I've set myself a goal of getting up to speed on Windows PowerShell, Microsoft's new* tool for Windows administration.

I've started by watching the Windows PowerShell: Learn It Now Before It's An Emergency webcast videos. I can't watch them online at work (my desktop doesn't have Silverlight installed), but it is possible to download them to Windows Media (WMV) format and play them in Windows Media Player, so that's what I'm doing.

The narrator for the webcasts is by Ed Wilson, author of the Hey, Scripting Guy! blog. Of course, Wilson references the Hey, Scripting Guy! blog in the video, and links to a couple of tagged subsets as well - Getting Started, and the Scripting Wife articles.

Besides the webcast, I've started reading the Windows PowerShell Getting Started Guide in the Windows Desktop Development Center. 

* OK, PowerShell has actually been around in a release version since 2006. It's new to me, anyway.

Mashable.com presents 6 Tips For Building a High Quality Blog Following.

The 6 Tips (with my thoughts on / experiences with putting them into action) are:

1. Turn Existing Customers Into Readers 
   When I first read this tip, my immediate reaction was "I don't have 'existing customers.'" But actually I do, and so do you, if people in your social or business networks have interests in common with your blog subject. If you're writing for part of your network, however, don't lose your focus while trying to reach network members who aren't as interested in your subject. Build on the part of your network that really wants to hear what you have to say, and add others with the same interest. Don't spam your friends who aren't that into your blog subject.
    
2. Skip the Misleading Traffic-Boosting Techniques
   Mashable refers specifically to slideshows (which bulk up pageviews-per-visit stats to increase ad revenue) and misleading headlines to draw traffic. I confess I've been guilty of the occasional misleading headline myself - but since getting on Twitter and linking to my blog posts on Facebook, I've become convinced that honesty is the best policy when it comes to blog post headlines.
    
3. Speak to a Very Specific Audience
   This is another lesson that it's taken me a while to learn. But learn it I have. In 2007, I had one blog (edwardspurlock.net) and posted anything and everything that interested me. Since then, I've started blogs on several different subjects - exercise and fitness (Geek My Fitness), mental exercise (Kung Fu Mind), and learning Web design and development (Evolving Code Monkey). I've repurposed EdwardSpurlock.net as a blog on social and business networking, and built this blog (edward.spurlock.cc) for subjects related to my current career  (my "day job") and career change (blogging and Web content creation).
    
4. Guest Post and Use Guest Bloggers
   I haven't done tried to do any guest blogging yet - being new to professional blogging, I've been hesitant to put myself out there.
    
5. Encourage Loyalty Through Consistency
   By "consistency", Mashable means being consistent in one's stands, as well as posting regularly and often. I've never had much trouble with philosophical consistency. 
   
   As for posting consistency - I've read this advice several times since I started blogging. In fact, "blog on a regular schedule" is one of the commonest pieces of advice for new bloggers. What a pity that it's so much easier to read this advice than to practice it!
   
   I've gotten serious about my blogging two or three times before, and posted several times per week for two or three months running - then something would come up, and I'd abandon the effort. This year, I'm off to a good start with a post every day on my Evolving Code Monkey blog - but it's very early in the year. 
    
6. Be Timely and Relevant
   This is another aspect of blogging that I haven't mastered. In fact, I hadn't really thought of it as an issue. It seemed to me that chasing the latest trending topic on Twitter or trying to be the first to comment on a new article on a popular industry blog were activities driven by a selfish desire to build up one's own online presence, and not in any way a service to the audience.
   
   However, this Smashing Magazine article has opened my eyes. Timeliness is more than chasing trends - it really is serving the readers. Rather than "interrupting" your readers by revisiting some subject they read about three weeks ago on some other blog or news site, a timely post on a trending industry topic gives them your unique viewpoint when they're already thinking about it. It's more convenient for your readers.

'Tis the season - for "Best Of..." lists. Mashable.com chimes in with The 15 Best Mobile Apps of 2011. There are five each for Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone 7. The WP7 apps listed are:

• Tango - Tango lets you make free phone and video calls over cellular data and WiFi to other Tango users - like Skype, except that as Mashable notes, Skype isn't ready for WP7 yet. Since Microsoft purchased Skype last year, it's probably only a matter of time before Skype users can take advantage of features like the front-facing camera on the HTC Radar - but Tango is dancing a solo on WP7 for now. Oh, and it's free.
  
  The Marketplace on my HTC Radar  shows two versions of Tango. Version 1.1 from tango.me earns 4 stars from reviewers. Version 1.0 from HTC only gets 3 stars. The HTC offering notes that only the HTC Titan and HTC Radar support video calling. The 1.1 app details page notes support for the Samsung Focus and Omnia 7.
  
  As an experiment, I tried installing the 1.1 version to see if it would kick out an error - it didn't, but since I don't know any other video-enabled smartphone users with Tango, I didn't bother to get very far into the app.
   
• Metrotube - allows you to watch YouTube videos. According to Mashable, it's better than the native WP7 YouTube app built by Microsoft, and a look at the WP7 Marketplace bears this out -- Metrotube gets 4 1/2 stars from user reviews, a good deal better than the 3 stars garnered by Microsoft's offering. Metrotube is $0.99 in the premium version in the Marketplace (not $1.99 as Mashable would have it), but there is a free version that does almost everything except HD video streaming.
   
• FeedWorm - this free app syncs with one's Google Reader account, allowing one to read RSS feeds - i.e., blog feeds. For someone who blogs regularly, reading other blogs is de rigeur. According to the Marketplace Details FeedWorm has a "no-frills...efficient interface...deliberately simple and focused...dedicated to the basics." Mashable agrees, citing the "super-clean interface", compared to rival app Fuse. Marketplace downloaders have given FeedWorm 5 stars. I'll be installing it soon myself.
  
  
• bubblegum -  bubblegum is a free photo app with "cool filters and social options", according to Mashable. The publisher in the Marketplace is listed as Goofball Labs, but Mashable says it was "Created by Microsoft programmers." Perhaps Goofball Labs is a pseudonym for a group of Microsoft programmers - I couldn't find a Goofball Labs website in Google or Bing.
  
  If bubblegum was a project by Microsoft programmers designed to show off features of WP7 (rather than a commercial app), that may explain why the app doesn't seem to have gotten needed updates in months, if the user reviews in the Marketplace are any indication. The Marketplace rating is only 3 1/2 stars - there are quite a few 4- and 5-star reviews, but there are also a lot of 2- and 1-star reviews from disappointed users. Mashable notes that Pictures Lab ($2.99, 4 stars in Marketplace) and Thumba Photo Editor (not in the Marketplace, but available for $0.99 from thumba.net) are popular alternatives to bubblegum.
  
  
• Mixtapes - a WP7 app for 8tracks.com free Internet radio playlists (created by 8tracks users). Mixtapes is free and collects 4 1/2 stars from WP7 Marketplace users.

From Slate magazine comes this essay on How to be a faster writer. I may have "blogged" ("curated"?) about this story before, but if so, I think it's something I want to remind myself of.

Looking at Web developer jobs in Austin, trying to figure out the dominant technologies in demand, I encountered the following listing:

.NET Entry Level Developer

Required Experience/Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science (or related)
2 to 4 years experience as a Software Engineer using the .NET Framework
1 to 2 years experience doing development for the web using ASP.NET WebForms

Two to four years experience is "entry level" now?

Dang.

I had hopes of being able to bootstrap myself into a real job, but if this is entry level, it doesn't sound like much of a chance.

At F8, the Facebook developer conference, Facebook announced some major changes to the service - this on top of the new Top Stories arrangement from a couple of days ago, which most people found took some getting used to.

So what's coming soon?

• Timeline - The Profile page will soon be replaced by a Timeline, which will provide easier access to past activity (including Status Posts). You can also add pictures, notes etc and place them on your Timeline after the fact - even before you started to use Facebook (all the way back to baby pictures, if you like). The Timeline will become like an online scrapbook of one's life. If you want to get a head start on this change, you can enable your Timeline now and get busy uploading those baby pictures. Also, Mashable's Ben Parr went in depth with the new Facebook Timeline.
• Gestures - developers can create buttons similar to the Like button, but for any action directed to any particular entity. For example, you might visit a book publisher's site, and the product page for a particular book might have a button you can click to tell Facebook (and the world) that you're Reading that book.
• apps only need to ask once to share stories on your behalf - as part of Facebook's new Open Graph, Web sites that get your permission to share a story on your Ticker don't need to ask permission when you visit the site again - they can just share automatically.
• "lightweight" information will be shared on the Ticker, not the News Feed - the News Feed will contain important updates, like Friends' status updates, changes in relationship status, and the like. Less-important information like shared stories, Farmville, etc will be relegated to the Ticker, has already been added as part of the recent changes.
• Watch TV shows, listen to music, etc with friends thanks to new FB partners - Facebook has partnered with Hulu, Spotify, and others to allow users to watch TV shows, listen to music without leaving Facebook. These activities will appear in the Ticker too. You might notice that your friends are watching a show you've been meaning to catch, and start watching it "with them" directly from Facebook.

Big changes! For the 800 million of us already on Facebook, some of these are going to be a pretty big deal.

Recently, I've become aware of OneNote, Microsoft's note-taking and organizing software. I've just begun looking at it for writing in-house documentation at work, and it seems to have a LOT of promise.

Currently, we use MS Word as our default in-house documentation tool. We have a wiki, but it's not generally used outside of IT. In fact, we've had a policy against putting process documentation in the wiki (don't ask me why).

To my mind, Word leaves a lot to be desired as a tool for writing in-house process documentation. One thing in particular that Word lacks is tabs - an easy visual way to divide documents into sections.

Happily, when we upgraded to Office 2010 last year, OneNote was included. OneNote has tabs - and much more. For one thing, it appears to be much more flexible than Word when it comes to integrating pictures and other visuals.

I wanted to find a quick overview of OneNote, something I could use to help convince my boss and coworkers to use this tool instead of Word. Today, it occurred to me to Google "onenote" for stories or reviews on this tool. I came across a couple of stories on Lifehacker that are worth coming back to later.

Five Best Outlining Tools describes the top five results from a survey of Lifehacker readers. OneNote came in first place, ahead of OmniOutliner (Mac OS X), MS Word, and two free alternatives. The fifth-place entry was a Java-based desktop program called FreeMind, which was actually designed for mind mapping.

FreeMind came out on top of an earlier Lifehacker survey of Five Best Mind Mapping Applications. There are a couple of other free tools in that review that look very interesting, but FreeMind was the most popular among Lifehacker users.

Besides outlining, OneNote starred in an article titled Getting Things Done with Microsoft OneNote. By "Getting Things Done" (GTD), the article's author is referring to the productivity system made famous by David Allen. Of course, this is far from the only article about GTD on Lifehacker.com.

For a quick overview of the program (which is what I was originally looking for, after all!), I turned up Microsoft OneNote is a Note-Taking Power Tool. It's a snapshot of the basics and some of the advanced features, and whets my appetite to learn more.

Websense says Potentially Damaging Content - help!

As I wrote a few days ago, I've been having issues with Websense marking this BlogEngine.NET blog as Potentially Damaging Content. This kept me from accessing the blog from my day job, and made me wonder who else might be unable to read it. In particular, I worried that potential clients would encounter a Websense warning and reject me from consideration.

More...

More...

The Panda attacks the Farmer

(picture from Rick Weiss)

Earlier this year, Google began rolling out changes to the algorithms used to rank the value of the Web sites in Google's index. These changes were aimed at "content farms" - sites that steal copy content from other sites (a practice known as "scraping") or post vast amounts of low-value content, such as poorly-written blog posts written by poorly-paid freelancers.

These changes (nicknamed "Panda" after the name of one of Google's engineers) have been effective. Sites that formerly ranked highly in Goggle's index, such as articlesbase.com, associatedcontent.com, suite101.com, and eHow.com, have seen their traffic drop way off. Even "real" sites like About.com have seen noticeable drops in the numbers of Web visitors.

Bad pages can hurt your entire site

Google has confirmed that the change in their ranking algorithms doesn't just apply to the low-value pages themselves. A site that contains a mixture of low-value and high-value pages can have the ranking reduced on all their pages due to the low-value pages.

This is probably what happened to About.com. Although the site (which is owned by the New York Times) did have genuine people with real identities acting as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and posting lots of high-value content, there were plenty of subject areas where the Experts were, well, not so expert. If some of those SMEs were manually scraping other sites to get the content for their subject areas on About.com, Google's newly tweaked ranking algorithms may have reduced the ranking of the good information on About.com.

Implications for site owners

What does this mean for you and me?

When I started this blog earlier this year, I wanted to get in the habit of daily blogging, and establish my Web presence. I didn't know that my "bookmark" posts (where I posted links to sites that I thought would have value to Evolving Code Monkeys like myself) could do long-term damage to my site's Google ranking.

When I relaunch my Evolving Code Monkey blog (as EvolvingCodeMonkey.com) later in August, I'm going to focus on providing only high-value, original content. I won't try to blog something every day - rather, I'll go for posts two or maybe three times per week, on a schedule.

I'm going to maintain my current domain (edward.spurlock.cc), and if I feel the urge to post a "bookmark" post or some other low-value content, I'll add it to this blog, rather than diluting the quality at EvolvingCodeMonkey.com.

Google's 23 Questions to Improve Your Pages

In response to question from site owners and webmasters about the changes, Google's Webmaster Central blog provided some more guidance on building high-quality sites, including a list of 23 questions that webmasters could ask themselves about the content on their sites. These are the kinds of questions Google's testers were told to ask in formulating their judgments of page and site quality. I recommend reading the entire list and taking all the questions under consideration. However, the 23 questions can be summarized by the first question in the list:

Would you trust the information presented in this article?