VanishingPoint

2010 State of the Blogosphere - " In Transition "

Bloggers’ use of and engagement with various social media tools is expanding, and the lines between blogs, micro-blogs, and social networks are disappearing. As the blogosphere converges with social media, sharing of blog posts is increasingly done through social networks—even while blogs remain significantly more influential on blog content than social networks are. via State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction - Technorati Blogging.

Technorati released their yearly "State of the Blogosphere" 2010 last week. This year they believe that while the blogopshpere is still growing, currently blogging is in "transition" from the growth of mainstream blogging to the adoption and incorporation of micro-blogging and social networking into mainstream daily life.

-- Read on for the Key Trends and more information -- Here are some of the "key trends":

The Reach of Twitter...

[caption id="attachment_426" align="alignright" width="283" caption="GoDaddy.com on Twitter @godaddy"][/caption] Had an interesting (frustrating but interesting) experience this morning.  You read that I recently decided to switch to Wordpress from Typepad (that might not be final if I cannot figure out a few things). About midnight yesterday, I set the nameservers on my GoDaddy registered domain to point my domain scottweidig.com to my space on Wordpress. After completing that process, it takes about 4-12 hours for the new information to be propagated throughout all of the DNS servers on the internet. (it is usually a bit less in practice). Last night about 2am, the servers began to correctly map my blog. However, this morning I was once again back at the GoDaddy parked page :0(  But, here is where it gets interesting... After a frustrating hour bouncing between my MacBook Pro using 3 different browsers (Safari, ForeFox, and Chrome) all being pushed to the GoDaddy parked page and my iPhone 4 which ALWAYS resolved properly. I turned to a wider audience: Twitter. Interestingly, GoDaddy responded within minutes... (hope this works, I am trying to leverage Wordpress' BlackBird Pie to present tweets) http://twitter.com/GoDaddy/status/1291911751012352 http://twitter.com/vanishingpoint/status/1294151597424641 http://twitter.com/GoDaddy/status/1297133734989824 http://twitter.com/vanishingpoint/status/1297170288345088 We then moved to private direct messages to exchange more information. Even though we were not able to actually do anything to correct the issue which was not on GoDaddy's end or on my end, it was really cool to see an organization care enough and take interest in random use issues.  Is was also interesting to see the power of twitter in action for solving problems.  Where initially, I was hitting twitter to leverage the folks I know to simply check what they were seeing when trying to get to scottweidig.com. What ended up happening was so much more than I expected. Thanks again @godaddy ^Cj

Frustration with change... [update]

[caption id="attachment_406" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="GoDaddy parking hell..."][/caption] [update] So, now I am experiencing odd behavior... First thing this morning, access to my blog was working correctly... Now, when I attempt to access it, it goes back to the GoDaddy parked space, but all of the settings are correct.  However, on my iPhone, the site passes through correctly... If this continues, I don't know what I am going to do.  I never had this issues with my old host. or GoDaddy.  I have another issue as well.  I cannot seem to use a html script within a Page or in a widget like i could in the past... The frustrations continue! [original] So, tonight I made the switch to my new blog host (wordpress.com). I followed the rules, I ported over all of my posts, did some minor housekeeping and adjustments, I setup my connections to Facebook and Twitter, and then I went to manage my domain... Initially, GoDaddy.com made the setup look easy.  I simply provided the Wordpress nameservers and poof my blog should automagically appear when someone entered scottweidig.com... Well, that is what appears to happen when I "forwarded" my domain through GoDaddy... however, when I set the forward as I had for my TypePad blog, GoDaddy reset my nameservers to their own effectively breaking the link to my blog again once everything tripped through the switches of the world.  Now I am waiting again for the internet to catch up with my host changes... But, by the time you read this, well... it will all be back to normal. Or you won't see this... Either way, I wanted to document my midnight frustration... GGRRRRRRrrrrrr!

A Year with scottweidig.com

This week a number of "alerts" rolled into my inbox.  GoDaddy wanted to remind me that I needed to renew my domain(s), Six Apart - TypePad's creators were purchased by Say Media, and just today, ClusterMaps advised me that my visitor's map is being archived.  So, I ended the year October 3, 2009 - October 3, 2010 with approximately 220 posts which 4,269 unique visitors perused and hopefully enjoyed. I want to thank every individual who took his or her time to plow through my ramblings and those who commented to extended my thoughts via Facebook, or re-tweeting.

While I have been blogging for about 4 years now, this marks the first anniversary of using my name as part of... well, in a way using my own name as a "brand" if you will.  Prior to re-tooling my blog into my own domain of scottweidig.com, may folks simply knew me as "VanishingPoint" on twitter... A few even remembered me as associated to my other (now defunct) blog Digital Cents as opposed to who I really was.  Now, I never hid my identity when writing, but I always worked to make myself part of something else as opposed to making something part of me... In a way I guess, I believed I was capitalizing on that mythical anonymity of the internet.  On October 3, 2009, that all changed as I registered scottweidig.com and ported VanishingPoint to my new domain.

On that day, I began to work on writing for myself.  I am not sure if I started this as a hobby, as a way to build something more, as a way to "find myself", if I was following the crowd, or something else.  I honestly don't know why I felt compelled to create something around who I am/was, but one thing that I have learned is that over the last year, I have been developing who I am and what is important to me through my writing.  Maybe not the strongest realization for change or the biggest endorsement for blogging ever, but while I cannot put it into the written word right at this moment, to me it is becoming more important than ever to try to find time to write... That IS something important. I need to really think more about this because I feel I might be onto something more here...

I Blog, Therefore I am...

Someone much more important than me has to have written that before. but I just felt compelled to write that... Well, I took a second to look that up... Google it, I got 32,600,000 hits and a book "I Blog, Therefore I am" See, I am not so original.

With any "anniversary", I sometimes think about what's changed in the last year... When I was 28, that simple thought brought me into competitive martial arts which found me 2 years later training 2 hours a day, 6 days a week in Tae Kwon Do... thinking about the 3 broken ribs I just got as part of belt testing... But, I digress, I was thinking about the process of writing for myself...

In the past year, I am finding that I write for many reasons... I write to think my way through issues. I write to get ideas out or to further the ideas and reach of others. I write to have something "public" to look back upon. I write because I feel compelled too... I write to share information. I write to ease angst... What I have really found is that I write for ME.  I always hope that others find some shred of interest in or insight in my thoughts and ideas, but really... I write for me.

Now I know that I have readers... well at least 4,269 folks have at least looked at my writing in the last year... some of you have commented, many just move on... and that is OK.

What do I write about?

VP Tag Cloud

Looking back through my tag cloud and I think the cloud is missing much of my tagging - aside: I started to use tags better in the last year... prior to that I created a ton of categories... oof too many to manage and I am trying to get better at that - I seem to write about Apple, privacy (I'll lump Facebook into that topic), learning and education... If I look at my posts honestly, I enjoy writing about technology and privacy issues.  Which came as an interesting little revelation as I started VanishingPoint around the ideas of education and professional development.  Writing over the last year has helped my find a niche that I enjoy playing in as opposed to forcing thoughts on topics. Overall not a bad thing :0)

What am I looking forward too?

Hopefully, more writing in my areas of interest (and hopefully the interest of my readers). In looking through many of my "referrers" some of the really hot topics you all are interested in are iPads, eReaders, and privacy issues... again who'd a thunk? Additionally, I am hoping to monetize my blog a bit more.  I like to review products and look at forward thinking things, so over time you may see some ads popping in or other links that could bring in a bit of revenue to your's truly (I hope). I can't imagine that it will be much, but every dime helps in this economy... However, I will always stick toletting everyone know when I am plugging something for a potential financial gain (plus its the law).

What can you look forward too?

For starters, a new look and feel... this is coming predominately because I am moving from TypePadto Wordpress.  Right now, cost is the biggest factor, but in the long run, it is fun to move around a bit and try something new. I have to say I really like the ability to have captions be automatic under photos... That was a huge perk in this little adventure. Secondly, a better build out of pages for content.  I had about 5-6 pages on my TypePad blog, but most were auto-generated or only partially completed.  I plan on changing that. Third, more content in a streamlined format.  I am going to begin using extended formats to keep from having to scroll down and down and down on my homepage for articles.

Finally, I plan on finishing more posts that I start.  It was interesting to find out that I had 24 drafts sitting partially written (this was one of them). I started this post October 4, 2010 and here it is November 6, 2010 and I am just bringing it to conclusion. I also want to be posting daily as opposed to a flurry in one day and nothing for a week or so... That will help me also be getting this smoogh out of my head.

Overall, I want to thank those of you who have come along for the ride and made this past year fun and worth while to me. Thanks and I'll see you at Wordpress in the near future (whenever the domain registration goes through (I hope I did it right...)

-Scott

A Year with scottweidig.com

This week a number of "alerts" rolled into my inbox.  GoDaddy wanted to remind me that I needed to renew my domain(s), Six Apart - TypePad's creators were purchased by Say Media, and ClusterMaps advised me that my visitor's map is being archived.  So, I ended the year October 3, 2009 - October 3, 2010 with approximately 220 posts which 4,269 unique visitors perused and hopefully enjoyed. I want to thank every individual who took his or her time to plow through my ramblings and those who commented to extended my thoughts via Facebook, or re-tweeting. While I have been blogging for about 4 years now, this marks the first anniversary of using my name as part of... well, in a way using my own name as a "brand" if you will.  Prior to re-tooling my blog into my own domain of scottweidig.com, may folks simply knew me as "VanishingPoint" on twitter... A few even remembered me as associated to my other (now defunct) blog Digital Cents as opposed to who I really was.  Now, I never hid my identity when writing, but I always worked to make myself part of something else as opposed to making something else part of me... In a way I guess, I believed I was capitalizing on that mythical anonymity of the internet.  On October 3, 2009, that all changed as I registered scottweidig.com and ported VanishingPoint to my new domain. On that day, I began to work on writing for myself.  I am not sure if I started this as a hobby, as a way to build something more, as a way to "find myself", if I was following the crowd, or something else.  I honestly don't know why I felt compelled to create something around who I am/was, but one thing that I have learned is that over the last year, I have been developing who I am and what is important to me through my writing.  Maybe not the strongest realization for change or the biggest endorsement for blogging ever, but while I cannot put it into the written word right at this moment, to me it is becoming more important than ever to try to find time to write... That IS something important. I need to really think more about this because I feel I might be onto something more here...

I Blog, Therefore I am...

Someone much more important than me has to have written that before. but I just felt compelled to write that... Well, I took a second to look that up... Google it, I got 32,600,000 hits and a book "I Blog, Therefore I am" See, I am not so original. With any "anniversary", I sometimes think about what's changed in the last year... When I was 28, that simple thought brought me into competitive martial arts which found me 2 years later training 2 hours a day, 6 days a week in Tae Kwon Do... thinking about the 3 broken ribs I just got as part of belt testing... But, I digress, I was thinking about the process of writing for myself... Why do I Write? In the past year, I am finding that I write for many reasons... I write to think my way through issues. I write to get ideas out or to further the ideas and reach of others. I write to have something "public" to look back upon. I write because I feel compelled too... I write to share information. I write to ease angst... What I have really found is that I write for ME.  I always hope that others find some shred of interest in or insight in my thoughts and ideas, but really... I write for me. Now I know that I have readers... well at least 4,269 folks have at least looked at my writing in the last year... some of you have commented, many just move on... and that is OK. What do I write about? [caption id="attachment_401" align="alignright" width="287" caption="VP Tag Cloud"][/caption] Looking back through my tag cloud and I think the cloud is missing much of my tagging - aside: I started to use tags better in the last year... prior to that I created a ton of categories... oof too many to manage and I am trying to get better at that - I seem to write about Apple, privacy (I'll lump Facebook into that topic), learning and education... If I look at my posts honestly, I enjoy writing about technology and privacy issues.  Which came as an interesting little revelation as I started VanishingPoint around the ideas of education and professional development.  Writing over the last year has helped my find a niche that I enjoy playing in as opposed to forcing thoughts on topics. Overall not a bad thing :0) What am I looking forward too? Hopefully, more writing in my areas of interest (and hopefully the interest of my readers). In looking through many of my "referrers" some of the really hot topics you all are interested in are iPads, eReaders, and privacy issues... again who'd a thunk? Additionally, I am hoping to monetize my blog a bit more.  I like to review products and look at forward thinking things, so over time you may see some ads popping in or other links that could bring in a bit of revenue to your's truly (I hope). I can't imagine that it will be much, but every dime helps in this economy... However, I will always stick to letting everyone know when I am plugging something for a potential financial gain (plus its the law). What can you look forward too? For starters, a new look and feel... this is coming predominately because I am moving from TypePad to Wordpress.  Right now, cost is the biggest factor, but in the long run, it is fun to move around a bit and try something new. I have to say I really like the ability to have captions be automatic under photos... That was a huge perk in this little adventure. Secondly, a better build out of pages for content.  I had about 5-6 pages on my TypePad blog, but most were auto-generated or only partially completed.  I plan on changing that. Third, more content in a streamlined format.  I am going to begin using extended formats to keep from having to scroll down and down and down on my homepage for articles. Finally, I plan on finishing more posts that I start.  It was interesting to find out that I had 24 drafts sitting partially written (this was one of them). I started this post October 4, 2010 and here it is November 6, 2010 and I am just bringing it to conclusion. I also want to be posting daily as opposed to a flurry in one day and nothing for a week or so... That will help me also be getting this smoogh out of my head. Overall, I want to thank those of you who have come along for the ride and made this past year fun and worth while to me. Thanks and I'll see you at Wordpress in the near future (whenever the domain registration goes through (I hope I did it right...) -Scott

New York Times Re-enacts the Civil War!

How cool is this?! Civil War buffs, Social Studies teachers, and historians look here:

DISUNION
One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.

Here is a direct link as I don't want to get this one buried or ignored as it hits Facebook: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/

Mobile Blogging from here.

Tags: Civil War, random coolness, New York Times, blogging, history

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

New York Times Re-enacts the Civil War!

How cool is this?! Civil War buffs, Social Studies teachers, and historians look here:

DISUNION
One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.

Here is a direct link as I don't want to get this one buried or ignored as it hits Facebook: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/

Mobile Blogging from here.

Tags: Civil War, random coolness, New York Times, blogging, history

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Blog updates, Feed Informer, and Disclaimers / Disclosures

I think that some of the cleaning and re-arranging that Trish and I have been doing at the house has gotten me to be a bit reflective about my blog.  It's been a while now since I have made any changes to the look and structure of scottweidig.com. So,with a bit of a lazy Sunday going here, I have spent the last few hours making small, but I feel nice changes to the site. One of the first changes I decided to make was to move my Instapaper feeds from the left side bar to individual pages.  I am not sure how many folks looked at the side bars (or will look at the pages), but this is a bit of a better place for them.

This changed presented the first challenge.  I use Typepad for my blog, and the sidebars have pre-defined "widgets" that "do stuff". Big technical term there I know.  Aggregating RSS feeds into a nice presentable format is one of of the nice things that comes standard wth Typepad sidebars.  That said, there is not an easy way to make this happen within a post or page itself. So, it was off for a bit of internet searching. While I already had an RSS feed from Instapaper, what I needed was a way to access that feed and embed it into a post.  What I found was feed.informer.com

This is a free service that will allow you to take an RSS feed, and display the contents in html, PHP, Flash (I hate flash), as a Picture, and a few others.  The "basic" account is free, but you can pay to remove the Feed Informer logo from the bottom of the feed.  With the basic account you can also only display up to the last 50 feeds, where a paid account allows greater freedom.

I have found that the basic account is really pretty robust.  You can have up to 100 "Digests" (an assortment of any number of feeds in each digest), display up to 50 feed stories, you can even have Feed informer run a search query against all of the feeds to narrow for specific topics. It even has the capabilities to eliminate duplicates.

Think of the possibilities to be able to create a digest of say 50 of the top educational blogs, but only having posts that have specifically information on Quadratic Equations displayed in a certain section of your website.

To use Feed Informer you simply have to sign up for a free account.  Then create your first digest. The system walks you through the process nicely.

1. Choose your Digest's sources. - This is where you enter the RSS feed(s) that you want to draw information from. You can have as few as 1 or it appears as many as you wish in a digest.
2. Choose the Digest's settings - Here you provide a name, choose the order you wish the feeds to be displayed, select how may items to show, provide a search query (if you wish), and choose how to handle duplicates.
3. Choose the Digest's Design - Here you pick from HTML, Flash, and Pictures for how your feeds will be displayed on your site. There are about 10 templates to choose from depending on your output choice.
4. Publish your Digest - Here you will get the embed code, javascript code, PHP code, etc. for you to enter into your website or blog.

Then you simply embed that snippet of code into your blog entry, or blog page, or website, and both services match up to automatically update the feed entries of your choice.

The Technology Tips, Instructional Ideas, and Random Coolness pages at the top of my blog now all use this service for dynamically updating their content depending on the articles I choose to add to my Instapaper account. Here are some screen shots of Feed Informer:

• 
• 
• 
• 

Overall, this is a pretty nice tool that has a plethora of uses for the blogger, educator, and web-enabled person.

Over the next few days, I plan on continuing to make small changes to my blog.  You may see related links or icons pop into the picture as well as a oossible change in look and feel.  Additionally, I will be increasing my iPhone App Recommendation page to actually have more that one app on it.  I have many friends, co-workers, and readers ask me about different apps I use in my daily life.  It is time to invest some effort to catalog and promote those developers who have made my life a bit easier through the use of their apps.

Finally, I have updated my "It's Me!" page to include a couple of disclaimers and disclosures. One of the main facets to any blogger's life is the interconnectedness of ideas, information, and personal passion and a companies possible revenue future.  A few months back, Congress passed a law requiring bloggers to provide full disclosure regarding products or services they they write about if there is a financial benefit to the blogger.  While in my case that is a really really REALLY rare occurrance, I often find myself touting or championing this site, or this tool, or that service.  These disclosures will help anyone reading to understand if I am receiving any financial compensation for my advice, recommendation, or writing.

Stay tuned.

VP

New Look... content and more... (under construction)

I am spending some time today to review and change thing around on my blog. Interestingly TypePad allows you to create new themes, designs, and some content while keeping the current look and feel for your visitors.  Then when you are ready a simple check box enables your new look!.  I hope that things seem a bit more organized and refreshed.  As I have gone through the years, I have argued with myself about the challenges and ethics of monetizing a blog... I still am thinking about those issues, but some of my perceptions may be changing... Hopefully, in the near future I will continue to make small beneficial changes to VanishingPoint.

~Scott

Testing of MarsEdit3

Over the past few months, since I got my MBP I have been testing various offline blogging tools.  I have played with Ecto, Qumana, and Mars Edit in it's v 2 form.  While each had some strengths, they all have their weaknesses and a varying level of costs...

In the last couple of weeks, I have been using Ecto by illumineX more often than not.  However, not for the reason that you might imagine... Really, I sort of defaulted to Ecto because illumineX also released an update to iBlogger (which leverages the Ecto framework) for the iPhone which is amazing.  Don't get me wrong, Ecto in and of itself is a nice blogging tool.  But, it does have it's quirks like: not easily being able to adjust font sizes or for that matter change font easily. (Yes, there are command options, and drop down menus, but still...

So, I was really interested in looking at the new version of Mars Edit that Dan Jalkut and the folks at Red Sweater released today.  I am not sure if Dan took to heart some of the concerns I expressed in my previous post, but his comments on my blog, and this release makes me think that he might have. While HTML code possibilities are here, the novice blogger can now default MarsEdit 3 to a nice pretty Rich Text input for entry. For me, much preferred (even though I don't consider myself a novice blogger or technologist) as I can crawl in to HTML when I want to, but the majority of the time I can simply look at clean inputed text :0).

As you can see here the text entry area is very clean and minimalistic. Also, a perk I just found, when I was adjusting the size of the image it constrained the properties automatically. i.e. changing from 718px wide to 240px wide automatically adjusted the height of the image to maintain the proper proportions.  That said, I have yet to find a tool that will auto thumbnail and upload / link the thumbnail to a larger original version... My TypePad online editor does enable me to do that which is nice.

Note to Dan: If I can make a future request on the day you launched 3, that would be a great feature.  Having the ability to resize a larger image to fit into the confines of a post is great. Having the ability to click on said image and get a full sized version in a popup (like my online TypePad editor does would be AMAZING. Here is a post with an example.) Right now if I click on any of the images here, nothing happens and you lose some of the detail.  Having the ability to see a full sized image when clicking on it is a great benefit especially in the educational arena.

MarsEdit3 still works in the expected multiple window method. An editing window, a post preview window, and the blog "maintenance" window which allows you to see previous posts, view other blogs, check out and update media etc.  Categories are easily accessible to the right of the text you are working on, however, adding tags or "keywords", as they are called in MarsEdit3, requires you to enable them under the "view" menu. Since I use both while I am blogging, this was a concern that was easily rectified.

One of the new features I like is the comprehensive and auto-adjusting right-click menus. Ahh... the power of the right-click! MarsEdit3 fully takes advantage of right-clicking to provide a contextual menu of choices.  They can be as simple are alternate spellings to changing alignment and formatting hyperlinks.

I really like the easy block quote format.

Version 3 now provides easy access to images. You can easily access images on your Mac (from folders, iPhoto, PhotoBooth, and folders [including Skitch]), a flickr account, or even images that MarsEdit3 has uploaded to your blog.  You can even add an image that is already on the web. That is once you figure out the it is called "Image from link" under the "Format" menu (or right-click>format). On an interesting oddity side, while you can add images from inside of a Skitch folder and a number of other folders on your hard drive, there is no access to your desktop which is where I drop all of my images temporarily when writing. You need to know that you can simply drag and drop them from the desktop into where you want them in the MarsEdit post which then prompts you to format the image like any other you bring into the post. Not a biggie, but I just thought it interesting see as how much access MarsEdit now gives you into your system. One other image related issue that I have tripped across so far is the fact that I cannot find a way to "pad" my images at all.  Padding keeps text from butting right up against the image making it look all cramped and squished.  You will notice that I have chosen to right-justify all of my images in this post except for the first. That one has a lot of white on all four sides.

Here is a small one that I jave left justified to show the difference. See how all the text is squished onto the image... You might not mind, but I do...

The one other thing that I cannot find how to do under the Rich Text is how to add embedded media.  Yes, I can flip to HTML and simply copy and paste the embed code, but if I am using the RT editor should I really have to?

I am going to continue to dig into MarsEdit3 over the next few days, but at first blush I really like the enhancements that Dan and Res Sweater have made between v2 and v3.  I hope that they continue to press the envelope in future enhancements. If I had a short list it would contain:

• Embedded media (in RichText entry form)
• Ability to easily add "Like posts" from my blog (from tags/keywords)
• Padding for images
• Image thumbnails with linking to full images

Ok, that is a start.  Nice job Red Sweater!

Other Posts Like This One:

• Testing of Mars Edit(2)
• Starting to play with Ecto and iBlogger
• Do you Mobile Blog?

Technorati Tags: MarsEdit3, RedSweater, Ecto, iBlogger, illumineX

Do you Mobile Blog? Can you hyperlink? [update]

[update: I just discovered that I can embed video from YouTube (or I guess I can embed anything really) right into iBlogger! how cool is that?! See this post for an example]

I have been blogging for a few years now and have used a number of different tools from standard web interfaces to offline blog writers like Windows Live Writer (probably the best edited/publisher around) to mobile blogging apps... one of the things that I have always struggled with is the desire to mobile blog, but the apps for that are few and most range from cruddy to passable to excelling in one area but not a lot of areas... the platform doesn't matter, WinMo, Android, iPhone, Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, Spaces, etc... I have tried a lot of apps. the one tool that was always elusive was creating a hyperlink to other material.

Wordpress Mobile, Blog Press, and others have the ability to post one or multiple images, but none can create a hyperlink... and just typing to pasting the link is not a guarantee that a blog would translate that into a true link when posted... So, often I would create a post, and then when I got back by my laptop/desktop I would need to add links, etc.

Well, I finally found the app I have been searching for all of this time iBlogger by illumineX. iBlogger is capable of not only posting images, categories, tags, etc. It also allows for the creation of hyperlinks!

To iBlogger's credit, the developer must be using a great save state script because I have been able to move back and forth between web searches on Safari, YouTube and the iPhone embedded YouTube app, and Mail to get link information and move it into iBlogger's link generator. This is really cool.

That said, there are tradeoffs like everything. Prior to finding and experimenting with iBlogger, I used Blog Press and have been used to being able to post mutliple images something iBlogger cannot do. Also, iBlogger crops portrait ages for some reason... That said, there are fewer times when i am mobile blogging that I desire to post multiple images as oppose to being able to hyperlink. That I typically want to do anytime I create an entry.

Additionally, there is the cost. At $9.99, iBlogger is one of the most expensive apps that I own in my iPhone arsenal. However, both of those drop quickly in importance balanced against the ability to hyperlink!

One final comment before I close this 40 minute hyperlink happy mobile iBlogger blogging session. To get the
links exactly where and how you want them you do need to jump through an extra step that I hope illumineX changes as iPhone OS4 allowed overlays get implemented. right now you need to create the link which iBlogger adds to the end of your current post with a blank line above. You then need to go back into editing the blog entry and simply cut the HTML link and then paste it where you would like it in your post. For me, this is another little tradeoff that I am happy to live with to be able to create hyperlinks!

Now about being able to add multiple images...

Mobile Blogging from here.

Tags: iBlogger, illumineX, mobile

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Starting to play with Ecto and iBlogger

I am still looking for that "awesome" blog editing tool. The TypePad online editor is really great, but there are some quirks like weird indenting behavior that frustrates me, and I often like to have the option to start a post and come back to it through out the day - while I can save drafts, having a reliable offline editor is a nice option.

The reason that I started looking at Ecto, is because I am interested in possibly leveraging iBlogger from my iPhone for mobile blogging. I currently use BlogPress, but the limitations for not being able to create a hyperlink cause it to really fall down. Plus it won't naturally translate a URL into a link itself. I need to go back later to update the post to redo the links or add them. iBlogger appears to have that capability. Now that said, the cost is also triple of BlogPress ($2.99) at $9.99 (and it looks like it might be going up to $20.00) and some of the reviews create concern that illlumineX has not been supporting or updating the app.

Update: not accurate version 1.08 just went up to the AppStore April 6, 2010.

So, since iBlogger is built on the Ecto platform and there is a 21 day free trial of Ecto, I thought I would play with it a bit before jumping into iBlogger.

Here is a challenge I have already... see the image above? How do I get my text to wrap appropriately in Ecto?

Anyone out there blog with Ecto and/or iBlogger? Love to hear your thoughts.

Ecto, iBlogger, illumineX

General frustrations and a change in posting style...

 I just wanted to drop a quick (well relatively quick for me) post.  Part of the reason for not posting often lately was a general sense of frustration with a few situations I have been experiencing recently. Home life is great, but in other areas of my life well... So, in an effort to keep myself from venting here I have chosen to be silent for the time being.  I know that I will come through this ok, but I just want to be a bit past the initial emotions to allow for clear headed decisions to prevail as opposed to an emotion charged outburst.  

That said, I have been seeing and reading a ton that I want to comment on as well as investigate from an educational prospective.  To that end, I think that I am going to mimic the styling of John Gruber from Daring Fireball.  Brief posts with commentary and links to full articles, as well as intermittent longer posts to better flesh out ideas.  

I hope that you all stay tuned through some of the times that I have coming up and I will be posting more traditionally as time goes on.

Scott 

Image Credit: Adam Tinworth "Frustration"

Testing of MarsEdit

[update... I know already?!] apparently, I need to figure out how to add line breaks as most of this is nice little paragraphs in the preview window in MarsEdit2, however everything is all run together after you get to the quote... definately not wysiwyg...) Ok, I don't like needing to force a line break with the "BR" html code... well... [update 2] it looks like line breaks are really not enough... I need to break my thoughts into "P/P" paragraphs (I would have put the actual html, but you would not have seen it as MarsEdit2 does not have a function to allow for code to be part of a blog post... more strikes against it...

Since I got my MBP, I have been looking for an offline blog editor. While I don't mind editing with the online TypePad, I really prefer a much more robust editor. Unfortunately, coming from the PC side, I don't think that there is a great MAC alternative to Windows Live Writer and I am not alone:

From Microsoft's Social Forums, to many bloggers: PakPoint, TechCrunch, Daniel Winter, Mountain Vista, SuperSite for Windows, to folks who went and boot campped to run a virtualization tool to get Windows on their MAC to be able to use Windows Live Writer: DragonStyle, WLW via VMWare hereand others...

I loved running across this comment:

Windows Live Writer is so far-and-away the best desktop blogging tool. I switched to a Mac this year and have tried every free and paid tool out there. Nothing on Windows or Mac even comes close for any price and they’re giving it away. I wish that they would either make a Mac version or the folks at Code Weavers would support it. Running Parallels for one app is such a drag.
.-= Christopher Masiello

So, I am now trying a number of different MAC-based offline blogging engines: Obviously, this was created with MarsEdit, but I will also be trying Blogo, Qumana, Ecto, and even online tools like Zoho Writer (which can be run offline). Hopefully, I will be able to land on a single tool that will allow me to feel comfortable on and offline.

As opposed to running through a full review here, I am simply going to post a couple of links to other reviews as they pretty much sum most of the interesting bits up. Here's one on MarsEdit 2 v.s. Ecto 3, and Mashable's top 10 roundup.

So, what do I think... Now I have found MarsEdit2 to be pretty user friendly. As you can see in my screen shot above, MarsEdit runs in multiple windows... which makes for an interesting tine to say the least. You have your composing window where all of the actual input is made. You can publish to multiple blogs, choose whether you want to have the full text on the main page, or use an "extended" version where an excerpt is placed on your main pace, and the remainder of the post in on the permalink page. You have access to your categories, but there is not a way to create a new category. While not a mandatory thing, it is nice to have that feature honestly. There is also server options regarding your post.

Through the composing window you have the ability to open a preview of your post (very nice as you are composing in html - with no real wysiwyg to speak of), and to open a Media window to add pictures and video into your posts. While there is direct integration with Flickr (nice) I do have complaint as there is no way to link/embed an image that is already on the web (which you also cannot do from TypePad's online editor either... ggrrr...). You CAN drag and drop an image into your post, or the media window, (slick) but after that the media manager wants to upload the photo to your blog as opposed to simply embedding from the web. A needless waste of space in my opinion.

But, the text markup drop down to the left here is quite user friendly especially for adding hyperlinks.

While MarsEdit2 seems to accomplish the task, it cannot leverage tags or as mentioned create categories (which I need to for this post :0( ), text is abutted right to images (not so pretty in my opinion) and border color is not easily changed... It leaves me preferring to simply use TypePad's online editor to accomplish the same tasks. The online editor even provides a bit more robustness actually which is sad.

On a side note, I received an email from TypePad this evening, and apparently they have a beta version out there that DOES allow for link/embed's to online images! Swaheet! I have asked to be allowed to take part in the beta. I'll let you know what I find (if I can).

Ok, Next Post will leverage Qumana to see its capabilities and how it compared to MarsEdit2.

The Making of a Blog

Since I just went through a number of hoops migrating my blog from edublogs.org to typepad, I thought I would put down some of the things that I was thinking about when I was creating this “new” blog.  There are many of you who already blog, some simply Facebook, others may think that it is too hard to create and keep up a blog, and there are some who have a blog and either see features on other blogs you would like to have, or are wondering how someone did “X”.

Now there are a number of amazing blogs out there and mine can’t compete with many of them, but I thought I would let you behind the scenes a bit with what I have done, and am hoping to still do with mine. 

Self-Hosting or Hosted

First, you really need to decide what level of technical experience you have and the setup / updating / upgrading commitment you want to make.  This will help you to determine whether you want to self-host a blog engine or have someone else host it for you.  Overall, I see two major benefits to self-hosting: control and customization. 

• With a self-hosted blog, you have the ultimate control.  You can upgrade when you wish to (keeps a host from upgrading on you and breaking a crucial add-on) or not.  Additionally, you are not at the whim of the host who can trim services you have grown accustom to or worse move them from free to a cost for use.  Both of those situations happened to me with edublogs.
• With a self-hosted blog you have the ultimate customization.  You can add any plug-in, add-on, widget, etc.  You can custom code your template and anything else in on your blog.

However, with self-hosting you are often on your own when an upgrade did not go as planned, you have custom coded to a point you cannot upgrade, you come under a specific spam or DDoS (Direct Denial of Service) attack…

The second option is a hosted blog using a blogging service like: Blogger, Microsoft Spaces, WordPress, Typepad, and many others. These services offer a variety of levels from completely free blogs to premium and business accounts that allow whole organizations to have blogs for their employees.  Additionally, there are differing levels of support, features, and benefits that come along with the differing levels of costs. If you are interested in starting a hosted blog, most have a “trial period” that will allow you to play with the service for 14-30 days to ensure this is the choice for you. Almost all are really easy to signup and setup with just a few clicks.

Another thing to think about when choosing a host (especially it you are a teacher an plan on having your students blog at some point.  A number of the services like Edublogs.org and Class Blogmeister have functionality for easily and safely setting up student blogs.  This will also depend on the grade level you teach and your goals for the blogs.  I know of one secondary school where the choice was to go with a Live Spaces account for each student in a major 1:1 initiative. One of the goals is for teacher – student secure sharing via skydrive, but the other is giving students a voice that they can keep after they finish high school and to begin the awareness of managing their digital footprint.

Choosing a Blog Engine

Ok, so when choosing a blog engine have a purpose and possible future in mind. 

While having a strong technical background, and having run servers in the past, one might think that I would prefer to self-host… that thought did cross my mind, and I explored the various possibilities, but I really didn’t want the possible hassles of forcing everything to work… So, my choice needed to be a hosted environment. 

Here were my criteria:

• Easy to use
• Good integration with many social services (facebook, flickr, twitter, etc.)
• Mobile Blogging capabilities
• Cost effective
• Access to a variety of templates and widgets at any level as opposed to getting increased capabilities ONLY if you upgrade.
• Ability to map a domain (no more myblog.whatever.whatever.com)
• Decent bandwidth and storage

After a couple months of off and on trials, Typepad fit my needs best. So, after signing up for a trial, and beginning to walk through the setup, I went on to the next steps.

Getting a Domain Name

To obtain a domain name you simply need to go to a domain registrar and see if the name you are looking for is available.  Click here for a list of the top ranking domain registrars. The other choice you will need to make will be the domain extension.  The most popular top level domain is .com which you see just about everywhere… other popular domain extensions are: .net .biz .info among others.  I chose to register with godaddy.com. I have used godaddy in the past and they provide not only domain registration services, but may other services including hosting as well. About $11 later, I held my new domain. Now there is a stated 24-72 hour wait time for the domain name to be propagated throughout the internet switches and servers throughout the world… pretty daunting when you think about it, yet it is commonplace happening many many many times each day relatively flawlessly and painlessly for you the end user.

Once the domain name is propagated throughout the internet you need to connect it to your blog.  Typepad makes this process a simple wizard function.  It even goes to the extent of warning you to NOT attempt to activate the domain until it fully resolves throughout the internet or it will in essence break your blog… it’s true… I tried it for kicks and your style sheet goes bye bye. It is easy to deactivate the domain map, and everything returns to happiness, but be sure to read the fine print when domain mapping (and don’t panic, you can’t really break anything).

Now you are setup!

Tomorrow: On to customizing your new blog