WordPress is catching on

I am getting pretty engrossed in WordPress and think I may switch over fully to it. I am not sure exactly how to deal with redirection of links from one to the other so I might just leave this site here and ask you to start browsing over at the new site.

If you read this by feed, the new feed is right here.

I hope to not to be switching around much, but for now will start posting more in the new locations mentioned above.

Talk about Making things easy!

For whatever reason I decided to mess around with WordPress and have to say at first glance it is very slick. The WordPress team has made a product that is very advanced, while maintaining a high degree of simplicity at the same time. I was able to edit my posts from an MT export by editing one line in the import script (just had to say where my MT export file was) and then it fully imported my entire history of MT in about 30 seconds!! When I was moving hosts I tried a few things with MT to MT transfers and it was no where even close to that simple. Sure MT also knows how to import things, but how can another system do a better job??!!

I like how WordPress has included a much more advanced in-browser editing system as well. You can very easily add details to posts with minimal code, unlike MT – at least on Mac. I am not sure just yet that I’ll be switching over fully as I have a nice link history with Google and I would have to figure out a mass-redirect or figure out a way to name my posts in WordPress the same. Assuming that is possible, I might just make the move…

I’ve user Blogger, GreyMatter, Radio, MT, TypePad and now WordPress…

You can see my default template site here if you like. Once I figure out a few snags, I’ll deal with the template… assuming I keep the site.

On Microsoft’s XNA Play

Joe Wilcox at the Microsoft Monitor has some solid insight and thought into Redmonds latest attempt to bundle game development tools for both XBox and Windows.

…I see inherent conflict between Microsoft the platform provider and Microsoft the applications developer. I would apply the same thinking to Microsoft the multiple platform provider. Microsoft must be careful about what design decisions its developers make with respect to Windows and Xbox gaming. The risk is using one platform to build sales for the other, and visa versa, which, like an addictive drug, delivers an initial high but later compromising dependence. [Microsoft Monitor]

T-Mobile doing better on HotSpots?

Glenn posts some more detail on T-Mobile today and it seems their cost structure could be much lower than previously thought. As a carrier they get apparently get a very sweet deal on T-1 lines…

In his post, he notes that even when he was at Wayport, his average T-1 cost was $250 per month, and that T-Mobile could be paying as little as $90 per month in many locations in which they have co-located equipment to carry their cell traffic.

Combine that knowledge with Carlo Longino’s analysis of our post yesterday about T-Mobile’s revenue averaging to $400 per location per month, and you start to see that they could, in fact, be running far cash-flow positive. (Carlo wonders if the infrastructure is all T-1 still; that’s what T-Mobile confirmed for me all last year for Kinko’s, Borders, and all Starbucks past and future.)

Carlo notes, by the way, that T-Mobile said 67 percent of users are subscribers. This doesn’t give us apples to apples on sessions, but if you ascribe $1.2 million to 48,000 subscribers at an average rate of $25/month ($20 for T-Mobile cell users, $30 for one-year commitment regular users, $40 for month-to-month) that would leave you about 25,000 hourly/day sessions a month. Is it really possible T-Mobile has 48,000 subscribers?

Even if T-Mobile is paying prices all across the board, Jim’s information leads me to believe that their recurring costs might be substantially lower than anyone has previously estimated. Carlo’s factoid contributes the knowledge, if it’s all connected correctly, that the cell carrier might be signing up many more regular users of Wi-Fi service than previously imagined. [Wi-Fi Networking News]

Thinking again about how crowded the Starbucks I’ve been visiting are, it seems like T-Mobile is doing just fine.

Coming Soon in NetNewsWire

Brent reveals what is quietly lurking for us with the next update in NetNewsWire…. I can’t wait. Looking forward to the beta when it is finally ready for testing.

I’m not going to tell you about all the new features today, but I will talk about two of them. (There are many more… this just scratches the surface.)

Browsing in place

This is perhaps the most-requested feature, the ability to view pages directly in NetNewsWire.

Weblog editor overhaul

The new weblog editor is a 99% re-do. The user interface has been completely redesigned, and most of the under-the-hood code has been rewritten.

[inessential.com]

WAP Blog

Just did this… If you are WAP-enabled… Only takes a few minutes to get set-up.

WAP is not just for the big sites. Movable Type‘s template system mean that creating a WAP version of your MT Blog takes around ten minutes to set up. Once done, your WAP site automatically updates along with your main site, as if by magic.

The method is similar to the RSS Feeds that Movable Type creates as a default for you. Here it is in practice on my site; first, the HTML version, now in WAP. I’ve writtne a complete tutorial, “Building a Better Wap Diary”, on just how to do this on your MT blog. [MobileWhack]

The wait will be worth it…

Sounds like Sony is going for it with the PSP – sounds like Nintendo has a solid competitor!

We’re not sure we can wait that long, but Sony says that PlayStation Portable will come out no later than March 31st of next year. They also released a few more details about the PSP, like that it will be more powerful than the PS2, and that it will have built-in 802.11b WiFi for connecting over a home network to both the PlayStation 3 and to PCs (for transferring audio and video files onto it). [Engadget]

Ballmer on Online Marketing

Speaking at recent online marketing conference hosted at Microsoft…

…Microsoft also unveiled a study on the effectiveness of online advertising. The company is using the study as the basis for an argument that companies spending about 1 percent of their advertising budget online should consider increasing that to 4 percent or 5 percent because people are spending more time online.

Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online advertising, and that he orders his staff to “saturate” that market first and foremost.

“I want to make sure (a user) can’t get through … an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad,” he said. [InformationWeek]

Where do you want to click-through today?

View all but Spam Folder?

Dear LazyWeb

I love Mail Enhancer, which lets my dock see that there are unread messages in folders well beyond my inbox, but I’d love to see a hack that lets me filter out certain folders so I don’t have to see that there are unread spam messages waiting for deletion.

Anyone?

Obvious perhaps…

Deactivating the “catch-all” mailbox for my domain has instantly reduced the spam flow. No more messages for emails that do not exist. Instead spammers…you get to bounce!

There is still a great deal of spam to manage but Spam Assassin and Spam Sieve are taking care of business very nicely.

Quicksilver

I have been a longtime paid user of LaunchBar which is a great way to keyboard your way around your Mac. Quicksilver is free and has a cleaner, more Mac-like feel to it. At first glance they seem to do pretty much the same thing. Free is good!

More new software to recommend today: If you prefer to interact with Mac OS X through an add-on utility like LaunchBar rather than the standard Dock, check out Quicksilver — a completely free, open source software launcher (and more) for… [Apple Matters]

I’ve spent a few more minutes with this now and have to say Quicksilver is very slick and actually more powerful than LaunchBar. Here’s a quick tutorial if you like as there are no screenshots available on the Blacktree site. I am just starting to cruise the forums and finding much to like…

LaunchBar (something I’ve used for all 3 years I’ve been in OS X) has just been removed from my start-up items and replaced with Quicksilver…

More on how Quicksilver works can be found at Tesugen.com

T-Mobile trying to make money on Hotspots

Perhaps the use of Cable or DSL would have been a better investment for connectivity…

From my experience here in NYC, the Starbucks are hopping in the am and in the afternoon. I’ve found it impossible to even find a seat and noticed that there are many laptops open – I assume connected, though of course people might just be playing solitaire.

Enck noted, however, that with 4,200 locations by year’s end, $1.6M works out to $13 per hotspot per day on average. This is slightly higher per store revenue than estimated a year ago when Starbucks slipped the news that they were averaging 25,000 sessions per week. At that time, I was estimating an average of $150 of gross revenue per Starbucks locations per month. The more current numbers are triple that.

But with roughly $400 per month per store, how does T-Mobile ever expect to even pay on a current basis for the cost of each store’s dedicated T-1 line, much less other ongoing costs, and the original capital expenditure? They would need to at least quadruple this revenue figure to pay out CapX and current operational costs.[Wi-Fi Networking News: T-Mobile Says $1.4M Per Month Revenue in 2003]

Apex Gamebox to use AMD…

What I like most about this box is that for just a bit more than you would pay for a next-gen game system (when they first come out anyway) you get a lot more. I wonder what kind of impact this box will have… It’s got a nice window of opportunity before the PS3 and XBox2 arrive. The real question is if the market is mass enough , or if this will just be a sweet new toy for the tech-set.

If you are Intel, then this is going to sting really bad. The DISC/Apex GameBox is going to powered by AMD’s Athlon XP2000 chip, making it the second game box to be powered by an AMD chip. Nvidia’s GeForce4 MX Graphics will be the graphics chip in the new device. The ApeXtreme (pronounced Apex Extreme) will support the most popular PC games. Additionally, Apex has added Personal Video Recording (PVR) functionality to the device since it was originally unveiled at CES.

The device combines all the most popular features of Apex Digital’s successful line of DVD players such as Component, Composite, S-Video and DVI output with everything a gamer could want in a game console including a 40GB hard drive and networking capabilities. Additionally, the ApeXtreme boasts 6.1 channel digital audio output, as well as the ability to playback a variety of CD and DVD formats. The ApeXtreme will be available to consumers in the third quarter of 2004 for $499. [Om Malik on Broadband: Apex GameBox powered by AMD]

Another SDIO Wi-Fi Card?

Seems like Sandisk will lose the race to deliver a Palm driver if these guys are for real. While they are saying that OS 4 and 5 will be supported the tested devices are unfortunately only OS 4 for now…(correction – it does say all Tungsten models below) Guess we’ll have to wait and see. I wonder if there will be a combo Wi-Fi / Bluetooth OS 6 device from Palm before any drivers become available.

The C-Guys SD-Link11b is a compact SDIO WLAN card that can be plugged into a handhelds SD expansion slot. The card enables wireless Wi-Fi connections will support 11Mbps connections, WEP and is equipped with a power saving mechanism.

The company is currently testing drivers for Palm OS 4 and 5 devices and expects the product to be available in May/Q2. It is already confirmed to work with all palmOne Tungsten models, the Zire 71 and m500 series handhelds. There is no information on pricing or a distributor of yet. [PalmInfocenter.com]

Rock and Roll Remotely

I knew Regal Cinema was looking to get into expanding the pre-show entertainment at the movies, but this is a whole new take on what you can do at the theater. I caught myself thinking this would actually be a cool thing for someone in my situation (young baby makes getting to a concert impossible given the nature of the concert atmosphere) and going to the movies is already something I know we can handle having done so a bunch of times. The theaters already have great sound and picture and unless you get good seats you are pretty much watching on a screen anyway – at least at the big shows. Who knows… this just might work.

Rock’n’Roll Multiplex. So, now you have a choice. You can fork over $49.50 for a nosebleed seat to see Prince live at Staples Arena in L.A., or you can splurge a big fifteen bucks to see the same concert simulcast live at any of 40 Regal Cinema movie theaters, reports Eleena De Lisser in The Wall Street Journal. [reveries – cool news of the day]

Call-in-One VOIP

If you use VOIP or are thinking about it, this might be the product for you…

By plugging the Call-in-One to your ethernet IP network as well as your phone line, then plugging any old phone into the Call-in-One, regular phone calls are routed as normal, while dialing a ‘#’ before your call will place your call via SIP. What this means to you is a seamless integration of SIP–a universal Voice-over-IP protocol–into your regular phone. [Gizmodo]

Mark/Space email for Palm

Mark/Space has a Palm email client, which Rael thinks is pretty nice. It does look good, but I am using VersaMail for IMAP for now, until Snappermail finally gets a major overhaul in 2.0 hopefully beta in a few weeks. I actually really like SnapperMail more, but it’s a pain to use both POP and IMAP on the same account… you lose all the message status information which is definitely helpful if you use a mobile client.

Mark/Space Mail for Palm looks to have all the features of a mobile mail app one could ask for. Of particular note are SSL support (Palm OS 5.2+), generalized attachment support, and rotation/large-screen support for those Tungsten T3s. It’s US $29.95, with a demo version available for download. [MobileWhack]