Dev-N-Progress

August 22, 2006
Mighty Seek - PodPress

Posted by nitestrike in : Blogging , add a comment

While I was looking around for add-ons for composing posts and pages I ran across a plug-in, called PodPress, that allows for PodCasts to be posted also. The best part of this plug-in is that it allows the podcast to refernced in the RSS feed for the blog. The ironic thing about this is my friend the Library Despot was looking into this very thing for his blog - the despot podcasts.

Download PodPress Version 6.7 (Aug 1, 2006 )

Features

Full featured and automatic feed generation (RSS2, iTunes and ATOM and BitTorrent RSS)

Preview of what your Podcast will look like on iTunes

Podcast Download stats

Support for Premium Content (Pay Only)

Makes adding a Podcast to a Post very simple

View MP3 Files ID3 tags when your Posting

Control over where the player will display within your post and what it will look like.

Support for various formats, including Video Podcasting

Supports unlimited number of media files.

Automatic Media player for MP3, MP4, MOV, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI, and more, with inline and Popup Window support.

Preview image for videos

Support for seperate Category podcasts

Audio Comments

From what I can see it is free for use, other than premium content situations. It is a full featured product for getting that podcast content distributed.

Link: Mighty Seek - PodPress

August 19, 2006
Live Writer improvements

Posted by nitestrike in : Uncategorized , add a comment

Here are a few things I’ve come across while using the Live Writer that would enhance the usability of this program. You have any feed back, you can leave it here the Live Writer Group site.

Spell Check hotkey normalized Shift+F7 -> F7
Post to multiple blogs at once
Can pull more than the last 25 posts of a blog
Can download, create and edit pages from Wordpress (plug-in)
Not limit the number of Categories that get downloaded

Thanks again Live Writer Team and look forward to using using the product. One last question, any chance that there is a Windows Mobile version in the works?

August 18, 2006
Theme tweaking

Posted by nitestrike in : Site Changes, Dev, Hacks , add a comment

I really like the Regulus Theme by Ben over at Binary Moon. But as I was going through my own site(s) I noticed that the date only appears once for each day there is an entry. The date is displayed after the title of the newest/last post of the day. I’m going to look through the code and see where that is written to the page and put it before and on a line above the tile of the newest/last post of the day.

UPDATE: Boy that didn’t take long, took longer to save the change. Cool, my first tweak for Wordpress.

UPDATE2: I have now updated the Regulus Theme on all the sites.

Windows Live Writer, live beta testing

Posted by nitestrike in : Blogging , add a comment

Microsoft has released a new web application focused on blogging called Windows Live Writer. It has been said that a future release of Microsoft Word was supposed to be able to do this also, but then it would not be free either. I would expect to still see that as a feature in Word, and hopefully Live Writer is an indication of what type of web code Microsoft applications will be producing.

Install & Setup

The install was really simple and went quite smoothly. The a couple clicks of the Next button and it was done. When opening the application for the first time it launches a wizard to create an account for a blog connection. The first option is to connect to a Live Spaces blog, and even option to create a Spaces, or to another type of blogging platform. These other blogs that can be posted to include Wordpress, Blogger, MobileType, but are not limited to them. You enter the URL, username, and password of the blog; it then goes out and detects the type of blogging platform is being used and other settings, such as categories. When this is done you are now able to start posting.

Composing

Posting is really quite simple, it works like a standard word processor with the ability to format the entry with options like bullets, font color, links and inserting pictures. You have most of the options you would for your normal postings. The Categories downloaded from your site, comments status and trackback options can be set along with the date and time of the post. My favorite and most used feature, I am happy to see, is spell check, something I make great use of.

There are also several views that you can choose from when composing. The first view is Normal which just has a plain layout with just the formatting you choose for the post during composing. The Web Layout view allows you to get a rough idea of what post will look like when posted such as width. The Web Preview view* uses the actual theme that gets downloaded from the blog and can see what the actual post will look like on the site, and is view only. The final view is HTML lets you to edit the post and it’s formatting directly allowing for tweaking of the content and formatting. The HTML view also brings to light how clean and simple the code is, especially compared to past Microsoft HTML generating products.

Pics & Maps

Live Writer’s picture capabilities are feature rich. Besides the obvious inserting the picture you have Layout, Image, and Effects options when inserting pictures. The pictures can be uploaded from a source, or can also be linked to from another location on the web. Layout options include text wrapping, how the text flows around the picture, border, how the picture looks against the background, and margins. Image options allow you manipulate the size and setup the linking if needed. Effect options include blurring, sharpening, sepia, and back & white changes, it allows for a text watermark also. See the picture for a few examples of what can be done with pictures.

Whitehouse - Aerial View

Maps can be inserted from Windows Live Local, powered by Virtual Earth. Maps are an extension of inserting pictures and have similar options for layout Captions, Text Wrapping, and Margins. Customize Map is how you pull the map, you enter the address and then

Whitehouse - Road View

zoom to the level you would like, anywhere from the continent level down to the street level. Allowing for the level of detail desired. From the map customization you can pick from several different views The first is the Road View, what you would normally when looking at a map. The Aerial View exactly what it says, a

Whitehouse - Birdseye View

satellite top down picture view. Last but not least is the Birdseye View, this a looking down aerial photo, with options to view from the N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW. With the Road and Aerial Views you also have the option of Pushpins allowing you mark points of important or interest. The Pushpins also have a “title”and description option.

Publishing and Posting

When writing posts you have the option to write from scratch, continue with local drafts and edit published posts. When editing published posts you are able to pull the last 25 posts of a blog and edit, view and publish changes without having to visit the actual blog. On the flipside you have the options of saving a draft (local machine), posting a draft (to the blog), and publishing your completed post.

There is one feature that I would love to see make it into the product, the ability to post to multiple blogs at once. This would be especially great for admin purposes.

Writer has a feature that integrates with the Live Toolbar, called Blog This it allows you to start a new post or edit a current post. I will expand more on Blog This in a bit.

Preferences

General preference have the options for the Spell Checker’s settings, and what action happen after you have posted should Live Writer be closed and do you want to see the post you have just published.

Blog This is a Live Toolbar button plug-in that allows you to start a new post based on the web site you are on, to open a new blank post, or to open an existing post. When choosing to blog on the current page it has four content type to choose from, Feed Items, Links, Snippets, and Images. The Content Types HTML templates can be edited to what is displayed initially by Live Writer.

Live Writer also includes a plug-in feature that allows for expandability, that could allow such things as to post to additional blogging platforms and the addition of new features. Already there are ones for Technocratic Tags, Winamp Currently playing, and Windows Media Player currently playing.

The last two are the Web Proxy settings and Ping Servers. The proxy settings are some that are pretty standard with Internet applications. Ping Servers are specific to Blogging and allow you to notify aggregator sites of new content.

Conclusion

Now I am sure that there are other applications out there that are more mature and feature rich, but I must say for a basic application, especially a first swing, this is a great little app that you should try. With it being free there is really no reason to not consider it. I am going to continue to use it, just for the fact that I can spell check, something I usually need a bit of help with. I will continue to keep you apprized of what I find.

* This write up was done using Wordpress and results may very depending on blogging platform used.