This is more a short confession then anything else.   I’m a creature set in my ways.  I can work inside the rules set before me, and I’m also capable of bending the rules of what is possible.    That being said I have had a hard time setting up and working with Xie on her blog.   It’s been an on going project for over a year now.

Sometimes things need tweaked outside of my ability.  Sometimes she wants things that are not possible, or there isn’t a plugin written for yet.   It’s frustrating for both of us.   We both have an ideal we are shooting for when setting this up.  I configure it for what I’ve learned is best overall use.   She wants to configure it for what works for her.  Neither of us however are very good at explaining our side it seems.

She is going through a complete overhaul of her blog, hopefully she will start actively using it.   I’ll help out where I can, but I think this time around I’m going to be taking a very hands off approach to the problem.  I’ll be willing to work on specific issues and feature sets, I’m just not going to do an overall architecture for her.  I think it’s better for our relationship that way.

Migrating to WordPress 2.7 was quick and painless.  It was also the last time I will have to use the Instant Upgrade plugin that has made upgrades so easy in the past.   WordPress now has built in support for this functionality.   I’m not a fan of the color scheme though.  I used an administrator theme plugin in the past – currently it’s broken.

I did manage to remove about 5 plugins that were not needed any longer because wordpress added native support for the functions.  So far so good.

I had been thinking that ping.fm wasn’t crossposting because of something on their end.   I discovered they changed the plugin’s configuration options and I hadn’t updated them.  My bad.

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Because of my article about removing certain feeds from my lifestream, it prompted an e-mail from Iminta.  I just received an email back from Iminta saying ” I just wanted to know if there was anything that we (Iminta.com) could do to make the service more useful for you?”.  I replied back that the point of the article wasn’t them, it was me.  I couldn’t handle all the RSS feeds from my uber producers.   I think Iminta is a great service.  They thought their might be issue and contacted me quickly.

I’ve had the same experience with Plaxo, Sezwho, and Lijit.  They are on top of their game searching blog posts or posts on their own sites and reaching out to their users.  While I’m at it I’ll shout out to David Cramer and his Lifestream Plugin, when I have an issue I let me know and he’s put up with me and all of his other users over the issues we may or may not have.

If more traditional companies had the outreach and proactive customer service that these companies did I couldn’t even manage how much better the world would be.

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Just the other day I wrote about cloud computing versus SaS terminology.   A web application isn’t necessarily a cloud computing or SaS platform.   It can be one or the other, it can be both, it can be neither.   Now that, that is out of the way let’s move onto the meat.

I think that all web application developers would do well to look at WordPress and the product they offer as key points for their own designs.   Obviously I use WordPress as a blog, I also use it as a CMS, a middleware application system, a database, a word processor and other uses.   WordPress is extensible far beyond the original blog software it was designed to be.

The reason that WordPress is so transformative is the ability to use a fairly easy (well not for me but I suck at PHP and programming in general) API that the users can use to extend and transform the core product.  This is done through the use of plugins.   In theory the expandablity of WordPress would allow it to transform into any functional web application you can imagine.   I’m not saying this should be done however.   WordPress plugins a lot of times just add band-aids to a product to extend it further then the core company can imagine or support.

Think of your ticket support system.  Most of these are moving to a web based interface.  Easy to manage, no software to install on users computers, easily updated since you only have to update the core server – it’s a no brainer to move everything you can over to a web based centrally managed focus for a company.

Why can’t you extend it though?

Most of the web application companies MAY ALLOW YOU to go as far as put your company logo in the interface.  Allowing you to brand a product to some extent is not the same as extending the product.  I don’t want color changes.  I don’t want a simple image swap.  I want feature sets being implemented without waiting 18 months to have it done.  If you have a robust CRM application, in this modern time wouldn’t you want a spot to add a LinkedIn Profile section?  This would be as easy as allowing customers custom fields that they can rename on the back-end.   What about adding an image?  This would be a bit more difficult then a simple custom field, but still possible doable.  How about however a full blow plugin that looks up the LinkedIn contact info.

This is all hypothetical, but let’s say this is how the plugin would work in generic CRM system.

1.  User logged into the CRM would associate their own – or a corporation profile with Linkedin

2.  User plugins in new contacts e-mail address

3. User is prompted with “Would You Like to Request Connection on Linkedin?”

4.  If users states yes the plugin would go into a state of “Waiting for Remote User to Confirm”

5.  At this point the user could add in all the information they normally would in the CRM database

6.  Later the user would receive an confirmation (or decline) of linking up in LinkedIn

7. If the receive a confirmation they could then pull in the information to the CRM application.

8.  Then the CRM application would have connections and how they relate to each other in their database, home pages, Resumes, etc. – all from a couple clicks.

That is a scenario that would appeal to sales personnel.   Let’s look at something more urbane, a library look up system. A library lookup system is something very simple  and single tasked.  It works well and returns (normally) the following information:

• Title
• Author
• Subject
• Location
• If it’s in or checked out
• Sometimes a Summary
• Sometimes an Image

Now let’s look at methods we can use to extend this functionality.  The first thing I would make sure is there a public internet accessible site where either the general public, or the Library chooses just card members can access.  Library users are normally people that live in the same town and there are a good number of them that know each others.  What does that buy you?  Word of mouth.  What about a a secondary revenue stream outside of donations or overdue fines?  How can you leverage more people to show up at your fund raising drives?  I’m assuming these are question that library officials ask themselves.   How can we turn that simple search to find a book into something more?

Let’s give the users an option to use the search page as a social platform.  I would give the a users a choice of using the old style simple search functions, but also give them a chance to leverage the public you are serving to work with you instead of you working for them.

Let’s go over an imaginary social library platform.

1.  User opens up a search window into the library database and enters a query.

2. User gets back the title, author, and subject – then a link that states more information (this is where a plugin would take over)

3.  On the plugin page users could get back an image of they are searching.  They also see where it is located, if it’s in or not, and more.   What about a sidebar that allows them to purchase the book/movie/CD at Amazon?  Reviews from other library patrons?  A list of who checked out which book (make this opt-in only on a per title usage – don’t compromise a users privacy).  A listing of library events where the author is signing books, giving a reading, or there is a book discussion covering these topics?

You just made something that is infinitely more “sticky” and let’s the users interact with your site on a much larger scale then previously.  They are no longer browsing alone, but in a group, with people they know from town.

All of this is possible with a platform that allows plugins.  I’m not asking for web application developers to support any plugins directly.  If a plugin breaks or crashes the core site (shame on the user that puts an untested plugin in a production environment) – the web application developer should tell the user they will not support the product with any plugins running at all.   It doesn’t mean the framework, APIs, and access shouldn’t be there.

I’m pleading with web application developers that allow the users to have self hosted servers to please build this extensiability into their products.   I can hack around another platform and get these functions, but sometimes we just want to buy a program from a vendor with support.   Currently your making us choose between function or support.   It should not be that way.  Opening up can only gain customer loyalty in the long run.

It seems the news media broke the story about my last minute presidential run before I had a chance to announce it on my blog.  Watch the video below.

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In part 8 I was going to write about crossposting to blogger, but that’s been delayed for the time being.  I’ll get back to that subject as soon as I get a chance.   Let’s move onto monitoring your crossposting.

Some people may have noticed that on my lifestream there seem to be duplicate posts.   This is because I’ve been working on adding all the RSS feeds from all the services in one trackable lifestream.   The benefits are that you can see and track how long information takes to get from one site to the next.   This also allows you to see where your crossposting is failing.   For example I’m noticing that my posts going to pownce are not getting through so when I get a chance I’ll look into what is actually causing that.

Lifestreaming all of our sites into one endpoint site that you can control and maintain allows all the little maintance to happy at a single glance.   We all know that crossposting is usually best effort delivery.  Not everything shows up in all the sites, but that happens because your not actively maintaining those sites and sometimes things just go wrong.

By having a single stream of all of your sites you are not bogged looking at RSS items for every site all together.  If I put all my feed items in google reader then it would take me an hour each day to get through all of them.  Having a quick glance allows the information to be singled out in a daily quick view.

Currently I’m using the wordpress lifestream plugin to handle my lifestream page.  It gives me the benefit of having a daily summary post generated automatically.  This allows me to have a permanent archive of all of my daily archives that I can go back search and vault away in my own life vaulting fashion.

Life is good.  Maintaining and monitoring in a single glance – that’s great.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 – Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 – RSS Feeds to Crosspost

The Crossposting God Series Part 7 – Where Can You Post By E-Mail?

Here is what has been published this week.

Articles:

1991-1997 Sailor Marching Band – Summoning Alumni

I Hate Traditional Marches

Is There a Strong Future For Community Bands?

Mac Users are More Smug Then Smart

King of the Circus

Drafts I Don’t Need No Stinking Drafts

I Made It To Level 22 in WoW

My Parents and the Sex Talk

I’ve Been Sucked Into Myspace More – Curse You Myspace

New Lifestreaming Plugin I’m Using.

50k-80k

My First Kiss (Kind of)

Old School Gamer

Daily Activity Summaries:

Online Activity for 2008-08-22

Online Activity for 2008-08-23

Online Activity for 2008-08-24

Online Activity for 2008-08-25

Online Activity for 2008-08-26

Online Activity for 2008-08-27

Online Activity for 2008-08-28

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Some people may notice that on my lifestream page it has a new look and feel, it also has a whole lot more stuff in it.   I’ve transitioned to a new lifestreaming plugin, previously I was using the “Simple Life” plugin.   The new plugin is is called “Lifestream“.  It allows me to put in more RSS feeds then I was previously able to with “Simple Life”, it also performs a daily digest post (which has allowed me to stop using the twitter plugin I used to use to pull in my digest of tweets).   There is one bug with the digest posting in the fact that it does a double post.

For creeva.com this is easy to fix.  I just go in each morning and remove the duplicate post.   However the people feeling the sting are the ones that I crosspost to.   There is absolutely no way I’m going to go everywhere my data replicates and track down and clean out the duplicate posts.  I have been in contact with the plugin author and he is aware of the issue.   He did some massive updating last night, let’s hope this got corrected.  I was also kind enough to hide these daily posts from the front page of the blog.   I didn’t want to make it seem that all I did was do daily updates of myself.  I’m not that vane to broadcast on the front page of my blog.   There is a link at the bottom of my lifestream to direct you to my lifestream archive.

The other thing to notice is the multitude of items.   It makes me look like an internet posting maniac.  Ok I am an Internet posting maniac, but not as much as my lifestream shows.  I thought it apt to try to get information on where my stuff is being posted and pull in the RSS feeds from here.  This will allow readers to see everywhere I crosspost to how frequently they are updated.

We’ll see if this is the magic bullet for my life vaulting.

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Always being on the bleeding edge, I upgraded to WordPress 2.6 today.  I upgraded all the blogs hosted on my account to the latest and greatest wordpress installation.   Since according to article that announced the release, the inner workings and plugin system remained the same as 2.5.  I’m hoping this means none of my plugins break.

I don’t think I will be that lucky though.  I do know upgrading my N810 to Diablo caused breakage in the applications I used.   As long as all of my crossposting still works I will be a happy upgrade monkey.   We’ll see how it goes.

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Introduction

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E-mail in the clouds.   Essentially back in 1996 when Hotmail was first released (in the pre-purchased by Microsoft era) the dawn of popular cloud computing for e-mail began.   The main issue was storage space.  I believe that Hotmail launched with 5 megs of storage space for all of your e-mail.   It is frustrating to know all the e-mail that’s been lost over the years due to inadequate storage space.   I now have single pictures in my email archive that are larger then 5 megs.   Times change and space get’s cheap.

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When Google released Gmail into the wild it was a game changer.  By offering 1GB of storage space it made it seem that you literally could keep your e-mail forever.   Other providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo were maxing out at 25 MB at the time, this seemed ridiculous in comparison.

Currently Gmail supports almost 7 GB of storage space and Hotmail and Yahoo went to “unlimited”.  I consolidate almost all of my e-mail to Gmail.

Data Types

To utilize e-mail storage you can attach any (supported) file and keep it in your mailbox.

Data Security

While you have to rely on a username and password to access your e-mail as the security barrier entry, if you want true protection from snooping it is suggested that you either get a web plugin that allows you to do encryption with Gmail, or keep your private messages encrypted and use them with an offline client.

Data Redundancy

Since you can forward e-mail from Gmail, I have it configured to forward all incoming mail to both my Yahoo Mail account and my Hotmail account.  If for some reason GMail loses my data or in the unlikely event Google goes out of business I’ll still be able to access my e-mail messages.

It is recommended that you keep an offline backup of your mail messages so they can be accessible while being off the grid.

Data Accessibility

With Gmail offering accessing via a rich web interface, a basic web interface, a mobile web interface, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP; it seems unlikely that you are going to find an Internet device that can not access it in some way or fashion.

Conclusion

This is the e-mail scenario that works for me.  Since encryption really isn’t ubiquitous across the board I don’t use it like I should.   Beyond that this scenario is highly redundant and should allow you operate from anywhere with a network connection without worrying about losing your data.

Previous entries in the Living in the Clouds Series:

Living In The Clouds Part 1 – Introduction To Cloud Computing

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/06/11/living-in-the-clouds-part-2-e-mail/feed/ 0 http://creeva.com/2008/06/10/the-crossposting-god-series-part-7-where-can-you-post-by-e-mail/ http://creeva.com/2008/06/10/the-crossposting-god-series-part-7-where-can-you-post-by-e-mail/#comments Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:48:07 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2831

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Where can you post by E-mail?  Well this is the easiest of crossposting methods (especially if you use Blogger).  There are lots of plugins for wordpress or movable type that can send out your full post as an e-mail to another address.   In most cases you would send this to your own e-mail address so you had it for reference.  What about sending it to another site entirely?  What if that site could send it to another site?  You can see how this chain can work.   If you are using Blogger then you can send out your post to ten e-mail addresses.   This means that your post can replicate like bunnies.   What are some of the sites that can receive e-mail posts?  Let’s get into that.

The original Creeva’s World was hosted on Blogger at creeva.blogspot.com.  This is where I started writing and I didn’t want to abandon it after migrating over to wordpress.  This was the very first site I crossposted to from my wordpress blog.  Crossposting allowed me to not abandon my site and any readers that may go to that address, but I could enhance my own experience while keeping theirs the same.

Lifelogger is the “cooler” blogging service, at least that’s what they say.   I’m not going to use any blogging platform again that I can’t customize to the fullest extent.  WordPress has spoiled me.   Though I do maintain a site there.

Unlike some major social networks (I’m looking at you Facebook and Myspace), Friendster does support e-mailing in your blog messages.

Blogr is just another blogging host that accepts e-mail.  Very blogger like, but crossposting friendly.

Evernote is unique unlock some of the rest of these sites, Evernote is a notebook service.   It allows you to e-mail in snippets (or use the desktop applications) to send in information that you can then share with your friends.  You can e-mail in text notes, audio, or video.

Busy Thumbs is a simple moblog site that accepts posts via e-mail.

Twine is similar to Evernote, but it’s about collections and community.   Think of it as sharing what you have with your friends.

Google Groups is a spot that I used to use as an online backup for my blog.   I have a private google group that only handles my own blog posts.   No you can’t join, not like you would want to.

I’ve just recently start crossposting to an old Yahoo Group that I used to moderate.   Mostly this is because I can share my thoughts with my friends that are still in that group, but that group is essentially dead.   So this is the only thing that it’s around for to keep me from pulling the complete axe on it.

Each Day is designed to handle your memories and save them so you can go back over your life.  It handles multiple media formats but all I’m concerned about is the e-mail option.

Multiply is a social network in the same vein as Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook.

Over at Vox I maintain a page to integrate with their community.  I’ve posted in the past how vox is a unique community and because of that I receive unique feedback.   They refer to their e-mail inbound service as moblogging.

I like to think of all of my blog posts as separate documents.   After working on this for awhile, I decided to start e-mailing all of my entries to my google docs account let’s me to search and repurpose documents a little easier then searching through the blog.   It’s my dump all account for documents.  I am annoyed that I can’t e-mail blog posts to Zoho Writer for redundancy, they only take documents as attachments.

When you are looking for a new site to crosspost to check and see if they have an option where you can post by e-mail.  Some sites may refer to this as moblogging.  Also remember to e-mail your post to yourself so you have a backup you can control.

Oh, I use the DJ E-Mail Publish plugin to push out posts from WordPress.

In the next part of our crossposting god series we are going to cover Blogger more in depth.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 – Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 – RSS Feeds to Crosspost

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RSS, I love RSS.   RSS makes crossposting easy.   It also allows me to read all of my news in Google Reader instead of jumping to 50 different sites that I used to visit once a day.  RSS allows users to subscribe to your site and read them where they want to, this may be good or bad based on your advertising style.  If you are like me and don’t really make a dime on your blog, then it doesn’t really matter.

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I use feedburner as a choke point for every web service that has an RSS feed (and I’m a member).   This allows me a couple things, the first is I can easily remember all the web services I sign up for.  The second thing is I have feeds that I can automatically plugin to lifestreaming services that don’t support the sites I use natively.

Through RSS I cross post my blog to Tumblr, Profilactic, Friendfeed, Suprglu, and any other life service I come across (just search for Creeva as the username).   Now At this point I’ve made feedburner to do all the heavy lifting and bandwidth intensive work for feed readers.  I even use my feed (a filtered version) to post notifications to Twitter when I have a new story published using the Twitterfeed service.

The other key thing to remember with RSS is when we get to the widget space.   Some sites don’t have an option for crossposting, they are completely locked.   You can however (in some cases) place a widget in your profile on these sites.  More times then not you can manage to place an RSS widget.  An RSS widget shows your current RSS feed items and allows you to place them on these profiles that otherwise have locked data.

With wordpress there is a plugin called feedwordpress that aggregates feeds and publishes them as items on your blog.   They keep trying to make this plugin better, but I can tell you it doesn’t seem ready for prime time yet.  I’ve tried every trick imaginable and I always end up receiving duplicate entries in my main blog.   Because of that I don’t use feedwordpress anymore, I may try in the future.  This would lead to the ultimate life caching solution, by allowing my blog to pull in all the data I generate everywhere else, and then crosspost it to all my friends across the web.  Unfortunately it’s a pipedream at this moment.

Now click the logo to subscribe to Creeva’s World 2.0:

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In the next part of our crossposting god series we are going to cover services that allow you to publish by e-mail.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 – Myspace

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Myspace.

Myspace.

OK, I’ve repeated it a couple times I think I’m ready to actually talk about it.  Unlike some other services where I explain the community and the functions, I’m going to refrain from doing that for Myspace.  While I do have a myspace account, I won’t say that I truly like Myspace.   I haven’t even bothered to give myself the uber l33t cool profile page.   It’s a thing, not a good thing, not really a cool thing, just a thing.

So if I’m so “meh” towards Myspace why do I post there?  Because unfortunately some of my friends haven’t seen the light and still utilize the server.   I keep in touch with old gaming friends there especially, so I feel I want to broadcast my information there as much as I do anywhere else.   I’ll tell you what though, it isn’t easy.   Myspace may proclaim new found openness, yet getting information into Myspace without using their tools is a pain in the butt.

There are three things you can do remotely to update Myspace and keep your friends up to date on you.

• RSS Widget
• Status Updates
• Blog Posts

RSS Widgets:

For any site that allows you to place a widget into your profile, and does not allow you any remote options to any other functions, RSS widgets allow you to bypass the whole “you can’t put our data in our service unless you use our tools” wall.   While Myspace is getting better, it still wants you to play with it’s tools.

If you do a search for RSS widget “Service Name” in Google you shuold be able to pick and choose the one that is right for you.   By editing your Myspace profile and putting your embed code into your profile, you should be able to display the news feed you want right there on your profile page.

While this is all fine and dandy it doesn’t really cover what a crossposting god wants to accomplish, so let’s move onto some of the other options.

Status Updates:

Your status updates, the “I’m in my room crying cause Kurt Cobain is still dead” status updates that you use on Myspace if your an aging emo kid, these can be done remotely.   By utilizing service such as Ping.fm and Hellotxt you can update this via instant messenger or my choice, my Twitter account, without ever logging in.

You can do this by creating an account on Hellotxt or Ping.fm and they will give you an email address in which you can notify them of your current status.   We’ve discussed on ways to utilize e-mail notifications for use with other services, now you know the gateway to updating your Myspace status message.

Blog Posts:

Blog posts are the final achievement of the crossposting god when it comes to Myspace, unfortunately I only have a solution for WordPress users.  There is a plugin called MySpace Crossposter that will send your post over to your Myspace blog when it receives a publish event notification.  To get some of the information in configuring this plugin (it’s one of the most pain in the butt) you will have to open up your wp-config.php file to get the accurate information.

The options to program this plugin are as follows:

Database Settings:

These options will be automatically configured in future versions of the plugin. Most of the data is available in your wp-config.php file if you need to reference it.

• DATABASE HOSTNAME: URL of your database host. NOTE: there is no “http://” before this server name
• DATABASE NAME: Name of your WordPress database
• “POST” TABLE NAME: Only change if your wp_posts table has a different name… Most users need not change this variable.
• “META” TABLE NAME: Only change if your wp_postmeta table has a different name… Most users need not change this variable.
• DB USERNAME: Username for the database
• DB PASSWORD:Password for the database

Blog Information:

These options will be automatically configured in future versions of the plugin.

• BLOG URL:URL for your blog, complete with http://
• BLOG NAME: Name of your blog, as you’d like it to appear on your MySpace post.  Please note that it seems to have a problem with non alphanumeric characters, using them can cause some strange results.  I had to configure it to be “Creevas World” instead of “Creeva’s World 2.0″, your mileage may vary.

Myspace Login Credentials:

Without these, you won’t be able to crosspost.

• MYSPACE USERNAME:Your MySpace username – usually your email address.
• MYSPACE PASSWORD:Your MySpace password.

Post style:

Choose “notification” or “full story”.

• POST STYLE: n = Notification Style *recommended* (will drive traffic to your external blog) w = Whole Blog Entry (formatting may be lost in translation)

Because of longer posts like this one won’t show up in the myspace blog I just have it setup to post a notification of a new blog post, this also allows me to see how often I get hits from my Myspace blog (not often I’ve either unloved or uninteresting).

If you have further questions on making this all work together, please drop a comment below.  The next chapter in the crossposting god series is going to be on RSS feeds and making them work for you in broadcasting your information across the blogosphere in a controlled manner.

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Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 – Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 – Entry, Distribution, and End Points

Live journal is another online blog that focuses on community.   While it is not as active and communal as Vox, it is infinitely more focused on true interaction between users compared to Myspace, Facebook, or any other of the more traditional collect as many friends as you can pokemon style social network.   I can say that in rankings of comments and feedback I get back from readers that my live journal is only to third to my vox and my main blog in terms of interaction.  Live journal has been so successful that there are derivative sites that use the live journal engine, the steps listed below should allow you (with some tweaking) to post to any of those sites as well.

I really wish I could say that I had options for you to crosspost to live journal from Vox or Blogger, but currently unless you have a paid account you won’t be able to use the post by e-mail method I mentioned in the Vox article.  If you do however wish to use a method and have a paid live journal subscription the steps are similar to the steps in the vox article.

Since my main blog is wordpress I of course us a plugin to facilitate the crossposting – LiveJournal Crossposter to be exact.   When wordpress 2.5 was released there was some issues with this plugin, but it’s since been updated and corrected.   To configure this plugin you do the following steps.

1. Download and install the plugin

2. Activate the plugin in your wordpress installation on your plugin tab

3. Go to your settings tab and click on the live journal option

4.  Fill in the following options:

• LiveJournal-compliant host:  (If you are using a LiveJournal-compliant site other than LiveJournal (like DeadJournal), enter the domain name here. LiveJournal users can use the default value)
• LJ Username
• LJ Password
• Community: (If you wish your posts to be copied to a community, enter the community name here. Leaving this space blank will copy the posts to the specified user’s journal instead)

That gives you the most basic configuration of this plugin, however unlike many other wordpress plugins that would end there, livejournal crossposter gives you a myriad of more options.  Here are a few more things you can tweak:

• Crosspost header/footer location – choices at the top or bottom of the post
• Set blog name for crosspost header/footer – you can use your own blog’s title or a customer title
• Custom crosspost header/footer – gives you the option for custom coding in the header or footer
• Privacy level for all posts to LiveJournal – choices are public, private, or friends
• Should comments be allowed on LiveJournal? – You can force commentors to come back to your blog to comment or allow them to comment directly in live journal (I just let them go directly onto live journal’s site)
• Tag entries on LiveJournal? – Choices are -Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress categories only, Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress categories and tag, Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress tags only, and Do not tag LiveJournal entries.
• How should LJXP handle More tags? Choices are - Link back to WordPress, Use an lj-cut, and Copy the entire entry to LiveJournal.
• Select Categories to Crosspost – You have the option to choose which categories of posts you wish to send over to live journal.  This allows you to target which posts and topics you wish to share, a big boon for some online publishers who are capable of writing on topic.

I think livejournal crosspost should be a benchmark plugin for all other crossposting plugins to come.   You can crosspost to live journal from other services, such as Utterz or Ping.fm – and I’ll be covering the Live Journal crossposting functions from those sites when I get to those articles.

The next article in the series will cover the difference between crossposting endpoints and crossposting distribution points.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 – Vox

Vox is a blog community that really focuses on the community aspect.   When Xie first started blogging on vox I kind of poo pooed it.   However I didn’t find some people that I knew from SWG that posted there, ever since I can tell you it is definetly a close knit community.   Since I’m a crossposter I’m kind of on the outside, but I reply to comments and Oh My Yod! is a blog I visit every other day.

Vox is one of the easier services to crosspost to since it allows post by e-mail.  To enable posting by e-mail go through the follow steps:

1. Go to your account settings

2. Go to mobile settings – here you can get your moblog address (which you can post to from any e-mail address) and the settings you wish to apply to it.

3. Setup your account that you are crossposting from (which can be any service that sends out emails)

There are two services I can recommend that you can use to post to Vox with (or bridge across with more on that around part 18), these are Blogger or a custom wordpress installation.

For Blogger:

1.  Go into your blog’s settings

2.  Go to your emai tab

3.  Paste your Vox moblog email address

4.  Now any post that goes to your Blogger account (I’ll talk about crossposting to blogger in a later thread)

For WordPress

1. Download a plugin that allows for publishing via e-mai ( I use DJ EmailPublish)

2. Go to your settings page and configure the plugin pasting in the Vox moblog address

3. Save and apply settings

4. Now any post that goes up on your wordpress account crossposts over to your vox account.

In part 3 I will be covering crossposting to live journal, so I hope to see you then.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 – The Introduction

I think I finally got to the point that statcounter is completely useless for me.   Now I’m rolling thruogh the max log size of page views faster then I can actually read them.  If I don’t read them they are lost forever.  I’m too much of a cheapskate to actually pay for their service (maybe if I actually made money at this I would consider it.

Checking stats mutiple times a day to actually get the data you want to read isn’t very efficient.   I will say compared to google analytics or wordpress.com‘s stat plugin that statcounter’s only really shining feature was the recent page load activity.   If either of the other services I used actually used that it would be alot easier to dump.   Regardless I think I’m leaving Statcounter by the end of the month.

I’ll miss you Statcounter, you just can’t grow with me.

For those curious which wordpress plugin’s I use on creeva.com, I thought I would post my plugin page for you to check out.

Enjoy:

Add Meta Tags	1.6	Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives. This operation is automatic, but the generated META tags can be fully customized. Also, the inclusion of other META tags, which do not need any computation, is possible. Please read the tips and all other info provided at the configuration panel. By George Notaras.
Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button	.9.1	Lets readers share, save, and bookmark your posts using any service and browser. [Settings] By MicroPat.
Admin Big Width	1.0	enlarge your wordpress administration. By XoraX.
Admin Management Xtended	1.0.1	Adds AJAX-driven options to some admin management pages with CMS-known functions like toggling post/page visibility without having to open the edit screens, plus changing page order with drag’n’drop. By Oliver Schlöbe.
AJAXed WordPress	1.19.2	A plugin that incorporates the best AJAX WordPress features and wrap them in a single framework–including such features as inline posts and comments, the ability to paginate posts, submit comments, thread comments, edit comments and posts inline. The Admin panel is under presentation tab. Need Help? Visit the Official AWP support thread or try reading the full documentation. By Aaron Harun.
Akismet	2.1.5	Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.
All in One Adsense and YPN	1.62	Inserts Adsense or YPN code in to your blog posts. Ad position can be random or pre-defined. By linewbie.
All in One SEO Pack	1.4.6.8	Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By uberdose.
Berri Technorati Reactions on Dashboard	2.0	Shows on the Dashboard the Technorati Reactions of your blog. Widget for the main admin page. By Alberto Varela.
Blog Metrics	1.0	Provides blog metrics based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post, now with a widget! By Joost de Valk.
Brian’s Threaded Comments	1.5.18	This gives you threaded comments and a “wandering” comment form. By Brian Meidell.
Chunk Urls for WordPress	2.0	This plugin shorten urls in comments so that they won’t break your site. By whoo.
Clean Options	Beta 0.9.6	finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table By Mittineague.
Comments number Restore	1.0	Hyper Cache is an extremely aggressive cache for WordPress. By Satollo.
Dashboard: Draft Posts	1.0.2	Displays draft posts on your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard. By Viper007Bond.
Dashboard Editor	1.1	Allows you to customise the dashboard. By Aaron Harun.
Dashboard Widget Manager	1.3.0	Greatly enhances your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard by allowing widget re-ordering and storage of preferences on a per-user basis. By Viper007Bond.
Different Posts Per Page	1.7.1	Show different number of posts in home, category, search or archive page. By MaxBlogPress.
DJ EmailPublish	1.5	Publish your article to other blog by email. Visit Options/Email Publish after activation of the plugin. By Der-Johng Sun.
Enforce www. Preference	1.3	Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www. By Mark Jaquith.
Facebook Comments	0.25	Copies comments from your imported Facebook Notes back into your blog entries. Took Thomas Albright’s version (http://thomasalbright.info/index.php/2007/05/27/thomasalbrightinfo-facebook) and then edited by James Low (http://jameslow.com). Made to work with Feedburner feeds by Aaron Harp (http://www.aaronharp.com) By Adam Hill.
Facebook Dashboard Widget	0.9	Display your friends latest status updates, posted items and/or notifications on your WordPress dashboard. Make sure you enter your feed details on the options page. By Chris Chrisostomou.
FeedBurner FeedSmith	2.3.1	Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
Flickr comment Importer	0.1	Add Flickr comments to your blog posts. Configuration Page By Donncha O Caoimh.
Flickr Manager	2.0.2	Handles uploading, modifying images on Flickr, and insertion into posts. By Trent Gardner.
Flickr Photo Gallery	0.93.2	This plugin will retrieve your Flickr photos and allow you to easily add your photos to your posts. Configure… By Silas Partners (Joe Tan).
Fluency Admin	1.1	WordPress 2.5+ only. A rethink of the WordPress admin interface giving it a slightly more modern application-esque feel, inspired by Steve Smith’s Tiger Admin. Firefox, Safari and IE8 only. IE7 soon. By Dean Robinson.
Forgot the Category	0.2.1	Hate forgetting to select a category when you write a new post? I know I do. This plugin won’t let you. By Dan Coulter.
Front Page Excluded Categories	1.1.1	This version uses a comma separated list of *excluded* category ids. By Sean O’Steen.
Genki Youtube Comments	1.2	Insert YouTube comments into your post’s comment By Genkisan.
Google XML Sitemaps	3.0.3.3	This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.
Instant Upgrade	0.2	Upgrade your WordPress-Installation with one simple click (Go to Manage » Instant Upgrade) By Alex Günsche.
LiveJournal Comments	1.0.3	This plugin displayes a number of comments in posts crossposted to LiveJournal. You can see how if works here. By Alexander Bishop.
LiveJournal Crossposter	2.0.5	Automatically copies all posts to a LiveJournal or other LiveJournal-based blog. Editing or deleting a post will be replicated as well. Original plugin by Evan Broder. By Arseniy Ivanov.
Live Space Sync	1.01	A Live Spaces rpc plug-in By William, priv.
Maintenance Mode	3.2	Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Options ? Maintenance Mode to get started. By Michael Woehrer.
Meet your commenters	0.9	When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network. By Alberto Varela.
MySpace Crossposter	2.0a	A plugin that enables automatic crossposting from WordPress to MySpace. By Roderick Russell.
No Flash Uploader	1.0	Disables the Flash Uploader of 2.5 By Dion Hulse.
NoFollow Free	1.5.5	Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… Supports multilingual and a Top Commenters sidebar Widget. By Michele Marcucci.
Official StatCounter Plugin	1.0	Adds the StatCounter tracking code to your blog. After uploading this plugin click ‘Activate’ (to the right) and then afterwards you must visit the options page and enter your StatCounter Project Info to enable logging. By Aodhan Cullen.
Ping.fm Notifier	1.0	A plugin that send a notification to your Ping.fm space after you publish your post. By Creeva.
Plugin Central	1.11	WordPress 2.5+ only. Automatically installs and updates WordPress plugins. By Vladimir Prelovac.
Postie	1.1.1	Signifigantly upgrades the posting by mail features of Word Press (See Quick Readme) By Dirk Elmendorf.
Post Template	2.1.3	A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure. When activated, you can check your new template management page and the option page. This plugin makes use of the excellent other plugin “Manage Pages Custom Columns” by Edward Dale. By Vincent Prat.
Reveal IDs for WP Admin 2.5	0.7.5	Reveals hidden IDs in Admin interface that have been removed with WordPress 2.5 (formerly known as Entry IDs in Manage Posts/Pages View for WP 2.5). See Options Page for options and information. By Oliver Schlöbe.
Routes	2.1.6	Adds route-based geographical information to your blog. By Jennifer Hodgdon, Poplar ProductivityWare.
Script Compressor	1.3.1	This plugin compresses javascript files and css files. By Regen.
SEO Friendly Images	1.11	Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well. By Vladimir Prelovac.
SezWho	WP2.1	A plugin that improves community engagement by showing universal web-wide profiles for participants and by empowering the community to rate comments and post. You need a key to use this service. Get your key at SezWho. By SezWho.
SimpleLife	1.2	SimpleLife is a fully configurable simplepie based plugin to produce a lifestream on your wordpress powered blog. Makes use of the excellent SimplePie. Either use the widget or place <?php simplelife(); ?> in a page template. By Kieran Delaney.
Simple Tags	1.5.7	Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags ! By Amaury BALMER.
Social Homes widget	2.2	Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons. Current services include del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Twitter, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Zooomr, Utterz, StumbleUpon, Digg, LiveJournal, MySpace, Jaiku, Pownce, VIRB°, and FriendFeed. By Elie Zananiri.
Twitter Tools	1.2b1	A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Configure your settings here. By Alex King.
Twitter Widget Pro	1.1.4	A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username and link parsing, feeds that include friends or just one user, and can even display profile images for the users. Requires PHP5. By Aaron D. Campbell.
VideoWarrior	1.0.3	Yet another plugin to include Videos from Youtube and Google Video By Sixtus.
WordPress.com Stats	1.2.1	Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
WordPress Database Backup	2.1.5	On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage ? Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.
WordPress PDA & iPhone	1.2.1	This plugin helps the users to view your blog in a pda and iPhone browser. By Imthiaz Rafiq.
WordPress Reports	0.87	Generates reports from Google Analytics and Feedburner data By Joe Tan.
WP-PageNavi	2.30	Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-Print	2.30	Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-ServerInfo	1.30	Display your host’s server PHP and MYSQL information (integrated into WordPress Admin Style) on your WordPress dashboard. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-SnapAvatar	1.1	This plugin puts the commentor’s website screenshot where there is no gravatar. By Neacsu Alexandru.
WP-SpamFree	1.8.3	An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well. By Scott Allen, aka WebGeek.
WP Contact Form III	1.4.1	WP Contact Form III is a simple drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. Go to Options -> ContactForm III to configure. Challenge (antispam) mod by Doug Karr. Original script by Ryan Duff By Kristin K. Wangen.
WP Limit Posts Automatically	0.7	Limit your posts automatically. This way you don’t need the use of the more tag. You can limit posts by letter, word or paragraph and apply it to home, categories, archive and search. By Jens Törnell.
WP Security Scan	2.2.64	Perform security scan of WordPress installation. By Michael Torbert.
WP Super Cache	0.6.4	Very fast caching module for WordPress. Once enabled, you must enable the cache. Based on WP-Cache by Ricardo Galli Granada. By Donncha O Caoimh.
Xanga Cross Post	0.6	Cross post your blog entries to a Xanga account By Joe Tan.

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/what-wordpress-plugins-do-i-use/feed/ 3 http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/ http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 15:02:45 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2789

Why is there a cat pictured in this article?  Did he damage the N810?  No, I just didn’t want to use the stock N810 image again.   Moving on.  Last night was more of a bust then a boom for me.    I had some specific goals in mind and I can’t say I really accomplished them.

The first goal I had was to attempt to upload pictures directly to flickr.  Doing some hunting I found the latest revision of maemo-publishr which supports uploading to flickr and to picasa.   I thought great, this is exactly what I need.  They even have a video demo.

I can say that it didn’t work as well as I had hoped.   The applications was extremely slow before i imported pictures from my external memory card and worse after pictures were actually involved.   I gave up on the application after failing to figure out how to intuitively upload (no I didn’t watch the video at that time, I saw it afterwards to share with you).   I know maemo-wordpy can upload to flickr and I am using that, but I want somethign that handles more bulk uploading so the hunt for that continues.

Before I get onto my next bad experience, let’s move onto a good one.   Using my N810 as my lifeline to my online life, I needed it to integrate with my other online lifeline, email.   After going through and reading reviews I knew better then to use the built in e-mail application.   I knew that if I wanted to use IMAP from my gmail account I had a  choice between Modest and Claws Mail.   Xie had tried out Modest on her N810 when it came in, it had caused memory issues and she stopped using it and doesn’t plan on doing IMAP.   I knew because of that Modest was out.

So Claws Mail it was, after a couple configuration I did get Claws up and working.   It is a bit slow, but I knew that going in, especially using IMAP.   At least I can cache my email instead of holding my full 2 GB e-mail archive on my N810.   Sending is fine.  Overall as an e-mail application I’m quite happy with it.   That’s pretty impressive since the only other e-mail applications I’m really happy with is Outlook and the Gmail web interface.

Claws-Mail screenshot from their web site

Now we’re back to one of the issues I wrote about yesterday, pod catching.   I found out that while I couldn’t activate the function menu in Canola that I could manually hold down the function key and hit the key I wanted at the same time (shift works the same way for these poorly written applications).  With this method I could enter in my podcasts feed and download them directly on to my N810 – goodbye slow memory hog gPodder.   At this point I uninstaleld gPodder and decide that Canola was going to be my choice going forward.

I played more with Canola and I wasn’t aware of the kinetic scrolling.  I sat there like a monkey with the stylus trying to scroll and was extremely frustrated.  I finally figured it out.   I exited it and rebooted after a different application seemed to lock up my N810 – I think it was the maemo-publishr previously mentioned.   When I came back Canola started and said loading for like 3 minutes and when it did load no icons were visible and it couldn’t do anything.   I uninstalled Canola and reinstalled Canola, same behavior.   From their repository I saw an installation clean up utility.  I installed that and it did clean it up.  I reinstalled it and it’s working again.   Unfortunately I need to spend 30 minutes again entering in  all of my podcast URL’s, grrrrrrrrrrr.   Benefit is that Canola can automatically scrobble to last.fm with a plugin.   The plugin is a bit over anticipating though, it scrobbled two podcasts that I haven’t listened to yet.   I have a feeling Canola is going to be a love/hate relationship.

Finally I rounded out the night loading Doom on my N810. I was surprised that we don’t need to load wad files for these cross platform ports, and the game controlled a little bit Metroid Prime-ish, but it’s Doom and it works.   Ironically it works better then it did on the 386 25mhz computer that I first played doom on.

So for day 2′s report I leave you with this youtube video someone did of Doom on the N810.

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/feed/ 8 http://creeva.com/2008/05/07/first-night-with-the-n810/ http://creeva.com/2008/05/07/first-night-with-the-n810/#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 15:33:00 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2782

A couple days ago I asked the blogosphere should I get an N810 and like the blogosphere normally answers I got nothing back. That’s fine, I’m used to talking to myself on my blog.  However I decided that I would give it a go.   I knew that if things didn’t work out I would return it.   It arrived last night and I thought I would describe what I went through.   It is also interesting that this morning from the blogosphere I got a comment on my article that was crossposted to my vox blog (hey I’m sorry vox users get weird characters).

Hyphn on vox asked:

Nice article. I’m in a similar situation to yourself. I’ve got a Palm TX and an Nokia 770 (& N95 8GB).

I use the N95 8GB for all of my music and podcasts (it automatically downloads them over the air). I have a Palm Infrared keyboard for my TX, which is nice, but the problem is that you just can’t really see the screen when you are out in bright sunshine. – Is the N810 screen readable in bright sunshine?

The N770 is ok, but it’s a bit slow and the lack of a keyboard (of any description) is a killer…. Not sure I can justify the extra 280GBP for another device thought…. (?)

So I’m going to cover this comment in this article.

I’ve never had a keyboard for the TX, I’m a fast on screen keyboard typer.  I knew however when my wife tried out the N800 it wasn’t for me since I’m more active online these days, the keyboard would be essential.  I never really wrote long blog articles on the TX so this is a hope for the N810.  I tried it the N810 outside today and in bright clear sky direct sunlight the screen was washed out but readable.  So I think the transreflective coating they advertise does work as designed.    For thoughts on whether the device is worth money, well I’m going to be writing about the device for the next couple weeks or so, what I find, how I make things work, and some things that people may not know because they are not widely published.   Hopefully yhis will help you make a sound decision.

New Toy

So everyone now knows I have an N810, I also added an 8 GB micro SD card (with mini SD converter card so it would fit).   Xie ‘anthia still feels that I’m going to feel cramped on space.   I unpacked the device last night and imeediatly had it flashed to the newest OS 2008 revision, curse the mobile ubuntu team for not having the port finished and ready to go.   I then paired it with my phone and installed everything that seemed interesting.

After trying to uninstall somethign I discovered that I had the rare N810 bug that sets the internal card read only and corrupts the data.   At this point I reflashed the device, formatted the internal memory card (virtual ram made it so I had to reflash before I hear any comments), and started over.   I had spent so much time installing software on the previous run that I wasn’t going to go through all of that again in one sitting.  Let’s however looked at what I did do.

I went through and chose a theme to my liking, I cleaned out the bundled maps and documentation.  I removed the demo music, video, and images.   I removed the map application and the welcome application.  In essence I stripped down the device as far as possible befoer starting over.    I didn’t need those things, and for map GPS data I plan on using maemo mapper, so I’ll get to that in a future blog article.

So what did I install?

Seeing as I have some guidance from Xie ‘lanthia on what is good and what is not so good, I followed her lead on some of my applications.  The first thing I installed was Pidgin, if you are unfamilar with Pidgin think of it as an IM product similar to Trillian.  It allows you to connect to many other IM networks at once.   The included chat progam bundled with the N810 really is good for gtalk, but what if I wanted more.   Pidgin right now is configured to connect to the following IM networks (some I rarely use) – Gtalk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Myspace Chat.   Also I installed Skype, thought I would mention it here while I was talking about IM.   So the N810 allows me to connect six instant messenger networks at the same time.   I’m all about ubuiquitous internet communication, especially when I can talk or broadcast across everywhere from a single point.

Pidgin Screenshot from maemo.org

Next I needed a media player.   I had read that the Canola2 would subscribe to podcasts as well as scrobble tracks to last.fm (last.fm connectivity is important from me in this device’s grand future).   However there seemed to be a bug in Canola2 that wouldn’t allow either copying and pasting a url in to the subscription field, and it wouldn’t allow me to use the function keys, so that ment no forward slashes.   Essentially the data entry for podcasts is broken.    Well this thing is going to keep me from carrying an Ipod around so I wanted some way that was simple to get podcasts on to my unit.  I found a way, but I wouldn’t use simple to be an accurate description, I used the Gpodder podcatcher to handle pulling down podcasts.

Conola2 Screenshot from maemo.org

gPodder Screenshot from maemo.org

The thing that drove me nuts over Gpodder was the fact that I had no easy way to add subscriptions.  Sure they tell you just point to a directory.opml online, but goodluck finding one.  I think I spent an hour on this before I found an article that explained that I could setup subscription in Itunes, export the opml file, put it on my N810, and then subscribe to the correct feeds in Gpodder once I opened the opml file there.   *WHEW*.   Then it seems that gpodder isn’t a fast and responsive application if you attempt to queu two or more songs it hardly moves, so load your subscriptions one at a time for the best response.  I limited it downloading one podcast at a time but that didn’t make much difference.   The last problem with Gpodder was that it doesn’t (rarely) save the podcast in it’s naming scheme, it downloaded most of my podcasts in a 34598745893475.mp3 style format.   These aren’t bob’s podcasts, except for one or two they are all from twit or revision3.   I can say gpodder will work since it will be a set it and let it do it’s thing overnight application, I wouldn’t however recommend living in it.

The next thing I installed was rdesktop.  This allows you to use the windows remote desktop function, so last night I was able to access my Windows 2k3 server from my N810.   The responsiveness was adequate and I can definetly see myself utilizing this.   I use RDP quite often and I think this is a life saver.   If you want to know how to setup and see screenshots, I just found this article on another blog (I figured it out myself).

The last thing I installed before fighting Gpodder to sync my podcasts for the next day was Maemo Wordpy this application is a blogging client (wonder what I want that for).  It allows me to post directly to my wordpress blog, like the test post I did last night before I reflashed the device.  It works, it’s a bit complex and you have to jump to different tabs for more options for you post but it works.  I had to however disable my myspace crossing plugin on my blog because I was getting duplicate post issues.   Wordpy still allows me to post a notification or blog post across about a dozen services (well my blog does all that work).   Wordpy does however support Blogger if WordPress isn’t you cup of tea.

Maemo Wordpy Screenshot from maemo.org

Some of the side things that I discovered last night.

• I can pull pictures directly off my phone, before I had to use esoteric software on windows or ubuntu to get them off via USB, with the N810 it just works via bluetooth (I have a RZR since I’m a cheap bastard and take the free phone).
• The Samba implementation on the N810 allows you to see hidden windows shares by default – good for me, bad for windows.
• Too many large files or directories in a share will absolutely lock up the N810′s file manager.
• The keyboard get’s easier to use the more you force yourself into it, with more training I may not need another bluetooth keyboard for “serious” writing
• Exchange Webmail works in the browser

Tonight’s goals (after I do some automotive repair unrelated to the N810) is to get a mail client working that I like (I’m leaning toward IMAP versus POP3, we’ll see how that goes.   I would also like to get a decent media player that can scrobble my songs to last.fm (who knows it might be great to find one that supports last.fm and pandora).  I did have some problems getting online via my cell phone so I’m probably going to following Xie’s article on how to set it up to properly use t-mobile as an internet connection.   I’m sure I’ll have some other information for you also.