...

A new story and a new theme

Adam Kinney — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 18:14:00 GMT

Earlier this year, I made a conscious effort to give my blog an overall theme to base my posts on. The concept of the "Devigner" is what I was going to go after, but due to the lack posts about this concept, its obvious that didn't work out. I still believe the idea is interesting, how one who designs interfaces and develops code fits into software development, but I wasn't spending much time into exploring how other "devigners" worked. It would have been an extra-curricular activity compared to my main work and my main work currently consumes a large part of my focus and outside time now.

Which leads into what my new story will be, I plan to cover my experiences and work at Microsoft.

"Oh that's original", you may be thinking. Although, it may not be completely original, the main theme of what I plan to discuss is the development of Channel 9, Channel 10 and any other sites or project my team works on. A lot of the Niners on Channel 9 are always asking about our current progress and what we're doing next, so this should give them some information to chew on. The size of our team and our responsibilities has grown quickly which has resulted in some lessons about software development worth sharing. And we are lucky enough to be tasked with creating new innovations using new technologies, so there should be interesting stories to tell there as well.

Overall I'm looking forward to providing a better insight into what we are working on as a team and hopefully generating stories worth reading. Now I just need to make a new banner for my site...

MIX07 Blog Bling/UnBling

Adam Kinney — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:08:00 GMT

So we've had the MIX07 blog bling ("flair" is out for now, "bling" is in, "badges" is up next I believe) up there for a little while now. You could win posters and just generally show your support and/or your excitement for the whole event.

Well a little while ago we stumbled on Jon Galloway's rendition of of MIX blog badges and I loved them. Irrelevant pictures (Abe Lincoln, Horses with pink stars, etc.) set against a softened MIX logo and Jon had a winner. I've known Jon for a while now and have always found his blog interesting, like interesting in the "unique content that's interesting" way. I'm happy to help push a little bit of that unique content on the intArweb. The bling or unbling if you may is now on the official MIX07 blog bling page.

What do I mean by "Devigner at Work"?

Adam Kinney — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:48:00 GMT

In December of 2006, I blew up my blog.

It was Christmas break and I had decided to update the code base of my blog. It was a small update, but something I could just throw up there on the way out the door. It didn’t work. In fact nothing was working. I could no longer run the application on my local machine. Somewhere I had lost something and had mismatched my assemblies. I had half-assed my blog code as much as I had half-assed my blog. This resulted in frustration and a hand-illustrated "Boom".

In 2006, I hadn’t done much on my blog at all. Sure I was busy at work, which I do put a lot of energy into and enjoy, but I knew it was just sitting there languishing. It had become an events blog, “Something happened here, something happened over here, too. I have thoughts to share, but no inclination to write them down.”

Blogs can be useful in different ways and mine has not been useful since post PDC 2003 days when I was blazing a trail through Avalon (now named WPF). I learned Avalon by digging in, trying to create and then sharing and garnering feedback. I liked that and I want to do something like that again. I want to learn and share again and interact.

So I’ve laid out some goals for my site.

Site news and feature updates — We do move quickly at work and often update our sites. By logging our progress here I can provide news for those who are interested (friends and community members who are often developers), keep track for my personal recollection and hopefully share useful information for other developers.

Create a gallery of personal work — As a designer type person, I have a large amount of side projects I have started, if only in my head. My belief is that if I have a platform to share these and receive feedback, I will be more apt to complete these projects and get some of that creative energy out in the process.

Explore the role of the Devigner — Finally the “devigner” term comes up. If you have not guessed by “devinger” is a combination of the words “designer” and “developer”. And I believe it is a term that describes what I do. I started my life out more on the designer side, drawing everywhere, loitering in art rooms and painting. Not until later in my life (much later than most geeks) did I get into technology and bending it to my will. Nowadays, I really enjoy and study User Interface design, but I also really enjoy coding and application development.

I believe I showed up at Microsoft (2005) at a very good time. Having been a heavy user of C# and ASP.Net, I was pleased to learn the direction Microsoft was going in the design and Web direction. ASP.Net 2.0, with its improved standards awareness and awesome new advancements (can someone say VirtualPathProvider?), WPF, with its vector and extensible sweetness, Atlas (now ASP.NET Ajax), with it simplifying Ajax for ASP.NET and better web experiences, "WPF/E", with its cross-browser rich Web experience promise, and then there is the whole Expression suite of products which enables building on all this technology.

The technology behind the web is growing quickly, and I want to follow along and explore what this means for people like me. People who design and develop. People who from this day forward will be known “Devigners”.

(All right, so I agree, the end may have been a bit dramatic, but I think it gets the point across…and I do know the term “devigner” has been used before, but I'm going to run with it...)

next.design.now is running Oxite

Adam Kinney — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 22:34:00 GMT

Well this is fun, just running around planting Oxite blogs. David Shadle (designer of the famous Channel 9 guy) who runs next.design.now has ben patiently waiting for me to provide a better setup for him for a while. Previous to this update I was actually hand-editing his rss feed :) Sometimes you have to do what you can to get things moving. I'm excited for him and I really expect him to become even more of (as the site title reads) a resource site for designers creating experiences on Microsoft presentation platforms.

Blog fortified, WordPress theme implemented

Adam Kinney — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 20:11:00 GMT

The last time I updated my blog's code base, I started from scratch (again) and my mindset was "keep it simple". And a very simple one-person blog appeared. Well it was a little too simple, no trackbacks, referrals and no automatic pinging of blog services like ping-o-matic. Now with Duncan's help (who was looking for a new blog engine as well) that has all been added and more.

I am authoring this post in Windows Live Writer (yay, MetaWeblog support!). So far I am pretty impressed. I like the simple and attractive UI, but the most interesting part is the extensibility model. Its very simple to write plug-ins and there are couple of cool ones available so far like the Live Local map and Flickr photo plug-ins. [Watch the video of Live Writer on 10]

If you are viewing this post on my website you'll notice that my blog is themed with a possibly familiar theme. The theme is entitled Subtle v0.32 and it was designed by Glued Ideas. Duncan first noticed a variation of the theme on Shooting the Kids, and it brought up the issue once again, how great Word Press themes are and how nice it would be to take advantage of them. So when updating the UI that's exactly what we did. Its a bit hardcoded now, but it sounds like an interesting issue to address. Multi-blog engine themes portability.

Anyways, now that the new engine is up, vacations are over and summer has passed, I'm going to challenege myself to blog everyday. I believe I have plenty of content, I was just ignoring or working on the tools. I'm also pledging to get better at email, regarding faster response times. So now would be the time to resend any emails that never received a response. :)

Looking for comments

Adam Kinney — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 19:12:00 GMT

Yes, this is a blatant request for comments. I changed the comment flow with the last redesign and I'm looking for comments about how it works. So if you don't mind could you leave a comment? Go ahead and choose to say what ever you want.

A blog rebirth

Adam Kinney — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 03:00:00 GMT

Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.

- Christina Baldwin

I've redesigned my blog once again. Actually in my head I've redesigned my blogging intentions. When I first started blogging back on weblogs.asp.net, I was just feeling my way around, not wuite sure what I was doing.

After PDC 2003, I got a taste of Longhorn, Avalon mainly, and was hooked. Very exciting and I needed to talk about it with someone and there was no one around locally. Luckily I was given space on Longhornblogs by Robert McLaws. Lots of fun and interaction, I learned a lot and was able to share my discoveries and projects I had done with Avalon. I had something to talk about and things were moving along.

From my outspoken work there I was hired on to the Xamlon team. A great learning experience and all very exciting work. I was then blogging about the new products we were offering. Good stuff but an uphill push to explain what we were doing and how it was most useful. The product changed a bit and so did my interests, we parted ways.

After that my blogging pretty much went out the door. I did some contract work for awhile, played WoW for awhile...relaxed. In a short while I had a conversation with Jeff Sandquist over IM where we found out we had a mutual interest. He had a job opening and I wanted a new job and in a few weeks I was moving the family to Washington to start a new life.

The tornado hit instantly. So much to do at work and at home, so much to learn, so much exciting stuff going on. No time to blog.

Its almost been a year now, and I've been through a Channel9 redesign, PDC 2005, the launch of Microsoft Gadgets, a massive redesign of Microsoft Gadgets, MIX 06, and the launch 10. *sigh* But its a been a ton of fun and work and I've learned a lot. (Put on a few pounds, as well, too many late night Taco Bell runs :p)

So now here I am, things are good, our team is moving along and growing our sites are maturing and just getting better. But there's still a little something missing. Not as much interaction with the coomunity at large as I'd like. I remember when I was into Flash Development, the Were-Here forums were a great place to hang out (Photoshop Tennis!). Then came along asp.net and GotDotNet (OTD rock(s|ed)), where my goal was to answer as many questions as possible. Then as mentioned above the Longhornblogs community was fun. Then initially when starting at MS when our team was only running Channel9, I spent a lot of time in the forums with Niners. Did I mention I also used to run a .Net User Group?

This is my refresh on interacting with others online and in the community. Its fun and you can learn from people all over the world. I'm going to use my site for sharing side projects that I work on and my blog for discussing my work and that of others I find interesting. Mainly web-centric user experience stuff. I'm using the label "frosh design" because I like the sound, almost like "fresh" (implied by the lime in the corner of this site's design). But the real meaning of "frosh" as akin to that of a zealous student. I want to focus and study design. Its a huge topic, but its what I'm into. I'm a pretty mellow dude, but its one thing I can become obsessive about.

Happy New Blog Year!

Adam Kinney — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 18:44:00 GMT

Its the 5th and I'm saying "Happy New Year!". Its 2006 and I've still got the PDC05 ch9 guy on my site. Yep, so I'm a little behind, but that has something to do with all the work.

Not suprising I am working on a new blog design, and when I do a new design I usually redo the codebase as well. This time I'm starting from scratch (again) using ASP.Net 2.0. My goal is to get the first rendition up by this weekend with commentary about the transition of moving over to the new version and what new features I am enjoyig (and those I am not). I'll continue to update the site taking advantage of more and more ASP.Net 2.0 features. Overall VS2005 and 2.0 is awesome, and I'm so pleased to have real projects moved to 2.0.