While Writely is cool, it deals with online documents. You can import/export, but the document lives online. That’s cool for many uses, but scares some people.
I just found a link to AjaxWrite (via Tangled up in Purple) - it’s a javascript based word processor that appears to be compatible with MS Word. You open and save documents on your local hard drive - not in the Internet Cloud.
Basically, it’s just a copy of Word that lives in a browser window, meaning you don’t have to install it anywhere. Stick your .doc files on a USB thumbdrive (perhaps with a copy of Portable Firefox) and you’ve got a portable word processor that you can take anywhere, regardless of how a “guest” computer is configured… (actually, if you want portable word processors, there are some options for native applications as well)
This is one of the coolest things from the world of musicians with respect to IP and copyright. Some of the biggest names in Canadian music just put their feet down to tell the Big Labels not to be evil.
The colophon, listing the various bits that get twiddled to run my blog, has been woefully out of date. I get periodic emails about the various plugins I use, especially the latest Podpress plugin, so I thought it’d be a good idea to automate the process of updating the list. Enter the bdp_setup plugin by Bryan Palmer at ozpolitics.info.
The colophon is now automatically generated, and guaranteed to stay up to date for as long as I’m using Wordpress to run my blog…
For some of our projects here at the TLC, we need to be able to manage identity information - traditionally, user accounts, groups, roles, etc… We’re taking a bit of time to think about a better way of implementing this, and how to use a flexible, distributed identity model.
I’ve been going through some web searches to find out what others are doing. The “version numbers” are loosely based on Dick Hardt’s descriptions (with apologies to him if I’ve misinterpreted what he was trying to say).
I’m playing with a pre-Cardinal (the next Big Release) build of Flock, and man is it nice! They’ve replaced the blog editor, and it’s the best blog editor I’ve used. Very nice. The blog manager topbar appears to have disappeared, but I assume it’s just being tweaked and will return before the Big Release.
My only gripe is that category selection still sucks - no way to easily find one of my 331 categories in a list sorted by primary key of the category database record. Some sorting/searching/filtering/text-auto-complete interface would be waaay more effective. Oh, and the selected category didn’t get applied anyway. I’ll go in through the Wordpress web UI to fix it…
The book is definitely on top of my nonfiction reading list (my fiction reading, on the bus ride commute, is currently another Gregory Benford book I’m deliberately reading out of sequence…)
One of the great comments on my BCEdOnline2006 Unkeynote Debriefing included a link to a wiki page by Chris Corrigan on Open Space Technology - a set of ideas, practices and guidelines for conducting “open space” meetings. Very cool stuff, and it resonated quite well with what we got to do as part of Northern Voice 2006 - specifically the Social Software Salon and the Edublogger Hootenanny. I finally had a chance to go through the linked wiki page, and it’s chock full of goodness. I don’t think it has to go as far down the kumbaya spectrum as Chris describes - even just the arrangement of the chairs sends a powerful message and sets expectations.
The performance of my shared server at GoDaddy leaves a LOT to be desired. Pages render out of the database in several seconds, when they should be easily generated in under a second. Their tech support response was to blame images and javascript, when the actual database-based page generation itself is waaaay too slow. Even when pages are rendered OK, they may be spit out somehow triggering a file download rather than content in the browser. (you may have seen a “Download file: index.php” dialog box - I get it all the freaking time) Comments on the Wordpress support forum pointed to perhaps the server being overwhelmed and reverting to a “safe” download behaviour.
We were able to record that Intro to Podcasting presentation I gave on Wednesday, and the video has been processed and compressed. The audio is a bit wonky because the microphones were fixed and all turned on - and I wasn’t wearing a lapel mic so I get hard to hear as I wander around the front of the room. Next time, I’ll wear a lapel mic, and warn everyone that all of the microphones are on all the time to avoid the paper rustling and desk drumming that got picked up.
Basically, it’s just a copy of Word that lives in a browser window, meaning you don’t have to install it anywhere. Stick your .doc files on a USB thumbdrive (perhaps with a copy of Portable Firefox) and you’ve got a portable word processor that you can take anywhere, regardless of how a “guest” computer is configured… (actually, if you want portable word processors, there are some options for native applications as well)
