I came across Google’s Firefox Extentions yesterday afternoon when I was looking for new software to play with. I downloaded and installed a new one called Blogger Web Comments. The extention uses Google’s Blog Search to find posts that link back to the page or site you are currently viewing. So it automatically brings up any posts about the page you are using, which is pretty handy.
It does have some weaknesses. For starters its branded as a Blogger tool, so its meant to allow Blogger tools to add posts. So I can’t use it to post to my blog. It also includes a lot of splog entries, which is rather annoying. Still, I find it kind of handy and I plan on playing with it for a while.
What I think is really neat is kind of creates a notion of blog posts being part of a larger online conversation. I wonder if in the future blog search tools will also be able to aggregate comment systems on a site - a one-stop shop for web feedback. Imagine if you could search for a movie and get a listing of critics and users opinions. This sort of interconnectivity sets the web apart from other mediums.
Grim day for the print media. I woke up today I found a post titled “The Last Presses” by Jeff Jarvis about the looming death of the print industry. Jarvis is apparently a media analyst and it seems he’s not far off. There is a lot that I could say about this article because it touches on a lot of stuff I am interested in. I work with The Daily Collegian, helping prepare and develop their transition into the web. I am also a big web news consumer, which I think gives me an idea of what readers are looking for. So here are some of my thoughts on the future of print and the web.
Continue reading ‘Newspapers on Their Last Presses?’
I cannot say I am really active with open source projects, but I do take interest in a number of projects, including Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is not just an alternative to Internet Explorer, it is a significant improvement over Microsoft’s web browser. The fact that it is not integrated directly into the Windows operating system makes it significantly safer than IE. That does not mean that Firefox is not free of vulnerabilities, but it is unaffected by viruses that target IE. I know people who have been spared of viruses because they had Firefox running as their default browser.
That’s not necessarily why I continue to use Firefox though. I love its improved interface, which includes tabbed browsing. When I first started using Firefox I didn’t use this feature much, but now I am hooked. It is so much nicer than opening half a dozen windows. Firefox also adheres to web standards better, so web pages may actually look better in it than in IE. I have just been continually impressed with the robustness of the browser and its user interface.
Anyway, they released the final 1.5 version today and I am very pleased with the new features. They are have also unveiled a new website today that appears to be geared towards consumers in hopes of attracting new users. These changes should be matched with a open source marketing blitz of some sort soon.
In any case, I just wanted to babel on about Firefox for a bit because some of my non-techie friends may read this. I highly recommend you download the new version and try it out.
I have to say that I have been very impressed with WordPress.com. This has not been my first test of the service, but I have used it more consistently this week than I have in past weeks. I have used WordPress for a while now and the updates to the software are pretty nice. This is simple enough for anyone to use, but has enough options for advanced users. And they announced today that now anyone can register for a WordPress.com blog.
The thing I am most impressed with, however, is the way a WordPress.com blog promotes itself. I checked it out and this blog comes up #4 on Google, #2 on Yahoo, and #2 on MSN for “quiet kid”. One thing I have started doing is treating categories as tags and I get more hits from Technorati. It also feels good to be part of a blogging community, with other members seeing your work and success through the dashboard.
Another part of my success this last week is that I have lowered my expectations. I just try to post something that’s on my mind everyday. Sometimes the posts are good, sometimes they’re not. The point is I am continuously posting.
I am a little irked about not being able to modify templates, but I guess I can put up with that for now. It keeps me focused on the writing. Anyway, I am happy with things so far. Thanks to WordPress.com, I am blogging again.
Ok, this is probably the coolest thing I have actually seen come out of the Windows Live camp so far. Windows Live Custom Domains is live now and its pretty cool. I found about it here. Basically it lets you create Hotmail accounts at your domain name. So you can create you@yoursite.com and create 19 other accounts too. Most exciting of all, its all free. I was a little disappointed because I thought these would also be running Windows Live Mail, but sadly its still Hotmail. For now.
While I am not entirely crazy about Microsoft’s web line-up right now, I have to say I am impressed by their enthusiasm. They are also starting to hit on the type of tools that web users really need. It’s getting web apps closer to being like real apps, where users define how and where they’re used. I hope and expect that Windows Live Mail may even let you send and receive POP3 mail, like Outlook. Maybe Office Live will offer users their own personal Exchange servers they can sync with any time. It’s thinking like this that may give Microsoft a leg up in its fight against Google.
I am looking forward to seeing Live.com grow out of Beta and into a full fledged web services platform. Until then though, I’ll be using Gmail.
For the first time in a couple weeks, I am feeling pretty good about the status of my Collegian project. We have been toiling in PHP and mySQL for 3 months now and have very little to show for our work. I am not sure anyone at the Collegian is really too disappointed with us, but we are disappointing ourselves. The systems manager pointed out a project at USA Today, with a much smaller scope and a lot more resources, took 4 months. Still, I felt like we were stuck in the road. I have been waiting for some externality to happen that would jumpstart development. It did today and it came from an unlikely source: Microsoft.
When we proposed our project last spring, we used the concept of using open source software as a cost saving measure and a learning experience for students. And I did learn a good deal. Unfortunately neither myself or my partner on the project had a whole lot of coding experience. This makes starting from scratch on a new content management system very difficult.
We had been making our cake from scratch, the news advisor noted, and we need a cake mix. So we’ve decided we’re going to chose ASP.NET 2.0 as our cake mix. Microsoft’s new Visual Web Developer really impressed us and its free to boot. I actually have less experience with ASP, but I have found a wealth of resouces out there to help me catch up. A big selling point, though, was the master template system and some of the other controls offered.
We still aren’t completely sure how we’re going forward. I’m not sure whether we’ll use MS SQL Server. We may try to still use MySQL or we may scale back our proposal and use static pages for the time being. There wasn’t anything wrong with PHP and I would definitely use it other scenarios. I do think that ASP may end up being better for this situation though. The good thing is I am feeling better about the project now and I am actually looking forward to programming again.