Wade Wegner

At MIX10, Jon Box – a Senior Architect Evangelist with Microsoft – spoke with SocialWendy about Internet Explorer 8.  In addition to highlighting the fact that IE8 makes the Internet easier, safer, and faster, Jon talks about three unique capabilities found in IE8:

• Accelerators
• Visual Search
• Web slices

Furthermore, Jon highlighted how a web slice allows a user to subscribe to a piece of content on a web page, and also explain how a user can leverage an accelerator – such as Walmart’s accelerator – to make it easier to search for information and goods on the Internet.

If you’d like more information on how to do this yourself for your own web pages, take a look at the following resources:

• MSDN
  • Web slices overviews
  • Subscribing to Content with Web Slices
  • OpenService Accelerators Developer Guide
  • Search Provider Extensibility in IE
  • Web Slices and Accelerators in PHP
  • Authenticated Web Slices
  • IE8 Web Slice Style Guide
  • ASP.NET Web Slices
  • Web Slices Tutorials
  • Web Slices Format Specification – Version 0.9
• Excellent blog posts
  • Building a Web Slice Does Not Guarantee Lighting Up the Web
  • IE8 Web Slices and Discoverability
  • An Expanded View of IE8 Accelerators
  • IE8 Fundamentals of Visual Search Providers
  • Simple approach to IE8 search providers
  • Dynamic web slice in 5 minutes
  • Web slice and feed authentication
  • IEAK

Also, if you want to take a look at some great web slices, try out the following:

• McDonald’s McNuggets – http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/shopping/the_McNuggets_Village/
• Winchester – http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/shopping/Winchester_Web_Slice/
• Chicago Tribune – http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/news/Chicago_Tribune_News_Headlines/

Happy web slicing!

I find myself doing this over and over again, so I figured it would be worthwhile to post.  Below you’ll find a really useful way for installing a Windows O/S from a bootable USB device.  I am particularly dependent on USB drives, as I have a Lenovo X61 Tablet that doesn’t have a CD/DVD-ROM (unless I’m docked, but I’m hardly in the office).

A couple of notes:

• This assumes you’re running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008
• I’ve tested by installing the following O/S’s: Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008
• You must have a machine capable of booting from a USB drive

Without further ado, here are the steps:

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. You must make your USB drive bootable.  Type the following in the command prompt:

   diskpart
   list disk (FIND YOUR USB DISK)
   select disk 1 (OR WHATEVER YOUR DISK NUMBER IS)
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
   

3. Mount your Windows Server ISO (or unpack it) and copy the contents of the CD/DVD onto your USB.  Make sure you get all files, including hidden ones.

You should now be able to use this USB drive to install a new O/S.  Good luck!