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:
Nothing is perfect however, and so there are flaws as well:
Overall I think it’s a good start. Apparently it’s been in an invite-only beta stage for about a year now. How often will I use it? Probably not very. When I’m on a computer I usually have MS Office or OpenOffice installed. The blog posting feature is nice but not really an improvement upon the built-in editor in WordPress and not as feature-rich as Windows Live Writer, which I’m using now.
To learn more, the original blog post located on Slashdot is located here.
[tags]word processing, online, google, OpenOffice, MS Office, Writely[/tags]
I’m posting this using the new beta version of Windows Live Writer. It’s a new, free blogging tool from Microsoft. So far it appears that it offers a few new features compared to say w.bloggar, such as post previews. Now I don’t mean the typical here’s your post in HTML form preview. It actually shows you a preview of your post ON YOUR PAGE. I think that’s a really neat feature. Another nice feature is the integration with Virtual Earth from Microsoft. From within Live Writer, you type in an address, zoom in, and insert your map or picture directly.
So in short I think that I’m going to give this a shot and start using it for my postings. For a more in-depth review, go read what Paul has to say.
[tags]microsoft,blogging_tools[/tags]
Not much news to post about. Plus I haven’t had time to write about any neat things that I’ve found on the net lately. Mostly just trying to tweak some of the parts of the blog. For now I’ve made the del.icio.us feed a bit easier to read, integrated my Flickr photos, and am now displaying my favorite albums from Last.fm. So mostly I’m just trying to make it easier for everybody to see my geek side….
[tags]flickr, last.fm, del.icio.us, geek[/tags]