I see IE7 has been released. Haven’t installed it yet, but I do have an early beta version running on another PC and found that a bit clunky. I’m a Firefox fan though, so I’ve just downloaded and installed Firefox 2 RC3. I like it. The interface has been given a subtle update but it is also noticeably faster. I really like the built in spell check. I used to use the Google toolbar to spell check my posts, when I remembered - I invariably forgot! So having spell check built in is a great improvement. Now I just need to change the dictionary from US English to British English!

You can download Firefox 2 RC3 here.

In my last post I said I would provide some tips on getting the best out of Google Groups and finding what you’re looking for. But first off let’s start with a few general search tips. Google themselves provide some helpful guides on using the regular Google search engine:

Basic Tips:
http://www.google.com/help/basics.html

Advanced Search:
http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html

These guides are well worth reading. There’s lots of stuff on the Advanced Search page that are easy to overlook and can be very helpful in narrowing down your search. For example, you can limit your search to a particular domain. I often use this for searching for answers on Microsoft’s site. E.g.:

“not allowed in this context” site:microsoft.com

Note that the advanced search simply adds information to the regular search query. To search within a domain it simply adds the “site:” attribute to the search term. You can add this yourself in the regular search box. You can also exclude results from certain sites:

“Macro Scheduler” -site:mjtnet.com

Note the use of the quote marks to search for a specific phrase. In my first example above I wanted to find pages on microsoft.com that contained this error message. So I needed to use the quotes.

Google Groups searches Usenet messages. It works in much the same way as Google. But since Usenet consists of a huge array of groups spanning all manner of topics it is often necessary to narrow your search down to within certain groups. Consider this Google Groups search:

create recordset

The first page of results consists of messages from various groups covering VB, SQLServer, MS Access, Dreamweaver and Ultradev. What I really want to do is find out how to create a record set in VBScript. In much the same way the regular Google search lets you search within specific domains, you can search within specific groups:

create recordset group:microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript

This searches only within the microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript newsgroup. But there are other groups that discuss VBScript. And what if you don’t know what they are called? Well, you can use wildcards:

create recordset group:*vbscript*

This returns a much more targeted, useful set of results from various VBScript groups. Definitely my most used search construct.

Hope this helps!

In a way I feel I’m about to blow my own cover with this post. But I’m pretty sure many people will find this really useful. I seem to have a reputation for knowing everything. People always come to me with their computer problems and I’m nearly always able to find a solution. When I help Macro Scheduler customers with obscure VBScript, ODBC, or Win32 API, issues they often ask “How the hell do you know this stuff?”.

The truth is I very often don’t have the answers immediately. Sometimes a support ticket will come in or I’ll see a forum post and I’ll be no more able to answer it than anyone else. But I have my secret weapons. And the fact is anyone else can use them too.

My favourite and most useful resource is Usenet. I take Usenet for granted, but I’ve realised lately that many people these days don’t know what Usenet is. Usenet is an email like distributed discussion system that was invented at Duke University (North Carolina, USA) by two graduate students in 1979. Yes, you heard that right, the best resource for answering technical questions for state-of-the-art problems is 27 years old! With Usenet, users read, post and reply to messages to a huge number of ‘newsgroups’ on all manner of topics. Newsgroups are distributed across ‘news servers’ throughout the Internet. Most ISPs have a news server that their subscribers can access.

Usenet is home to all sorts of weird and wonderful topics. Discussions of all sorts take place in Usenet. There are literally thousands and thousands of groups. Many I’d rather have nothing at all to do with! But Usenet is also the domain of programmers, technical whizkids and geeks of all varieties. And since it has been around for so long there’s almost no technical issue, programming problem or computer scenario that hasn’t been discussed at some point. So it is the perfect place to go to find out how to build that bit of VBScript, use a Win32 API function, or fix a problem in XP.

But Usenet is a bit tricky to use. You need to be able to access a news server and then you need a news reader, which is like an email client. You need to subscribe to relevant groups and then you get overwhelmed as thousands of posts pour in. And then somehow you need a way to search the content.

So Usenet is great for day to day discussions, but how do you tap this resource as a knowledge base? Well you may have heard of a company called Google. A while back Google bought a system called Deja News which archived every Usenet post since 1981. The system is now called Google Groups. It continues to archive Usenet postings as well as Google’s own web based discussion groups. It can be accessed at groups.google.com. As you probably know, Google is quite good for searching for stuff. Google Groups is no different. It combines the power of Google’s search with the massive resource of Usenet. With Google Groups you can search for pretty much any technical matter you need help with. And 99% of the time you’ll find an answer, often from a technical guru who knows his stuff, or someone who has had the same problem already.

I find that people tend to turn to Google, or one of the other search engines, to try to find answers. But specific technical questions can be hard to locate on Google, because Google indexes web sites, and even if the issue is dealt with by a web site it may be hidden deep within it’s bowels. So a web search engine isn’t always the best way to find answers to technical problems. In contrast Google Groups indexes only messages that people, like geeks and programmers, have written, and so it gets straight to the crux of the matter. It’s also instant. Pretty much as soon as a Usenet message is posted, it shows up in Google Groups. In contrast a web site can take months before it is fully indexed. So Usenet is often more up to date on technical matters.

As an example you will probably find more discussion of Vista technical issues and Vista specific programming techniques in Usenet than anywhere on the web. Long before Vista is released, beta testers, Microsoft experts and C++ gurus have been discussing such concepts via Usenet for months. And you can find this stuff now with Google Groups.

So now you know! I’m not such an expert after all. I just know where to find the answers. In my next post, I’ll explain how to get the most out of Google Groups and give you some tips on how to search and narrow down on what you’re looking for.

I’ve just had a bit of fun writing a couple of small scripts that will search Google for a set of key phrases and find the position of a specified URL for those key phrases in the results. I have built two versions of this script. One with a simple dialog where you can enter a URL and key phrase to search for, and another which takes a set of key phrases in an input file and produces a CSV file with the results and date. This second script can be scheduled to take place every night. The CSV file will grow with the new results and can be opened in Excel and a chart produced showing the trend over time of your website position for those key phrases.

As well as being extremely useful as an automated way to monitor the performance of your keywords in Google, these scripts also demonstrate what can be done with some simple Macro Scheduler scripting and WebRecorder. The scripts are not long and give a glimpse at the sort of things WebRecorder and Macro Scheduler can do to automate web sites and parse the resultant HTML.

Download the scripts here:
http://www.mjtnet.com/usergroup/viewtopic.php?t=2983

Note that these scripts automate IE and therefore operate at the user level just as if you were using Google yourself.

There’s a lot of hype at the moment over what Microsoft’s Origami device is going to be. As far as I can see so far it looks like it’s going to be a small handheld/tablet PC. Somehow I wonder if the device will live up to the expectations the hype is generating. Especially as the concept is nothing new. I’ve already got my eye on this little fellow: OQO Ultra PC. This solves the problem that most small computers have - the lack of a qwerty keyboard. I’m always answering emails on the move and I used to use a Pocket PC - but, what a nightmare without a real keyboard. So, recently I purchased this HP iPAQ hw6510 which has a small qwerty. It makes a real difference. It’s really good for answering emails, and even, despite the small screen, surfing the web - and it is a phone too - so I don’t need to carry around two devices. But because it is Windows Mobile I can’t run stuff like Macro Scheduler on it - which means I can’t test things out until I get back to a regular PC. So I’m now drooling over this OQO which runs full Windows XP Pro. It would let me put my whole office in my pocket. I wonder how the Origami will compare. Will it be worth the hype? Scoble thinks not:

“There’s no way this thing is going to be able to meet the expectations of the hype being placed on it.”