Tag Archives: Opinion

Hosted WordPress.com blogs aren’t that bad

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There seems to be a small but vocal migration away from self-hosted WordPress blogs, many citing that they just want to write and not worry about the rest of the guff that goes along with managing one’s blog. Squarespace seems to be the current weapon of choice, along with static options like Jekyll, and even Github.

From what I can tell, it’s a painful process, with Justin Blanton being the latest to experience the drama, From WordPress to Jekyll/Octopress or Squarespace?

One of Justin’s reasons for moving, or at least checking out his options, is one of the reasons I moved my site over to the hosted WordPress platform;

Frankly, I’m just tired of having to upgrade WordPress (and then make all of my little one-off modifications each time I upgrade), tired of having to manage memory on the web server, tired of having to think about whether something I do is going to break the site in some fatal way that I simply don’t have the time these days to fix.

Another one of the reasons was that it would stop me tinkering. For those of you who are regular readers here, cast your minds back 6 months or even further, how many times did you arrive at my website and see a different theme? Looking through my site archive I keep on one of my other servers there’s at least 20 different themes, and that’s only over the last 4 years! Since I’ve moved over to a WordPress.com hosted, apart from adding in the sidebar in the last couple of days I haven’t tinkered at all.

Granted there’s a few things you can’t do on the WordPress.com platform i.e. Linked List style posts, shopping carts, I think even advertisements might be off the list, but if you’re just wanting a simple little blog where you can just write and not worry about all the other stuff you might want to give WordPress.com blogs a look.

Squarespace is pretty awesome as well, though I tended to tinker there a lot too, and the new version 6 doesn’t appear to be quite ready just yet…but it’s pretty damn close.

A-League's GF medal gaffe | Fox Sports

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In an embarassing gaffe, Perth Glory captain Jacob Burns was awarded the Joe Marston Medal for the A-League grand final’s best player after it was mistakenly awarded to Brisbane Roar playmaker Thomas Broich.

The A League is just going from strength to strength.

This incident just tops off a debacle of a season where we saw Gold Coast FC stripped of their license due to the outspoken nature of their owner, the Newcastle Jets handing back their license because of not being able to reach decent terms with the FFA, the Central Coast Mariners not making the Grand Final because of bad refereeing (the ref admitted after the game that he got it wrong), the Brisbane Roar winning the Grand Final on the back of a wrongly called penalty….and then something as simple as tallying votes correctly get’s all screwed up.

You’ve gotta feel for the Glory here.

Dear Harry Kewell

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Seriously kiddo, learn to ride the challenge rather than taking the scummy option of diving to the turf. Granted you don’t roll around theatrically injured like other footballers, but still you go to ground easily and stare straight at the ref with such anger at the lack of let’s call it protection.

How about checking out this video compilation of Lionel Messi, yes I know he occasionally goes to ground but more often than not he’s riding the challenge and looking to score or at least off load to a teammate.

Come on Harry, get back to being the sort of footballer young kids can look up to and respect. Ride the challenge!

Good riddance to RSS?

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MG Seigler had this to say as commentary on Dan Frakes’s Macworld article, Mountain Lion: Hands on with Mail.

Previously, a (shitty) RSS reader was built into Mail. And Safari would sniff for RSS feeds. Both functionalities are now gone.

Good riddance.

Good riddance to RSS, or good riddance to OS X’s inbuilt crappy RSS ‘reading’ options?

If RSS is all but dead as a distribution method, what is the likely preferred distribution / delivery method for content? Should we be pushing all our content through twitter, Facebook, email subscriptions, apps, something else? Or all of the above?

How do non-geeks find and subscribe to content on the web, aside from Google? Do non-geeks even want to subscribe to websites, or is it a case of Google and forget?

Recently, as I’ve upped my article / link blog output I’ve noticed I’m receiving more traffic from twitter and Facebook.

I’ve been thinking about whether or not I should set up a separate twitter account, and a Facebook page, so that I’m not spamming my current follower and friend base. Whilst Facebook gives readers a quick overview of the post as well as any images I add in, plus also an easy way for them to comment, twitter’s 140 character limitation isn’t quite so forgiving.

I don’t know that there’s an actual single correct answer to all of this, tech and trends change every 5 minutes online, especially when it comes to social networking stuff ((Yes I know twitter and Facebook have lasted longer than 5 minutes, and likely will last a while longer)), however the one constant for a long while now for geeks and non-geeks alike, has been Google….so for now I reckon it’s a case of writing good content and making sure you keyword and what not well enough so that Google indexes it well enough.

On the subject of greed and entitlement

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It seems there’s a bunch of whinging going on about Tweetbot not being a Universal App; see articles from Macstories and Culture Milk defending Tapbots decision to not make Tweetbot a Universal App.

After reading both these articles, and the linked tweets, a thought hit me.

Now that OS X is steadily being iOS-ified, and that numerous applications that were released on iOS have successfully been launched on OS X, does that mean that the future definition of Universal App will be adjusted so that it not only includes iPhone and iPad, but also Mac? And if that is the case, will users then expect developers to give them 3 separate versions of the app for the one price?

God help the devs if that is the expectation!

Seriously people, this is such a dumb argument. Pay developers for good applications, plain and simple. If these guys and girls don’t make an income off of their hard work then they won’t continue to bother putting the effort in, and in some instances they may abandon developing apps altogether, and we will all get stuck with a bunch of crappy apps that won’t be supported at all and all the innovation will be gone.

Does anyone remember how much you had to pay on average for Palm apps in the Handango store?

The need for App Store comment filtration?

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One iPhone application that has been getting some great press of late is Launch Center. In it’s simplest form Launch Center is an app that allows you to trigger certain actions within other applications with a single tap, it also allows you to schedule actions as well.

For a bunch of it’s users, myself included, Launch Center has replaced numerous Homescreen apps, as well as saved many many taps. However it also has it’s detractors. Take a look at these screen caps from the App Store, how do you go from a glowing 5 star review to a call for minus stars?

I’ll admit that typically most 5 star reviews have little to no value, especially when it’s a review like “omg awesome app 5 starz” as it tells us nothing about why the app is so awesome. On the other end of the spectrum a 1 star, or in this case a “minus star” is next to worthless as well.

Continuing to use Launch Center as an example; the developer, App Cubby, clearly states in the description that notifications do not stay in Notification Center permanently, Apple does not allow apps that do this, they also state that users can ask for help or submit feedback on their support website. With developers not being able to interact with their Apple’s customers via responding to issues disguised as reviews, and when they clearly state that they can / will support via their own website, I think Apple is doing the developers a huge disservice by approving these comments.

I’d love to be able to have a filter set so that I don’t see any 5 or 1 star reviews, only give me 2,3, and 4 star reviews where people have actually submitted a considered opinion on the app in question. There’s an infinite amount more value in those reviews.

I’d love to see Apple start to actually moderate comments that are so very obviously user based issues, or even open a feedback channel so that developers can respond to critical reviews.

Or maybe it’s all too difficult for a $1.99 app.

Reclaiming The Newcastle Post Office

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Newcastle is especially devoid of a physical space for its lively tech and creative start-up community. It lacks affordable space for tech and creative entrepreneurs to touch down, plug-in and work, a place that stimulates a start-up culture, facilitates networking, collaboration and knowledging sharing.

My Internet pal Gordon proposes an interesting plan for the old Newcastle Post Office. I for one would love if it re-opened as a co-working workspace, I can see myself grabbing some desk space there at least 1 day a week. Being stuck in an office 5 days a week is a pain, and a bit of a drain on creativity.

So how do we make this happen?

If you work hard to learn a craft and even harder to mas¬ter it, if you put great thought into what you say and who you want to say it to, then there’s no bet¬ter place to be pub¬lished than on a web¬site you your¬self own.

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Or that, despite the overwhelmingly positive feedback and kind regards from readers, no one is actually reading or, even worse, that my words are simply scanned and forgotten. Then there is also the fact that so much of my work is in places I don’t really own or control.

I sympathise with Patrick’s thoughts here, however I think it would be a damn shame if he stopped publishing content on the Internet. I also must confess to having a lot of Pat’s content in Instapaper and Evernote, permanently saved and often referenced.