Ed's Tech Tips

I almost always have a network connection nearby so I have not played around with desktop blog editors much. In addition, the WYSIWYG editor built into my blog server software, LifeType, works very well which was not the case a few years ago. The editor is based on a open source Javascript editor called TinyMCE. It works across multiple platforms and web browsers. It is one of the few WYSISWYG editors that works as well with Apple's Safari web browser as it doe sin Firefox. However, this article is not about TinyMCE which you would only really be interested in if you are a web developer. This article is about Qumana, a free desktop blog editor. There are versions for Windows and Macs. It is written in Java.

There are not many free blog editors for the Mac. There are some commercial versions: iBlog, MacJournal and Ecto. Other free editors include the one built into Flock, a social web browser, and another called ScribeFire (previously Performancing), an extension for Firefox. While it could be useful to have the editors built into the browser they do not make adding photos very easy. You have to edit the HTML source code. While I know how to do it, I do not want to have to take the time to do so.

The photo above is one I shot at the Strawberries and Champagne party for graduating Seniors that is hosted by the Alumnae Association. I was able to easily insert the photo, align it, put a 5 pixel border around it and add a alt text description.

Qumana has the basic formatting tools and works with a wide variety of blogging platforms. Unfortunately, it cannot list my categories, but otherwise appears to work fairly well. The spell check as you type feature is handy.

If you want to make money with your blogs Qumana has an Ad service. You can sign up for an account and easily insert ads into your blog right from within the Qumana editor.

Post Publishing Notes: The article published without any issues to my blog from the Qumana editor. However, when I edited this article online, the picture was not aligned correctly and I had to edit the settings. It did appear correctly on the blog page. I also had to change the category. Despite a few minor gitches Qumana looks like a possible tool I can use when I do not have a network connection but I want to type a blog class.

The software that runs Mount Blog has recently been updated to version 1.2.2 of LifeType which is a free open source "blog platform." A blog platform is designed to host multiple blogs. If you want your own blog and you want it for free, check out WordPress.com or Blogger.com - these are the two most popular hosted blogging solutions. If you have your own server or hosting account and only want a single blog, then WordPress.org would probably be your best bet. However, if you want multiple blogs for your school, company or organization on your own web server that you can easily administer then check out LifeType. There is a good article on ProBlogger about choosing hosted or stand alone blogging software, unfortunately they do not mention LifeType, which is a shame, because it is one of the better freely available blogging platforms. There are commercial options, such as, TypePad and SixApart's MoveableType, but you have to pay for those. Other open source blogging platforms include PMachine, Greymatter, B2Evolution, TextPattern and Expression Engine (to name just a few). I reviewed a few of the others and LifeType came out on top for ease of use, flexiblity, features and documentation.

There is a multi-user version of WordPress called simply enough WordPress-MU which I assumed is used at WordPress.com, but each blog has it's own database tables which in my opinion does not appear to be very scalable (able to grow or expand) or as easy to administer - LifeType was built with the backend administrator in mind. There is another project called Lyceum which is based on WordPress, but uses a shared database backend designed to be very scalable. While it can use slightly modified WordPress templates (or Themes which are gorgeous) and plugins (which are many) the project is not nearly as active as LifeType, although it does look promising and I'll be keeping an eye on it.

The new version of LifeType has a wide variety of improvements which is a testimony to the commiment of the developers which are constantly improving LifeType and still manage to make it easy to upgrade from one version to another. The upgrade wizard was able to upgrade the backend database and nothing was lost in the process despite the numerous changes. When selecting an open source solution it is important that there is an active community behind the project, otherwise you won't have anyone to turn to when you need to assistance. LifeType has a wiki and an active forum. 

I will not attempt to list all of the improvements, but here are a few key new features in addition to the standard features it already has:

• Fine-grained user permission framework: Amber was asking me about being about to edit her own template and now she can without affecting anyone else.
• Bad-behavior integrated in the core: Bad-behavior is an effective anti-spam library and is now incorporated into the core of LifeType.
• Improved searches
• Improved administration and summary interface
• Global plugin settings framework
• "Partial" templates: This feature makes updating certain template components, such as, the comment form across multiple templates much easier. This has resulted in there not being as many ready made templates. Whereas there used to be 50, there are now about 13 because the developers focused on only improving th emost popular templates. This is really not bad because many of the ugly templates have been removed and creating new ones is not that difficult if you know CSS and the Smarty template system. This is the reason for my blog template change, which I like better than the old one.

Why does any of this matter? Hopefully, Mount Blog will be growing next year with the addition of class, club and possibly alumnae blogs along with the staff and student blogs we currently have. I'll keep you posted.

This year for Mother's Day my wife hinted at wanting an iPod or something similar. She liked the 2GB iPod Nano's we bought our daughters this past Christmas. However, she wanted a FM radio in order to be able to listen to the Boston Red Sox baseball games. She is a very loyal fan. Since iPods do not come with FM receivers (I know there are many add-ons available) and the iPod's cost more than what my wife would have preferred me to spend I looked for an alternative.

I think I found a winner with the Sony Network Walkman MP3 player. More specifically the NW-E005F model. It is not much larger than a USB Flash drive and it doe snot cost more, maybe even less and you can stil use for transferring files if you have space. Circuit City had it on sell for $60 - $90 less than the 2 GB Nano. The features include:

• Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery that should be good for 28 hours on an hour charge.
• It features a rapid charge mode where 3 minutes provides 3 hours of playback. To charge it just plug it into a USB port.
  
• A built-in high speed USB 2.0 plug under a removable cap.
• It plays back MP3, WMA, ATRAC and AAC. AAC support is only for tracks that you ripped from a CD in iTunes, not for DRM protected files you purchase online, unless they are  recently purchased from the EMI label.
• It includes a option to change the menu orientation for left-handed users which my wife appreciated because she is left-handed.
• There is a scrolling single line OLED (Organic LED) display.
  
• The FM receiver offers 30 programmable presets, but how to do so is not intuitive.

This brings me to some of the negatives, some of which could have been avoided if Sony's engineers and programmers talked to one another. The hardware guys designed a pretty awesome player in most respects, but the software guys messed things up.

First, in order in copy music to the player you must use Sony's cumbersome SonicStage software. I have not read about anyone who likes the software. Why is software even required? I would like to simply be able to drag and drop the files and folders into the drive and have the player be able to display the artists, albums and songs. Sony uses some sort of directory encryption scheme to encode the songs. The software only works with Windows, but I do not have A Windows computer at home. I have a Mac and a couple machines running Ubuntu Linux. Fortunately, I discovered a free Java program that allows you to be able to transfer your MP3 files from your Mac or Linux computer to the Sony player. Unfortunately, the program uses Java 1.5 which is available on Mac OS 10.4 Tiger, but not on OS X 10.3 Panther which includes Java 1.4. There  is no way to  update it because Apple  does not supply a newer version. A situation which is out the control of Sun, the creator of Java. If you want the latest version of Java you have to upgrade to the latest version of Mac OS X even if Panther offers everything you want. I found that annoying. Never the less, I was able to copy the songs to another computer and transfer them.

I find it odd that a freelance programmer could write a simple multi-platform utility and give it away for free, whereas, Sony, a multi-billion dollar corporation could only produce the awkward Windows only SonicStage, which is now past version 4 but still needs a lot of improvement.

The Hold switch and Volume controls are on the back of the device which is kind of awkward. The ear pods sound a little hollow and could be replaced with a better pair, but given the price of the player what do you want? 

Overall, my wife enjoys the player despite it's quirks. The iPod wins hands down as far as  ease of use, both in the player and in the iTunes software. Why Sony does not learn from the competition I do not know, because if they did then they could give the iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle a real challenge beyond price. They player is available in  different sizes and colors. 

A co-worker of mine here at the Alumnae Association office likes to keep the rest of us abreast of the air quality here in Western Massachusetts. The state recently exceeded safe ozone levels.

She recommended retiring that gas-powered lawn mower and relaxing in the tall grass. I agree with her to a point. I retired my gas mower some time ago and have used a push reel mower since, because my neighbors and wife frown upon tall grass in my yard.

There are many benefits to a push reel mower:

• They are pollution free and I'm not just talking about air pollution, but noise pollution as well. I find the whispering whish of the blades actually relaxing.
• They are less expensive to purchase.
• They are practically maintenance free. There is no gas, oil , air filters, and spark plugs to look after. The blades should be sharpened once a year and it can be done easily by yourself.
• They provide you with some exercise. Do we really need to sit on our butts to cut the grass?
• They are better for your lawn. Reel mowers gently evenly cut the grass like scissors, instead of whacking it like a gas engine mower.
• They are much safer. When you stop walking, it stops cutting. Children can learn to cut the lawn at a younger age because you do not need to worry about them loosing a toe. The trick is getting them to walk in straight overlapping lines.

Learn more at PeoplePoweredMachines.com, which feature the Brill mower, the Cadillac of push reel mowers that I aspire to own one day. I'll leave you with an intersting fact: Each weekend, about 54 million Americans mow their lawns, using 800 million gallons of gas per year and producing tons of air pollutants. Garden equipment engines, which have had unregulated emmissions until very recently, emit high levels of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, producing up to 5% of the nation's air pollution and a good deal more in metropolitan areas.

A conventional lawn mower pollutes as much in an hour as 40 late model cars (or as much as as much air pollution as driving a car for 100 miles).