Entries in the Category "General"
Goodbye Netscape
Ah, the memories...
A Sad Milestone: AOL To Discontinue Netscape Browser Development
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/28/a-sad-milestone-aol-to-discontinue-netscape-browser-development/I'm speechless...
I never thought the day would come that I would expand out of my Safari / Firefox worlds. That is until I read this article this morning. I was skeptical, since installing it first thing this morning, I've been blown away. Here's just a couple quick things that have really impressed me:
RSS Reader. I've been a huge fan of NewsFire, but the RSS reader incorporated with this browser seems to do everything I ever liked in NewsFire: flagging, organizing, searching, etc. and all without needing a separate program. It also gives you more options for viewing the feeds.
Search Box Customization: Before is Safari 2, there was a great plug-in called AcidSearch. It allowed me to customize what search engines were in the default Safari box. Invaluable! But having freezing problems with Safari made me upgrade to the Beta 3.0, but that turns off that feature and I'm not sure AcidSearch is getting updated anytime soon.
Firefox Plugins: To have access to this wonderful world of plug-ins is hugely beneficial.
Bookmarks: I like how it manages and displays bookmarks better than Safari & Firefox.
Then of course there are all the social media features of Flock, such as seeing all your Facebook, Flickr & YouTube friends. Not a huge deal for me, but quite impressive how it's been integrated. Including the integration of multimedia - uploading your own photos to those services, searching them, etc.
Finally, there's the blog editor, which I'm using right now to post this article (we'll see if it works).
Here's an article for you:
I Have a New Favorite Web Browser: Flock (via PCWorld)
Blogged with Flock
Tags: Flock, Web Browser
Information R/evolution
From the maker of The Machine Is Us/ing Us comes a "Library" version. (via the Shifted Librarian)
Safari's Going Windows
For those of you not glued to the WWDC today. The only real exciting announcement was that the new version of Safari (3.0) is now available to Windows users (XP & Vista). Not exactly sure what to expect of this, but it's an interesting twist. If anything, it makes it a more serious contender when developers are testing pages.
Download your copy here: http://www.apple.com/safari/
(The Apple website has received a nice little upgrade as well...)
Apple is really touting Safari's speed. I can't say I've noticed it being that much faster...
RSS in Plain English
One of the more exciting developments of the Internet (for me) has bee the use of RSS feeds. And with all things great, I like to share the wealth... I find myself often talking to family and friends about RSS feeds, what they are and why they should use them. I have to admit they often look at me funny and say things like "uh oh, here he goes again." But still I try... Why? Because I think RSS feeds are worth it, once people know how to use them.
Well, luckily I found another tool to help explain them over at the Common Craft show (via LibraryBytes) It does a great job explaining the process in a simple way, so I thought I'd share:
The only thing I would add would be the mention of what else you can do with software-based readers. Web readers are great (and free), but looking at these other applications is definitely worth it. I highly recommend NewsFire (for OSX).
And to keep this "professional," have you checked out the RSS feeds available here at Kelvin Smith Library? There is further description of what they are and how to use them, as well as a complete list of available RSS feeds broken down by department and subjects. Enjoy.
The Trouble We Face
This video represents the challenge that web designers face when working in an Academic Library. While we strive for the best possible user experience, there's only so much we can do when dealing with a 3rd party catalogs & databases...
Though I believe we're on the right path to make things like this less likely.
Case Blog API Help...
Is anyone having luck with using a separate blogging application to post entries on the Case Blog?
I found this article describing how to do it...
I'm trying to use Journaler, which supports XML-RPC Movable Type API.
I enter all the information in, but then when I try to send an entry to the blog, it attempts to pull back the categories and I get the following error:
XML-RPC Fault: 0
Fault message: Failed to locate method (getCategories) in class (metaWeblog) at /usr/local/apache/htdocs/mt/extlib/SOAP/Lite.pm line 2180.
I've followed the instruction and I've done just about all the self-help I can do. I'd love to see if anyone has any suggestions.