blogging
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endo: powerful RSS reader updates for Safari 3 beta
Since Adriaan Tijsseling makes one of the Mac's best blogging clients, it only makes sense that he also has a slick RSS newsreader called endo that we honestly don't stay on top of as much as we should.With features like a custom Growl-like alert window which allows you to read snippets of feed items before actually bringing endo to the front, a powerful subscription manager, and a feature-packed download manager with options for adding media to iTunes and even BitTorrent controls, endo brings some clever stuff to the table with a unique UI. Upon opening endo for the first time, a short setup process allows you to enter users names and URLs to track activity and comments at sites like your Flickr account and a personal blog. The headline list on the left features favicons for your individual feeds to help you pick out items from different sites easier, as well as color labels for subscriptions and even a customizable summary + tag display below each headline. To summarize: if you want features and power - endo is a great choice. I bring all this up again because endo was yet another app that is affected by the Safari 3 beta, which includes a new version of the WebKit rendering engine than many Mac OS X apps, including endo, use to display web content. Fortunately, Adriaan has produced an update that accounts for this fix, which you should be able to grab by starting up endo or heading over to kula software and downloading a fresh copy.Another perk of endo is that, even though it's one of the most powerful and feature-packed RSS readers on the market, it only costs $17.95 for a license. Adriaan even offers a bundle deal that includes both endo + ecto for a savings of $10 at a mere total cost of $26.95 - those are some good deals for blogging + newsreading software.
Blogging Zelda
As bloggers ourselves, we understand the incredible demand such a duty can take on a person. Heck, just covering all of the Nintendo news every day, let alone doing other things such as hosting Game Night, is enough to drive a person insane. That's why we can hardly believe this man is set to extensively blog about his experiences in every Zelda game. He's even planning on blogging the latest title still due out on U.S. shores, Phantom Hourglass, and is currently making his way through Zelda II: The Adventures of Link at the moment. Odds are you've already beaten each title yourself (or, should have), but just in case you haven't, or you enjoy reading about someone else's perspective, this just might be a fun read for you.[Via Joystiq]
David Jaffe returns to blogging (but only with pictures)
After swearing off blogging over a month ago for reasons unbeknownst to us -- Jaffe's back! Wave your rollies in the sky and wave them side to side. Whoop, whoop! He returns to blogging with pictures and not words -- actually, not true, the title of the post is "coming soon". The post holds two pictures, the one you see above and one after the break. It's very avant-garde, what Jaffe is doing here; the pictures speak the words for us. It's blogging 2.0.What does it mean? Well, it's one man's struggle against words while probably showing his new office getting all fixed up. Or maybe they put gamers in the fishbowl off to the right side to observe their behavior, helping craft an optimal gaming experience. Obviously Jaffe is building a mystery and carefully choosing what to reveal. Or he's just building an office. One or the other, we're pretty sure.
Widget Watch: Tumblr widget 2.0
Tumblr is a unique 'tumble blog' service that gives users a no hassles, no frills blog, and a simple bookmarklet with which to quickly post text, videos, pictures and even chats. For those who feel Blogger or WordPress are a little much to manage, or if you simply don't feel like you have that much to say but you find as much (if not more) cool stuff across the web as the typical dorm-bound student, Tumblr's services might be right up your alley.If Tumblr's official bookmarklet isn't always your blogging tool of choice, however, there are a few other options on the table, including the recently updated Tumblr widget 2.0. Offering a simple title + body UI, this widget should make it easy to send off your quotes, links (the widget accepts HTML) and chat quotes.
More ecto 3 details, a screenshot and roadmap revealed
Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac OS X version of the ecto blogging client, has been teasing us with sneak peeks and development details for some time now, but he's just posted another more revealing screenshot of ecto3, along with more details and a basic roadmap. Adriaan has touted ecto3 as a complete rewrite from v2, ushering in a new plug-in architecture that should make the app far more extensible. Also on the notable changes list is the replacement of the rich text editor by Editable WebKit, a new, more WYSIWYG feature of the engine that is used to power Safari, many other browsers on Mac OS X and even HTML rendering in Apple Mail. While Adriaan doesn't have any kind of ETA for a shipping version or even a beta just yet, it does sound like development is wrapping up well. Since support for different blogging platforms has moved to the plug-in format as well, he still has to build support for the latest Blogger (yes, it'll be in ecto3) and WordPress. As a final note, it's always nice to hear a developer using their own product, as Adriaan is using ecto3 "heavily" to try and catch as many bugs and problems as he can before unleashing it in one form or another on the masses.
MarsEdit 1.2 lands with Growl, Picasa and Vox support
Making good on his word after purchasing MarsEdit from Brent Simmons, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software has quickly taken up development of the blogging client. Today Daniel released MarsEdit 1.2, a minor update that brings some great features like Growl support (when publishing, refreshing or uploading images and files) and Picasa upload support for Blogger.com images, as well as support for blogging to Vox, the community-focused blogging system from Six Aparts, makers of Live Journal and TypePad. For anyone who needs the power of Mac OS X while blogging, MarsEdit is a great great choice that offers a wealth of other features for a mere $24.95. A demo is of course also available from Red Sweater Software.
TUAW Podcast #24: Journler
[Update 2: The direct download link is working fine now, and I pinged the iTunes Store to check our podcast feed again, so it'll take a little time for them The iTunes Store feed has updated so we're good to go. I hope you enjoy the podcast - and of course Journler if you give it a whirl - and please leave feedback as I hope to make a lot more of these in the future (with podcast releases going far more smoothly, of course). Thanks again for your patience.]This week's podcast is a screencast of an app that I finally 'get' and have subsequently gone nutty for: Philip Dow's Journler. It's an app very much like Yojimbo, Mori and SOHO Notes in that it's a journal/digital junk drawer for your work and life. For roughly fifteen minutes I cover some of the coolest features in Journler that both grabbed my personal attention and caused me to chose Mr. Dow's excellent app as my new blogging tool of choice for penning most of my TUAW and Download Squad posts.As usual you can pick up a copy of our latest podcast (weighing in at 36MB and 13 minutes on the dot) from our iTunes Store Podcast directory, this direct link or our own podcast rss feed. I'm also please to announce that I finally did some research into why my previous video screencasts weren't iPod-friendly and have fixed the issue. Even though this particular screencast might look a little tiny on a 5G iPod (I captured the entirety of my 1440 x 900 MacBook Pro display, then re-sized to 640 x 398 for this one), you should nevertheless be able to take it with you on that commute you're packing up for. Enjoy![Update: We are indeed having trouble serving the podcast at the moment. Hang in there, we'll get this fixed as soon as possible and I'll update this post once we stamp out the issue. Sorry for the trouble.]
FlickrMate bundle for TextMate
Brett Terpstra at the Circle Six Design blog just can't seem to stop making cool stuff, especially when it comes to bundles for TextMate. You might know his work from other plug-ins and bundles such as his WordPress theming bundle we mentioned, as well as his most excellent AutoTag bundle for blogging to WordPress blogs. Not content to work merely with words, Brett has created a FlickrMate bundle that offers an impressive suite of options for interacting with Flickr and embedding images in any HTML or Markdown document you're working on. You can search the text and tags of just your photos, or across the entirety of Flickr. An 'upload and embed' command is also available for uploading a new image up to Flickr and either linking or embedding it in the document you're working on. You can also browse your own Flickr account with a simple viewer that organizes your photos by sets. Basically: Brett made one of - if not the - coolest Flickr blogging plug-ins, which just happens to work with the powerful and flexible TextMate, and all he asks for any of his creations is a donation. If you find his hard work useful, I definitely recommend you show him some PayPal love.
Thompson sues Kotaku owner over comments, suit dismissed
[Update: The Kotaku suit has been dismissed by Federal District Court Judge Paul Huck, GamePolitics.com is now reporting. Apparently, Thompson "failed to follow the proper federal court procedure for amending a complaint." Thompson says he'll try it again though, so please, read on.]The smoldering battle between Florida lawyer Jack Thompson and the gaming press has been taken to a new level. In a tersely worded post yesterday on Kotaku, Brian Crecente revealed that Thompson has added a complaint against Kotaku owner Gawker Media to a March 13 suit against the Florida Bar.The childishly-worded complaint (He actually makes a "NOT!" joke on page 27) focuses on a few Kotaku commenters (which Thompson mistakenly refers to as "bloggers") that allegedly said Thompson "should be shot ... struck with a baseball bat, shot in the face by an irate gamer, [and] castrated and his testicles stuffed down his throat," among other things. To be fair, those are some strong, hateful words, and threats like these are not necessarily protected by the first amendment. Still, Gawker or Kotaku probably can't be held liable for them -- a federal judge ruled in June 2006 that "bloggers cannot be hit with libel suits on the basis of anonymous postings on their Web sites."Perhaps knowing this, Thompson goes a different route in his complaint by alleging Kotaku is part of a "civil conspiracy ... to deprive Thompson of his various basic constitutional rights" and that the site is "attempt[ing] to intimidate a citizen for the exercise of his constitutional rights." Mark Methenitis goes into detail on what exactly is legally wrong with this overreach over at his Law of the Game blog. All we'll add is that we're sickened by this obvious attempt at legal intimidation and we support our blogging brothers at Gawker all the way.
BlogMate - blogging with TextMate on steroids
TextMate has a basic, built-in blogging bundle that provides some decent features. You can use a variety of syntaxes (HTML, Markdown, etc.) to pen your next digg-worthy post, and the bundle also has rudimentary support for retrieving posts from your blog to edit. It's not bad, but it isn't stellar either.Todd Ditchendorf's BlogMate plugin, however, is stellar.As a blogging interface for TextMate, the first thing you'll notice is that BlogMate isn't simply a bundle - it's a full-blown plugin, offering a palette with all sorts of control over your MetaWeblog-compatible blog (for now BlogMate has only been tested with WordPress, but in theory it should work with any of these blogging systems). As you can see, BlogMate can keep track of a configurable number of past posts, hook into your categories and even display previews with pictures of your posts. BlogMate can also handle multiple blogs for those who can't stop at just one (I'm looking at you, Scott McNulty).Setting up BlogMate is a breeze, though I should probably mention at this point that it is a beta product, so I echo Todd's sentiment of backing up your blog's database just in case. Creating a new post is as easy as opening a new TextMate document and typing away, but there's a major difference from the Blogging bundle here: you don't need to insert a post title; you do that when you actually finish the post and click BlogMate's 'Send Post' button. Managing posts is one area where BlogMate really shines, as editing a post is as easy as writing one - simply double-click any post in your list (and you can configure BlogMate to pull down more than the default 10 posts) to open it with all formatting preserved. Deleting a post involves nothing more than selecting a victim and pressing delete. While you don't get some of the finer features of other blogging clients, BlogMate is already a pretty powerful plugin for the rocking swiss army knife text editor that is TextMate. Todd has done a great job here, and I hope enough interest builds to help make BlogMate worth everyone's while. If you're done reading and you're itching to get blogging, you can grab a copy and peruse more instructions and details from Todd's site here.
Video bloggers receive email from Apple
LC Angell at iLounge posted that Apple has sent out an e-mail to its roster of iTunes video bloggers recommending that they increase the resolution of their video blogs. We're not talking Washington Post-level High Def videos here. Instead, Apple recommends that those podcasters still using 320x240 videos upgrade up to 640x480 or 640x360. Welcome to the age of Apple TV. It would seem that It is no longer cool to format your video blogs for iPod-only viewing.
Reminder: WoW Insider is still LFM!
With everything that gets posted here on a daily basis, it's easy to lose track after posts fall off the first page. So I thought I'd throw up a reminder that we are currently looking to expand our staff with new bloggers and columnists -- and we'll be continuing to accept applications until Monday, March 26th. Think you have what it takes to join the team? Take some time to read through the job requirements and send in an application!
WoW Insider is LFM!
We're looking to expand our staff here at WoW Insider with new people and fresh perspectives. Getting paid to play isn't just a pipe dream -- though in this case you at least have to alt-tab out and write about your experiences. We're looking for two different types of contributers right now: regular bloggers and columnists. A blogger is someone who posts regular news, opinion, and feature content -- everything you see written here now is done by our bloggers. Columnists are a new addition to our team: a columnist would have a particular topic of interest (you get to choose your topic -- and pitch it to us) and make longer weekly or bi-weekly posts. (For a better idea of what sort of work we're looking for from a columnist, you can check out Bonnie Ruberg's Playing Dirty column and Scott Jon Siegel's Off the Grid column on our sister-site Joystiq.)Think you might make a good addition to our team? Well then, read on for all the details!
PaPeRo gets blogging software; Engadget one step closer to full automation
Now we were always under the impression that a personal blog is supposed to be just that -- personal -- so we're not sure that we see the advantages of bringing a robot in to automate this process by filling your site with multimedia content that it thinks you'd want to share with the rest of the world. Nonetheless, NEC has done exactly that with its little cannibalistic PaPeRo bot (you know, the one that thinks humans taste like bacon), endowing it with AI software that recognizes certain keywords uttered during a conversation with its master and then scours the net for seemingly-related pics, vids, and tunes. Scheduled to be unveiled at 13th Annual Conference of the Association of Natural Language Processing later this month in Japan, the newly-spec'ed PaPeRo will be tasked with listening to you talk about your boring day at work ("So I commuted the eight feet from bed to desk, blogged all morning, ate lunch, blogged some more, ate dinner, and then blogged until bedtime."), and then turning your page into what we can only imagine will be a blinking, flashing, slow-loading lookalike of some teen's gaudy MySpace. Just be careful what you talk about from now on, because PaPeRo may be listening, and the last thing you want on your blog is a visual representation of that thing you've been doing to your coworkers' coffee every morning for the last eight weeks.[Via Digital World Tokyo]
MarsEdit acquired by Red Sweater Software
MarsEdit is my blogging client of choice. It is simple, straightforward, and streamlined (unlike Ecto, which I also use and enjoy). Today we found out that MarsEdit, formerly of Ranchero which itself was acquired by NewsGator, has been acquired by Red Sweater Software. This is good news for all MarsEdit uses since NewsGator is much more focused on NetNewsWire, and the future of MarsEdit didn't look too clear.Check out this Q&A with Brent Simmons, creator of MarsEdit, and Daniel Jalkut, the man behind the Red Sweater, for some insights into the future of MarsEdit. Updates to MarsEdit 1.x will continue to be free for registered users, and new users can pick up a copy for $24.95.
Five iWeb Shareware Alternatives
Over at Informit, Ryan Faas posts about five shareware alternatives to iWeb. I spent a bit of time using iWeb when it first shipped but quickly abandoned it when it became clear how slow and clunky it was as a development tool. Although iWeb produces some beautiful pages, it wasn't useful enough for me to make up for its operational difficulties. So it was nice to stumble across this list of alternatives including programs like Sandvox and RapidWeaver and revisit a space that I had more or less already written off.
Develop a WordPress theme on your Mac
I'm going to tell you a secret, that I hope we can keep between us: I am a big fan of blogs and blogging. I love to write and I love to read, so blogging is a natural extension of that (and I hope my level of enjoyment makes its way into my posts here). WordPress is the hottest blogging tool out there. It is open source, dynamic, and all the cool kids use it. Sadly, while content is king, people also love a pretty face.Circle Six Blog has a great post up that outlines Brett's workflow for designing WordPress themes locally on his Mac. He lists a number of useful apps that we have covered on TUAW and includes some good general web design tips.
TUAW Tip: Publish an iMix to your blog
In case you hadn't noticed, Apple is now making it easy for you to publish an iMix or Sport iMix (yours or someone else's) on your blog, "social networking profile," or any Flash-enabled web site. Unfortunately you can't stream any of the actual music or even the 30-second previews directly from the published iMix. Instead, those familiar little arrows take you to the iTunes Store where you can purchase the track your interested in, or the entire iMix. Still, this is a nice way to display the track list in an attractive manner. All you have to do is copy the HTML code that Apple provides under the "Publish to the Web" link on every iMix and paste that code where you want the list to appear. You can choose from two sizes and the RSS feed link to that iMix is provided as well. My one complaint about iMixes is that they lose context if you include things that aren't available in the iTunes Store. Apple simply truncates your playlist when you create an iMix out of it and omits any track that Apple doesn't sell. What they should do is list those non-iTS songs anyway and put a "notify me if this song is ever available to purchase" link next to them. That would maintain the integrity of the iMix and potentially generate future sales as well. [via Macworld UK]
On Apple, blogging and policies
For some time now, Apple's hush-hush policy on public communication has been the focus of much debate. The discussion escalated, however, with the debut of the Masked Blogger, an Apple employee blogging under the radar (or directly in the middle of it, depending on your perspective). Today, John Gruber linked a couple of interesting posts on the subject, one from Chuq Von Rospach (a recent ex-Apple employee), and another from Dave Winer. The more interesting of the two is Chuq's post, where he discusses at length Apple's policies on communication, the fact that the company and its employees actually *do* communicate and blog (though without affiliation), and why Apple's lack of a blogging-specific policy doesn't matter in the grander scheme of things. Chuq's essential point is that Apple's employees do a lot to communicate and interact with the public - they just do it over traditional systems (like email lists) for the purposes of helping and solving problems. Further, 'blogging' is just one more way of communicating (albeit a new and hyped one); it isn't an end-all solution for these purposes. While I think Chuq makes some great points about the focus of blogging and the importance of considering it as a tool for a company like Apple, I still think the company could use one, especially in light of one of its many facets as being closely involved with creative media (see: iLife, which they even brag about on TV). While blogging doesn't have to become a public focus for the company, it certainly wouldn't be difficult to fire one up, and having a blog or two for anything from pimping new products (see: the Google Blog) to offering an easily accessible forum for discussion couldn't hurt (after all, not everyone likes checking in on forums or having one more email list to organize), and they could capitalize on a popular and buzzing new medium. The blog(s) could be treated with a formal touch (like many company-focused promotional blogs) or have a more personal touch from a company-sanctioned individual, like the Scobelizer. Of course, being powered by iWeb, or having a corporate Photocast (or podcast!) couldn't hurt either. Ultimately though, I think one of the good points Chuq makes about how well (yet quietly) Apple's employees actually are communicating is the true Achilles' heel of the idea of an Apple blog to begin with: most of the communication efforts of Apple's employees are quiet or under the radar - right where the company wants them to be. Apple, like most of its products, has a very shiny, polished exterior, which is exactly the kind that does not lend itself to opening the holes and flaws that blogging would puncture, no matter how personal or cute they may seem. One only needs to glance at the company's quiet handling of problems like battery recalls and MacBook RSS to see what I mean. Apple may be a purveyor of some of our favorite creative and communication tools, but donning a more personal side by *using* them just doesn't seem to be in the cards.
Reminder: TUAW may want you!
Hey kids, don't forget that we are looking for a few good bloggers to join our happy TUAW team. Here are the directions one more time (and failure to follow them will result in us not reading your application and mocking you): A brief bio 3 samples of posts written in TUAW's style. One should be a review of something, another an opinion piece, and the third can be whatever strikes your fancy (existing blog posts cannot be used, this has to be new material) Your current Mac setup Email all of those things (yes, all of those things. And no, you can't just link to a bio) to apps-at-tuaw-com in plain text (no attachments, please).We'll be accepting applications until Tuesday, October 17th, so get crackin' already!
