Yicrosoft Directory is a keyphrase given by Ryan over at SEONoobs.com for a 30 Day SEO Challenge for SEO newbies. Although there are a some SEO experts involved I’ve got my eye on Alejandro Reyes’ Yicrosoft Directory Blog.

Yicrosoft Directory was probably coined because of the recent talks about Microsoft placing a huge $44 Billion bid on Yahoo. As Microsoft and Yahoo (or Yicrosoft) go back and forth in negotiations there are some really cool logos, websites, videos, podcasts of people talking about this potential merger. Questions that are arising are: What will the name be? Will Steve Jobs become CEO? Will Miley Cyrus be the face of the company?

With all these speculations, Alejandro Reyes over at Yicrosoft Director Blog is keeping you informed and updated with what’s going on with the Microsoft/Yahoo merger as well as the 30 Day Challenge.

If you’re interested in the challenge and learning SEO, definitely follow what Alejandro is doing and if you want to help him win the competetion, you can LINK to Yicrosoft Directory using the anchor text: “Yicrosoft Directory”

Good luck Alejandro with Yicrosoft Directory

The Wordpress Admin interface can be a real pain at times, and darn slow too. Not to mention a lean, mean bandwidth hog. I’ve put together this quick simple list that will not only beautify your whole administrative experience, but also improve your workflow efficieny and total control over your blog’s administration. Most of the images below can be upsized, so click for a bigger view.

1. Beautfiy - Tiger Admin

Tiger Admin is a custom made, clean-built, highly customizable Wordpress Admin theme. Packaged as a plugin, simply upload the file as usual into your Wordpress plugins directory and go to the in-dashboard menu, then hit ‘activate’. Clear your cache and refresh the page to see your new, completely revamped, XHTML compliant, CSS2 admin interface. I’ve had very few problems and issues with the theme, however in Internet Explorer, due to the browser’s nasty habit of not being quite ‘with the net’, the plugin will have no effect whatsoever and will simply show the default admin layout. This is because of Microsoft’s lack of support of CSS2, though in future updates, this is due to be fixed. In the meantime, download Firefox.

2. Streamline - Drop Down Menus

Tired of the usual clutter & pain of having to click back and forth between sidebar buttons in the Wordpress Admin interface? Drop Down Menus is for you. Fully compatible with Tiger Admin, when a top-bar or sidebar link is hovered over, a full set of secondary page links will also be displayed. Save time, bandwidth and trouble by downloading now.

3. Monitor - Audit Trail

Monitoring a large group blog can be a right pain, as can be finding out who made that crucial edit and accidently deleted last month’s archives. That’s why Audit Trail exists though. By monitoring all activity that goes on in your blog and allowing you to access it within a secure database, never again will you have trouble monitoring your user’s activities. From precise dates and times to exact pages visited, and actions taken, Audit Trail has you covered. Ever lost a whole post due to an accidental refresh? This plugin also allows you to restore a post to a previous version at any time… How cool is that?

4. Server Setup - Diagnosis

This plugin creates a new dashboard sub-tab. In this, a whole host of useful server settings are displayed. From the version of Wordpress you’re using, Server OS, PHP version, MySQL version, Server Software, Domain IP, Database Settings and Webserver Document Roots to the ways in which yoru server chooses to handle incoming traffic, treat MySQL Storage Engines and more, if you’re looking for an all-in-one server admin tool, this nifty plugin integrates right in with Wordpress. If your software is out of date, or settings insecure, often Diagnosis will notify you that you could do with an update, or tweaking of permissions. If you’re serious about your blog, this is for you.

By no means am I saying that these four brilliant plugins are the only plugins you need for your dashboard, heck no! What I am stressing though, is that from a total novice’s point of view, this is an ideal way to start modifying your cashboard to make it both more user friendly/centric, faster, more clean and easier to navigate. Let’s face it… Nothing is perfect. That’s what a community is for though, right?

Like the article? Digg it!

Today, it seems that there’s no one thing that I really want to write about, so here’s an informal, general list of links & things that I think you guys might like.

- Social Media… The cover taken off. (This cracked me up for about 5 minutes whilst my PC was frozen thanks to some Vista-incompatible software!)

- Silent USB Linux powered machines have hit Europe, smashing onto the arena at only €280. (Go me! I just found the euro-key on my new keyboard! Alt Gr + 4. I knew it was something like that…)

- Viacom have sued YouTube/Google $1billion for ‘unauthorized use of clips’. Seems slightly excessive to me… While I’m here, I’d like to announce that I’m suing Digg $10billion for crashing my servers. (Note to lawyerbots, that was indeed, a feeble joke. No need to smite me!)

- Having seen John Chow’s post on checking whether China is banning you blog, I decided to check it out for myself. Guess what? Turns out China have blocked me & my site. I’m not the only one though… Turns out that free-speech & wikis don’t cut the chase for the Chinese government.

- The root of all evil, John Chow is at it again… Promotional Pens maker 1234Pens, have partnered with John to give away a Nintendo Wii! *drewl* - I wanna Wii.

NOTE: The hover text over the Slashdot picture is meant to be something of an irony. Afterall ‘linking to other people’ is exactly what I’m doing now…

This is a very brief update, which I’ll try to make as short and to the point as possible.

If you’re a Nvidia GTS/GTX-8800 owner / Nvidia nForce Motherboard owner using Vista, DO NOT UPDATE THE LATEST 64-BIT DRIVERS!

Bad things happen… I’ll tell you more once I’ve got this sorted out. Let’s just say that ‘System Restore’, ‘Corrupted File’ and some scary errors come into the equation.

UPDATE: I’ve spent over 8 hours today trying to re-install critical software that was wiped by the corrupted file, courtesy of Nvidia… I’m going to bed.

Related Link: Emergency loans in easy installment payment plans from ThinkCash.

There’s something funny going on at bLaugh…

That is, that Chris & Fitz have come up with another quality cartoon for the blogosphere to giggle over. But the fact remains, software piracy is a real concern. Most geeks will simply head over to a torrent if they’re looking to get the latest version of Adobe Creative Suite, and there have even been reports of some brute-force Vista key hackers. No industry expert really seems to have a definite cure to piracy, and wihtout a doubt, we still won’t see any new developments in combatting pirates within the near future. The thing is, hackers are a community. You already know what can be achieved with a community in the wings… This is just another game that will have to be waited out, I guess.

David Lenehan’s post at ReadWriteWeb reports from the Future of Web Apps conference, and suggests that it’s impossible to run IE7 and IE6 on the same machine. The commentors chime in too, and you don’t need a reason to bash Microsoft, do you?

The point of this post: It is not impossible. Many workarounds exist, and there’s also an official Microsoft solution.

The workarounds are unsupported, and if you run into any problems (you probably will), be prepared to spend a fortune on that monitor you broke when you smashed your head into it….

The workaround I use, Multiple IE, will install a whole slew of IE versions on your system, right from IE3 to IE 4.01, 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0. You could look back and look at how the web was before CSS and Javascript made an appearance (most of today’s content is unlookable on IE3). Not recommended on production systems.

The other supported solution is Virtualisation. You could get the free Microsoft VPC ‘07 and then run a copy of Windows in it without IE7. And, no, you don’t have to shell out money for another copy of Windows, ‘coz the wonderful people running Microsoft’s IE team have made available a free, pre-activated version of XP SP2 as a VPC image! The blog post mentions VPC ‘04 by name, but it should work unmodified on VPC ‘07 as well.

There’s a caveat though: The release will timebomb on April 1st, but the current plan seem to favor releasing a new image after this one expires, if enough people shout…

Guest Post by Yuvi Panda, 16 year old Microsoft Correspondent. Likes to call himself a developer and posts to his blog here.

More news from the European Arm of Microsoft, this time from Slovenia: a Windows Vista emulator that runs completely on your browser! And, what’s more, it runs on Firefox and IE on Windows, and heck, even on Safari on Mac OS X!

Built using cutting edge WPF/E technology that was released to CTP only in the end of December, this site has been live for quite some time. WPF/E is Microsoft’s answer to Flash, and uses XAML along with Javascript to build Rich Internet Applications, and is cross-platform, working on Windows and Mac OS X. It’s a pretty small download (~1 MB) that you download before you can run this site. You can download the addon for Windows (IE and FF) here, and for Mac OS X here. It’s not yet ready for prime time, but this demo shows what the holds…

The site will be slow to start (Hey, it’s just a CTP, okay? ), but it’s quick after that. You can drag windows around, see the clock tick, use the Start Button Orb and heck, there’s even a mini version of Internet Explorer in there! There’s also a small pseudo-sidebar and the baloon notifications work great…

Just imagine, if Microsoft does something like Netvibes on WPF/E with looks like this…

Guest Post by Yuvi Panda, 16 year old Microsoft Correspondent. He likes to call himself a developer, and writes some development related stuff at his blog, Yuvisense.

As some of you may know, I ordered my computer from MESH Computers several weeks back… They promised to deliver in time for my birthday, which just so happens to be today. The date they quoted, was infact Monday 12th February.

I have no problem with a company having issues or problems with it’s services, but when they lie to the customer repeatedly, put you on hold for several minutes on Premium rate numbers and refuse to tell you the status of your order, I have a problem. If they just owned up to the fact and admitted the problem, I’d be happy. But they’re still not quite telling us the truth I feel. First it was ‘Your PC will arrive today’. Next day it was ‘Your PC will arrive today’. Next day it was ‘Your PC may not arrive today. We’ve had a Vista Problem’. When we inquired what the problem was, they told us that the ‘Vista disk partition is yet to leave the labs’. You know what? That’s absolute rubbish… I’ve seen people on forums who’ve had MESH deliver Windows Vista, so why won’t you give me mine?

Why have you left us in the dark? Like I said, if you have an issue, admit it, and tell me where I stand. I hardly believe it’s Vista as I’ve had confrimation from others who’ve ordered from MESH.

Update: It turns out that infact it’s something to do with MESH and Vista Ultimate in quality control… Slightly more believable! Why couldn’t they have just told me that in the first place though? With a company this big, they need a better method of notifying customers of delays.

No idea why a Digg button is showing for my article I did on ProBlogger.net - I didn’t put it there. Perhaps a pingback to this article in the comments? Anyhow…

Hmm… My computer which was scheduled to arrive today never did. I was holding on, and my mum even stayed home, from work to make sure everything came fine. Ah well. Tomorrow is a new day, and if the PC is one day late, I’ll live. The fact that the coming gave a definite date though, then when we rang to check with customer service at 3PM today, it was again confirmed, is rather disappointing. I expected better.

It seems that the Microsoft website has an incredibly bad lag, after suffering the Digg effect, for accidentally recommending users buy ‘GarageBand for Mac’. As I quote from the Microsoft website…

Part of iLife ‘05, a suite of integrated applications (including iMovie and iDVD), GarageBand is a popular program that turns a Mac computer into a professional-quality recording studio for musicians. The intuitive interface lets music lovers create and record music by selecting from the more than 50 virtual instruments (including a convincing grand piano) and more than 1,000 professional-quality audio loops that can be used in a new composition. Players can also attach instruments to their computer, such as music keyboard or electric guitar (via analog input or microphone), which can be recorded, edited, and mixed together with other tracks. GarageBand users can also add more instruments and loops with any of four Jam Packs (U.S.$99). These expansion discs each add more than 2,000 additional loops and dozens of new software instruments, among other features.

Incredible what hiring an editor would do for the Microsoft website. Sheesh! What a company blunder! They were so kind to even include a link to the Apple iLife Product Page! Either this is a real good show of faith from the Redmond giant, someone with a laser has it pointed at Bill’s forehead, this is reverse-psychology, or Mr Gates has finally cracked, we won’t know tell Microsoft lets us know. Very funny, whatever the outcome. Admittedly, as a Windows user though, there are very few decent Windows audio editing tools, and GarageBand for Mac does the job perfectly. Sourced from Digg.