As I am catching up on my news reading, and starting post again using
my new Radio v8, I noticed that my last real post was almost a month
ago! It has taken me 3+ weeks to get Radio working. And
it’s not even completely working.
It’s frustrating in this day and age that software does not allow for easier updates and migrations.
I installed Mozilla v1.6 a while ago … and have slowly been using it
more and more. They have come an amazing distance with this
browser. I really like a lot of the features … although there
are still serious issues with it.
One of the tools for Internet Explorer that I had picked up a while ago
was a tabbed interface “wrapper” called Scope. Scope allowed me
to open a single browser window, and have it contain numerous “tabs”
that each displayed a different web site. It was completely based
on the IE engine. I used this tool extensively and would open
three copies of Scope each morning – each one containing numerous
tabs. Scope was extremely lightweight and just worked cleanly.
All of this is now implemented in Mozilla. I have now converted
two of my Scope “tab-groups” into Mozilla tab-group bookmarks.
I’ll get the third one done this weekend. I am also impressed by
the pop-up blocking, and some of the other configuration options.
It comes up quick and just works.
Lastly, the DOM and ECMAScript support that is now in Mozilla is really
good. Our WebFace libraries are now able to fully support the
Mozilla browser and so now our WebFace applications are completely
cross-operating system. This is getting very cool …
I have just completed my migration from Radio 7 to Radio 8 . It
has been a long time coming, and was quite a pain to do. There
were far too many details that I had to manage … I wish they would
have had some sort of upgrade program. They actually did … it
upgraded the blog database and some other things. It left my HTML
templates to me, and the HTML templates were not compatible between
versions.
I’m postin this tonight to watch and see that my new format is
working. I still have one more change that I want to make to the
item template. I might try it tonight.
I actually ran into a nasty problem last night, however I believe that
I now have that resolved. I had modified the opening “body” tag
to add a new background image. When I commented out an older
attempt at this (it includes a Radio macro to reference the images
folder correctly) it seemed that Radio had a real issue with processing
the macros when they existed inside of commented HTML.
Anyhow … back to blogging …
Selling stuff on-line … your own brand!
I was reading the blog of Nat Friedman and came across his reference to CafePress … a very cool on-line site. They have taken the concepts of outsourcing to the extreme by allowing you to create your own product line from their merchandise. I’m going to have to create an account and see what I can come up with. Our 12 year old wanted to start his own line of T-Shirts, etc.
Looks like he’s now going to be able to!
There is one standard … until there is the next one!
I enjoy talking with Phil … he gets it. All of the people who argue about “which standard” to adopt, completely miss the point that they are only going to evolve and move forward. Pick something and go with it … and be prepared to embrace change … prepare to adopt the next standard when it arrives. I didn’t see them mention Atom!
Enjoy the Politics of Difference. John Gotze talked to Mr. Safe recently. The conversation is about whether to use RSS 2.0 or RSS 1.0 since they’re both part of the Danish Government’s Reference Profile (which I had a hand in creating). John’s advice to Mr. Safe was to publish both formats. Here’s the most important part of the conversation: [Windley’s Enterprise Computing Weblog]
Sharing photos … and information
I liked reading about this application since it reminded me of a project that I set aside. A couple of years ago, I began to work on my “slide-show screensaver” … something that a lot of people have. A screensaver that flips through a directory on my hard disk, displaying each of the photos saved there one after the other. This is no big accomplishment, except that I then expanded it to begin to sync the directory with one on my server. Now I have a screensaver that pulls the photos from my server when new ones are placed there … by anyone.
What makes this a useful application is that I don’t have to go looking for photos for my screensaver. I don’t have to update the photos on my hard disk. If I, or anyone that I permit, puts new photos on my server they just start to show on my laptop. And on any other laptop running my application.
I really believe that it is the ease of use – and the automation – of applications that makes them more and more usable. And more accepted. This is why RSS news aggregation makes so much sense, and is used so heavily. I don’t have to go looking at web sites to search out the news I want … I subscribe and receive the information automatically.
I like this application … I’m going to dig up my source code and experiment with my screensaver again … this gave me some new ideas!
Share That Photo: Hit Save. Some photo buffs have so many pictures from their digital cameras, they don’t know what to do with them. And sending by e-mail is clunky compared with new technologies that make storing and showing as simple as pie. [Wired News]
Open Source Audio/Video Editing
I am always impressed with where audio and video editing software is going. When I upgraded to Windows XP on my latest laptop, I was pleased to find the Windows Movie Maker … a very easy-to-use software package for creating digital videos. I’ve been using it lately to create animations from the .png images created by PieSpy.
This is an impressive package that takes things even further to the professional level. It is amazing the software that is being created.
Cinelerra 1.1.9. A complete audio and video production environment for Linux. [freshmeat.net]
KISS … for a Wiki
Keep It Simple, Stupid … and this is a very simple implementation of a Wiki. I like it. I’m going to experiment with it.
Guiki .9. A graphical Wiki. [freshmeat.net]
SVG continues to make progress
Working with the WebFace team has taught me a lot about Web Browser technologies. One that we have been tracking for a while is Scalable Vector Graphics – or SVG. This is now beginning to gain momentum, and I am impressed at this article that shows what is possible using this solution. In addition, it references information at the end about using SVG with mobile devices, and even how voice interfaces might emerge.
I agree with Rachel Reese that Adnan Masood’s Interactive Mapping Using SVG & ASP.NET is among the coolest articles I’ve seen done about ASP.NET.
The return of WebPhone
When I first started to really use the Internet, I was involved with a group of friends in lookin at what was possible. We played with a lot of software – including WebPhone and CUSeeMe.
WebPhone was an application that looked like a little phone on your desktop, and it allowed you to use Voice over IP (VoIP) to talk with other WebPhone users over the Internet. The other day I found a list, that I was keeping, of all of the places around the world that I spoke to using WebPhone. I remember one day when we talked to a professor and his class at Kent University. They joked about us having Internet in Utah, and we joked back that we just heard they had a shooting on the campus.
CUSeeMe was a Video Conferencing package that we used at the same time. It was really impressive to set-up a “reflector” on one of our servers, and then to connect to the server using the CUSeeMe client. You were able to see who was connected in a list, open a video display of one or more of the participants, and then type back and forth. Audio was possible, however not well implemented.
What was interesting is that we were doing this with 14.4kbps modems, and then 56kbps modems. It seemed that as the bandwidth increased, the use of these applications dropped off. I just spent some time to go and find some of the “remains” of CUSeeMe … I’m going to see if I can get a reflector going again.
In the mean time … it was interesting to read about this new application catching attention … a decade later! Skype is almost exactly what WebPhone was …
OK, Skype has 240,000 downloads in just half a month. It took ICQ 60 days to get that many back in 1996. What’s different? Well, for one it was an established company that released Skype. ICQ was released to 40 users and no one knew anything about ICQ. But, remember, back in 1996 no one had weblogs. In fact, I had one of the first five public pages up about ICQ, while Skype has been talked about everywhere.
Anyway, Skype is now my new bar of release excellence for a small-company software product.
Hey, during that Sun keynote this morning the IP telephone from Vodaphone failed on stage. They shoulda used Skype. Hasn’t failed for me yet and the audio quality is unbelieveable.
People are asking me “you were the NetMeeting bigot, why you so excited about software that just does audio?” (NetMeeting was Microsoft’s audio/video/collaboration product that was released in 1995). For one, it works. For two, its user interface is clean and uncluttered. Don Norman would love it. For three, it makes you feel good using it, and makes you want to use it with your friends and family. (Translation: the audio quality rocks and is better than NetMeeting, or even MSN Messenger 6.0).