Have you ever wanted to get a better sense of an event’s commentary on Twitter? For example, a subset of your following may be attending an event in your periphery but making interesting enough comments to warrant a closer look.

Well, I’ve had these thoughts on an increasing basis lately so I thought I’d dive into the Twitter stream a bit to see what I could learn.

Fortunately, I was aware of a gist to query Twitter by @pmonks, and this Groovy script became the foundation for my exploration.

Since I don’t normally program in Groovy, I had to setup Groovy on my MacBook Pro. (To be clear, I went for “get this to work” rather than “accomplish your configuration with all best practices incorporated.” I’m sure there may be better techniques where Groovy setup on MacOS is concerned, and I thank you in advance for any comment-based pointers.)

1. Visit the Groovy website and understand basic Groovy installation instructions.
2. Downloaded the binary release (Zip) of Groovy 1.8.6 (i.e. latest available version of the stable branch at the time of this post).
3. Extracted Zip contents and moved (via Terminal) them under my up-to-date Java distribution:

   prompt$ sudo mv ~/downloads/groovy-1.8.6 /usr/share/java

   (I’ve seen apparent best practice guidance to create a symlink that allows you to access Groovy without referencing the version number, but I’ve skipped that here.)

4. Edit your .profile file to point your environment to your new Groovy installation. (If you don’t have a .profile file, read and follow this.)

   prompt$ open /Applications/TextEdit.app .profile

   Add (or confirm) the following lines in your .profile file:

   JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home; export JAVA_HOME
   GROOVY_HOME=/usr/share/java/groovy-1.8.6; export GROOVY_HOME
   PATH=$GROOVY_HOME/bin:$PATH; export PATH

   Save your .profile file, exit TextEdit, close all open Terminal windows, exit Terminal and open a new Terminal window to enable .profile changes to take effect.

5. Confirm that Groovy is ready to act on your script:

   prompt$ groovy -v

   My confirmation looked as follows:
   Groovy Version: 1.8.6 JVM: 1.6.0_31 Vendor: Apple Inc. OS: Mac OS X

For this particular script, queryTwitter.groovy, you need to provide a peer twitter4j.properties file that will provide to Twitter your username and password. Once that’s ready,

prompt$ groovy queryTwitter.groovy %23interesting_event

The results are ready to be nested within a table element, if you want to produce HTML for display as-is. However, you could also modify the script to render JSON output and pursue alternative visualizations (e.g. rate of tweets over time, geolocation of individuals in the tweetstream, word clouds for the event, influencer status, etc.)–something for D3.js.

“D3.js is a small, free JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data.” -http://mbostock.github.com/d3/

Since I’ve been trying to spread the word with colleagues about this powerful, expressive visualization technology, I thought it might be worth sharing similarly here.

The following tutorials have been helpful in ramping folks up on D3:

• Jan Willem Tulp’s introduction (also his blog posts on D3 and his interview about D3)
• Stanford CS
• Scotty Murray’s series

D3′s creator, Mike Bostock, has published a white paper on D3 (Stanford Visualization Group) and presented D3 during the most recent W3Conf (browser-based slides).

A couple of spotlights on D3 include one by Flowing Data and another by SVG Magazine.

Flowing Data also posted an application of D3, “How Americans Spend Their Day” (background context).

If this whets your appetite, visit the D3 wiki for a whole lot more goodness (documentation, additional tutorials, example visualizations, etc.).

A little over a month ago, I encouraged my readers–many new from the Day Software (now Adobe) community via the Ignite conference in Berlin–to download and leverage Adobe Enterprise Café.

…the Café is hard at work to integrate the Day community as well. However, you don’t need to wait for that new version of Café; you can install Café today and when the Day community is integrated, you’ll receive that update the next time you launch the Adobe AIR application.

Hopefully you’re already receiving value from Café. If you held out for the Day community integration with Café, that day has arrived.

Presenting Adobe Enterprise Café 1.6!

Update 7/29/2011: Now that the Adobe® Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) has been announced, I recommend that you upgrade to Adobe Enterprise Café 1.8, which features a new ADEP community that is the combination of the previous LiveCycle and Day Communities.

For technical insights on ADEP, please follow the ADEP category and/or ADEP tag herein. Thanks.

Thanks to everyone at Day Ignite Berlin 2010 who came to the technical track session that I presented this afternoon. In order to keep the conversation going, I’ve uploaded this presentation as follows:

During this presentation I recommended that you consume my “Realizing great customer experiences with LiveCycle ES3″ presentation from Adobe MAX 2010, if you’re interested in more details about the architecture and capabilities of LiveCycle ES3. You will find that presentation here.

I also asked you to consider downloading and installing Adobe Enterprise Café. Café, as we like to call it in Adobe, helps you stay in touch with the enterprise community, receive news, find information and aggregate content related to Adobe LiveCycle ES (Enterprise Suite), Acrobat, Connect, ColdFusion, the Adobe Flash Platform, and (since its v1.5 release) the Omniture community. Targeted at the general developer ecosystem, Café is the one tool you need to search across the entire community knowledge base and stay in touch with the Adobe teams. Furthermore, the Café is hard at work to integrate the Day community as well. However, you don’t need to wait for that new version of Café; you can install Café today and when the Day community is integrated, you’ll receive that update the next time you launch the Adobe AIR application.

When I presented this session with Alex Choy in Chicago, Irina Guseva of CMS Wire published her thoughts on the session: “Apps as Content, or How Day and Adobe May Fit Together.”

Thanks to everyone at Day Ignite Chicago 2010 who came to the technical track session that Alex and I presented–especially those who stood the entire time in a packed room.

In order to keep the conversation going, I’ve uploaded this presentation as follows:

We’re very excited at Adobe about the opportunity to work with those at Day Software as fellow colleagues. By working together with you, we believe that great things will emerge from the unified delivery of content plus applications.

P.S. If you’re not already watching the #dayignite tweetstream, why not?

Update 10/18/2010: Irina Guseva published her thoughts on this presentation on CMS Wire: “Apps as Content, or How Day and Adobe May Fit Together.”

Update 10/22/2010: Presentations from Day Ignite Chicago 2010 are appearing here. Presentations that will also be delivered during Day Ignite Berlin 2010 won’t appear on Slideshare until after both events have concluded. (That being said, you can see a thorough write-up of David Nuescheler’s presentation here.) Event photos from Chicago are here.

Update on 10/27/2010: The message first delivered in Chicago around the unified delivery of content and applications was expanded upon in Los Angeles at Adobe MAX 2010, and that presentation is now available here.

Roughly a month ago, VMware released a new major version of its Workstation (and Fusion) software (i.e. 7.0 (and 3.0, respectively)). So, it seemed like a good time to upgrade from version 6.5.3. Past protocol suggested the following approach: uninstall old, reboot, and install new. Unfortunately, and unexpectedly, this approach failed to result in an up-to-date Workstation installation.

Shortly after launching VMware-workstation-full-7.0.0-203739.exe, the installer presented:

Clicking the Uninstall button resulted in a second cryptic dialog being presented:

“The MSI ” failed.” seems to be a fairly unique phrase, especially when combined with VMware, etc.; so, I Googled to see what others had encountered. Suffice it to say that I found nothing that ultimately solved my installation issue–although I was able to reclaim over 9 GB of free space by running CCleaner, thanks to one post.

So, I confirmed that my host operating system is supported by VMware Workstation 7.0. I further confirmed that my Windows file system and registry were both clean of VMware-related content–rebooting after this confirmation. Nada.

Sometimes I’ve seen installers insist on being the party to uninstall older software. Since I’d uninstalled VMware Workstation 6.5.3 myself, I tried to reinstall the older software, reboot my host OS, and retry installing VMware Workstation 7.0:

In hindsight, I could have seen that this wouldn’t resolve anything, but I clicked Uninstall as before…only to end up with the failed mystery MSI dialog once more.

So, I tracked down where VMware Workstation 7 wrote its installation logs: %TEMP%\vmware_*.log. I re-ran the installer to arrive back at the top state above, allowing me to recognize the associated log file and examine its state at the point of presenting the uninstall panel:

20091128194313:INFO    CGetMSIStateOperation::Execute: Examining the system for VMware Workstation.msi
20091128194313:INFO    CGetMSIStateOperation::Execute: MSI Data ProductCode: {A3FF5CB2-FB35-4658-8751-9EDE1D65B3AA}, PackageCode: {CDA82EA5-329A-428D-8ED3-9857244767DE}, UpgradeCode: {14F539F3-C4A4-4597-A29D-8C1D753ACC93} , Version: 7.0.0.9911
20091128194313:ERROR** CGetMSIStateOperation::GetSysVersionString: ::MsiGetProductInfo failed to retrieve the version string for {{98D1A713-438C-4A23-8AB6-41B37C4A2D47}} due to error: 1605
20091128194313:INFO    CGetMSIStateOperation::Execute: Installed MSI Data ProductCode: {98D1A713-438C-4A23-8AB6-41B37C4A2D47}, Version:
20091128194313:INFO    CGetMSIStateOperation::Execute: Default MSI Action: upgrade, Details: cross product
20091128194313:INFO    CBootstrapCmd::RunOperation: Operation 'GetMSIState' completed successfully with return code 65539
20091128194313:INFO    upgrade
20091128194313:INFO    cross product
20091128194313:INFO    CGetMSIStateOperation::Execute: Examining the system for
20091128194313:INFO    CGetMSIStateOperation::Execute: MSI Data ProductCode: {233A935E-6132-48B2-840F-37C9D32555D5}, PackageCode: {46F73961-902A-4A20-BB36-5060DC6ACB2C}, UpgradeCode: {2A0F937B-3E75-47D8-9306-14D45CC0F756} , Version: 4.0.0.0
20091128194313:INFO    CGetMSIStateOperation::Execute: Default MSI Action: install, Details:
20091128194313:INFO    CBootstrapCmd::RunOperation: Operation 'GetMSIState' completed successfully with return code 65539
20091128194313:INFO    install
20091128194313:INFO    SaveSetting: Wrote setting 'action', value 'upgrade'
20091128194313:INFO
20091128194313:INFO
20091128194313:INFO    {98D1A713-438C-4A23-8AB6-41B37C4A2D47}
20091128194313:INFO    SaveSetting: Wrote setting '{98D1A713-438C-4A23-8AB6-41B37C4A2D47}', value ';'
20091128194313:INFO    {98D1A713-438C-4A23-8AB6-41B37C4A2D47}

Right away, I could see that the installer was recognizing an unexpected upgrade state rather than the expected “fresh” install state. Fortunately, the log also captured more details behind this divergent recognition: “failed to retrieve the version string for {{98D1A713-438C-4A23-8AB6-41B37C4A2D47}} due to error: 1605.” First of all, this log statement is a bit of an oxymoron, since Windows error code 1605 (ERROR_UNKNOWN_PRODUCT) means “This action is only valid for products that are currently installed.” That is, if the product isn’t installed, then shouldn’t the current installer be “happy?” Second, this error led to the sparse dialogs (i.e. ” (Version: )” and “The MSI ”failed.”).

Again in hindsight, I could have Googled the suspect GUID to determine its relationship with VMware Workstation 5.5. However, I went back to my Windows Registry to perform additional forensics first. The first RegDB reference I found is associated with Windows’ ARP Cache, which has to do with Windows’ TCP/IP stack (i.e. needs to be left intact). I did find another RegDB key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Folders, with a value named C:\WINDOWS\Installer\{98D1A713-438C-4A23-8AB6-41B37C4A2D47}\, which I removed. Nevertheless, after rebooting, I was still unable to install VMware Workstation 7.0

So, I thought that if my 6.5.3-based hack appeared to have some merit, perhaps a similar, 5.5-based hack could, too. First I had to download the 5.5.9 installer and unearth my version 5.5 license key. With these in hand, I installed VMware Workstation 5.5.9 and then rebooted my host OS as directed.

Following reboot, I re-ran the VMware Workstation 7.0 installer, yet again:

This time, after clicking Uninstall, I was eventually presented with the ability to proceed with installing the new software. After choosing to reboot at the end of the installation process and rebooting, I’m able to run VMware Workstation 7 as I originally expected.

Hopefully this knowledge sharing will help you to avoid the wasted time and energy I experienced. At least that’s my purpose in posting. Cheers…

Atlassian’s Confluence software offers a decent collaboration canvas in the form of an enterprise wiki. For example, Confluence can support the practice of “living and active” specifications (instead of, for example, obsolete-once-authored-in-Word specs). Often, though, it’s good to have a more self-contained snapshot in hand (e.g. increase traceability from one review-based state to another, support Customer audits, etc.). Fortunately, Confluence supports export to PDF.

Given its rather prominent display by default in the upper right hand corner of every wiki page, most Confluence users are aware of how to export a single page as a PDF document:

However, Confluence also supports exporting a set of wiki pages (up to an entire wiki space) as a single PDF document; yet, this feature is less well known. Here is the step-by-step process to leverage this feature (e.g. to export a multi-page, wiki-based spec as a single PDF document):

1. Click the browse space link (on any page in the page set of interest):
   
2. Click the advanced link:
   
3. Click the export space link:
   
4. Configure your export as follows (recommended):
   
5. After setting PDF output, including comments, and clearing all selected pages, select the particular pages that make up the page set of interest.
6. Click the export button at the bottom of this export space page.

Happy Thanksgiving!

First of all, I want to thank Mike Swanson (@anyware) for his original work (e.g. for MIX09 and also for PDC09). Good stuff.

That being said, I noticed that there were posted sessions missing–six altogether–from the 11/19/2009-dated batch files here; so, I thought I’d post my “fix”:

• PDC09DownloaderCSR.zip
• PDC09RenamerCSR.zip

It may be worth noting that my rename “style” includes session codes (e.g. SVC29), making it easier (for me anyway) to distinguish one overall theme from another.

For your convenience, here are copy of the original instructions for PDC09 use:

If you’d like to download all of the keynote and session content, download a recent build of cURL (~250K), and extract it to your folder-of-choice. Then, download PDC09Downloader.zip (1.49KB) and extract the PDC09Downloader.bat file to the same folder. From a command prompt, start PDC09Downloader by passing it one of the following parameters: WMVHIGH, WMV, MP4, PPTX. Then wait. For files that aren’t available, cURL will download a file that is around 221 bytes in size (if you change the extension to .htm and open it, you’ll see that the file is simply an HTML “not found” error page).

To rename the files, first, download the PDC09 Renamer batch file (4.52KB). Then, extract the PDC09Renamer.bat file to the folder that contains your downloaded files, and from a command prompt, type PDC09Renamer WMV to rename all of the .WMV files to the full session title. By changing the parameter, you can also rename your PPTX and MP4 files.

Update at 6pm Pacific: It looks like both of my scripts, above, are live on http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos, too.

Today Silverlight 3 officially launched; so, I decided to cut-over to v3 from v2. Here’s what worked for me:

1. Ensure that all browsers are closed before proceeding.
2. Open the Control Panel to begin uninstalling older Silverlight 2-related software.
3. Select “Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 – ENU” and uninstall the older IDE integration.
4. Select “Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK” and uninstall the older SDK, which, in my case, was installed via the IDE integration installer.
5. Select “Microsoft Silverlight” and uninstall the older runtime. In my case, I was running Silverlight 2 GDR 1 (2.0.40115.0). You can determine your current version, if need be, here.
6. Since I didn’t have an older version of Expression Blend on my machine, I could proceed. If you have an older version (release of beta), you should remove it, first, then continue on here. Before you install please know that once you do, your machine now becomes a Silverlight 3 development machine. You cannot down-level target to Silverlight 2.
7. Install Silverlight 3 RTW (3.0.40624.0).
8. Install Microsoft Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1, which includes the Silverlight 3 SDK.
9. Install the Release Candidate of Microsoft Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow. (I was hoping for the final release of Blend today, but I’ll settle for this (60-day trial) RC (version 3.0.1921.0).)
10. Upgrade your Silverlight 2 solutions to Silverlight 3 solutions via the upgrade wizard. Etc. Etc.

Since the web is already flooded with plenty of additional commentary and sample applications, I’ll stop here and keep it practical for now. However, I’m excited about this new release and have some ideas to pursue in Silverlight 3. Stay tuned…

P.S. You may also want to download the HTML Help documentation for Silverlight 3.

Today we launched a new EMC Documentum developer-oriented community within the EMC Community Network. Front and center is the new developer edition of the EMC Documentum ECM Platform.

So, what does this developer edition include? We believe it includes a lot of goodness for the development of content-enabled applications.

• First of all, free software for developers
• A new one-click installation process for the core of the EMC Documentum ECM Platform
• xDB and new XML components – please visit the just-launched XML Technology Developer Community for more details about our native XML database and other technologies
• Integration between the resulting development environment and online community resources and support mechanisms – think of this as a starting point and means to the ends you want to pursue, not an end in itself

Essentially, we’re trying to provide a low-touch, DIY experience. That being said, by integrating your local installation to an online community, the developer edition enables you to reach out to fellow developers and EMC employees as your pursuit your content management development interests grows. For example, you’ll find a range of white papers, documents and videos, as well as sample code in, for example, Java and C# (.NET). Topical tutorials available online are drawn from our Education Services library.

So, what is the process to obtain the free developer edition? We hope that it’s straightforward.

1. Browse here and login into ECN/EDN
2. Navigate here and complete a short (less than 30 seconds) registration form. Click the “Continue” button to proceed to the download site. (You may need to add ecn_communications@emc.com to your email safe senders list so as not to miss messages from that address (i.e. have them interpreted by Outlook as junk).)
3. Navigate the EMC SubscribeNet links to arrive at the FTP download (or HTTPS-based download, if you prefer). Note that the download is a bit more than 1.73 GB and represents a Zip archive, which means that you should ensure adequate disk space to extract, deploy, etc.
4. Commence your download.

In a follow-up post, I’ll walk you through the installation experience and how to leverage the version of DFS that comes with the developer edition. BTW, if you’re too anxious to dive in and can’t wait for my post, go for it! There is an online getting started guide as well as an online tutorial for building your first application.

Cheers!

Update 5/20/2009: Well, I’m about to take a much needed vacation, and I have yet to follow-up with a walk-thru post. So, I wanted to at least provide some details here as to what this software requires system-wise. System requirements are as follows (and are displayed in the initial installer screen):

• No Microsoft SQL Server or SQL Server Express installed [1]
• No other Documentum software installed [2]
• Microsoft .NET 2.0 or higher [3]
• Browser with Sun JRE 5.0 update 16 or higher [4]
• Minimum of 3 GB RAM (4 GB RAM is recommended)
• 5 GB of free disk space [5]
• Intel x86 CPU
• Operating system–again 32-bit only for this release–is one of the following: Windows XP SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2 or Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2
• You must be logged in as a member of the Windows Administrators group, but not necessarily as Administrator

Notes:
[1] Be aware that if you already have Visual Studio (e.g. 2005 or 2008) installed on your target machine, you may need to first uninstall the version of SQL Server that may have been installed with the IDE. If you are running Windows SharePoint Services or UDDI on your target (Windows Server 2003) machine, you may also need to see what embedded database is supporting these services before proceeding with this developer edition installation.
[2] Be sure to understand where you may still have Documentum-related configuration files on disk (e.g. dfc.properties, C:\Documentum, etc.).
[3] Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 is required for WCF-based consumption of DFS endpoints; so, I recommend .NET 3.0, which includes (requires as its foundation) .NET 2.0. .NET 3.5 is also supported by DFS, if you prefer to leverage WCF “v2.”
[4] This is supported by Webtop and DA.
[5] Keep in mind that, as I noted above, the Zip archive download is a bit more than 1.73 GB. The total size of its extracted contents is not that much larger, but you’re also starting to approach 4 GB; so, I recommend that you have 10 GB free disk space in order to complete the installation with room to spare before cleaning up the extracted bits and the original archive to reclaim that 4 GB.

…and, welcome, CMS Watch readers!

Update 7/16/2009: Be sure to run Windows Update after installing DevEd. Typically, you’ll need to apply SQL Server 2005 SP3. Note that if you upgrade a DevEd environment from 6.5 SP1 to 6.5 SP2 (via uninstall-reboot-install) that you should still run Windows Update after your upgrade, and you may need to re-apply SQL Server 2005 SP3.

When upgrading a DevEd environment from 6.5 SP1 to 6.5 SP2, I also recommend that following the uninstall and reboot, that you confirm C:\Documentum and C:\Program Files\Documentum are empty before you proceed to install the newer DevEd.

Finally, if you’re reading this blog but not the installation guide, please note that you should uninstall DevEd via Start | Programs | Documentum | Uninstall, not via Add/Remove Programs under Control Panel.

Yeah, I know that Twitter lately is all about Oprah, CNN and Ashton Kutcher, but it’s also about brief remarks, gripes and triumphs related to products and/or services that you send into the world wide market. (And if you were waiting for The Tipping Point, it’s already occurred for Twitter, IMHO.)

BTW, before I go any further, I’m @craigsmusings on Twitter. (Thanks, Dan.)

If a tree falls in a forest, it always makes a noise–regardless of your presence there. There are social conversations that occur online (e.g. Facebook, blogs, wikis, Twitter, newsgroups, IIRC, etc.), and they will continue to occur regardless of your presence there, too. However, that’s an especially risky position to take these days–see the conversation but not engage.

Consider the following conversation on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/johnsmith

Very disappointed in _YOUR_PRODUCT_HERE_, does not appear to have very much to it at all….if anything!
12:10 AM Apr 23rd from TweetDeck

http://twitter.com/janedoe

@johnsmith Did you see a live presentation or play with it,
4:45 AM Apr 23rd from TwitterBerry

http://twitter.com/johnsmith

@janedoe Had a play with it, will blog later this week, does not seem to give us anything to use as an accelerator
4:52 AM Apr 23rd from TweetDeck in reply to janedoe

http://twitter.com/janedoe

@johnsmith Ouch! That’s the point in theory.
4:58 AM Apr 23rd from TwitterBerry

So, what will John Smith blog exactly? He’s indicated that his post is forthcoming but also that there may be time to engage him–understand his concern and possibly influence him after listening by demonstrating value.

Jane appears to be an interested party, too. Is Jane a known advocate, possibly trying to reach out on your behalf? Is Jane known to be skeptical?

How can you “see” this conversation?

I use TweetDeck, an Adobe AIR-based Twitter client, for my tweeting, etc. It works equally well on both MacOS and Windows. (There are many other clients out there, too!)

TweetDeck allows me to do a number of useful things.

• For example, the leftmost column/pane is a group. (You can read that tiny font, right? ) In my case, I filtered All Friends (i.e. those I follow in Twitter) into just the subset that tweets about content management. (You can see that there is a horizontal scroll bar on the bottom, and the default “All Friends” column/pane is off to the far right (where I moved it to reduce seen UI changes).)
• The “Replies” column/pane is just what it implies—tweets in reply to me from others.
• The “Direct Messages” column/pane contains DM’s from me and DM’s to me.
• The two rightmost columns/panes in view above are searches. Since these are Twitter-based searches–one for tweets containing “CMIS” and another for tweets containing both “EMC” and “Documentum”–I receive traffic updates that apply in near realtime (unlike, e.g., a Google search that requires one to hit Refresh to see new results).

Anyway, I can visit John Smith’s Twitter profile to learn that he has a 70:30 ratio (i.e. he’s following 70 twitters and 30 twitters are following him). Clearly, Mr. Smith is not a “rock star” by Twitter standards. (Certainly, I am not either!)

However, consider the junior high campfire song’s sentiment: “It only takes a spark, to get a fire going…” This goes back to my point above: there may be time to engage him–understand his concern and possibly influence him after listening by demonstrating value (and create a positive fire–however big or small–about your product or service).

The truth is that, although I’ve been blogging for awhile now, I’m relatively new to Twitter. Fortunately for me, I have great resources in my “2.0 type” EMC colleagues and elsewhere online. For example, I recommend that you check out Gina Minks’ Twitter Cheat Sheet. (I understand from Gina that a v2.0 release is due out in time for EMC World, too.)

I recall during last year’s Microsoft Strategic Architect Forum (SAF) that a good industry colleague of mine suggested a “I don’t get Twitter” topic for the open space segment of that afternoon. I egged him on to make the suggestion; so, of course I attended…and I think that everyone learned a fair bit in the process.

Since then I’ve only recently begun to seriously tweet. Already that engagement has paid dividends, and due to the fact that most of my cross-domain architect colleagues don’t yet tweet, I thought I’d humbly offer this post to get them to “dive into” Twitter, too, in a way that’s both meaningful to them and meaningful to their communities. (You know who you are. )

For those who weren’t at or don’t know about SAF, Microsoft worked with Mindjet to mind map the open space sessions. Here are the notes from the “I don’t get Twitter” session in mind map form–just click the following image for the .mmap (MindManager 8 format) file:

So, what do you think of Twitter? If you find it useful, how do you receive value from it?

Update 4/30/2009: Gina Minks just published a new cheat sheet for tweeting from your phone.

Thanks to a recent IT change concerning the OASIS JIRA server, I can now leverage ALM Works JIRA Client to work OASIS CMIS TC issues.

Furthermore, all OASIS Issue Trackers in the single OASIS JIRA server are available to me–or any other OASIS member!

Here is how…

1. Visit ALM Works and download JIRA Client.
2. Install JIRA Client and choose “Run JIRA Client” before exiting the installer.
3. Enter your license key. That is, download deskzilla_oasis.license to your local %USERPROFILE%\.JIRAClient directory (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\.JIRAClient, on a Windows XP machine), and point your JIRA Client instance to your local license file (i.e. select it).
4. Verify the following license data is presented upon selection:
         Site license
      Licensed to: open-source community
      Support ID: 4000383
      Supported servers:
        JIRA [http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues]
5. Restart JIRA Client in order for this license to take effect (i.e. Start | Programs | JIRA Client | JIRA Client).
6. Configure connection (i.e. enter your OASIS member login credentials).
7. Connect and select the OASIS issue trackers of interest.
8. Initialize connection, which may take a short amount of time during first-time initialization.

At this point you should be able to leverage JIRA Client against OASIS issue trackers (e.g. CMIS).

Credits…

• A big thank you to ALM Works founder, Igor Sereda, for his support of open source projects and organizations like OASIS.
• Thanks also go to Mary McRae of OASIS for gently vetting JIRA Client licensing details, since I’m not an OASIS employee.

Just to be clear, this ALM Works software is not being provided by, nor licensed to OASIS as an organization. The JIRA Client license from ALM Works isn’t granted to OASIS, but it’s restricted to access the OASIS JIRA repository. Each person who installs will need to determine whether or not they are able to accept the licensing agreements for their organization.

Enjoy!

Repaving – def. the computer-based act of reformatting the system partition followed by installing a fresh operating system followed by fresh application installations followed by user settings restoration

For starters, it’s a good idea to separate your data from your applications (e.g. C: has OS and software; D: has documents, pictures, music, videos, etc.). You can accomplish this separation via separate physical hard disk drives or drive partitions. (Given the amount of software I use regularly due to my professional as well as the volume of digital content I posses, I go the multiple drive route.) So, if you currently run a one-disk-and-one-partition environment (RAID 1 (mirror), RAID 0 (striped) or no RAID), consider creating two partitions in your new environment.

Any robust repaving process should begin with current backups. If you don’t already possess a current backup of your critical files, settings, software installers, etc., find your backup medium of choice and start that process. If your backup solution is online and off-premise, just make certain that you save the means to reconnect to your service from your new computing environment–same applies to your ISP. If you choose, for example, to backup to disc (DVD or (gasp) CD) be sure to validate written data is readable before calling it a day. Also, be sure to exit out of all applications before commencing backup–even to the point of confirming exits via Task Manager (e.g. OUTLOOK.EXE isn’t hanging around nor is any other desktop search software that maintain a lock on your PST file, etc.).

Recently I’ve found it useful to maintain a list of what I install on a machine, especially for work (software architecture). When I’m repaving, I simply review this list to trigger anything specific that may require backing up. This list also comes in handy further into the repaving process when I start re-installing software. As a cross-checking measure, I save the contents of my Start menu, my Quick Launch toolbar, and a listing from my Program Files directory, too. Be sure to save the means to reinstall each piece of software (e.g. URL’s, license keys, setup programs, access credentials, etc.).

Use care when your repave involves software or content with activation (e.g. Adobe) or other rights management (e.g. music). By “care” I mean take time to confirm that nothing OS-specific forms a basis for rights (e.g. seen as one machine under XP and a different, second machine under Vista, or not). Omar Shahine has a useful post about persistent application cache care and other concerns.

So, you have your current system backed up and your ready to repave.

First, restart your PC using your Windows operating system installation disc and not your existing OS. Select the existing system partition and perform a complete reformatting of this partition–nothing less than NTFS, of course. This reformatting should not affect any other partition or hard disk drive on your computer. Depending on the size of the system partition/drive, reformatting can take some time (i.e. window of opportunity to break for another activity of choice).

Next, install the software you require. Unlike looking over everything in your closet of garage before you get rid of it, take the time to consider whether or not you really need to restore a particular piece of software in your new computing home. If no compelling reason comes to mind, don’t install it–instead just save it for a later day (that may never come).

Finally, restore or apply your particular software configuration, app-by-app. Fortunately a growing amount of software provides an automated way to backup and restore user settings (e.g. Microsoft Office). For me, this also involves a review of my Start menu, Quick Launch bar, Windows environment variables, Windows Registry favorites, IE favorites, Firefox bookmarks, etc.

Once you have your new environment finally setup and configured to preference, it’s a good idea to create an image (e.g. built-in ImageX software on Windows Vista or third party software like Acronis True Image). By creating an image, should your system partition head south, you can restore your OS and applications back to a known state in minutes rather than hours. Of course, as your system changes over time, it’s worth periodically updating your system image.

One last tip: Increasingly I’m using virtualization as a means to partition my computing environments (e.g. I have several VMware-based virtual machine images for work-related projects). Virtualization allows me to keep my physical computing environment (i.e. host OS in VMware parlance) simple and more spartan. Virtual images compress well; so, I regularly archive these to my data partition/drive.

This process has served me well over the years. Fortunately as Windows has matured, my need to repave has decreased. Alas, it hasn’t gone away completely, though…