Blogging

A couple of big announcements from Skype today. SkypeWeb is a little bit of code you can put on your web pages that’ll alert the world to your availability on Skype. That in itself is nice, but not a revolution. What’s really cool about SkypeWeb is that once you’ve put this HTML code on your blog, web page, or email messages, anyone can connect with you, even if they’ve never used Skype. I admit that was an impediment to my own use of Skype. I never saw a link or the info in anyone’s bio… So a good thing to get Skype’s name out there, and an easy way to connect people. Win-win, right?

But wait, there’s more! Also announced today was the SkypeNet API. Again, trying to push beyond their own application, the API will allow developers to integrate the Skype IM and Presence components into, well, whatever… Two scenarios from Skype’s share pages are tantalizing enough: "What if you could use Skype to communicate with a product reviewer on a Web site, to chat with other players in an online game using Skype?" This is going to get good real quick folks. Who said the day had to belong to Google?

Wordpress developer Matt Mullenweg has announced plans to start a hosted Wordpress service via Wordpress.com. This will effectively position them against Typepad, although Brad Hill notes they’ll also need to distinguish themselves from the growing number of web hosts offering Wordpress as a one-click install (Dreamhost, Bluehost, etc.).

Way back before Tiger (remember those days?) the default image type for screen captures was PDF. Ick. Tiger changed it to PNG, which is nice and all, but still not what I need for PowerBlogging. By gum I need those tiny screen cap pics to whip out as JPEG’s! So while there are ways to do it in the Terminal (isn’t there always?), I found a handy-dandy app called SCIT, or Screen Capture Image Type from Daniele Kraehenbuehl. You don’t find that many people who still claim HyperCard on their resume, but he just won my heart for SCIT’s usefulness. Now I can switch up my screencaps without having to log out or reboot. The old Terminal method necessitates such a nasty diversion. Double ick. While at his site check out some of the other (free) cool tools…

Inspired by Scott McNulty’s virgin install of OS X (documented at TUAW), I wanted to try the same on another machine. But not OS X, Windows XP. Anyone who has purchased a PC from any major manufacturer will no doubt tell you about all the useless or painful apps that come bundled with the PC. My VAIO came with offenses to the great GUI Gods that Sony will have to answer for someday (SonicStage makes babies cry). It’s that "gunky" stuff I was happy to avoid. I happen to have a basic Dell Optiplex, and a fully genuine copy of XP Pro (SP2 naturally). So what’s it like having a fresh, clean, gunk-free install? In a word, nice.

Over the next several weeks I’ll be installing a number of things on the PC to see what happens. Mostly this will be freeware, and I might be setting up some web services to extend my presence… Hacks, scripts, mods, etc. what’s the worst that could happen? But so far I did one thing wrong: I installed McAfee’s Security Center/AntiVirus.

All I really wanted was AntiVirus. When I installed the software things

went swimmingly. Especially compared to the bungled installs I’ve done

over the years with Symantec (why does LiveUpdate kill the entire

program, why?). Unfortunately I allowed the McAfee Security Center to

overtake the Microsoft Security Center. Oh no, here we go again. Listen

McAfee, all I wanted was AntiVirus! In the little dialog box there

portends great doom and furious anger if you don’t use their

security center. So I did. Then I wised up and uninstalled both. My

machine actually boots much quicker now. That McAfee antivirus is outta

here… Personally, I prefer MS’s tools.

Back to a purely pure install, and time to download some

goodies. What’s neat about a clean install of XP is that you can immediately see what Microsoft gives you to begin creating stuff. Keep in mind I have NO Office installed. No Word, Excel, etc. I do have a text editor, a paint application, MSN Messenger, Outlook Express, and Internet Explorer. Let’s not forget Media Player, and apparently Movie Maker and Frontpage. Frontpage? Somehow I wound up with version 3 on here. No matter, as it (along with Outlook Express and MSN Messenger) will never be touched. If I get frisky I’ll try to uninstall them later.

My first priority at this point was to get antispyware and antivirus apps. I went with Microsoft’s AntiSpyware Beta (which is the best beta ever IMO), and Grisoft’s AVG to handle viruses. Now I feel more secure.

Next up: the tools I need to blog about all this. As a personal preference I installed Firefox, then GIMP for image manipulations, RSSOwl for news, and OpenOffice for all those DOC’s I’ll be working with. I soon discovered I needed to install Java, which is annoying but understandable…

Well that gets me up and running for yummy blogging goodness. Stay tuned as I check out the best and worst of whatever free apps catch my fancy. As usual, if you have any suggestions, feel free to send them in via our tip form.

That it took this long to get feeds in Google is a no small wonder, but as of today we finally have them. You can now get an RSS or Atom feed for any section or keyword on Google News. It’s somewhat interesting to note that it supports both formats, unlike Gmail which only published Atom feeds.

Via Jeremy Zawodny.

There are more featureful blogging apps out there than Thingamablog, but most of them require that you have access to a web server, and that that web server have PHP or Perl or something of that ilk, and often a database as well, to run your blogging software. Like Blogger, Thingamablog eschews all of that and requires only FTP, SFTP, or network access to the web server, but unlike Blogger, it runs on the desktop (which may be a pro or a con in your book). Some of Thingamablog’s more surprising features include RSS and Atom publishing, blog tracker pinging, and an integrated RSS reader. Notably missing are features that would require interaction on the server, like comments and trackbacks.

So the open-source content management system Drupal got yet another feather in its cap: a chat module using Ajax. It’s a very early build (we’re talking alpha here), but it looks pretty cool. You’ll need the buddylist module first, making sure you have buddies of course, and obviously a Drupal site.

There are other ways to chat using Drupal, but they either require external apps or are just plain old HTML. Expect some rough edges as it’s mostly a proof-of-concept at this point, but word is that it’s working well in Firefox.

And for those of you who don’t know, Drupal is great for making things like blogs and forums, and is currently used to power Linux Journal.

This could make my boss really happy - Technorati has added a mobile version of their site at m.technorati.com. While users that need to access Technorati’s service using smaller devices will appreciate this slimmed-down version, users on PCs may also prefer this version as it appears to be quicker. This could be simply due to the fact that there is very little in the way of graphics or distractions loaded on the mobile pages. Jason asked for this recently, and it looks like Technorati has delivered.

My continuing plight with RSS readers has spread to my Windows machine, although I think I’ve found a pretty cool solution: Newzie. There are a number of unique and cool features that make this RSS reader stand out from an overcrowded and underwhelming crowd. How does color-coding sound?

If a news item is about an hour old, it’s red. If the news is a stale year ago, it’s blue. How very homeland security of them. In NetNewsWire I like to keep my feeds stacked in order of newness, but the color coding is pretty sweet (though a little tough on the eyes after a while). Of course there’s the requisite features like tabbed browsing within the app, support for Atom and RSS, content filtering, and you can grab video and audio content. You can also grab pieces and parts of web sites for research or later viewing (web clippings).

Read on for even more goodness…
Another time saver: slide shows. It’s a quick way to get through that

ton of unread stuff by just looking at the latest unread in, well, a

slide show. Set up a few criteria, like how long ago you want to see

the unread, and sit back and enjoy. Using left and right arrows you

peruse the news. There’s even a handy highlighter.

Besides the reading features there are a couple of ways to alert yourself to news. There’s a taskbar notifier, which should be a standard option on any RSS reader (even OSX). And there’s a DeskBar mode, which squeezes your feeds into a little scrolling bar on the top of your screen. You see the news scrolling by, along with a search bar.

Speaking of search, there’s a great web search tool built in that’ll search most major engines all at once. By using a shorthand you can specify a search engine, or even do a specific search, like "yi" for a Yahoo image search. That’s a time saver for sure.

All this is free, and only on Windows. Who says Windows apps are uninspired?

If you’ve been looking for a simple way to start podcasting, check out Loudblog. Loudblog is a content management system (CMS) for syndicated audio content on the web - otherwise known as podcasts. It’s not a full-featured blogging platform, but then it’s not intended for that. If what you’re looking for is a dedicated, easy to use way to create a podcast feed and manage your audio files, give Loudblog a try. Other blogging platforms can handle enclosures, but are usually focused on managing text content.

[Via Chris Pirillo]