Random Bytes...by Ross Rader

Thursday, November 11

[07:38PM EST]

We released Blogware v1.21 today, and now my blog is finally cool. Well, as cool as I can handle anyways.

Tons of bug fixes went into this release. Some you'll notice, some you won't. None that I'll talk about here because that's what release notes are for and I hope I never have to hear about some of them again ;-)

BUT, on the uber-super-exciting end of of things, we've finally release a few features that were supposed to make it into v1.2 but didn't because of timing considerations. These have been hanging around for almost a month while we took care of other business and are very, very nifty...

First off, you'll notice that I've jammed a bunch of headlines into my left hand column. This is thanks to a new Blogware feature called "RSS Headlines" that allows you to parse RSS directly into your weblog templates simply by specifying the URL to the feed. Of course, we've got a nifty cache on the back-end of this to ensure that the target feeds are only being pulled once for all of Blogware-land instead of grabbing it each time we parse the page in. Quite responsible of us, dontcha think?

We've also done a ton of work to our outbound ping interfaces. Usually when you want to get a ping from a hosted weblog platform like Blogware, you'd have to suck up to a company like Tucows. However, we don't particularly need the suckup (you should see the gift baskets we get from our suppliers at Christmas) so we've created a pingAPI tool that allows you to add yourself to the list of sites that we ping when one of our users posts a public post to their weblog.

Neat eh?

You can sign up to receive our pings here: http://www.blogware.com/pingAPI Not everyone will make the list, we'll need to sort out the wheat from the chaff, but if you have a legitimate need to get pings from us, please make sure you fill out a request!

We've also finally added a few hooks into Technorati that allow a blog owner to include a link with each post to allow their readers to check the Technorati Cosmos for everything they post and additionally, we've created an enhanced search component that gives your readers the capability to search not only your weblog, but optionally, the entire blogosphere courtesy of Technorati.

There's a whole whack of other things as well, but I'll leave you to read the official announcements when they come out tomorrow. I realize that this isn't a major release or anything (I mean c'mon, this is nowhere near as impressive as adding a WYSIWYG post editor and stuff like that) but we're pretty proud of it. Blogware continues to rock pretty hard. Hope you like it as much as I do.

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[04:13PM EST] SOHOSAD:

"If someone would have told me 2 years ago that I would be a webmaster for 3 separate web sites, I would have laughed my ass off and replied "I don't know html worth spit and I don't ever want to know html, it gives me a headache!"

Well here I am today looking after 3 websites."

I really wish Rick hadn't said this. Running a blog is geeky-cool. Running a website is...well...lame. Now everyone is going to figure out that Bloggers aren't really geeky-cool...*sigh* we're really just webmasters using amazingly simple management tools to run our websites...hrm...
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Monday, November 1

[07:56AM EST] Marc's Voice: Where's the meta data? What's wrong with Podcasting. "I wanna know who's on the recording, what are the subjects and topics of the discussion, where particular juicy quotes reside and most of all the length and Creative Commons license info on the audio. All of this meta data should be accompanying the Podcast yet we're still in hack mode no sorry, nothing."

No need to be sorry Marc! Every single Podcast that goes out is chock full of metadata, all you have to do is look for it - and get on the cases of the iPodder guys, server vendors and everyone else to start making it more accessible for people like you. No hacks necessary - perhaps some hacking, but its right there for you to take a gander at.

The metadata I'm talking about is enabled by a format called ID3v2 - a description format that's almost as old as MP3 itself. It allows a publisher to describe their audio in a zillion different ways, include transcript, binary objects (like album art) and so on...at some point, I fully expect all the major aggregators and weblogging tools to start reading this stuff and exposing it to the end user.

And almost as if to prove my point - check out the tagline for the ID3v2 website

"ID3v2: The Audience is Informed".

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Monday, October 11

[07:46PM EDT] IT Conversations: Maximizing Your Blogging Strategies - Gnomedex 4.0

Wherein I say in a deep voice "CONSUME MY WORDS" like I've got indigestion or something

(...and even funnier , wherein Robert Scoble says "I'm Robert Scoble and if you don't know me, you will" :)

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Thursday, October 7

[09:21AM EDT]

Jeff Jarvis: "...creating content for the iPod platform is an important evolution in media."

Everyone, according to some, is talking about Podcasting and "the iPod platform" but a lot of what I'm hearing and reading really distracts from what I see as the true value of this innovation. (Perhaps this is just "the vanity of Apple users" :)

Podcasting gives users a new "knob" to twiddle. It allows them to fine tune a variable that they never had access to before - "Time and Place ". Podcasting users get to define when high-grade multimedia content will be automatically downloaded to their mobile media devices like the iPod which unlocks the capability to allow a user to choose when and more importantly, where they will consume it. Someone who wants to listen to an audiocast of a specific radio show can subscribe to it, define that they want it downloaded overnight while they are sleeping and most importantly - specify that the audio file is copied to their iPod or other MP3 player so that it is ready to go for the morning commute. Hence the term "Podcasting" - media is "broadcast" to a users portable player directly from an internet source to be "consumed" whenever the user wants.

The Podcasting name might be a bit of a misnomer. It leads one to believe that this is an iPod specific development that only iPod users can benefit from. Sure podcasting brings new functionality to iPod users and those with an investment in the "iPod platform", but from my standpoint, this is just a small and uninteresting slice of the podcasting pie. The real magic here is that this isn't limited to iPod users -podcasting is limited to internet users with media devices. Podcasting builds on and extends the internet platform - the RSS/Syndication platform. Podcasting brings timeshifting to user generated content.

The universe of potential device interconnects that this enables is huge. By creating forging these new interconnects between the network and a new class of devices, Adam Curry and his band of merry hackers have unlocked major value for any device that wishes to "listen" to the new message that the internet has to deliver. This is innovation of the highest degree and has the potential to radically change the entire content delivery landscape.

Podcasting is, "A Big Deal".

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Monday, September 27

[01:05PM EDT] Blogumentary: "...a bit of Blogumentary going back in time. This clip ramps up to 1999, when LiveJournal and Blogger both opened the blog frontier to non-techies. After a fast-forward sample of that blog explosion, we jump back to ancient history... Samuel Pepys, and American Revolution pamphleteers - aka the original citizen media." C | T (34) | #

Thursday, September 23

[10:36PM EDT]

blogkathleen: "...Blogware is really much superior to Typepad"

Wow - this is an incredibly flattering review. Thanks a lot Kathleen - the team really appreciates it.

I can't wait to see Ping take off...

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[12:30PM EDT] Roland: "SEO is dead and Bryght sites helped kill it"

SEO isn't dead. Its just sleeping. Blogs haven't beat SEO, its just that SEO isn't playing all that great with Web 2.0 yet. Blogs won't continue to get radically high rankings within the various indexes when regular sites start to look like Blogs.

If every web site is a Web 2.0 site, my personal web site isn't going to keep getting crazy rankings like it is today. If if my site doesn't get the rankings I want it to, how am I going to change the situation?

That's right, SEO 2.0.

SEO 1.0 is not compatible with Web 2.0. Please upgrade to SEO 2.0 before proceeding.

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[12:44AM EDT]

Scott: "...they contain a considerable amount of pornographic material."

I hereby declare this the tipping point for RSS adoption. Why?

What I call "the first law of internet technology adoption"

Until and unless a technology can demonstrate a clear capability to distribute pornography or otherwise facilitate copyright infringement, it will not be embraced by a majority of internet users.

What's the second law?

Technology that has been specifically designed to distribute pornography or otherwise facilitate copyright infringement must always be referred to as "the next killer app" - even if it isn't.

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Tuesday, September 21

[06:35PM EDT]

Yeah - Its been quiet here.

We shipped v1.2 today. Probably the biggest single revision that we've ever done to the Blogware code base.

In my mind, this is the v1.0 that we *should* have shipped. Users syndicating with RSS 2.0 now get to drop ENT metadata into their feeds - the UI has been cleaned up a *ton* (I've started calling it "the useful version" - Useful Interface instead of User Interface? Hmmm...sounds like a whole different post unto itself) and we've nailed down user profiles pretty substantially as well - check me out here.

The feature I'm most proud of? The new picture posting tools in the Rich Text Editor. I've hated how we had implemented this in the past and I hated seeing users struggle with simple things like uploading thumbnails - hopefully the new tools make this a lot easier to deal with.

There are a ton of new things in there - hopefully you have some fun uncovering them. Here's a checklist for those playing along at home:

Added "Post Web Page" function. Allows custom static HTML web pages to be inserted in the standard templates and managed within Blogware.
Added Reseller client OCS. Generates an OCS directory listing the weblogs belonging to the resellers clientele. Available via the Reseller Control Panel.
Added Reseller client data export. Provides resellers with a CSV export of the contact information for their specific slients. This is available via the Reseller Control Panel.
Added function to allow the forced deletion of a blog which is in "Pending Delete" state.
Added function to automatically rename photographs when duplicate name is used. This is to facilitate the upload of images from phone-cams that recycle image file names.
Added function to support secure file attachments to article entries.
Added a tool that records a history of IP addresses of the individuals who are logging into a weblog via the Publisher Control Panel.
Added support for article keywords.
Added support to allow search of article keywords.
Added "About Me" business card web page that includes image, contact information and social networking features (including FOAF, authenticated login, etc.) The About Me page is generated on the fly on located at a "personal permalink" in the form of "http://www.blogware.com/profiles/username/". Authenticated users will be provided with access to personal information as defined in the users "Address Book". This URL may be "cloaked" by the reseller.
Added FOAF support. FOAF is generated and located at a similar permalink in the form of "http://www.blogware.com/users/profiles/username/foaf.rdf". Authenticated users will be provided with access to FOAF information as defined in the FOAF owners's "Address Book". Users can authenticate themselves by passing their Reader username and password via HTTP in the form of "http://username:password@www.blogware.com/users/profiles/username/foaf.rdf". This URL may be "cloaked" by the reseller.
Added support to respect reseller private label variables for users that are navigating between the Publisher Control Panel and the Reader Control Panel.
Added support to allow resellers to be mapped as parents of other resellers. Child resellers will not receive system updates/notices sent from Tucows. Parent resellers will be billed for the activity of their child resellers. This feature can be enabled by your account manager.
Added additional user interface cues and streamlined interface to make the transition between the Publisher Control Panel to the Reader Control panel interfaces easier.
Added support to allow Review templates to be fully customized.
Added ENT (Easy News Topics) support for RSS 2.0 (Details regarding the ENT specification can be found at http://matt.blogs.it/specs/ENT/1.0/).
Added support to enhance switching between the Rich Text Editor and the Standard Text Editor. Line breaks are now preserved.
Added createBlogAdminCookie to the Blogware Reseller Provisioning API to facilitate "single sign-on" sessions from a Reseller hosted control panel into the Blogware control panel. See Blogware Provisioning API documentation for full details - http://resellers.blogware.com/bpa/
Added addBlogCategories function to Blogware Reseller Provisioning API to facilitate the creation and addition of customized categories to newly created weblogs. See Blogware Provisioning API documentation for full details - http://resellers.blogware.com/bpa/
Added additional reseller branding support on the user login page into the Publisher Control Panel.
Added support to allow Resellers to specify Layout & Component defaults that are applied to weblogs they provision via the API or Reseller Control Panel.
Added support to allow Resellers to create and designate default favorites list and its contents
Added "New User" cues to the Publisher Control Panel interface and streamlined navigation including the capability to show and hide less/more commonly used interface elements via a "roll-up" widget. This also includes signficant changes to the "Settings" tab which now breaks various settings into more logical and distinct groups of settings related functions.
Added support for RSD, "Really Simple Discoverability", 1.0. RSD is a mechanism that helps client software find the services needed to read, edit, or "work with" Blogware. Full details concerning the RSD 1.0 specification can be found at http://archipelago.phrasewise.com/rsd
Added support to make it easier to insert images in an Article entry within the Rich Text Editor.
Added support to export "author" information within the Blogware export file.
Added UTC support in blog xml-rpc interface and fixed various TIME formatting issues.
Removed "article widgets".

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