flickr4writer

Follow Silverlight updates on Twitter

Tim Heuer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:46:59 GMT

I was just thinking the other day that I have some decent subscriber numbers here, but the same volume isn’t matched on my Twitter account. For those who don’t know about Twitter, it’s a great short message service that kind of works like a global messaging system. The best description I’ve heard has been:

Twitter is like an ongoing conversation at a party. Come in and listen/participate whenever you want with whomever you want. Leave at your leisure. Come back often if you’d like.

I use Twitter to communicate along with friends, family and mostly developers across the world. Rather than blog every little cool thing I find interesting in Silverlight, for example, I often send out links to very innovative and helpful information via Twitter. Sometimes when something isn’t long enough for a blog post in my mental benchmark, it ends up going out through Twitter. I’ve given software and passes to conferences away on Twitter as well.

Sure, all these social networking things can get overwhelming, but I’ve found Twitter to be the most useful of them all for me on various levels. So if you aren’t on Twitter, consider it. It is extremely helpful when actually attending conferences (usually where you’ll see the most activity) in keeping up to where/what the happenings are. That being said, I’ll be pointing to a lot of resources during these next weeks while at MIX09 and DevConnections Orlando.

If you are on Twitter, I’d love for you to follow me for these updates. If you aren’t, then sign up and follow me and Silverlight updates on Twitter.

tags: silverlight, twitter, mix09, devconnections

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license.

Flickr4Writer Service Pack update

tim heuer — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:57:50 GMT

This is a public service announcement for my Flickr4Writer project. It was recently brought to my attention that Flickr has some privacy settings that users can opt-in for in their account to protect their images. Some users felt that my plug-in for Writer was not honoring these settings. Truly, I didn’t know about them. You can read the thread on the discussion lists here if you are so inclined. For me it came down to a couple of items:

Flickr enables users to set a flag to prevent “blogging” of their images
Flickr enables users to be hidden from 3rd Party/API searches

First, a note on the “blogging” flag. This is a setting under your Flickr account privacy tab labeled Who can blog your photos or videos?. To me, this setting is a little misleading because the description of it actually reads:

This means that anyone who does not match at least the contact level you select will not be able to see the "Blog This" button. (Source: http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/blogging/?from=privacy 07 NOV 2008)

This setting is clearly for the “Blog This” functionality that shows up if you are logged into Flickr as a non-anonymous user and browse photos. There is some functionality for them to integrate directly with your blog engine to do some one-click blogging of photos and videos. Because of the way the setting is named however, some users interpret “blogging” in the broader sense. flickr4writer was challenged as one violating the principal of this setting. Since the setting ONLY enables authenticated users to even blog (the setting options go from any Flickr user (non-anonymous) to your specific friends/family settings. flickr4writer does not use any authentication, so browsing any photos has the appearance to violate this term if the plugin enables an anonymous user to browse and select photos in a tool that is build for “blogging.” While I draw the correlation that flickr4writer is basically a shell to the web site and does not do anything different than an anonymous user being able to browse and grab an image URL, it is the essence of the rule that I was alleged to violate. One challenge here is also that the API is poorly designed in this regard because the “canblog” setting is returned only at the photo level even though it is an uber setting for the user’s account. I think it should be a filter param of the photos.search API call.

The second setting about 3rd Party/API blocking from searches gets even more interesting. First, this totally makes sense. Again, it was a setting I wasn’t aware of. You can change your setting under a section titled Hide your photostream from searches on 3rd party sites that use the API? Great. You’d think that once a user selected this setting that any search would filter out their photos/vidoes at the API level right? Wrong. flickr4writer uses photos.search calls to query data (actually technically the library that Flickr4Writer uses does). Again, by definition of this API, only public searchable photos will be returned. UNLESS you specify a user name. What?!?! Yes, that’s right…if you specifc a user name, their results will come back in the API call. Read that again. If you specify a user name in flickr.photos.search it will not honor the user’s privacy setting. So this sucks for me as an API developer/consumer who wants to honor those settings.

So on to the resolutions. First, I added authentication. flickr4writer now requires you to have a valid Flickr account to even use it (their accounts are free). This helps with the first part about blogging. If a user has specified they do not want their content to be blogged, I honor that and will alert the flickr4writer user with a message that the user they searched prevents blogging and no search results will display. I feel that this complies with that setting within my application. If a user wants to bypass my app and copy/paste the URL to the photo/video still…that’s Flickr’s problem now, not mine. Adding authentication also enabled me to comply with the blogging settings of users because it identifies who the user is and whether or not they can blog the content.

The second thing I modified was to only return content that had Creative Commons or No known license attributes. This actually makes sense and I needed to do it for a while. The licenses I filter for are identified in the flickr.photos.licenses.getInfo API. So if a user has content that is “All rights reserved” then it will no longer show up in the search…even if you are the owner of that content. I’m interested in feedback on this one if you think I should do a check to see if you are the owner and allow you to see licensed content…leave a comment on how you feel about this one.

For the setting of hiding from 3rd parties…I cannot resolve this. There is no setting for me to look at. I’m quite disappointed that Flickr isn’t doing this at the API level as I think that they are violating the user preferences by enabling a loophole. Should they enable a setting for this (I think they just need to fix the API), I will enable my application to comply even more. Please if you are a Flickr user who has set this privacy setting, let Flickr know that you want it to be honored.

The authentication adds some initial screens to the use of flickr4writer. When you launch the plug-in from within Writer, you’ll now see some prompts to authorize the application with Flickr. There will be a button that will take you to Flickr to authorize the action. This is only required one time and you won’t see it anymore unless you de-authorize the application on your account (which you have the complete control to perform).

Please upgrade to the latest version. You will have to uninstall any previous version before installing, but will not lose any settings. Thanks for your assistance in helping keeping flickr4writer compliant.

tags: flickr4writer, writer, windows live writer, flickr, api, creative commons, codeplex, ms-pl, oss

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license.

Download Windows Live Writer June 2008 Preview

tim heuer — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:20:08 GMT

Hot off the press, a new drop of Windows Live Writer was just released. Get it here. This is one of my favorite tools from Microsoft and the update brings a few new changes.

First, I’m happy to report that Flickr4Writer and S3Browser still work fine and require no adjustments. The other thing announced today from the Writer team is an updated SDK. This new SDK includes a new type of plugin which enable plug-in activity for pre- and post-publish events. Some of you following me on Twitter may have noticed something every so often that said “blogging: blah blah” and a link to the post. This is done automatically for me from Writer using a plug-in. It actually is one of the ones included in the updated SDK (along with another example for adding a Digg badget to your post).

Recently there’s been some discussion of people re-aggregating/posting blog content to other sites. Even though I had a Creative Commons license on my blog’s footer, etc, it wasn’t in my content so when someone re-posted my stuff automatically, it wasn’t visible. Using the new Writer SDK, I created a quick little plug-in that would add a notation about the Creative Commons license I was using to every post. Again, automatically now and I don’t have to write anything. I’m making this one available for free/test and you can get it here. These plug-ins are accessed in the same way through the Tools…Options menu in Writer. Here’s the configuration for mine:

If you click the Preview tab (a new feature in Writer preview – tabs instead of menu options to switch between Edit, Preview, Source), it will show you what it will look like as well. These types of plugins can also be enabled per weblog so if you have more than one weblog defined for Writer, you can choose which one you want these post- and pre-publish event plug-ins to be turned on for.

For some existing plugins out there, this is a more natural fit. When I heard about this new model, I joined up with Alexander Groß who wrote the Now Playing plug-in which is awesome and flexible (he’s also involved in a great Graffiti template for user groups). But it seemed a more natural fit to use this model of automatically appending the information instead of having the user remember to click the button to insert the information. I’ve submitted my changes to Alexander and hope they make it into his next build of Now Playing. It looks the same in config and here it is in preview mode in Writer:

I love the new Writer with the subtle changes it has made and the additional plug-in model. Get your update today!

tags: writer, windows live, windows live writer, flickr4writer, s3browser, s3, now playing, creative commons, blog, blogging

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license.

feedreader gets a contribution

timheuer — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:09:08 GMT

feedreader, my sharepoint web part originally built for sharepoint 2003, has been consumed by quite a few people (which i think is cool -- it is a rare moment when a lowly d00d like me can fill a gap). while sharepoint 2007 has better built-in support for syndicated feeds (actually 2003 did already with the xml web part), i still think feedreader has some advantages that can be leveraged.

a while back i put feedreader on codeplex, an open source sharing ground. i used the microsoft public license so anyone can download, alter, and profit from the code. i did this because i was getting feature requests weekly as well as some of the problematic issues that i never fixed (namely proxy server support needs to be better). i thought to myself that there way better developers out there than me and can actually help out. i wanted to prove my own theory wrong.

well, there wasn't a ton of contributions (more work items though), but over the past month i got another one of those requests. and just the other day, the rss feed from my codeplex project source code check-ins delivered this to me:

1) Added the code that jdenicola suggested in the codeplex discussion forum to fix the object reference... error. The error is caused by the cache being empty. Which is weird since the PartCacheWrite line is being called, but when it reads it doesn’t return anything. Might be environmental, but I didn’t spend too much time trying to figure it out.
2) Changed the cache key from this.Parent.ClientID to this.ClientID (neither key affected the results of PartCacheRead)
3) Moved the assignment of the graphic to the web part code from the .dwp. This fixed the display of the icon at the top right in the title bar, but it still didn’t display the graphic in the web part library. Could be a SharePoint bug not reading the property. The properties PartImageSmall and PartImageLarge are obsolete. I used TitleIconImageUrl and CatalogIconImageUrl (but still couldn’t get the catalog icon image to show up)
4) Repackaged it in a .wsp for WSS 3.0. I included a new manifest file, a couple .ddf’s, and some stsadm commands to handle the install/upgrade from a build event.
5) Added .snk files so assemblies could be strong named and added to the GAC
6) Added setting for "Expand Headline Descriptions by Default" which, when checked, will expand the item descriptions when the page first loads instead of showing them as collapsed (assuming the headline descriptions are not hidden)
7) Added a div tag with a class called sg-item-description surrounding the item descriptions which the user can overload to control the look (background color, border, text size, etc.) of the description

sweet. a contribution...and a good one at that. several things were fixed and a few added. the contributor, ryan mcintyre really stepped up because he saw some things he could fix and leverage for his own benefit as well. i should also note that flickr4writer also got some contributions from josh holmes a few months back as well. it is cool to see some progress on something i hadn't had the time to work on and to that i say 'thank you' to ryan for making feedreader a better experience!

tags: codeplex,flickr4writer,feedreader,sharepoint,moss,wss,web part,open source,oss,shared source,ms-pl,josh holmes,ryan mcintyre,xml,rss,atom,syndication

new windows live writer avail

timheuer — Thu, 31 May 2007 05:51:19 GMT

beta 2 of windows live writer was released today. go get it. improved user interface, improved blog support, some new functions...you know all the good stuff you want in an update. oh yeah and continued extensibility.

i took a quick second (after doing a little RTFM'ing [thanks charles]) and uploaded a custom manifest to my blog. why? because when in writer sometimes i want quick access to things about my blog (stats and such). so i took a minute to "subtext"-ize a sidebar extension to writer...see:

i've got the nice little transparent subtext icon in the back and two custom buttons taking me to my various stats. additionally, a link directly to the admin functionality. i'll be playing around more with this stuff later.

tags: windows live writer, writer, live writer, subtext

flickr4writer minor release

timheuer — Thu, 17 May 2007 15:07:12 GMT

well, the flickr4writer project had it's first community contribution (thanks simon). a new minor release was updated today that incorporates one small bug fix and one feature change (ability to select multiple images).

release: Flickr4Writer v1.2.7.0516

tags: flickr, flickr4writer, codeplex, windows live writer, writer, live writer, blog, blogging, writer plugin

s3: my possible new storage location

timheuer — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:22:29 GMT

so at tech lunch wednesday here in phoenix, after lunch i sat with hamid and scott for a bit and we were brainstorming about a few things. one of which was storage, then we got on the topic of amazon's s3 solution. i had started to look at it before, but then never got the time to go back. essentially amazon provides storage via a web service (there are no tools provided by them, just an api). i said that i mainly use flickr for the storage and that i'd only use it if i could get a direct url to things, and that i'd have to have a plugin for live writer :-).

well, when i got back i started to mess around a bit and got a working progress for my "s3 browser" live writer plugin. you can browse your buckets and link to an item as a link or an image. it is very rough right now, has some issues with UI threads, etc., but it works for me so far.

you can take a look at the screenshot below -- and the link is directly to my s3 stored image!

tags: live writer, windows live writer, writer plugins, amazon s3, s3 storage, plugin

flickr4office: office add-ins for your pleasure

timheuer — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:11:14 GMT

building upon the model of Flickr4Writer, i decided to take a look at doing some simple add-ins for Outlook and Office to look at vsto and the extensibility vsto se has offered the developers. i started documenting some of my findings in part 1 of office dev. i'll continue that in a later post and ask some questions there as well.

for now, i wanted to let you know that the two add-ins i created are ready for your consumption, source included.

Flickr4Outlook - enabling inserting of images from your Flickr account into a new mail message.

Flickr4Word - you guessed it, same thing, but for Word.

while the naming of these projects is quite lame, hopefully they will show some value (of course if you are a Flickr user). they've only been tested to work with office 2007 versions of Outlook and Word. the code demonstrates basically the customization of the ribbonui as well as interacting with some of the different contexts of the office application you are working with at the time.

part 2 on their creation and some gotchas i found coming soon.

tags: flickr4writer, flickr4outlook, flickr4word, flickr, vsto, visual studio tools for office, vsto se, office, vista, outlook, word

windows live writer updated

timheuer — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:36:45 GMT

well, one reason i haven't updated tag4writer (which i now consider to be an archived project -- at least i won't be touching it) is that tagging support is now added into the latest refresh of windows live writer:

the tagging support now included was exactly the direction tag4writer was heading with exposing the templates for configuration, etc. you'll notice the tagging support in writer has some cool memory-sense (intellisense-ish).

along with tagging support, here are some other updates:

blogger beta
categories changes
improved startup
improved style detection
and some others...

learn about all the updates and get the refresh from the windows live writer site. install it, then make sure you install flickr4writer :-).

tags: flickr4writer, tag4writer, windows live writer, windows live, writer, flickr, blogger

writer plugins on gallery

timheuer — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:42:13 GMT

windows live gallery now has a category for windows live writer. flickr4writer just released a new version with better performance and more streamlined options (yeah, there were too many buttons with icons ;-) and you had no idea what did what). The latest version is on windows live gallery as well as the current release on codeplex.

tags: windows live, live writer, live, windows live writer, flickr4writer, tag4writer, gallery, codeplex