Recently Scott Hanselman added support for OpenID to http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ and I have been wanting this for some time.

Today I finally got around to getting the source to Dasblog (revision 823) available at Codeplex or SourceForge.net

Currently its the same revision, but DasBlog will move permanently to Codeplex, so go for the Codeplex checkins in the future.

I tried to build, but got a few errors, but figured out that there was an issue with renaming Utils to SiteUtilities, so i commented out the second definition of the "Utils" class in SiteUtilities.cs, and it compiled.

I merged the new version with my existing Dasblog, but running it gave me the following error:

Could not load type 'newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Services.OpenIdHandler' from assembly 'newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Services'."

on this line:

Line 159: <add verb="*" path="authenticate.ashx" type="newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Services.OpenIdHandler, newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Services"/>

So I removed it, and I would seem that OpenID now works for comments, but not for administrator login.

I haven't looked further into it yet, but it looks a little like there is something missing in the "newtelligence.Dasblog.Web.Services" project. I will dig a little deeper and see if I can figure it out.

But please help me test the OpenID support on the comments. If you don't have an OpenID then go get one.

Related Links:

• http://www.myopenid.com/
• Scott Hanselman - The Weekly Source Code 25 - OpenID Edition

I have done a few changes to the blog today to improve usability - I thought it was getting a little cluttered:

• Upgraded to newest version of dasBlog
• Removed adsense ads
• Cleaned and re-arranged the sidebar
• Improved styling of comments
• Added spam protection with Akismet
• Removed large Digg button
• Swithed to Feedburner (dasblog does a 301 redirect from the old feed)
• Added flares
• Fixed a few issues with the adminsection (bad upgrade i suppose?)
• Added dates to posts (about time)

I hope this is an improvement, and if you have any issues you are most welcome to write me, and I will make sure to fix it.

This might alreay be obvious to you, but it occured to me that my blog in the future, will be a great reference to the solutions, that i will have found at that time to everyday developing problems.

Sometimes I get stuck with a problem, that I know I have already solved once, but I can't seem to remember the exact solution - and I didn't write down the solution, when I found it.

This is where the blog is a handy lifehack tool, that keeps you logging all the problems you encounter, and the solutions you find. Other people with similar problems might find some help in your blog, but in time, so will You.

So blog persistently, it will not only help others, but you will benefit greatly from it, in the future - and your memory is probably not going to get better over time.

I like Windows Live Writer. Its very intuitive, and a great way of writing posts, even when your not online, so obviously i'm using it for this blog running dasBlog.

But during the posting of my second post, i ran in to the first problem with it. I wrote the post, read it a few times, and decided to post it. After posting I checked the post on the site, to make sure it looked right, and realized that i forgot to include a picture. So what do I do? I was logged in on the site, so i just pushed the delete icon on the webpage, and it was gone.

Great, i thought. I added my picture, and pressed publish to weblog again. But then i got the "Server error 0, Object reference not set to an instance of an object". And whatever i tried, i didn't seem to be able to upload my edited post.

It turns out that this is a know bug. If you create a post, and you delete from the Blogs userpanel, Live Writer will still have en ID associated with the post, and when trying to update, to a post ID that doesn't exist ... well you get the picture.

My workaround was to create a new post, and copy the contents to this new post, and publish that instead, and then delete the faulty draft.

Alternatively, according to a post on Peter Laudati's blog you can switch to another blog in Live Writer, if you have another configured, and then back to the original blog - this will reset the ID, and you will be able to republish as a new post. I haven't tried that approach though, but it makes sense.

As the world develops from a place where everybody would have their 15 minutes of fame, to a place  where everybody has a lifetime of 15% fame through online services and realityshows, I have chosen to follow the mob of lemmings  - they do seem to have som direction going for them - and create my own blog.

Well, I did already participate in a danish reality show about startups, so i suppose it was bound to happen some time.

Why should I read this?

You might be asking yourself, and with good reason. With more than 55 million blogs, you have a point. Does the world really need another blog?

According to the Technorati "State of the Blogosphere" more than 70.000 blogs will be created today. Is there actually enough to write about, and is anybody really reading all these blogs?

The answer in short, I think, is no. A lot of blogs are not being read by anybody, and probably only a few of us, who start blogging today, will still be blogging in a year from now.

Whereas it is true, that many blogs are not continually providing original content, if any at all, and therefore isn't generating much of an audience, the group of blogs that do create unique content, is an invaluable ressource of information, news and entertainment, that otherwise might never reach an audience.

So what can DevTalk offer, that isn't already available?

Well first of all, a little about my background. I'm a lead software developer in a danish company, focussing on the forefront of Microsoft server products, such as Commerce Server 2007, Bizztalk Server 2006 and Sharepoint Server 2007. I mostly do custom .Net 2.0 development with C#, and primarily work with logistics-solutions.

Furthermore i run a MicroISV currently developing something as antiquated as a desktop application that handles your TODO list items in a very handy way. More about that later on.

The focus of the blog will of course be the things that i work the most with, reaching to a broad interest in technology. So there will be a lot of posts about .Net development, software architecture, tools and developer relevant lifehacks. I will be posting about entrepreneurship and MicroISVs, and of course a small percent of completely personal, subjective opinions about this and that.

I will maintain the objective of 1 post a day in average.

Will there be a Podcast as well?

Actually yes. Im going all the way, and will in a few weeks be launching the DevTalk Podcast.

Topics will be roughly the same, and i will be putting out a podcast every second week to begin with. If your interested in joining me as a guest on the show, please let me know, and we'll set something up.

For now, i will say, thank you for listening - there is more to come!