Leo Interviews the writers/creators of the wildly successful ‘I’m on a Horse’ Old Spice commercial. They explain, step by step, how Isaiah Mustafa got from the shower to the horse.

Having recently updated my Adobe Flash Player software for the umpteenth time on two different PCs, I discovered that if you download and install it in the normal way, you end up with a new and unwanted Adobe Download Manager Firefox extension that cannot be removed.

Here’s how to avoid this:

On the Adobe Flash Player download page, uncheck the “Free McAfee Security Scan Plus” option (who knows what that will add to your machine), then click on the yellow “Agree and install now” button:

This will take you to a ‘Thank You!’ page where the little yellow ‘Firefox prevented this site [yada yada from installing something] bar comes across the top of the browser . DON’’T click on the Allow button as normal:

INSTEAD, click on the ‘click here for troubleshooting information’ option’. This will take you to a ‘Common Flash Player download and installation issues (Windows)’ page. Scroll to the bottom of the page where you will find the ‘If you are still having problems…’ option to download the  most current ‘install_flash_player.exe’ executable directly by clicking on the “Flash_Player_10_ Plugin_(All_other_Windows_ browsers)” option.

Run the executable and you will install the latest Flash plug-in, without the unwanted addition of an unnecessary and unremovable Firefox extension.

Until recently I was using:

• iMap to sync email between Outlook, Google Apps Gmail and my iPhone/iPad;
• Google Calendar Sync to sync my calendar between Outlook and Gmail; and
• iTunes to sync contacts and calendar with my iPhone/iPad.

Until Google Apps Sync I had no way of syncing contacts between Outlook and Gmail. When iTunes version 9.1 crapped out and stopped syncing contacts and calendar with my iPhone (this was fixed in iTunes 9.2 by the way) I made the decision to pony up the $50 a year for Google Apps Premier which includes Google Apps Sync.

It was worth every penny. I am rid the sync hodge-podge described above. I now have an end-to end, email, calendar, contact sync solution across my PCs, Google Apps Gmail, my iPhone and my iPad.

The Problem – How to Sync Only Selected Contacts

I only want a relatively few current contacts synced from Outlook to Gmail, my iPhone and iPad – about 250 or so contacts. But, I have accumulated some 800 contacts including historic clients and colleagues from prior law firms, restaurants from when I lived in different cities, old friends I no longer keep in touch with and so on. I don’t want to lose these contacts but I also don’t want them cluttering up my Google Apps Gmail, iPhone or iPad contact lists.

While you can segregate contacts within different contact folders inside the Google Apps Sync account in Outlook, all contacts such segregated contacts continue to sync into the unified Gmail, iPhone and iPad contact lists – regardless of the contact folder structure you set up inside of Outlook.

The Answer – Move Older Contacts into a Segregated .PST File

This solution is essentially the same as the solution I used only to sync certain emails when I was using iMap (for example I don’t want archived emails synced to the server). However, in Outlook 2010, after Google Apps Sync is installed, it wasn’t particularly easy to figure out how to do this. Below is a step-by-step guide to setting up a separate PST file and how to create non-syncing contact folders within that file.

Create the New .PST File

In the Email view in Outlook 2010:

• Click the ‘Home’ tab
• Click the down arrow on the bottom right of the New Items icon
• Select “More Items”
• Select “Outlook Data File…”

• Select ‘Outlook data file (.pst)’
• Click OK

• A ‘Create or Open Outlook Data File” dialogue box will open (not shown)
• Navigate your PC’s C:\ drive (network drives work too) to where you want the PST file to reside.

Note: You can save the file anywhere on your system. I keep it within the hierarchy of directories that are backed-up each night.

• Give the PST file a name. I chose ‘Old Contacts”
• Click ‘OK’.

An empty new account item will appear on the left side of Outlook’s Navigation Panel with the name you gave it (see image on the right).

Note: You will not directly access your contacts from here.  Unfortunately, you can’t see this account as a separate account in the Contacts view panel (in the next image). But you can still use it as I describe below.

Create Non-Syncing Folders in the New PST File

Here’s the less-than-straight-forward part that took me awhile to figure out.

• Click on ‘Contacts’ view on the bottom left of Outlook’s Navigation Panel to bring up your contacts view (pictured to the right)
• Select the ‘Home’ tab
• Right click on any existing ‘Contacts’ group (as pictured) to bring up the required pull-down menu.
• Select the ‘New Folder…’ option

Note 1: Unlike what you see in the picture, you will likely only have one contact group called “Contacts’ under ‘My Contacts’ on the left.

Note 2: Do not right click on the ‘My Contacts’ heading. You’d think that that would be the logical place to right click to create a new contact group, but it isn’t.

In the resulting ‘Create New Folder’ dialogue:

• In the ‘Name:’ section, type the name of the new non-syncing contact folder you wish
• In the ‘Folder Contains’ section, select ‘Contact Items’
• In the ‘Select where to place the folder:’ section, scroll down to the new PST account you created (in my example Old Contacts’) and select it.  Note: This is THE critical step. By putting the new contact group in this segregated PST file, it’s contents will not be synced to Gmail, your iPhone/iPad etc.
• Click OK

That’s it!

You will now have a new contact folder (pictured in the image to the right), that is outside of the Google App Sync account folder structure.

Drag and drop all the contacts from your Contacts list that you do not want synced to Gmail, your iPhone/iPad to that new contact group. They will remain on your PC in Outlook but will no longer synced.

If the warning above annoys you as much as it does me whenever you open an attachment in Office 2007, here’s how to get rid of it.

The Problem

Microsoft has understandably made security a cornerstone of its recent software releases. Each time you attempt to open a possibly malicious attachment in Outlook 2007, a warning dialogue box like the one above appears. It presents an always-checked, always-grayed-out box that reads: ‘Always ask before opening this type of file’.

Because Word, Excel, PDF and other document types can contain malicious code, you should, as the box warns, only open attachments from trustworthy sources. But, if you have a modern Anti-Virus program such as AVG or Microsoft’s Security Essentials (both of which are free), attachments in your emails should already be checked for malicious code. When this is the case, this warning dialogue box is an unnecessary interruption that becomes increasingly annoying if, like me, you receive emails with attachments many times a day.

The Solution in  Windows 7

Warning: You should only do this if you have anti-virus software installed on your computer that checks for, and quarantines, all emails that contain attachments with malicious code. And, as the warning says, you should never open attachments from anyone that you don’t know and trust! 

OK, you’ve been duly warned. Here’s how to do it:

• Close Outlook 2007 before you start
• Click the Windows ‘Start’ Button
• Click ‘All Programs’
• Right Click on ‘Microsoft Office Outlook 2007’ in the “Microsoft Office’ folder (as shown below)
• Click on the Properties option

• Click the ‘Compatibility’ Tab (shown below)
• Check the ‘Run this program as an administrator’ box
• Click the ‘Apply’ button

• Restart Outlook 2007
• You will get the following ‘User Account Control Warning’

• Click ‘Yes’  -  Don’t worry, you won’t have to do this every time you start Outlook
• Open an email with the attachment type (eg: .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pdf) you want to open in the future without this warning
• Click on the attachment
• You’ll get the same warning message as before, but, as you can see below, this time the ‘Always ask before opening this type of file‘ checkbox will not be grayed out
• Uncheck the box and open the attachment

• Open other emails with each of the attachment types that you do not wish to receive this message for in the future (eg: xls, xlsx, doc, docx, pdf, ppt)
• Similarly uncheck the ‘Always ask before opening this type of file‘ check box for each document type and open them.

From then on, you will no longer get the warning message when opening each of these types of attachments from within Outlook 2007 emails.

But, we are not quite finished. If you stopped here, you’d get the User Account Control Warning above every time you started Outlook 2007. To stop this from happening :

• Close Office 2007 once again
• Redo the first six steps above, but this time
• Uncheck the ‘Run this program as an administrator’ box under the Compatibility Tab in the Office 2007 Properties box.
• Click ‘Apply’

From then on Office will remember your attachment-type warning preferences without giving you the UAC warning every time you start Office 2007.

Enjoy!

The Solution in Vista

I found the answer below in this MSOutlook.info post. I have not tested this answer personally, but this post twigged me onto finding the solution in Windows 7 (above) so I’m pretty certain it will work:

1. Close Outlook
2. Right click on the shortcut you use to launch Outlook 2007
3. Choose Run as Administrator
4. Press Continue or provide the logon credentials for an Administrator
5. Restart Outlook
6. Open an email with the attachment of the type you want to be able to access without the annoying warning message
7. Deselect the option “Always ask before opening this type of file”
8. Repeat steps 6 & 7 with emails containing each of the various attachment types you wish to be able to access without the warning message
9. Close Outlook
10. Restart Outlook as normal (not in administrator mode)

From then on, you will no longer get the warning message when opening each of these types of attachments from within Outlook 2007 emails.

Since I connect my iPhone to iTunes every day (to update my podcasts, backup data, install new apps etc.), I had to cancel out of the IPVW every time I connected. This was a daily frustration!

Along the line I had collected up some 30ish pictures in my iPhone’s ‘camera roll’ for the following reasons:

1. Originally, I had not set the ‘delete from iPhone when importing’ option in the IPVW, so those pictures remained on the camera roll even after syncing; and
2. For some good pictures, I just wanted to keep a copy on my iPhone for viewing.

Strangely, there is no way to move  pictures from the iPhone’s ‘camera roll’ to an album in the iPhone’s native Photos app.

Most of the time I want pictures to be copied off my iPhone when I sync. As a result I had set the IPVW’s Import settings (see link in picture above) accordingly. To my mind, the iPhone should only automatically pop-up the IPVW when there are new pictures that a user might want copied over to the PC. That is not how it works.

The Solution (sort of) – Emptying out the ‘Camera Roll’

As it turns out, if you have Windows AutoPlay set to import pictures from the iPhone, the IPVW will pop-up and bug you, needing you to cancel out of it before your iPhone will otherwise connect to iTunes, day after day, for so long as their are any pictures in the Camera Roll.

I finally figured that out today. So I copied all the pictures off my iPhone’s ‘camera roll’ onto my PC, leaving the camera roll empty (as you can see from the picture on the left).

That solved it (sort of)! Thereafter, when I connected my iPhone with an empty camera roll to iTunes, it went about its business of syncing podcasts, updating, backing-up, etc. business without the IPVW popping up, annoying me and needing me to exit-out-of-it. Whoot!

The Ultimate Solution

However, this ‘solution’ resulted in their being no photos left on my iPhone. After a little further Googling and Binging I discovered that I can put pictures back onto the iPhone’s native Photos app – outside of the camera roll – with the result being that I can view them on my iPhone at any time, without IPVW popping up each time I connect my iPhone to iTunes.

Here’s how:

• Create a separate folder on your PC where you can copy the pictures that you want left on the iPhone. I created a folder called ‘iPhone Pics’
• Copy the pictures you want on your iPhone into that folder
• Connect your iPhone to iTunes
• Select your iPhone from the ‘Devices’ list on the left side of iTunes (see picture below)
• Click on the ‘Photos’ tab

• Check the ‘Sync photos from:’ checkbox
• Click on the button to its right and select ‘Choose Folder…’
• Select the folder you created (in my case ‘iPhone Pics’)
• Click ‘Apply’

ITunes will then copy the pictures in the selected folder back into the iPhone’s native Photos app (see icon to the left), and not back into the ‘camera roll’.  From then on you can view your pictures as desired through the Photos app. Any pictures you add into that directory in the future will automatically be copied onto the iPhone and if you remove pictures from that directory they will be removed from the iPhone.

Suggested Changes

I would really prefer that Apple make one of the following two changes:

1. Provide a way on the iPhone itself to directly move pictures from the camera roll to an album in the iPhone’s Photos app (and sync those pictures back to your PC behind the scenes); or
2. Allow users to keep pictures on the camera roll but pop-up the Import Pictures and Videos wizard only if there are new pictures on the iPhone since the last sync.

Either of these solutions would make managing photos on the iPhone simpler without the tedium of having to close out the IPVW every time the iPhone is connected to iTunes.

Notes

Copy and Paste Doesn’t Work: Strangely, with the iPhone OS v. 3.0, you can copy a photo out of the camera roll to, say, paste a photo into an email, but you cannot paste that photo into an album in the Photos app. My guess here is that Apple wants the Photos app to be one-way-only. Meaning, Apple wants you to manage your photos on the PC only. Perhaps they fear that if someone edits/deletes photos on the iPhone they wouldn’t realize that doing so would modify/delete them from their PC after a sync.

Pictures Above from v. 8.2.1.6, the pictures and instructions above are for iTunes version 8.2.1.6 as of July 28, 2009. The approach may be slightly different for different versions of iTunes.

[Note: Rogers is somehow still blocking Pandora and Skype even when I removed the SIM  card. Grrr! Here’s a Skype iPhone App workaround for Canadians – I haven’t tried it yet.]

Setup is a breeze. It took me about two minutes. You essentially set up a VPN connection to the U.S. through the HotSpot Shield servers. This, of course, would also be useful for safe surfing at coffee shops and other wifi locations.

Once you have set up your account, configured and activated the VPN (see instructions below), navigate to the App Store on your iPhone. Search for the app you want and (if its there) download it. It’s that simple.

Survives Desktop Sync

I was concerned that if I downloaded apps this way, they would be wiped out after I synced my iPhone with iTunes to my desktop. Not so. The sync went fine and the apps remained on the iPhone.

No Need to Keep VPN Turned On

You only need to activate the VPN to download the app. Once downloaded, you can use the app with the VPN shut off.

SETUP INSTRUCTIONS

These instructions were cribbed from the Hotspot Shield site here. See that site for pictures and any updated instructions. You’ll need to go there anyway to get an account (with only one mouse click) as described below.

Configure iPhone

Make sure that Wi-Fi is marked "OFF" in: 
Settings -> Wi-Fi

Then find the VPN settings in:
Settings -> General -> Network -> VPN -> Add VPN Configuration:

• Select the L2TP tab/pane
• Description: HotspotShield
• Server: 64.55.144.10
• Account: [insert account number – see below]
• RSA SecurID: OFF
• Password: [insert password – see below]
• Secret: password
• Send all traffic: ON

Get Account & Password

Getting an account is easy. Click on the GetAccountID button on this page. With one click you’ll have your account and password. You’ll need to fill them into the appropriate place as indicated above.

Save Settings

You are now done. Save the settings and hit the "HOME" button to quit. Make sure to turn Wi-Fi back "ON".

Activate

To activate Hotspot Shield on your iPhone, the VPN setting needs to be turned on. From "HOME" menu, go to Settings and click the "On" tab for VPN. Your Status will change to "CONNECTED" and the VPN icon will appear on top in the iPhone Tray when complete. If you cannot connect to the VPN immediately, power down your iPhone, turn it back on, and turn the VPN to "ON".

If you cannot connect to VPN immediately, power down your iPhone, turn it back on, and turn VPN to "ON" in "Settings".

Windows has not provided .iso file burning functionality before. Rather than use a specialized tool, I have, until now, used my iMac to burn iso files. This morning I discovered that with a couple clicks of the mouse, Windows 7 users can now burn .iso files. 

Here’s how:

• In Windows Explorer double click the .iso file you wish to burn
• Windows 7 opens the following dialogue

• Choose the DVD burner you wish to use (in my case Drive F:)
• Select whether or not you wish to verify the disk after burning
• Click the ‘Burn’ button and you are off:

That’s it. I’m surprised it took Redmond this long to finally include this functionality.

To me, and I suspect to many Windows users, it would be intuitive for Windows to bring whatever window the mouse is currently hovering over into focus without the need to click on that window.

It turns out that Windows 7 now makes this possible. I stumbled upon this tip when writing my ‘How to Shut Off Windows 7 Aero Snap – Stop it from Auto Arranging Windows’ post.

There are two additional reasons why I want Windows 7 to activate (bring focus to an ‘out of focus’ window) by hovering the mouse over it:

1. Symbiotic With Single-Click Item Activation

For the better part of a year I have been using the ‘single-click to open’ option in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (The option has been around since Windows 95). The idea behind this one-click option is to make the Windows use experience similar to the web-browsing experience. Instead of double clicking icons and options to open/access/activate them in Windows, you need only click icons, items etc. once.

To set windows 7 up to open/activate items with just one click, do the following in Windows Explorer

• click on Tools
• click Folder Options
• on the General Tab, click the ‘single-click to open option shown in the picture below:

Up till now, a downside to using this single-click approach, is that I often accidently clicked/activated items within a window that I had no desire to activate simply because I clicked that item when I clicked on its window to bring it into focus.

Using the tip below to activate a window by merely hovering over it solves this accidental click problem.

[Side Note: For this 25 year DOS/Windows veteran, moving from the two-click model to the one-click model, was quite hard to do. It took some time but I’ve now adjusted to it and am happier for the effort.']

2. Solves a Kat-Mouse Focus Problem

For several months I have been enjoying the free utility KatMouse (recommended by Steve Gibson). With KatMouse, spinning a mouse’s scroll wheel scrolls the window beneath the mouse cursor – whether or not that window is in focus. This is useful but doesn’t bring the scrolled window into focus.

My preference would be to move from window to window, scrolling away, without having to click the scrolled window to bring it into focus. KatMouse gets me half way to my desired end-game. The tip below gets me all the way there.

I’ll need to report back on this, but it may be that I no longer need KatMouse at all. This tip seems to get me where I wanted to go with KatMouse.

How to Activate a Window by Hovering a Mouse Over It

To set this up:

• Go to Control Panel
• Select ‘Ease of Access Center’
• Select ‘Make the mouse easier to use’
• Check ‘Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse’ as shown in the picture below
   
• Click ‘Apply’

One Downside – Accidental Jumps

I noticed one downside to using this tip. Typically I’ll click a window (say, Microsoft Word) to activate it and then I’ll push the mouse out of the way when I start using the application (in the Word example, I push the mouse pointer away before I type text) so that the mouse pointer doesn’t get in the way. However, if I push my mouse away too far, so that it points to another window, I’m accidently jumped over to window where the mouse pointer randomly landed. This takes a bit of getting used to.

Window’s 7 new Aero Snap feature is, no doubt, a useful feature for those with just one monitor. In my case, where I use multiple monitors, it is a major pain. Windows 7 frequently auto-adjusts windows across multiple monitors when I have no desire for this to happen.

In the picture above, my Firefox window was originally open in just the lower, central, window. I was dragging the lower right corner with my mouse (see yellow arrow) to adjust the window when, suddenly, it popped up across three monitors (see four red arrows above). Yikes!

Windows 7 does this because it thinks that if you drag an edge of a window to the edge of a screen (any screen) you want the widow stretched across the full screen (or in my case, multiple screens). Nobody would want the result produced above.

Before disabling Aero Snap this happened to me several times a day. It doesn’t any longer. To disable Aero Snap, follow these steps:

• Go to Control Panel
• Select ‘Ease of Access Center’
• Select ‘Make the mouse easier to use’
• Check ‘Prevent Windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen’

• Click ‘Apply’

See also: Disable Aero Snap (the Mouse Drag Window Arranging Feature in Windows 7)

Have you ever wanted to share a blog post, website, video, music or news story in Facebook?

There are two ways to do this, by using either: (i) the ‘Share on Facebook’ bookmarklet’ (depicted in the image above); or (ii)  the attach ‘Links’ method.  Either way, your friends will see what you share in their Facebook feeds. Shared music and videos will be directly playable by them from within the feed.

Using the ‘Share on Facebook’ Bookmarklet

This is the easiest way. Get the the ‘Share on Facebook’ bookmarklet here. You’ll be taken to this page:

Follow the instructions. Grab (point and hold-click on) the ‘Share on Facebook’ bookmarklet icon on that page, then drag and drop it onto your browser’s bookmarks bar.

Later, when you are on a website, YouTube page, whatever, that you want to share:

• click on the ‘Share on Facebook’ bookmarklet. A page like this will pop up:

• Type your comment (or don’t – comments are optional)
• If there is more than one image on the page, you’ll be able to cycle through the images to pick the image you want to show up as the thumbnail in your Facebook feed. Or, choose ‘No Thumbnail’
• Click the blue ‘Post’ button
• If you are logged into Facebook, the link will be shared and your friends will see it in their feed. You can confirm by visiting your Facebook wall which will look something like this:

The Links Option

The ‘Links Option’ method takes a few more steps, but is still easy.

• Click the "Link" button on the left side of the Facebook page:

• Copy and past the link’s URL of the blog, story, YouTube video etc. that you want to share into the Attach field
• Click the ‘Attach’ button
• Type an optional comment (as I did in the example below):

• Select the image you wish to use as a Thumbnail (if more than one) – or choose ‘No Thumbnail’
• Click on the blue ‘Share’ button

The link will then be shared and your friends will see it in their feed. You can confirm that the link was shared by visiting your Facebook wall.

Not so with video podcasts. Clicking the ‘Sleep/Wake’ button, or clicking the iPhone’s start button shuts video podcasts off. The inability to just listen to video podcasts has been one of my primary complaints with the iPhone’s iPod functionality. See my other major complaints here and here.

Why Would Anyone Want to Just Listen to a Video Podcast?

All video podcasts are not created equal. Some video podcasts such as CO-OP, demand that the user ‘watch’ them to get the most out of them. Other podcasts , such as the ‘Cranky Geeks’, Geek Brief TV and Diggnation can usually be enjoyed without ever looking at the screen.

There are several reasons why one might wish to consume a video podcast with the visual element shut off:

• While Using other IPhone Apps: Since I can, and often do, use other iPhone/iTouch apps while listening to audio podcasts, I sometimes just want/need to just listen to video podcasts while using other apps. Why not?
• Increased battery life: Video playback consumes an enormous amount of battery charge. If you don’t need to watch the video to enjoy it, why waste the battery?
• Putting iPhone in Pocket: I often put my iPhone in my pocket while listening to podcasts. When the iPhone screen cannot be shut off, this becomes a bit clumsy. The act of putting it in my pocket (or taking it out) often results in unwanted screen clicks that can shut the podcast off, fast forward it, pause it etc.
• While Driving: Who needs the video on while driving?

Bottom Line: Hardly a day has gone by since I purchased my iPhone last August, when I didn’t wish I could turn off the screen and still listen to my video podcasts.

Turns out that there has been a way to do this all along. It took me 8 months before I stumbled upon this trick.

How Then, to Listen to Video Podcasts Without Watching

From day 1 I realized I could click the ‘Sleep/Wake’ button (depicted below) to shut off the screen while listening to an audio podcast.

While in this state, the user can still press the earbud pause button (depicted below) to start/stop the audio podcast.

I later discovered that one can press the button on the earbuds at any time and the most recently listened to song/podcast etc. would start playing where I last left off – this without actually waking up the iPhone or needing to press the iPod icon.

Quite by accident, I discovered this week, that video podcasts will also wakeup, with the screen still turned off when you press the earbud button after putting the iPhone to sleep (with the Sleep/Wake button) during a video podcast.

More astonishingly, if you jump away from the video podcast by pressing the iPhone’s ‘Start’ button, you can press the earbud button to restart just the audio portion of the video podcast that just shut off – all while using your other iPhone apps.

It’s as simple as that!

Note: This only works while listening with the earbuds. You cannot, for example, listen to video podcasts with just the built-in iPhone speaker or when the earbuds are removed and you have the iPhone plugged into something else like an in-car auxiliary jack. So there is still room for improvement here.

[Update: Turns out this can, indeed be done without the earbuds. See Cassidy Napoli’s welcome comment below to learn how this is done.]

Note Re: Audio Version Alternatives

You might ask, if I don’t want to watch the video version of a podcast, why not subscribe to the audio-only version. The answer is three-fold:

1. AppleTV Interoperability: I consume podcasts on both my iPhone and on AppleTV. I don’t want to have to subscribe to, and then have to manage, two subscriptions to a podcast.
2. Sometimes I Watch: If I’m on a subway or eating at a restaurant, sometimes I want to watch the video podcast.
3. No Audio-only Version: Sometimes there is no audio-only version of a video podcast.

Other Earbud Button Uses:

FYI, there are a number of other earbud button uses that many iPhone users are not aware of:

• Answering a phone call (press once to answer)
• Hang-up a phone call (press once again to hang-up)
• Forward call to voicemail (press and hold the button for a few seconds while the iPhone is ringing)
• Starting up an audio book where you left off without waking the iPhone (one click)
• Pause a song, movie, podcast, movie (click once)
• Jump from chapter to chapter in an audio book (double click)
• Jumping to the next song when listening to a playlist (double click)
• Jump to the prior song (triple click)

[May 5, 2009 Update: Download the Windows 7 release Candidate here. It will be available here until July. They are not limiting the number of downloads this time. The release candidate will function until March 1, 2010 after which it will nag you several times a day to purchase the RTM version. It will cease functioning on June 1, 2010. Until then, party!]

The instructions for how to do an in-place upgrade are set out below. I edited them  to make them easier to follow from the instructions provided by Paul Thurrott on his SuperSite for Windows blog  here. See similar instructions here (scroll down to the ‘How-To’ section).

Despite Thurrott’s ivory-tower purity of not recommending users do in-place upgrades, I went ahead anyway. At worst, I could have rolled back to my prior Windows 7 beta image. Doing a fresh install is obviously the best practice. But anyone that takes even a cursory look at my ‘The Windows Apps I Use and How I Configure Them’ post can understand why I was loathe to do yet another clean install for just a release candidate. That said, I probably will do a clean install when the RTM version comes out this summer.

In the mean time, here are the instructions for how to do an in-place upgrade:

Before You Begin

• Local HD Space: You’ll need about 13 Gigs of free space on your C:\ drive (though Microsoft recommends 16 GB).
• External HD Space: You’ll need between 2.5 and 3.2 GB free space on your D:\ drive (or bootable external drive or network drive) for the extracted ISO to be saved.
• Drivers: You may have to remove/reinstall certain drivers. I upgraded my primary PC and my ThinkPad tablet laptop. In both cases it warned me in advance that I should remove certain drivers (my audio  card driver on my PC and my Thinkvantage system update service on my tablet prior to completing the upgrade). I didn’t do this for my PC. Consequently the upgrade knocked out my audio card driver. I reinstalled it after the upgrade and all was fine. Having learned my lesson, I did remove the Thinkvantage update service from my laptop prior to the upgrade and reinstalled it fine on the other side.
• Backup: Or course, you should ALWAYS backup your data before attempting any system upgrade. Ideally you’ll also create a system image of your current setup that you can restore if something goes awry.

Doing the Upgrade

1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2. Copy the whole image (ie: copy the directory structure as-is on the DVD) to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from – eg:  a directory on another partition/drive (eg: a D:\ drive) on the machine running the pre-release build or a bootable external disk or flash drive).
3. Click on the ‘sources’ directory.
4. Edit the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. In this case, change 7100.0 to 7000.0. Note: See this article where they discuss how the 7100 build floating around the Internet still has the MinClient build number set to 7077 – in that case change 7077 to 7000). See Ed Bott’s picture of this.
6. Save the file in place with the same name (ie: overwrite the prior version).
7. Click on ‘setup.exe’ in the root directory where you copied the DVD contents and away you go.
8. You will be prompted for the serial number/key you used when you originally installed the beta. You can bypass this step but you will have to type it in within 30 days of the upgrade.

Related: Windows 7 setup secrets (by Ed Bott)

In mid February 2009, shortly after installing Windows 7 Beta on my primary PC, I made the huge mistake of running an automated ‘Registry Cleaner’ program. Suffice it to say, it destroyed my system.

Because, my data is backed up on a nightly basis, I lost no data. But I did lose years (stretching back to my first Vista x64 install in January of 2007) of application installations and tweaks. Two months later I have finally (mostly) completed the long and laborious chore of re-installing and tweaking the many dozens of applications I use every day.

To ensure that I NEVER experience this special kind of hell again I decided to create an image of my primary system C:\ drive. I looked at various commercial system image/ghosting programs but decided that the system image feature built into Windows 7 was sufficient for my needs.

Highlights:

• The process took about 30 minutes for a 100 Gig C:\ drive.
• I was able to use Windows 7 and all my apps as normal during the entire time the image was being created.
• Compression was terrific. It compressed my 100 GB system to a 45 GB image backup.

Below is a simple step-by-step description of how to use it. The process is simple:

• Click on the Start button.
• Type ‘Backup’ into the search box.
• Choose the ‘Backup and Restore’ Center option.
• This will take you to the ‘Control Panel –> System and Security –> Backup and Restore’ page (see image above).
• Select the ‘Create an image backup’ option (circled in red above).

• Choose where you want to save the image. You can choose between another drive on the same machine, a network drive or you can burn it to a bunch of DVDs. In my case I chose a largely empty local D:\ drive.

Glitch Re: Network Drive Credentials: There is a glaring glitch if you want to backup the image to network location. For example, when upgrading my laptop to Windows 7 RC 1, I wanted to save a laptop image to my Drobo which is hung off of a networked XP machine. However, I do not require password credentials to access my shared network drives. Windows 7 would not allow me to proceed with the image backup when the network credential fields are left blank. Grrr!

• Click ‘Next’ and away it goes:

• It took about 30 minutes to create the image of the 100 GB system C:\ drive on the locally attached D:\ drive.
• The ultimate image is substantially compressed. The image on the D:/ drive was 47.5 GB – 47.5% of the original 100 GB size!
• When done, you are given the option to create a bootable repair disk:

• As the message above implies, if you have the original Windows 7 install disk, you won’t need a separate recovery disk because the install disk provides an option to recover from such system images. That said, for the cost of a blank DVD, I chose ‘Yes’ here.
• You next choose what DVD RW Drive to burn the recovery disk to – in my case the F:\ drive.

• It took about 1 minute to burn the recovery disk.
• On the local or network drive, the saved image is stored in a directory entitled ‘WindowsImageBackup’ (highlighted in the image below):

That’s it.

Now, I haven’t tested the image backup to confirm that recovery works as advertised. I trust that it will. I hope I never have to find out.

—

For a look at Windows 7’s built-in data backup system, see: ‘First Look at Windows 7’s Backup and Restore Center’.

Note: I don’t use the built-in data backup system. I much prefer Centered System’s Second Copy,

I recently installed the Safari 4 beta. In earlier versions of Safari, there was always an option to import bookmarks from IE or Firefox during the installation process. Not-so with the Safari 4 beta install.

Note: I purposely uninstalled Safari 3 before installing Safari 4. My hope was to get a fresh import of my most current Firefox bookmarks in the process. That didn’t work.

I use xmarks (formerly foxmarks)  to synchronize my bookmarks between computers. While there is an xmarks beta client for use on the Mac, so far there is none for the PC.

Here’s the easiest way I could find to import Firefox bookmarks into the Safari 4 beta:

In Firefox:

• Click on Bookmarks
• Click on ‘Organize Bookmarks’ (Ctrl-Shift-B)
• Click on ‘Export HTML…’ under the ‘Import and Backup’ pull-down menu

• Firefox will generate a ‘bookmarks.html’ file and ask you where to save it
• Save it to the Desktop

In Safari 4 Beta:

• If your menu bar is hidden, click on the ‘preferences cog’  on the top right and select ‘Show Menu Bar’
• Click File
• Click ‘Import Bookmarks…’
• Select the ‘bookmarks.html’ file from your Desktop
• The Firefox bookmarks will then import into Safari
• Click on the ‘Bookmarks’ icon on the top left of Safari to see the imported bookmarks. They will listed under the heading called ‘imported [date]’ where date is the date you imported them on. You can rename this as you see fit.

Bookmarks Toolbar Issue:

If, as I do, you access bookmarks and bookmark folders from your Firefox bookmark toolbar, the Safari 4 Beta’s bookmarks toolbar will not, unfortunately, be populated with the contents of your Firefox bookmark toolbar from this import process.

The Firefox bookmark toolbar is still imported, however. You’ll find it at the bottom of your imported bookmarks list under the heading ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’.

You can drag and drop each item in the ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’ heading to Safari’s bookmark toolbar. This works for individual links as well as bookmark folders. Within minutes you’ll be able to reconstruct a working bookmark toolbar just as it appears in Firefox.

Bookmarks Will be Static:

Until xmarks comes out with a Safari 4 plugin for Windows, the imported bookmarks will, of course, be static. But, the process is simple. I’ll likely use this manual import process every few months to keep my bookmarks manually synced.

Taking a queue, once again, from Dave over at ZNF, I added the new Twitter Widget to the Daleisphere (currently below my Disqus comment box) and my other Wordpress sites.

Previously I had used Twitter Widget Pro and Twitter for WordPress for this purpose with mixed results.

The most important benefit of changing to this widget is that it works! The other widgets yielded spotty results with too many fail whales.

The other obvious benefit is that it allows me to embed many more tweets in my sidebar than the others did – through a scrollable interface.

Downsides:

Performance: Occasionally it doesn’t work. The result, a  black fail whale rectangle with nothing in it. While annoying, so far the black rectangle appears less often than the fail whales I experienced with the other Twitter widgets. Also, sometimes the black box turns into the proper widget if you give it long enough. Odd.

Flash: On the downside the widget requires Flash. As a result, it does not work with the iPhone. Note: There is an html version of the widget available – though it’s not as nice or useful.

Installation

For Wordpress blogs:

• go to this twitter widget page (you’ll need to be logged into twitter.com)
• select ‘Other’ (there is no Wordpress-specific widget)
• click ‘continue’
• select the type of widget you wish (flash, or html)
• click ‘continue’
• continue picking options and clicking ‘continue’ until you get to the ‘Set up your Twitter widget’ page
• choose your final options
• add a Text widget to the appropriate column in your Wordpress dashboard
• copy the resulting HTML into the Text box
• Edit the width parameter (see below)
• Save and you are done

Editing the Width Parameter

When generating the widget on the Twitter site, there are three width choices available to you (narrow, wide & full). I selected the ‘narrow’ option but it was still too wide for the width of  The Daleisphere’s middle column. The ‘narrow’ width default is 290 pixels. My middle column is 275 pixels. At 290 pixels, the widget bled over into my third column.

Fortunately you can manually edit the width parameter in the HTML code that you cut and pasted into the Wordpress dashboard widget text box.  You have to edit the width parameter in two places. Search for the text ‘width=”290” and change it to your desired width, in my case 275. Then search and replace again. The first instance is close to the top of the code, the second instance is lower down in the code. Save your Changes in the Wordpress dashboard and you should be good to go.

I have been using Google Apps to host my personal and professional ‘@daledietrich.com’ email (pictured above) for about a year now. In this post I provide detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to do this.

While Google Apps’ Gmail is completely free, to use it you must register your own domain. If you haven’t yet, you can register a domain with a Domain Host (‘DH’). I use GoDaddy. As of the date I write this, GoDaddy charges $9.99 U.S. ($9.99 on sale) for a one year registration of  a DOT COM domain ($6.99 to transfer in an existing .com domain) and $10.69 for annual renewals.

Screenshots below were taken when I set up my ‘daleipshere.com’ domain to use Google Apps Gmail using GoDaddy.com as my DH.

Why Google Apps for Email?

A. Email Hosting for Any Domain – for Free: I used to pay $65 a year to have my @daledietrich.com email hosted by Elehost (a terrific ISP by the way). Now my @daledietrich.com, @daleisphere.com and @wishhh.com email is hosted on Google Apps for free!

B. Freedom from ISP Domains: Most personal email accounts use the ISPs domain – eg: yourname@comcast.com, yourname@rogers.com. This artificially locks users into a given ISP. If you wish to change your ISP you may be reluctant to do so because you’ll have to change your email address. If a move results in a change of ISP, you’ll have the additional hassle of changing your email address. But, when you set up a Google Apps Gmail account with your own custom domain, email accounts you set up for your family or business can be used forever – regardless of your ISP.

C. Best in Class Spam Filter – for Free: In the last year, only a half dozen or so spam emails have got past Google’s best-in-class free spam filter – with no false positives.

D. Up to 50 Users – for Free: The Standard Edition of Google Apps permits up to 50 users. Let’s say you used the domain ‘SmithFamily.com’. You could set up fifty email accounts such as Sam@SmithFamily.com & Sally@SmithFamily.com etc. for that domain. A small business could host customized emails for everyone – eg: Tom@PlumbingShop.com, Fred@PlumbingShop.com etc.  

E. 7 Gigs of Space per User – for Free: Each of your users is given 7 Gigs of space (same as Gmail). As has happened in the past, I expect the free per-user capacity to increase over time in-lock-step with regular Gmail accounts.

F. Mobile Sync – for Free: Google now uses Microsoft Exchange to sync Google Apps Gmail,  Contacts and Google Calendar to popular mobile devices such as a blackberry or an iPhone. (See: Google Turns on Exchange for iPhone and Windows Mobile Users.) [April 7, 2009 Update: Google App Gmail also works with the latest ‘faster, better Gmail for iPhone’ web-app.]

G. iMap Integration – for Free: Google’s IMAP for Gmail service allows you to sync email across any iMap compliant device. In my case, all the email I send and receive from any of my Outlook 2007 (desktop and laptop) accounts, my iPhone and the web – are all automatically synchronized, all the time. For example, if I send an email from my iPhone, that email appears in my ‘Sent Mail’ folders in Outlook (on both my PC and laptop) and on the web version of Google Apps – all accessible from any web browser, or any other iMap compliant device anywhere in the world. Free iMap support is what made me switch to Google Apps in the first place. I expect to write a separate post about this feature in the future. Here’s a demo on how to configure Outlook 2003 to interoperate with Google Apps Gmail via iMap.

H. Works Just Like a Gmail Account: If you use Gmail, you already know how to use email within Google Apps. As you  can see from the picture at the top of this post (click on it for a larger view), the environment is almost identical. There are subtle differences that the average users would never notice nor care about.

I. Works with any Pop3 or iMAP Email Client: In Step 9 below, I show you how to configure Google Apps Gmail for use with Outlook 2007. However, you can access Google Apps Gmail using any Pop3 or iMap compatible email client. Better yet, use the web-only Gmail client. The web-based Google App Gmail app is terrific. While I use Outlook 2007 as my primary way to access my Google App Gmail, I find myself using the web-interface more and more. And why not? Everything I do on the web is synced back with Outlook.

J. No Need for Corresponding Website: Let’s say you registered YourName.com. You can use Google Apps Gmail to host email accounts, such as me@YourName.com without ever having to set up a corresponding www.YourName.com website. If you so choose, you can also use Google Sites (which is part of the Google Apps suite) to host free websites on your domain. Google Sites is outside the scope of this post.

K. Beyond Email: Google Apps permits you, your family or your organization to do much more than just email – again, all for free. Google Apps features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including: Google Calendar (personal and shared calendars), Google Talk (instant messaging), Google Docs (documents and spreadsheets) and Google Sites (websites).  These are outside the scope of this post. Suffice it to say, once you’ve started with Google Apps Gmail, you’ll likely find some of the other apps compelling – I personally use its calendar, talk and docs apps frequently.

L. De-facto Email Backup: If you use Google Apps Gmail via the web or with iMap, instead of via POP3 as described below, your email is automatically backed up by by Google.

Before You Begin – Integration With Your Domain Host

This post assumes you already have secured a domain using a Domain Host (‘DH’). Below I describe the changes you’ll need to make to your DH’s configuration settings (including MX & CNAME Records) for Google Apps Gmail to work.  Virtually every DH allows users to modify these settings. Google maintains specific instructions on how to change MX records for about 50 different Domain Hosts (click on Section 3 in the link to find the instructions that apply to your DH). If you don’t know what these records are – don’t worry. They are just fields that need to be filled-in or edited on an online form. I give examples of how to do this on GoDaddy.com below. The process is similar with all other DH’s. It’s pretty easy.

If you have not yet secured a domain, I suggest using one of the 50 or so Domain Hosts listed in Section 3 of the link mentioned above  to make integration with Google Apps easier. 

I use GoDaddy in the examples below. Click on any image below for a larger view. Once you have secured your domain, you are ready.

[Note: The processes for adding/amending GoDaddy CNAME and MX records below assume Godaddy is your registrar and that you have not hosted a website on your domain elsewhere than with GoDaddy. If GoDaddy is your domain registrar, but you host your site elsewhere, you’ll need to edit your CNAME and MX records through your web-hosting ISP’s account settings dashboard.]

Let’s begin…
 

Step 1: Sign Up

To signup, click here. on the blue ‘Get Started’ button under the ‘Standard Edition’ heading on this Welcome to Google Apps page:

[July 7 2009 Update: The ‘Get Started” button depicted above is now gone from the main Google Apps page. A similar Get Started button appears on the Standard Edition description page. Or just Start here on the sign up page pictured below. For details on this change see: What the Hell Happened to the Free Version of Google Apps.]
 
Check of the ‘Administrator’ radio button, fill in your domain and click on the ‘Get Started’ button:

Fill in the account administrator and organization information fields as necessary and click the ‘Continue’ button (click image for larger view):

Fill in the administrator account info, click on the ‘I accept. Continue with set up’ button (if you accept):

Note: The administrator Username and Password you input here will be the default email username and password that you will use in Step7 below – once you get everything set up. Write it down somewhere.

You’ll next be taken to the Google Apps dashboard (pictured below). An email will also be sent to you explaining the next steps. The email will contain a link you can click on to get back to the Google Apps dashboard in the future  (click image for larger view):

IMPORTANT NOTE: The dashboard URL you’ll be taken too (and in the email) is a temporary Google Apps URL for your dashboard. If you close your browser during this process, you can get back to your dashboard through the email or by using the following temporary URL:

www.google.com/a/cpanel/<your domain>/Dashboard

where <your domain> is your particular domain – including the top-level-domain part (eg: .com) . For example, my temporary Daleisphere dashboard URL was:

www.google.com/a/cpanel/daleisphere.com/Dashboard

I strongly suggest you save the temporary URL as a bookmark until you are finished this tutorial. You’ll be going back to the dashboard several times in this tutorial.

Once you finish setting up and activating the email on your domain (as described below) you’ll be able to access your Google Apps’ Gmail and dashboard through an URL specific to your domain. For example, I access my Daleisphere email through this subdomain/alias: email.daleisphere.com.

I show you how to set up a permanent URL in Step 7 below. Until then you’ll use the temporary URL.

Step 2: Domain Ownership Verification Process

Next you’ll need to verify that you own your domain. Note the verification notice that appeared on the dashboard (pictured above):

Click on the ‘verify domain ownership’ link circled in green above. You’ll be taken to the verification page pictured below (click image for larger view):

There are two methods of verifying domain ownership. The first, ‘Upload an HTML file’ is the easiest but assumes you have a website setup on your domain. For the purpose of this post I’m assuming you do not have a website set up on your domain.

The second method requires you to ‘Change a CNAME record’ with your Domain Host. Select that option from the pull-down menu (circled in red above). Instructions for how to do this appear below the pull-down menu as shown in the image above. The 2nd bullet point in the instructions include a ‘Unique Key’ (see above). You’ll need to copy and paste that unique key into a temporary CNAME record on your domain. I explain how to do this in Step 3.

Note: Do not click the ‘Verify’ button yet (we’ll do that in Step 4). Keep this page open while completing Step 3. We’ll be coming back to it. Either open up a new browser instance or open a new tab in your browser to complete Step 3.

Step 3: Adding a Temporary Verification CNAME Record in your Domain:

The process of adding/editing CNAME records is slightly different from one Domain Host to another. Google has general ‘Creating CNAME records’ instructions here. Click on the ‘Specific Instructions for popular domain hosts’ section in that link to get instructions for more than a dozen domain hosts. For example: Here are the instructions for adding a CNAME record in GoDaddy.com.  If your domain host isn’t on the list, review the instructions for another domain host and do the best you can – there’s really not much to it.

Ultimately what you are doing here is:

• creating a new CNAME record (just a new entry in a database(;
• giving it the ‘Unique Key’ name identified ab0ve; and
• fling in the blank to ‘point it to’ google.com

Here’s how to do this in GoDaddy.com. Note: I’m following these instructions with a few more pictures:

1. Log in to your account at www.godaddy.com.
2. Click on the Domain Manager link (circled in yellow below):

    

3. Click the domain (eg: circled in red below) that you intend to use with Google Apps Gmail. If you just registered your first domain, there will be only one to choose from:
    
4. Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records link (circled in red below – click image for larger view):

    

5. Click the ‘Add New CNAME Record’ button: 

   

6. Paste the ‘Unique Key’ that Google Apps provided in Step 2 above  into the ‘Enter an Alias Name’ box below. Type ‘google.com’ in the ‘Point to Host Name:’ box below. Leave the default TTL field as it is. Click on the orange ‘OK’ button:

   
   You should see your temporary CNAME entry (circled in red) in the CNAME table that looks something like this: 

   
   Note the X circled in red on the right. When you finish the verification process we’ll come back here (at the end of Step 4) to click on that X to delete the temporary CNAME verification entry.

7. Wait until ‘Pending Setup’ Message Clears: It may take a few minutes for the CNAME to be processed. If this is the case you’ll see a ‘Pending Setup’ message under the ‘Actions’ column on the right (instead of the icons you see in the image above) while GoDaddy processes the temporary CNAME verification entry. Refresh this page every few minutes until the ‘Pending Setup’ message disappears and the checkboxes show up as depicted in the table above. Do not proceed until this is cleared. This typically took about 2 minutes to clear for me.

Step 4: Back to Google Apps for Verification

Click ‘Verify’ Button: Once you have added the temporary CNAME alias using the ‘Unique Key’ that Google Apps provided in Step 2, you can click the ‘Verify’ button on the Google Apps verification screen that we left open at the end of step 2 above.

You’ll be returned to the Google Apps dashboard and you’ll see the following notice (highlighted in school bus yellow below):

“We are checking domain ownership. This may take 48 hours to complete”.

I’ve done this 6 times now and it never took anywhere near 48 hours.In my experience this process takes from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Refresh the page every half hour or so until the notice goes away. Once the notice is gone, your domain has been verified and you can continue to Step 5.

Delete Temporary CNAME Alias: Once your domain has been verified you can go back to your GoDaddy CNAME table and delete the temporary verification CNAME entry by clicking on the x (circled in red in point 6 of Step 3 above) beside the temporary alias. Note: You don’t have to delete the temporary CNAME alias. It’s just a good practice to keep you records tidy.

Step 5: Activating Email – Configuring Your MX Records

Once verified, you’ll need to complete one more step to activate your email.   Notice the ‘Not Active’ notice circled in red beside the blue ‘Email’ link on your dashboard (pictured below). Click on the ‘Activate email’ link (circled in green below) to activate.

On the page that follows, you’ll find instructions on how to set up your Mail Exchange (‘MX’) records on your domain host. As you can see below, I selected the instructions for GoDaddy (click image for larger view):

You’ll need to follow the instructions that appear on that page – the GoDaddy instructions are shown in the image above and stepped through below. Adding/Editing MX Records is as easy as creating/editing a CNAME Alias – what you just did.

Note: Do not click on the ‘I have completed these steps’ button circled in red above until you have completed the applicable steps for your Domain Host.

By way of example, below is how to setup MX Records on GoDaddy.com. If you are not using GoDaddy, follow the instructions that apply to you and skip to Step 6 below.

Note: I’m following these instructions with a few more pictures:

1. Follow points 1 through 4 in Step 3 above.
2. If there are any entries in the MX records column delete them all first (by clicking on the ‘x’ box beside each existing entry (see picture below)).
3. You’ll be clicking on the ‘Add New MX Record’ tab (circled in red below) five times, filling in the rows so they look EXACTY like this when finished – it doesn’t matter whether you use upper or lower case (click image for larger view):
    

   NOTE: The exact number and content of MX records you’ll need to enter varies depending on your domain host. Be sure to find the exact records you’ll need to add from Section 3 on Google App’s Configuring MX Records page available here.

4. In GoDaddy, each time you click on the ‘Add New MX Record’ button you’ll fill in the contents of each row with this dialogue box:

   

5. You’ll get the ‘Pending Setup’ message again (just like after you created the temporary CNAME record) after you add each. These should clear up in a few minutes.

Step 6: Checking MX Records

After adding/editing your MX Records, click on the ‘I have completed these steps’ button circled in red on the Google Apps ‘set up email delivery’ page (shown in the image above). After clicking, you’ll be returned to the Google Apps dashboard where you’ll see this ‘Email’ – Updating’ message:

Once again, it won’t take 48 hours. If you followed the instructions in Step 5, this shouldn’t take more than a couple hours (and possibly only a few minutes). Refresh periodically (every 10 minutes or so) until you see the following ‘Email – Active’ indication on the Google Apps dashboard:

When you see the ‘Email – Active’ message your Google Apps’ Gmail account is set up and good to go. Congrats!

Step 7: Add Shortcut (subdomain) to Your Email on the Web

Your domain is set up, your email is activated, but how do you access the Google Apps Gmail screen on the web? As with the lengthy and easily forgettable temporary Google Apps dashboard URL discussed in Step 1 above, Google supplies an equally forgettable URL you and your users can use to get to your Google Apps Gmail inbox:

mail.google.com/a/<yourdomain> (depicted in green in step 7.1 below)

where ‘yourdomain’ is to be substituted with your domain name.

You can use that, and bypass this Step 7, if you wish. But I suggest setting up an URL that is easier to remember. That is the objective of this Step 7 . I suggest this form:

email.<yourdomain>

For example, I use email.daleisphere.com to access my info@daleisphere.com email through Google Apps.

To do this, you need to:

1. tell Google what alias you’ll be using;
2. create a permanent CNAME alias with your Domain Host, just like we did to create the temporary validation CNAME alias in Step 3 above; and
3. tell Google Apps that you completed the CNAME creation steps.

7.1. Telling Google Apps The Web Address You’ll be Using to Access Gmail:

From your Google Apps dashboard click on the blue Email link.  Before you do, notice the temporary email access link in green below the Email link .  We’re going to change that now.

After clicking on the blue Email link you’ll see this screen:

Click the red ‘Change URL’ link to bring up the following screen:

Click the second radio button option, type in the alias/subdomain you want to use and click the ’Continue’ button. Notice that I use the ‘email’ alias. You can choose any alias. If you do, modify the instructions below accordingly. I think ‘email’ makes logical sense.

The screen that appears next may provide instructions for your particular Domain Host. It knows your Domain Host at this stage (notice godaddy circled in green below) because you told it what your Domain Host was when up set up your MX Records above.

STOP!  DO NOT CLICK the ‘I’ve completed these steps’ button until you set up the CNAME described in section 7.2 below.

7.2 Creating Another CNAME Alias with Your Domain Host:

Once again, the process of adding/editing CNAME records is slightly different from one Domain Host to another. As before, click on the ‘Specific Instructions for popular domain hosts’ section here  to get instructions if Google Apps doesn’t give you instructions for your particular Domain Host on the ‘Changing CNAME record’ page above. In any event, the process is identical to the process you used to set up the temporary verification CNAME alias in Step 3 above.

I’ll be using the GoDaddy example once again:

• Follow items 1 through 5 in Step 3 above – which will result in your opening a new CNAME (Alias) dialogue box.
• This time the CNAME alias (ie: a subdomain) named ‘email’ will be added and we’ll be point it to: ghs.google.com by filling in the blanks as shown below (again leave the TTL field at its default):

• Click OK and wait for the ‘Pending Setup’ notice to disappear.

7.3 Tell Google Apps that you completed the CNAME creation steps

Now go back to Google Apps and click on the ‘I’ve completed these steps’ button shown in step 7.1 above.

7.4 Testing / Using your New Alias (Web Address) to Access Google Apps Gmail

Type:

‘http://email.<your domain>’ 

into any web browse and press ‘Enter’. ‘<your domain>’ is replaced, of course, with your particular domain (in my case I type in http://email.daliesphere.com). You’ll see a login screen like this:

Save that URL in your bookmarks. This URL is your (and your users) permanent entryway into your Google Apps Gmail and dashboard.

Type in the administrative username and password you entered in Step 1. and you’ll be presented with your Google Apps Gmail screen:

Take a look around. Enjoy.

7.5 Manage Your Domain

A ‘Manage this Domain’ link is circle in red above. Clicking on that link takes you to your Google Apps dashboard. If you wish you can setup another CNAME to take you directly to the dashboard. However, I haven’t bothered to do this personally (and don’t describe that process here) because the dashboard is always just one click away when I’m using Google Apps Gmail. You can also continue to use the ‘temporary’ URL discussed in Step 1 above to get to the Dashboard. But I never do. The ‘Manage this Domain’ link is all I need.

7.6 You’re Done?

If: (i) you are the sole user of your domain; (ii) you intend to use just the web-based Gmail front-end (shown above) to access your Google Apps Gmail account; and (iii) you do not want to have email from your old email account forwarded to your new account; this can be the end of the tutorial for you.

Keep reading, however, if you want to add additional email accounts/users to your domain, if you want to use Google Apps Gmail with Outlook 2007 via a POP3 account and/or to see you how to set Google Apps Gmail up to access email from your old email account as you transition away from it.

Step 8: Adding Users

If you are the only person using your domain, you can use the administrator email/user account you created in Step 1 above. Or, if you choose, you can add up to 50 users with 50 unique email addresses with the free Standard Edition of Google Apps.

Here’s how:

• click the ‘User and groups’ tab on the dashboard
• click the ‘Create a new user’ link
• enter the user’s first and last name along with a unique username
• record (copy and paste) the Google Apps generated temporary password somewhere – you’ll be providing this to the user in order for them to login later (they can change their password at any time)
• click the ‘Create new user‘ button
• notify the new user of their userid, password and how to access the email (ie: via the custom ‘http://email.<your domain>’  alias you tested in step 7.4 above)
• Repeat as needed

Step 9: Configuring Outlook 2007 for POP3 Access to Google Apps Gmail

In this section I describe how to configure Outlook 2007 to work with Google Apps Gmail.

If you use another email client Google provides this Supported POP client list page that provides instructions on how to configure other popular email clients.

Below I follow Google’s instructions for how to configure Outlook 2007 for use with Google Apps Gmail.

[Note: While I describe how to set up a POP3 connection here, if you intend to use/access your email from multiple devices, setting up an iMAP connection is a preferable connection method – See benefit ‘G’ at the top of this post.  In the future, I hope to write a follow-on post to this one describing how to do this.]

9.1 Configuring POP3 Settings on the Google Apps Gmail Page:

1. Click Settings at the top of any Google Apps Gmail page (circled in green below).
2. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
3. In the ‘Pop ‘Download’ row:
   
   1. select Enable POP for all mail or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on; and
   2. choose the action you’d like your Gmail to take after new emails are downloaded to your POP3 client (in my example Outlook 2007).  Unlike when I use iMAP, when I use POP3 accounts l do not want a copy left on the server so I chose the ‘delete The Daleisphere Blog Mail’s copy…’ option circled in red below

      (click image for larger view)

      

4. Click the ‘Save Changes’ button

9.2 Configuring the Outlook 2007 Client:

Remember: If not using Outlook 2007, you can get instructions for your email client through this Supported POP client list page.

To remove it:

• Run Regedit (Start button – type ‘regedit’)
• Navigate to:

       HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

• Change the ‘FeedbackToolEnabled’ key to 0 (it is set at 3 by default)
• Reboot

Here’s how to do this on a PC:

• open iTunes
• click on the ‘Edit’ menu
• click ‘Preferences’
• click the ‘General’ tab
• click the ‘Import Settings’ button
• click ‘MP3 Encoder’ on the ‘Import Using’ pull-down menu
• Select the desired quality level on the ‘Setting’ pull-down menu

 
I suggest using the highest possible ‘Higher Quality (192 kbps)’ option. This will take more time but encodes the best quality MP3.

• click ‘OK’ twice to close both dialogue boxes
• select the AAC track you want to convert in the iTunes window
  (you can click and convert more than one at a time if you wish)
• right-click on it;
• choose "Create MP3 version" from the popup menu.

The AAC file will then be converted into an MP3 file. It will automatically be added to iTunes. It will appear above or below the AAC track in your library as it is being created. To locate the underlying MP3 file on your hard drive:

• right click on the newly created MP3 version in your iTunes library
• click on the ‘summary’ tab

At the bottom of the the open dialogue box you’ll see the ‘Where:’ field telling you exactly where the song is on your hard drive.

Note: AAC and MP3 are both ‘lossy’ formats. The quality of the MP3 will be lower than the original AAC quality. This is why I suggested the highest encoding level above. For most, the quality will be just fine.

Google’s acquired Feedburner back in June of 2007. Feedburner has since been integrated into the Google Adsense platform. Bloggers can now place adsense units into their RSS feeds. In order to take advantage of of this service I needed to migrate my three Feedburner feeds into the new Google adsense feeds system.

According to this Google/Feedburner FAQ, February 28, 2009 is the deadline to migrate feeds. After that users will no longer be able to access their Feedburner accounts.

The migration process is simple for regular Feedburner users.

I use the MyBrand service – see my earlier ‘Google Turned Feedburner into ‘Free’burner Without My Knowledge’ post.   A few more steps are required to migrate MyBrand feeds.

General Migration Steps

You can initiate the migration process from inside of Google Adsense or Feedburner. I initiated the transfer from within Adsense.

Note: You’ll need to set up an adsense account before you initiate the migration.

• Click on this link to begin: ‘Move feeds to your Google Account’.
• Enter your Feedburner credentials into the following dialogue box:

  

• Click on the ‘Next’ button.
• The next page provides a list of your Feedburner feeds. Click the ‘Next’ button to complete the migration. Regrettably I didn’t get a screen shot of that page.
• For simple Feedburner feeds (ie: for those not using MyBrand) that’s it, your job is done – you’ll see the following ‘success’ screen (click on the image for larger view):

  

Additional ‘MyBrand’ Migration Steps

As you can see fro the ‘Important!’ paragraph above, there are a few more steps involved to finalize a ‘MyBrand’ migration:

• On the ‘Success!’ page above, click on blue
  
       http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mybrand 

  link to jump to the MyBrand migration instruction page. It looks like this (click image for larger view):

  

• Essentially these instructions tell you to change the CNAME alias you setup within your site’s DNS records when you first activated the MyBrand service.
• Specifically you change the alias from a Feedburner-specific alias to a Google-specific alias.
• The alias you’ll need to use is highlighted in yellow on the instruction page (see above).
• DynDNS is my DNS Service provider. For The Daleisphere, all I had to do was enter the alias highlighted in yellow above into the ‘Alias to:’ field for my feeds.daleisphere.com hostname as pictured below: 

See also: Instructions on how to adjust CNAME records on other DNS services

• Save Changes and Repeat for each feed.
• That’s it!

When logged into your adsense account, click on this Feedburner-within-Google link to access your feed information in the same way you did on Feedburner. My Feedburner page after migration looked like this (click image for larger view):

Note: The highlighted yellow text at the top that warns:

”Your feed stats might be low for a bit; they should return to former levels in about 72 hours”

Known MyBrand Migration 404 Problem

Some users have had problems with the MyBrand migration not taking. See here and here. I had the same problem initially. Here’s the solution:

• Sign in to feedburner.google.com
• click ‘My Account ‘ (top left)
• click the MyBrand option
• click the ‘Deactivate’ button on the bottom right of the page.

• Note: Do not remove feeds and click the ‘Save’ button on the bottom left as some have suggested.

Reference

• Transferring FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts FAQ
• MyBrand Tech Support FAQ

[This Post was Updated on April 18, 2009 to reflect the changes made to the setup process, both on Disqus and the Facebook developer pages.]

1. Why Facebook Connect is a Big Deal

Discussion via comments draws users back for repeated visits to their site while engaging them in conversation with the blogger and other commenters. Bloggers want traffic to drive more ad sales and, frankly, they want more people reading their content. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Users are understandably reluctant to leave comments on blogs. Most bloggers, including myself, require users to leave a name, email address and an optional URL. The reason for this, at least in my case, is to weed out spam commenters and to develop a sense of community among commenters. Requiring such information has the unfortunate side effect of dissuading most readers from commenting because they don’t want:

1. the ‘sign up’ hassle just to leave a comment; and
2. to provide personally identifying information.

Facebook Connect solves these two problems and provides other terrific benefits.

If the user is already logged into their Facebook account (and if they had previously granted appropriate permissions (see section 3 below)) when they read a blog post they’ll see an “Add New Comment” box like this:

They’ll automatically be logged in, ready to leave comments – the blue and white ‘f’ box in the bottom right corner of their picture indicates they are logged in with Facebook. All the user has to do is type a comment and click on the ‘Post Comment’ button. That’s it.

With Facebook Connect:

1. commenters are automatically logged into a blog’s comment system – without doing anything;
2. commenters do not need to sign up for anything beyond the authorization step described in point 3 below;
3. commenters do not need to disclose any personally identifying information to the blog;
4. commenters do not need to have a gravatar account in order to associate their picture with a comment -their Facebook picture is automatically linked to their comment;
5. the commenter’s name above the comment is automatically linked back to the commenter’s Facebook profile; and most importantly
6. at the commenter’s option (see picture below), links to the comment can, appear on the commenter’s Facebook wall/feed for their Facebook friends to see. This has the potential to draw new readers to the blog from a huge pool of Facebook users that would never have found the blog on their own.

Sweet!

The few people left on Earth without Facebook accounts can choose to login with a Disqus account, if they have one, or they can leave posts anonymously by clicking on the ‘Unclaimed’ option.

I’m convinced!

2. What Happens When a Facebook User is Not Logged into Facebook?

If a Facebook user is not currently logged into their Facebook account, they are presented with the generic Disqus ‘Add New Comment’ box:

Clicking on the ‘F Connect’ button, will log the reader into their Facebook account (via the permissions dialogue – see point 3 below) after which the Facebook-specific ‘Add New Comment’ box with the Facebook photo and ‘f’ icon, depicted two images above, will appear.

3. Granting Permissions

The first time the user chooses the Facebook Connect option on a given blog, they are presented with the following ‘permission screen’ notifying the user of the consequences of using Facebook Connect on the blog:

4.  How to Integrate Facebook Connect with Disqus

You can view Disqus’ very short original updated set of instructions on how to integrate Facebook Connect in this ‘Disqus – Facebook Connect Setup Page’. [April 18, 2009 Update: Despite being updated, as of April 18, 2009, this page still contains factual errors in its setup instructions. I have notified the Disqus team and hopefully it will be updated soon].

Or, keep reading. I fill in the gaps and walk you through the process step-by-step below.

4.1 Login to your Disqus Admin/Account Settings page: To begin, login to to your Disqus Admin/Account Settings settings page.

4.2 Check the Facebook Connect Box: Check the box beside the ‘’f  Facebook Connect’ box shown below. Notice the ‘(How do I get this ?)’ link (circled in red) under the ‘Enter Facebook API Key’ box. Clicking on this link exposes the five bullet point instructions and the sample Facebook ‘Create App’ form shown below:

4.3 Objective: Your objective here is to obtain the API Key from Facebook to copy and paste back into the designated field.

4.4 Getting The API Key: To get the API Key, you’ll need to ‘Set up a New Application’ on Facebook as a Facebook developer. Either click on the ‘fill out a new ‘Create App’ form pointed to by the green arrow above, or click here to go there directly.

If you are not logged into Facebook you’ll be taken through the Facebook login screen.

4.5 If you Are Not Already a Facebook Developer: If you are not already a member of the Facebook Developer group, you’ll be presented with this ‘Allow Access?’ screen (skip to section 4.6 below if you are already a Facebook developer):

Click ‘Allow’ to proceed. If you are not willing to join the Facebook Developer group, you will not be able to enable Facebook Connect in your blog.

Clicking ‘Allow’ brings you to the ‘My Applications’ page:

Click on the ‘+ Set Up New Applications’ button circled in red above.

4.6 Set Up New Facebook Application:

If you:

• followed the steps in section 4.5; or
• were already a Facebook developer, after clicking on the link in section 4.4 above; 

you will be taken to the following Facebook ‘Create Application’ screen:

• Fill out the ‘Application Name’ field: In my case ‘The Daleisphere’
• Click on the radio button beside ‘Agree’ if you agree to the Terms of Service; and
• Click the ‘Save Changes’ button

You’ll be taken to the ‘Basic’ tab Facebook Application settings screen depicted below:

4.7 Copy/Paste Facebook API Key: Copy and paste the API Keys(blurred and circled in red above)  into the corresponding fields (indicated in section 4.2 above) on the Disqus settings page. Don’t forget to click the ‘Save” button at the bottom of your Disqus options page (you may have to wait until after completing step 4.8 before clicking the save button however).

4.8 Edit and Save the Connect & Account Reclamation URL: Fields:

Next click on the ‘Connect’ tab on the Facebook Application settings screen – depicted below:

Type in the full URL, including the ‘http://’ part of your blog’s domain into the ‘Connect URL’ field. Type in just the root/base domain of your blog’s URL in the ‘Account Reclamation URL’ field as indicated in the picture above. 

Scroll down to the bottom of that page and click on the “Save Changes’ button.

4.9 That’s It! Assuming everything went as planned, that should be it.

Your Facebook commenters will be able to leave comments as described in section1 above.

5. Problems

5.1 Newsfeed Functionality currently Disabled: As of January 26, 2009, comments made using Facebook Connect are not fed into a commenter’s Facebook newsfeed/wall. In response to my query on this issue, Disqus Community Manager, Giannii, made this remark on the Disqus-Facebook newsfeed being disabled issue:

“Currently, the functionality for comments to post to your newsfeed is
disabled. We are waiting on a few items from Facebook and it will be
good to go.”

Note: As of April 18, 2009 the problem identified in the prior section 5.1 is resolved. I’ll need to do more testing before I can determine whether or not the issues identified in points 5.2 and 5.3 below are solved. They appear to be after some very basic testing.

5.2 ‘That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen’ & Other Errors: Testing Facebook Connect with Disqus on this blog with various browsers on different computers is sometimes resulting in the following error message:

I got that message when trying to post a comment (after having successfully connected to Facebook Connect) using IE 8 in Windows 7 Beta and when using Safari on my iMac. A friend of mine is getting that error in both Firefox and IE 7, on two different XP computers. I tried once again with IE 8 the next day and it worked fine. So the performance seems spotty at best with some browsers.

5.3 Having to Connect with Facebook Connect Over and Over: Jack reported this problem in the comments below and I have also experienced it.  Sometimes when a comment is left with Facebook Connect immediately after another comment was made with Facebook Connect (even in the same blog), the user has to go through the permissioning step discussed in section 3 above, over and over. Disqus is not always remembering previously verified Facebook users. This is not how this is supposed to work. Again.

Earlier this month I described How to install Intense Debate in Wordpress 2.7 blogs. In my ‘Why I switched from IntenseDebate to Disqus’ post [coming soon] I describe why I made the switch.

The Disqus installation instructions are out of date (written for pre WP 2.7 blogs) and surprisingly difficult to follow.

Happily, both Disqus and IntenseDebate mirror/sync comments within a blog’s databases (though there are still problems with threaded comments not retaining structure – see part 6 below). This makes it possible to switch back and forth between the two at will.

Below I provide a step-by-step guide for integrating Disqus within a Wordpress 2.7 blog. I first make some preparatory recommendations. Then I describe the steps needed to set up with Disqus, download and install the Disqus WP plugin, how to import your historical comments into Disqus and, finally, how to reclaim straggler comments.

1. Preparation Recommendations

This guide assumes you have installed and are running Wordpress 2.7 (see my WP 2.7 First Impressions post here for more details).

1.1 Tweak Your Comment URL & Email Address Fields: 

(Note: This step may not be required in light of the process described in section 5 below to reclaim comments. This is what I did nonetheless.)

If you’ve run your blog(s) for years, as I had before installing Disqus, you’ll have many personal comments made by you in response to comments made by others. For various reasons I used different email addresses and URL’s as a self-identifier when commenting within my own blog posts. The email address you use when you sign up for Disqus, will be the only email address used to identify you within your comments both on your blog and every other Disqus blog going forward. If the email address you give Disqus is different from the one you’ve used when leaving historical comments, you’ll want to use WordPress’ built in comment editor to edit the email and URL fields in all your prior comments prior to integrating Disqus to make sure a consistent email address and URL are used.

(Note: This can be done really quickly if you use WP 2.7’s new “Quick Edit’ option after each comment on the Comment moderation page in your WP 2.7 dashboard.)

Otherwise, historic comments you’ve left using other email addresses will NOT be associated/linked as comments from you on your own blog. You must do this before integrating Disqus. Edits made locally after you integrate Disqus will not be integrated with your comments on the Disqus servers. And the Disqus comment manager provides no way of editing these fields once you are done.

1.2 If Migrating from Intense Debate: If you are migrating from Intense Debate, you’ll want to edit all your comments to change the default URL they insert in the URL field for all your comments from: http://intensedebate.com/people/[your unique ID profile  name] to your blog’s URL. Otherwise, you’ll have permanent links back to Intense Debate that you won’t want.

1.3 Delete All Spam: You might as well delete all current Akismet trapped spam within the Wordpress dashboard’s comment moderation page before backing up and integrating Disqus with your blog.

1.4 Backup: I strongly suggest you backup your Wordpress database files before you start. I use the WordPress Database Backup plugin for this.

2. Set Up Steps on Disqus Site

2.1 Sign Up: Sign up for an Disqus account. It takes less than a minute.

2.2 Add a Website/Blog to Integrate: Once signed up, from the Disqus home page, click ‘Add Website’ link to bring up the ‘Add a website to integrate’ page pictured below (click image for larger view):

 
Click ‘Done’ when ready. Next, click on the Wordpress logo on the ‘Choose your platform to install’ page (click image for larger view):

As of the date of this post (January 23, 2008) Disqus still presents these out of date instructions for installing the plugin (click image for larger view):

These instructions assume you are using a pre-Wordpress 2.7 blog. The Wordpress 2.7-specific instructions described below are easier, less confusing and faster to use with Wordpress 2.7. I suggest clicking on the ‘Done’ button to bypass this page altogether.

2.3 Settings Screen: Next up is the Disqus ‘Settings’ screen partially depicted below (click image for larger view):

You can come back and futz with these settings options after you install the plugins and get the comments syncing (as described below). The defaults work well. FYI I initially made the following changes (circled in red above) from the default settings:

• Trackbacks: I want trackbacks included in my comments for cross-promotional reasons. So I checked this box.
• Facebook Connect: Facebook Connect integration is the  primary reason I switched from Intense Debate to Disqus. To learn more, read my ‘Why and How to Integrate Facebook Connect with Disqus’ post.
• Default Sort by: I’m a traditionalist and chose ‘Oldest First’. the default, ‘Hottest first’ confuses me.
• Do not show comments below: I chose –10 for now. The default is –4. Any posts rated below the threshold (ie: by people effectively giving them thumbs down) are not displayed.
• Add Comment Box: The traditionalist in me likes to place the comment box at the “Bottom of thread” instead of the Disqus default ‘Top of thread’. But I keep moving it around as I’m playing. As of this moment, I haven’t settled on a final preference.

When you are finished with your tweaks, click on the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page (not shown in the picture above).

That’s it for the setup steps on the Disqus servers! You can now proceed to your blog’s Wordpress 2.7 dashboard.

Remember, you can adjust your settings on the Disqus servers at any time.

3. Plugin Set Up Steps in your Wordpress 2.7 Dashboard

Fire up your Wordpress 2.7 dashboard and continue with the steps described below:

3.1 Install the Disqus Plugin in WP 2.7: In the Wordpress 2.7 dashboard, click on the ‘Add New’ option in the Plugins menu (item 1. below). Type the search term ‘disqus” into the search box (item 2. below), click the ‘Search’ button and then click the install option to the right of the ‘DISQUS Comment System’ result (item 3. below):

  
3.2 Warning Message: As of January 23, 2009, a warning screen comes up after clicking on ‘install’ saying that this plugin (I installed v. 2.03-3166) has not been tested with Wordpress 2.7.

Disqus founder Daniel Ha verified that Disqus works perfectly with Wordpress version 2.7 in a reply to a comment I made on the Disqus forums. There are any number of Wordpress 2. 7 sites using it without problem, including mine.

Click on the orange ‘Install Now’ box (pointed to in the image above). The plugin will download and install automatically.

3.3 Activate: Activate the plugin-like any other WordPress plugin by clicking on the ‘activate’ option beside the plugin in the WordPress dashboard plugins directory.

Note: Simply activating does not complete the installation process. You’ll need to install Disqus (described below) after which you’ll want to import your current comments (export from your perspective) to the Disqus servers.

3.4 ‘Install’ Disqus: After activation, click on the ‘Comments’ button down the left side of your WP 2.7 dashboard to bring up the following ‘Install’ screen (click image for larger view):

WARNING: Do not click on the ‘Install’ button X’d out in red above (like I initially did).

Fill in the username and password you used when you signed up for Disqus . Click ‘next’ button (circled in red above).

If you are installing multiple blogs in one Disqus account like I have, you’ll be asked to identify which blog it is on the next screen:

In the case above I selected ‘The Daleisphere’ radio button then clicked on the ‘Next’ button to proceed. A few seconds later the initial install will be complete and you’ll see an empty Comment screen within your WP 2.7 dashboard:

Notice how there are zero comments. That’s because at this stage, Disqus has not yet imported/backfilled your old comments into its database. We’ll do that next.

4. Importing your Old Comments into Disqus

This is the next-to-last part of the process and the one that has been fraught with problems in both my earlier Intense Debate and Disqus trials. The import function has come a long way over the last half a year. Hopefully all the bugs are ironed out and this will not be a problem for you. I couldn’t get past this part last November but it all went swimmingly this time around.

Remember, you should have backed up your blog’s databases before you start the import process so you can recover if something goes wrong.

As indicated in the image above, click on the ‘Advanced Options’ button when you are ready to begin the import/backfill process. The ‘Advanced Options’ page comes up next (click image for lager view):

• The ‘DISQUS API Key’ field should already be populated with your Disqus accounts’ API key. If not, something went wrong with the install process above
• In the ‘Use DISQUS on’ field, select ‘On all existing and future blog posts’ from the pull down menu
• click on the ‘Import’ button

I’m curious as to what the ‘Uninstall’ button does there. I thought to uninstall all I had to do was deactivate the Disqus plugin. Hum?

If all goes well you’ll be returned to the comments page with the yellow queuing message highlighted below:

The message reads:

“Your comments have been queued for importing to DISQUS. You may check the advanced options tab for a status update.”

When you click on the “advanced options” tab/button as suggested you’ll see this ‘Import Status: Unprocessed’ message:

Now you can walk away for a few hours!

In my experience it was hours before the importing process began. I was never present when my blog reached the front of the queue and the import process took place. I did catch the Intense Debate process for one blog and it took just seconds to process a few hundred comments. I’d expect the import process to take the same amount of time on Disqus. Obviously if you have thousands of comments, the import function will take much longer.

When the import/backfill process is finished, your comments moderation page within your WP 2.7 dashboard will look something like this:

Notice the pull-down menu. If you run multiple blogs you can moderate all your comments from all your blogs within the same comment moderation panel. Sweet.

5. Verifying / Claiming Your Comments:

Oddly, after the install was compete and my old comments were imported back to the Disqus servers, some of my old comments didn’t automatically get associated with my Disqus account. Some of my comments no longer showed my avatar pictures. Some did. When you hold the cursor over your name/avatar when viewing a post, you’ll see and ‘unclaimed profile’ box like the one below for comments that didn’t get linked with your Disqus profile (click image for larger view):

The reason for this, I believe, is that I did not use the same email account, when I left those comments, as I used when I signed up for Disqus. In fact, for various reasons I’ve used several different emails when posting comments on my blogs over the years.

Happily, you can claim all such unclaimed comments and associate them back with your Disqus profile.

Be sure you are logged into Disqus before proceeding.

Clicking on the ‘unclaimed profile’ link (circled in red in the image above), takes you to this Disqus page (click image for larger view):

To claim comments associated with the email address you used when you initially left that comment click on the ‘Claim Profile’ button (circled in red above). This takes you to this ‘claim profile and comments’ page:

Type in the email address that you used when you originally left the comment (not necessarily the one you used when you signed up for  Disqus). Click the ‘Done’ button. Disqus will send an email to that email account. When you verify the email, your older comments (and all comments left with that email address even on other Disqus blogs) will then become associated with your Disqus profile.

Repeat as necessary for any and all email addresses you control and have used in the past when you left comments on your, or other Disqus-powered, blogs (in my case there were about five).

I don’t fully understand how this works, but suffice it to say after claiming a few comments I was able to associate all the comments on all three of my blogs with my Disqus profile. After claiming the post above, hovering over the avatar for that same comment yield’s this profile box:

 
Notice the chicklet links to my other blog, my facebook, linked in and twitter accounts. There’s also a ‘View Profile’ link at the bottom that links to all my prior comments across all Disqus-powered sites.

6. Disqus Problems/Issues

As good as Disqus is, it isn’t without its problems. Obviously none of these are deal breakers for me. I hope most of these will be addressed over time.

6.1 Edits Not Synced back to Database: All new comments are synced on Disqus servers and my blog’s database. However, if a commenter subsequently edits a comment (or if I edit one of my own comments), the edited version is not synced back to my underlying blog database. This is a big deal. This means that if I ever leave Disqus, only the original comments will be shown. All edits exist only on Disqus servers. Intense Debate does not share this problem. This needs to be addressed.

6.2 Deletions Not Synced back to Database: This is just a variation on point 6.1. The ultimate comment edit is to delete a comment. If you delete a comment using the Disqus comment moderation page, the deleted comment is not deleted from the bloggers synced database. This includes deleted spam that made it through Akismet and Disqus spam filters. So, if/when I leave Disqus, all the comments I deleted will return.

Tip: The obvious, though regrettable, workaround for this is to manually delete deleted comments in your database as and when you delete them through Disqus. To do this, bypass the Disqus comment moderation panel in the Wordpress dashboard. You’ll need to save the following shortcut to access it:

http://<insert your blog’s domain>/wp-admin/edit-comments.php

You need this shortcut because Disqus redirects the WP dashboard ‘Comment’ menu item to its moderation panel and, unlike Intense Debate, does not give you an option to use Wordpress’ superior comment moderation page.

6.3 Facebook Connect Users Cannot Edit their Comments: One of the nice features of Disqus is that Disqus registered commenters can go back and edit prior comments at any time. As of January 25, 2009, commenters that use Facebook Connect to leave a comment, cannot edit their comments. This seems to be a significant oversight.

6.4 No Ability to Edit Comments: As a moderator all Disqus permits me to do is delete comments (and mark them as spam). I cannot edit out inappropriate language, flame bating etc. Disqus is courting the commenter community. I understand the desire of commenters not to have their comments mangled by bloggers. But, as a blogger, I’m not happy with this all-or-nothing approach to comment moderation.

6.5 Threaded Structure Didn’t Survive Conversion from Intense Debate: In the move from Intense Debate (‘ID’) to Disqus the threaded structure of ID comments was stripped out. The ID team told me that when threaded comments are synced to my blog’s database, they are synced with the info needed to keep threading intact. WordPress 2.7 now supports threading natively. If I leave either ID or Disqus, I want my threaded comments to retain their threaded structure. Either the ID team was wrong or (more likely) the Disqus comment import function does not yet support threaded comments. This is more probable given that all their documentation reflects pre Wordpress 2.7 functionality. Beyond the conversion issue, I want to know that if/when I leave Disqus that comment threads created while using Disqus will remain when I leave Disqus.

6.6 Issue re: Comments.php File: Disqus works by substituting its own content for your comments.php template file. If, like me, you made customizations to your comments.php file, they will be gone. In my case I had inserted Adsense and Amazon Affiliate scripts in that file. I had to modify my post template to accommodate this change.

6.7 Bland Default Avatars: Most of my commenters, at this point, are not Disqus users. As I mentioned here, I really liked the default WordPress comment avatars for anonymous commenters. As you can see, the default Disqus avatar that shows up for non-Disqus and non-Facebook users is a rather boring grey/black one.

7. The End Game

As I wrote in my original ‘How to install Intense Debate in Wordpress 2.7’ post, the end game will have to be some kind of unification of the systems, or at least some industry standard specifications so the two communities interoperate and are not islands. Think how AIM and MSN Messenger users, for example, could not IM between the two systems. Or how Prodigy and CompuServe users could not email each other before Internet email became a standard. In an ideal future world, commenter reputations, identities, comment threads, histories etc. should follow the commenter whether the blog is an ID, Disqus or other comment community site.

Who knows, perhaps Facebook Connect will be the grand unifier.

8. Thanks

Thanks to Daniel Ha (Disqus’ founder) and Giannii (Disqus’ Community Manager) for helping me out and answering all my questions over the last 6 months.

The installation was straight forward. It took about two hours to complete on my system (I understand clean installs can be done in about 20 minutes). After answering a few questions, the upgrade took care of itself.

[Update: On Sunday January 18, installed W7B on my Lenovo x41 Tablet in dual-boot mode. So far so good. I hope to write a separate post about my tablet experiences with it soon.']

Below I describe the problems, bugs, likes, dislikes and other observations I’ve made after constantly using the beta in a production environment for five days.

1. Upgrade Problems, Issues, Bugs

The upgrade went smoothly for the most part. But, I did experience the following problems, issues and bugs:

• Windows Desktop Gadgets Do Not Work When UAC is Shut Off: This bug took me several days to isolate. As you’ll read below, I shut off UAC because, among other reasons, Woopra wouldn’t start automatically with it turned on. Isolation was tricky because when you first turn off UAC, the gadgets don’t immediately disappear. But they will be gone after your next reboot. In my case the next reboot came after I installed a sound card driver (see below). For days I though my sound card driver was knocking out my gadgets … until I found this article explaining the bug. Suffice it to say, in Windows 7 Beta, if you turn off UAC, your gadgets will disappear. For now I’ve set UAC on the lowest settings to keep my gadgets going. This means Woopra won’t auto-start any more (see below) and I have to manually bypass the UAC warnings each time I manually start it up.
• Multi-monitor & Screen Resolution Setup Issue: I have four monitors connected to my Dell XPS rig. Both: (i) the relative positioning settings (ie: where monitors sit next to each other); and (ii) the screen resolution settings s (ie: 1900 x 1200);  used in Vista were futzed up after the upgrade. Plus, the procedure used to adjust the relative monitor positioning has changed in W7B. It took me some time to figure that out. To adjust each of these settings in W7B, right click on the desktop and select ‘Screen Resolution’  (click image for larger view). From there you can position your monitors and set the screen resolutions back to where they should be. 

• Sound Card Driver Knocked Out: My Creative Sound Blaster Audigy  2 ZS audio card worked just fine under Vista. The W7B upgrade knocked it out. When I used Windows 7 to look for updates to the driver, the system said I had the latest version. I downloaded the latest driver from Creative (here) and when I tried to install it, it gave me this error message:

  ’Your Version of Windows Operating  System is not supported by this product. Please upgrade to Windows Vista or later versions before resuming installation’

  Ha! For a few days I used the sound card built into the motherboard, but later I tried using the next-to-last Vista driver available from Creative and it works fine.

• iTunes Auto-Launch Issue: iTunes no longer automatically launches when I plug in my iPhone. I need to manually start iTunes each time I want to sync it. Everything else about iTunes including syncing with AppleTV and my iPhone otherwise seems to be working fine.
• Gadget  Issues:
  • AccuWeather Gadget Knocked Out: I used the AccuWeather Gadget in Vista. It doesn’t work under Windows 7 Beta. I switched back to WeatherBug, which does work.
  • 24 Clock Gadget Clipped: The ‘24’ Clock gadget gets clipped at the bottom (see picture). It still tells the correct time, however. So I’m using it as clipped for now.
• AutoStart Issue: Some programs that I had set to auto-start in Vista do not autostarted after the upgrade. I’m still working through the issues for each one. But I know Woopra didn’t (and for now won’t, because of the gadget issue described above) start because its drivers are not signed (as required of all programs running under W7B). So UAC prevents its launch.
• No Warning/Notices on Faulty Installs: I tried to install TeamViewer several times. Each time it looked like the install went fine but the program never showed up in ‘All Programs’ etc. I later remembered to use the ‘Run as Administrator’ mode to install the program. When I did, it installed just fine. You’d think W7B would provide some kind of warning/notice screen when installs are blocked owing to permissions/UAC issues. But, no, it allows the installation to run and finish as though everything went OK, right to the end, with no explanation as to why the app did not, in fact, install.
• Skype: Earlier versions of Skype are not compatible with Windows 7 Beta. Fortunately, Skype version 4 is now compatible with Windows 7 Beta.
• Windows Live Messenger, Windows Mail, DVD Maker Etc. Gone: As part of Microsoft’s plan to move Windows users to ‘Windows Live Essentials’, Windows Live Messenger, MSN, Windows Messenger (all various flavours of the same app) and several other Vista apps no longer ship with Windows. Indeed, I discovered that all of them were removed from my system when I did the WB7 upgrade. Grrrrr! To get WLM back, for example, I had to download it here.  During the install process Microsoft tried to get me to agree to: (i) change my default search provider to Microsoft; (ii) change my default home page to MSN; and (iii) get me to help them to improve search results by collecting information about how I use the web (click image for larger view):

  
  Given how lucrative search is and how much Microsoft wishes to recapture this business from Google, I understand why Microsoft forces its W7 users to go through this process to get back apps that were previously included in Vista. There is no other rationale for this.

  TIP – Run Windows Live Messenger in System Tray using Vista Compatibility Mode: When you run WLM in Vista, an icon for it appears in the system tray. When you run it in W7B a taskbar button appears on the taskbar. If you want it to run in the system tray as it did in Vista, set it up to run in the Vista compatibility mode. To do this:

  - right click on the app in the ‘All Programs’ menu;
  - select ‘Properties’;
  - select the ‘Compatibility’ tab (see picture below);
  - put a check in the ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for:’ box;
  - select the “Windows Vista’ option in the pull-down menu (see picture); and
  - click ‘Apply’.

  
  As far as I know, this work around will run with all Vista system tray apps don’t run in the system tray in W7B. I expect this will be fixed before the final release of W7B. 

• Default .wmv Playback in Firefox: Firefox 3 is my preferred browser. When I access .wmv movie files (eg: video game trailers) on a website, I prefer for them to play  inside of Windows Movie Player (‘WMP’)  and not inline in my browser.  I want the full set of playback controls when I view web video content. The W7B upgrade, however, reset the Firefox defaults to play .wmv files (and other media types) within the browser.

  TIP – To Make .wmv Files Play in WMP: In Firefox select: Tools –> Options —> Applications tab —> for each media/content type default you wish to change on the left, select your desired playback method through the pull-down menus on the right (click for larger view):

   

• File Menu Disappears in Windows Media Player 12: When playing back video content the ‘File’ menu across the top of the player no longer appears. Pressing and the ‘Alt’ key when a movie is playing will display a vertical File menu. I have not yet found a way to return the File menu the way it was in earlier versions of WMP.
• MP3 Corruption Issue: An early known flaw with W7B is that it can corrupt MP3 files (see here and here). The first thing I did after installing W7B was to install Microsoft’s patches to fix this issue. These patches will be included in future WB7 system updates. For now you can get the patches direct from Microsoft as follows:

  - Fix for Windows 7 x86 (32-bit)

  - Fix for Windows 7 x64 (64-bit)

• Outlook 2007 .pdf Preview Issue: I use Foxit Reader to read .pdf files. Adobe Acrobat has caused nothing but problems over the years and is a prime example of modern-day bloatware. I removed Acrobat over a year ago. Prior to the W7B upgrade I was still able to preview .pdf file attachments inside of Outlook. After the Upgrade I cannot. I get this error message:

  ”This file cannot be previewed because there is no previewer installed for it”

  [March 3, 2009 Update: A possible longer term solution to this problem is the Foxit PDF Previewer. Though I tried it and it doesn’t work with Windows 7 yet.]

2. New Features & Functions I Like

• Speed: Without doubt, the biggest advantage of Windows 7 over Vista is speed. Everything is snappier in Windows 7. Programs launch faster. The computer starts faster, shuts down faster and resumes from hibernation faster. One of my Windows Gadgets monitors the four CPU cores in my rig. While not a scientific test, by my simple observation the cores seem to be doing noticeably less work than they did under Vista for the same tasks.
• Jump Lists: I’m finding the new ‘jump lists’ feature very useful. For example, when I right click on the Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar (or hover over the icon on the Start menu), a list of all the directories I’ve recently visited are listed for easy access. Right click/hover over Windows Live Writer (as depicted below – click image for larger view) and all the recent blog posts I’ve written/edited are easily accessible with a single click from the resulting jump list. Same with images recently edited in Paint.net, documents recently written in Word and so on and so on. Brilliant!

  
  TIP 1 – Jump List ‘Swoosh’ Shortcut: Rather than right clicking on a taskbar icon you can left-click swoosh your mouse (like how you swoosh lists on an iPhone to move them) over a taskbar icon to bring up the jump list.

  TIP 2 – PIN Frequently-Used Directories to Windows Explorer’s ‘Jump List’: When in Windows Explorer, drag and drop any folder onto the Windows Explorer icon pinned to the taskbar and that folder will appear in Windows Explorer’s ‘Jump List’.

  Note: If you look closely at the image above, you’ll see that I restored the Quick Launch Bar in W7B. I explain how to do this in a TIP further below.

• Reduced Restarts After Installations: The need to restart the system after installing applications and updates is significantly reduced. For example when I downloaded and installed the new Skype Beta, Windows Live Messenger (see above) and an update to Windows Live Writer, I did not need to reboot my system for the install/change to take affect. Two W7B system updates were accomplished without the need to reboot. This is a huge improvement if it is implemented across all apps going forward. Love it!

  Note: I did, however, have to restart the system for the Windows Live Messenger change discussed above to take (ie: where I set it to run in Vista compatibility mode).

• Free Floating Gadgets: In Vista, most gadgets were grouped together in the the gadget sidebar. Now you can scatter them around to any convenient place on your desktop.
• Free Floating Sticky Notes: WB7 has a free-floating sticky note application. Create as many sticky notes as you want, and place them anywhere on the screen. Right click to change their colour. Very useful for temporary note taking.

  TIP – Keep Stickies Alive: If you leave the new ‘Sticky Notes’ App running when you shut down W7B, it automatically runs the next time you boot the system – which makes me wonder, why didn’t Microsoft implement stickies as a new  gadget instead of a free floating App? I’d much prefer it that way.

• Non-Combined Taskbar Buttons are Grouped: As you’ll read below, I dislike much of the way the taskbar now works. However, I do like how it keeps non-combined taskbar buttons for the same application together. For example, with Outlook running, if I later open an email and then open a contact, the associated task bar buttons for the newly opened email and contact appear to the right of the previously opened Outlook button in the taskbar – even if I had opened other applications in the mean time (click for larger view):

  
  In Vista, if, say, I had opened a Word document after opening Outlook but before opening the email and contact, the Word icon would have been placed between the Outlook icon and the email and contact icons. So, all icons for any given open application are always grouped together on the task bar. Sweet.

• Taskbar Preview Enhancements: Vista provided a preview of an app when you hovered over its button on the task bar. Windows 7 takes this further. As you can see from the image above, when I hover over any taskbar button associated with any open application W7B shows previews for all the open windows for that application. In the image above, I’m hovering over the button for an open email but you can see previews for that email as well as for the main Outlook screen on its left and an open contact on the right. You can then move the mouse over any of those previews to isolate/find that full-sized window on your desktop. For example, if a previewed window was under another window, hovering over the preview pulls that window to the top. Move the mouse away and the highlighted screen returns to its prior state. You don’t have to click your mouse for these previews to work. Hovering without clicking is all that’s needed. If you do click on a preview, the associated window becomes the window in focus. Very clever.
• ‘Aero Peek’ (Show Desktop) Button: By hovering your mouse over the little rectangle on the bottom right corner of the screen (or by pressing Win+Space) the desktop is revealed. Move the mouse away, and everything comes back. No need to click. If you do click on the rectangle, all open apps are minimized (as did Show Desktop button in Vista). Click on it again again and everything is returned.
• Automated, User-Selectable Backups: In Vista you could not choose what directories you wanted its backup function to back-up – making it useless for those of us that choose our own data file hierarchy structure. In W7B the user can choose which directories are backed up. And you can set W7B to automatically backup your selected directories at intervals of your choosing.

  This finally has the makings of the first truly useful Windows-based backup system! I haven’t tested it yet so I’m going to reserve final judgement on it until I do. I’m hoping this automatic backup system will result in a mirrored file-for-file backup rather than the proprietary mish-mash of unusable guck that Microsoft backup systems have provided in the past. I’ll test this at some point and update this post when I do.  For now, I rely on Second Copy (which still works fine under W7B).

• Ed Bott’s ‘Six Vista Annoyances fixed in Windows 7’: Ed Bott wrote this terrific piece on fixes made in W7B to deal with Vista annoyances. Rather than repeat or summarize them, I’ll just link to them below. Suffice it to say, I am delighted with each of these W7B changes:

  - Vista Annoyance #1: That awkward Preview pane
  - Vista Annoyance #2: The overcomplicated Shutdown button
  - Vista Annoyance #3: Arranging windows, awkwardly

  - Vista Annoyance #4: Unpleasant User Account Control
  - Vista Annoyance #5: The ultra-minimalist Defrag utility
  - Vista Annoyance #6: The no-options backup program (mentioned above)

3. New Features & Functions I Dislike

• Taskbar Issues & Quick Launch Gone:
  • New Apple Dock-Like Taskbar: Microsoft took a play out of Apple’s playbook. They removed the Quick Launch toolbar (which I use constantly) and implemented a Windows version of the Mac Dock (which I very-much dislike). In lieu of the Quick Launch Toolbar, launch icons for your favourite apps can be ‘pinned’ to the taskbar (click here to see a video on how the new pinning system works). That’s nice as far as it goes. But once you start launching applications from those pinned launch icons:  

       – the launch icon for the launched app disappears and turns into a running app icon; and

       – the remaining launch icons get  mixed in with the running app icons; 

    with the result that:

       – it’s hard to determine which apps are running and which are not; and

       – there is no remaining quick launch icon available to click on to launch another instance of that app (though you can right click on a running app icon, scroll up the menu and click on the app’s name to run another instance)
    TIP – Middle Click to Launch a New Instance: You can middle click on an already running app icon to launch a new instance of it. 

    After a few apps are launched, the ‘pinned’ launch icons can be anywhere on the taskbar. There is no consistent place to go to to launch the app you want. You now have to search the taskbar for the icon of the program you want to launch. It’s location will always depend on which running app icons are around it. If, like me, you run 10, 15 or more apps simultaneously, this quickly becomes an nightmare. GRRRRRRR!  I do not want icons for running apps mixed with icons for non-running apps. Short of returning the Quick Launch Bar (see below) there is no way around this that I can find. I really hope that in the final release the quick launch bar is formally returned or they provide a way to separate the active running app icons from the inactive launch icons.

    TIP – Restoring the Quick Launch Bar: Thanks to Tim Sneath from this ‘The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets’ article for the following instructions on how to restore the Quick Launch Toolbar (from secret 13):

    • Right-click the taskbar,
      • Uncheck the “lock  the taskbar”
      • Choose Toolbars / New Toolbar
    • In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
      %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
    • The Quick Launch Bar will be added to the right side of the task bar beside the system tray
    • Right-click on the ‘Quick Launch Bar" divider.
      • Uncheck the “Show text” and “Show title” buttons
      • Select view and choose “small icons" or large icons as per your preference
    • Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

  I have restored my Quick Launch bar, as you can see in the ‘Jump Lists’ image above, but have still left a few applications pinned to the task bar.

• ‘Pinned Icons’ Take up too Much Space:  As you can see below, the ‘pinned’ icons for applications yet to be launched are spread out, wasting precious task-bar space. In the previous Quick Launch toolbar they took up much less horizontal space. 
  Note: See my ‘Jump Lists’ image above to see how much space icons take up in the Quick Launch bar.
• Combined Icons: On top of that mess, the default taskbar button layout is ‘Always combine, hide labels’ (see image below).
   
  Can you tell from the icons above that there are two open Word documents, zero open Excel spreadsheets, two open Outlook windows and five open Firefox windows (among other apps)? No you can’t. If you have steely eyes you’ll notice ribs beside the Word, Outlook and Firefox icons indicating more than one, but you won’t/can’t know how many underlying windows are open until you hover over the icon to preview them. 

  Combining taskbar buttons in this way is nothing new. It’s been a Windows staple for some time. I always shut this off . Ideally there would be a ‘Never combine, never show labels’. But there isn’t. For me, the best choice,  of the available three (see below) is ‘Never combine’. But I’m still stuck with labels. Grrrr!

  
  To make this change, right click on the ‘Start’ button,  select the ‘Tastkbar’ tab, then make your choice as per the image above. The same taskbar now looks like this when you choose the ‘Never combine’ option:

  
  It’s obvious now how many windows are open for each application and they are much more easily accessed. Notice the Excel launch icon mixed in with icons for launched apps even though Excel is not launched. This is just plain silly!

  For an in depth discussion of this topic, listen to the last 15 minutes or so of this Windows Weekly podcast with Paul Thurrott.

4. Other Observations

• All Other Applications Run Fine: I run an extensive array of applications. Save for the sound card driver problem and the Skype, Woopra and Live Messenger issues discussed above, so far every other application runs exactly as it had in Vista – only faster.
• ‘Windows Experience Index’ Score Decreased:  My WEI score decreased significantly.  My vista score was 4.3. My Windows 7 Beta score is 3.2 (gaming graphics being the lowest score). Same hardware. Go figure.
• HomeGroup Won’t Be Useable By Most: While great in theory, the new ‘HomeGroup’ functionality only works if all your systems are using Windows 7. It will be years before this is useful in most households. In my experience only power users upgrade their operating systems. Most people will only get Windows 7 when they buy a new computer. The other computers in their home will continue to run XP and Vista for years after a household’s first Windows 7 purchase. Hence, this nice new feature set will only be useful for most users years from now – unless they bring out Vista and XP updates to work with it, which is unlikely.

5. Mixed message re: Ability to Upgrade to Future Commercial Release

My biggest concern arose  after installing the Beta when I discovered this warning on this download instructions page:

The Beta will stop working on August 1, 2009. To continue using your PC, please be prepared to reinstall a prior version of Windows or a subsequent release of Windows 7 before the expiration date. You won’t be able to upgrade from the Beta to the final retail version of Windows 7.

So will there be a ‘subsequent release’ of Windows 7 that is not the final retail version? Must everyone that participates in the beta, downgrade and then re-upgrade. That would be insane. That would be an enormous amount of work for nothing.

6. To Be Determined

• Long-term Recovery from Hibernation: One of my biggest disappointments with every version of Windows to date has been glitches with recovery from sleep and hibernation modes. While Vista did get more reliable over time, after a few days of putting the system in hibernation and coming out of it, glitches usually arose requiring a fresh restart. It will take weeks or months before I’ll be able to assess whether Windows 7 has advanced the hibernation reliability ball any further. 

  Five days in, however, I’m impressed. I’ve had no problems with hibernation whatsoever. If this can be duplicated on my laptops, that alone would be worth the price of the upgrade to Windows 7.

  [March 3, 2009 Update: Windows 7 does recover from sleep and hibernation modes on my primary desktop rig MUCH more reliably than under Vista. However there are some glitches – the most notable being that Windows 7 frequently and spontaneously turns itself on when in hibernation mode. On my tablet laptop it works perfectly – this alone is worth the upgrade to Windows 7 on my laptop.

7. Other Windows 7  Related Links / Resources

• What’s new in Windows 7: Faster & Easier
• Windows 7 Demo Videos
• The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets

8. Conclusion

For sure, I love the speed and some of the other new features mentioned above.

With the ‘Quick Launch’ taskbar return workaround, the only major technical/feature set issue for me is the inability to create customizable toolbars that I can pin to the sides of my monitors. I’m sure I’ll get used to it if Microsoft chooses to keep the system as it is. I hope they do not.

Most importantly, had I known that I might have to downgrade to Vista after August 1, I never would have done this on a production machine. If that ends up being the case it will take me months to reconstitute my system, just as it took me months to fine tune Vista x64 when I did a clean install from XP back in January of 2007.

9. How did it Go For You?

I’d appreciate any comments on how the process went for you? Did you have any glitches I didn’t have? Have you found any workarounds for the problems I’m having?

Since joining Twitter a few months back, I have wanted to understand how it overlapped/interacted with the web-content aggregator friendfeed. I looked at friendfeed at least two or three times and never quite ‘got it’ – until today.

Robert Scoble was a guest on the recent episode 81 of net@night. This guy is quite the friendfeed evangelist (Arrington suggests he’s addicted to it). So much so that the net@nite discussion made me want to take another look. Leo mentioned that Scoble had done a ‘how to’ type video on friendfeed. A quick Google search lead me to this very informative 26 minute video: ‘Robert Scoble: 20 Things About Friendfeed”:

What Does friendfeed Do?

friendfeed is not easy to understand out of the gate. Following along with the Scoble video, I was able to learn the basics, how to how to set it up and how powerful it can be.  A primary function of friendfeed is to aggregate all of your web activities, posts, pictures, comments etc. into one place. I added feeds from each of the following web services that I contribute too(click each to see the underlying feed):

• Digg.com
• Disqus
• Facebook
• IntenseDebate
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• rss feeds from each of my Daleisphere, Video Game Law and iMedia Law blogs

Secondly, all my public web content will be streamed out, in real time, to those who choose to follow me on friendfeed, Twitter, Facebook etc.

Finally, I can follow others on friendfeed and have all of their public web content streamed out, in real time, to me – in one place.

[Jan 9, 2009 Update: I just noticed that Microsoft’s Windows Live ‘What’s New Feed’ function seems very similar to friendfeed.]

Addictive

I can see how friendfeed can become addicting. I initially set it to follow the same individuals that I currently follow on Twitter (those with friendfeed accounts that is – Dave Zatz, Davis Freeberg, Brent Evans).

I then expanded it to follow some of the diggirati that I respect such as Scoble himself, Michael Arrington, Paul Thurrott, Leo Laporte, Ed Bott, Ryan Block, Jason Calacanis etc. The quality of content (especially since CES 2009 is in full swing as I write this) is outstanding.  Clearly, following smart people with similar interests leads to fantastic results.

Search

The search feature is powerful. There are three normal ways to search friendfeed – your own content, your friends content or everyone’s content.

With all my content from around the web aggregated into one place, I can search all of my public-web content, going back for years in some cases, in one place. There is no need to traverse 8 different sites with eight different search engines to find my stuff.

Even more powerful, is the ‘Everyone’ content search. As I’m typing this post, the Palm Pre was just announced at CES. A simple search of ’Palm Pre’ in friendfeed found endless blog posts, comments, tweets, pictures etc. on the just-announced Palm Pre. Powerful stuff!

Advanced Search

You can granulize your search by content type. For example, you could search just for sub-content types from, say, flickr, or just tweets, or just blog posts etc. You can search by friend. Cool.

‘Best Of’ Feature

The “Best Of” feature, was particularly interesting. friendfeed users can effectively vote on what content is good by clicking on the ‘like’ button beside any entry. These ‘like’ votes are dynamically tallied such that if you click on “Best of”” (day/week/month), friendfeed will display the content that your peers/friends voted to be the best of that day, week, month. Terrific. This is a great way to surface the most interesting content. It’s kinda like “Digg.com for Smart People”.

Issues

Need a friendfeed Desktop App: Like Twitter, friendfeed is web-based. I use the twhirl application to access my Twitter feeds. I would like a similar application to access my friendfeed feeds. They must exist. Any suggestions?

[Note: I purchased the Nambu iPhone App ($1.99) to access Twitter and friendfeed on my iPhone. It seems to work well enough – but it is annoying to set up.]

Loosing Control of Comments: I’m new to this. I’m concerned that if someone comments on one of my blog posts within friendfeed, that I’ll loose those comments. I’d rather have them comment directly in my blog, not on friendfeed. I know Disqus and IntenseDebate were talking about importing those comments back. As I write this, I don’t know the status of backhauling friendfeed comments into the source blog’s database. As you can see below, IntenseDebate pulled in comments I made on this post from within friendfeed.

[Jan 9, 2009 Update: As you can see from my first comment below, Intense Debate pulls comments on a post made in friendfeed back into the blogger’s comments (details here). While it appears that Disqus is working on integration (see here) and there are some tools to do this with Disqus (see here), near as I can tell there is no formal solution for Disqus yet.]

No Comment Character Count: You can setup friendfeed to Tweet your friendfeed comments (as I have done). Twitter permits only 140 characters per Tweet. friendfeed permits more but it does not tell you how many characters you have typed in a comment. If you type more than 140, they get truncated in Twitter. Dang! I note that Nambu has the same limitation.

Outbound Feed Publishing to Twitter: Yikes, I quickly learned not to include every feed from every service in my outbound feed to Twitter. This was a bit much. As of right now, I only publish friendfeed comments, and new blog post entries to Twitter. Not sure what I’ll do with facebook status updates yet. I attempt to keep my Twitter feed more professional than my Facebook world. And I don’t want every comment I make everywhere on the web to appear in my Twitter feed. That’s just noisy overkill.

Conclusion

Will I continue to use it? Only time will tell. It is certainly more interesting, useful and impressive than I had expected. If I can find a good desktop app to run it, I probably will.

Since listening to this net@night podcast back in May 2008, where Amber and Leo interviewed Daniel Ha, the founder of the Disqus, I have been interested in implementing this kind of a community-oriented, commenting/discussion system on my blogs.

Early on, I had compared the feature set of Disqus and its competitor, IntenseDebate (“ID”), and Disqus’s feature set and looks won. Concerns surrounding the ability to import, export, sync and otherwise control my comments, held me back. I was not going to join any system where I lost ownership/control of my users’ comments.

In the interim, both Disqus and ID have added dynamic comment importing, exporting and synchronization features. I became comfortable that I would not be locked into any commenting system if/when I chose to leave. Scot Jangro’s December 30, 2008 post, ‘Comment System Review Redux’, compared the the two systems afresh and gave me substantial comfort that ID’s feature set had evolved to near parity with Disqus (see other comparisons: inquisitr.com | Mashable).

But the clincher came on Sept 23, 2008 when Automattic, the owner of Wordpress, purchased IntenseDebate. (See: Matt Mullenweg’s comment – IntenseDebate’s comment – Disqus’s comment). I expect Automattic to integrate IntenseDebate’s community comment / discussion system into the Wordpress core at some point. So, as a Wordpress user, it seemed a no brainer to go with IntenseDebate.

[January 23, 2009 Update: Despite what I wrote above, I ultimately switched to Disqus not long after implementing Intense Debate. In my ‘Why I switched from IntenseDebate to Disqus’ post [coming soon] I describe why I made the switch.]

IntenseDebate’s WordPress Plugin features are discussed here.  The newest Wordpress Plugin (v 2.0.18) has been completely overhauled, making the installation and comment import/export/sync process much easier than it was.

Below I describe why I installed ID. I then walk you, step-by-step, through the IntenseDebate installation process in Wordpress 2.7.

Why Intense Debate?

A list of ID’s features can be found here (see here for Disqus features). Below are a list of some of the reasons I wanted to do this:

• Threaded Comments: Commenters can reply directly on previous comments. Comment replies are successively indented. No more flat comments only. (Note: WP 2.7 has just added threaded comment functionality requiring template modifications to work).
• Commenter Reputation: Commenters that are ID members gain a reputation across all the sites they comment on. Anyone can vote on the value of any comment. A commenter’s reputation follows him/her across all ID sites.
• Email Notifications: Commenters are notified when anyone replies to their comments, so they can continue the conversation. They can reply to the email to add a reply. No need to navigate back to the blog.
• Commenter Profiles: Clicking on the commenter’s avatar shows the commenters profile. No longer are commenters unknown anonymous people. A real sense of community can develop.
• Cross-Site Commenter Following: If you like a comment, clicking on a commenter’s avatar will show show you other recent comments made by that commenter on other participating ID sites.
• Multi-Blog Moderation: I can now moderate comments from all my blogs through just one dashboard – instead of having to successively log into the moderation page on each of my three blogs. Though my first experiences with moderation on the ID website didn’t leave me too impressed. Moderation within the WP 2.7 dashboard is much nicer.
• Powerful Sidebar Widgets: A growing set of powerful sidebar comment-specific widgets are available. The one I like cross-promotes comments from each of my blogs across all of my blogs.

Installation Instructions

These instructions assume you have already installed and are running Wordpress 2.7 (see my WP 2.7 First Impressions post here for more details).

• Delete All Spam: Might as well delete all current Akismet trapped spam before backing up and integrating Intense Debate.
• Backup: I strongly suggest you backup your Wordpress database files before you start. I use the WordPress Database Backup plugin for this.
• Sign Up: Sign up for an Intense Debate account here. It takes less than a minute.
• Add Your Blog: From the IntenseDebate dashboard, click on the ‘+add blog’ option on the dashboard (see pic below):
  You can set up as many blogs as you wish. I currently use ID with three blogs.
• Type in your Blog’s URL: Specify the URL of your blog and click ‘Next Step’
  
• Wordpress Blog Detection: IntenseDebate automatically senses that you have a Wordpress blog. So the second step, ‘Choose Platform’, is automatically skipped.
• Old Installation Instructions: As of the date of this post, the third step presents you with the older pre-Wordpress 2.7 installation instructions (click image for larger view):You can still follow those older pre-Wordpress 2.7 instructions, but I recommend you use the newer, easier and faster plug-in search and install tools built into Wordpress 2.7 (as described below) to automatically download and install the IntenseDebate plugin.
• Install Plugin in WP 2.7: In Wordpress 2.7, click on the “Add New” option in the Plugins menu (item 1. below). Type the search term “intensedebate” (one word) into the search box (item 2. below) and then click the install option on the right (item 3. below):
  That’s all that’s to it. The plugin will download and install automatically.
• Activate: Activate the plugin-like any other WordPress plugin by clicking on the ‘activate’ option beside the plugin in the WordPress dashboard plugins directory. Note, simply activating does not complete the installation process. You’ll need to import your current comments (export from your perspective) to the IntenseDebate servers to complete the process.
• Import Your Comments: To export/import your comments to ID’s servers, click on the ‘Intense Debate’ option that appears in your WP 2.7 Settings menu. You’ll first be presented with this login screen:Type in the username and password information you used when you signed up and you’ll be taken to the import screen. Click the ‘Start Importing Comments’ button:

  

• Queuing & Importing: You’ll likely see the ‘queued, waiting for import’ message below.
  On two out of my three blogs the queuing message disappeared within seconds. Once your comments start importing you’ll see a green progress bar followed by a ‘Finalizing … almost done” indication:

  
  It took only minutes for my comments to import once that progress bar appeared.

• Wordpress Dashboard Options Tweaking: Once done, you’ll be presented with the tweak screen below. There are several options to tweak both inside and outside of the Wordpress dashboard:
  Owing to a glitch, I strongly suggest that you set the “Moderation Page” option (see item 1. above) to the “Wordpress Standard Moderation” option. As of the date of this post there seems to be a glitch with the “IntenseDebate Enhanced Moderation” option. When moderating comments within the WordPress 2.7 dashboard, if you use the enhanced option, it makes the comment moderation window really small and hard to use. Until this is fixed, the default Wordpress 2.7 moderation setup is much more usable.
• Tweaking Blog Settings on IntenseDebate Dashboard: Clicking on the ‘Edit your blog settings on IntenseDebate.com’ link (item 2. above) takes you to this settings page for your blog on the IntenseDebate site (click image for larger view):

Once again, the settings you choose are up to you. I recommend unchecking the “Email admins when I have a comment that waits moderation” option. Akismet and the ID spam filters are constantly flagging spam for moderation. It drove me nuts receiving email after email asking me to moderate what was almost always nothing more than spam.  Grrr! I’d much prefer to manually filter out that spam in bulk every couple weeks.

Intense Debate Problems/Issues

Note re: Comments.php File: IntenseDebate works by substituting its own content for your comments.php template file. If, like me, you made customizations to your comments.php file, they will be gone. In my case I had inserted Adsense and Amazon Affiliate scripts in that file. I had to modify my post template to accommodate this change.

Bland Default Avatars: Most of my commenters, at this point, are not IntenseDebate users. As I mentioned here, I really liked the default WordPress comment avatars for anonymous commenters. As you can see, the default IntenseDebate avatar is a rather boring grey/black one.

No Option to Require Email Addresses: To reduce spam I used to require commenters to leave a name and email address. When you use ID, there is no such option. Users are either anonymous or ID users. As a result, I get way more anonymous spam than I did before. This needs to be addressed by ID.

Issues with Two of Three Installs: I had tried to install Intense Debate on my iMedia Law blog in early December 2008 just after I wrote my WP 2.7 First Impressions post. It got stuck at during the importing comments stage. I assumed this was a glitch due to WP 2.7 still being in beta at the time. So I gave up. When I tried the updated plugin at the end of December 2008, it got stuck again, even with the latest 2.0.18 version. However, after a few emails to support@intensedebate.com they solved the problem. I had to provide them with the value in the "id_import_token" from my wp-admin/options.php page. Shortly after providing that value, they tweaked something on their servers and import finished in seconds. My second install to my Video Game Law blog went off without a hitch. It took only minutes to install. Unfortunately the install process got stuck once again when I first attempted to install ID into this Daleisphere blog. Once again, an email to to support@intensedebate.com had the problem solved in minutes. So while there still seems to be issues with the install process, the ID support folks responded quickly and were very friendly and helpful.

Video Tour

Below is a video tour of the Wordpress plugin for IntenseDebate. It is a bit out of date in that it demonstrates the plugin in Wordpress 2.6.x and shows the manual plugin installation process now made obsolete with the automatic plugin installation system integrated into Wordpress 2.7. But, its still useful to get a sense of what its about.

What about Disqus?

I may very well deactivate IntenseDebate and install Disqus at some point just to give it a whirl. Since all my comments remain synced in my MySQL database, as per the experiences of others (see here), this should be pretty straight forward. But, as I said above, I think the Automattic purchase will mean that IntenseDebate will become increasingly integrated with WordPress making Disqus less and less attractive over time.

The End Game

As good as Disqus and ID are on their own, the end game will have to be some kind of unification of the systems, or at least some industry standard specifications so the two communities interoperate and are not islands. Think how AIM and MSN Messenger users, for example, could not IM between the two systems. Or how Prodigy and CompuServe users could not email each other before Internet email became a standard. In an ideal future world, commenter reputations, identities, comment histories etc. would follow the commenter whether the blog is an ID, Disqus or other comment community site.

Please Comment

Please comment on this post to see how this all works. So far I’m not liking how the comments are squished up against the left margin. I’m not sure how to tweak this since my comments.php file is no longer used.

Is the size of your iTunes music library starting to overwhelm your C: drive? Do you want to make your iTunes music library available to more than one PC over a network?

This post is about how to move all the files in your iTunes Music Library (including music, podcasts, videos, TV shows and audio books) from your PC’s drive to a network drive (or another drive on the same PC) while retaining both: (i) the integrity of the underlying file names and organization structures; and (ii) playlists, play counts, ratings etc.

This post is for the gear-head types like myself. Those that have spent time ‘under the hood’ organizing their music the way they want – naming the underlying files with names of their choice, organizing the files into directories of their choice, etc.

If you are like most people and let iTunes do its own thing (ie: let iTunes handle file naming and organization), this post is not for you. There are much easier ways to move your files if you let iTunes do this it’s way. See, for example, here, here and here.

Background

First PMP – The Creative Nomad: My first portable music player was a 32 Meg (yes, Meg, not Gig) Creative Nomad. I organized my music at that time with Windows Media player (‘WMP’).

Dale’s Early Music Organization: Over the years, I spent an enormous amount of time and energy ripping songs from my CDs, keeping my underlying music library file names, file organization/directory structures and meta data pristine. All the files were contained under my C:\Files\MP3 hierarchy, making it very easy to back up my media from time to time by simply backing up that directory.

Song Centric vs. Album Centric: One of the reasons I gravitated to portable music was that it freed me from the ‘album centric’ listening paradigm. That is, I much prefer listening to individual songs rather than entire albums where I typically enjoyed just a song or two.

The Playlists: Because I rarely ripped entire albums, I developed a large number of playlists – about 100 organized into folders and sub-folders (see picture). Each playlist typically has 50 to a couple hundred songs in it. This is how I listen to music. If I’m in an upbeat mood, I play an upbeat playlist like my “Pop – Hip Hop” playlist. If I’m working or studying I might may play my “Classical – Baroque” play list.

iPod and iTunes: A few years ago I purchased an iPod and abandoned WMP. This was a big decision because at the time there was no tool to migrate my extensive set of playlists to iTunes. Fortunately, I had meticulously edited the meta-data in my underlying files. So, importing the music into iTunes resulted in proper indexing by song, artist, album, genre etc. But, I had to spend SEVERAL painstaking weekends recreating my playlists, song by song (thousands of them), within iTunes. This was NOT so much fun. I will NEVER do that again.

The First Problem

Video Podcasts Take Over: My music library has grown over the years. Its size grew much larger and much faster after I purchased AppleTV and started downloading and retaining a large number of SD and HD video podcasts (for example I subscribed to the 200+ available Ted Talks). My iTunes library has grown so much that it swallowed up my C: drive.

Drobo the Answer?: I purchased a Drobo earlier this year. I love it. It expands as my storage needs expand. I have hung it off my home network server, it is shared across the network and is mapped to the N:\ (for ‘N’etwork) drive on all of my PCs and laptops. It is also networked to my iMac.

To solve the space problem I decided to move my iTunes music library from my main PC’s hard drive to the Drobo. This will allow me to expand my iTunes media library to my hearts content. This will also allow me to share my iTunes media library with any other PC or Mac on my network.

The Next Problem

The ‘Apple Way’: iTunes has a pretty straight-forward solution to moving the iTunes Music library to an external PC.  You can read about it here, here and here. The problem is, this comes at a HUGE price for me.

My Way: Let’s step back for a moment. Back around the year 2000, memory in portable music devices was limited, as were hard drive sizes. As such, I historically only ripped the songs from albums that I liked the most (not entire albums).

Every single song in my file library is now named with this convention:

     artist – song name.mp3 (example: ‘Aqua – Happy Boys & Girls.mp3’)

I do not include the album name in the file name for two reasons. Originally I wasn’t ripping entire albums. More importantly, one of the forces driving how I organized my MP3s was my dislike of the album format. I like to listen to songs, organized into thematic playlists, not albums. I do not include the track number in an MP’s file name for the same reason. A track number is relevant only to people playing albums.

All of my ‘singles’, are contained in one huge directory. It makes no sense to organize my couple thousand ‘singles’ into a directory structure based on artists or albums when there would be only one file in most of those directories. In this way I can find and access any song quickly by sorting my single MP3 directory by artist name.

As portable music device memory grew and hard drives got cheaper, I did go back and re-rip the entirety of most of my albums. The thinking was, why not? Memory is so cheap I might as well. I also took that opportunity to re-rip my music collection into higher bit rates (typically 256 kbps VBR)

I also assiduously included the album name in the meta-data should I ever actually want to access and listen to music by album in the future (which, with cover flow on iTunes, AppleTV and the iPhone, I actually now do sometimes).

But I still rarely listen to those albums. I almost always listen to my playlists.

The Problem with the ‘Apple Way’: In order to migrate my library the “Apple Way”, I would loose all the organization I describe above. When you move a library the ‘Apple Way’, you must be willing to allow iTunes to ‘consolidate’ your library and ‘Keep [the] iTunes Music folder Organized’ in the manner it chooses. This results in two very bad things for me:

• Forced File Renaming: iTunes renames every single .mp3 file into a format I do not want, namely:

           ‘track number – song name.mp3’

• Forced Restructuring: iTunes places all such renamed files into, in my case, some thousands of folders and subfolders, with the artist name being the name of the lower folder and the album name being the name of the sub folder.

Think about this for a moment. Most of my music is one-off songs. Most of these newly created folders would have just one song located two folders down, with the track number and the song name identifying the song.  How lame is this?

Again, if you are the type that lets iTunes organize all your music and you never ‘look under the hood’, you aren’t going to care. But I do care. I not only want to manage my media library at the file level (and often do), I want the freedom to leave iTunes some day, with files organized how I want, when a better music playing service comes along.

In short, I want to control my files, my way, not the Apple way.

An Unpalatable Solution

Aside from the solution I describe below, the only other way I could find to solve my problem would have been to move my music library to the Drobo, clear my iTunes library entirely, re-import it all, and then spend weeks manually recreating my playlists. Sorry, but that’s too much work. Been there, done that.

My Solution

After many, many frustrating hours, thanks to Rob Garret in this post, I found a solution that allowed me to move my music library to my Drobo while retaining my file names and organization structures with all my playlists remaining fully functioning.

Summary: The answer lies in: (i) editing the key .XML file (see below) so that all MP3 file references point to the new file locations; and (ii) purposefully corrupting the key .ITL file (see below) such that it is forced to rebuild itself from the edited .XML file.

Understand the Risks: Review my ‘Casualties’ section below before you begin so you know what you might loose by doing this.

The iTunes File Structure: To understand the solution you need to understand the two key files. iTunes manages your music library, play lists, ratings, play counts etc. in this file:

          iTunes Library.itl  (the ‘.ITL file’)

This .ITL file is a binary file that cannot be directly edited. Almost all of the information in the .ITL file is, however, replicated this companion XML file:

          iTunes Media Library.xml  (the ‘.XML file’)

[May 27, 2010 Update: Somewhere along the line since I first wrote this post, iTunes changed the .XML filename to iTunes Music Library.xml]

In Windows 7 these files are typically located in:

          C:\Users\username\My Music\iTunes\

In Vista these files are typically located in:

          C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes\

in XP these files are located in:

          C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\

LETS BEGIN!

Change Your ‘iTunes Music folder Location’: Under the ‘Advanced’ tab under the ‘Files –> Preferences’ menu, change the ‘iTunes Music Folder location’ field to your target directory. You can see in the picture below that I changed it to ‘N:\media\iTunes’.

Important Note 1: This will not immediately result in the any files being moved. It tells iTunes where all the media files will be moved to shortly. It also tells iTunes that all media files (such as music or podcast downloads) should be placed there in the future.

Important Note 2: DO NOT CHECK the ‘Keep iTunes Music folder organized’ check box. If it is checked, it should be unchecked. Checking it will defeat the entire point of this tutorial.

Close iTunes: iTunes must not be running for the next while.

Backup Before the Key Library Files: Before doing anything else, backup both the iTunes .ITL file and the .XML file to a safe place. If you make a mistake or disaster strikes, you can use the backups to recover (see recovery instructions below).

Copy Your Underlying Media to the New Location: Copy your underlying media (all your .mp3, .aac, .mov, .mp3 etc. files) to the location you want them (in my case a network drive), within a directory structure that corresponds with their current structure. In my case, this meant I copied everything in the:

          C:\files\MP3

directory to my

          N:\media\iTunes

directory. Note that under myMP3 directory, I had thousands of MP3 files and dozens of subfolders including subfolders for my podcasts, movies, TV shows etc.

Important Assumption: This tutorial assumes that before you start, all of your media is organized under a single hierarchy structure somewhere on your C:\ drive like mine is under C:\files\MP3 and its subdirectories. If your music is scattered across your  hard drive, this tutorial won’t work for you.

Important Note 1: Your entire music structure needs to be copied as it is. The resulting underlying structure on your network drive, needs to remain EXACTLY the same as it was on your C:\ drive, or this won’t work.

Important Note 2: I strongly suggest you COPY your media to the network drive and not just MOVE it there. If something goes wrong, you’ll want the source files for recovery purposes (see below). If, after sufficient time has passed and everything is working from the new location, you can then delete the source files to clear up space on your C:\ drive.

Edit the .XML File (‘iTunes Media Library.xml’ or as iTunes subsequently renamed the file since I originally wrote this post, the  iTunes Music Library.xml file): This is the only quasi-challenging part of this process. Open the .XML file in any XML file editor (I used Dreamweaver) or any text editor capable of handling large files. Vista’s/Windows 7 WordPad, depicted in the picture below, works too.

The .XML file contains a link to each underlying piece of content (all your MP3s, MPegs, AACs etc) in your iTunes library. For example, this is how the originating link to Barry White’s ‘Your the First’ song looked in my original .XML file:

file://localhost/C:/files/MP3/Barry%20White%20-%20Your%20the%0First.mp3

You need to edit the .XML file to change all such link references to the point to the new library location. In my example, we want this link to be changed to:

file://localhost/N:/media/iTunes/Barry%20White%20-%20Your%20the%0First.mp3

This requires using your editor to search for and replace every instance of original library location to the desired destination folder. In my case that means replacing every instance of ‘C:/files/MP3’ with ‘N:/media/iTunes’ in the .XML file.

Given the size of the .XML file, depending on the speed of your computer this could be done in seconds or may take up to 10 or more minutes to complete.

When done, save the .XML file to the same name (‘iTunes Media Library.xml’ or as iTunes subsequently renamed the file since I originally wrote this post, to the  iTunes Music Library.xml file) and the same location as it was on the C:/ drive.

Note 1: Neither the .ITL file nor the .XML file ever get moved to the new directory where the underlying media is being moved. They stay on the C:\ drive where they always were.

Note 2: Unless you have a very small .XML file, do not use Notepad. It is not designed for editing large files. It will likely crash.

Note 3: As noted by Dave in the comments below, using Microsoft Word is not recommended, though I suspect it could work if you forced it to save in Plain Text (.txt) format. [Update: Note 3 added May 27, 2009]

Edit / Zero Out the .ITL File (‘iTunes Library.itl’): This is the key step to this whole post. The ‘iTunes Library.itl’ is not directly editable. If it were, we would have edited it instead of the XML file. What we need to do here is create a corrupted version of the .ITL file. When you do, the next time you start iTunes, it will notice that the .ITL file is corrupted and will recover it from the newly edited .XML file. The result – a circuitously edited .ITL file with all its internal pointers, pointing to your newly located media library directory.

To empty / zero out the .ITL file:

• Open the file with the same editor you used to edit the .XML file. You’ll see a screen full of gibberish.
• Delete everything in the file. In most editors pressing Ctrl-A will select everything in the file. When everything is selected, press Delete.
• Save the .ITL file to the same file name (‘iTunes Library.itl’) at the same file location.

That’s it! Your work is done. The rest is up to iTunes.

Rebuilding the .ITL File

Assuming you have:

• copied your music files to the new location;
• edited the .XML and ITL Files; and
• saved them back to their original locations;

the next time you start iTunes, it will automatically rebuild the zeroed out .ITL file by importing all the needed information from the .XML file. This took about 10 minutes for my 4,800 files.

 
Along the way you’ll get an error message (not shown) telling you the library had been corrupted and had to be rebuilt. You’ll need to acknowledge that message (by clicking ‘OK’ if I remember correctly) before the process will proceed.

iTunes will next recreate your artwork thumbnails. That took about 5 minutes.

You’ll then see iTunes go through its ‘Determining Gapless Playback Information’ process with all your files. This took about 10 minutes.

Once that is complete, you’re entire iTunes media library will have been moved, your file names and organization will have remained intact and you will also have retained all your playlists, play counts, ratings etc.

Good job!  Pat yourself on the back!

Two Minor Casualties

• iPhone Apps Wiped: I’m not sure why, but, along the way about 60% of my iPhone Apps were wiped from iTunes. They did not restore from the iPhone on the next sync as I had hoped. I could not see any rhyme or reason as to which were gone and which remained. Their .ipa files were, however, still in my C:\ drive at this location (in  Vista):

            C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes\Mobile Applications

  I simply dragged and dropped the .ipa files onto iTunes to get them back. They synced back to my iPhone without issue.

  No big deal except that one app was somewhat data-centric. I lost about an hour’s worth of data.

• Some Cover-Art Lost: I lost about 5% of my cover-flow art. It didn’t take long to recover the art. If this happens to you, you can easily recover most, if not all, album cover art as follows:
  • In iTunes, sort your library by album
  • Successively select all the songs in for each album without cover art
  • Right click on each highlighted group of songs from a given album
  • Left click on the ‘Get Album Artwork’ option

That’s pretty much it. iTunes should find and replace most, if not all, cover art that way.

Recovery if Something Goes Wrong

So long as you followed my instructions above (backed up key library files and kept a copy of source files in their original location), if something goes wrong recovery is simple. It won’t take more than a minute

To recover, all you need to do is:

• close iTunes; and
• restore the backed-up .itl file and .xml file to their original locations

That’s it. When you next start iTunes, all should be as it was before you started this process

Note: Restoring the original backed up .ITL and .XML files necessarily results in your overwriting the newly created versions of those files. You might wish to back up the newly created versions before recovery if you want to switch between the old and new setups for testing purposes.

Notes on my Setup

• iTunes v. 8.02.20. This is the version of iTunes I used when I wrote this tutorial.
• Vista x64 with no UAC: I use Vista x64. The PC OS shouldn’t make a difference except for the locations of the key .ITL and .XML library files (see above). You may or may not have permissions to access or edit those files. I have Vista’s UAC shut off. You may need to shut it off first and/or work in administrator mode.
• No DRM: None of my music files are encumbered by DRM. 100% of my music files are .MP3 files. This process should work for DRM’d AAC or other files too, so long as they are still being played on an appropriately accredited PC/Mac. But I haven’t verified this point.