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May 13, 2009 >>

What's New at Experts Exchange
New Features, Personnel and Geniuses

More Microsoft MVPs
Several we didn't know about

Almost All About Articles
Brian Milne and your humble editor give an overview

More News and Notes
Who says there aren't opportunities?

Nata's Corner
Windows 7 still has some issues

New Certificates
New certificate holders, through May 9

What's New at Experts Exchange

New Feature: Experts Exchange has pushed the long-awaited Articles feature. We explain it in more detail below, but we hope you'll take the time to look through the work of your colleagues. We do want to take note of the hard work of two Experts Exchange members in particular, though: JDettman, who, many years ago, helped put together the framework for what is now the Articles system, and DanRollins, who seemingly tirelessly hammered the Articles feature while it was in beta making sure it worked correctly. Our thanks to both of you!

Promotion: Along with the launch of the Articles feature, WhackAMod has been asked to join the administrative team, assisting in the selection and training of the Page Editors and Zone Advisors, and he has accepted. Congratulations!

New Moderator, Page Editors and Zone Advisors: quomodo is the newest member of the Moderator team. We are also pleased to welcome to the ZA and PE teams juliakir, mark_wills, BrandonGalderisi, Graphixer, evilrix and slam69, and want to give a special welcome to mwaterhouse, who will be helping out with the non-technical aspects of editing articles. We will publish complete rosters in a couple of weeks.

Help Wanted: A few weeks ago, we noted that the Zone Advisors and Page Editors will become separate functions, and now that we have articles, we're looking for capable, dedicated people for both positions.
Page Editors are the people who will be responsible for helping ensure the quality of the articles. They need to be experienced in their specialties, and need to be able to help an Author polish an article before it is published to the site by examining it for accuracy and completeness.
Zone Advisors are the members who monitor the questions and answers at Experts Exchange. They help the Moderators in determining which comment(s) should be selected as answers, and they are the "Go To" folks when a question isn't getting answered.
If you think you have something to offer, please contact the Site Admins and let them know of your interest.

Cleanup News: The online cleanup system is back in business. If you're interested in helping out taking care of old, abandoned questions, please contact AnnieMod and she will point you in the right direction.

Mea cupla: In our last issue, we inadvertently used the incorrect pronoun in identifying the artist who contributed her drawing to the newsletter. We sincerely apologize to her and hope she doesn't take it out on her father. This issue's MODern art was created by the 13-month-old son of a different Moderator, and the depiction of "Dad with his laptop" is eerily familiar.

New Geniuses: DatabaseMX has earned his second Genius certificate, in Access Forms and Kenneniah has recorded his first, in Windows XP Operating System. Nice work, folks!

Milestones:

• angelIII has earned over 28,000,000 points overall.
• war1 is the ninth EE member to go over 2,000,000 points in two different zones.
• objects has earned 11,000,000 points in the Java Programming Language zone.
• Callandor, rindi and rockiroads all reached the 7,000,000 points overall level.
• aneeshattingal has earned 6,000,000 points overall.
• chapmandew went over the 3,000,000 point mark in both the SQL Server 2005 and MS SQL Server zones.

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Tips From the Moderators

Who are all these people and what do they do?

• Administrators are the people who work with Experts Exchange to manage the site.
• Moderators are the "referees". They assist in getting questions answered, and make sure members are treated fairly.
• Zone Advisors are the technical "experts" for the Moderators. They assist the Mods in making sure questions and comments don't violate an EULA or involve illegal activities, and are also the "Go To" people for solutions.
• Page Editors are responsible for making sure that articles are technically accurate, complete and concise.
• Cleanup Volunteers help the Moderators by recommending the resolution of abandoned questions.

Microsoft MVPs at Experts Exchange

It was inevitable that when we published the list of Microsoft MVPs who haunt the hallowed ether at Experts Exchange that we would miss a few. If we are still missing anyone, please let us know and we'll be certain to recognize you and offer our congratulations.

Access: jefftwilley, datAdrenaline
Excel: BobP
Exchange: KevinBall
SQL Server: rob_farley, simonsabin
Visual FoxPro: Olaf_Doschke, tusharkanvinde, cbasoz

Almost All About Articles

An editor by trade, a writer by avocation and an Expert by some cosmic practical joke, ericpete puts together the newsletter for Experts Exchange. BMilneSLO is the Experts Exchange staff member who is responsible for the Articles system.

The long-awaited Articles feature is now live on Experts Exchange, and with it, we have also revived the Page Editor positions. The Page Editors are selected members who will be providing guidance to help make sure the Articles posted at Experts Exchange are of high-quality; it is their mission to be a sounding board for you so your Articles can be the best possible.

You can post your Article-related questions at http://www.experts-exchange.com/Community_Support/Article_Tips/ zone, and be sure to read the Articles Contribution Agreement before you post your article.

How does the points breakdown work for articles?

• Publish article: 500 points, pending editor review
• Community voting: 500 points, after 10 "Yes, this article was helpful" votes
• EE Approval: 1,500 points
• Editor's Choice: 2,000 points

Who edits the articles and awards points?

Experts Exchange has appointed Page Editors to oversee content in their areas of expertise. Portions of the points and publishing process are automated. Page Editors have the ability to edit articles, award points and also contact authors about changes that need to be made to their articles.

What should I do if I find something wrong with an article?

General comments that do not require administrative attention can be made in the comments section below an article. If an article requires additional assistance, or violates EE's member agreement, guidelines or contribution agreement, use the "Request Attention" button/link on the Article page. That alerts the Moderators, who will take care of the issue.

How long does my article have to be?

In most cases, an article should be 300 words or longer to be considered for points.

How many topics can I write about?

Users should focus their articles on IT and tech-related ideas. Remember, Experts Exchange is a solutions site, so articles geared toward resolving tech problems are encouraged. Objective reviews on software and hardware are also welcome.

Here are the types of articles you can write on EE:

• General
• FAQs and Tips/tricks (combine several to reach 300 words)
• Tutorials
• Reviews
• Resources
• Best practices

See the Articles Guidelines for a complete description of the types of articles.

What are the reasons an article may be deleted from the site?

• Explicit, defamatory or malicious content
• Libelous content or statements that violate third party rights
• Content that outlines illegal or unethical activities
• Spamming or flaming; soliciting, promoting or advertising for a commercial purpose
• Plagiarism or posting copyrighted content
• Clear misuse of the EE points system
• Content that has considerable errors or information that is intentionally false or misleading

More News and Notes

Who says there aren't opportunities? If you're one of the thousands of people who have found yourselves looking at a severance package and the prospect of visiting your local unemployment office, one out-of-work woman in Colorado has figured out a new career for herself: organizing job fairs, although you can also start your own business or even stop by the SEC if you happen to be an unemployed investigative journalist. Hey... wait a minute...

Happy birthday, LaserJet!

New player in the phone wars: Heaven help us for thinking Austin Kutcher can contribute much of anything remotely significant to the world, but he did expose a Silicon Valley startup that can cut your phone bill to ZIP if you happen to live in the US... where telecommunications companies historically display their greed every month. Speaking of which, kudos to Verizon's broadband service. We produced this newsletter from our daughter's home in the boondocks, where the only available Internet service is (*gulp*) dialup. We picked up their PCMCIA card on eBay (get the serial number before you buy) and then walked into the Verizon store and set up a month-to-month account, since we're only here for a few weeks three or four times a year -- and it worked perfectly without costing an arm and a leg for the next two years. If Verizon picks up the iPhone, we might have a reason to dump AT&T entirely.

It needs another name, that's for sure: We've written asking for a sneak preview of a new search engine that says it's launching this month, but as of last weekend hadn't yet. Send your search terms and we'll publish the results -- but we don't see ourselves saying "Just Wolfram it" anytime soon.

Inquiring minds want to know: Send your suggestions for the Evil Bucket List, but please, don't get whiny like the people who think they're funnier than the guy who wrote A Brief, Incomplete and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (thanks, John!). We would also like to know why there isn't anyone in the newly-wired White House who knows how to Photoshop, and how many of the Webby Award nominee sites you have actually visited in the last three months. We count maybe 25 of them.

If it's on FOX News, it must be true: The Internet Is Dead. So how's that MySpace thingy working for you, Rupert?

What ever happened to the Pet Rock anyway? The next big thing will be Qwitter: a site for people who have created Twitter accounts and already forgotten the password. Or maybe it will get turned into a site that has no clickable links and works only with touchscreens. And in case you're curious, here's why text messages are 160 characters or less.

YASNSWCI: Yet Another Social Networking Site We Can Ignore: Microsoft Vine, which will probably not change its color scheme to pink. More red might be a choice, though.

The Florida elections commission was not involved, though: The founder of 4chan was voted the most influential person in the world in Time magazine's online poll.

Sign of the Apocalypse: ... at least if you're Steve Ballmer: the most frequently searched-for term using Microsoft's search is "Google". As might be expected, Yahoo is number two. And as if it isn't bad enough that the Twitter folks have made a cottage industry out of taking money from venture capitalists with no revenue stream in sight, now a firm that aggregates Twitter posts is doing the same thing. Finally, Microsoft actually released something early.

Nata's Corner

I have written a number of times about how frustrating Vista is for me, but the latest I have read on Windows 7 makes me just as nervous about upgrading to the next operating system from Microsoft. It really bothers me that they are willing to not fix something they know is a fundamental problem, all in the name of giving new computer users more of a reason to think they're getting something great. It's like AOL charging $20 a month for a dialup account when you're already paying the telephone company for one; to me, it's taking advantage of people.

We travel a lot, so there's something to be said for having immediate access to medical records from anywhere in the world, but then you read about hackers getting ahold of them and you begin to re-think the idea. That gets even more scary when you realize that there are viruses and such that can hijack your computer and even destroy it. Of course, AOL's massive data leak a while back showed what researchers have now proven: you don't need to hack actual personal data to figure out an awful lot about people when they'll tell you themselves.

Finally, everyone has found him/herself looking at a page that looks like it has a bunch of useful links on it -- even if it isn't the site you wanted to go to in the first place. I always just retype the URL, because you never know if the site is going to try to download some malware onto your computer, right? Well, now, you can't even trust the search bar on those sites, even if there is a little Google or Yahoo or Microsoft icon next to it. The bad guys are now incorporating their own "search engines" into their sites, and the results pages do the same thing the original pages do.

New Certificates