Good Technology

By Ray on November 25th, 2008

Jousting Yesterday I was hard on some technologies. Today, despite having found even more technology things to be down about, I thought I would make note of a couple of positives. I need to be more positive in my life right now anyway. First though, I thought I would make a note of why so much technology, especially that with computers and especially software gets so messed up sometimes. First, we are writing code for a several million different possible combinations of hardware platforms, and while it all should meet some standards, it is still different. Second is the way we end up using software is not the way it was intended often, not to mention trying to design stuff that makes a feature guy like me happy and yet still works with the lowest end by knows how to get the computer on user too. Lastly is the just the development cycle and cost of testing all of the differences above. At some point a vice-president says it has got to go out and of course in my favorite word, the GPL/GPU licensing, we release it to get feedback and testing to make the next one better.

Internet Explorer actually has a couple of features I would like to see in Mozilla Firefox. Granted, I am generally not an IE person, but with the issues Firefox has been giving me that last bit I have temporarily switched over awaiting a new release or my time to fix somethings. But having new tabs open with the home page set is a great thing (my home pages is just a 122 links to places I go, so usually if I open a tab having that home page pop up is a good thing). Also, when I open a link in a new tab, it is nice the way IE puts that tab beside the one I opened it from instead of over at the end, like when I have eight or nine tabs open at the same time. And lets face it, Firefox has had some security issues lately as well.
StumbleUpon is a pretty darn awesome site that is kind of like an aggregator with personal tastes in mind of what you will like. You set up some information about your interests and give it a click, it gives a you a suggested site based on what your interests are. You can vote it up or down. It is the same concept as Pandora in a lot of ways and just like Pandora has done for music so to as stumbling done for me with finding a few extra things to read about things in which I am interested. I admit I do not need that and the random nature is a bit much to get used to at first. It is also a great tool to get some increased traffic to your sites and sites you like, but I am told to be careful of that, as they don’t like just self promotion. To really utilize it, you do have to get a plug-in for your browser.
A few weeks back, maybe even months now, I noted the way pinging worked by default in WordPress and suggested a plugin. Then later the plugin, which required email started spamming. A different tool that does the same without email required – nor the spam is Smart Update Pinger. It is in the public license and works with the latest version of WordPress, but does not have support for the future at the current time. And my apologies for the previous direction if you went that way, lesson learned once again about giving out email addresses.
A cool plug-in for WordPress is called Snazzy Archives. This tool gives you a cool visual way to show your archives to your blog and depending on options will show pictures, information all organized by date and even set to scroll. You can see it in action on my page by clicking the archives page link at the top. Keep in mind I still have a bit of tweaking to do with it and I think I am going to make it go its own full-page eventually which requires a bit more effort to accomplish.
Another great tool for WordPress bloggers is a plug-in called Smart YouTube. The tool lets you quickly and easily link videos into your blog from YouTube of course. If you have tried to do that with the use of such a tool you know what a pain it is. This lets you append one or two letters to a simple URL and you are good to go. The video below is an example of the tool in use (and is some shots on a low quality camera from the Emprise at Gulf Wars XVI in 2006 – which includes a few passes of SCA jousting).