Experiments & Expressions

If you’re anything like me (which I don’t think anyone would want to admit!), you have data all over the place. And that’s even considering the highly organized systems that you’ve put in place such as using Outlook and/or Google Apps. The main reason isn’t lack of organization. It’s lack of synchronization. But there’s a solution!

ScheduleWorld, an online app, can help bring you back to bliss by synchronizing your calendars, tasks, and even contacts. It can do this for multiple computers, across multiple operating systems, and even different applications. ScheduleWorld leverages open protocols to talk with services such as Google Calendar and your desktop software.

Here’s what I’m doing. I’m just starting the testing process, but so far so good. I manage my calendar in Outlook 2003 on a WinXP box, Thunderbird (via Lightning and Provider) on Ubuntu and Google when I’m somewhere else. I also manage tasks and contacts (not syncing yet with Google Apps) using the same software. * Yes, I realize I could use Thunderbird on Windows, but I thought having more applications would make for a better experiment.

I signed up for a ScheduleWorld account and am now on my way to syncing everything with everywhere. Pretty slick, but not quite perfect yet.

Are you using ScheduleWorld or think you might? Share your experience.

I got into a conversation with someone (NB) who was looking for a free way to host their blog. I suggested Blogger, but was immediately shotgunned with:

• It’s not secure.
• I want my own domain.
• It’s not flexible enough.
• I can’t upload documents.

In the end, he needed much more than a blog. Here’s our conversation (roughly)…

Me: It’s not secure?

NB: No, I want to require people to login to see my blog. I don’t want it available for the whole world to see.

Me: Blogger has a privatize feature that does just that.

NB: It’s still inflexible. I can’t have normal web pages (non-blog posts). That’s why I use Google Pages. But I don’t really like that either, I’d rather have my own domain [instead of nb.googlepages.com or nb.blogspot.com].

Me: Blogger let’s you have a custom domain. I actually use that on my site. But for your needs you want something a little more than just a private blog. You should take a look at Google Apps. By signing up for their free service, you can use your domain with Google Pages. You’ll also be able to use your own domain for Gmail.

I know that you distribute documents through your website, too. With Google Docs (part of Google Apps), you can have your documents published to your blog, while adding the ability to collaborate with other users.

Whether or not its security is ready for the enterprise, Google Apps can play a powerful role for mobile users, families, non-profits, and small businesses. You get email, document management, shared calendars, and more.

Give Google Apps a try and share your experience here! Would you use it?

One of the best technology gadgets I’ve ever purchased is my Wacom Tablet. With up to 8 (okay 12) hours a day on the computer, a stylus and tablet provide for more productive, injury-free computing. Although it comes with a mouse, I use the stylus and ExpressKeys for just about everything. Not ready to spend the $300+ to get one? Check out the new entry-level options.

Unless you’re doing professional graphics work, you probably won’t need an Intuos3 Wacom Tablet. I used to recommend the Graphire line to people, but even that has a steep price point. Enter the Bamboo.

For less than the cost of 2 weeks of lattés, you can get the Bamboo with:

• Precision desktop control
• Handwriting recognition
• Increased workflow efficiency

Do you need color coordination? Check out the Bamboo Fun. They’re available in black, white, silver, and blue. How’s about wireless? Check out the Bluetooth Graphire Tablet.

Do you use a tablet? Ever consider using one? Share your thoughts!

Source: Popgadget

Mac users who are enticed by the syncing solution provided through .mac, Apple’s commercial webspace, email, and file storage solution, now have a free alternative. Say, “Welcome” to notMac. notMac, a product of the notMac Challenge, was recently introduced as a free, opensource alternative.

If you’re not willing to pay $100 to fix corruptions issues, try notMac out and let us know how it works for you. Apparently there are plans to create a cross-server solution that will also work with non-Mac web servers.

Check it out here: notMac.

During my recent switch, I decided not to import comments. The main reason? It was easier not to. I don’t regret it, but now my posts look less lively. So I need more! For business blogs, even old comments are important. They increase authority and can provide a bit of an ego boast if you’re looking for one.

So how can you encourage people to comment more? Here are a few tips:

• 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog (ProBlogger)
• 10 Tips for Attracting More Comments (Performancing)
• Increasing comments (Blogozine)
• Understand why people don’t leave comments by (Successful Blog)
• Get on the D-List (Courtney Tuttle)

How are people encouraged to comment on your blog?

Favicons are those little icons in the Address bar and next to your Favorites. When I migrated to Blogger, I lost my custom favicon and inherited the default, orange “B.” To restore it to my original “j.u” favicon, I performed some first-grade slight-of-hand trickery (It’s really easy).

1. Choose a favicon host.Although possible, Blogger doesn’t make it easy to upload non-post files. To get your favicon online, you need to sign up with an image host. I chose ImageShack since I had a few things on there already. Others you could use include Photobucket or even GooglePages.
2. Create my favicon.If you’re creating your own, simply create a 16 x 16 pixel image. You can save it as a GIF or PNG. They should both work.I already had a favicon, although it was in .ico format. When I was on my own server, that was fine, and correct. ImageShack, however, doesn’t allow the uploading of .ico files. I had to convert my file to a standard image format. I chose PNG.
3. Upload my faviconI uploaded my favicon. Imageshack gave me a few choices of code to use to display my favicon. I copied the “direct” URL and pasted it in the next step.
4. Add favicon to templateOnce my favicon was online (it took less than 4 minutes), I inserted the appropriate HTML into my Blogger template.<link href="URL_TO_YOUR_FAVICON" rel="shortcut icon">

The whole process took less that 10 minutes, and almost less than 5. If you’re ready to dump that orange B for a spiffy new icon that better represents your blog, the four steps are all you need. If you need help with any of the steps, feel free to leave a comment.Update: If you’re getting some kind of parse error in Blogger, it’s probably looking for a closing tag. Try this code instead (note the added slash toward the end). <link href=”URL_TO_YOUR_FAVICON” rel=”shortcut icon” /> 

With the migration to Blogger from Wordpress, the most effort is going into dealing with post path differences. These differences will cause 404 (missing file) errors if not dealt with correctly. I wanted to be sure that people looking for my older WordPress posts would be appropriately redirected to the correct Blogger address.

My WordPress paths had this structure:
http://jason.ungos.com/2007/09/27/blog-downgrade/

On Blogger, the same post looks like this:
http://jason.ungos.com/2007/09/blog-downgrade.html

Here’s how I’m doing it.

1. Setup a missing files host.
2. Redirect visitor to new Blogger path.

Blogger Missing Files Host
The missing files host option was probably created to deal mostly with broken images or downloadable documents. I’ve expanded its use a bit by creating a custom 404 page that has some redirecting functionality.

The custom 404 page is a PHP script that:

• Checks the URI
• Determines what kind of document is being requested (post, tag search, etc.)
• Semi-intelligently determines the new URI, and
• Redirects the visitor.

Here’s what I have so far:

It’s neither elegant nor robust, but it achieves my main goal of dealing with old post links. I plan to develop this a little more to accommodate changed page names, broken images, and feeds.

Anything else I should add?

With each blog incarnation (i.e., reboot, redesign, or relaunch) things are usually updated, upgraded, or improved. But how about a downgrade?

After months of dealing with spammers and denial of service attacks, I’ve decided to pass the bandwidth buck. I’ll be migrating my personally-hosted, personally-managed Wordpress blog over to the free, yet acceptable, Blogger.

Here’s what I’ll have to do…

1. Move posts from Wordpress to Blogger (Complete: 08/27/2007)
2. Update DNS (Est. Completion: 10/3/2007)
3. Make things look pretty and go template tweak happy. (Est. Completion: ???)

So why do I call it a downgrade?
Blogger is a great product. It’s simple, easy to use, and free. I call it a downgrade because I will lose a lot of the tweakability that a self-hosted Wordpress installation can give. With Wordpress, I can install any of the hundreds of plugins available and dive into code to my heart’s content.

Then why downgrade the blog?
If there are so many good things about Wordpress, why go to Blogger? Simplicity. This is my “fun” blog. I don’t want to spend hours deleting spammy comments, or paying lots of money because of exorbitant bandwidth usage. Neither do I have the hours of free time that I had in the past. I’m looking for easy and free.

Blogger has improved remarkably over the years and has the basic features that I’m looking for. I also contribute to a few other Blogger-based blogs. Blogger’s dashboard gives me quick access to each of those blogs.

Wordpress or Blogger?
I love Wordpress. It’s a top notch blogging system that can also do well as a basic CMS (Content Management System). Wordpress is the system that I recommend to most of my clients.

Blogger has some powerful options, but still not as powerful as Wordpress. For personal blogs (like this one), Blogger does does the job. Though, in the end, it’s all about preference.

What do you prefer?

If you’re not using FeedBurner, now is a good time to try it out. FeedBurner is a site that allows you to share your content with others through a central service for distribution. (Okay I tried to make it sound simple, but RSS is sure a lot simpler.)

So why now? FeedBurner has just given more for free. In addition to their standard services of syndication, you can now get their pro level TotalStats and MyBrand. Yes, for free.

In addition to standard subscriber counts, TotalStats will let you know things like:

• The number of times an item was viewed,
• The number of times and item was clicked, and
• The number of subscriber who actually did something with your content (i.e. read it).

MyBrand is a cool little feature that lets you use your own domain name for feeds. This means you can have feeds.yourdomain.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com. If you’re working towards professionalism and stronger branding, you must enable this.

These features aren’t enabled by default. So if you’re already syndicating your blog through FeedBurner, you need to login and check a couple of boxes. The TotalStats

I know I’m not the only one. Comment spam is frustrating people all across the blogoshpere. I moderate comments and have even gone through the hoops of using great plugins such as Akismet, Bad Behavior, Comments Post Rewriter, and Spam Karma 2.

Unfortunately, the issue has nothing to do with the amount of comment spam that gets posted on the site. The real issue is my data transfer threshold. The combination of heavy server beatings that slow site access and obscene data amounts that get pumped through each day is too cost prohibitive. Just to give you an idea, I burn through 6GB of transfered data when spammers attack. Multiply that by once every 2-3 days. Oh how I hate these guys.

I’m pleased that I do not have spam on my site, but what’s the point when comment spammers prevent a site from working. Obviously it doesn’t take much brains to be a spammer.

What to do?