Computing

My quietness of late is largely down to the massive amount of work I have been putting into Palimpsest, head over there and take a look for yourself.

Basically, the old phpBB forum software just wasn’t up to the job. I think that when they get round to releasing version 3 this might chnage, but it was taking too long. Every other day the site seemed to go down with sessions error problems, and it seemed like the phpBB feature set was becoming more and more antiquated. So, I took the plunge and invested in vBulletin.

I had seen the software in use on the pretty dreadful book site The Book Forum, and it seemed to be pretty effective and feature-rich. I then headed over to the VBulletin site, where you can test drive using the forums and also the control panel – the complexity of which really makes it clear what a powerful piece of software this is.

So, I bought it and downloaded it and started to set it up. This is where I started to run into problems and should have planned much better. In many ways, I was very lucky as the import of data from the phpBB database into the vBulletin one was pretty seamless and meant that no data was lost. However, in my haste to get cracking, I had merely locked down the phpBB board and sent out an all-users email to warn people that changes were afoot, and letting them know that the forum URl was changing. What I should have done was develop the new site until it was completely finished, and then make the switch.

It wasn’t long before the complaints started to come in! To be honest, they were all very polite, but having had a difficult night getting the install and upload right (with tedious backing up in between) it made me bemoan rather than celebrate the loyalty of the Palimpsesters. Still, soon, with stylesheet modifications made things started to look more like home. The remaining issue was that the icon set that came with vBulletin was overly fussy and hard to distinguish. This was easily solved by using the icons from the phpBB installation – simple solutions being the best.

So, what makes vBulletin so much better? Firstly, security. New members now have to complete one of those graphical tests, typing in the letters on an image, to try and discourage false members signing up to promote a product or website automatically. Secondly, stability. The number of guest users has reduced dramatically, and not one error along the lines of the sessions one that so beleagured phpBB has been seen.

Thirdly, the features. I’ll run through some of the big ones quickly, at random: moderators can merge threads, sub-forums, wysiwyg post editing, retrieval of deleted posts, customisable user profiles and custom BB codes being just a few. The latter is great, we have created an icon on the wysiwyg editor that, when provided with an Amazon ASIN number, produces a link to the product in question that will credit the Palimpsest coffers if bought.

The other major aspect of vBulletin is the way it can be customised with good quality third party plugins. I use two, the vbAdvanced Portal which produced the dynamic front page, and their link manager which allows users to add links to a directory held on Palimpsest. Both work very well and were very simple to set up.

All in all, I think Palimpsest comes across as being a far more professional site than it did before. In the process of this it is possible that it has lost a little of its charm, sadly. I would like to think that the new features outweigh any disappointment though.

Still, lessons have been learned, most notably about keeping members better informed and also to get a working almost-100% complete site ready before unleashing it.

Having been playing and thinking about the new Google Desktop Search, and specifically its new sidebar form, I have the following few thoughts.

Firstly, like all Google innovations, it’s US only at the moment, content wise. This means that the news and weather info is restricted to the States, which is useless for the rest of us. Plus, the News items which appear are of dubious relevancy to me. I guess this will improve over time, but it would be nice to be able to select specific areas of interest from the outset.

The webclips idea is nice, but I would prefer to see it working as it does on the Google Portal rather than along the small scale Gmail lines. I guess space is an issue here, but the tiny previews are of limited use – plus links don’t seem to work and images aren’t loaded.

In terms of size, though, in many ways I would like the sidebar to be a lot bigger. In fact, make it the size of the whole screen and call it Google Desktop, or even Google OS. Launching apps by typing in (part of) the name is brilliant, so much quicker than mucking about with Start menus, or having to manage the contents of an ever-expanding quick launch toolbar. On a full screen version, you shouldn’t even have to click into the little box to type in what you want. You should be able to just type, hit return and have the application appear in front of you. A little like Jeff Raskin‘s Archy.

It could be made even easier to use, so that you wouldn’t need to know the name of the program you want. Say your installed word processor is OpenOffice.org Writer. You could type ‘letter’ and it loads up your word processor, as the word letter is tagged to the word processor. If you have more than one installed, it could offer a choice. Likewise, ’email’ would offer up Thunderbird, or Outlook and ‘web’ a whole host of browsers and other apps. ‘Chat’ would call up IM and IRC clients that the user has installed. All the talk, of course, is that Google are going to release their own IM client tomorrow. A system like this would retain the speed of a command line with ease-of-use.

With a full-screen to play with, much more information could be displayed – somewhat akin to the current Google Portal, but with local information displayed too.

Going through my RSS feeds on FeedDemon, I notice Jason Kottke has written with far more authority about a similar idea here. More intriguing thoughts on this issue are reported by Microsoft Monitor.

Google Sidebar is part of the new version 2 of Desktop Search.

It works pretty much like Desktop Sidebar, but obviously with all Google services involved. It features an email preview pane, which will pick up your Gmail, if you have an account – it also indexes your whole archived account, so you can search for emails even when you are offline.

Another great feature is the ability to display RSS feeds as ‘Web Clips’ – similar to the way some Gmail accounts do – and you can use the search box to quickly find and run applications too: just typing in ‘Firefox’ will boot up the browser for you. More details of the new features are here.

Some views on this from the web:

• Neville Hobson: The window of opportunity for Google
• Search Engine Watch: Google Desktop Search 2 Offers New Sidebar Widgets, Outlook Integration & More
• Slashdot: Google Releases GDS 2.0
• The Register: Google uses Sidebar to sideline rivals
• Inside Google: Google Releases Desktop 2
• BLADAM: Google Desktop Search
• Guardian Online: Google ‘sidebar’ brings web to desktop

More to come as I come across them.