Announcements

Today's Gazette is going to break away from our regular discussions to introduce two new members that have recently joined our Blogging Team. Besides that, I'm sick with a nasty bug (possibly the Flu) and I'm just not up to writing a whole lot. ;-) ... First up is Sarah Perez (blog name: Sarah In Tampa): Sarah enjoys blogging about the latest technology buzz on the Internet. Her compositions are typically short-but-sweet and never fail to intrigue. Just recently, some of Sarah's remarks were featured on News.com's BlogMa. Next is Nick Tyrrell (blog name: Nick's Computer Security): Nick's ... (view more)

Today's article was submitted by Bill Hudgins and is the 1st Place Winner of our Editorial Contest . The original article was put forward by one of our contributors (Sheila Foss), only a few days before the contest began. With Sheila's permission, I ... edited the article to include erroneous mistakes and later used the composition as the inspiration for the contest. If you would like to compare the contest article before reviewing the winning submission [below], you can do so by clicking here (recommended). Without further adieu, here is the Bill Hudgins' version of the article, "Make it a ... (view more)

As promised, today's newsletter will announce the winners of our Editorial Contest. To recap: On September 23rd , I announced that infopackets would be opening its doors and allow new contributors to submit articles to our audience of 250,000 ... Readers. On November 30th , a contest was held (lasting only 5 days) for a seat on our Editing Team. From that point forward, I've been implementing many changes to the web server to accommodate our new contributors and editors. Moving on -- With so many volunteers cramming for a seat on the Editing Team, I knew it was going to be difficult trying to ... (view more)

Last week was a very busy week for me. I spent an obscene amount of time writing a plugin for the new publishing system ("Movable Type") so that our Editing Team would be alerted (via an RSS feed ) when a new draft article has been submitted by our ... Team of Bloggers . My notification plugin, aptly named "RSS Draft Notify", is used in conjunction with another plugin (called " Workflow "). In a nutshell: the Workflow plugin changes the dynamics of the publishing system (Movable Type) such that "Contributors" may only submit draft articles, while " ... (view more)

Today's issue of the Gazette is a synopsis of what's been happening with our web site. On November 25th , I wrote an article which asked for volunteers to edit article submissions from our team of Bloggers . The response to that article was so ... strong (with over 120 candidates volunteering to lend a hand), I decided on November 30th that it would be best to host a contest for a seat in our Editing Team. The contest was simple enough: edit a sample article and correct it to the best of your ability. The contest deadline was very brief and ended December 5th (lasting only 5 days); as expected, ... (view more)

I am simply overwhelmed from the response to last week's posting, " Editors Wanted !" To be quite honest, I was expecting no more than a handful of folks to volunteer their help; to my surprise, however, there were well over 100 "volunteer emails" ... [pic] in my inbox only a few hours after the post was published online our web site. While I do not have the time to reply to each letter individually, I would like to take a moment to give a very warm and heartfelt "Thank you!" to everyone that offered their assistance. It *really* made my day to see so many ... (view more)

For the last few weeks, I've been working around the clock ironing out bugs, as well as addressing new issues which have arisen as infopackets moves into the next stage of multi-authored publishing . As an editor, one of the most challenging tasks I ... am regularly confronted with is to find new and interesting ways to express technology-based questions and answers using simple-to-read English so that anyone (and everyone!) visiting infopackets.com can learn from our articles. I would like very much to offer our Readers fresh and exciting material as infopackets continues to grow; however, I ... (view more)

Today's issue of the Gazette is a series of very important announcements. Let me begin by telling you what's been happening in my life. I don't normally write about personal stuff, but this circumstance is different because it directly affects ... infopackets.com. At any rate, here goes: As of November 2nd, 2005, I finalized the deal on my new home. Prior to the 2nd (and beginning October 20th), I was running around like mad trying to get everything settled -- such as: meeting with the builder regularly, the bank, the lawyers, and making tons of phone calls to service providers. All of this ... (view more)

Since 2001, the Infopackets Windows Newsletter has become one of the premier tech resources on the 'net, chock-full of highly informative and well-sourced computing tips. In all, our library of in-depth tech tips stretches to over 875 articles to ... date. So what makes Infopackets.com so successful? Every once in a while, someone new comes along and asks me what the secret is to having a successful web site. And every time I'm asked this question, I always chuckle, because I think back to almost 5 years ago when I asked that very same question. Of course, the answer to having a wildly successful ... (view more)

Great news! After 1 year in the making (and many changes to our web site), I'm pleased to announce that the implementation of RSS is ... drum roll please ... finally online! If you've been reading our newsletter for some time, then I'm sure you're ... already aware that all the articles published through this web site have a similar "theme" -- namely: Microsoft Windows, computing, and the like. In terms of RSS [Rich Site Syndicate] technology, related articles are grouped together to form a "Channel". For example: The Software Spotlight Section, Bob's Freeware Picks (also ... (view more)