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Free for All: A few tips for the indie developer
I am no developer, nor do I have dreams of one day becoming one. I absolutely love having the ability to write about what I like and to interact with those who enjoy (or hate) what I write. Developers have their hands and tongues tied much of the time, and often the indie developer gets no credit whatsoever. Granted, if artistic release or programming is your thing, I say go for it. But I will absolutely admit to wanting attention most of all -- it's what I like to do. Over the years, I have visited more independent MMO sites and played more independent MMOs than I care to recount. Still, not a week goes by when I do not find a new one to look at, and so I file it away for future use. I am often amazed at some of the mistakes indie developers make -- such obvious ones, too. I try to remind myself that the garage-coder is not always the best choice for graphic designer, so sometimes the websites and logos of these tiny companies look like they were hosted on Geocities. I decided to have some fun and throw down some general rules that I apply to indie developers. Take them or leave them, but I think that they are based on quite a bit of observation. Feel free to add any of your own. Click past the cut and let's get to them!
iPads can now see WordPress blogs in an optimized view
WordPress is the world's most popular blogging tool, with over 25 million users. The iPad is the world's most popular tablet device, with over 17 million shipped in 2010. What happens when you get these two popular kids together? Magic. Automattic Inc, the company behind WordPress, announced a new iPad-optimized view for all WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs. The company has developed a new plug-in in cooperation with Onswipe that provides iPad users with a special experience, featuring touch controls that provide navigation of WordPress blogs through swiping, rotation and other gestures. The plug-in even knows how to properly format content based on the orientation of the iPad. As you can see in the screenshot at right, the iPad-optimized view displays posts in a visual grid, with individual posts readable with a tap. The plug-in is entirely HTML5-compliant, and it can be customized from the WordPress Dashboard to create a magazine-like cover page, display a logo on the cover and choose from nine different skins to match the overall theme of your site. For WordPress.com users, the plug-in is available with a touch. Self-hosted WordPress users just need to install the Onswipe plug-in available here. Automattic notes that WordPress.com is already seeing about 750,000 page views a day from iPad visitors, with the numbers rising rapidly.
WordPress app now includes video recording
WordPress for iOS has updated to version 2.6, which adds the ability to record video from within the app and upload it to a blog. Other improvements include an overhaul of locally saved drafts, which brings it more in line with the web version -- including the ability to autosave while the post is being written. Also, version 2.6 implements a full media library within the app. WordPress for iOS 2.6 is a free download from the App Store and available now. [Via Macworld]
Windows Live Spaces throws in the towel, sends users to WordPress
Are you a proud user of the Windows Live Spaces social networking / blog publishing service? Since the halcyon days of 2006, Spaces has been helping users connect with each other (and publish their Get A Life! fan fiction), but no longer: under a new plan announced yesterday, users who sign up for a Live account will be instead sent to WordPress, and users who already have Spaces accounts will be given a couple options: delete the site entirely, download the data, or migrate to WordPress.com. According to Huffington Post, this is all part of a new corporate strategy that sees Microsoft working to "play nice" with other people's solutions, and as such the company is assuring users that existing code and content will be compatible with (or convertible to) WordPress. This is also, obviously, part of a strategy to pull the plug on services that aren't makin' any money. All we can say is: we're having flashbacks to the great Geocities disaster of 2009, and it's not pleasant.
Visualized: world's most trafficked websites and their favicons
We knew Google Search was an iconic service (we had to), but seeing it dwarf the rest of the web like this is pretty humbling. This here map of the internets uses Alexa data from earlier this year to assign the favicon dimensions of each of the top 288,945 sites around the world. Oh, and if you don't have an icon sidled up next to your URL, tough luck, you're not on here. See how many you can spot before your eyes start bleeding, then hit up the source to look up your favorite sites. As to your absolute favoritest site of them all, you can spot us somewhere in the space between vBulletin and Wikipedia.
MarsEdit 3 adds rich text editing, enhanced media browsing
In the "send an email, post a blog entry" fun and fast-paced world of tomorrow, services like Tumblr and Posterous make it exceedingly simple to prepare and post to your blog; meanwhile, Twitter, Facebook and AOL Lifestream push past the article metaphor to 140-character status snippets. Delightful as they all may be, sometimes it's nice to have a well-rounded Mac app that supports more reflective and considerate writing for your online outlets -- not to mention one that saves your drafts in case your browser picks that particular moment to crash. For a lot of bloggers, including many TUAW veterans, Red Sweater's MarsEdit (US$39.95) is that app. It allows you to write, edit and schedule posts offline at leisure, with full preview capability so you know what you're getting when you hit the Publish button. It will happily upload your images and files alongside your posts, and it works with scores of popular and obscure blog back-end systems (WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Squarespace, etc.). If you prefer to edit elsewhere but still want the uploading savvy MarsEdit delivers, it plays nicely (via the ODBEditor scritping suite) with other text editors like SubEthaEdit and TextMate. MarsEdit has just hit version 3.0. At long last, WYSIWIG rich text editing is included, alongside the traditional HTML/text edit window that has cheered experts but may have intimidated novices. Other new features include better syntax highlighting in HTML, support for WordPress static pages, media browsing from iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom libraries, and more. You can download a 30-day trial of MarsEdit and see for yourself if it works the way you do. Upgrades for previous owners are free if you bought MarsEdit in 2010, and $14.95 for all earlier purchasers.
iPad use case: Pro blogger
Over the past few weeks, we've heard many people say, "The iPad is cool, but what would I do with it?" This new series aims to answer that question. We'll examine one user case per post, from couch surfer to mobile professional, and describe just how that person uses his or her iPad. As a professional blogger, there are 5 things I need to do my job: A comfortable, reliable keyboard A text editor RSS feeds Web access A reference tool for compiling research The iPad lets me get nearly all of that accomplished. Let's start with what works. The keyboard The iPad's software keyboard is more usable that I expected. It's forced me to develop a hybrid typing method that's part hunt-and-peck and part touch typing. Years ago, I learned to keep my fingers in the home position, lightly touching the keys. On the iPad, "lightly touching" means "pressing," so now I hover just above the keys. The landscape keyboard is just a bit smaller than a standard keyboard, so I can't keep my hands in the true home position. However, knowing each key's location without having to look is tremendously helpful. With a bit of practice, my muscle memory has adapted to the smaller keyboard. The real key, as with the iPhone, is to be fearless and type. The iPad will correct the vast majority of your mistakes. That being said, I don't want to write more than a few hundred words with it. Even with the above accommodations, I still make more errors than I do with a physical keyboard. Therefore, Apple's Bluetooth keyboard is essential. It's a breeze to set up, fits squarely in a bag and is barely wider than the iPad itself. With the iPad docked and the keyboard in place, I'm ready to write.
Getting started with WordPress and MAMP on your Mac
WordPress is among the more popular blog publishing and content management systems available. Some web hosting providers, such as GoDaddy and DreamHost, provide a relatively seamless and integrated WordPress installation process built into their dashboards. However, if you'd like to dip your toes into the WordPress waters and learn what lurks beneath it, but aren't yet ready to make a web hosting commitment (or switch, if your host currently doesn't support it) you can get you feet wet using MAMP.
The Queue: I don't really know what's happening here
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.The video I've included in today's edition of The Queue is... something. It is certainly a thing. A thing that is entirely unrelated to WoW. I know the music is produced by Justice, but the video? Well. It's a video. Enjoy?corwin asked... "Is anything more going to be done with the Grizzly Hills Venture Bay PVP areas? It seems like it has a lot of potential and isn't paid any attention."
Linden Lab launches a bunch of blogs
After a comparatively quiet period for communications, Linden Lab has relaunched the blog -- or blogs, in this case (we count seven blogs altogether, so far), presenting us with more talk than we've seen from the Lab in quite some time. The new blogs (migrated now from Wordpress to Jive's Clearspace) certainly seems to have that 2005 feel that came with the original Linden blogs, only with more polish. The new blogs are Features, Press, Land (and sea), Technology, Eureka (an inworld showcase), Working Inworld, and Community. Only a very few All of the posts [thanks Yoz!] from the old blog have been migrated to the new system. We're not aware of any especial comment limits, but a moderation policy has been announced as a part of the package, and commenters must log in with their Second Life account credentials before commenting. Overall, at present it is a bit like a new series premiere. It's full of introductions and setup, but at this stage it is a little too early to tell how it is all going to work out in the longer term. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Turbine releases my.lotro.com beta
As we first reported in October, Turbine was looking to release a social networking site in Q4 2008 for its Lord of the Rings Online players. Now we're happy to announce that the site has officially been launched in an early beta stage, although not quite as Facebook-y as many had speculated early on. Powered by Wordpress, this site tracks character, monster character, kinship and tribe information and relays it in a very easy-to-use format. It also displays item information, stats, deed accomplishment and leveling dates, times and much more. There's a calendar for kinship events, a journal option for keeping notes on your character's progress and even an RSS feed for each journal. This beta version will run from today until Friday, December 12th, and you can check out our own gallery of the site's features by following the link below. Take a Tour of My.LotRO >> %Gallery-38999%
Found Footage: Help test WordPress for iPhone 1.2
Have a WordPress blog? Own an iPhone or iPod touch? Have you been using WordPress for iPhone to update your blog from the comfort of your bathroom [insert your own visual image here]? The WordPress community has been hard at work on the next release of WordPress for iPhone, and it will contain a ton of new features including: Landscape mode with the extra wide keyboard Link creation help Support for editing and creating Pages Comment moderation Asynchronous publishing Photo resizing options A video of WordPress for iPhone 1.2 in action with a beta of WordPress 2.7 is available with a quick click on the video window at the top of this post. For more information, visit the WordPress for iPhone page. As with the previous versions, WordPress for iPhone 1.2 will be free. As soon as the beta test is complete and all bugs have been successfully squashed, the new version will be available via the App Store.
WordPress for iPhone source now available
When I first heard that the iPhone WordPress app was open source I thought that was cool, but what about the SDK NDA (that's nondisclosure agreement, which means you won't share any information you're told with anyone)? It would seem that the fine folks at WordPress aren't too worried about that bothersome NDA because they are now sharing the source code of the app via their SVN server. It'll be interesting to see if Apple releases the legal hounds upon WordPress or not. If they do it means that Apple is still considering the iPhone SDK NDA serious business, but if they just let WordPress distribute the code I wage we'll see plenty of other devs posting iPhone code of their own.
First Look: WordPress
It seems like only yesterday that I was posting about the soon to be released WordPress app for the iPhone. Ah, right, it was only yesterday. A lot can happen when I'm sleeping, it would appear, because sometime last night the WordPress app went live on the App Store.This free app, which works with WordPress.com blogs as well as any self hosted sites running version 2.5.1 or higher, let's you post to your blog easily. As you can see in our gallery, the application is straightforward and pretty easy to use.At the moment this app is all about posting to your WordPress blog, not managing it. You won't be able to access comments from this app, nor can you add users, activate plugins, or anything along those lines.That being said, this is a must have app for all you iPhone toting WordPress bloggers out there.You can find out more about this app on the WordPress for iPhone website.%Gallery-28318%
WordPress: our iPhone app is coming soon
Just a little while ago I wrote about Typepad's native iPhone app, which I quite liked. Many folks thought it looked neat, but they were either running their own WordPress blogs, or using Wordpress.com's hosted service neither of which are compatible with the Typepad app (for obvious reasons). Luckily for them, the good folks at WordPress have posted some information about the forthcoming WordPress iPhone application.The app is ready, and pending addition to the App Store. It will work with both self hosted WordPress installs and blogs hosted on WordPress.com. You can do all the things you would expect: upload pictures, write blog posts, and edit existing posts.The app should be available soon on the App Store for free. Once it is available I'll be taking it for a spin and posting my thoughts.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Blogo 1.1 emerges from Brainjuice
Attention all bloggers! The nerd bunnies at Brainjuice have just released Blogo 1.1, the latest take on their Mac OS X blogging tool. Blogo 1.1 now includes support for Drupal and Twitter in addition to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, typo, and MovableType.The new Twitter support allows users to post tweets and direct messages from Blogo, and can even send a tweet whenever you post. Brainjuice has fixed some existing issues, as well as adding these new features: Support for raw image formats Integration with NetNewsWire and Safari Use of Growl for all user notifications New text formatting options (quotes, lists, aligned, justified) Custom cropping of thumbnails independently of the full-size images To give Blogo 1.1 a try, download a 21-day unlimited trial or purchase the app for $25.
MarsEdit 2.1.3 helps keep drafts in WP and Blogger
Daniel Jalkut posts that TUAW's favorite blogging app, MarsEdit, has hit version 2.1.3. Mainly a bug fix update, the biggest change is that drafts in WordPress and Blogger are now better handled -- their "draft" status is apparently better preserved.Additionally, a few markup elements, specifically "#tags#" and "#askurl#" have been tweaked to work better, and there is also improved handling of URLs in localhost-based blogs.MarsEdit is available, as always, for $29.95 from Red Sweater, or free for a 30-day trial period.
How to put Massively on your web site and computer
Everyone these days either has a blog or a guild site that they post to regularly; and it's especially common amongst the greater MMORPG community. One of the neat features of most of these sites is that they allow you to subscribe to other blogs, like Massively. The software of these sites and tools can put up our headlines in easy to access places, so you and all your friends can stay up to date on the latest Massively news.Getting this setup might seem like a hard thing to do, but it's really not. In fact, with our guide, complete with pictures, you'll be able to get Massively's latest news on your site in no time! We give you step-by-step instructions for sites and software like Guild Portal, Guild Launch, Blogger.com, Word Press, vBulletin, Google Reader, Outlook, and more. We also tell you the info you need to get our news setup on any other site.Continue reading on for a complete list of guides we provide.
How to put Massively on your WordPress blog
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put Massively on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index. Note that the images in the guide are for illustration only and you can replace all references to WoW Insider with Massively. About WordPress WordPress is a fancy blogging site that has a lot of features. In fact, I think it has more features than Google's blogger.com. However, it's not as easy to use, nor does it flow as well as blogger.com does. Nonetheless, it's a really great site and is pretty popular. Getting Massively on your wordpress.com site isn't hard at all. How to syndicate Massively on your wordpress.com blog 1. Open up the Dashboard of your wordpress.com blog. This is where you create posts and edit your blog site. 2. Click on the top "Presentation" tab, and then click on the "Widgets" tab right bellow that. You want to see the screen pictured above.3. Scroll down until you see the "RSS 1" widget. Left click and hold on the widget rectangle.
How to put WoW Insider on your WordPress blog
In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index. About WordPress WordPress is a fancy blogging site that has a lot of features. In fact, I think it has more features than Google's blogger.com. However, it's not as easy to use, nor does it flow as well as blogger.com does. Nonetheless, it's a really great site and is pretty popular. Getting WoW Insider on your wordpress.com site isn't hard at all. How to syndicate WoW Insider on your wordpress.com blog 1. Open up the Dashboard of your wordpress.com blog. This is where you create posts and edit your blog site. 2. Click on the top "Presentation" tab, and then click on the "Widgets" tab right bellow that. You want to see the screen pictured above.3. Scroll down until you see the "RSS 1" widget. Left click and hold on the widget rectangle.
