I recently purchased BlogJet and absolutely love it.  I'm also a big fan of FeedDemon.  I just discovered that I can configure FeedDemon to automatically launch BlogJet so I can quickly blog about entries in my FeedDemon Channels.  The setup is absolutely simple.

• Launch FeedDemon
• Click "Tools" -> "Blog This News Item" -> "Configure Blog Blog Publishing Tools"
• Click "Add"
• In the "Name" field add a descriptive name, I just entered "BlogJet"
• In the "Command Line" field enter the location of BlogJet.  You can browse to the .exe or just enter the default location: "C:\Program Files\BlogJet\BlogJet.exe"

I'm sure there are ways to customize this even further.  If you figure it out please add a comment to this entry so everyone can take advantage.

Some suggested reading from Brandon Bohling... 

• Breaking changes to System.Xml in .NET 2.0
  For those that rely heavily on XML (which is probably most of us), you'll definitely want to take a look at this.
• Describing the Enterprise Architectural Space
  Anyone working in the reuse space or is an Architect will be interested in this excellent read.
• WSE 2.0: Finally Web Services without HTTP
  Probably not useful quite yet, but as we move towards SOA and Indigo becomes available I see this being powerful.
• Web Services and Datasets
  This is a common question and a difficult one to answer. For quite some time I have been at Level 2 (hate datasets), but have recently been moving towards Level 3 (enlightenment...now think they may be all right in most cases). We will definitely be addressing this more in our Primer white paper.
• EIF vs. Log4Net
  According to this particular opinion, we have chosen wisely with ILAAB (extended version of Log4Net.
• Blogs.MSDN.com
  Keep up-to-date with many MSFT bloggers.
• SecureString in .NET v1.1
  For those using encryption and wanting to start utilizing the Whidbey recommended solution for encryption with today's .NET FW, you definitely will want to take a look at this article.

Feedster has taken an anonymous look at the the users of myFeedster, their web based aggregator, and calculated the "Feedster Top 100", the most popular RSS feeds based on the number of subscribers.  This is a very interesting list, and well worth a look.

Click here to see the list.

If you need a good primer for Agile Methodology this is a great one.

Copied from: The New Methodology

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge today gave preliminary approval to a settlement that would require Microsoft give voucher "refunds" to all consumers and businesses that purchased its application and operating system products between 1996 and 2002.

Copied from: Arizonans to get 'refunds' on Microsoft purchases

Finally, a "get money from Microsoft" rumor that is true!

If you want a very quick way to deploy applications you can use this very handy tool.  Robocopy allows you to copy files from computer to computer very quickly.  I've used it to deploy web files from my development box to test and production.  Just write a script and you can update everything with one click.  It's great.

Robocopy is a tool in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools download.  It runs just fine on Windows XP Professional as well.

Click here to go the the download site.

It's amazing how little the developers work around here. All i see around me are people making excuses in order to get out of a little work.
Take Shon for example. Never gets anything done. What's his excuse this time? “I have a baby.” Well boohoo. What about his other baby, the C# compiler??
Then there's Biliana. Leaving to go to some other country for a few weeks. She wants to spend time with family, or something equally unimportant. Doesn't she realize that we're her family now?
Finally, there's Rami. He wanted to get out of work so badly he switched to another team. Sure he'd been with this team for 5 years (longer than I've ever spent at anything in my life), but anyone unwilling to put in at least 10 years toward this product... well, they're just not a team player.
Well, I hope the powers that be are paying attention and realizing who does the real work around here.

Copied from: blogs.msdn.com

This sounds a lot like my group!  LOL!!

I just learned something really useful...

If you're not satisfied with the way BlogJet inserts text when you click BlogJet This! button in Internet Explorer, you can change the template for this action.

Copied from: BlogJet weblog :: Main Page

If you want to change the template, find C:\Program Files\Blogjet\Data\Templates\blogthis.htm file and edit it.  Here are the variables that you can use:

{$ .URL $} - page url
{$ .Title $} - page title
{$ .Text $} - selected text

I changed my default template to:

<p><blockquote><em>{$ .Text $}</em></blockquote></p>
<p><blockquote><font size="2">Copied from: <a href="{$ .URL $}">{$ .Title $}</a></font></blockquote></p>

It's pretty simple and very effective!

I just installed a new tool called BlogJet.  It's really awesome!!  It's a client tool for windows that allows you to manage your blog(s) without opening a browser.  It totally streamlines the process of uploading entries into your blog.  And it works with all major blogs!

Version 1.6 of dasBlog is available.  It has some nice new features and a few bug fixes.  One of the most irritating defects I've encountered in v1.5 is the problem with images renedering correctly if you don't have your blog as the root directory in ISS.  This defect is fixed in v1.6.

Click here to see complete release notes.

All of the downloads can be found at: http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/viewUploads.aspx?id=77a29128-4746-4473-b676-e4f1517a1907

Last night I was trying to fix the RSS feed on my home page.  I had two problems:

1. The RSS feed from dasBlog had missing URL information in the <IMG> tags (read more here...)
2. The RSS feed was not responding correctly after updgrading to dasBlog 1.5.  I needed the SyndicationServices.asmx page to give me just the last days entries, I was getting errors.

The first problem was fixed when I discovered the RSS feed wasn't to blame.  The problem with the <IMG> tags has to do with the way dasBlog 1.5 captures HTML.  If you use FreeTextBox to edit your entries, it will automatically strip <IMG> tags of the absolute reference.  In fact FreeTextBox does a lot of “automatic formatting” so you have to be careful when using it.  The workaround is to edit entries using the normal text box, or fix entries created with FTB by editing them with the normal text box and adding the absolute references back to the <IMG> tag.

The second problem was that I was calling the wrong method of the SyndicationService web service.  In dasBlog 1.4 there was a method called “GetRSSWithDayCount”.  This method is replaced in 1.5 by “GetRSSWithCounts”.  That's simple enough, but the problem was when I updated my web.config file to add the new RSS feed.  The address is:

http://blog.markwallace.net/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRssWithCounts?maxDayCount=1&maxEntryCount=2

The problem with this address is the ampersand.  When I added this entry to my web.config file (which is XML) I kept getting the following error:

This is an unexpected token. Expected 'SEMICOLON'

This is a result of the ampersand (&) between the maxDayCount and maxEntryCount variables in the query string.  Since I'm a newbie to XML it took me a while to figure out what was wrong.  I found a great article in Visual Studio Magazine that really helped out.  Here are the five ASCII characters that are not allowed in XML files, and the escape characters to replace them:

I hope this helps out!