lewisc_pipe

New Blog Editor - Blog From Your Phone

noreply@blogger.com (LewisC) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:17:00 +0000

I am always looking for ways to be productive while on the go. One of the reasons that I quit updating this blog as frequently as I used to was that I started traveling so much and spending so much time in traffic, I just didn't have time to keep up with all the things I need to do.

I have tried to blog using my phone's browser by connecting to the online blog entry page. That is incredibly painful. Scrolling up and down, trying to click on buttons, zooming in and out; it was a lesson in frustration. Now, I have finally found a tool that allows me to blog, with ease, from my blackberry (although I do have one issue that prevents me from using it on this blog).

The new tool is called BlogLive and it's from a company called imoblive. It runs on BlackBerry and Symbian (and may run on other j2me platforms). You can view the entire list of supported devices.

Some of the product features (from the publisher web site):

Supports multiple blog accounts
Efficiently create, edit and delete posts
User library support for frequently used words and phrases
Advanced text editor: Easily insert text URL, online image in your posts, without having to enter any HTML codes
Supports major online mobile systems including the Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, and MetaWeblog API for compatibility with a most blog sites

You can see from the screen shot above that it does in fact support multiple accounts. From the menu, you select Add to add a new account. One the new account screen, you enter your connection and XMLRPC information. You can select from a list of blog types.

I was able to get it publishing for my wordpress blogs but I could not get it to work with Blogger no matter what I did. I think I may have the Xml-Rpc link wrong but I can't find any definitive information for the right link. I used the link that is in my Zoundry Raven blog editor but that didn't work either. If you use this editor and get it working with blogger, please let me know. I would love to get this working.

Once you have it configured, it is a nice, if simple, editor. Select New Article and then start writing.

If you are going to be entering URLs or images, you might want to use the Advanced Editor. You get a nice large screen as well as some additional options for input. It is still a manual process but I hope they make this even easier over time.

It also has a spell checker. One of the nicer features is the User Library. In that library, you can add often used snippets of text. Footers, common links, signatures, etc. Open the library, select your snippet and it's added to your post.

The editor costs $17.99 and that price includes a free year of upgrades. Support seems to be minimal; I can't find any beyond an email address. There is a FAQ but it doesn't even mention BlogLive.

Still, even with its issues, I find it to be a nice product. I will wait and see how often it gets upgraded before purchasing it and I want to work out the blogger issue. If I can get it to work with Blogger, I will probably buy it.

Let me know if you use and what platform you use it with. If you get it working with Blogger.com, please, please, let me know.

A funny note. When my spell checker hit XMLRPC, it came up with SMALLPOX as a replacement. I have often thought the same. ;-)

Thanks,

LewisC

Technorati : blackberry, blog, blogging, bloglive, client, editor, mobile, remote

Moving to a new blog

noreply@blogger.com (LewisC) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:31:00 +0000

I'm consolidating my various blogs to a common blog, the Database Geek. There is a nice search feature and you can read the blog by category (Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, etc). I also plan to add an RSS feed for each category so you only read the topics that interest you. Stop by and check it out.

Any comments or feedback is appreciated.

I just posted an article on new features coming in Postgres 8.4. It's not detailed, just an overview of a few features I find to be very useful.

LewisC

Technorati : blogging, database-geek.com

Feedburner.com shuts down

noreply@blogger.com (LewisC) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:01:00 +0000

I logged into my feedburner.com account and was welcomed with a message that I had to move my feeds from feedburner.com to feedburner.google.com. It listed all of my blogs and a link to move them. It gives the opportunity to create a google account if you don't already have one. I was already signed and that's where I wanted them so I hit the button.

All of my feeds are now hosted in the google data center. I guess I should feel safer. ;-)

If you haven't logged into your feedburner account in a while, you probably should: More details on moving to a Google account

On February 28th, if you have not moved your feeds to a Google Account, the traffic to your feeds will not be cut off or terminated, but you will not be able to view or manage your feeds until you have moved to a Google Account, unless you use MyBrand. Technically, this means that all traffic will now be served out of our Google data centers, and there will still be a way to move your account that will be in place indefinitely.

You will not be able to log back into your feedburner account once you move your feeds. Then again, you won't need to. I've read some people complain about the move but I have been satisfied with the various services I've used from google so I don't mind it. My biggest hope is that the intermittent interruptions will be fixed now that feedburner has really been moved to a google data center.

LewisC

Technorati : feedburner, rss, subscription

Consolidating Blogs

LewisC — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:57:00 +0000

I'm consolidating my various blogs to a common blog, the Database Geek. I'm still tweaking the site and I plan to add links to categories (i.e. Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, etc) so that it is easily searchable. I also plan to add an RSS feed for each category so you only read the topics that interest you. Stop by and check it out.

Any comments or feedback is appreciated.

LewisC

Technorati : blogging, database-geek.com

A New Open Source Community

noreply@blogger.com (LewisC) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:08:00 +0000

If you are into social sites, check out the newest for OSS: Open Source Universe.

I like this because it seems to me that most people in OSS (developers, designers and even users) tend to cluster around projects. I mean, that makes sense when actually working on the project but mixing with other projects (on a regular basis and not just at the occasional conference) makes sense. If there is regular social interaction, I think that will trickle down to ideas which would make for even better products.

Of course, this isn't just an issue with open source. Technologists seem to want to spend most of their time with people dealing with the same technology. Who today isn't using (even if not developing) multiple OSS applications and tools? On a daily basis I am moving between PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Linux, FireFox, and a plethora of other tools.

So anyway, that's why I wanted to give a shout out to OSU. Now, having said all that, it's a new site and there just isn't much there right now. The forums need help. I don't like the fact that the forum is grouped around project. If I wanted to just hang out with Drupal folks, I would go to the Drupal forums. I think the forums should be grouped by technology. Let database folk hang together, let the PHP, Perl and Python folks hang out in the Language forum, etc.

The link exchange is a but cheesy for my but they are already listing some jobs.

If you don't already have a blog, you can start one. I would rather start one on blogger or wordpress though.

So, give the site a check and maybe post something in the forum.

Lewisc

Technorati : database, open source, oss

Use Blogger or Install a Blog on Your Own Site?

noreply@blogger.com (LewisC) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:14:00 +0000

I was recently asked this question:

Do you find that its beneficial to start a blog on the blogger platform versus installing it on your own site?

My opinion on this has changed in the last few months. I used to think that blogger or wordpress.com were "good enough". I now think you should host your own blog on your own domain. My only reason for this is the amount of control you have by doing so.

I have started several new blogs (on tech topics) on my own domains. I chose wordpress a my blog software. The number of plug ins that help me format and control my blogs is amazing. I don't want to spend a lot of time tweaking and with these plug ins, it's mostly install and move on.

NOTE: Don't confuse wordpress with wordpress.com. Wordpress is a blogging package (that you can get from wordpress.org). Wordpress.com is a hosting service that uses wordpress as it's blogging software. You can use wordpress the software on your own domain and if you chose wordpress.com as your blogging provider, you will be using wordpress the software (and can ONLY use wordpress the software).

From talking to family, friends, peers and co-workers, I don't think most people care about the domain being a custom domain or the blogspot domain. I have read some bloggers who feel that a custom domain gives you a certain amount of legitimacy that a blogspot or wordpress domain wouldn't. I don't agree.

So, the short answer is that if you want a very quick start up with no muss and no fuss, blogger (or one of the other hosted domains) is a perfectly fine choice. If however, you are like me and want the additional control, you should buy a domain and install your own blogging software. All of the major blogging packages are incredibly simple to install and most web hosters offer additional assistance in the option of cPanel and SimpleScripts.

LewisC

Technorati : blogger, blogspot, domain, hosting, wordpress

Christmas 2008 In New Olreans

LewisC — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:10:00 +0000

Photos courtesy of Logan (5 years old) and a new digital camera. I love the perspective he put on the photos.

Technorati : christmas, family, holiday, vacation

Postgres in the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (LewisC) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:08:00 +0000

The Amazon AWS blog has a good story about about Soocial.com. Soocial.com is an address book on steroid. It works with (or will work with soon): outlook, blackberry, gmail, mac address book and other phones. They just need to add Yahoo and Windows Contacts.

I wrote about it on my cloud blog, 100% AWS.

The AWS blog post has a good overview of the overall architecture. They are using Postgres and pgpool II on EC2 and EBS. They use RabbitMQ for messaging. For high availability they are using HAProxy and memcache.

It sounds like a pretty sweet setup.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, aws, cloud computing, pgpool, postgres, postgresql

New EBook Reader Foxit eSlick

LewisC — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Foxit just announced a new ebook reader, the Foxit eSllick. At less than a half inch thick, it has a built-in MP3 player and it uses the same eInk technology that Amazon Kindle uses. It comes with an SD slot and a 2GB SD card. It doesn't have wifi but it comes in at $100 dollars less. It also lets you update the device via USB and supports rich PDF documents, that means that you can load your own documents painlessly (unlike the kindle that makes you jump through hoops and does not support rich documents).

It will be temporarily available for $229 (MSRP is $259). That's still more than I would like to pay. I think $99 is the ideal price point for an ebook reader. For that price, I'd like to see an FM tuner and some kind of video playback. I know the eink technology doesn't refresh fast enough for video though. Still $229 is a bit steep.

Since it supports PDF, that means that any of your business documents can be converted (software included). .doc, .ppt, open office, cad and just about any other document can be viewed on the device. PDF can be zoomed for better reading and an interesting feature is reflowing. That means that if you use a large font for easier reading, the device will flow the text so that you don't need to pan around the screen.

As a bonus, you can listen to your music while reading. I don't know anyone who doesn't already have an MP3 player or a cell phone with MP3 capabilities. Having an MP3 player in the reader is a nice touch, I guess, but I would prefer it to be MP3-less and $50 cheaper.

The OS is an embedded Linux running in 128MB of ram on an ARM 400MHz processor. The SD can take up to a 4GB card. The rechargeable lithium ion battery will last 8000 page turns. That's like reading Battlefield Earth 8 times. That's a lot of reading.

I am somewhat tempted to get this. I don't have a kindle or a sony reader and I am an avid reader. I'm also a gadget freak. Still, I can do so much to my EEE PC or my laptop with $200 and both of those are far more useful to me than an ebook reader. I'll have to think about it some more.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, books, ebook, eslick, foxit, kindle, reader, sony

Temperature in Riverview, FL 20081216

LewisC — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:55:00 +0000

The local temp on 12/16, 82 degrees. The reason to live in Florida.

Picture of the Day. Dakota, the Siberian Husky, relaxing his old bones in the sun.

LewisC

Technorati : florida, home, riverview, temperature