a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
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.
So far WordPress is a very cool system. It’s fully dynamic, which means that there is no rebuilding when you post, edit or delete – unlike MoveableType which can be a serious pain in the ass in that regard – not too mention a time hog if you find yourself tweaking (itself a time sucker) or deleting spam or just making the occasional edit.
Those days are over with WordPress. Not only can you edit and delete without worry, you can actually edit your posts right from your own page. You don’t login to a control panel like MT in order to make an edit, you can click the continuously helpful Edit This under each post title. I can get right in, make the change and republish the post in seconds – with minimal effort.
I am also digging the enhanced New Post functions from within the UI itself. Once you are under the covers… you can utilize the quick buttons to insert quite a few HTML tags without writing them in. This isn’t a major technical achievement as (in Windows mostly) you can do this in other systems, but I find it to be enormously helpful.
Nightly builds… Sure you don’t want to run a real site with bleeding edge code, but it’s nice to see that there are daily changes and fixes occurring which allows you to maintain confidence in the community building this fine system.
There are many other features which I am sure I will comment on as I go… For now though I like it enough to be considering a full switch. I might just use a redirect on the /mt site initially and post in the new feed url for this site as well. Have to see how it goes.
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.
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.
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?
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
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]
Tasks has been a fantastic application for me. It’s a php/myql hierarchical Task Manager and about the best I have used. What this means is you can easily keep track of complex multi-step tasks or simply organize things into groups. I initially blogged this about the release of Tasks Pro about a month ago and have been using Tasks (the “lite” version) since. I’ve got it installed on a remote server, but you can easily install it locally as well.
Everything happens in the browser though once you have things running you can easily view your tasks in iCal which is excellent as they then sync over to your Palm. This is a one-way sync, you can’t write back to the Tasks system, but that has actually not bothered me like I initially thought it might.
I get a daily email reminder with all my tasks thanks to a nightly cron job that was easy to configure, your mileage here might vary depending on your skill level, though if you installed PHP and MySQL, you can probably figure out cron.
Tonight I upgraded my installation to the Tasks 2.0 beta and it is most impressive.
On the surface – literally – are themes so you can change the way the app looks from serious to more fun. The next main difference is that all the configuration now occurs from within the app itself, rather than in a config file via text editor over ftp. You now can configure authentication within the application instead of having to rely on an .htaccess file which is very user friendly. A new sort option called Magic Sort and seems to be a good way to go for now… have to actually learn what that one really does. It was the default, so far so good.
You can also control how Tasks publishes to phpiCalendar (included) which then allows iCal (and other aware apps) to subscribe to the published file. In the original version, you could just subscribe, but now you can choose to publish as a Task instead of Event as it used to be. This is a great change for me, since on my Palm things are now in the ToDo app rather than in my Calendar as a float for what is due that day. I noticed that in order to get this to work in iCal, you have to actually un-check the remove todo option in the calendar which was initially selected blocking the Tasks from showing up. There is a button now within Tasks that lets you instantly subscribe to the Calendar – again a very nice user friendly touch that changes the discover the url in the docs procedure from 1.x.
You can publish to a B2, Moveable Type or WordPress blog if you have one, which could be cool to do on occasion. The addition of Notes to Tasks might cause me to do this more this time around. I find myself using Tasks all the time for various things so keeping Notes is very logical to me.
At the heart of it all is a very simple, yet powerful task management system. Thanks to the MySQL database you can include all kinds of helpful information with the task beyond just when you might want to have things completed. Version 1 allowed for priority, percent, some notes and the addition of URLs which might be relevant. Tasks 2.0 includes some more tricks. You can now add files to tasks which is great for project work – say a creative brief, the photoshop file you have etc. This is then accessible anywhere you have a browser. The Pro version (something I won’t be covering in any detail here) offers a group mode so you can send tasks, notes and files around between the users of your installation.
You can now select tasks to be billable and also keep track of time spent on things. I have yet to try this as, well I did just get it up and running tonight but expect to for a variety of things.
Tasks 2.0 beta seems to be a fantastic upgrade to what was already a great tool for everyday organization. I am looking forward to using it much more and would recommend this to anyone juggling more than a few things. The version out now – 1.8x is free to try and donation-ware with a suggested offer of $25. I think you would be hard pressed to find an application that is anywhere as powerful for anywhere close to this price. The Pro Version is currently $125 for a 5 user license – again a great price.
Love the name and I consider myself a newsjunkie as it is… so a product that can make life easier… oh wait that’s NetNewsWire. Seriously though if the filtering works as rumored it will be very cool to use the site regularly.
Microsoft is readying its own entry in the news search game, according to this Mercury News piece on “Newsjunkie,” the latest purposeful leak out of Microsoft’s research labs. Features sound cool, and certainly point to some common themes I’ve heard cropping up in discussions of next generation search engines.
Using principles of artificial intelligence and information retrieval, NewsJunkie keeps track of what a reader has already seen. It reorganizes news stories to rank those with the most new information at the top and push those with repetitive information to the bottom, or filter them out entirely.
NewsJunkie can help improve news alerts beyond key words to offer only new information, the researchers said. Dumais is working on a similar project to make search happen behind… [John Battelle’s Searchblog]
Is it? I am unable to ping or reach though the browser…
Update – Guess it’s back… no idea what happened.
JD says, their server crashed this afternoon…
So many blogs, so little time. If you want to stay at the top of the information food chain, you gotta read ’em – lots of ’em. And you have to do it every day. But as that list of must-read blogs grows, hunting and gathering the latest posts becomes a daily drain. You could hire an assistant to read them for you. Or tap into RSS. [Wired News
A potentially interesting service if you are finding that AvantGo, Hand/RSS or Plucker are not cutting it for you. Have to give it a shot and see how it compares…
HandMark touts Express as a much faster and easier method for searching with the micro-browsers found on wireless PDAs and smartphones. HandMark Express is a direct Internet client application that works via a subscription, as opposed to a web browser based service. It provides automatic and on demand updates to news, market data, weather, sports scores, maps and directions, directory lookups, movie times and ticket purchases.
Express is available for $6.99 per month and at retail with a prepaid one-year subscription for $69.90 USD. [PalmInfocenter.com]
LG Electronics, the world’s fifth-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, has licensed the Symbian OS and Nokia’s Series 60. Lenovo, which was already a Series 60 licensee, has just become a Symbian licensee. [Brighthand]
I find myself between Safari (90%) and Firefox (10%) when I browse… I like Firefox and think it renders beautifully, does a great job with tabs and passwords (though keychain support would be great like in Camino) but I miss a few small details that work for me in Safari – all keyboard related.
I can’t get between tabs without the mouse or search google and I absolutely miss the keyboard shortcuts to initiate bookmarks in the bookmark bar. These seem minor I am sure, but to me they make a huge difference. I can’t move as quickly as I like without them.
One final missing piece is the ability to keep new windows cleanly locked to the upper left of my screen…
I guess that probably explains the balance of my usage. I bet it would be the other way if I could get better keyboard access.
Funny I was just emailing about this very topic… I think I should get better acquainted with PGP again… easy enough to use with Mail as I recall with a plugin.
Personal encryption hasn’t taken off, experts say, because consumers don’t think it’s worth the trouble. “The real need for privacy hasn’t been demonstrated yet for consumer-to-consumer [e-mail],” says Jonathan Penn, a senior industry analyst at Giga Information Group.
Many free e-mail programs are targeting consumers, including 1on1mail, LokMail, PrivacyX.com and ZixMail. But the industry’s longtime darling has been Pretty Good Privacy, which nearly landed creator Phil Zimmermann in jail for violating export regulations. PGP, which Zimmermann sold to Network Associates in 1997, now boasts about 7 million users. Most of them, however, are “die-hard Phil fans and encryption gurus,” says Allison Taylor, PGP director of product marketing for Network Associates.
“Most people don’t care about encrypting their e-mail,” says Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography and CTO at Counterpane Internet Security. “You lock your front door now because you care. Your grandparents didn’t.” [CNN.com]
Shrook 2.0 is out is out and looks like a very slick update from where 1.0 was. I did not use it much after an initial test run, but this looks like a very interesting reader. The display supports an enhanced wide view and seems to render text in a very clean manner – much differently than NetNewsWire, though I can’t tell if that is just the font or what. I like it though…
I also like the web rendering within. There are certain sites that only offer abstracts that you can now read right from within Shrook which is a nice touch.
You can also sync your account through the Shrook service which is nice for people using 2 macs or if you are away from your computer but online via a browser interface. I’d love to see that make it’s way to wireless devices as well.
No posting capabilities… just reading and not free. It works for 30 days and imports all your groups from NNW perfectly if you want to give it a try before paying $19.95.
Later… After about an hour of usage I have to say I really like Shrook 2 with some minor exceptions. The speed is killer. I’ve got a few hundred feeds in NetNewsWire and it starts to feel heavy when you are trying to just cruise around. Shrook really jumps nicely when you are moving through a large list. Again – the text display is excellent…. very clean and easy to read. The negatives… two things really. First, It is driving me a bit nutty that you can’t get a consistent sort on feeds. Sometimes a site is listed chronologically and sometimes in the reverse. Since I have not used Shrook with my subscription file, it is pulling some old stuff and trying to recall what order someone posted in is not high on my list of priorities, yet you have to think about it often. The other detail is that when Shrook updates sites shift around and re-order on you to get to the top, listing as new. This is bad. I’d much rather see more unread in the folder for now and when I return to that group, have them reordered. Still kicking the tires… liking what I see for the most part though.
I am trying out this new RSS enhancement service called FeedBurner.
It’s going to allow me to do a couple things i’ve wanted to do. [A VC: FeedBurner]
Looks interesting and can handle the tweaking of your RSS for a variety of situations, like linking to amazon or converting your feed into other formats (atom perhaps). Not sure I’ll use it knowing that I have an amazon plug-in here and MT already creates an atom feed.
I did like the looks of the mobile feed reader they offer, but was amazed that it supports the Sony Ericsson P900 first – that’s got to be a first… apparently Palm support is coming so we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
Moving a site is not something people generally like to do. It involved making sure you have a good backup and some luck on the switch over of DNS, which in my case so far this week has been a bit flaky – well slow perhaps.
Just when I thought everything was over and in place I learn that some ISPs are actually caching DNS entries so they are much slower and in those cases actually delivering a 403 not found error as I’ve already deleted the old pages and databases. Oh well – soon enough I hope.
I thought I’d comment on my experience so fellow bloggers and active Googlers might gain from my pain. I’ve got an account with 1and1 and found the initial service to be great, the control panel to be great and speed of site to be great. The issue was that no matter how hard I tried – and I tried man – there was no way to get the MySQL database to allow my MT site to read and write without error. I really hammered Six Apart initially when I began this process and while service was a bit tricky, Ben was really helpful in advising me of what to try. 1and1 just does not seem to support MT, though another site of mine which is a private family site runs just fine. The only think I can think of is that the database is much larger and causing some issues on rebuild. I can’t actually make the db smaller and expect it to continue to grow as I post more and expand what I want to do with my site.
After a great deal of effort I decided to move to Pair. So far (I realize it is only days) they have been great. MT installed without issue, I was able to rebuild and post generally without issue and find that after making some changes to the MT.cfg file courtesy of Adriaan at Neoteny/Kung-Foo all is in fact excellent. I was running into some strange errors in both NetNewsWire and Ecto when posting which have now been resolved…
Thank you everyone for your support!
Tantek Celik is a software development lead at Microsoft Corp. Joi Ito founded Neoteny, a venture capital firm focused on personal communication technologies. Pete Kaminski iniated the Social Software Alliance and serves as CTO for SocialText. Sam Ruby is a 21-year veteran of IBM and works as an open-source software consultant. And Adam Weinroth founded Easyjournal.
The SXSW Interactive panelists explored how to quickly form groups and teams using social software tools. The panel also discussed what happens when team members are allowed to quickly and easily contribute content to various projects. What follows is a partial discussion of the panel. [Fast Company Now]