Monthly Archive for August, 2006
Mike has written a post about how he has started using del.icio.us in a number of different ways. It's funny but I never thought about using it for my blogroll. I should do that instead of just listing my most current bookmarks. He also has started tagging each of his posts.
Currently I tag all of my posts internally as well as links to the tags on Technorati. I'll have to experiment and see if del.icio.us tags work better. I'm pretty skeptical on that. I really like Technorati and at this point probably trust their tagging more than users tagging things themselves.
For those that have never watched this show but get FXNetwork, you don't know what you're missing. Dennis Leary has created a great drama about the firefighters in the FDNY and their crappy and unfufilling lives. I just can't get enough of this. As Becky said as I made her watch it some "It's like a trainwreck that you can't take your eyes off of".
Vox is a new free blogging service from Six Apart, the people that brought you the excellent Movable Type publishing system. They also run Typepad as a paid-for hosted Movable Type install.
I actually initially used Movable Type back when I started blogging about the Mepis Linux distribution. It works well and is pretty flexible. However, Wordpress has since overtaken it in ease of use and the number of people developing plugins which enhance the functionality. That's what happens when you pit an open source project against a closed source project some of the time.
Six Apart has also bought Livejournal. This blogging community has been around for a long time and overall has a very loyal and rabid fanbase. However, it never was the most flexible nor user-friendly of blogging tools. Enter Vox. It's positioned to directly compete with Blogger by being very easy to pick up for beginners. It goes one step further though by offering some of the newer 'Web 2.0' features such as tagging, easy interaction with Flickr and Amazon, and allowing you to form groups of friends like Flickr as well.
I like the service but am unwilling to leave my Wordpress install. So I found a Wordpress plugin that will allow me to cross-post to Vox. I plan on making collections of pictures, music, and books that remind me of certain things as well as doing album and book reviews there since that functionality is already built in.
If anybody is reading this post on Vox, then welcome! My main blog is HERE. And of course, my Vox blog is HERE if you're on my main page.
[tags]blogging, Movable Type, Six Apart, Typepad, Livejournal, Wordpress, Vox[/tags]
After seeing an article on Slashdot concerning Writely, which is an online wordprocessing app that was bought by google, I decided to give it a spin. As with other online apps from Google it makes great use of AJAX in order to give the user an experience similar to something that's on your machine locally. Here are some of the features:
- Import from a number of sources including MS Office and OpenOffice
- Export to the same formats as well as HTML and PDF
- Collaborate on files with other users
- Post entries to your blog after editing in Writely
- Must store files on Google's server in order to always have them available
- If internet access goes down there goes your work
- No integration with Google Spreadsheet or multimedia
- No encryption for sensitive data
