We’re using Windows Live Writer for most of our blog posts.  Inserted into Live Writer we have the xPollinate plug in.  This plug in has primarily been used to post blog entries made in one Famous Grazing blog to the others in the series.

There are a few of these blogs we couldn’t connect with xPollinate. We’re going to try its Ping.fm feature to connect the stories to Posterous and Vox when we post this message to Random Grazing Space.

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Image via Wikipedia

There are few spare moments between the breakfast my son made for his mother at 0600 and the dinner we plan to share with other mothers and their families.

In that spare time there are two ‘utilities’ I have started to use over the past few weeks worth mentioning....

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From MakeUseOf.com is this link to an entry on Windows screen Docks.   It is a very thorough listing.  I am not a fan of screen docks because I make most use of the Quick Launch tool bar in Windows XP.  But for those who like bells and whistles, docks are good.

If you're looking for some interesting feeds to add to the feed-reader you use, the downloadsquad site as a huge number of RSS tags on a broad set of platforms and on-line applications.

I picked three of the hundreds of available feeds.  I know this will bite me if  we abandon the reader for a day or two. 

We've been mystified by Twitter for quite a while.  Perhaps this link to Webware's article Newbie's Guide to Twitter will help.

This Shorpy.com  photograph of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh taken in 1929, four months after they were married, is a marvel in the detail of their features as well as the airplane in front of which they are standing.  The blurb below is worth reading as well.

The Ultimate Guide to GMail Collection of over 80 Tips.

The next link was to intense debate.com.  This site has been mentioned in other blogs and podcasts.  We tool the comments add-on and installed it on Belltowernews.com. 

Just another added feature.

And finally, just for fun, if you live and work in Cambridge, The Periodic Table on steroids...

It should be mentioned that Firefox, though no manipulation of my own, is now back up and running. 

When it activated all of my add-ons, along with their associated websites.  I had to go in and turn off the add-ons not currently in use.  It did surprise me there were so many.  I am a taster.  When I find mention of something that may make the browsing experience more interesting, will try it.  Mostly the reason I turn it off as to do with loading time or its conflict with a already running feature.  I only delete the ones that have an obvious detrimental effect on my set-up.

I wonder if this huge patch, whose pending arrival was all over ZDNet news. (Google Read Feed), was a precursor to Firefox's version 3.0.

Each year, for the past thirty or so years, I have found a copy of The World Almanac and Book of Facts in my stocking.  The first section I go to always is the obituaries.  Each year, without fail, I am surprised to find people I thought either still alive, or long dead, on the list.

For the past few years, the second place I go is the Computers & Telecommunications section.

Besides some interesting facts, such as Yahoo sites combined got more hits in July of 2006 than Google sites, there is a list of what the editors believe to be useful webpages.

Each year they've become more selective, weeding out the popular for the interesting.  Now it's my turn to weed even more.  I have visited each of the recommended sites not already in my bookmarks, or Google Reader feeds. 

Using Thunderbird's option of Bookmarking All Tabs, I name the folder 2008Almanac.

Here is the list of sites that have made it through the weeder.

The first has to be The World Almanac Blog.  The feed from this delivers a daily dose of interesting facts to my reader.

The rest I will list without comment for you to explore on your own:

Resource Shelf

Newseum & Today's Front Page

American Memory & Exhibitions

The British Library

Internet Archive

NYPL Digital Gallery

Our Documents

Kayak.com

Library Thing

Though each of the sites listed above are of interest, the one that kept me the longest this morning was Our Documents.  Here are digital images of the actual documents in file at the National Archives.  See the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's handwriting, the hand corrected copy of FDR's December 8, 1941 speech  to a joint session of congress.  See the actual treaty completing the Louisiana Purchase... 100 documents going up to the Civil Rights Act.

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Now that Live Writer is a usable blog editor you are guaranteed to see more entries here at Random Grazing Space.  The other active grazing blogs are rooted in Belltower News.  The catchall blog is Other Grazing on Live Journal.

On WordPress we have Grazing Portal and Grazing Press= our last hosted blog.

While at a trade show in British Columbia we set up the Vox blog Trounce Alley.  Because of the lack of off line editors that support this blog and its connection to a social connection portal, we don't count it as an active blog. It does serve as a good place to test programs which tout themselves as all-over blog editors.

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Each new entry in a new blog host for me
has always started with the words Opening Salvo.
This is one way to tell if the blog was
created by sgtret or not.
There is a lot of chatter on the "Blog" blogs and
other media regarding MSN's attempt to break into the blog world.
The general comments so far are saying MS has become like the Federal Government:
too much-too late.<BR
It's still in beta. Let's give the big guy a chance.
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