Category: Uncategorized

Mark Pilgrim weighs in on MovableType and WordPress. He’s switched the 11 sites he operates over to WordPress for clear reasons he explains in the piece above. He puts his money where his mouth is: he donated the $535 he would have owed MovableType to move to MT 3.0 to the WordPress developers. I respect that. Separately, in this web-wide re-evaluation of which software to choose to power your blog, here’s a feature comparison of server-side tools. Not complete, but actively being filled out.

I’m using WordPress for my work blog. With my frustrations over Radio several weeks ago (subsided, but I don’t know why), I continue to consider moving clock to WordPress. I don’t look forward to the conversion, or the data migration, but some command line work and data manipulation would be good exercises for me. Lauren Wood notes what WordPress does right. The only quibble I’d make with her post is that interest in WordPress was rising before the MovableType announcement. She’s right, though, that people are really swarming now. Recently migrated Eric Meyer has a WordPress tools page, according to Photo Matt. Dave Winer points out an RSS-WordPress import tool from Matt, which is very much of interest. But I can’t find the referenced tool at Photo Matt. Hmmm… any hints?

Of course, I’m putting all these links here for me more than you. More readily accessible than my bookmarks. I was glad to see that my orginal mention of Meyer’s switch helped someone else notice the switch. I’m only sorry I can’t remember where I read about it, so couldn’t give appropriate credit. Since I’m not a regular reader of Meyer’s blog, I didn’t see it on my own.

About a week ago, thanks to Ian Holsman, I set up a Gmail account. While the last thing I need is another e-mail account, I was as curious as everyone else. To test the account, I’m publishing, in text, the email address: [email protected]

Not that it would be so hard to figure out my work or home address, but the combination of SpamAssassin and Mail.app (at home) isn’t doing quite as good a job as it used to. The spammers are gaining in the “Red Queen” race, or so it would seem.

Recent mentions/thoughts on Gmail:

• David Pogue in the NYTimes loves Gmail.
• Steve Gillmor at eWeek must think if he says it often enough that Gmail will incorporate RSS. (For the record, I’m sure they will… doesn’t everybody and everything have RSS these days?)
• My friend at Yahoo Mail isn’t quite so happy, but, hey, isn’t competition good for the consumer? Seriously, the storage aspect can so easily be a non-issue. All the current webmail providers do need to think hard about just how much pain it is to switch email addresses. We’ve achieved (sort of) cell phone number portability. Email portability? Well, get your own domain.

Regarding the Gmail service… it’s fast. Threads are different. Not better or worse, so far, just different. Let me know you read this blog, either on the web (sure…) or via an RSS feed (so much more likely), by emailing my Gmail account. That will force me to put the service through its paces a bit more. (Note: I’m not out to receive 1GB of spam. Thanks to Scripting.com for that slice of webness.)

Jon Gruber explains how to write for Google. More than just search-engine optimization (SEO) blather, Gruber points out how a very tightly focused page can be the answer to a very focused question… and Google aggregates questions.

Steve Yelvington writes a quick report on Washington Post VP Chris Schroeder’s speech at the E & P Interactive, where Schroeder worried about “the perfect storm of the Internet,” as it affects media companies. The storm is made up of aggregator competitors, and the disaggregation of services to best-of-breed offerings. For an example of the latter, think CraigsList vs. SFGate.com for classifieds.

To survive this storm, Schroeder said, it’s essential for sites to focus on delivering quality audiences through registration and behavioral targeting, and to focus on content that delivers nuance and not just commodity data.

Of course, nothing there about serving quality audiences. Still, I would have liked to hear more.

I’m a Netflix customer. Since October 2000, I’ve enjoyed the no-hassle back-and-forth of DVDs waiting for me to find time to watch them. The alternative — finding time AND interest AND going to a store to rent a movie — seems almost as antiquated as the pre-ATM world. (There’s a world I wouldn’t want to have lived in!) I’m not an aficionado, so I’m quite satisfied with the “2 Out Lite Program,” which lets you keep only 2 discs out at a time, for a slightly reduced monthly fee.

The only problem with the whole arrangement is managing a single queue for two people (the kids don’t count, yet). My wife and I have overlapping, but not identical, tastes in movies. I feel it would be simple to have multiple ‘identities’ in a queue manager. Simple, technically, at least. We would still have to share a queue, unless we were prepared to pay for two accounts, but with two identities, we could rate movies independently and receive independent recommendations, and generally acknowledge that while we’re a unit, we’re not one person. The interface for offering this kind of feature is probably more complicated than the feature itself, and it may create more problems than it solves, but I’d love to hear more thoughts about this.

In general, software needs to go in two directions. First, applications need to expect a network, and, where possible, allow control over the network, whether via a server-based application or a fully network aware client application which exposes control interfaces. Second, computers need to understand the context of different operators. Think about the internet cafe, and then think about a two-person, one computer household. Somewhere in that wide swath, there is a growing space for software which doesn’t assume identity, even for ‘personal’ computers. Identity management is a pain in the a–, but various services (think webmail), have begun training each and every one of us to the ubiquity of access to our data. Only at shared machines where the sharing is limited to family/roommates are things more awkward. Both Windows and Mac OS X do have accounts and opportunities for separating the computing worlds between people, but the technical ability hasn’t brought along with it an interface simplicity that makes the feature worth the hassle.

I think there is more to work through here, and I hope I’m not contradicting myself too fully. I do want a separate Netflix queue.

Never got out to see The Ladykillers, despite Tom Hanks, but the Wall Street Journal’s review of that movie endorsed the original, The Lavender Hill Mob. So, Netflix away. Eighty minutes of black-and-white British fun. Not a great movie, but I haven’t seen much of Alec Guinness long before his Obi-Wan role, so that was a slight bonus. The poor man… an entire illustrious career missed by those of my age or younger.

1. Because We Are Geeks [via Simon]
2. Disrupting the News Industry – webcast of UC Berkeley Journalism panel I missed, but I’m listening now
3. Switching from Movable Type – WordPress is listed as a competitor, and Eric Meyer has switched
4. Rich Internet Applications – some classifications to argue about
5. GEL conference writeups – in Fast Company… not sure I’ll have time to read, but I love the idea of this conference
6. Make your own sign – via Dennis
7. MIT Usability checklist – nice to have common-sense in one place
8. Doc on conversations – Lots of links to follow in one small post from a few weeks ago
9. Free self-paced course in HTML and CSS – won’t take it, but I could use week 4 and after week 12
10. CNET News.com wins an Ellie – National Magazine Award… big deal for journalists… woo-hoo!

I don’t make it to many baseball games these days, but got to watch the Yankees beat the A’s 4-3 at the Coliseum tonight. A-Rod’s homer on the first pitch of the ninth to tie the game at 3 was the clincher. Being at the ballpark is fun, but TV really spoils the attention span. I can’t count the number of times I watched the replay, out of habit (baseball, of course, has plenty of time for infinite replays).

The word HeyDoYouKnow prefaces most everything that comes out of my son’s mouth right now. Most of the time, I do… so far. He occasionally comes out with something I don’t. It’s a bit too early for me to give up my role as the Wizard (“pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!), since I never get to play it again. But the days are already numbered, clearly.

Of course, I still love my dad even when he doesn’t know, not that he ever admits to a gap in his knowledge. Maybe all will not be lost when he finds out I’m not much better than sliced bread. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.