Tag Archives: WebTech

New 140-Character Platform, identi.ca

The latest and maybe-not-so greatest (yet) micro-blogging tool identi.ca is up and running, and wants you to answer the question, “What’s Up?”.  It feels very new, which it is, and I’ll have to experiment with it a bit more before I can fully conclude as to whether or not I’ll make the leap away from Twitter.  Twitter, by the way, is slowly driving me crazy with all its whale fail screens and seemingly random removal of features.  (A whale fail screen is what you see when Twitter is not functioning correctly.  Not quite as bad as the infamous BSOD, but definitely up there.)

Really quick:

What I do like:

  • Laconica, OpenMicroBlogging  (HUGE)
  • OpenID support, which I use
  • Layout similar to Twitter’s (unlike Plurk, which is difficult to read)

What I don’t like:

  • Early stage software, missing features
  • No Search, how to find Twitter followers
  • Getting auto-logged out

What identi.ca needs right away:

  • SMS support
  • Desktop Client (maybe Twhirl will add it)

Check identi.ca out for yourself, if you’re into that sort of thing.  If not, keep on keepin’ on with your current 140-character service.

What’s A Pogo From AT&T

Project Pogo ?  More like "why the heck?"  This is the new browser from AT&T, and I can’t figure out what’s going on here.  Perhaps just maybe I’m that dense.  (I’ll take it, if you can throw it.)  Why, I say, do we need another web browser?  Especially one that is so closely tied to that of FireFox ?  I’ve been using the product for over a week now (at home and in the office,) and I haven’t been able to see a reason to switch from my already favorite browser to this new beast.

I will say that it leaves a much smaller footprint on my machines, but I’m going to have to attribute that to Pogo’s lack of support for the many addons I have installed with FireFox.  I need these plugins.  (Wait till I tell you about SocialBrowse.  It’s good stuff.)  I really do need them.  And perhaps, just maybe, they do work in Pogo.  But what, or why, is my excuse for figuring out how to make them work?

Pogo’s big selling point is that its tabs are 3D.  3-what?  Exactly.  I don’t need larger tabs eating up my screenspace.  I can work them just fine in FireFox, and if I was really having trouble I would install the ColorfulTabs addon .  (It changes the colors of your browser tabs.)  It’s safe to say that I’m not having trouble.

Final words, the broswer isn’t bad, but it’s not great.  There’s no reason to switch to it from your current browser.  It’s nice, new, and clean.  But so is your current setup.  I’m sure.

Oh My Goosh.org

This is probably only really neat and fun for anyone who has ever maintained a computer from the shell, and I don’t know too many folks that still work regularly at the command line.  I have three linux machines (Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu) myself, and only on one of them (Fedora) do I work in the shell environment, and not very often.  (That’s pretty good considering it doesn’t have the GUI installed.)

Goosh.org gives you a command line-like interface in your web browser.  I came across it while reading the blog of Emily Chang and I started tinkering with it immediately.  Loaded up my blog, and ran all the commands just to see what they did.  Typing help is probably what you’re going to want to enter first so you can get a list of commands.  If you want more information, check out Emily’s post.

Like I said, this is probably only fun for a few folks.  Ha!  I’m not sure why I’d ever use this app, but I like knowing that it’s out there. I’ll throw a bookmark on it, and keep it around.

Enjoy.

FireFox 3 Reachers Farther Faster

Maybe that’s true.  I don’t know.  What I do know, is Mozilla had a record day with the release of its latest version of Firefox.  I don’t know what the official count is for the opening day, but I’ve read that it’s upwards of eight million.  That’s a whole lot of simultaneous downloading going on in the first 24 hours.

I took it three times, and still have two computers to upgrade.  How does that affect the counting they’re conducting?  I’m only one user, but I have many machines.  Not to mention those I maintain for others.  (I’ll get the upgrades done soon enough.)

If you’re looking for an actual review of the product, you’ll have to do a google search for one.  Otherwise, just make good and get your shiny new copy of Firefox 3 today!

I will note that a few of my addons have been disabled due to compliance issues, but I’m sure they’ll be updated soon enough.

Please comply.  Thank you.

SMS Tax? Not 3jam!

How strange, that on the same day I come across an article in the local Sacramento newspaper indicating local government is considering a tax on text messaging, I also find myself knee deep in the latest SMS tech?  It’s called 3jam.  (Thanks Techcrunch.)  The whole thing is oddly curious.  But curiously odd?  It’s not.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a huge fan of the text message, be it SMS or MMS.  My biggest qualm being a general degradation of the English language form.  Which, if you’re keeping up, should seem kind of ridiculous —  I Twitter and Plurk.  Both services limiting input to 140 characters.  (What is it with that number?)

To be fair, the tax doesn’t really bother me.  The article claims there would be a reduction to my tax on the land line I keep.  Yea!  Some balance.  But the real reason is, I don’t do a ton of texting (verb?).  I typically distribute my GrandCentral phone number and it doesn’t allow for SMS or MMS.  (I’m saved.)

So far as I can tell, this tax is limited to the Sacramento area, so if you’re local, you might want to get involved in the November fourth election.

But even if you’re going to get taxed, the great feature of 3jam is that it only registers one text message regardless of how many folks you send the same message to.   (I can send a message to all two of my friends and only be charged for the price of one message.  Then, if either recipient replies to said message, it will go to every person on the original message list and only result in the cost of one message being sent for the sender.  It probably makes more sense if you have more than two friends.)

Good luck.

WordPress or MovableType

These days, if you’re going to blog, or if you are already blogging, then you’ve probably come across at least one, if not both, these names.  Based on my own searches, I’m guessing these are the top two cms products available right now, but which is really the top?  And does it matter?

I have this blog running WordPress 2.5, and I have a second blog running MovableType 4.1 (but I don’t maintain that blog, I just use it for testing different software.)  I can say that the install was much quicker and probably, from the average user’s view, simpler to install and setup with WP than with MT.  WP just about set itself up completely once the process started, whereas MT required a bit more user input including creating the database myself.  (Not horribly complicated, but could be an intimidating step for some users.)

Both systems provide a dashboard for creating and managing content, which are fairly easy to use and navigate through.  Although, I personally prefer that of WP, I can’t say that one or the other is superior.  I think it’s a preference for look and feel, which varies day to day.  You’ll have to load each and decide if it matters to you.  They are both done well enough that this probably won’t be your limiting factor.

WP and MT allow addons, or plugins.  So this is probably a toss-up as well.  Although, some may argue that MT comes loaded with certain features that would require a plugin in WP.  To which I would aruge, again, that this is only an issue of preference and isn’t a final determining factor since features in one system are available in the other system.

Spam filtering, is probably one of the biggest issues after ease of use and installation.  I haven’t had much experience with the MT spam filter since I don’t actively blog with it, but I have had quite a bit of use with WP, and I can say that it has caught quite a bit of spam.  WP clearly sorts out the spam and labels it for my review and removal.  It’s a breeze.

Overall, I like them both, but probably will not switch this particular blog from WP to MT.  MT is a worthy blogging software, but I couldn’t find an easy migration tool.  If I decide to maintain a new blog in the future, I’ll revisit the issue and possibly switch to MT.  MT does appeal to my geek and tweak style, so it has that going for it.

Update: After snooping around each platform a bit more, I found that it is pretty easy to migrate entries from one system to the other using the import/export feature.  I did lose my formatting when going from WP to MT, but I guess if you don’t have a ton of entries, you could easily go in and fix that.  Although, there may be a way to keep the formatting.

My Life, On The Line — Plurk

It’s just like Twitter, but it’s the new kid on the block.  Oh my.  Here we go again, and it’s called Plurk.com.  Now you can write everything you’re doing every minute and, if you have friends, they can comment back.  Sweet.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of time-wasting social communities like this.  It just cracks me up that there’s always something newer.  But is it better?  Maybe.

The real problem is getting all your friends and followers from twitter to follow you to Plurk.  Otherwise you’re just writing to yourself.  (I guess that’s not so bad.)  Once you have some friends and such, then you can get to plurking, whatever that means exactly.  I do enjoy having  another place to collect tiny faces.  I get a kick out of that.

The layout is more appealing, and you can earn karma, which is like pretend money used for buying enhancements to your profile page.  (Collecting things is great way to hook people with an addictive personality.)  So far there doesn’t seem to be a stand alone client (like twhirl for twitter,) so you have to keep a browser page open.  And they’ve yet to implement support for my mobile browser.

Anyhow, I don’t know the load to their system, but maybe the service will have a better uptime and fewer hassles than that other service.  In the meanwhile, we’ll probably continue to use plurk as intermittently as the others.

Not the Jott Network Again

I’m usually forgetting that I have a Jott account, so when I do actually think to remember to use it, I can’t recall how any of it works.  I tried again (and failed horribly) to leave myself a message.  I don’t know what it is about me, or the sytem, or maybe the two of us together, but we can’t seem to make this deal agreeable for the both of us.  I think I eventually ended up writing something down on a napkin, which, while my handwriting is often unreadable, was much easier and much quicker than trying to figure out what this Jott thing wants me to do.  It shouldn’t be this difficult.  Don’t worry, I have yet to give up on the service.  I want it to work at least once before I completely walk away from it.  That’s assuming I don’t just up and forget about the whole thing.

How Twittering Sent Me Beer Drinking

All of a sudden, this week only, every blogger seems to be writing about Twitter, the cool new service for updating all your nearest followers as to what you’re doing right now by answering the simple question, “what are you doing?” What am I doing, that’s a reasonable question, but why would you, or anyone else want to know if you don’t already know me? Seems like a better question, but I’m not sure what the answer is. I suppose it has something to do with adding value to your world. Well not your world, but the worlds of anyone who decides to follow my Twitter feed.

Nevertheless, or needless to say, I started my twittering in late January of this year, and I couldn’t figure it out. I wasn’t really talking to anyone, and my account just kind of sat there looking back at me wondering when I would begin to understand what this service was for. Early March rolls around, and I’m still looking blankly at the space for 140 characters, not knowing what to do. I start twittering a bit more, and I begin to add the authors of blogs I follow. And here we have it, the space between blogging and emailing — Twitter.

Do you hear me?  The space between blogging and emailing.  Twitter.

Then the SXSW conference hit, and there was all sorts of Twitter activity taking place, from updates about the panels to flash mobs at the pubs. This was my biggest draw to making an active effort toward Twittering. The idea that you and your followers could meet up in real life and have a beer. And between meeting up and having beers, you stay in touch and spread ideas. Or nonsense. Whatever, whenever, just keep it to 140 characters.