NewsGator
Posted on October 27, 2004
Filed Under Internet & Technology | 2 Comments
Been meaning to blog this for a while. I’m having a lazy day. Not in the mood to do anything truly constructive so I’ve spent some time catching up on mailing lists and feeds.
Even though I “initially dismissed it,”:http://www.momathome.com/viewfromhome/software_reviews/bloglines.php I am now thrilled with “NewsGator.”:http://www.newsgator.com I definitely need a web-based subscription thing. That much was a given, considering the multi-platform lifestyle that I’ve adopted (and have been enjoying) this year. I tried “Bloglines”:http://www.bloglines.com for a while, and everyone is raving about it but I read too many feeds. I’d rather collect 100 articles and pick through the ones I’m interested in and throw out the rest than only get a few. And since I tend to read in bursts, a lot of feeds would back up. Bloglines got painfully slow. Spinning beach ball or hourglass of death slowdowns. No matter which machine, no matter which browser so I had to assume the problem was with Bloglines.
One day in September, for the heck of it, I remembered the comment on my entry about NewsGator. Turns out, the comment was from the developer…go figure…didn’t realize it at the time…Hi Greg if you catch this. So I signed up for the 14 day trial, imported my OMPL files and it’s been happiness ever since. It is *fast*. No matter how many feeds I have or how long it has been since I last read, every browser Mac or PC handles it beautifully. Interface-wise, it’s a more pleasant experience than Bloglines. And thanks to a recent burst of funding, the developers are making improvements quickly. The basic service is now free! I have decided to keep paying the $5.95 per month because of the PDA syncing option. If I’m sitting in Starbucks I can catch up on some feeds exactly where I left off on the desktop, come home and when I load up Newsgator in my browser it’s in the exact same spot I left it on the PDA. Unlike Bloglines, reading Newsgator feeds in Pocket IE is fast and easy on the eyes.
The only downside to Newsgator is:
# Organizing feeds into folders is clunky at best. You have to do it in 3 clicks, one feed at a time. I’ve posted this in the support forums and the issue has been acknowledged. I imagine the next interface refresh will address this.
# It’s in an early stage of working with “FeedDemon,”:http://http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/ which is often a more comfortable interface than reading feeds in a browser. I’m just waiting for it to be integrated into “NetNewsWire”:http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/ for the Mac. It’s been hinted that it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
The latest Mac “threat”
Posted on October 25, 2004
Filed Under Macintosh | 7 Comments
So now there’s something else for Mac users to supposedly worry about. It’s known as “Opener” and rather than take a lame, probably-wrong try at explaining it I’m just going to link to the site where I first read about it. There, it’s linked.
I’m also not going to bother speculating as to whether it’s serious or not. I think DB does a pretty good job of taking a bird’s eye view of the situation. What I find hysterical is the way the “mainstream” media trips over themselves to circle the wagons. Like this story on C’NET, which makes it sound like a widespread issue. In fact, no one has actually been victim to Opener and what is the source of the article? The original Macintouch report referenced above. FWIW, I agree with DB. I think Mac users are a little too quick to pat themselves on the back when it comes to security. There is a difference between being comfortable, and being complacent. I don’t have virus protection installed on my Mac(s). It’s not because I’m cocky, or I think my Mac is immune. It’s because I haven’t found a Mac anti-virus software package yet where the benefits of the so-called security are worth the hit on performance and stability that come with it. They make a big show of scanning your drive for all these threats. The number known to be Mac-specific and spread within the last 10 years can be counted on one hand and even those aren’t easily transmitted. Most outddated, most only impact Windows. As soon as the threat outweighs the inconvenience and maintenance hassle, I’ll be first in line to buy the software.
MT-Blacklist
Posted on October 21, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I just installed the MovableType 3.1-happy version of MT-Blacklist. All it takes is one incoming trackback ping to a site where the URL in itself is repulsive to make me take action. I’ve had some comment spam which was easy enough to deal with thanks to comment moderation, but this was the first time I had been hit with trackback spam. Figured there would be more where that came from, so a proactive response was necessary.
*Update:* Ha! Take that! Just got another trackback from the same disgusting source on the same entry from last night. But instead of having to log into the site and delete the ping and rebuild the entry it came in on and wait for it to happen again, I click a simple “despam” link and the entry is gone *and* added to a blocklist for the future. Thanks, MT-Blacklist!
InDesign assessment test
Posted on October 21, 2004
Filed Under Design | 8 Comments
I signed up with a creative staffing agency today. I have my clients, but with Eric’s job situation still on the fence (maybe something really good to report on this next week) I wanted to have the option of getting extra income. I first heard of this company years ago. They only place creative folks, have offices all over the place and generally have a decent reputation. The pay is far less per hour than I make on my own, but there are benefits and I don’t have to worry about invoicing or any of the other headaches that come with self-employment.
I sent in my application online soon after Eric lost his job in August. I finally made it in for an interview. I think they can keep me busy, as she said a lot of their calls are for “people with a design sense who are strong in production.” Sounds like me. The interview included a skills assessment test, which I chose to take in InDesign. I was nervous about this part, having never taken an application test before.
The test was interesting. If you have never worked in QuarkXPress or InDesign, you can stop reading now. I was given a sample newsletter layout and instructions on what was needed to duplicate it. I had one hour to complete the 4 page layout. Thankfully, they had a reasonably fast eMac running OS X and InDesign CS to do the test. The instructions were clear on what they were looking for, stuff like “make the page 6” × 9”, 1p3 margins, 2p gutter…body text is in file named bodytext.rtf, it should be Russell Square 9/10 with 4 points spacing between paragraphs… it’s a 5 color job, using PMS 2756 as a process color and PMS 272 as a spot color…” etc. etc. I am sure that I will never get an actual assignment that looks like that. But it was interesting to see exactly what they were testing. For example, the application was set to use picas as the measurement by default, but some measurements were given in inches or points (no problem, just enter the units and it will do a conversion to picas). The body copy had styling that had to be cleared in order to set a new style sheet, and there were misspellings and - - instead of em dashes. I corrected the problems whether I had been asked in the instructions to do so or not. The instructions said to start the page numbering at 17, obviously looking to see if I would do it correctly (through the Page Numbering… dialog) or would I number the pages by hand. I made some decisions simply based on the fact that I only had an hour to put this layout together. I used master pages to set up the columns and the footers, but I ran the actual text in entirely on the pages. I knew it would be faster that way for this one document, but if I was doing a newsletter or a chapter in a book I would make sure the titles and text were on a master page. The instructions were to take a TIF file and rotate it. Had I been doing this in a real job, I would have opened the original art in Photoshop, saved a copy and rotated that so I could bring it in to InDesign without rotation. And so on.
I did a reasonable duplication of the test layout, but it wasn’t exact. I didn’t try. The test page was produced in QuarkXPress, and therefore I couldn’t match the text formatting exactly and I wouldn’t want to. Type in InDesign looks so much better. I set hyphenation to avoid widows/orphans and funky hyphenation and left it at that.
I was told that the test would be graded on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “perfect.” Most folks are sent out on jobs when they score between a 3 and 4. My score: “a very high 4.” She said it was clear that I only lost a few points due to the time constraint. Another 30 minutes so I could go back over the pages and I know I would have gotten a 5. Everything I know about InDesign is self-taught. The results of this test don’t change a thing, but it’s still nice to know. I hope this agency can keep me busy. I certainly know that if a company needs someone to do production in InDesign, my phone should be ringing.
Movable Type 3.12
Posted on October 20, 2004
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I kept meaning to upgrade to Movable Type 3.1, and then I heard that 3.12 was around the corner so I decided to wait for that. I did, and here it is.
There are a lot of new features that I don’t have time now to dig into, but this new formatting bar when entering is a nice addition.
As usual, the upgrade process is a breeze. Replace a few files, set a few permissions, run a script from the browser and you’re good to go. I always backup my Movable Type folder and entries first, but knock-on-wood I’ve never had an issue while doing an upgrade.
