Turbo = Super Fast Blogging…Maybe

Wordpress has an update today that adds a new feature called Turbo. Turbo is Wordpress’ brand name for its Google Gears integration. I just updated my software and noticed the new link in the top right-hand corner of my screen. When you click on Turbo, it opens a window that lets you know that you will need Google Gears in order to enable Turbo. I downloaded Gears and then enabled it.

The popup window also touted a speed increase after enabling Turbo. So far, I haven’t really noticed a speed increase, but to be fair I have only been using it for a few minutes.

Google Gears is Google’s app that allows users to take their computer offline and still be able to use their online apps. In other words, you can still get to your Gmail when you take your lappy on a plane with no wi-fi. Google Gears works in the background saving the necessary files to enable offline functionality.

Obviously, if a large portion of your page is pre-downloaded, you should see a speed boost. Again, so far… not so much, but it is still early.

Other Additions

A welcome addition to Wordpress is the ability to see all the revisions that have been made to an entry. This is particularly handy if you share a blog with someone and you want to see what they have added to you entry.

Also, just under the Save and Publish buttons there is a new Word count feature that will let you know if you need to spend a little more time on your entry in order for it to get to an impressive, unreadable length that will convince your readers to skip your blog. Handy.

It is now possible to add a caption to images. This is an incredibly handy thing. Now if you have a somewhat cryptic image that needs a little explanation, you are in luck. Now you can put a caption at the bottom of the image and your readers will never be confused ever again…ever.

Another new feature of Wordpress in 2.6 is a little, red speech bubble that now lives above the link to Plugins letting you know how many plugins you have installed. I have 13. Super.

It doesn’t just stop there, if you go into the plugins management area, it is now a lot easier to manage your plugins. The interface is now a lot more ajaxy and draggy and droppy which makes it much easier to manage the plugins that make your blog so special.

Since draggy and droppy is so cool, Wordpress has updated its media gallery to allow drag and drop functionality allowing you to better manage the content uploaded to your blog.

And finally, keeping with the drag and drop theme I’ve got going, the Press it linklet has been updated to make quoting blogs and other websites much easier.

All in all, it isn’t quite the continental shift type of change that we saw with the release of 2.5, but this update does bring a lot of good functionality that will make your blogging a little easier.

I just started using the social music site last.fm. You can check out my page! They have a journal/blogging system on the site that allows you to post entries about your thoughts on music. I posted something there, and I was afraid that the post would just disappear into the ether so I am going to post it here too!

I have heard about this site for years now and I haven’t felt like jumping in, but now.. it is a Friday, and I just bought Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, and music is on my mind so now is as good a time as any to jump in and do some social music.

Shuffle on iTunes

I have iTunes set to shuffle on a playlist I call Super Mix. I put all the albums I love in there and turn on shuffle. Sometimes I have this creepy feeling that iTunes shuffle has a personality and makes weird picks. Today, iTunes is in love with Coldplay. It won’t stop playing them. I hit the next track button and then it gets stuck on The Cure. I am trying to get to the magic number of tracks on last.fm so that I can see trends in my listening and all the other fun stuff this site does and I want the trends to be correct. iTunes, quit screwing me.

New Coldplay

The latest Coldplay album is a departure from its first three albums. Where the first ones were sparse and patient in bringing the full band to bear. This album is adventurous and more in your face. It has a definite flavor of 80’s new wave and is deliciously english. I am still in that strange honeymoon phase with this album, and it is a bit of an acquired taste. I am only now starting my third listen and the songs (itunes just played another Coldplay song… what the…) are starting to grow on me.

It seems very evident that Coldplay has a lot more money to throw at an album because every song is crammed with instruments, like I said earlier. A real departure from the sparse patient sound of their earlier albums, Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and X&Y.

I am interested to see whether or not this new album will grow on me as their first three have (iTunes just played another The Cure song… this is weird…).

Adobe has just released a brand new online word processing application called Buzzword. You can find it at buzzword.acrobat.com. It is a very nice and clean looking interface that fades into the background as you create. That is nice, and it gives you some handy stats as you write. In the bottom left hand corner of the screen, it keeps you up to date on how many words you have type so far, something handy for those columnists who have to come in around 500 words every time. It also keeps you up to date on how many misspellings you have in your document. Something that is quite handy for those of us who are copying and pasting content written by others.

One thing I did notice which I thought was pretty strange. Even though Buzzword is housed at acrobat.com, you can’t save your document as a .pdf. What the…? Come on Adobe! Ridiculous.

My biggest fear for the product is that it may be a little to late to make a big difference. I don’t use online document creation much, but when I do, I use Google Docs. Not so much that it is the absolute best online document creation experience, but rather that they were first, and all my online documents are already there.

Good luck Adobe.

The following is copied and pasted from what I wrote using Adobe’s new online word processor offering, Buzzword.

Hello there you slick little interface. I just wish that I didn’t have such a backlog of documents in Google Docs. You see, this interface is quite slick, but I am not in this world. Flash is getting better and better, but it is so hard to shake those bad feelings I have accrued since the advent of Flash. There were so many sites that used Flash badly. You could use the back button, you couldn’t see the history, and for some reason, the fonts were rendered poorly which led to a ton of illegible, unnavigable sites. Yuck.

In comes Web 2.0 where we go back to standards and get back a lot of the functionality lost just prior to the big web bust of 2001. But, there is a problem a brewin’. With more and more money being funneled into Web 2.0 projects, the market is more and more palatable to larger companies who aren’t as passionate about web standards.

Are we going to go back to an era where tools such as Flash and Flex are used losing the ground yet again that was gained back over the past 3 to 4 years?

Buzzword looks nice, and maybe this rant belongs somewhere else. But is it nice try but too late?

One thing that I am noticing about this tool. There is a word counter and as of this word, I had typed 235 words. Wow that is an eye opener. I figured I had typed much more than that. I wouldn’t work out too good at a newspaper. Writing is like pulling teeth for me, and I realize it is the same for a lot of other people, but the finished product isn’t valuable enough to me to endure the pain on a daily basis.

I like being creative, but just in other ways. Blogging is only a hobby, and one that I don’t believe I will ever pursue much further than that.

What do you know, I was right! Admittedly, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to read the tea leaves on this one, but on the latest version of Tekzilla, Veronica Belmont is indeed introduced as the new co-host. As in my earlier prediction post, I still say that the addition of Belmont is exactly what that show needs.

Veronica’s name is now added to a growing list of Internet Hotties who have moved on from their original post. At the top of the list is Amanda Congdon who was the host of RocketBoom, one of podcasting’s earliest hits. She left to go on to bigger and better things. …haven’t heard from her in a while. Maybe it was a bad move.

I don’t see a similar fate for Belmont. Revision3 is fairly established and is getting stronger and stronger each month. It is capitalizing on the audience left behind after the death of TechTV. That is a big audience when compared to the audiences gathered by other Internet ventures. Add to that the growing interest borne out of the web 2.0 era, and it looks pretty sweet for Rev3.

She is leaving behind Jason Calacanis after a fairly short run on Mahalo Daily. I wonder if there is a reason other than the grind of putting together a daily video podcast with a very small team? Also, there is the question of who will take Belmont’s place on Mahalo Daily?

Revision3 looks like a fun place to work.

Good luck Veronica, break a leg!

Ok, I don’t have any, and I mean any, inside info on this, but while watching the latest Tekzilla video podcast, Patrick and Roger gave some hints about the fact that they had “maybe” found a new co-host for the show. The co-host position was left vacant when Jessica Corben left to go and start two new shows on the network, popSiren and The Digg Reel.

In the meantime, Veronica Belmont has done a couple of guest appearances on the show, and did a great job. Veronica got her start on a CNET podcast, Buzz Out Loud with Tom Merritt and Molly Wood as the producer. Early on she chimed in sporadically, but over time she became more and more involved until she was for all intents and purposes the third host.

Jason Calacanis, ex-Weblogs, inc, ex-AOL, and present grand poobah at the human powered search engine Mahalo, snatched Belmont up to host a new video podcast called Mahalo Daily. Mahalo Daily had a predictably bumpy start but matured quickly to become a very enjoyable daily vidcast.

Recently on guest appearances Veronica has announced that she was moving on from Mahalo Daily to a new and secret project.

Mark my words, Veronica Belmont will be the next co-host on Tekzilla, making yet another addition to the now very formidable Revision3 team. She will be a great co-host because she is fun to watch and she almost always has interesting insights that add a much needed female influence on the show. I have missed Jessica Corben but I look forward to Veronica Belmont.

By the way. Now that Revision3 has matured, I officially no longer miss TechTV.

South by Southwest is three conferences all rolled into one. First there is South by Southwest Interactive. It is focused on web and web development. It is the biggest geek party on earth. Mouth-breathers, neck beard-ers, and the socially inept let their hair down for a week of partying and passing out business cards. If you are a web startup…you have to be there. I wish I could have gone. Judging by all the twitters and blog entries, it was a lot of fun.

SXSWi lasts for a week. After that the South by Southwest turns into a music and film festival. The people there are a lot more mainstream, and the contrast in the atmosphere is quite funny. Justine Ezarik has been there during both phases of the festival and did a man on the street that is entertaining.

To listen to the Web 2.0 crowd, you would think that everyone is into this, but apparently that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Hulu is officially open to the public. What does that mean? It means that you can watch all most of the shows from 2 of the 4 major television networks, Fox and NBC, and some movies from certain movie studios.

Most importantly, we have another compelling time sink to keep us from doing work while at work. Or, if you are like me and you grew up in an era when the tv was always on, here is a great way to get your noise on. I seem to work better in a noisy environment anyway.

I have started using the new service from Google that allows you to “host” Google Apps on your domain. I started the process of getting it all hooked up on Thursday of this week and so far it has been pretty cool. It was pretty simple. I went to the Google Apps page and signed up. I filled out the online form and that was pretty much it. I had to post some HTML in a specific folder on my site, but doing that was trivially easy. The HTML let Google know with certainty that I was the owner of the domain.

The Killer Apps

Once you have Google Apps set up on your domain,iIt allows you to share a family calendar, or a shared calendar with all those using your domain which, right now, seems like the killer app. Keeping up with all the things your family is up to is a real chore, and having a simple powerful calendar that everyone shares for free is incredibly handy.

I set Megan up with an account, and she immediately filled the calendar up with all our family’s upcoming plans. Super handy.

In addition to a family calendar Google Apps also gives you Google docs. I haven’t found a killer use for this yet, but it allows you to create documents that are available for everyone in your family. I can see where this could be very handy for a business domain, but in the family world, it seems to be fairly limited in usefulness.

If that weren’t enough, it also includes a built in start page based on iGoogle. It lets you set up a personal start page with a ton of different widgets that connect you to the information you need. I don’t use a start page much now that I have started using Google reader to keep up with the news that I am interested in, but I still like it. All the users on your domain that you set up with Google Apps also get a start page of their own.

I was hoping that there would be the option of having a common iGoogle start page that everyone on the domain could use. It could be a great place to communicate, but so far I haven’t found that option if it exists.

My Email Dilemma

It also comes with integrated email which means that my MurDog.com email addresses can go through Google’s Gmail interface which is incredibly handy. Right now however, I can’t get that running. In order for it to work, you have to update the MX records on the DNS server to point towards Google’s mail servers. I know that is pretty technical, but it should be a pretty simple thing if you can get access to it. The Google site has great instructions that make it pretty simple to make the changes.

I have a problem. My hosting service provider, www.thehostgroup.com doesn’t give me access to the MX settings. Or, if it does, I can’t find them. It is enough for me to start thinking about finding better hosting for this site. Having a personal email address that leverages the power of Gmail is an exciting prospect. I have sent a message to my provider in hopes of getting this resolved, but so far I haven’t heard anything from them.

One of the bad parts of having a personal email address that I have to manage is spam. It is a huge problem. I turned off my personal email address years ago because of spam. If I could get this Google apps thing to work then I would have Google’s horsepower behind spam control. It would be a huge help.

If I can’t get the email thing resolved, I might have to look at another provider for my web site hosting.

MurDog.com is just a personal site, and I don’t get any revenue from it so low-cost hosting is a necessity. If I can find a provider that is inexpensive, and allows me to host this WordPress blog I might be interested in switching.

For now, I will wait and see what The Host Group does.

Other than that, it is a pretty cool option from Google that should only get better.

I have heard two stories lately that have really made me start to reconsider a company that I used to have very positive thoughts towards. On a recent Security Now podcast with Leo LaPorte and Steve Gibson Steve spent the better part of the show talking about an alarming trend. Paypal, on some of the links on its page, routes users through an ad service called Double Click and then back to its site without the user knowing it. You need to listen to the podcast for a full explanation as to why this is very, very disturbing, but the short version is, it allows for Double Click to place third-party cookies on your system. This is a problem because it allows a third-party, a website that you aren’t expressly visiting to track you as you move from site to site. PayPal is allowing this in a transparent way that doesn’t alert you as the user of the site that it is happening. This is quite disturbing and as of yet, PayPal hasn’t given any explanation as to why they are doing it. Evil.

Next, I just read on Seth Godin’s Blog about his recent experience with PayPal where they sent him on a galactic goose chase when they inadvertently flagged his account for suspicious activity. Seth wanted to rectify the situation because the recent activity was all on the up-and-up but couldn’t when he found it impossible to get a hold of someone with the power to fix the problem.

PayPal used to be a glowing example of a trustworthy site that endeared itself to its users. Now, there is story after story of PayPal plunging down a black hole of bad service and mistreatment of its customers. Bad show PayPal, it is time to shape up, or another service will come around and turn your world upside down. In this post-industrial world where service is your only point of differentiation, you are jeopardizing your future for some short-term gains.

Another good company gone bad story is brewing over at Facebook. Recently Facebook released its new plan for monetizing its growing market share in the social-networking world. Supposedly, their new service was an opt-in ad service where your purchasing habits were automatically put into your activity stream. In other words, when you bought something online, Facebook would tell your friends about it if you said it was ok. That is all fine and good if indeed it was an opt-in service, but according to today’s Buzz Out Loud Podcast, it has come to light that the service was opt-out by default. That meant that Facebook and its partners tracked your online purchasing habits without your express permission. This is a huge mistake.

Facebook is in an industry where they could be supplanted very easily if its users became disenchanted. There are a number of other social-networking sites out there that are simply waiting for the next grand exodus to happen. If you don’t believe that it could happen, its happened before. Friendster was the first uber-popular social-networking site. It was supplanted by Myspace who was in turn supplanted by Facebook.

Facebook is the current Web 2.0 darling, but if the winds change they could very well be tomorrows Myspace. I expected more. Hmmm, maybe that was a mistake.

——–This Just In———

As I was scanning my feeds, I found this.  Apparently Robert Scoble feels the same way about Facebook that I do.

I am down in Little Rock about to embark on three fun-filled days recording segments for the corporate training site GenoNow.  I will be making product training episodes for Dillard’s Department Store.  These segments will be in their “walled garden”, and not for public consumption, but the exciting part is that it give Dillard’s a way to push this high-level product training all the way down to its employees.

Communication is always a tough thing in a large organization, anyone who has played the game Phone Booth can tell you that.  Not only do messages get tangled in translation, but it also costs a lot.  GenoNow answers that problem by making these videos to all interested a la YouTube.  Companies can put their private content in their own private area, and corporate trainers who are interested in a wider audience can put content on the site where it is visible by all visitors.

GenoNow has public facing content also.  With subjects ranging from Dressing for Success for women in the work place to managing change in an organization.  There is some free content available so you can see how it works, but we believe it can be a real life saver for the human resource manager looking for a cost-effective way to train an ever-spreading and diverse workforce.

If you are interested in what I am up to these days, you can check out our site.  It’s pretty exciting.  Who knew that there would ever be an Internet start-up in Arkansas, not exactly a hotbed for technology, but here we are.