I’ve gained a lot of experience running and working with bulletin boards in my day, although most of my experience has been based on numerous mistakes. In 2004 and 2005, I established a number of communities, but most of them wound up being unsuccessful for a number of reasons, and that’s pretty much how I learned NOT to run a community.

Well, a few weeks ago, Patrick O’Keefe (of phpBBHacks.com fame, as well as a number of other communities and websites), released a brand new book called Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards. Patrick was on phpBB Weekly #050 back in February, and in addition to talking about phpBBHacks.com on that episode, he gave us an early preview of his book. Since then, he sent copies to both myself and David Lewis for us to read and review. (Plus, we’ll be giving away an autographed copy on phpBB Weekly #061 on May 10th!) I recently finished the book, and am quite excited to have the opportunity to review it.
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Tags: administrators, book, communities, forums, guide, guidelines, management, Managing Online Forums, marketing, Patrick O'Keefe, phpBB, review, staff, tips

I covered Mail in last Wednesday’s Leopard Feature Presentation, which was one of the apps that sought to bring Mac OS X’s built-in applications in lockstep to go up against Entourage, part of Microsoft Office. But Entourage isn’t just e-mail and information management; Entourage also has an Address Book and Calendar included, which recently has been making iCal look a little, um, amateur. Not so in Leopard. iCal 3 in Leopard finally has been fully redesigned to be more professional looking and faster to use, and although those of us who regularly used iCal before will have a few new things to get used to, the new iCal overall offers a lot of stuff to be excited about.
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Tags: calendars, Entourage, events, Exchange Server, iCal, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, management, review, to-dos

Yesterday, I began talking about the general improvement of the user experience in Leopard when messing with network settings, something that we all have to do one time or another. That is, if we have any aspirations to get on the internet. Yesterday’s LFP on the AirPort Utility was for those of us who have our own AirPort base station to manage, but today, I look at the Leopard’s new treatment of connecting to networks.
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Tags: connection, internet, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, management, network, review, settings, System Preferences