“The time has come…to talk of many [technologies].” –Lewis Carroll(‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’)
Web
Screenshot of Digg.com in Firefox vs Safari on Windows
0Egze posted this image to show how poorly Windows version of Apple’s Safari web browser rendered Digg.com web page on a Windows machine. It made a pitiable sight but I guessed that such problems should be showing up only on some computers. So I tested out Digg.com in Safari on my Windows machine and it came out just fine. Here is a screenshot(click to see the bigger version):
Download Safari for Windows and find out how it fares on your computer(It’s an ~8MB download). If you like it, go ahead and install the plugins too: Plugins for Safari.
I have been using Safari on Windows for a few days and neither its performance nor its stability has impressed me. To me it looks a long way short even from alpha stage. If its stability improves in coming days, it will be an invaluable tool to test out the websites without having own a Mac machine.
Is it a good time for someone to conduct a fresh benchmark of various web browsers(Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari, Flock etc)?
Features I Would Like to See Added to the GMail Service
5One of my friends sent me a link yesterday asking me to use it submit my ‘dream’ features that I would like Google to add to their GMail service. I like GMail like no other Google product I have ever used; I have abandoned all the previous email ids that I was using once I started to get used to GMail’s Conversational Stacks, Labels, Filters and Starred Items. Ability to track a large number of mailing-lists will be severely limited without these features. Its spam protection and searching ability are also better than that of the others’. My friends love the browser-based chat feature. What else could be added to what is such an excellent product already? The more I use this product, the more intensely I feel the lack of some functionalities. So I didn’t had to think for a single moment before preparing the following list of features that I want to see supported by GMail as soon as possible.
- The ability to view all the unread messages at one place. There should be a link/button called “View Unread Messages” or something like that which will show only the unread messages.
- The ability to view all the messages which have no labels.
I have created a separate GMail Id to track the mailing-lists of different products/services and the emails from each mailing-list are collected(using filters) under their respective labels(‘wordpress-hackers’, ‘gentoo-java’, ‘sounder’, etc). Occasional emails do get to my email account which don’t belong to any of the created labels, and such emails are so few that they get lost among all the labeled emails. Even if such emails are 5-10, I have to wade through several pages in the “Inbox” section to read them all. A predefined label called “Unlabeled” containing all the emails not labeled with anything can be very time-saving in such a situation.
- Disposable emails. I want GMail to allow disposable email ids to be associated with a main account so that the main account can be shielded from those whom we don’t trust(yet) and hence help fight the spam menace. One can create a real GMail id and then use its forwarding feature to get the similar result but a simpler way would be more desirable.
- Quotes as random signatures. Many desktop email clients support this feature: From a list of quotes entered in the “Signature” box(or uploaded through a file), one quote per line, GMail should automatically select one of them as part of the signature(in place of a placeholder such as ${quote}). It’s boring to use the same quote in the signature for 2 months and having to remember to then manually change it to something else.
- An option to add signature at the top of the quoted message while replying. I prefer bottom-posting in the user group and forum messages but top-posting for the individual emails. I want the option to select where the signature should be added in the replies, for each GMail account individually.
- Be able to work with multiple GMail accounts simultaneously.
Because I love GMail so much, I use it for all my purposes – even for getting group messages from the Yahoo Groups. One GMail id for one purpose though, so that I can control the frequency of checking each id according my preference. But on occasions when I want to check the messages from multiple accounts at the same time, I have to login into one account, check the messages, logout, login into the second account, check the messages, logout and keep going on like that. I have tried to let the browser remember my passwords(Firefox does it by domain name and not by pages, so it doesn’t work when I want to work with GMail, Google Analytics, Google Reader, Personalized Home, etc at the same time. Opera claims to remember by both domains and by individual pages, but it has never worked for me yet) but it didn’t turn out to be the solution I was looking for.
Because a machine can be shared by multiple users(who might have their own GMail accounts), the owner of a group of GMail accounts can authorize the set of ids which can remain active simultaneously on the same machine/browser. Currently I login into each GMail account from a different browser to get around the problem, but it is still less than convenient. Even when using multiple notifiers(one for each account), I still need to login to check the actual messages and reply to them. They also work only for email and not for Google Analytics for example.
That’s it for now. Do correct me if some of the features I have mentioned here are already supported by GMail(some might be supported as a Greasemonkey script for example) – I am not a GMail power user. I am sure that other GMail users too have their own favourite features that they want to see added to the GMail service. Which ones are your favourites?
UPDATE: sewar has got some nice suggestions in the comment section to get around limitations (1) and (2).
Cheapest Web Hosting at $1.92/month With Dreamhost
I happened to come across several blogs and websites in the recent times that have started to refer Dreamhost’s web hosting service, some of them offering various promotional offers, but none of them offering the best possible deal. This prompted me to put this post up to offer the best deal that you can ever get at Dreamhost and which applies to all the hosting plans that Dreamhost offers.
(For those who know the drill, the promo code is TAB97, which will get you a discount of $97 on any Dreamhost plan. This promo code will make it $23 for one year of hosting service under the most basic plan, for example.)
Follow these simple steps to recieve maximum discount:
- First gather some information(“research”) to decide whether Dreamhost is a good hosting service provider for your requirements or not. Continue to the next step only if you think that Dreamhost is for you. (I plan to review a couple of hosting providers in the near future.)
- Once you decide that you want to go with Dreamhost, go to the the sign-up page and select the plan that suits you the best. When filling out the information, enter “TAB97″(without the quotes) in the “Promo Code or email of who referred you:” text field. Click “Continue to secure payment” button to continue to the next page.
- You should see that $97 are deducted from the total price of the plan that you have selected. For example, if you have selected “L1: Crazy Domain Insane” package, then $97 should be deducted from the price of $120 for one year worth of hosting, making the final payable amount around $23. Doubly make sure that correct amount has been deducted before continuing further.
- Enter the rest of the information needed to place the order.
Don’t be fooled by any other promotional code that you recieve promising a discount of $25, $50 or something like that. The maximum discount that you can get at Dreamhost from such promotional codes is $97 and that is what you get with my promotional code TAB97(as I didn’t chose to split the discount between me and the referred customer). You can also search for similar promotional codes that give you the maximum discount possible($97) by going to the Dreamhost forums.
Coming to the question of how good Dreamhost’s hosting service is, no one can give a verdict that holds true in everyone’s case, but I believe that it’s definitely worth $23 for hosting with them for an year. I Hope to follow this up with a more detailed review of Dreamhost soon; until then, have a look at their complete feature set.
NOTE:
- I will try to post an update here as soon as the above promotional code ceases to work, but it should work for a long time to come in my estimation.
- I am not sure but it is believed that the promotional codes only apply if you place the order with Dreamhost using a credit card. Check with the Dreamhost support staff if you wish to pay through paypal/check/money order.
Windows Live Writer: A Slick And Powerful Blogging Tool From Microsoft
2The new desktop blogging tool from Microsoft – Windows Live Writer – is worth checking out by all the Windows users. It looks good, is fast to operate and packs enough functionality to get most of the everyday blogging tasks done conveniently.
The major features of the product include: rich text editing in WYSIWYG style, multiple options for choosing preferred editing mode(see screenshots below): Normal Mode, Web Layout Mode and HTML Code Mode; easy switching between edit and preview modes, easy uploading of the images - to the weblog or to the FTP server, easy way to insert Windows Live Maps into a blog post(wish there were similar support for Google Maps too ;) ), saving the drafts on the local machine(Ctrl-S) or on the weblog(File -> Post Draft to Weblog…), auto-save option, automatic or manual spell-checking option etc.
It also allows changing the weblog settings right from inside the Writer(very few settings can be edited right now, though). The weblog categories are also imported into the Writer and are made available to the blogger for tagging the posts with them.
Writer supports multiple weblogs to be managed from the single interface; weblogs can be maintained through separate accounts for each weblog(access them from the Weblog menu or the drop-down list box at the top-left corner).
All in all, a good initial beta version of the product without any major irritating bugs/shortcomings. There were some minor hiccups though, like the spell-checking tool failed to recognise the word blogging!
Its strange to believe that the developers chose to just insert the spell-checking engine and the dictionary into the product without doing any customisations to better suit the blogging needs. Other words that it couldn’t recognise include: screenshot, weblog and blogger.
Adding Pictures To The Blog
It appears that, going by the feedback from the blogger community, the developers of Live Writer have put in extra amount of effort to help bloggers manage the pictures in their blogs. Inserting pictures in a post and uploading them to the server are straight-forward jobs in Writer; it also provides many other ways in which the images can be manipulated prior to publishing of the post. Selecting the image inserted in the post will open up the Image Properties sidebar on the right side, and from here, many operations can be performed on the selected image, like new dimensions for the image can be specified in pixels, or one of the available pre-defined sizes like small, medium, large can be selected from the “Image” tab of the sidebar.
A side note: If you select medium or large size for the image, it is immediately enlarged in the editing window. This gave difficult time to me while scrolling up and down the image to type the normal text. I don’t know if there is an option like “Always show thumbnail of the image in the editing window…” in the Writer yet, but if there is not, then I recommend it to be one of the features to be added to the final release. I don’t want to edit blog posts carrying images of dimensions 800×600!
The image can be rotated and its brightness can be adjusted. Various effects can also be applied to the images from the “Effects” tab of the Image Properties sidebar. Simple transformation like converting images to black & white can be done or custom Watermarks can be added to the images.
The sidebar also has the options to specify how the image should be laid out with respect to the surrounding text(left, right or inline). See Image Properties -> Layout.
Some Weak Points Of The Live Writer
Though the Writer did not show any recent posts from my weblog(for some strange reason), it did allow me to fetch the last n posts and edit and publish them from Recent Posts -> More… link in the sidebar. But every time I click on the More… link and select my weblog, its fetching the entire list again without bothering to cache any of the information already fetched.
One obvious weak point of the software is that it runs only on the Windows operating system. It may not mean much to the dedicated Windows users, but the trend these days is to get into habit of using such products which are available for maximum number of platforms. With Microsoft, one can’t even hope that a GNU/Linux version will be made available in the future. Mac OSX version might be released depending upon the mood of Microsoft.
Installing Windows Live Writer Beta
I will quickly go through the steps to install Windows Live Writer on a Windows machine, mostly guided by the screenshot images. Download the software from Microsoft’s website and click the installer file to start the installation process. The installer includes the option to create a Windows Live Spaces account for those who don’tyet have a blogging account. Nice way to advertise their service!
If you have your own blog, you need to enter the details of your blog in the next dialog box. Live Writer will try to automatically detect which blogging software is being used for the specified blog and will download and configure the blog software settings to the local machine(this information is used to publish the blogs, fetch previous posts, show the preview of the post, among many other things).
The Writer software supports publishing to an impressive number of weblog software, ten in all. Apart from these 10 blogging software, blogs which support the MovableType or Metaweblog publishing interface(API) can also be used with the Writer. If the Writer fails to detect the blogging software for the specified blog, it prompts the user to select it manually(WordPress, MovableType, LiveJournal, WordPress.com were automatically detected; Blogger.com was not detected, as Live Writer apparently isn’t yet aware of the new Blogger Beta publishing interface I guess).
Once the installation is finished, the Writer will open an empty post in the theme style set in the blogging software. This particular feature needs some work in my opinion as the theme that I use with my wordpress software was not at all satisfactorily emulated by the Writer. I switched to “Normal Mode” to continue editing and there were no problems here. HTML geeks though will have to face a lot of difficulty if they want to edit in raw HTML mode as all the bugs of the product seem to have taken refuge in this particular feature(event the ‘Del’ key is not working properly in this mode). The most impressive feature of Live Writer has to be its “Web Preview” feature; it shows exactly how the blog will look like once the current entry is posted to it. Even the “Recent Posts” box in the sidebar is appropriately updated(a thumbs up to the WordPress’s publishing API)!
If you ever change the look & feel of your weblog, just select View -> Update Weblog Style menu and the local settings will be updated.
End Notes
I haven’t used very many number of desktop blogging tools in Windows, so can’t say where this product could stand among them, but its zero cost, slick appearance and decent functionality should satisfy most of the expectations of regular bloggers.
Note: I have never posted any blog from the Windows operating system before; I am primarily a GNU/Linux user. The appeal of a free desktop blogging tool from Microsoft was strong enough to persuade me to hunt for an Internet-connection enabled Windows machine at my home and test this product on it. I have installed the software just now, and am posting this blog entry from it even without first testing it on a test blog(my confidence levels are high). The only problems I faced while composing this post and publishing it were with taking screenshots(such a long procedure in Windows!) and editing them(I know nothing except GIMP; no time to install it on Windows). I had to copy the screenshots to my GNU/Linux machine, edit them and bring them back to the Windows machine. Other than that, the entire exercise of posting this entry was a pleasurable experience.
SixApart’s Vox Is Blogging With Community Feel
0Think about your favourite blogging service(blogger.com, wordpress.com etc) and think about all the fun you have at community sites like MySpace, Live Spaces, Orkut etc and then combine these two environments: You get Vox, the new blogging service from SixApart, for those who love to blog but love the community feel too. Though most of the community websites too support blogging, Vox is a blogging service foremost, and communities are created around these blogs.
Vox is still an invite-only, beta service. If you are interested, you can place a request for an invite and then wait for it to arrive. Or hunt the Internet for a spare Vox invites from the existing Vox members. I had got an invite several weeks ago from SixApart but didn’t quite feel motivated to start using it. It does have some features that are lacking in most of the free services, like convenient way of adding youtube videos, flickr/photobucket pictures, books from Amazon.com etc. Here is a visual tour of the service for those who don’t have an invite to check out how the interface of Vox looks like.
Composing blog entries is a child play with no HTML knowledge needed. Inserting images, videos etc is easier than in other free services. Tags can be attached to every individual blog entry.
Adding and organising a collection of media files is simple from the following interface. The media files thus added are accessible while composing the blog entries.
Upload photos from your computer, flickr account, photobucket etc to Vox Library.
Upload videos from your computer, Youtube etc to Vox Library.
Comments can be added to the pictures too.
One of the following layouts can be selected for a blog. The Vox team keeps adding new layouts and themes to go with these layouts at regular intervals so that the users have a good collection from which to choose a favourite look for one’s blog. Two column and three column layouts are available for selection.
Select which modules you want appearing in the sidebar of the blog. Similar to WordPress Widgets.
This is how the neighbourhood looks like. The appearance depends on who is present in your neighbourhood.
Vox team keeps sending invites to existing Vox members so that they can invite their friends to Vox. If you are desparate to try out this service, you can consider sending a request on the SixApart mailing list.
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