Stardock has released DesktopX 2.1 today!

DesktopX is a desktop enhancement utility designed to let users of Microsoft Windows turbo-charge their Windows desktops. DesktopX does this by enhancing the desktop and extending it to natively support objects and widgets These objects and widgets can add all kinds of new features for users as well as be put together to build entire desktops.

DesktopX has been used to create kiosks, create alternative computer interfaces in movies and TV, create simplified, child friendly desktops, and by power users who want to improve their productivity. Simply put, DesktopX can make Windows more useful and more fun to use.

DesktopX has 3 primary features:

1) It can enhance your existing Windows desktop by making desktop icons have shadows, be sized independently from the rest of the system (i.e. have big icons just on the desktop), respond to mouse events (such as grow and shrink when the mouse is over them), play a sound when the mouse is clicked on them, and much more.

2) It allows for additional functionality to be added to the desktop. DesktopX objects can do virtually anything. DesktopX objects include clocks, calendars, stock tickers, news monitors, IRC clients, video games, fish, simulators, color grabbers, timers, CPU meters, network monitors, MP3 players, radio station players, PVR interfaces, and much more. In DesktopX 2.1, these objects can be exported as mini-programs called Widgets that can run on any system that has DesktopX installed.

3) It enables users or administrators to actually build their own unique desktops. These desktops can be used as kiosks, power user desktops, desktop for guests, and much more. DesktopX Pro even includes security features to lock-down the desktop.

DesktopX comes with a host of built in features allowing end users to easily create their own objects and themes. Features such as monitoring virtually any resource on the PC, clocks, email checking, and many other common tasks are built into DesktopX.  But DesktopX allows third parties to easily extend DesktopX through either plugins or using Javascript/VB Script to add new functionality.  DesktopX 2.1 now provides extensive documentation on both its use and how to extend it.

New in DesktopX 2.1:

Full history at: http://sdcentral.stardock.com/public/dx/production/history.htm

• Registered users can now export their objects as programs (.EXE) that can run on any computer that has DesktopX installed. These are called widgets and run like any other program.
• All users of DesktopX (including the free version) can run widgets created with DesktopX.
• DirectGUI 2.1 - much more seamless painting of objects and widgets.
• Objects covered by a window are not drawn saving CPU (this is a big deal - you can now have an animated desktop that uses virtually no CPU when it's covered up by windows).
• User Mode greatly enhanced - objects have a "close" menu item now on them when running in user mode.
• Dragging common images to the desktop creates a thumbnail of that image on your desktop (very cool - you can drag a .JPG file to your IconX enhanced desktop and instead of it having the standard .JPG icon it will be a thumbnail of that image).
• Users can now include custom files to their exported object (in the summary page).
• Can now include custom fonts with an object, DesktopX will auto-install them.
• DesktopX VBScript/Javascript support greatly enhanced with a large number of new DX based APIs to make use of.
• Scripts can control the z-order of an object (you can command your object to go on top at different times)
• DesktopX objects can now act as "Appbars". The Star bar is an example of an appbar. Appbars can be auto-hide, always visible, or normal. See included Longhorn theme example with mode button at top right.
• IconX enhanced desktop icons now respond to same commands as regular icons (such as rename, copy, move, etc.)
• DesktopX objects now use 1/3rd as many GDI objects as DesktopX 2.0 and before.
• Developers can control object visibility from scripts independent from those objects being classified as "pop ups"
• Tons of tweaks and fixes to improve performance, stability, and compatability.

DesktopX is one of the programs that makes up Stardock's Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements which also includes WindowBlinds, ObjectBar, IconPackager, IconDeveloper, Keyboard LaunchPad, WindowFX and much more.  DesktopX Enhanced comes with Object Desktop or can be purchased on its own for $19.95.  It adds the ability to export widgets, use enhanced objects, make use of additional IconX settings and more. Object Desktop is $49.95 for the entire suite which includes a full year of additional updates and new programs as they become available.

Screenshots:
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-feb04.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-jan04a.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-jan04.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-dec03a.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-dec03.jpg
https://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/dx-feb04a.jpg

Websites:
DesktopX - http://www.desktopx.net
Object Desktop - http://www.objectdesktop.com
Stardock - https://www.stardock.com

WinStyles evolved into Theme Manager. Here is a preview of Theme Manager 2004's UI.

Anyone who's written enough on-line over a long enough period of time knows that there are a lot of people out there who write before they think.

This is particularly true on Blog Sites.  My favorite blog, USS Clueless, doesn't allow any comments on his articles. He used to have a message board but eventually he grew weary of the idiocy there and disbanded that too. We have some advantages in that our IT staff can put together some interesting options for bloggers.

Ultimately, JoeUser is a blog site, not a discussion site. How much discussion occurs on blogs will be up to the author of a given article on their blog. If a blogger doesn't want "l33tdue89" to respond on his or her blog, then he shouldn't be allowed to respond. Period.

But why stop there? What I am interested in setting up is a system in which bloggers can have control over not just who can respond on their blogs but what kinds of users can respond on their blog.  Here are some ideas that we have.

Basic Filtering

When you write an article not only can you control the audience of who can read it at all (that's already in) but you can control who can comment it. Your options will be:

Who can comment on your article?

( ) Everyone (default)
( ) Registered Users Only
( ) No one
( ) Custom

If you select Custom things get even more interesting.  You could then filter out people based on anything you want. Let me be up front: Bloggers would have the right to discriminate who gets to comment on their blog.  I personally would probably not use these features but that freedom should be provided to the bloggers themselves to decide.

For instance:

No one over age X can comment on my blog

No one under age Y can comment on my blog

No one with access less than Z can comment on my blog (in the next few weeks we'll be adding new access groups where trusted regulars will slowly move up in access).

We could even have a generic JoeUser knowledge test where users would take a test on knowledge on various issues. Bloggers could have a score threshold needed to comment on their blog.  Most people wouldn't take the test but that would be fine with bloggers who used this option since they would be ones looking for only those who are interested in serious, intelligent, discussion.

Some people would likely be up in arms about these kinds of options. But the fact is, this site exists for people to be able to write blogs. It's a blog site. The features are aimed at encouraging people to write. To be comfortable writing about what they want. And to that end we want to provide them with features necessary to have some control over who comments on their blog.

 

One of the biggest challenges in designing a US Presidential political strategy game is balancing the fun factor with accuracy.  And nothing quite exemplifies this as much as coming up with political issues for the game to have.

 Ultimately, as political junkies, we decided to throw out wisdom and not make the political issues generic but instead contemporary.  That puts the burden on us to keep updating the game but at the very least players will be able have an advantage in being up on the latest political issues.

 That isn’t to say all the issues a candidate will run into will be contemporary, many will be timeless in nature or at least timeless enough for our purposes.

 In addition to coming up with issues, we also have to figure out how Democrats, Republicans, and Independents feel about a given issue. Even more, we have to figure out in many cases how attitudes change from state to state. This means that we have to know first what percentage of the population in each state tends to vote for Democrats and which tends to vote for Republicans.

In The Political Machine, issues aren’t about what percentage of the population agrees with a position. Instead, issues are about how much people care about a given issue. A big difference. This means that we have to know secondly roughly how much Democrats and Republicans will care about a given issue.

The role of a candidate is to accomplish three things:

 1)      To build up their strength behind a given position

2)      To convince the population that the issue in question is important.

3)      To convince the population that their opponent’s position is counter to his on that issue.

 

So what are some of the issues of The Political Machine? Let’s start with the “timeless” issues:

• 1)      Abortion Rights.  Should abortion be legal or illegal?

• 2)      Government Provided Healthcare. Should the government provide healthcare to all citizens?

• 3)      Tax Cuts. Should the government lower taxes?

• 4)      Increased Federal Spending on Education. Should the federal government spend more on education?

• 5)      Social Security. Should the government continuing providing social security?

• 6)      Debt Reduction. Should reducing the federal debt be a priority?

• 7)      Prayer in Schools. Should the federal government pass laws to allow prayer in public schools?

• 8)      Curbing Illegal Immigration.  Should the federal government do more to stop illegal immigration?

• 9)      Improving the Economy. Should the federal government focus on improving the economy (this stat is heavily affected by the economic climate setting at the start).

• 10)  Fighting Crime. Should the federal government do more to help fight crime? This statistic is affected by the domestic unrest setting.

• 11)  Increasing Military Spending.  Should the federal government spend more on defense? This statistic is affected by the state of war setting.

• 12)  Capital Punishment. Should the federal government support the death penalty?

• 13)  Gun Control. Should additional restrictions be made on the carrying of fire arms?

• 14)  Environment. Should the government focus more on helping the environment?

• 15)  Farm Subsidies. Should the federal government support subsidizing farming?

• 16)  Foreign Aid. Should the federal government support less fortunate nations with economic and humanitarian aid? How much?

• 17)  Civil Rights. Should the federal government concern itself more with the civil rights of minority groups?

Here are some more contemporary issues:

• 18)  Legalizing Marijuana. Should the federal government legalize marijuana?

• 19)  War in Iraq.  Was removing Saddam Hussein through military force the right thing?

• 20)  War on Terror. Should the US continue the course of fighting global terror as we have been?

• 21)  Gay Marriage. Should the federal government support and recognize gay marriage?

• 22)   School vouchers. Should parents have the ability to control which schools receive their tax money?

• 23)  Private Social Security Accounts. Should we begin to privatize social security?

• 24)  Prescription Drugs for seniors. Should the federal government subsidize prescription drug coverage for senior citizens?

• 25)  United Nations. Should the US continue or increase its support of the United Nations?

• 26)  Israel. Should the US generally back the Israeli government in its dispute with the Palestinians?

• 27)  Palestinians. Should the US generally back the Palestinians in its dispute with Israel?

• 28)  Flat Tax. Should the US switch to a flat tax?

• 29)  Affirmative Action. Should the federal government continue to support Affirmatie action.

• 30)  Kyoto Treaty.  Should the US ratify the Kyoto Treaty on global CO2 emissions?

• 31)  NAFTA. Should the US continue with the NAFTA treaty?

• 32)  Tort Reform. Should the federal government crack down on what individuals can file a lawsuit for?

• 33)  Nuclear Energy. Should the federal government subsidize the building of nuclear power plants?

• 34)  Missile Shield. Should the government build a missile defense shield?

• 35)  Campaign Finance Reform. Should the government put strict limits on how money can be raised for campaigns?

• 36)  Drilling in ANWR. Should the federal government open up ANWR for oil exploration?

• 37)  Fighting Global Warming. Should the federal government put its efforts towards fighting global warming? Does global warming exist?

• 38)  Deficit Reduction. Nevermind the debt, should the federal government be focusing on reducing or eliminating the budget deficit?

• 39)  Trade with China. Should the government be interfering with trade with China given China’s shortcomings in human rights?

These are just a sampling of issues that candidates will have to deal with. On top of these, there are personal issues candidates can target such as integrity, credibility, competence, experience, and so forth. 

In designing the game, it was important to also deal with the fact that not only do different parties care about these issues at very different levels, but a candidate’s ability to persuade the electorate will differ greatly based on their political party. 

When you speak on a given issue, you may be able to convince the population that an issue is important but they may not believe you care about it as much as you say depending on what party you are on.

A Republican preaching about the environment might help make people start thinking about the environment more but it will likely not help the Republican very much.  Similar, a Democrat talking about the importance of a strong military might convince people of the need for one but not necessarily help the Democrat’s perceived position on that matter.

Learning which issues matter and how they affect the constituencies of each party will be key in mastering The Political Machine.

I highly recommend reading this article: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/236jmcbd.asp

It is a very good article that discusses why the US went to war with Iraq in the first place.  It never ceases to amaze me that two things about the on-line world always remain true: 1) How little people know about the facts of history and 2) How willing they are to go on-line and demonstrate this.

The United States and UK went into Iraq because it believed, correctly so, that Iraq was a serious threat to the region and to the US/UK. The Kay report has been reported very selectively. What it actually says includes three  things but only one has been widely reported:

1) No weapons of mass destruction have yet been found and it is increasingly likely that none will be found.

and the part left out that should be mentioned:

2) Saddam thought he had weapons of mass destruction. His generals thought he had weapons of mass destruction. Due to internal corruption, money that was being spent to create weapons of mass destruction were diverted to other things.

3) The general strategy Saddam was going towards was to not create stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction but rather prepare the way to be able to produce them in quantity once the sanctions were lifted. That is, not have a smoking gun but get everything in place to flip a switch once the heat was off.

It is items 2 and 3 that should be remembered and yet are overlooked by the media (and amazingly there are still some people who claim there is no bias in the media).   The United States was attacked on 9/11. It was the most severe attack by a foreign entity against the United States since 1812.  The US is at war.  Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 directly. But that's totally irrelevant. In a post-9/11 world Saddam couldn't be allowed to stick around. The UN believed he still had weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence services from every major country thought he had WMD.  And why not? Iraq said that they had them too. When Iraq tossed out the inspectors in 1998, there were still tons of WMD unaccounted for.  Iraq refused to account for those weapons and hoped to play the stall game in the hopes that France and Russia would again take the position that sanctions should be lifted.  The people who were against the war are still against the war. The people in favor of military action are still glad we did it. Not finding WMD is completely irrelevant because a) it wasn't up to us to prove he had WMD. and His current possession of WMD was irrelevant.

But don't take my word for it. Here is something former President Clinton had to say this past year.

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions."

Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months, and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.

In 1995 Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities--and weapons stocks. Previously it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth.

Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability, notably, 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And I might say UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production. . . .

Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door, and our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. . . .

Over the past few months, as [the weapons inspectors] have come closer and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions by imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring key sites which have still not been inspected off limits, including, I might add, one palace in Baghdad more than 2,600 acres large. . . .

One of these presidential sites is about the size of Washington, D.C. . . .

It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them. The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons. . . .

Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.

And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal. . . . In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

If we fail to respond today, Saddam, and all those who would follow in his footsteps, will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council, and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.

-Bill Clinton

I don't watch a lot of TV. I just don't have time. So when I do watch TV I want to watch the things I want to watch and not just whatever is on. For that reason, I've been an advocate of PVRs (Personal Video Recorders).  2 years ago, I bought a software PVR called Snapstream. It was a good start but fairly primitive at the time. So I went and got a Tivo and have been quite happy with it since then.

But Snapstream has made steady progress on their PVR and rebranded it "Beyond TV". Version 3.4 is out and it works pretty well (though some people, including myself, have run into stuttering problems on playback). The new version takes aim at Tivo and other PVRs and has a ton of features that make it pretty compelling. Here are some screenshots of its interface. Remember, this is a program you just install to your Windows PC and it can run as a full screen application (or windowed if you prefer).

 

Their main interface.

 

When you buy the program, you get a .NET account with their web service which provides FREE listings from the net. It works quite well, better than Tivo in this area.

Finding a program is a matter of typing in the name. This is one area that is not as nice as Tivo's. This is the only way to find a program. I can't, for instance, simply look for "History" and have shows dealing with that subject matter show up. One feature that wouldn't be hard for them to do that neither have would be to have a channel spotlight. Each channel realistically only has so many shows coming on in a given week.  I would love to be able to click "Discovery Channel" and it would list what shows are coming on that week and then get season passes to them (both Tivo and Beyond TV support season passes -- get all the episodes as they come on).

 

This interface shows up when you first go to a channel but smoothly slides away as you watch the show. Very slick.

 

See the yellow areas? Beyond TV can detect whether something is a commercial and will highlight it allowing you to quickly skip over those areas if you choose.

 

One complaint by PC users has been that sure, you can do this on your PC but who wants to watch TV on their computer? But that's the thing that's cool about Beyond TV, you can get a remote control and control it like you would a TV. Its new full screen interface works fine on most standard TVs. Just make sure your video card has TV out on it (most good new ones do) and you're all set to have your PC control a regular television.

The million dollar question is, how does it compare to at Tivo. The answer isn't straight forward because it has a few features missing such as the aforementioned program finding features. The other issue is that because they only provide the software, the hardware side can be problematic. Why, for instance, does 3.4 have jerky video on my brand new 3 Ghz Dell machine with a ATI 9800 Pro card in it? Some people have the problem others don't (btw, by the time you read this they'll probably have this fixed, they're aware of it and working on a fix). 

On the other hand, there are some killer features in Beyond TV that make it quite compelling to nerdlings such as me. I can, for instance, watch my recorded shows from remote. I.e. if I'm working late and it's recorded say The Simpsons, I can watch it from work as it streams the video to me from my home machine. Very slick.  I can also export my saved shows to a PocketPC to watch. Seriously, you can watch shows pretty decently on a PocketPC. So for those of you who travel quite a bit, this can be pretty handy. Store up a half dozen shows and watch them on the plane on your PocketPC or Laptop (since it saves the files as standard Windows files including .WMV files).

Beyond TV is $70 normally. The only hardware you need is something that will take video signal (like WinTV or something) and convert it to be on your PC.  I personally have a WinTV USB card. Pretty ghetto fabulous in setup, I just plug the cable into one end and the USB cable to the PC and off I go. Very easy to set up.

As a software developer, I have to really hand it to the Snapstream folks, they have an immense amount of polish. Their installer is possibly the best software installer I've ever encountered when it comes to trying to make things painless for the user. You can try out Beyond TV at Snapstream's site to see for yourself how you like it.

Right now I'd give it 3.5 stars out of 5. When the video playback issue is addressed it'll go up to 4 stars. I definitely recommend giving it a shot. I have it set up in our basement on a PC that's in front of our various exercise equipment. Nothing too fancy but makes the treadmill more bearable...

Steven Den Beste has taken aim at Michael Moore's upcoming mockumentary Fahrenheit 9-11.

It's no secret that I have nothing but disdain for Michael Moore. I've only debated with him electronically once and my impression is essentially that he's a lot like many far left wingers I see on the blogsphere that are willing to distort things in order to further their preconceived agenda. But he has the fortitude to actually go through and make movies and books to spread his drivel to the general public. I'm thankful there are sites like www.Moorewatch.com that help document the inaccuracies and other BS in his writings.

But back to Steven's post which I agree with -- Michael Moore writes "Remember when lots of people were asking 'Why do they hate us?'" No. Actually I don't. I, like many Americans, remember 9/11 and the aftermath quite well. Our main interest was finding out who did this and what we could do to eliminate them. This led us to Afghanistan and the elimination of the Taliban government and disrupting Al Qaeda well enough that there have been no major attacks against the United States since. Which is remarkable given how active Al Qaeda had been prior to 9/11 (USS Cole, the Embassy bombings, etc.).  So it would seem that the response has probably had some effect in all likelihood.

But Moore goes further and his film looks at all the terrible things the US government and US corporations do and says the pertinent question should be, "Why don't they hate us?"

But Moore, like many of his kind, falls into the intellectual trap of believing in some sort of mystical Karmic retribution. I believe in Karma about as much as I believe in the Force. US corporations doing bad things in Central America does not contribute to a group of Islamic terrorists deciding to fly airplanes into skyscrapers.

Besides that, such thinking represents a moral and intellectual surrender. It always bugs me when people throw up their hands and basically resort to magic explaining everything. That is one reason I'm not religious. "How does the TV work? Magic" Why did a bunch of people hijack 4 commercial airliners with the intention of crashing them into buildings to kill people? Karma.

Sadly, experts on both sides of the issue actually do have a pretty good idea of what specifically triggered Al Qaeda's actions on the US. It's just that neither side wants to make such information generally known. It's not a secret or anything, it just doesn't get very much coverage because it's not sexy and it makes Al Qaeda look pretty lame while as the same time not having the same grandiose goals necessary for keeping the war on terror going.

Osama Bin Laden began targeting the United States after the US took up a permanent military presence in his native Saudi Arabia. His long term goal was to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia, a government he considered (rightly) to be corrupt. He believed, given the events of Somalia and Beirut that if the US got a bloody nose, it would eventually wisen up and get out of Saudi Arabia.

Ironically, he succeeded. The US has moved its forces out of Saudi Arabia -- into Iraq.

That said, the war on Terrorism isn't just a war on Al Qaeda. That is just one battle and I am working on an article that talks about what exactly the war on terrorism is and the eventual goals involved in winning it but that's another story.

Moore, however, won't get into those things. Instead, he just wants to present a litany of actions by the United States and its citizens that he feels makes people hate us to the point that they want to attack us. But hating us and being motivated to commit violence are two different things.  After all, pick France, Germany, Russia, UK, Australia, Belgium, Italy, or Turkey and you would have no problem coming up with a long list of equally karmic bad deeds.  I mean heck, the entire Middle East was ruled by the colonial powers for quite awhile and you don't see airplanes being flown into the Eiffel Tower. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq France invaded the Ivory Coast. Should we be expecting Africans to start bombing Paris?

I'm convinced that Michael Moore is becoming more of a shtick than anything else. He has figured out that he can make money by catering to the ideological fringes of society and now provides a product for those people. I wonder how much of this stuff he even really believes personally at this point.

I don't think it'll be as smooth sailing as Bowling for Columbine was though. Reaction to that movie was strong enough to have created a net infrastructure that helps get the word out on the other side of the issues he (ahem) presents. So this time around, people will be ready to pounce. It'll be interesting to see.

My education background is in engineering so writing wasn't something that came naturally to me. And yet, without a doubt, I am convinced that learning to write effectively has been an important factor in helping me succeed professionally.  But learning to write well didn't come overnight. It took years of writing to get decent at it.  Let me save you some time and give you some quickies on how to improve your writing which will in turn help make your blog more effective.

1) Perfect is the enemy of good. This is a universal truth. I am a good writer. I am, however, no where near great. My articles could be much better if I spent more time crafting them. But as Joseph Stalin used to say, quantity has a quality of its own and sadly it's true. It is better to have more articles that are well written than fewer articles that are superbly written.

2) Topic is king. This goes along with #1. The topic matters more than anything. Pick topics that you are interested in to begin with. For greater popularity, make sure those topics are things others will be interested in. I may be interested in finding out what that sickly sweet smell from my toe is but I suspect others may not be so interested  in that.

3) Writing Style: Paragraphs are your friend.  #1 problem I've seen in blogs are users who don't put spaces between paragraphs. Heck, really the #1 problem is people not having paragraphs at all.  People need to be able to read you article in bite-sized chunks. One big long block of text is not going to be well received generally.

4) Read out-loud what you've written. This is my #1 problem. I generally just crank out an article (or particularly a response) and don't read it before hitting submit. The result can be incoherent or come across as rude. Written communication is tricky and a few extra words can make the difference between a well received article and one that comes across as just mean or grammatically challenged.

5)  Stick to the topic. Once you pick your topic, remember what it is and stick to it. Don't go meandering off onto some tangent. Make a second article about that.

6) Look up what you write about. If you've been here long enough, you know that's my biggest pet peave. There are so many articles that get written here that are essentially a collection of straw-man arguments or historical revisionism. It can damage your credibility and turn off users. Writing articles entitled "President Clinton <or Bush> is the worst President in our nation's history" are generally unhelpful. Google is your friend.  If your article is trying to be persuasive, facts are very persuasive. A writer insisting that their opinion is a fact is not persuasive.

7) Find places to link to your article. There are numerous places interested in posting RSS feeds. Every blog on this site comes with a specific RSS feed for them. Find places that syndicate RSS feeds and get your blog in there. JoeUser has a lot of features built into help reward those who link to you as well as getting the word out on what you write. Take advantage of it. One site I like is called Blogstreet. But there are many other sites out there that are interested in letting people know when a blog has been updated.

I hope these suggestions will help you.

 

Ever wanted to have your own web site with your name as part of the domain? A place specifically deisgned to make it easy for you to write articles, blogs, etc. about anything you want.

That's what JoeUser.com is set up for. And if you have an account here on WinCustomize, you have one on JoeUser too.

We are currently testing out an updated blogging feature that we're not sure how well it works yet.

We are looking for some volunteers to go over to https://www.joeuser.com and create a blog and make sure they are able to do so (and then let us know here). We are also looking for people to give us feedback on how easy (or hard) the process was for them.

Thanks!

JoeUser is growing in leaps and bounds. A month ago the average number of people on the site might be around 30 people. These days it's typically around 80 people at the same time with it being 175 as I type this. So things are going pretty well. Of course, we've also had a of technical glitches as the site has grown, we've had to make adjustments as we've started gaining unwanted attention from hackers, griefers, and other undesirables.  If you've had problems posting articles to your blog in the last couple of days, that's been the cause -- us adding features in a hurry to combat these types.

Addressing Hackers & Griefers

So now the site is more secure, your blogs are backed up very regularly to a remote machine in case of catastrophic failure, and we have the ability to ban people. Pat and I (T-man) became friends 15 years ago. We ran BBSes in those days. Since that time we've built many net communities. The largest one we've put together is called WinCustomize.com which gets over 2 million users per month.  With JoeUser, myself, Pat, and his team (DarkStar and Flying Hawaian) have put what we've learned in that time into this site.  So the banning feature here is pretty cool in how it technically functions (it's based on IP addresses and other things I won't get into to help make it hard for someone to come back as someone else).  We hope to add less severe penalties and checks and balances to the system over time so that people can get a second chance if they misbehave.

Blog Navigator

In the next week or so we plan to release Blog Navigator. Blog Navigator is a program designed to read JoeUser like a news reader. It's still in the relative early stages but it is pretty slick. It'll be free to view JoeUser but will have some cost (probably $19.95 or something) to add non-JoeUser sites to browse through. There are RSS readers out there, some of which are free, that are reasonably nice but our goal is to make Blog Navigator so slick and useful that it'll be worth it.

Premium Accounts

Creating a blog on JoeUser is free. Eventually though we plan to put in place a way for people to pay a nominal fee in exchange for being able to upload images and other things to their blog.  Over time we'll be adding services that will be available to premium accounts to make blogging easier. One feature is that Blog Navigator will be able to eventually download your blog to your machine so that you have it all locally whenever you want. I don't know about you guys but I want to have 5 years of my blogs on some remote machine. I want a way to have it backed up myself locally. And that is something we will be doing in the coming months.

New Features for JoeUser itself

Some features coming up include the ability to enter in more information about yourself if you choose. We are going to "force" every user to enter in their age as we really need to start differentiating between adult users and minors given some of the content that has come up. Similarly, authors will be able to check a "Adult content" checkbox when they make an article so that children won't be able to see the article. It won't be full proof by any means but it's better than what we currently have (nothing).

The re-organization of the forums is nearly complete. Next week we'll be consolidating some of the top level categories.  For instance, instead of Books, Movies, TV, etc. It'll all fall under the Entertainment category with those sections becoming topics of Entertainment. That way there won't be so many different categories to sift through.

We will also be adding the ability for authors to decide whether people can comment on their article. The option will say: "Comments on your article? [] Anyone, []Registered users only, []No one.  So someone who wants to just write their blog without any comments will have that right. Or if they want to make it so that only people who have accounts can respond that's good too.

We will also be adding features to let you upload a picture of yourself and of your desktop. The personal information you choose to enter can optionally be made available as part of your profile.  Here's a simple version of what we're thinking of from The Political Machine. It's not done yet but you can get the idea: https://www.politicalmachine.com/infoLite.asp?ID=879148.

Advocates

One feature deserves its own sub-heading : Advocates. As some of you no-doubt have noticed, we don't get many referrals from other blog sites or anywhere for that matter.  What makes blogs special, IMO anyway, is that they are part of a larger community. We need to become more integrated with the rest of the blogsphere which will help your articles reach more viewers. The way to do that will be by becoming an advocate.  Since we track referrals, we could give points to users who are associated with a particular site.

The way it works is that a user registers a given website with the advocate system. Then, whenever that site sends a referral to JoeUser that user will get a fraction of a point. We will also have a top advocates list as well to highlight those users.  It's a good way to encourage users to exchange links with other blogs and sites elsewhere (called blog rolling) as well as give recognition to those who are the best at evangelizing their blog (the link doesn't have to be to www.joeuser.com, it can be to your specific blog). 

So in my case, I could register www.wincustomize.com as a site and then every time they send a link here I'd get a fraction of a point. Now, most people don't have such an easy advantage since I can add links to both sites.

As for me...

I'm going to not be commenting nearly as much on other people's blogs. I don't want to discourage anyone from writing and having the owner of the site jumping on someone's article disagreeing with them might be a bit overwhelming. So I'll keep my hands off until you get into the top 10 or so in general.  

It has been a real adjustment for me opening my blog site to the public to have their own blogs. Particularly because many of the articles people post are "debate" type topics. I belong to many mailing lists that essentially are for "expert" debaters to hash our various issues. I confess to becoming frustrated interacting with people who are new to on-line debating. For instance, my area of "expertise" in on-line debating is history. History is my #1 hobby and through reading of history you can eventually get a clearer picture about why things are they way they are (for example, some people act like the war in terror is in chaos because the US attacked Iraq even though it had nothing to do with 9/11.  The first nation whose territory we violated with troops after Pearl Harbor was France -- we invaded French North Africa in operation Torch. Needless to say, critics of the administration at the time didn't see what French North Africa or even Rommel had to do with Pearl Harbor, especially with the Philippines occupied by the Japanese).  So I tend to be short in patience when people think that any events occurring now are somehow unprecedented or articles that show a distinct lack of knowledge on history despite asserting a certain level of certainty about what happened.  So I'll be cutting down on the responses.

But I will be making more articles though.  I have a bunch nearly done. Many article just take a long time to do because of the research involved. Which is probably another reason I tend to get impatient with articles that just spew out what I consider to be regurgitated propaganda from either the left wing or the right wing on some issue.  For instance, it's amazing how many people, including "journalists" slam on Haliburton. I wonder how many people actually know what this company does? Or that it actually made more money under Clinton?  Like many things, finding these things out is just a few clicks away but it's easier for people to just parrot, unwittingly, talking points from some political operative as if they are fact.

But that's the type of stuff I enjoy writing about -- things that many people may not have heard of before. Some people may find it "bomb throwing" but that's not the intent. It's just that I choose topics sometimes that are so against the prevailing (and often ill-informed) views of the day. Seriously, how many people out there that you meet on a day to day basis would know that it was the Republicans who fought tooth and nail in congress and in state legislatures to abolish slavery (passing the 13th amendment) while Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep slavery going. That until around 1965, the Democrats were generally the party of "white power" in ways that would make either side cringe today? The whole slapping Republicans with the racist tag is so amazingly offensive to me because it shows a complete lack of knowledge on history. Republicans just don't like special treatment based on pigment. That's about the biggest thing that can be thrown on them. The people who created and supported separate but equal were Democrats. The people who created the Jim Crowe laws were Democrats.  Just another example of how goofed up current events can get if history is ignored. 

Not that Republicans should start feeling high and mighty. The reason why Republicans are stereotyped as being uncaring of the less fortunate is because so many of them are uncaring of the less fortunate. I've seen it first hand so many times. What Republicans need to realize is that while there are many poor people who just leech of the system, the majority of poor people are hard working Americans just trying to make ends meet. And Republicans need to start taking white collar crime much more seriously. In the 10 years I've been in business, I've had around $600,000 stolen from me. Did anyone go to jail? Nope. Did the police even get involved? Nope. Because in the business world, you can be an amazingly dishonest crook and steal all you want. My first publisher stole an estimated $150,000 from me. I was a college student at the time, what could I do? He just didn't pay royalties. Not a cent after the product's release. It was as simple as that. He got money and just didn't pay any. And my experience is sadly, typical.  If Republicans want to get taken more seriously about their complaining about the taxes "wasted" each year on the less fortunate they need to start pushing for criminal penalties in financial contract violations and the like. You can set up a LLC corporation in a few days, put together a contract with people to sell their stuff, get the money and then declare bankruptcy without ever paying. Is that right? No. Ever hear Republicans talk about how we need to stop the hundreds of billions of dollars lost each year due to white collar crime? Nope. And who really gets screwed at the end of the day? Working Americans.

What's next

So as the site gets more popular, you'll see a lot of interesting articles and such. You'll also see commercialism creep in as at some point we'll have to find a way to pay for this monstrosity. We will keep blogs free though (though we may require at some point that to use technical support you'll need to get a premium membership).

It's been fun and it's getting funner and more and more personalities enter the site. I'm really glad to see that the site isn't dominated by any ideologies. Of the top 10 you have one right of center blogger (me) and a couple left of center bloggers. So it's reasonably evened out overall.  We want to make sure JoeUser is a reasonably neutral place for people to write about whatever they want.

Have fun!