Want to read your Twitter feed inside of MS Outlook?

Here's a handy tip for reading Twitter feeds inside of MS Outlook.  If you want to read the twitter feed of a particular user in Outlook, just add their RSS feed.

Here is the formula for getting a Twitter feed in RSS :

RSS URL = http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name={ twitter user }

  1. In the Outlook folders bar, right click on RSS Feeds > select "Add a New RSS Feed..."
  2. In the New RSS Feed popup, enter the twitter url of the user you wish to follow. EX : http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=ericfickes
  3. Click Add 
  4. Click Yes to add this RSS Feed to Outlook

 

Twitter-in-outlook-rssfeeds

 

* This tip applies to any version of Outlook that includes RSS support.  I think this is Outlook 2007 and higher.

Ever need to window.close() a Telerik RadWindow after a PostBack?

Here's a quick little tip for closing a Telerik RadWindow modal dialog automatically after a Postback.  After your postback operation, refresh the parent opener using javascript and the dialog disappears.

                    //  all good, reload parent to close the RadWindow popup
                    Response.Write("<script type=\"text/javascript\">parent.location.href = parent.location.href;</script>");

This isn't a silver bullet, but it works for my project since reloading the parent page is perfectly acceptable.

Demo the speech API in Chrome on Windows7

The easy answer is to start the latest version of Chrome with the --enable-speech-input flag.

These steps work for users of Windows 7.

If Chrome is in your PATH.
Run1

1. Windows + R 

2. chrome.exe --enable-speech-input

3. Enter

If Chrome is NOT in your PATH.

Run2

1. Windows + R 

2. "C:\Documents and Settings\eric\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --enable-speech-input
* change this path to match your windows username

3. Enter

Then visit http://slides.html5rocks.com/#speech-input and you should see a microphone icon if you enabled the speech input correctly.

Run3

This is pretty amazing stuff, but I wonder how long it will take to be available across all modern web browsers.  Right now this is a Chrome only feature.