Spaced out TD: MSN Spaces

Fixed broken image links, can't fix Microsoft not making up their mind

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 21:42:18 GMT

Finally took a few seconds and fixed the pictures that were broken thanks to MSN Spaces changing locations for the forth time since December 2004.

1. originally
spaces.msn.com/members/ACCOUNT

2. then
spaces.msn.com/ACCOUNT

3. then
ACCOUNT.spaces.msn.com

4. now:
ACCOUNT.spaces.live.com

Let's hope this is the end of changing where my space is located. That is until I can move it to my own domain (something I've been asking for nearly two years now). Make up your mind, Microsoft, please.

Using MSN Spaces MetaWeblog API

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:45:21 GMT

How to post using MetaWeblog API in MSN Spaces (from FAQ):

Account name
A descriptive name, such as My MSN Space.

Username

The name of your space. For example, if your space's URL is http://spaces.msn.com/example, use example.
Password
The secret keyword you entered on your space's E-mail Publishing tab.

Host address

Page (or path)
Use storage.msn.com

Book list Amazon affiliate gotcha in MSN Spaces

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 00:52:58 GMT

I just went through creating a book list and adding to my MSN Space. I added one book before adding our Amazon Associate ID and noticed when that the code was only added to the other books and the original affiliate code stayed "msnspaces" so I just deleted that book and readded it. You can tell what code is used by hovering over the book link.

MSN Spaces changes

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:11:12 GMT

Been a little while since updating this blog and it is nice to see several changes afoot at MSN Spaces including:

- comments on pictures
- 100 templates

- 500 pictures a month limit, no more max space limit
- make money using Amazon (see quote below)

- xbox recent games played integration option
- updated profile photo
- removal of "members" from URL
- permissions changes as well

Quote

Change is good!

Great news for those of you living in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France or Japan. You can now make money with MSN Spaces. You heard me. Make Money! With Amazon.com if you sign up for an associates ID, whenever anyone buys a book from Amazon.com by linking through from your space, you get a portion of that. So make sure to put up all of your favorite and maybe not so favorite books online.

In the same vain if you live in the US or Canada, you can earn money by allowing Kanoodle ads to run in your space.

I particularly liked the shorter URL with getting rid of the whole "member" thing. Hopefully clean redirects are in place so prior links weren't broken.

While trying to publish this post I received a "this space is temporarily unavailable" message.

Ray Ozzie blogging on MSN Spaces

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:43:06 GMT

Ray Ozzie, CTO at Microsoft, is now blogging at MSN Spaces in what he calls his version 3 attempt at blogging. Something interesting to note is his MSN Space doesn't have any ads. Subscribed.

30 million MSN Spaces blogs and counting

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:27:06 GMT

This weekend at Seattle Mind Camp I learned that there was now over 30 million MSN Spaces blogs. Wow! I wonder how many of these blogs are updated and how often? When you stop and think about it, MSN probably has more blogs than any other blogging platform and they've done it on software which is friendly for the common person who maybe only wants to blog for his friends and family, share their pictures and playlists, etc. MSN Spaces hasn't targeted hardcore bloggers, just the common man/woman and they are clearly have been the most successful in capturing this niche. Kudos to the team!

I'm still holding out on being able to use my own domain someday (and thus my own scripts) which I've been assured several times is a planned future feature. It's coming, it's coming.

I'm starting to get psyched for the upcoming Xbox 360 launch in a mere two weeks. I noticed that some games will be available next Tuesday and I'm thinking about buying a few ahead of time. Don't think I've ever bought games before owning the system ... and since I didn't preorder I may not even be able to buy the system on launch day. I don't preorder systems though and rarely have done so with games. Something about going out on launch day and buying these things that is part of the whole fun.

This Spaces blog inside Opera

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 10:50:16 GMT

Every time I check this blog out in Opera I want to go in and edit it so it looks better ... but can't, unfortunately. I actually noticed this last month but viewing in the now free Opera browser sure gives this a different look. The logo I made is cut off in IE, but in Opera it is shown full size and pushes the containers out so they aren't aligned properly.

Talking about Carnage4Life's Space: Dates and Times in the MetaWeblog API and XML-RPC

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 03:43:06 GMT

On my birthday last month, I saw Dare talking about public beta testing of the MetaWeblog API and XML-RPC for MSN Spaces:

Quote

Carnage4Life's Space: Dates and Times in the MetaWeblog API and XML-RPC

We're almost ready to begin public beta testing of our implementation of the MetaWeblog API for MSN Spaces. As with most technology specifications, the devil has been in the details of figuring out how common practice differs from what is in the spec.

Wonder when this will be implemented? Did I miss the beta launch news?

MSN Spaces Tweak UI Powertoy

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 20:15:57 GMT

While the Tweak UI Powertoy doesn't allow full template customization, it does give some new design options that make it easier for Spaces users to customize their respective blogs. I've used it here to customize the look of this blog. I wish links would be underlined without having to add the underline every time. Any ideas on that front for workarounds?

The Tweak UI Power Toy is designed to allow you to customize the look of your Space. Once you add the Tweak UI Power Toy to your Space you can use it to control colors, module borders and transparency, and the background image’s placement and presence. Granular control combined with existing Spaces layout and module configuration allows for almost endless customizability and personalization.

"Almost" is sort of a misstatement above. C'mon Microsoft, just give users full template customization (it's not that hard to block malicious javascript). I still have my Spaces domain that redirects here. One of these days I'm going to get an hour or two and bring the content from this blog in and do some full scale customization.

MSN Spaces and screensaver integration

Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:14:46 GMT

MSN now has a beta screensaver where you can integrate your MSN Spaces blog and images. It works similarly to the Mac RSS screensaver in that you can display any RSS feed, although it has more features than the Tiger screensaver.

Also this weekend you can catch up with the new MSN Virtual Earth. I did a side-by-side comparison between Virtual Earth and Google Maps at MakeYouGoHmm.

15 million MSN Spaces blogs

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 03:20:55 GMT

Wow, Microsoft can push some massive traffice. That's quite a number. 15 million blogs at MSN Spaces alone in a little over 6 months according to Scoble. Congratulations to the MSN Spaces team.

Turned off external trackbacks due to spam

Sat, 14 May 2005 17:49:09 GMT

Cleaned out a bunch of spam from domains-that-look-a-like.this.com. Maybe this is something for MSN Spaces Team to consider filtering. If a site has more than one dash in the domain there is a 99.999999% it's spam. I never was able to send myself trackbacks from any of my other blogs here anyway. There have been a few legitimate non MSN Spaces trackbacks so it does work with some blog software out there. I didn't really explore this one to figure out what the problem is, but maybe somebody else reading has or can do so.

Got hit with a bunch of Passport questions just trying to view blog

Fri, 13 May 2005 03:24:51 GMT

So is Passport now required to view MSN Spaces blogs or what? I just got hit tonight with a bunch of Passport demographic data trying to access the "public" part of my MSN Space. Here's to hoping that this was just a Passport glitch. Nobody seems to care much for Passport, even some of the M$ employees hate it.

Problems reporting abuse on MSN Spaces

Sat, 07 May 2005 16:40:05 GMT

Look, I'm just trying to report some abuse from another MSN Spaces blog that is ripping off entire original blog entries from another blog and posting them as their own, along with hotlinking the pictures, also on their MSN Spaces blog. It appears to me like it's not just happening to one blog, but many. Worse yet, they are encouraging others to steal their stolen content!

Every time I try and access the MSN Spaces REPORT ABUSE page it tries to have me sign up for .NET Passport account. Mike, Dare, can somebody please fix this and delete this MSN Spaces blog that is not only thieving content and bandwidth but also encouraging others to steal with comments like: "The Motto of Any Fool Can Blog is 'All the news thats fit to steal'"

Yeah, they got that part right: steal.

Wait, hmm, it seems that after my fifth attempt and right before posting this I actually got through. I kept clicking cancel on the message and it finally defaulted to a sign-on screen for MSN Support (even though it shows me as already signed on to .NET Passport). I filled out the form and submitted, so maybe that will make something happen. Here's my report (Your Support Ticket Number : 192290148) in case somebody wants to act faster on this:

COPYRIGHT VIOLATION: http://spaces.msn.com/members/anyfoolcanblog/Blog/cns!1paHQNsbIBUV8yl3GwluuN3g!1551.entry
Is a direct copy of this original, copyrighted material: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050503/1805/
They also are hotlinking many, many other pictures from other sites and read the sidebar comments where they are telling others: "So if you see something you like here steal it and pass it on."
This blog is an accident waiting to happen!

It's unlikely that this group of bloggers doesn't know better considering their commentary about encouraging others to steal. Blog thieves suck! It's not MSN Spaces fault that cancerous members like these exist, but it is their fault if they don't make it easy to report thieves like this. So please, MSN Spaces team: get with MSN Support and work out an easier system for dealing with (rare, fortunately) situations like this.

Note to fellow bloggers, it's totally ok -- and encouraged -- to use fair use with attribution but it's so totally not ok without permission to hijack entire blog entries, strip off the name of (and link to the original work) the author and hotlink the images (stealing their bandwidth) claiming it is your own. That's called plagiarism. It's wrong.

Activated my spaces domains

Mon, 02 May 2005 20:49:07 GMT

Shortly after MSN Spaces launched I read that maybe someday we'd be able to host blogs created via MSN Spaces on our own domains, so I registered two domains that have to do with the title of this blog, so I'd be set when/if this day ever came.

As the months have gone by it seems clear to me that these domains would continue to gather dust if I didn't do something on my own, so this last week I came up with an idea of how I'm going to use these domains ... at least in the interim until/if MSN Spaces does finally allow us to publish to our own domains.

I will hopefully be able to implement this solution soon and share with others, but we'll see. My May schedule is pretty full.

Some folks might be thinking, hey: who cares about hosting on your own domain. Well, for one, on your own hosting/domain you can insert scripts, interact with database and do so much more than you will ever be able to do with MSN Spaces directly.

Thoughts on MSN Spaces upgrade

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 06:58:08 GMT

Good to see an MSN Spaces upgrade this week. Mike Torres reports that they have tweaked RSS and pinging, which was needed (thank you). They have added more themes, and I changed to this Xbox-green theme ... not sure if I'll stay with it. Frankly, I don't really care for any of these themes. Please somebody give us the ability to edit/create our own custom templates. Sure, you can put your new Volvo ads at the top and copyright notice and TOS at the bottom but why can I share my playlist, share photos but not share my own custom theme? This one doesn't fit the strategy as far as I understand it, anyway.

I understand Spaces isn't aimed at early adopters, regular bloggers, etc, but if this is truly my personal "space" then why can't I put the kind of wallpaper I personally want up? Lock it down with no malicious script code if that's what you are worried about. Certainly you guys can write a parser to protect against harmful code injection if that's the concern, yes? I've never heard a good reason why custom template designs aren't allowed. Heck, make it a fun thing like a contest or something for Spaces members who have the most creative templates. There's got to be some way to make this happen ... what do you say?

Hopefully custom themes is something that can/will be made in a future version. Mike did ask for the one thing people would like to see and I guess if I can't get the ability to host from my own domain, than that would be next: true template customization. That would help MSN Spaces users better personalize the experience.

Anyway, I don't want this to sound like a total moan/groan-fest because I like that the Spaces team are moving the needle and I also like how receptive and responsive the MSN Spaces team continues to be to constructive criticism, questions and commentary. I'm sure I'll have more to say after I've had some spare time to poke around and try things out.

WTG and congrats on the 4.5 million Spaces!

Special MSN spaces weblogs ping page

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:45:06 GMT

Dave Winer has added a special page for most recently updated MSN Spaces blogs. There's an option in MSN Spaces to add a few of the most recently updated spaces blogs to the page.

I think it's about time for another MSN Spaces update

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 00:43:52 GMT

I'm starting to lose interest in MSN Spaces as a blogging tool.

Some of the future features that have been hinted at like the ability to host a spaces at our own domain like blogger does need to come to fruition to revitalize my interest in this service. I purchased a domain for this very purpose months ago and they sit, collectin dust.

Not just me though, I don't hear many others talking about MSN Spaces any more either. I know the target audience isn't regular bloggers, but just people who want to have a journal, but if Microsoft really wants MSN Spaces to compete with blogger then they need to add the ability to run off their own domain and open up the template customization a lot more.

Otherwise this will become -- maybe it already is -- just a glorified diary for sharing notes, pictures and music playlists with family and friends.

One of the big M$ criticisms, fair or not this is to you to decide, is that they bulldoze their way into a market and then don't move things forward. MSN Spaces clearly made a splash but I'm getting bored with it now. Sorry.

Talking about 5 things I dislike about MSN Spaces

Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:21:02 GMT

Being self-critical is a good skill to demonstrate in business and displays a willingness to improve a product or service. Mike Torres, one of the people behind MSN Spaces, has posted his personal dislike list of the current incarnation of MSN Spaces:

Quote

5 things I dislike about MSN Spaces

Anyway, my point: I have used a bunch of different tools (and even wrote my own on the .NET Framework beta). Not a single one of them does everything I want it to do, MSN Spaces included. There are places that TypePad outshines us, and there are areas where LiveJournal kicks our butts. Of course, there are also things we do better than they do too :)
But we know we aren't perfect. Hence this post.
Five things I dislike about MSN Spaces:

I can't use BlogJet to post to my blog today. Not a huge deal, but I love this little tool. Web browsers (Firefox included!) just don't do it for me in the way of text editing.
We don't have enough themes, which means there isn't enough differentiation between spaces. People come in a lot of flavors.
We don't have comments on anything other than blog entries, which means a lot of people are using comments to either a) comment on photos, or b) comment on the space itself.
The Statistics page doesn't roll-up RSS aggregator "hits", only web page-views. I want to know who is reading this post in various aggregators.
The recent blog entry on the MSN Messenger 7.0 beta contact card doesn't show enough information to compel me to visit the user's space.

Disclaimer: I am just one member of the MSN Spaces team. There are a bunch of us, and I can almost 100% guarantee that not a single person would have the same 5 items on their list. Additionally, just because I don't like something doesn't mean we are already "fixing it" - but it doesn't mean we aren't either!
Basically what I am saying: these are just my personal thoughts. Don't read too far into them.
So, what do you dislike? Have you added your requests to our wiki over on Channel 9 yet? Have you sent us email via the Feedback button below? Have you commented on my blog? If so, we have heard you loud and clear. If not, why not?<

I have a couple things I'd add to this list, and this is in no particular order of importance, namely (and I'm sure my list is incomplete, but these are just a few things that would be nice):

Timed posting. Allowing bloggers the option to schedule their posts is handy instead of posting one after another in a machine gun style.
Allow at least some template editing. This sort of meshes with Mike's post on their not being enough themes. If at least minor template editing would be allowed then bloggers could better personalize their Spaces. Blogs that all look mostly the same are boring.
Choose which image directory to attribute photos to in a blog entry. Currently you can add photos to a blog entry which is great, but it would be nice to be able to categorize those photos. Is this possible now and I just don't know how?
Ability to remove default categories. Custom categories are put in the bottom of the list of default categories which requires a scroll when picking out the requested category.
Not a request, really, but it would be cool if I could ink my posts directly from my Tablet PC and have them transferred into an image automatically in MSN Spaces blog post.
*** Ability to add local blog search form directly to blog *** This way myself and readers could search past blog entries from this MSN Space specifically. If I could only have one of these requests fulfilled, this would be the one, Mike.

Hope this helps and thank you for being so open for feedback.

MSN Spaces trackback broken

Mon, 27 Dec 2004 22:30:39 GMT

I haven't had a chance to analyze the trackback pings being sent out from MSN Spaces to see if it's something on the blog script I'm using end, but every trackback received from MSN Spaces is missing a link back to the MSN Spaces blog permalink. Trackbacks received from other programs are being accepted just fine, but MSN Spaces doesn't seem to be working correctly. Example here. Maybe somebody from the Spaces team will see this and provide some sort of explanation or workaround.

Downsides of 3rd party hosted blogs

Thu, 23 Dec 2004 18:53:07 GMT

There's a couple downsides to using 3rd party hosted blogs:

no control over features or functionality
blog service could end -- literally -- any time the host feels like it or can no longer afford to run/offer it
many do not offer any sort of backup service for the blog content (MSN Spaces?)
backend filtering for comments might be too overzealous for the blog owner
adding additional plugins, scripts is either difficult, mostly unavailable or impossible
usually limited space and/or bandwidth
if it's free, then there's probably zero control or sharing of revenue over the advertising on the blog

Spaces fervor starting to subside?

Wed, 22 Dec 2004 19:59:06 GMT

The inevitable seems to be happening as less and MSN Spaces talk is happening. They released an update but I didn't see a lot of people talking about it in the blogosphere. Too bad, because it addressed a number of first generation beta issues. Somebody asked me yesterday how long I thought Microsoft would be blogging to the degree it has in 2004 and my answer was simple: as long as they have MSN Spaces.

Suggestion #8: customize link in portrait mode is sort of cut off

Mon, 20 Dec 2004 01:50:05 GMT

I've been doing primarily portrait mode surfing via the Tablet PC and noticed the "customize" button is cut off. Would be cool if that floated (suggestion #8) so that it would move based upon the browser width.

Hacking your own category module

Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:50:29 GMT

Looks like there is in fact a way to further customize the categories list, sort of, and this comes via Ryan from the MSN Spaces team. Requires a little hacking, though. Haven't tried this out yet, but it looks pretty straight-forward.

Quote

How to Build a Better Cat. Trap

The MSN Spaces Beta launched with a simple built-in category picker for filtering blog posts. When added to a space this module stays up-to-date with all the blog categories currently in use, providing readers with a way to drill down on a topic with one click from your home tab.

But here's where the critic in me wants to jump in and clutter up a simple and elegant design (the PMs on the team are starting to cringe about this point in this post)... There are some things that the category list doesn't do/allow that I think would be incredibly useful. They are:

• Have a customizable module title.
• Allow me to add comments for each category
• The ability to hide old topics that I'm no longer keeping current
• A link to get back to an "all categories" view.
• Control the order of the listed categories
• And finally, once I click on the category I'm interested in, I'd like an expand view of just those posts (nice and wide, like what I get when I select the "Blog" tab)

Well, if you agree with me that these would be (really * N) nice to have then, until we build it for you, you'll have to build it yourself. Have a look at the "Blog Category Picker" I created on my space. Note that if you're not on my home tab (say you just followed a permalink/trackback) click the home tab now. You'll find it in the leftmost column (my take some scrolling). Go ahead and click on "MSN Spaces" and you'll see this post become/return to full width... Now read on.

Lists in the Spaces Beta are generic structures. The book/custom/blog lists don't really have to contain that type of information at all. You've probably already figured that out by now. But how do you turn something like a blog lists into a category filter for you own blog roll

Feedback on new MSN Spaces update

Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:38:04 GMT

Wow, the "blog it" button is pretty cool! Yeah, I know it's been there for awhile, but I finally used it. There's also a bookmarklet for that somewhere, I believe, so it can be added to IE (not sure about Firefox). I just tried that out and it inserts a significant portion of the post in as a blockquote and automatically includes as a trackback so you can add your own comments and snip what parts you want of the post from there. I was reading Mike Torres post yesterday on what's been changed:

Quote

Minor updates today

As you may already know, we released a bunch of minor updates today (note: more 'fix' than 'feature'!) We have been closely monitoring your feedback (both around the blogosphere as well as in our own comments and email) in an effort to identify the things that were bugging you the most, and we didn’t want you to have to wait much longer for these updates with the holiday season rapidly approaching. So we figured we might as well just do it now!

Here is a partial list of some of the updates we made:

Weblogs.com pinging: Thanks in large part to the work Dave & team did to improve the reliability of Weblogs.com, and some minor tweaking and testing of our implementation, our success rate has jumped from about 0-5% during our first week to close to 100% today. This means more and more of your content will start being syndicated around the web (if you have a public space and have Weblogs.com pinging turned on).
MSN Search results: Due to a goof-up on our part involving the infamous robots.txt file, the search results for spaces have been a little wonky (oops). This will start to heal itself.
Blog edit layout: A bunch of people had been kind enough to alert us of what appeared to be a security issue – but was actually just a layout bug (you know who you are! Thanks for looking out!) After today, you don’t have to worry about this happening again.
Mobile publishing: This is somewhat of a corner case, but it is a big deal to Microsoft employees and other gadget geeks around the world. Posting an image from the (phenomenal) Audiovox SMT5600 phone via email now works without having to have text in the body of the mail; just a photo will do.
“Space not available”: Some of you may have been receiving “Space not available” errors if you setup a space during the first 24 hours the service was live. This problem should now be fixed, and the likelihood of getting into this state on sign-up again is much, much lower. The one gotcha is that if you had one of these spaces, you will have to go into Settings: Permissions and reset your space to Public (or whichever setting you like best.) If you are still seeing this error, please send us Feedback using the link at the bottom of the page and we will look into it.
Sign-in/out: We made some updates that will help improve that pesky sign-in/sign-out issue in places like the comments area. If you don’t know what I am talking about, don’t worry about it. It was harmless – but it was pretty darn annoying, so we fixed it.
Usability: It is now easier to get into “author” mode from “preview” mode on your own space. Just click “Customize” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, where “Preview my space” is usually shown.
A bunch of other random fixes: Without going into too much detail, there were other little things we did to improve your experience with Spaces.

My favorite additions are fixing the sign-in/sign-out issue and the addition of the "customize" link so we can easier get into author mode. Keep up the good work, MSN Spaces team!

How do I get rid of the default categories? [Suggestion #7]

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:00:05 GMT

I would like to customize the category list and get rid of the default provided ones (since the three categories I created are at the bottom), does anybody know if this is possible?

Suggestion #7: Please allow editing / deleting of default categories

Also, I see a number of MSN Spaces updates are coming, according to Jay (added to my MSN Spaces blogroll) who was at the Blogger Meetup last night.

Bug? I noticed when I uploaded the last Tablet PC capture for this post that it did not compress the file (it was 150k). Could this be a bug that sometimes the compression algo isn't working right? I downloaded the picture, compressed in Photoshop and reuploaded.

Auto pic compression: testing photo at Seattle meetup for bloggers

Thu, 16 Dec 2004 04:27:45 GMT

Here at Ralph's with Robert Scoble and he said that I could snip and it would (automatically) compress the pictures for me. Addy, is here watching.
Update: I didn't mention that the original post was written and posted on the Tablet PC (hence some of the original, weird capitalization [which I just fixed] as I'm not totally used to blogging with/from a Tablet). Anita Rowland has a list of those who attended and Jon took two pages of pics (you can rate them too). I'll be writing my thoughts about the event at Things That ... Make You Go Hmm later today.

Suggestion #6: Comments / trackbacks on/off by blog entry

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:35:34 GMT

Suggestion #6: Allow comments and trackbacks to be enabled / disabled on a per blog entry basis. This is useful when you do not want to receive feedback on something, you just want to make a quick comment or perhaps just share a picture.

A friend asked me yesterday if there was a way to turn on and off ALL comments in MSN Spaces blogs and the answer is yes. To do that:

STEP 1. Navigate to SETTINGS -> BLOG SETTINGS ->
STEP 2. Uncheck the box that says "allow comments"

The picture shown below shows how and where to do this.

Why do I have to keep logging in and out of .NET?

Thu, 09 Dec 2004 20:15:10 GMT

This is a bug with Spaces that has been really frustrating. No matter what I do, I keep having to logout and login to .NET (Passport) to be able to leave comments on spaces blogs and sometimes to even get to the screen to be able to post a new blog entry. Even though I tell it to remember me, it never seems to do it, though it shows me as logged in with the .NET graphic (it asks me to "Sign Out" but yet on the comment form it says I need to "Sign in") I am not closing browsers, I have a pretty much always-on machine I've been working on and it doesn't matter.

Has anybody got any tips / tricks for how to workaround this issue? It must be cookie-related, but I've tried dumping the cookie file and that doesn't seem to help either. I commented about this on one of the developer's blogs and another user (who I don't know) said he was having the same problem.

Linking to pictures from my other websites and server space

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:52:26 GMT

Since MSN Spaces only allows 10MB for pictures (but apparently "virtually unlimited" space for blog text, according to Mike Torres [see his comment]) I was wondering if I can hotlink pictures from my own dedicated servers? I know that hotlinking to other websites content without permission is a major no-no so it wouldn't surprise me if this is blocked by default, but I'm going to try an experiment using the raw HTML edit function and see what happens below.

Copy and paste from another site:

Raw HTML addition (different picture):

Nice, both ways work good! So it's not required to use the MSN spaces 10MB exclusively for picture storage! I just had to add a little tweak to my .htaccess file so that only my space can hotlink these pictures. The htaccess code looks like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?spaces.msn.com(/members/tdavid/)?.*$ [NC]

Bug? My photo transition is gone after adding new photo category

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:28:03 GMT

When I added the two new picture categories (to match the content categories), the photo module no longer shows the cool transition slideshow that it did before :( I wonder if there's a way to get that back. Does anybody know?

Also, I wonder how does one move pictures between one category and another? Or is this even possible. If anybody knows, please comment below or on your MSN Spaces and trackback to this entry so I can learn. Thank you!

Suggestion #5: Background picture scaling / stretching

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:17:47 GMT

I noticed with my originally chosen MSN Spaces theme that the background picture didn't scale or stretch to the number of blog entries (even when there was 5, it was out of whack). So it would be nice if in the future ...

Suggestion #5 (design/cosmetic): Please allow for background images to stretch, scroll, fix, move or scale based on the total height of the page. There is Javascript which can fix a background image so that it will scroll with the user as they read down the page, and therefore won't make the design look all blocky.

In the meantime I've chosen this green theme ... I'm not sure how long this one will stay. My wife likes hunter green and this is sort of hunter green, so I'll stay with this for a little while.

This blog now has a central topic / theme / font! (suggestion #4)

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 15:48:11 GMT

Well, it took me a week to figure this out, but I've been inspired by MSN Spaces developer activity out in the blogosphere, and it's given me a purpose for this blog to give back back to Microsoft for what they've given the blogosphere:

Offering user feedback on/for, sharing tips and tricks, and evangelizing Microsoft products/services.

I guess in a way this sort of makes me a Scoble-clone of sorts, but I'm not going to copy him, I'm thinking that this blog will be more about specific user suggestions for Microsoft products/services from both my family, friends and my own experiences. Hopefully this will help shape/make better Microsoft products/services. We users will win if that's the case when upgrade time comes around ;)

So that's what I'm going to do here specifically at this blog since I don't have another blog dedicated to this or even a blog category within another blog for this elsewhere. Why would I do this? Well, one, although I don't own and use that many Microsoft products, we do use some flavor of Windows on just about every computer we have (except the Mac of course), we're on XBox live with our XBox (Gamertag: TJSNK) and I own and regularly use a Pocket PC. Also (and I bet Scoble will be interested to hear this) I just ordered the loaded Motion M1400 Tablet PC after months and months of waffling on the decision there. I'll have lots to write about my first experiences using a Tablet PC.

As you might also note, I'm using Courier font for this blog with a default size. I'm hoping this will be a bit easier to read (the default MSN Spaces font with at least my weathered eyes is not very reader-friendly). This will be the font used from now on unless many readers tell me it is irritating or hard to read for them (I think it's easier to read, but I'm happy to get feedback from others on this). It's too bad I can't customize the site wide font. Perhaps that will be my first 'official' suggestion (although I just made 3 suggestions about MSN Spaces, so this would actually be suggestion #4).

Suggestion #4: please allow for global font size / type changes. This way the modules will reflect the same design as blog entries and the blog won't look funny, design-wise.

I'm also going to number these changes so that as they are added / responded to I can keep record of them. The suggestions will be numbered for each product/service and each number will relate to the categories. So for XBox and Tablet PC suggestions (and any other Microsoft products/services added in the future), they will start numbering at one for easy reference for myself and any developer comments in those specific teams.

I'm excited to track what happens with this constructive user feedback and help make Microsoft products/services better.

Suggestion #1-3: new spaces update by language option

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 15:29:42 GMT

The "new spaces module" is a neat way to explore and share new blogs across the MSN Spaces community. What I'd like is to be able to limit the new spaces module listing by language. I realize that (hopefully, anyway) someday I'll have some readers who speak multiple languages, but since blogs tend to be blogger-specific in nature (IE. sharing my WMP playlists, my pictures, etc), and I only speak one language (English) I'd also like to be able to control/customize the new spaces module listing (number of items shown, perhaps someday even limiting by category so that I could find "new technology-related blogs" or "new Microsoft product/services-related"). If this is already possible to customize, then somebody please let me know how?

Suggestion #2: It would be even cooler along the same lines, if we could someday list and share new MSN Spaces blogs by category/type. I realize this would mean adding a new field to define what type of blog it is but to keep things simple new blogs could be defined as "general" by default and once the category is set/changed for the first time only (so it isn't abused) it shows up as a new blog in the new spaces module. This way people who start their blog are given some time to think about what it's going to be about (it took me a week to decide what this blog was going to focus on). For example, I would be particularly interested in visiting and reading new MSN Spaces technology-related blogs, or new MSN Spaces or MSN Spaces developer/tester blogs but I'm not as interested in seeing/reading personal blogs. It's not that I don't like reading about people's personal stuff from time to time, but that just isn't my primary field of interest and besides being useful for me personally, it could also be useful for networking with other like-minded folks.

Suggestion #3: Also, for the search that is in development it would be useful to be able to search by language for blogs and drill down by type/category of blog as well.

For reference, the picture below shows exactly what I'm talking about on the language thing.

Hey, how do you search this thing?

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 06:00:25 GMT

I just realized something that I use a lot on my main blog: where's the built-in blog search? I know I can use MSN but is there an MSN Space-specific search by blog? I'm going to have to check into this because as more entries are amassed this could be a real issue. I'm also looking at that 10MB space and thinking: boy I sure hope they offer some sort of upgrade (for a small fee or whatever) as 10MB just won't cut it for any kind of regular blogger.

MSN Spaces is hiring!

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 05:49:55 GMT

This sounds like a great opportunity for someone to get their foot inside the MSN Spaces (Microsoft) door: http://tdurl.com/a5

We are looking for passionate, bright software engineers and testers to help us drive this product forward. If you get excited by things like RSS and CSS, drop us a line.

BTW, I'd recommend using a URL shortening service for these long MSN spaces permalinks, anybody is free to use tdurl.com for this purpose (there's free click-thru tracking too included so you can see what links folks are clicking on)

Spaces still moving slow for me

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 19:18:36 GMT

Just dropped in to check out spaces and it's still moving pretty sluggish for me. I'm on a very fast cable connection. I'm hoping things will stabelize in the next couple weeks after the onslaught ends of people adding their own spaces blog. I guess this is why Google didn't want to open the floodgates on Gmail.

Raw HTML editing inside MSN Spaces

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 05:58:36 GMT

It's possible through an "Edit This" hack offered up by Scott here: http://www.siteexperts.com/blogging/editit.htm and discussed here on Scott's spaces blog: http://tdurl.com/a3 (note my use of my free URL shortening program tdurl.com to shorten the permalink):

Consider this button completely unsupported and experimental (it may stop working at any time). When adding a blog entry, clicking this button will reenable a couple of the toolbar options and turn on a checkbox where you can edit your raw HTML. Before you get overly excited, we support a very small subset of HTML so there are no guarantees that the HTML you type (or generated by these new buttons) will render.

Check out the cool screenshot below of it working in Internet Explorer.

More Spaces features coming

Sun, 05 Dec 2004 21:40:29 GMT

Mike Torres comments on the features that they left out of MSN Spaces in the interest of time and in particular the "A-list" bloggers who likely wouldn't switch blog programs no matter how good Spaces was: http://spaces.msn.com/members/mike/Blog/cns!1pG4qKNdtRA5Nl-UhvZI_1rQ!491.entry

So when faced with the question of whether or not the 100 or so "A-list" bloggers would consider switching to MSN Spaces in December 2004, the resounding answer was "probably not, but that is OK." And just about everybody we talked to (including A-listers - which really is a ridiculous term) agreed with this approach given the alternative.

Interesting stuff, thanks for keeping us updated via your blog, Mike.

Having trouble accessing Spaces? Here's a couple things I've tried

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 16:49:46 GMT

These last couple days it's been like computing in molasses at MSN Spaces. Here's some things I've tried to be able to make Spaces blog editing semi-functional:

logout of .NET passport and back in sometimes will make customize menu appear
refreshing the blog post page and other pages will sometimes make them come back
bookmark the page to get to the editing menu, as often times I'm thrown back to spaces.msn.com

Yes, it's very frustrating and slow trying to work with this system, but it is beta. I think I'm going to let this one settle for a little while and come back to it when the kinks are more fully worked out.

Tweaking my Space

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:59:07 GMT

I've done a little bit of tweaking here: changed the default template, added a few pictures which was done through uploading from my desktop (need to install an ActiveX first), added a Windows Media playlist so folks could get some ideas of some of the music I listen to when programming and added a blog or two to the blog list.

Michael Lehman has figured out how to: Podcast via MSN Spaces blog

I found that there's no direct editing of HTML (yet anyway) so you need to write your posts somewhere else and then cut and paste with the HTML components inserted. A little awkward but maybe I'll get to used to it.

I am still thinking about what the purpose of this blog will be beyond my experimenting with the MSN Spaces interface. Any suggestions for good blog ideas/subjects?