Windows 7 - The fix is in

Although I've been on a bit of a 'blogging vacation', I know a lot of you are out there 'playing' with Microsoft's Windows 7 Beta.

Honestly, I've been somewhat glued to it myself because, other than Live Mesh, it one of the best things I've seen come out of Redmond in a LONG time.

Not only are there improvements for everyday users, but lots of neat stuff under the hood for the tech crowd.  I suppose, best of all, the drivers should be on time ..... as the driver program is not only well underway, but access to the operating system and the tools are already here (This was, in fact, the biggest problem with Vista.  The firmware updates and drivers were extremely late.)

Microsoft has also set a summer deadline for Vista drivers so that they are also Windows 7 compatible. In my own tests, the operating system recognized ALL of my existing hardware but it is fairly current stuff and had been updated for Vista.

Faster than Vista.  Much more enjoyable and configurable than Vista or XP.  Period.

The main reason for the post?  I did have one annoying issue with Windows 7.  It's already been documented on a few other blogs and now by Microsoft .... but we can't be everywhere?

Some programs simply wouldn't load, regardless of the 'legacy settings'.

Originally a few blogs reported that if you adjust the CEIP (Built-in Windows 7 Customer Experience Improvement Program), it would fix the problem (and did).

That fix has now has been replaced by a simple command prompt registry fix.

Tony Mann posted the following to TechNet and so far so good (and I thought a few of you would want to know):
An issue related to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP is also known as SQM) in the Windows 7 Beta is causing crashes of Explorer, MSI-based installers, and other applications on some PC's.  In order to resolve the issue, impacted customers need to run the following command from an elevated command prompt. This procedure will permanently stop crashes related to CEIP. A machine not currently affected by this problem will work fine and new installations of Windows 7 Beta are also not affected.

Background:

Microsoft deployed a configuration change which exposed this problem. The procedure provided below removes those changes (registry keys) to prevent further CEIP related crashes.

Detailed instructions:

1. Select and copy the following to your clipboard:
   

reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SQMClient\Windows\DisabledSessions /va /f

2. Click on "Start", then "All Programs", then "Accessories"
3. Right click on "Command Prompt", then click on "Run as administrator"
4. In the UAC prompt, verify that the program’s name is "Windows Command Processor" and then click "Yes"
5. Right click on the "Administrator: Command Prompt" window’s black area, then select "Paste"
6. Press "Enter", you should see “The operation completed successfully”.
   If you see “ERROR: Access is denied”, please make sure you followed Step 3.
7. Close the "Administrator: Command Prompt” window       
   

Another sidenote:  Try ReadyBoost on Windows 7.  It flies ...!

Back Soon
Have a GREAT weekend all
Charlie

Belated Year End Thanks!

Note: SEO and Tech Daily is still being redesigned and re-launched on or about January 30th.  The comments and more will be back soon.  This is an interim post by the (proud) founder / editor, Charlie Anzman.

I've always had a tradition on the Internet that usually kicks in around the holidays. 

Back in 1995, when I put the second electronics export company on the Internet, and since then, I've always tried to recognize those that helped me, directly or indirectly, accomplish my immediate goals .... at least once a year.

About a year and a half ago, I launched SEO and Tech Daily with some very specific goals in mind.  I had spent over 6 years in 'in-house' SEO and, in today's times, that basically meant I went off the radar.

This blog started as an experiment in a variety of ways:

To see if I could quickly 'reconnect' (with a minimum of travel).
To see how quickly I could brand the blog (and myself .... again ?!).
To see how the search engines picked up on it over time.
To see how many people would link here (without expectation)
.... and also, to bring my humble view of a variety of topics, mostly Tech and SEO related back to the Internet.

Any decent SEO is always experimenting.  Not in a 'Black-Hat' fashion, but to see how search engines react as they continually re-write their algorithms for relevance.

The response was somewhat surprising and well, just great.  I not only reconnected with many I hadn't spoken to in the SEO / SEM world, but with people that I used to correspond with back in the dial-up days?!  Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook all played a significant role in that respect as well.

There were new people too.  Some absolutely brilliant, some interesting, and some that just made me laugh.

So, here, it goes .... with a little disclaimer.

I'm not big on lists. Important people always get left out.
If I do, just find this piece on Friendfeed and let me know!

Not in any particular order ....

Guy Kawasaki and crew - Who added us (me) in 3 places on Alltop.
Robert Scoble - Who put this blog on a list of 'Blogs you should be reading'. (The list was then copied and linked to by more people than I could count :)
Louis Gray - Who discovered this blog early on, later interacted, and also had this blog on his first 'recommended reading' list.
Mike Fruchter - Without whose Likey's on Friendfeed ... a lot of people never would make it to visibilty there.
Tamar Weinberg - Who I missed by a minute at a trade show and am still regretting it.  This young lady knows the landscape.
Sarah Perez - Who always keeps the door open and writes some great stuff.
Microsoft ?! - Their mention of this blog on the front page of the PDC 2008 website sent the stats into the stratosphere (and just made me feel pretty good for a few days :)
Mona Nomura - Whose outright insanity on Friendfeed kept me laughing.
Shey Smith - I'm not sure why, but he's here.
Matt Cutts (Google) - Who answered comments on his blog promptly, made a brief appearance here in the comments and immediately answered my e-mail .... when I wasn't sure if it was him or spam :)
Vanessa Fox (ex-Google) - Who engaged me in the comments on her old blog, while we were both trying to sell houses ... and probably helped the rank of the 'for sale' website .... that sold mine?!  (Not to mention bringing A LOT of quality reading to Search Engine Land and her new venture Nine by Blue).
Mike 'Glemak' Dunn - Who invited me up to visit 'the tower' last year.  A great (fascinating) conversation that made me look at things a little differently (and lent some more visibility with an awful picture of me on Flickr :).
Peter Troast - Who had the wisdom to let me do my thing without all kinds of reports, meetings and interruptions (and didn't regret it).
Bill Slawski - Just one of the nicest guys in SEO with an interesting blog (and who also linked very early on).
Duncan Riley - Who lent some important advice when I needed it ....
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira - Who let me invade a live podcast and didn't ask me to shut up.
Lee Odden - Who added this blog to 'The Big List' before there were a billion people on it ...
Jill Whalen - Who doesn't know it but was my original inspiration for switching gears to SEO, years ago.
Lisa Barone - Who's writing style I always enjoyed in her former, and current places on the web.
The founders of Friendfeed - Who made this year much more fun and interesting.
Gabe Rivera - I have NO IDEA how TechMeMe found us, but I collected at least 40 mentions last year, two headlines, (maybe more) and that was just cool.

Franklin Pettit - A fan and important critic.
Allen Stern - Whose videos made me crack up and who always responds ... and is just a nice guy.

My wife, daughter (and her fiance) ... without whom I wouldn't have half of the drive I do (and who somehow understood why I was doing this for free !?)


Great week all .. Back Soon
Charlie

Happy New Year !

SEO and Tech Daily will return on or about January 30th.

A Happy and Healthy New Year from our family to yours!

(Note: You may see some changes in the look and feel of the blog during this period as we run a few experiments with Blogger in Draft. Most of the previous features will return shortly ....)

Pardon our year-end dust

Over the next few days we'll be experimenting with a new look and feel for SEO and Tech Daily (and deciding whether or not to move it from Blogger to Wordpress).

So if things look like they're movin' around ....

.... it's not you :)

2008 : It's all Louis Gray's fault

It was somewhere around early last summer when I began reading Louis Gray's blog.

As time went on, it became part of my daily 'social graph'.

A few months later, Louis and I chatted on the phone and I even broke my own rule and did a 'guest post' on his blog.

For those of you that (have been living in a closet???? and ...) don't know who Louis is, or what he writes about, he spent much of this past year breaking stories on new and unique online products.  Some of them were pretty cool.  Some were probably dead out of the box (or will be).  A few were game-changers.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to play with 'new toys', so as Louis brought them to my attention, I subscribed, commented ... even featured (more than) a few right here.


So now I have a problem.

I'm overconnected?!

I belong to all of these cool services.   I have absolutely no idea which I set to import what.  It's true.  In all honesty, I didn't keep track.  I probably lost the passwords to more than half ....

..... and now I'm getting a few surprises.

Earlier this week, I wrote a passing piece here.  It wasn't one of my best and I decided to delete it. 

Usually, I'll relegate stuff like that to 'draft', and then re-write or decide later.  For some reason, in this case, I just shot it quick, before it was picked up by the 'micro-blog-where-am-I-and whos-got-my-stuff-stream'.

Facebook imported it and published it in it's entirety. 

I can't even hide when I want to!?


This is Louis' fault too.  Why?  It just is.

So on Christmas Eve, I'm sitting with my wife and daughter wandering around YouTube.  We check out a few old friends and then I show them Louis' babies?  The guy is clear across the country and we really don't know each other as 'real' friends. Is something wrong here?

As I've been sitting here this week, redesigning my own 'social graph' as well as the business .....to help those effected by the downturn, I'm wondering if it's necessary to revisit the gobs of sites importing this blog or my other 'spaces'.  There would be at least 50 password resets as well as reading back my own stuff (and Louis') to figure it all out.

I think I'll just wing it .....

Santa delivers new version of TweetDeck

TweetDeck, the popular Adobe Air-based Twitter desktop client moved to version .21 beta last night.

Among the changes is a built-in spell checker and more.

How many times have you sent as Tweet and said... "I can't believe I did that"?  Unfortunately, you can't take a Tweet back.

Well, if online spelling is on your New Years resolution list, TweetDeck just made it a little easier, as well as adding a host of improvements and fixes:




Along the same lines (You guys knew I had to get this in here .. :), Friendfeed now allows you to edit your own posts.  Gone are the days where you had to delete them altogether and re-post, (taking those all-important 'likeys' with you :) ......


Merry Christmas All !

Charlie

Happy Holidays!

Picasa goes to Version 3.1 (and rocks!)

Picasa, the free photo editing (and uploading software) from Google took a little jump to version 3.1 last week.

The software's secret is something we talk about a lot here.

It's easy (and now it's faster and better).

Picasa 3.1 (at your option) will search your computer's hard drive for images at light speed.  From there, like many other programs, you can sort them into albums, add titles, and more.

One button upload to Google's picasaweb.com, one button e-mail or blogging it makes it super-simple.

The editing tools have been improved and are also very easy for those not familiar with photo editing.  Adding geo locations has been added as well.

Overall, it's certainly not Photoshop.  It IS easy and produces excellent output in a variety of export formats.

Add the freeware Paint.Net (one of my favorites) and you've got a decent 'suite' of photo and image tools .... for FREE.

Both programs now support larger image sizes being produced by the higher megapixel cameras now in the marketplace.

You can explore or download Picasa 3.1 here.  Paint.Net can be found here.

Update 1: It's worth noting here that Windows Live Essentials from Microsoft has also been 'refreshed' and more information on the new Photo Gallery beta, Free 25GB online storage and more new features can be found here.

Test Post – Windows Live Writer RC1

Just a quick test post using the just released version of Windows Live Writer 2009 (Release Candidate 1)