Spiceworks simply put is an IT/Network Managers best friend. Best of all – it is FREE! Building on Spiceworks strong foundation that allows IT Managers to inventory hardware, software, and other devices via WMI the new Beta 3 now allows it’s built in Help Desk to operate via LDAP and performs testing of your Exchange server. The review on Network World doesn’t do the product much justice because simply put this product is a must have. It easily saves me hours of time and notifies me of any problems that otherwise would have gone undetected. Try it for yourself. I often wonder how I lived without this software before.

Beta 3 – http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/13852
Spiceworks v2.1 – http://www.spiceworks.com/

Watch out MySpace you are about ready to be replaced.

With all the problems that plague the giant online meeting place, a shift to person-centric social networking is primed to take some share of users from MySpace and Facebook.  After all why would you want to rent space when you can own your own home.

WordPress and its upcoming sister product bbPress are offering a multitude of options for users who would are making the switch from social networking to blogging.  Why not start your WordPress site today?

Reference:

http://gigaom.com/2007/12/11/the-next-social-network-wordpress/

Do you have an Intranet or a similar web site that requires the use of Integrated Windows Authentication? If so the default Firefox browser settings will always prompt you for a username and password first before accessing a site using Integrated Window Authentication.

Fortunately Firefox has the slick ability to easily modify it’s configuration to use Integrated Windows Authentication.

How to configure Firefox

1. Open Firefox
2. In the address bar type: about:config
   
3. Firefox3.x and later requires you to agree that you will proceed with caution.
4. After the config page loads, in the filter box type: network.automatic
5. * Modify network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris by double clicking the row and enter http://www.replacewithyoursite.com or http://your-intranet-server-name
   
6. * Multiple sites can be added by comma delimiting them such as http://www.replacewithyoursite.com, http://www.replacewithyourintranetsite.com

Package for Large Installs

If you are a network administrator that has a lot of installs to do, you can modify the Firefox installer.

1. Use a tool such as 7-zip to extract Firefox Setup 2.x.x.exe
2. Extract browser.xpi from the setup
3. Edit all.js contained in browser.xpi contained in binjreprefs
4. Modify the entries as in items 4 and 5 above
5. Re-package browser.xpi and use the extracted setup to install Firefox

* Special Notes

To specify all subdomains use .replacewithyoursite.com instead of www.replacewithyoursite.com, help.replacewithyoursite.com, pictures.replacewithyoursite.com

Updated March 5, 2010

Eye-tracking studies are hot in the web design world, but it can be hard to figure out how to translate the results of these studies into real design implementations. These are a few tips from eye-tracking studies that you can use to improve the design of your blog or site.

read more | digg story

Recently Microsoft released Windows Live Writer, a blog authoring tool from its BETA hell to, well, Live.  The tool has a lot of promise and is a vast improvement over the default editor in Community Server.

If you are a corporate user of this software that uses Community Servers integrated login module, you were out of luck, sort of until I discovered a forum post by Telligent employee Kevin Harder.

Windows Live Writer and Integrated authentication – Community Server

Windows Live Writer does not natively support integrated logins at this point and requires a username and password to setup a Community Server Weblog account.  To do this you need to perform one of the following workarounds.

One of the great advantages of the WordPress blogging system is the ability to add plugins and widgets. This article offers 3 suggestions to help with Google Adsense, add Gravatars, and highlight author comments. All three are great ways to improve your audiences experience.

read more | digg story

Introduction 

One of the greatest things about the Internet is the ability to “borrow” many of the cool things that are out there for your own site.  You don’t need to be a web design guru, just be able to find articles like this one.  Flickr has become an extremely popular free photo service and offers many services to its users including the ability to play a flash slide show of your photo sets (albums), tagged pictures.

Why Would I Want To Embed The Slideshow?

Simply put it saves you bandwidth , storage space, and you don’t have to have anything special on your site.  If you host your site via a provider and have bandwidth limits, this is a must use technique.

How do I embed a Flickr Slideshow?