An online notebook
FeedDemon 2 has a cool little icon on each post you read to link to it in your del.icio.us archive. I’ve actually started to use this now for a few things. Here is the RSS feed, if you are interested.
It would be nice to have a ‘blog this’ icon too. Currently it’s either going through the menus or hitting ctrl-shift-b.
Couple of interesting points from MJR:
Annoying blog comment misfeatures: letter images
Just tried to leave a comment on Sasquach wears a yellow hat at blogger.com – it has one of those annoying “type the letters from the distorted image” screens (which don’t work well [w3c]). Even when I switch images on, I can’t get the letters accepted. I don’t know if it’s a problem with the site or my eyes, but it’s really annoying.
Quite right! Though what is worse is blogger blogs that will only let you comment if you register with blogger. That really is just rubbish.
Google Problems: China; and World Economic Forum TV
25 Jan 2006: google is taking a lot of heat online for agreeing to Chinese government content requests. I won’t criticise the actual decision too much, because it’s typical corporation behaviour: follow the money, like the rest of the World Economic Forum. If you’re buying Chinese products just because they’re cheaper, you’re part of the reason they have the money and part of the reason that google is following them – corporations are seldom held accountable. If you don’t like that, maybe you should Boycott Made In China as well as google?
I think most people’s problem is that it is such hypocritical behaviour – MSN and Yahoo! have had this sort of thing in place with China for ages, and no one batted an eyelid – but perhaps many people – naively – expected better from Google. At least Bill Gates never pretended to be anything other than evil… And fine, it is typical corporation behaviour. But isn’t it nice that at least once people kick up a stink over it?
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iran blocks BBC Persian website
The Iranian authorities have started to block the BBC’s Persian language internet site, for the first time.
The BBC says the level of traffic to the site from within Iran has dropped sharply over the last three days.
No official explanation has been given. The BBC has expressed concern at the action, saying it deprives many Iranians of a trusted source of news.
The BBC said it would be approaching the Iranian government at an official level about re-instating access.
BBC Persian.com is the most popular of the BBC’s non-English language websites, receiving about 30 million page impressions a month – about half of which are from inside Iran.
BBC World Service radio broadcasts in English and Persian are being received by audiences in Iran as normal, as are the BBC’s international online news services in English.
When entering the BBC’s Persian site a sign comes up saying “access to this site denied”, says the BBC’s Frances Harrison in Tehran.
It is not clear if the filtering will be permanent, but many websites are routinely blocked in Iran, our correspondent says.
The BBC says readers from Iran have begun emailing them to ask for help with what are known as filter-buster sites, which enable access to banned sites.
Things have been pretty quiet over here recently. I guess I have just been concentrating on other things.
First up, I have started to host the Impnet forums – a site for fans of Lincoln City Football Club. This has involved me redesigning the phpBB board and making a few changes to see if it can help increase participation. At the moment the site is stored at http://davebriggs.net/impnet but this will change to http://impnet.co.uk – the traditional domain for the site – just as soon as the registrar geeks have sorted it out.
Otherwise, Palimpsest has been pretty busy – see the Fetish Detectives thread for some amusement – and I have been helping one member set up a blog of their own to join Chilli and Rick. I don’t think the blog is for public consumption just yet so I won’t mention anything for now.
I’ve been playing with the new beta of version 2.0 of FeedDemon, which is excellent so far. The integration with Newsgator is very useful – meaning that blogs I read at work using NG on the web are marked as such at home on FD. Fab. I also got to have a copy of the NG plug-in for MS Outlook, which I had a little play with even though I don’t use Outlook for my email (for obvious reasons…). It seems to work pretty well and integrates nicely – a good choice if you must use Outlook. I haven’t been making any link blog posts recently because things have been pretty quiet since Xmas and the New Year. Maybe things will start picking up now. Having the FD/NG sync will help me sort the wheat from the chaff anyway.
…right now. This is a seriously temporary list!
1. Gmail – never have I stuck with an email system or even address for so long. Quick, easy to use, almost perfect.
2. Newsgator – you could possibly substitute this with Bloglines, as I seem to switch between the two, but this is my current favourite, largely due to the clarity of the layout. Must have a look into the FeedDemon synching.
3. Writely – simply a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed.
4. ProtoPage – has fully taken over from the Google Portal for me. Am looking forward to any additions to the service next year – how about integrating with other services, like
5. HipCal – the online calendar that has actually got me using an online calendar – and that’s while it still only displays dates in US format!
6. WordPress – easily, to my mind, the best blogging platform there is. With version 2, it’s even more accessible.
7. Flickr – since upgrading to a Pro account I have started to realise the true benefits of this service. And all the talk about sharing is fine and dandy – but nobody gets more out of seeing their photos online than the photographers themselves. Makes me want to carry my camara around all the time.
8. phpBB – even though I have had to move Palimpsest onto VBulletin because of the workload, this remains the easiest to install, administer and use free internet forum. It’s amazing, really, that this doesn’t cost anything.
9.Wikipedia – lots of people sneer about it, but here’s my view: if you use Wikipedia as your only source for a piece of academic, or indeed any, work, you are a nitwit. I wouldn’t use Brittanica, say, as my only source for something, so why use something as obvious open to error as Wikipedia? But, as a quick guide to something, a way of genning up on something you knew little about, or as a way of whiling away a bored hour, there’s nothing better.
10. Palimpsest – well, I have to mention it. A haven from internet witlessness. Read this if you don’t believe me, if you have a spare couple of hours. Be there and be square.