Posted on April 16, 2008 by Michael Helmuth

Resizing Your Windows XP Boot Partition in Parallels

After many hours installing the various things required for .NET development on my Parallels instance of Windows XP, the last service pack was finally installing.  I really thought 14 gigs would be enough for my XP Parallels install.  Apparently, I was wrong.  Disk full.

Once I began looking at my options, I realized it was not as simple as using the Parallels Image Tool to expand the disk and boot partition.  The Parallels Image Tool allows you to resize the virtual disk but not your boot partition, or any partition for that matter.  Further, when you resize the image and then look in the XP disk manager, you find that you can partition and format your newly created space, but you can't actually resize the boot partition into it. Apparently Vista allows this from the Win disk manager but XP does not.

I did a little research and came up with a really cool little application called GParted (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php).  This app offers a bootable disk image that allows you to manipulate the partitions of a Windows disk--which includes the boot partition. It turns out to be a brilliant solution to this problem.

In practice, there really are quite a number of steps involved, but nothing particularly difficult.  In my hunting I also turned up a helpful tutorial with screenshots to guide you every step of the way: (http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/01/9404/).  I followed that carefully and everything is working great.

Problem solved.

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Posted on April 16, 2008 by Avi Flax

Trying Out Blog It

Blog It is Six Apart's new Facebook app for blogging. I'm writing this post in it right now. Above this box for the post content, there are four checkboxes; one for each blog I've set up with the app. Simply by checking the desired blogs, I can send this post to any combination of them, with a single action. Pretty nice.

But there are already plenty of blogging apps - I'm currently using MarsEdit - so the big question is: what's special about Blog It?

A few things come to mind:

• Most obviously: it's a Facebook app. That means it gets the advantages of a web app: nothing to download, easy upgrades, big potential user base, cross-platform; and one of the big advantages of a desktop app: no need to sign up, create an account, keep track of yet another password, or understand OpenID. Also, being a Facebook app, it gets the possibility of quick "viral" adoption, integration with an experience people are already using every day, and the ability to update the user's Facebook status.


• Adding blogs is really, really easy. And a wide variety of platforms are supported.


• Finally, a unique twist: it's not just for blogging. It's also for updating your "Status", on Facebook itself but also external services such as Twitter. I don't really use these services, but I do have accounts with some of them, which I opened just to try them out. It's pretty cool: a single text box and pressing enter can post an update to Facebook, Twitter, and a bunch of other services, all at once. I have four accounts set up, and it works very smoothly. Also notable is that apparently blog posts are also sent to these services as well - although I'm not quite sure how, or in what form. What gets posted? A link? An excerpt? Well, I'm about to find out.

A few drawbacks:

• like most web-based blogging interfaces, the post body is typed into a large text area - with no auto-save. So if your browser crashes, or the post doesn't work, there's a good chance that any time spent typing could be lost. I know plenty of people - myself included - who've been bitten by this case. At this point I tell people to never spend more than five minutes typing in a web page. It's one reason that I use a desktop blogging app. (WordPress's built-in blogging interface does auto-save; one of it's best little-known features.)
• The entry body is just a simple text area: no rich editing, no support for other media, such as images, music, video, etc. It's a bit of a throwback. Six Apart says this'll be enhanced soon, so this initial release can be thought of as almost a proof-of-concept.
• The app is for posting only; once a post is up, it can't be edited within Blog-It; you'd have to use a different tool.
• No ability to add tags or choose categories.

Here's what it looks like:

It'll be interesting to see how Blog It grows and matures, and how it fares in the market, given its unique set of features and its identity as a Facebook app.

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Posted on March 4, 2008 by Avi Flax

NIN at the Cutting Edge of Music Distribution

With the release of their new album Ghosts I-IV, Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails have raised the bar of music distribution to the next notch.

The first order page :

A great set of options, ranging the gamut from free to $300, from digital downloads to CDs to vinyl to Blue-Ray. I really like that the options are selectable with check boxes, so, for instance I could order the $5 download and the $10 2-CD set, with a single transaction, without having to add them to a "shopping cart" and then "check out".

If you click the "more info" link under the $5 download option, this graphic pops up:

Again, a great set of options, covering a full range of convenience, quality, and ideology. The rest of the ordering process is straightforward and effective. I didn't think of getting screen shots, but the screen where you choose which file format you want - which smartly appears during the "pickup" phase, after payment - is clear and - again - effective.

I actually like that the non-free download option has a fixed price of $5 - there's less to decide than a name-your-own-price scheme such as Radiohead used for In Rainbows, and it means that I know that the musician is good with the price. Plus it's just a bargain - 36 CD-quality DRM-free tracks for $5!

ReadWriteWeb has some good background about Reznor's previous attempt at digital music distribution. The Wall Street Journal's Business Technology blog laughably describes BitTorrent as an "underground filing-trading service." (And who wrote that post anyway? It's anonymous! Lame.)

Tip: Downloaded the album, and wondering where to keep that nice PDF booklet? If you use iTunes, you can just drop it in to your library, right next to the tracks themselves. I even set the Artist and Album fields so that the booklet shows up in the track listing.

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