Rogue Amoeba expects to release Audio Hijack Pro 2 this July — it’s a major new version of their audio recording and enhancement utility for Mac OS X. The new version will add the ability to record audio using Dolby Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) and the new Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC)… [MacCentral]
Google Redirector plugin
Activated!
This plugin strips URIs from your comments and uses the Google redirector to prevent comment spammers from taking advantage of your pagerank. Simply turn on or off [Weblog Tools Collection]
WordPress Linkblogging
WordPress linkblogs are getting easier to deal with for the interested… I’ve been debating how to best do it myself since I sometimes post very short “of interest” bits rather than actual written by me bits. Here are two ways you might consider…
Matt, the lead developer of WordPress has devised a simple way which maintains the links within the flow of your blog. Matt’s code as well as other versions are linked at the Weblog Tools Collection. Matt’s asides, as he calls the links, are simple once the code has been added (though it looks like it’s already in the CVS and may make it to release for 1.2) and get included in your main syndication feed which is certainly a nice way to not have to ask anyone to subscribe to another feed to follow your postings. Simple is good.
The second option from RebelPixel Productions uses a plugin which you can expect to see more of as things move to 1.2. I used a previous iteration as a test and found it to work well, though involved a bit of tweaking to get things to work. The plugin resolves that extra work…The site is down at the moment so I can’t download and play, but as I recall these links get added to the sidebar rather than in the main flow. I don’t believe that you get them included in your syndication feed…
The choice is yours… whether you want it and how you plan to use it.
BlackBerry Connect for Palm OS
As cool as this is, I wonder how it will work. Since the Palm mail clients in OS 5 have to connect in order to get mail. vs the mail just arrives solution in RIM hardware. Perhaps a background service is coming in OS 6? If not perhaps this is more than you need (though secure behind the firewall), when you consider what’s coming in SnapperMail 2.0.
PalmSource and Research In Motion (RIM) have completed their distribution agreement to make BlackBerry Connect available to Palm OS licensees. Together, BlackBerry Connect and Palm OS will extend email and corporate data connectivity to Palm Powered smart mobile devices, facilitating workforce productivity while away from the office. [PalmInfocenter.com]
Camino updated to .8 beta
Get it Now! Camino is getting better and better… this release included the Talkback bug tracker to make it easier to squash the blips.
I’ve been enjoying the nightly builds and definitely recommend it as an alternative browser on the Mac platform. I’ve previously blogged about Camino here.
SubEthaEdit 2.0
SubEthaEdit 2.0 has been released.
Static WP Pages made easy
Note to self…
TechGnome has a nice hack for working through additional static pages in WordPress.
Blog App Breakdown
If you’ve been trying to figure out what application suits you, here’s a pretty intensive comparison.
Multiple Weblogs Support In WordPress
Burningbird has posted a way to enable multiple weblogs in WordPress…. not as clean as you might like just yet, but I have a good feeling that this type of support is coming quickly now that so many people are making the move from MoveableType. For now this seems to work, though I am not quite daring enough to test on my functioning nightly build… have to wait for 1.2 to be released and see what trouble we can get into then… 😉
The SixApart solution
Jeff Jarvis suggests Typepad divest from Six Apart as a full service business so that Moveable Type can offer more attractive licenses, which he feels are clearly limited based on blocking potential competitors to Typepad. Jeff’s logic seems right on, based on and considering the backlash currently rising within the MT community, somethings going to have to give if they expect to pull out of this without too much damage to their existing market share.
I suggest divesting. Then SixApart, the software business, will come up with licenses that serve its customers well and will sell as many as possible. Rather then having your entire customer base scream in protest — as they are now — they would beat a path to your door to pay for your mousetrap (whenever your customers are screaming in protest, you know you are doing something very wrong). Meanwhile, TypePad — a licensee of Movable Type software — would offer no-hassle and reasonably priced hosting and would compete with other licensees. Competition would lead to more business for the two companies and happier customers and probably market dominance for Movable Type and its standards (e.g., TypeKey and Trackbacks). Instead, what we’re seeing now is that SixApart is driving present and potential customers to competitors. [BuzzMachine]
Whisper – Quiet content management
I’ve only just started to play with this, but it seems pretty nice for non-blog stuff. You can create pages in an almost wiki style and they will follow a CSS structure you create for your site. It’s all managed through a clean web UI.
Whisper is a small site engine, ideal for people seeking to maintain static web content in a simple, straightforward, and convenient manner. It lets you manage your web site%u2014whether it%u2019s simple or sophisticated%u2014without the fuss of complex tools or blog-centric bloatware. It is very clean and simple. [Whisper]
How is this happening?
Anytime I get an Apple newsletter sent to me through my .Mac account, I get this instead of the nice HTML I am supposed to see…
You appear to be using an email application that won’t properly display the graphical (or HTML) version of our newsletter.
I use Apple’s Mail app and receive plenty of HTML as well as text-based mail each day.
dive into mark now in WordPress
Score another high profile convert to WordPress…
No one is allowed to fork Movable Type, because it’s not open source.
The WordPress development team is now working on releasing version 1.2. Version 1.2 will be GPL-licensed. Version 1.3, if it exists, will be GPL-licensed. Version 2.0, if it exists, will be GPL-licensed. I will never be surprised by the licensing of new versions of WordPress. [[dive into mark]]
What WordPress Does Right
Hard to argue here… My experience has been great.
Four basic rules. WordPress gets them right. Other products do too, even when they don’t have the same amount of support from a user community. Call it Product Management 101. [Lauren Wood – Anyway]
A Day in the life of the MS Mac BU
Rick Schaut works in the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft …
A few years back, Steve Ballmer sent out a company-wide memo stating the policy that no product can ship unless it first runs on Windows NT. He was pretty good-natured about it when we pointed out that this policy would have a seriously negative impact on our ability to ship Mac Office 2001 on time, but it was pretty clear that he simply hadn%u2019t thought about Mac BU at all.
A guaranteed way to garner a few surprised looks is to attend some non-Mac BU meeting, like one of the lectures at Microsoft Research%u2019s Tech Fest or one of the training courses offered by Microsoft%u2019s Technical Education group, and pull out your G4 PowerBook so that you can take notes. I always feel like I should boot up the debugger to run Word so people understand. [Life in Whoville]
The WoPr Tagging Series
Stuff/Things has a nice primer for getting yourself around WordPress if you are thinking of making the move from Moveable Type.
Since most people who use Movable Type know more-or-less how to deal with MT-style templates, it might help those people switching to WordPress to compare the two templating schemes. [stuff/things]
Moblog/Phoneblog Software
This is a great list… some of which I’ve never heard of… mo:Blog looks very promising
In the search for a mobile blogging tool for Palm, Anil de Mello has rounded himself up a very nice list of some of the current mobile and phone blogging softwares. [Gizmodo]
Movable Type 3
Here’s to not looking back on my switch over to WordPress. I even paid for MT and would still have to pay more (yet it was free) to upgrade to 3.0. My previous site will live on for now, but thankfully all the content was easily migrated to this one. No need to deal except amazingly to continue to delete the comment spam.
There’s a lot of talk on the blogs today about Movable Type 3, of course, and a lot of negative feedback about their new pricing and licensing models. It seems topical to discuss a few things that worry me about Six Apart as a company moving forward.
First, they’re up against the biggest unspoken rule of Internet commerce: You Are Not Allowed To Charge For What Was Once Free. I don’t know how the rule came to be, and I don’t like the rule, but it’s pretty much incontrovertible. Try to bend it and you’ll likely have a mutiny on your hands. [~stevenf]
NYC Wireless offers secure wireless email
If you were concerned about wireless security….
NYCwireless, Corp., a New York-based non-profit organization, today launched NYCwireless SafeMail, an affordable secure email solution for the wireless community. NYCwireless Safemail utilizes industry-standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to ensure data privacy and security for users on public Wi-Fi networks. Both secure IMAP and webmail services will be provided. [Smart Mobs]
Macintosh Garden
If nothing else you have to love the System 7 motif. Browsing around makes me want to get classic installed again though… some tempting morsels from the past.
The Macintosh Garden, a site devoted to preserving Macintosh abandonware games.
Abandonware is commercial software that has been discontinued by the publisher and are not sold or supported anymore.Macintosh Garden