WordPress 2.5 Versus WordPress.com
Posted on April 10, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under Blogging | 5 Comments
With all the buzz around WordPress 2.5 you might think I would have rushed to upgrade. Yes, I am a geek, and yes I also love playing with the latest shiny gadgets and toys, but hold on, there is more to it than simply installing every update that comes along.
The fact is, whenever there is any significant update to blogging software, inevitably something breaks. To get all the gizmos we desire there are often hacks, template tricks and not-so-standard plugins that we like to cruft our blogs up with. Those are always the first to break.
WordPress are doing their best to help. There is a growing list of plugins and their 2.5 compatibility. If you look down you might find there are a good number that still don’t work.
It’s good to know which plugins work and which do not, but it becomes a pain to keep changing, trying, finding alternatives. Many programmers put out one version of a plugin and then find it is too much trouble to support it. Some of my most used features will have to be sacrificed or I will need to fix them up myself, or hire a programmer.
This is where the lure of fully-hosted solutions like WordPress.com become attractive. They keep the software up to date, they manage the hosting. No more worries about Digg front page stories putting your site offline. No more expensive or cheap and unreliable hosting. Security, stability, features and management are all handled on your behalf.
What you sacrifice of course is control and flexibility. You can pay for a domain, and some amount of visual tweakage, but you can’t put any old plugin or widget in there. And there lies the rub. While I do not need the ability to show advertising, and they do allow business blogs, they are a bit funny about pushing the boundaries of commercial use, plus I need my gizmos.
I don’t want to give up my many wonderful WP toys! Please Matt and Co, give us a geeked-up pro version of the hosted WordPress.com service so I can get off this update cycle for good!
Why Forward Junk Chain Letter Emails?
Posted on April 8, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under Sad | 11 Comments
Every week friends and family members send me junk chain letter emails.
Bill Gates will pay you to forward this.
A fairy will grant your wish if you send to 1,000 friends.
Some kitten’s nose will fall off if you don’t.
Why do people forward these things?
These emails are annoying but I know I am more annoying. I put each one through Snopes and reply. Futile, irritating, and ultimately as much a waste of time as the original.
“There is no harm in it” I hear you cry. Well, probably not much harm over and above spreading potentially dubious information. I imagine harvesting those emails (each email tends to have tons of email addresses right there on the “to” line) is a rich source for spammers.
I don’t know if it is my imagination but these emails tend to arrive just before a bump in the number of spams. Coincidence?
That brings me back to the point, other than the “social gaming” aspect (seeing how far your lie can spread), why do people send these things?
I would really like to know the answer. Anyone know?
A.Viary First Impressions Review
Posted on April 3, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under Web 2.0 | 3 Comments
I have been playing with A.Viary image editor since I got my invitation to take part in the test version. Right up front I have to say I am super impressed with it.
This tool is an online image editor. The idea is not new, we have seen tools before, but unlike those simple “crop and rotate” jobbies we have seen before, this bad boy is comparable to my much used and bulky desktop tool of choice, Photoshop Elements. 
In fact, it can do some stuff that software can’t.
Testament to how much I need to do image editing work, despite not being an artist or digital imaging pro, I have a copy of Photoshop Elements for both my Mac and PC. This tool has the potential to make those packages largely redundant. Consider how many people in the world need these tools but not enough to buy a full copy?
A.Viary can do all that I use Elements for but in my web browser, wherever I am in the world. Hook it up to Flickr (there is seems to be an option to do this in future, although the dialog is empty) and my imaging needs will be pretty much sorted.
I look forward to seeing how the tool progresses as they fix bugs and flesh out features. Right now there are some rough edges but I am sure this is going to be fantastic when complete.
Take a look at a feature comparison of online editors at their blog here.
7 Free Software Tools That Save You Time With SEO
Posted on April 1, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under Productivity | 1 Comment
Try as you might to avoid it, SEO is an important part of any online businesses marketing arsenal. Think of it this way, if you had a high street store you would want to place it where there was maximum passing trade, right? The same goes online, you want your website to be seen, and that means playing the Search Engine game.
How can we productively keep our SEO hand in, and monitor progress, without it taking over all our time? Enter our friends automation and software tools!
I have only recently started seriously getting back into the search area so let me know of your favorite tools in the comments, I am eager to hear what you recommend! I’m focusing here on online or cross-platform tools seeing as I am a mac user and most desktop tools seem PC based 
On with the tools …
- Google Webmaster Central - If you are looking at improving your search engine performance you might as well go to the source!
Get diagnostic information to see if you are causing spiders crawling problems, and see where you rank and for what. 
Website Grader - Get your site analyzed and see where you are going wrong and what you are doing right.
- WordTracker - Find the keywords people are using in your niche.
103Bees - Find the phrases people are finding you with. Great for those long tail searches.- SEO for Firefox - See detailed stats for any page, such as how many links it has pointed to it, all the way through to how old the site is. In fact, check out the rest of the tools at Aaron’s site while you are at it!
- Sheer SEO tool - Funny name but very useful. See your ranking progress over time
- Link Diagnosis - Find who is linking to your competitors.
Those were my 7 selected tools, which do you use and why? Please share in the comments …
From Programmer to Puppet-Master: How I Didn’t Rig the Zimbabwean Elections with a PDF Converter
Posted on March 30, 2008 by Yoav Ezer
Filed Under PDF, Cogniview | 12 Comments
Here is the unbelievable story … Last Thursday (03/28/2008) a newspaper called “Zimbabwe Online” published an article accusing my company (Cogniview) of helping Robert Mugabe, The infamous Zimbabwean president, rig the Zimbabwean elections.
The article continues to claim that my company has secret ties to the Israeli Mossad, and that the accusations came directly from the General Secretary of the MDC, Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party.
Before I go on with the details of the story, here’s my official response … this story is NOT TRUE. In fact it could have only been more fictional if we were accused of using alien technology. Here are some more facts:
- We have no ties with Robert Mugabe’s party. We have never met or dealt in any way with him or any of his people.
- We have no connections to the Israeli Mossad.
- No Cogniview employee has ever been to Zimbabwe.
The full story up until now…
On Wednesday, a day before the article was published, I received an email from a Yahoo email address, inquiring whether my company was helping Robert Mugabe win the upcoming Zimbabwe elections. The email was so funny, I assumed it was spam and deleted it (not before being very impressed with how well it was tailored for my company).
A day later, an email from the site ZimOnline alerted me that there was an article on the site that concerned Cogniview. The article was even funnier than the email. At this point my respect for the Zimbabwean scam-artists was at an all-time high. Not only did they send me a well crafted email, they went as far as to setting up a mock newspaper and publishing an article there.
And then it became very serious very quickly …
I was contacted by a gentleman called Phil Matibe, a human rights activist from Zimbabwe currently living in the US, who wanted to get to the bottom of this story (I will be speaking with Mr. Matibe later today).
We also started getting emails from angry people telling us that we “sold the Zimbabwean people for 20 pieces of silver”
And then additional articles began to appear. Apparently we got 3 million dollars for helping Mugabe.
What I think happened
About a year ago we developed an Open-Source PDF converter called CC PDF converter. This converter (which is available for download for anyone that has an internet connection) allows one to convert anything printable into PDF. It also allows adding a Creative Commons license as the last page of the document. And at the very end of this page there is a link to Cogniview’s website.
I also learned (from the people that called to chastise us) that the voter-roles that were provided to the MDC by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had a link to Cogniview’s website.
My guess is that the people at the MDC wanted to get the voter data in a format they could easily handle (like Excel) and instead got it in a PDF file (that was produced by our converter). They got (justifiably) angry and concocted a story about the Israeli Mossad and my company (this part isn’t justifiable).
Here’s what we are willing to do to help sort out this mess
Every respectable party (UN, US, European) that will want to investigate this matter will get Cogniview’s full cooperation. We will give them unlimited access to our legal and financial Records. We will also allow them to interview any employee in the company. Heck, they can strap us all to lie-detectors - we have nothing to hide.
But I’m hoping it won’t come to this. This story has the potential to damage my company’s reputation as well as to seriously damage the credibility of the MDC officials who spread this lie.
One last thing: If anyone from the MDC is reading this, please check your facts and denounce these lies. They bring you no honor.
I will continue to update as the story unfolds.
Asus Eee PC the Wave of the Future?
Posted on March 27, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under IT | 6 Comments
The latest gadget on my “I want I need” list is this little gizmo. The Asus Eee PC.
It might not look much but I think it is a vision of things to come.
While Apple was making big about their thinnest notebook, Eee PCs were delivering something equally remarkable, perhaps more so.
This machine comes in at just over £200, less (even as low as $299) if you are lucky enough to live in a more reasonably priced country and choose the base model.
It weighs just 2 pounds. I have books that are heavier and bulkier.
You see, for me, thin is not much of a selling point. Light is. Add to light cheap, and you have right there a winning combination.
For travelers, being able to pack power into a compact and light unit, delivering everything you need without going over your weight allowance or getting funny looks from the nice TSA folks, has real benefits. Even better having it at a low enough cost that you don’t convulse into panic every time someone waves their Starbucks over it.
The benefits don’t just end there. It runs Linux, hence the low price, but you can install XP if you have to. Wifi is built in, and has no hard drive so is power efficient. You can plug in external monitor and keyboard but the keyboard is well equipped for touch typing. Some models even have mic and webcam.
Of course the clones have arrived, but the Asus is still the leader. The question I have is how are Dell and Apple going to respond? This machine has found a niche in the market full of hungry consumers. Could it lead them to create an ultra compact and lower cost device to compete? You could argue the iPhone is kind of in that market but not quite.
I’m seriously considering buying one of these Eee PCs for my next trip in May, but I hear there is a 9″ screen model with 1024x resolution coming so I might just try and pick one up while I am there 
Anyone used one of these bad boys? What is the user experience really like? Is it cramped or comfy? Please share in the comments …
Mixx Fixes the Breaking News Problem
Posted on March 25, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under Web 2.0 | Leave a Comment
I am a sucker for the plucky under dog. This is always certain when said under dog tries harder and is much more friendly than the dominant player. Sometimes these under dogs turn out to be the winner over the long term, just look at Google.
My current fave plucky upstart is Mixx. I’ve written about how and why I like Mixx before. They just seem to want to improve the experience more than the competitors. It’s not just about the traffic but about actually sharing interesting and relevant stories.
A big problem with all these social voting sites is the vote process itself takes time, and that can mean once the site is popular breaking news takes so long to appear on the front page it is no longer breaking. Digg especially is lousy for news. Once it is on Digg front page you can be sure the news is 24 hours old or more.
Mixx though has a solution, but one that might well upset the more democratically aligned users.
They have announced that certain Super Mixxers will have the power to nominate a post as breaking news, which will catapult them right to the front page in a special breaking news area. You will still be able to vote up and down on the story, but everyone will get to see it regardless until it is no longer breaking I guess.
As I mentioned, there is one big problem with this already, and that is the level playing field of web2.0 is no longer level. Of course there have always been power users, but this makes it explicit and obvious.
The second problem as pointed out by Michael Arrington is they are depending on Super Mixxers actually being “Super”.
I’m sure the digg guys will be watching this carefully. Mixx are aggressively working hard on features, it might not be too long before they take the lead in innovation and people are calling new Digg features Mixx clones.
Retro Gaming and Childhood Computing Memories
Posted on March 20, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under IT | 15 Comments
Todays BBC News article about the computer they sponsored, the BBC Micro, takes me back to my childhood. While the machines back then didn’t have the power or cool factor of todays gaming machines, at the time they had a deep and lasting impact on the people, culture and what we take for granted today was born out of those geeks and their machines.
The BBC did have a big impact in the UK, particularly in schools. It was too expensive for the average household so they released a more scaled down version. The only other time I can remember the BBC being so involved in something was when the internet was just starting to kick off they sponsored an ISP.
While I didn’t own a BBC Micro, or its smaller, cheaper sibling the Acorn Electron, I am a proud member of the micro computer generation. We started out with one of those TV Sports Systems then graduated to a Commodore Vic 20.
Do you remember those sports consoles? Basically put batteries in, plug into the tv and play variations of Pong. Glorious black and white boxy wonderfulness. Kept me happy anyway.
While other kids were already onto their second computers, usually the Commodore 64, we were just beginning with the Vic 20 as I turned (I think) age 9.
That little 3.5k beast had a profound influence on me. That and Star Wars made me the geek I am. Obviously I was jealous of the C64 kids, in particular my cousin Ian who would bring his over when he visited, but I was glad to own this little box of tricks.
Do any poll of geeks and the Commodore machines will rank highly. In other countries you will hear other names bandied as competitors. The TRS-80, the early Apple machines, but in the UK there was Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair and later, Amstrad.
The alternative to the Vic for us at the time was the Sinclair ZX81. It was a popular (and cheap!) machine but far more limited than even the Vic 20. Sinclair had a massive share of the UK market with their machines but if it took the Spectrum to build real popularity.
Starting with the ZX80 they had several versions of the Spectrum, 48k, + and 128k models, even a 16-bit machine, the QL. That QL was the first mass market computer based on the Motorola 68000, beating both Apple and Atari to the punch, but ultimately failing in the marketplace.
The logical upgrade path for the Commodore kids was the Amiga, a 16 bit powerhouse. They did in fact have other computers that are lesser know, the 64c and the 128. The Amiga had its biggest rival in the form of the Atari ST.
Acorn didn’t want to sit back and let Commodore and Atari take the whole market. They built their most powerful machine, the Archimedes. It didn’t set sales figures alight outside of the education sector, but the legacy of that ARM RISC work lives on in a multitude of products to this day.
Which computer did you start with? Do you remember home computing fondly? Share your memories in the comments …
The End of the Ebook?
Posted on March 18, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under Content Licensing, Video Tutorials, PDF | 7 Comments
Yesterday I had a debate with my friend Ryan about the future of ebooks.
I had just uploaded my audio and PDF transcript and was seeing subscribers coming along nicely. I was suggesting the same tactic for another project we were working on together.
You might already know, I am a big fan of ebooks. I buy them, I read them, I give them away, I even plan to sell them.
Ryan doesn’t believe in them. He thinks bloggers should do series posts instead. In fact, he doubts ebooks have much of a future.
I can see his point. Ebooks are about reading a large amount of material in one package. Most I imagine get read online rather than printed out or downloaded to a reading device such as Amazons Kindle.
Then look at prominent bloggers such as Aaron Wall and Brian Clark, their content has been turned into member sites rather than ebooks. Aaron in particular is surprising as for years he made a good income out of his SEOBook but now his content is delivered as an SEO Training Course.
It is easy to see the attraction of a member site for content producers. First off is obviously the recurring revenue. One sale versus monthly income. After that it is also about lifetime value, a one-off book purchase versus an ongoing relationship with all the opportunities that implies.
For the customer, with a member site you get not just words and pictures but video, audio, discussion, web conferencing, chat, and maybe tools and utilities also. An ebook is capable of more than words and pictures but rarely is.
The downsides to ebook delivery is clear also. Ebooks are routinely copied and shared, it is so easy to do and largely untraceable. The more people try to prevent it, the more damage is done to legitimate customers by applying restrictive DRM and other draconian measures.
Is this the beginning of the end for the humble ebook or is there life in the old dog yet?
Please share your thoughts in the comments …
Free Mobile Phone Calls?
Posted on March 13, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under IT | 2 Comments
My wife lost her phone recently so we have been on a hunt for a new handset. While I saw that phones could do Skype when I bought my n95, I didn’t think the feature was as widespread or as good value as it really is.
Talking to the phone shop guy we discovered on Three network Skype calls are completely free. Yup, you don’t pay even for the data. How does that work? A voice call over the internet has to be quite a lot of bytes. If they don’t charge for the call, and don’t charge for the bytes, all they are getting is your monthly subscription?
Well, regardless, we will take it!
For those people without smart phones, or with phones where Skype is not available, there is now a Skypephone
handset available.
When I travel those short “how are you doing?” calls add up to a princely sum. To be able to make them for free will be a big bonus. Add to that the fact that if I am not online she knows not to contact me or the other way round.
One shame is despite the phones and Skype being capable, there doesn’t seem to be a video option. That would be really cool. After a few days away from family it is nice to get to see them as well as speak to them. My daughter is old enough now to be able to tell me in detail how her day went but the pets in particular don’t talk very much, heh.
OK, lack of video I can understand, but for some reason from my n95 I can not initiate text chat. Seems a strange thing to be missing, especially as the screenshots at Skype.com seem to imply you can.
From our small tests the call quality seems just as good as using Skype from your computer but I would love to know your experiences, I worry if it is seems to good to be true then it just might have a sting hiding somewhere!
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