November 2007 - Posts

• To all my peeps playing scrabulous

  Just another advantage of virtual scrabble to the real thing for all the haters out there. Posted Nov 19 2007, 01:41 PM by Josh Ledgard's Blog

• Rich Text Editor Control on Codeplex

  I was pushing for this release when I was at Microsoft and while I can't explain what took so long I'm just happy that the code has finally been released.  Building a Rich Text Editor control is not for the faint of heart, but now you have a starting point on Codeplex if you'd like to build your own.  BTW - This is currently being used on the MSDN Forums. :-) I am super excited to announce that Kannan Sundararajan, my colleague at Microsoft, has written a Rich Text Editor control using ASP.NET and JavaScript and shared it under the MS-PL license on CodePlex. It has a very rich feature set and Kannan hopes to enhance it further in the future. Since it is a CodePlex project you can report issues and make feature requests. foo, bar and donkey : Rich Text Editor is here Posted Nov 12 2007, 03:41 PM by Josh Ledgard's Blog Filed under: mindless linkage

• A Great Sell, Sox Opening Letter to Schilling in 2003

  It's pretty cool to have someone as outspoken and transparent as Curt Schilling blogging about his baseball accomplishments. For me his blog has been inspirational and educational when it comes to my hobby of playing baseball.  The post I'm linking to here is a repost of the letter the Sox sent to him in 2003 to open the negotiations that landed him in Boston... and therefore landed the Red Sox a world series victory.  What's impressive here is what a great sales job they did. The letter remained classy while at the same time tugging on all the right buttons I'd imagine to get someone like him to come to your team.  If nothing else it paints a great picture of a well run organization. ...It is clear that the Schillings and the Diamondbacks have formed a partnership. From afar, we have admired Curt’s accomplishments in an Arizona uniform and the incredible impact the whole family has had in the Phoenix community. We have the utmost respect for your roots here, and also for the full no-trade clause you negotiated into your current contract. In short, we know you don’t have to do this. Why, then, did we leave our own families behind and fly here today? Well, we think that the Schillings and the Red Sox might just be another great fit – a perfect marriage – and we hope that we can demonstrate why... 2003 Sox opening letter. « 38 Pitches Posted Nov 07 2007, 02:36 PM by Josh Ledgard's Blog Filed under: blogging, baseball, red sox

• Alpha Release: Windows Live Writer Feed Insert Plugin

  I've published an alpha release of a Windows Live Writer plugin that makes it easy to pull multiple RSS or Atom feed items into a blog post.  Let me know what you think. The download link is here: http://ledgards.com/files/folders/610/download.aspx This download includes an installer that will also install the source code underneath the Windows Live Writer plugins directory.  Instructions After installing this plugin you should see a new option in your insert menu. If you choose this then you'll get a pop-up that asks for the URL of a feed to insert. Click OK. The contents of that feed will be inserted in your post and the feed will be kept in the feed history for the plugin. Thanks I'm about to head over to www.codeplex.com and contribute some fixes I had to make to the http://www.codeplex.com/FeedDotNet project.  I'm including this as a dependency and should probably give them attribution in addition to the contributions to the source.  :-) Thanks to the Windows Live Writer team. This was easy since the SDK was decently documented and came with good samples.  Notes This has been tested against Windows Live Writer (Beta) 12.0.1277.816.  I can't promise it works against any other version. If the install succeeds, but you don't get the "Insert Feed Content" menu item then it's likely you have a non-default install location for windows live writer.  You'll have to go to the "c:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins" directory and manually copy the files out of there and into your real \plugins directory. Hey, it's an alpha, it's not supposed to be easy. TODO My goal with this was simply to have a way to insert my shared google reader feed items into one post in a format I liked. This means that there are no alternate feed templates available.  Next on my todo is to support multiple templates so that you could, for example, insert shared items one way and flickr feeds another. The code has not been factored nicely. Enter the source at your own risk. Fix bugs. There is little to no error handling here and I'm willing to bet this will crash while inserting your favorite feed for some inexplicable reason.  Umm, it's an alpha. :-) Create a codeplex project. I should probably have some sort of source control for this. :-) Enjoy and let me know what you think below! Posted Nov 03 2007, 08:27 PM by Josh Ledgard's Blog Filed under: blogging, Live Writer Feed Inserter Thingy

• They advertise the hell out of scrabble

  But do they do it right? If you've played scrabulous on Facebook then you've, no doubt, experienced the cramped feeling of your scrabble board surrounded by ads that are reaching out, tapping you on the head, and saying "look at me!" Are they doing this right? What else could they be doing to make money off of this endeavor?  Here are some ideas. Some of them might be a little out there, but maybe worth it.  Micropayments/Subscriptions Let everyone play, but offer some premium experiences. Maybe your stuck and you'd like to hit up a scrabble solving algorithm.  I'd pay 10 cents not to have to leave the site and get some hints.  Maybe it's not in the spirit of the game for some people so give hosts the option of not letting people use it... even though you know you are going out there and cheating anyway.  I know as well as you do that you didn't know what "eath" was before we played scrabble.... ok, sorry about that. Where was I? :-) Charge me to set up Xbox live style tournaments. I think that the Live services has proven that you can charge for premium services that used to be free if you make them simpler to use.  Scrabble Accessories These people are clearly addicted to this game. Why not have a simple online store or minimally some affiliate sales with Amazon for scrabble related accessories. Better Ad Targeting Seriously, you have access to my Facebook profile and this is the best ad targeting you can come up with for me?  I'm married and I don't think any of my favorite movies have anything to do with David Spade.   Rotating Ads This isn't a page I go to, get my information and leave. I'm studying the board and could be spending 20 minutes staring at this page. But the ads never change. Maybe it would be distracting, but the ads should rotate after a while on the page. so I see something new once in a while.  Ok, those where my four suggestions for the Scabulous team.  I'm not sure why I wrote this. I guess I almost feel slightly insulted by their poor attempt to make money off of an experience that sees people spending hours staring at the same page. Posted Nov 03 2007, 03:54 PM by Josh Ledgard's Blog Filed under: social networking, Facebook, commentary, ads

• Where to Spend Christmas Near Seattle

  I was asked recently what one would do if one happened to be near the Seattle area on or around Christmas. I can say, without a doubt, if you haven't then you need to experience Christmas in Leavenworth. Specifically you should make sure you get to witness the tree lighting ceremony. Fan's of the movie Groundhog Day will get an extra kick out of these festivities. Here are a few of the things you'll get to see and do there. Scenic trails. Make sure to visit Blackbird Island. A village filled with lights. Sledding. Just be sure to buy a sled in advance. For some reason they are hard to come by in town. A giant knight... covered in snow. The mountains and, of course, mountain dogs. If you are lucky you'll get to meet Oliver and Duncan who will be making their yearly appearance around town this Christmas. I haven't even mentioned the wine tasting, nearby skiing, or good German food. Of course downtown Seattle with pike place and maybe the pacific place shopping areas are also fun if you are into that kind of thing. :-) Enjoy! Posted Nov 01 2007, 09:10 PM by Josh Ledgard's Blog Filed under: opinion