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Matt Mullenweg is only 24. BASTARD.
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Great! The original version of Sim City (and my favourite) has had its code released under open source under the original development name of ‘Micropolis’. Cool.
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Stef on the Birmingham Bloggers’ meet.
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“What do Gawker and Bittany Spaers have in common?” asked a commenter with the user name Nutgraf. “They have both gone nuts.”
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Schedule an event such as a board meeting, business lunch, conference call, family reunion, movie night, or any other group event.
A social media software toolkit
Being a blogger is about far more than just words. To that end, you need tools which you feel comfortable with to enable you to create in any number of different media. Here’s some of the software I use to create my blogs and other online content. It would be cool to know what other options are out there, so do let me know what you use in the comments!
- Firefox. My window onto the web. Of course, the various plugins I use make Firefox into a better tool for blogging. But that’s for another post…
- FeedDemon. My RSS reader of choice. Of course, now it’s free, it should be yours too 😉 Being a desktop based reader, as opposed to web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines, has a number of advantages – like downloading feed items to read when you are without the web – but to be honest I like it best because I am used to it. How pathetic is that?!
- Windows Live Writer. This is a new one for me as I always used to be a BlogJet fan. But I gave the latest version of WLW a try a month or so back and I love it. How come MS can get some stuff, like this, so right – and yet others so badly wrong? Using an offline editor just works better for me that using the inbuilt WordPress online offering. One advantage is that I can write blog posts without an internet connection, like right now when for some reason the connection’s dropped…
- Paint.net. A great free image editor. Much easier to use and more stable than the Windows version of the GIMP. Paint.net is easy to use and packed with features.
- SnagIt. Lee Hopkins tipped me off to this one and it’s the most recent addition to my toolkit.Snagit is a great little bit of software that makes taking screenshots a doddle. No relying on the PrtSc key any more! Snagit lets you copy just a portion of the screen, or even an entire web page that scrolls a number of screens. You can then use SnagIt to resize, crop and add effects as you see fit without having to fire up another image editor.
- FileZilla. A great little open source (free as in speech, as well as beer) FTP client.
- Audacity. It’s always cool when an open-source bit of software is also one of the best available, and Audacity is one of those. An audio editor which makes producing podcasts child’s play.
- BB Flashback. This lets me produce screencasts – videos of what I am doing on my PC screen. Great for producing demos and tutorials. Not sure if this is the best package on the market – lots of people use Camtasia – but this was more reasonably priced 🙂
- Windows Movie Maker. OK, so I need to get some better video editing software 😉
- Evernote. A lovely note-taking application. It lets me clip things as I am browsing through the web, whether text or images. Handy for pulling together thoughts for blog posts.
Photo credit: Saffanna
A thought on spam
Just a thought… If one runs a blog or online forum about erectile dysfunction and the use of viagra to combat that – how do you decide what is and isn’t spam?
A hypothetical thought, of course!
Creative Connectivity
I’m talking at Creative Connectivity – a conference being organised by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Support Centre, which is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee – on the subject of the risks and opportunities presented by Web 2.0 and social media for e-learning providers. The RSC are doing some great work in encouraging teachers and learners to engage with the web to create new learning opportunities. This includes a network they have set up using Ning. It will be a really interesting day, and I’m dead chuffed to be involved.
It’s on the 22nd January (2008!) between 10am and 4pm.
Click below for a PDF of the flyer for the event.
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Creative Connectivity flyer |
If you are interested, visit www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/events.
Regeneration
Am currently reading Pat Barker’s Regeneration, all about Siegdried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and other fictional soldiers recovering at Craiglockhart War Hospital during WW1. I must admit to, shamefully, not knowing an awful lot about the ‘great’ war before reading Oxford University Press’ World War One: A Very Short Introduction. It so interested me that I immediately spent a Christmas book token on David Stevenson’s 1914-1918, which looks a beast of a read.
Here are some of the links I have been looking at, hunting down background information: