I like this title much better than the ‘For Dumbies/Idiots’ ones.
Anyway if you are into this blogging thing at all and are running Firefox 3 then you really should give ScribeFire a test drive. It really make this easy.
Archives for April 2008
General
Honestly I am still getting the hang of this blogging thing. I can tell you that using wordpress is a hell of a lot better than eblogger, or myspace, facebook, y!360 or any of the other thing’s I’ve tried over the years. Advance the score +1 for Open Source!!!
Yahoo | Radical Paradigm Shift | Going Totally Open
This could be the move that breaks the appeal of Yahoo to Microsoft. Although Microsoft has attempted to make appearances of shifting itself into being Open Source friendly, truth of the matter is that this company is even less open than Sun. Honestly with Sun swallowing up MySql the nearly ubiquitous Open Source database player, and subsequently closing off some of it’s core componentry. I am absolutely certain the Balmer and crew performed a little heel clicking jump for joy at this maneuver.
So what to make of Yahoo’s turn about? Well honestly this company has flirted with the whole Open Source concept since it’s humble beginnings. Like Hotmail, they’ve run their systems on FreeBSD since the start. Considering that they already have many fairly open APIs this is an extremely interesting move.
succeeds I would venture that this is aimed at making the company much less attractive that it currently is to the hostility it is seeing on the market. If the ploy it is likely that this tact will strengthen their position against Myspace and Facebook as the PC World article states.
widgets, gadgets & applets
Ok so it’s interesting to see that Microtsoft followed Apple’s Dashboard lead with it’s pathetic gadget solution. However both pale in comparison to Yahoo’s Widget engine. I am currently running y!w on both Windows and Mac, without much issue. Althoughnow that I finally upgraded to Leopard I do miss my Day Planner, even after several major OS updates Yahoo still has not fixed the errors with this widget from their defualt set. Otherwise on all of the systems that I use I have subsequently replaced/disabled the built-in widget facility and erplaced it with Yahoo’s.
I have to ask the question: When oh when will these OS manufacturers figure it out that they do not need to create these half assed software packages when there is a superior alternative already available.
Had Microsoft dumped the gadgets and struck a financial deal w/ Yahoo to commercially license their widget engine as an option, Vista might have failed a bit less. Of course Yahoo might not be in the straights it’s in right now as a result. I wonder what would have happened if Apple did the same thing? But let’s face it that these widgets aren’t really anything new. Many of the window managers that run on top of the X Windowing System found on UNIXes like FreeBSD, and many Linuxes have applets. Handy lightweight mini applications that perform specific tasks.
In any event I thought it might be a good idea to cover a few of the y!widgets that I find useful, click the embedded image to jump to the widget’s source page.
IP Subnet Calculator
COLOURLovers COlor Picker
I’ll add more later.
widgets, gadgets and other nerdy things
Whether you are a Mac or PC user you’ve seen some sort of operating system widget. the big problem with both the Mac OS X Dashboard and the Windows Gadget are their implementation. Honestly, could there be any worse implementation of system applets? The other issue is the incompatibility of widgets across platforms.
Just so you understand an applet is exactly what a widget/gadget really is. They are mini programs usually programmed to perform a specific task under an a support framework. They are not capable of standing alone as a full blow application. They must run within the constraints of the app engine for which they were built.
Let’s take a step back in history for a moment. My first exposure to widgets was in the form of applets on the Enlightenment Desktop around 2000. If you are familiar with the way widgets work on a UNIX or Linux based window manager then you will understand why I say that the Mac and PC implementations are entirely borked.
To explain both Mac and Windows limit where a widget can reside. On KDE for instance widgets can be placed anywhere on the desktop. In fact some can even be parked in the task bar. Honestly this flexibility of these open source windowing systems is one of their main attractions of switching to UNIX or Linux.
The first thing I do when I get a new Mac or PC in my environment it disable their built-in applet systems. For instance I kill dashboard and disable if from running on my system. I then install the current copy of the Yahoo widget engine (YWE).
The Yahoo widget engine is based on the konfabulator project. Upon installing YWE it will walk you through some settings. You only need a Yahoo account if you wish to use some of their built-in ones like the email, weather finance etc. I recommend setting up an account regardless it’s free and can be very handy when trying to unlock the power of the widget system.
Once you finish the basic install you will notice a bunch of floating applets appear allover the desktop. Widgets like the analog clock in the center of the screen. In addition there is a widget dock for easy access to installing them as well as toggling them on and off.
Installation of new widgets is fairly easy in that you go to the widget repository on yahoo and search for what you’d like to add. Take for instance that you are a huge Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG) fan and would like to keep track of when the next Towel Day is. Simply install the Towel Day widget from their website.
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