So, NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. This means I am going to have to cut back a little, and so it’s likely to be my del.icio.us daily posting only for a little while. This is a bit of shame as there is plenty going on at the moment (I def. want to get a post written up about Google/Jotspot in more detail), but there we are.

So how am I attacking NaNoWriMo? Well, I’m going to write it in Google Docs, mainly. A file for each chapter. I’ll post snippets on here as I do them, categorised as NaNoWriMo (like this post is). Other bits may find themselves on Palimpsest and the PBwiki we have set up for Palimp members.

Wish me luck!!

Been using the FeedDemon 2.1 Beta3 for a while now. Here’s a couple of thoughts:

• Each blog post has a link to post it to del.icio.us, it’s been there for a couple of versions now. But if I click a link to another post, or to expand a summary feed, the link disappears. Can we have a link on the main toolbar to send the current page to del.icio.us, or our blogs please?
• If I clip a post in NewsGator for later viewing, can it be automatically sync’d to a News Bin in FD please?

JotSpot has been purchased by Google, according to the official Google blog:

OK, I can finally blurt it out: JotSpot is now part of Google, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Three years ago my friend Graham Spencer and I set out to start a new company. We’d both recently left Excite, which we co-founded, and we had spent a few years starting a nonprofit together. We brainstormed scores of ideas, debated late into the night and ultimately exchanged a mountain of email and documents. We realized we needed a tool to help us organize our thoughts or we’d quickly become overwhelmed. So Graham set up a wiki. I was hooked because it immediately changed the way we worked together. Everything was kept in one place, not locked in email threads or on different computers. We could both make changes to the same document, without having to know HTML (well, without me having to know HTML). After twenty minutes of using a wiki, I was convinced that they were like the Internet in 1993 — useful, but trapped in the land of the nerds (which both Graham and I proudly inhabit). So we set out to start JotSpot as a way to bring the power of wikis to a much broader audience.

As we built the business over the past three years Google consistently attracted our attention. We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online. Then when we had conversations with people at Google we found ourselves completing each other’s sentences. Joining Google allows us to plug into the resources that only a company of Google’s scale can offer, like a huge audience, access to world-class data centers and a team of incredibly smart people.

Google seem to be on something of a feeding frenzy at the moment. Still, a well deveoped wiki system will certainly fit in wth the collaborative online office they are building with Docs, Spreasheet and Calendar.

Technorati tags: google, jotspot

Here’s the post on Matt Mullenweg’s blog where the fork of the b2 engine was first mooted…

Tags: wordpress

FireFix 2.0 keeps crashing on me. Anyone else having problems?

Tags: firefox

Am going to give NaNoWriMo a go this year. I’ve some time off in November, which will give me a chance to catch up if I fall behind. Last year, Palimpsest attempted a joint version, which didn’t quite go to plan. Maybe doing it on my own will actually make it easier…

Steve Rubel and John Naughton both link to a story from Greg Verdino about the Nielsen BuzzMetric conference, which has banned delegates from blogging about the event. There’s more here from David Armano.

The subject covered by the conference? Consumer generated media. Unbelievable.

As many have said, the word-of-blog marketing that having running commentaries on conferences and other events is a real bonus for organisers, and many events have grown in popularity as a result. Banning bloggers from anything is a bad thing, especially when they can so clearly have a beneficial effect.

Strange times at the moment. Yesterday I went to the doctors to try and get my sore throat sorted out – I’ve had it for about a month now. When I left, I had diabetes.

Everyone has been cool so far, plenty of good advice and well wishes. Heck, it’s not like I’m even properly ill – just that I’m not going to be able t enjoy the booze like I used to (on occasion…) and that sweet tooth of mine is going to have to come under control.

Am running the recently v2 of FireFox, only this strange thing is happening at the moment, a weird beige strip between the title and the menu bar, using up screen estate and generally being annoying…

Tags: firefox

My iPod has gone wrong. For some reason, it refuses to update with new songs and podcasts. So, I need a replacement. But do I spend 300 odd quid on a new iPod, or look to another solution – because it’s not like iPods are exactly perfect…

I’m thinking of using this instead:

Yep, my mobile. Well, it’s meant to be a Walkman, isn’t it? Using the headphone jack I can still get it working in the car, and if I buy myself a 4gb memory card, I’ll be well away. Alright, it won’t be the same as my old 20gb iPod, but it’s a lot cheaper than getting a new one, and I can still play the songs already on the old one, so…

Pressies

Picked up all the wedding presents today. If anyone who reads this got us one, then thanks. The trouble is, with all these lovely new plates and bowls and whatnot, we can’t bare to use them in our current kitchen, which is a little rundown. We need to move. And hopefully, having looked round a house today, we soon will. Nice one.

Interesting post on Google Operating System blog:

If Gmail were integrated with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, it would have a new link next to some attachments that says “Import in Google Docs & Spreadsheets”. This way, you could edit these files online.

Fortunately, if you go to this page, you can find a mail address where you can send your documents to be uploaded in Google Docs. So you can add that address as a contact (let’s say Google Docs), and forward the mails that have .doc or .xls attachments to that address.

You can even add a filter that sends all your .doc or .xls attachments to Google Docs & Spreadsheets:

Has the words: has:attachment doc OR xls
Forward it to: (the email address discussed above)

For the moment, you can upload only files smaller than 500 KB and you can’t upload spreadsheets by mail (but this feature will be added soon).

Source: Import Gmail Attachments into Google Docs

I’d rather there were some sort of Google file manager to managed all attachments and Docs files in the same place, but it’s a step forward anyway…