2011 Greatest Hits

I did a "Greatest Hits" blog post in 2008, and since this year is winding down I though it was time for another. Here's what I think were my best blog posts this year.

Personal

• Updated for 2011 - McDonald's WiFi Guide with updates for Mac OS X Lion and Windows 7 - This sill cracks me up, and I wrote it!
• Link-bait Hacker Slash News Dot Considered Cancerous Request For Call To Action - This took me 10 minutes to write and is the most popular thing I've written this year. It's also got comments that are WAY better than the post. I hope it lives forever.
• Just please comb their hair and wipe their noses - My month as a single dad - The wife was gone for a month. No fingers or toes were lost in the ensuing chaos.
• I'm a phony. Are you? - Turns out we all feel this way.
• Brain, Bytes, Back, Buns - The Programmer's Priorities - Your tush is worth the money.

Punditry

• Good UX in the Wild: Dropbox's attention to detail on their download page - Discussion about how much effort Dropbox put into getting users to download and install their software.
• Your images are a virus. They are EVERYWHERE on the Internet - How a silly bit of SmartArt spread through the internet.
• Profanity doesn't work - A number of folks didn't agree, but the discussion was worth it.
• 410 Gone - Thoughts on Mark "diveintomark" Pilgrim's and _why's infosuicides - Mark Pilgrim quit the internet and took his stuff with him.
• There is only one Cloud Icon in the Entire Universe - Yep, pretty much just the one.
• Welcome to the Cloud - "Your Apple ID has been disabled." - When my Apple ID was compromised. Later I proposed a better workflow experience for Apple.
• Hackers can kill Diabetics with Insulin Pumps from a half mile away - Um, no. Facts vs. Journalistic Fear mongering - I throw stones at the way the media tries to scare us.
• Why the #AskObama Tweet was Garbled on Screen: Know your UTF-8, Unicode, ASCII and ANSI Decoding Mr. President - Unicode is hard.
• JavaScript is Assembly Language for the Web: Sematic Markup is Dead! Clean vs. Machine-coded HTML - I make a declarative statement, comments ensue. Later the experts weigh in.
• Should I use HTML5 or Silverlight? One man's opinion. - When should you use a plugin and when should you use HTML5?
• New Interview Questions for Senior Software Engineers - No, I don't have the answers to send you.
• Reading more than ever: An analysis of four lazy years with an Amazon Kindle and no dead trees - My Kindle has made my reading life richer.
• I know apps - My new resume.

Technology

• Your users don't care if you use Web Sockets - How choosing to support a super-new technology might make your app better or it might cut your prospective audience in half.
• Apps are too much like 1990's CD-ROMs and not enough like the Web - I'm getting tired of Apps, AppStores and Updating Apps.
• Solving the Shakespeare Million Monkeys Problem in Real-time with Parallelism and SignalR - Paul and I had such fun with this. How many monkeys does it take to write Shakespeare? And how will it scale?
• CSI: My Computer - What is netsession_win.exe from Akamai and how did it get on my system? - I love a good mystery.
• Guide to Installing and Booting Windows 8 Developer Preview off a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) - Want to try Windows 8 in a risk-free way? Boot to VHD! It's fabulous.
• A basic non-cloud-based personal backup strategy - Back it up, any way you can.
• NerdDinner being updated to MVC3 with Razor, HTML5, GeoLocation, EF CodeFirst, jQuery Mobile, YepNope and Modernizr and a fixed Mobile Device Capabilities ViewEngine - Longest title ever? Maybe, but we did a lot of work!
• Learning about Progressive Enhancement - Supporting Mobile Browsers with CSS3 Media Queries - I'm in love with CSS3 Media Queries.
• Installing and Running node.js applications within IIS on Windows - Are you mad? - Freak out your friends by running node under IIS.
• Hire and Pay a Designer and Be Happy - Designers are worth the money.
• Making awesome Wedding documents using OpenType Ligatures and Stylistic Sets in Microsoft Word 2010 and Gabriola - The wedding menus were greatly appreciated.
• Spring 2011 Fiction Reading List - Young Adult eBooks Will Save Science Fiction - I've been enjoying this last few years crop of Young Adult sci-fi.

Tutorials and Lessons

• A Social Media Brand Primer: Managing your (personal) brand with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
• The Guide to Creating Quality Technical Screencasts - A checklist for screencasting
• Taking Proper Screenshots in Windows for Blogs or Tutorials - Nothing like a lousy screenshot to ruin a tutorial or blog post.
• Using Code Signing Certificates to sign downloaded MSIs and build reputation with IE9 SmartScreen - More people should sign their publically downloadable applications.
• Productivity and Continuous Improvement - Measurement (and RescueTime) makes it happen, both Personally and at Work - If you measure your time, you can use it more effectively.
• How to add Tweets to your blog and debugging basic JavaScript: Why did Twitter.com/JavaScript/Blogger JSONP Widget stop working? - Add a nice feature to your blog and learn some Javascript at the same time.
• NuGet for the Enterprise: NuGet in a Continuous Integration Automated Build System - NuGet is making waves in the Enterprise. Big thanks to TeamCity and JetBrains.
• Adding a Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR3700 to an existing FIOS Wireless AP for improved wireless coverage - Funny how general IT posts like this catch fire.

Tools

• Scott Hanselman's 2011 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows -Yes, it came late, but it did arrive eventually. The tools list. I'll try to do even better next year.
• Five Absolutely Essential Utilities that make Windows better - The five I can't live without.
• Guide to Freeing up Disk Space under Windows 7 - These 120gig SSDs are too small. Or are they?
• The Technical Friend's Essential Maintenance Checklist for Non-Technical Friend's Windows Computer - Be nice to Non-Technical Friend.
• Console2 - A Better Windows Command Prompt - Make your Console better.

Speaking

• VIDEO: The Art of Speaking - with Scott Hanselman - Rob Conery and I made a video to help teach people about how to give an effective technical presentation. There's lots more information about this video at http://speakinghacks.com
• Developer Stand up Comedy - Coding 4 Fun - I'm  happy with how this evening of storytelling went.
• Check out videos of all my recent speaking engagements in the Speaking section of my blog.

See you next year!