Zoundry
I thought I would give a desktop blog client a whirl and see what impact it has on my posting. It’ll also be a good test to see how well the client compares to the dashboard interface provided for posting to this blog on line.
After a bit of searching, I settled on Zoundry to be my guinea pig. I’ll have a bash at using it to post this item and then a few on A View From The West. Thereafter I’ll report back with my impressions of using the client with both WordPress and Blogger.
Keep watching this space 
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Technorati
Everybody knows about Technorati and what it aims to do in terms of publicising blogs and bringing traffic to them. If you don’t, and you write a blog, then you should pay them a visit.
I now have two active blogs (though, truth be told, this one is slightly less active) and I am now trying to get things moving on the readership front. I know that I have a few regular readers but I’d like to establish a wider circulation for what I have to say. I found this post on Blogger which gave a useful suggestion which I have applied to A View From The West. And I also found a very helpful article about Traffic Generation over on No nonsense Internet Tips. That article, and most other places I have looked, all refer to Technorati as being pretty much the top tool to use when publicising your blog. So I hopped on over there and claimed my blogs.
The claim process is really straight forward and took just a few seconds to complete for each blog. The process is as follows:
- enter the url of the blog you wish to claim;
- provide your log on credentials for that blog;
- enter a description for the blog along with a set of tags/keywords that relate to your blog;
- select a button to display your affiliation with Technorati (or not);
- and save your blog’s details.
You should now have a profile for your blog which you can return to and edit at any time.
Next, it is worth displaying the Technorati claim widget on your blog – click the Edit Widget button for your blog to do this. The widget configuration page then shows a preview of the widget and presents a range of options for you to select. Setting these options dictate the size and information contained by the widget. You can select whether or not to include any of these: a photo/avatar; a Technorati search link; a Technorati search box; your Technorati Authority; a link to your profile at Technorati, and; a Tag Cloud. Once you’ve made your selections you need to save your changes then cut and paste the widget code to your blog. The widget will then appear on your blog, though not instantly, so allow for a delay of up to a few hours before it does appear.
Overall, my Technorati experience was quite satisfying though at times the site was slow to respond. In my case, it took about 6 hours for the widget to appear on my first blog (A View From The West) which caused a bit of impatience on my part. One slight niggle remains in that I haven’t yet managed to install the widget on this blog but I think that is a WordPress issue rather than a Technorati one.
Final Score: 4 out of 5
UPDATE: The Technocrati widget does not display correctly on this blog because WordPress removes SCRIPT tags from any code placed in a WordPress widget for security reasons. This is something to bear in mind if you plan to add this Technocrati widget to your own WordPress blog.
If you want to see the Technocrati widget in all it’s glory, visit A View From The West and check out the right hand column of my blog.
foobar2000
One of my other sites describes my experiences of trading live music on line. In the process of starting my collection I tried out various music players, looking for one that would handle all the various different formats – both playback and tagging, as well as allowing me to navigate my collection with ease and without having to create an individual playlist for each recording. I also needed a player that would allow me to burn my music files to CD without any gaps (nothing worse than a silent pause between every track on a live recording!). And finally, I wanted an application with a customisable interface, something that could be extended easily by the inclusion of plug-ins.
This did not seem like a lot to ask for and indeed a lot of players that I tried came close. But the only one that fitted the bill to within a gnat’s wing of perfection was foobar2000.
As a result of this, I’ve got a lot to say about foobar and all that it can do for you. I obviously recommend that you read it all but for those that don’t want to, you should just go get it and then use the foobar home page, the accompanying Hydrogen Audio forum and the foobar wiki to help you get the most from it. If you want some additional insights and pointers, read on.
Games Without Frontiers
As you can see, it’s way too long since I posted anything here. That is about to change as I have started using some more free applications and have been using them enough to write something useful about them. I’ve also decided that a clean fresh look is appropriate at this time hence the change to the site’s theme. Before we get to the new stuff though, here’s a little info about a handful of games that I’ve been time-wasting with recently.
This is a bat and ball game in which you have to destroy all the bricks to pass from level to level. There are lots of different power-ups which slow things down, cause bricks to explode, grant you extra lives, multiply the number of balls, etc. There are also some nasties that freeze your paddle, shrink it, make it invisible, and turn the lights out so you can’t see the bricks. The game play couldn’t be simpler and is a lot of fun. It’s available for several platforms, is easy to install has hundreds of levels as well as an editor that allows you to create your own levels.
This is another clear the bricks with bat and ball game. The graphics looked a bit too basic when I first ran it but then the sneaky gnomes appeared! Like LBreakout2 you have to destroy all the blocks and are presented with a range of power-ups that help and hinder you. You also have giggling garden gnomes who pop up randomly and pelt you with flower pots causing you to lose points (and concentration) if the pots hit your bat. Another easy to play game which will distract you for hours if you let it. Check out what happens if you keep bouncing a fallen gnome up and down on your bat for an extra twist!
Make a line of three or more jewels by swapping the position of two jewels in the game grid and the line explodes causing more jewels to drop into place. If this causes other lines to form then they too explode. The more lines of jewels that explode as a result of one swap the more points you get. Clearing so many jewels moves you up to the next level. It’s a game against a countdown timer which runs down faster as you progress through the levels but exploding jewels earns you more time. Simple but effective graphics and sounds make this game quite engrossing in an irritating kind of way. Give it a go and you’ll see what I mean.
Another jewel based puzzle but in this one you have to pick four jewels of the same colour which form the corners of a rectangle (or square) within the game grid. Doing this causes all the jewels within the rectangle to disappear and be replaced by new jewels. The bigger the rectangle the more points you get and the more time is added to the countdown timer you’re playing against. Removing enough jewels to cause the countdown bar to fill up advances you through the levels and with each level time runs out more quickly.
This is a ZX Spectrum emulator which I think I’ve mentioned before. It is probably only for the nostalgic but these basic games with limited sound have a unique charm. I’ve been playing JetPac recently and it brings back memories of sitting up way too late on school nights as I struggled to get a higher and higher score. There are lots of Spectrum emulators out there but this is the best one I’ve seen, not least because it’s free.
Enjoy!
Writely
It may still be in Beta test but Writely, Google’s online word processor, is a very nice tool indeed. It is Javascript based and runs in a browser (see the list of compatible browsers here). Once you’ve signed up to the service, you can sign in from anywhere and access your files. The interface loads and responds very quickly and offers all the formatting tools you would expect on a very nice toolbar. Additional tools can be accessed using a set of drop-down menus.
You can import existing documents from Word and OpenOffice, as well as rich text files. Though documents are stored online in HTML format, you can download your documents in a variety of formats using the Save As feature. You can download documents in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML, and PDF formats. You can also share your documents and invite others to collaborate on their development.
Writely also allows you to post documents to your blog. It will allow you to post to blogs at Blogger, Blog Harbour, Blogware, Live Journal, Square Space, and WordPress. I successfully posted an entry to my Blogger blog, A View From The West – though no title was set for the post and I had to add one manually.
There is only one other niggle I have about this service. When I first tried it, I couldn’t actually get any documents to load using Firefox but had no problems using Internet Explorer. Obviously, there had to be an explanation for this as Firefox is so much better than IE, I did some investigating. And, it didn’t take that long to figure out that the problem was being caused by a conflict with one of the Firefox extensions I had installed. I disabled the extension – the MR Tech Link Wrapper – and my problem was solved. So, watch out in case you find another instance of an extension to Firefox that causes problems.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5 plus points (should deserve at least 4 when out of beta testing!)
