The world as frankps sees it!
Web
WordPress 3.0 and a new theme
1Project work at work has come to an end, at least for the summer and I have again found time to work on my blog. I have migrated my department to Windows 7 and I have been working with new webpages for the central computer department at the University. Blogging on days where you have been writing documentation for hours, was not something I wanted to do. Therefor the lack of updates.
First out was an update of WordPress to 3.0 RC3 and second, finding a new suitable theme. My first impressions on WordPress 3.0, is that is yet another amazing update. The developers have done a really nice job, getting this blog tool even easier to use. As they have also managed to merge WordPress with WordPress MU (Multi-User), I am thinking of migrating my Norwegian blog to WordPress. More on that later.
Next out, is an article summing up my experiences with iPad. I have been using it for about 10 days at home and at work, and I am mighty impressed. I have also been testing Boox, an ereader for the Norwegian market, and I am about to finish an article in Norwegian that I’m to publish at frankps.posterous.com.
I hope to be able to blog again this summer, in between sitting out in the sun. At least it is gonna be far easier with an iPad in my backpack!
Who wants Google Maps, after seeing this?
0I have just seen Blaise Aguera y Arcas is an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, architect of Seadragon and the co-creator of Photosynth, demoing augmented-reality functionality in Microsoft Live Maps. I have been using Microsoft’s map service more and more lately, as it works brilliantly here in Oslo. There are some important things that I miss, like being able to embed maps in to blog posts. I partically liked that Microsoft has been working together with the Flickr developers on some of the new functionality, and I hope that Flickr soon start using Live Maps instead of the now outdated Yahoo Maps on their service.
Here’s the TED talk, enjoy:
Microsoft’s Silverlight technology impresses me. It is used in their map service, so I hope that it will be available as plugin/extension for all major browsers soon.
Google Buzz
0Finally an update to Gmail that I am looking forward to:
Google Buzz is integrated in Gmail and is a more social way of communicating than e-mail. My first though was, could this be functionality from the Google Wave project?
Buzz can be used with Picasa, Youtube, Google Reader, Flickr and Twitter, and is one of the easiest way I have seen to share updates, photos, videos and more. You can choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time you post. What’s more is that you will automatically follow the people you email and chat with the most.
After having read about Google Buzz, looked at some screenshots and a video, I must admit that it is quite so similar to Posterous. Posterous works with tons of Internet services. I have been using Posterous as my blog in Norwegian, and enabled it to talk with Twitter, Facebook and WordPress.
And yes, Buzz also works on your favourite phone: iPhone and Android. Both phones have geolocation support. Now we just have to wait for our Gmail accounts to be upgraded. Google says that they will be rolling out it out over the next few days.
Voddler coming to Norway
0I have been a paying customer over at Spotify for a few months, and I’m absolutely thrilled about how great the service work. It’s a kind of cloud computing that I like and it completely changed how I listen to music. I haven’t bought a single CD since I signed up.
I love watching movies, and have had Betamax, VHS, DVD and HD DVD systems through the years, and I am currently using Blu-ray as my preferred way of watching movies. I realize that I basically have had all the movie systems released for the consumer market. Now I wonder if Voddler can change the way we watch movies? iTMS still doesn’t sell TV shows or movies in Norway, so Voddler can get most of the market for themselves. And I guess they are going for it, as Voddler is to launch a beta version in Norway later this spring. I have flagged my interest a few months ago, if you also are interested to try it out, then sign up for a Voddler Norway account on Voddler´s website. According to Voddler, invites will be handed out in queue order.
Instapaper: Take the news with you
2Instapaper is a perfect example of useful cloud computing. A service that lets you “bookmark” articles that you wish to read later, in the chair or in a spare moment, as for example the subway to and from work. A lot of people have been blogging about it lately.
By adding a Read Later button in your browser’s toolbar, articles will get stored on the Instapaper site:
To read the articles you can later visit the Instapaper site and read them. But is more useful is to use the Pro [iTunes link] or the Lite [iTunes link] version of Instapaper for the iPhone. If you have five minutes free, you can read an article or two. For longer articles, I prefer to read them on an ereader. Both Mobipocket and ePub are supported, so articles can be read on the Kindles, Nook, Cybook and Sony boards:
One of the most beneficial things about Instapaper, is that the service “peels away” both the right and left column of the sites, gone is all Flash content, javascripts, and comments. Moreover, images are reduced in size, fonts and text formatting are changed for improved readability, all this so that you can sit down and read the article comfortably. You will simply not get disturbed by the online newspaper’s desire to get you to also read other articles and click your way around.
(here I found a small bug in Epub implementation – can you see it?)
I find it wonderful to be able sink down on the sofa after coming home from the gym, and read articles from my favorite technology and media writers, as Ed Bott, Jean-Lois Gassée (CEO Be Inc.) og Frédéric Filloux (editor in Norwegian Schibsted-group, Paris).
I’m an frequent user of Google Reader, both on my desktop computers and on my mobile phone. On my Mac I use NetNewsWire to follow the newssites that I have subscribed to. It lets me send articles that I find interesting to Instapaper, and the same does the iPhone application Reeder. Unfortunately FeedDemon (Windows), form the same software house that makes NetNewsWire, doesn’t have this functionality built in. But in the end of the article, I will show you how you can add send to Instapaper functionality to FeedDemon.
When some of my friends twitrer about an interesting article or a news bulletin, which they think others should read, I do it in the same way with Tweetie on my iPhone:
A web service suggesting articles to read
Also be sure to have a look at Instapaper’s most frequently bookmarked articles at Give Me Something to Read (www.givemesomethingtoread.com). It is an eclectic list of magazine articles and short fiction from publications like The Atlantic, Seed magazine, and The New Republic.
A small summary
Instapaper is a service allows you to “bookmark” news and articles for later reading. The service has, with Google Reader, iPhone, and my ereader, changed my reading habits last year quite a bit! I read more news than ever, as I can better decide when and how I want to read the news that interests me.
If you are interested in learning more about Instapaper, the developer has a blog that gets frequently updated.
FeedDemon – Send to Instapaper
Well, I must honestly admit that I struggled to get this to work on FeedDemon. It was not easy, but it’s great fun to manage to solve problems yourself. I found an article on an Australian blog, that told me to create a XML-file with the name instapaper.xml and with the following content:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<fdsendto template=”http://www.instapaper.com/b?v=3&u={url}&t={title}&s={summary-plain}” service=”Instapaper” />
I’m running Windows 7 (x64), and the installation routine for FeedDemon is not the best one, so the programme files ended up in the folder Users/frankps_loc/AppData/Local/FeedDemon (note that the folder AppData by default is hidden).
The problem was not to create the file. That was the easy part, but I struggled with getting the Send to button to appear in FeedDemon. This is enabled under Tools → Options → Reading → Newspaper Icons, and it that window you have to activate the Send to.
On each news entry in FeedDemon, you will now find an arrow that points to the right. By clicking on this arrow, you will activate a context menu that contains a link to Instapaper. The first time you send an article to Instapaper, you are asked to write in your username and password to your Instapaper account.
