links for 2006-02-24
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Professional secrets from those in the know
Archive for February, 2006
Google page creator
Google Page Creator was just released. It’s almost like a 2006 version of Geocities — some generic templates and a you.googlepages.com URL. The service, at least right now, is fairly limited, though I suspect that template customization might be possible, either as a feature later on, or through a hack. At the moment, the site is slow and the html editor is acting a little buggy, but that will probably all resolve itself soon.
The coolest part about Page Creator is that you get 100MB of free file hosting, though there is no word on what file types are allowed. Limits aside, this is the best free web hosting service I’ve ever seen. Perhaps it could be used to complement Blogger — create Google Page Creator pages to host relevant files or static content, and use a Blogger blog to publish site updates, news, etc.
I’m still not 100% sure where this is going.
Update: You can put CSS in the HTML areas to customize your layout. Although just as I tried this the site went back offline, so maybe that will change.
Update 2: CSS not allowed.
Update 3: CSS changes are not allowed, but you can upload images and HTML files, seemingly without restriction. So look at it as 100MB free hosting without the ability to FTP in or create directories. (Hey, maybe these are coming, too.)
Simpla
This theme is totally Minima for WordPress.com.
Nice.
Autoblogging
This is cool. You can set up del.icio.us to automatically post your links for each day to your blog, at a specified time and to a specified category. I just set it up, but I’m not sure whether I’ve done it correctly.
The link above explains how to do it. del.icio.us should make the page a little more clear. I had seen the daily blog posting link before, but wasn’t sure what it was, so didn’t give it a second thought.
Update: del.icio.us’ daily blog posting feature is cooler than I thought. The post happened with a bit of a delay, but it worked. And, best of all, it includes the tags that I used for the links that it posts.
Text editor woes: resolved
Earlier, I wrote about my problems finding a text editor that meets my key criteria:
- Column selection and editing
- Auto indentation
- Syntax highlighting
- (Maybe some other features that aren’t quite important)
Almost every editor has some form of 2 and 3, but for some reason 1 is elusive. But I found a solution. Two solutions, actually.
First, TextMate has all of these features, but it’s $50. If you’re that hardcore, go buy it. I installed the trial, and it’s a very nice editor. But I’m not a fan of paying for software when there are free alternatives.
TextWrangler has been my editor of choice. It’s a very nice application, with customizable language modes, extensive scriptability (AppleScripts, Unix scripts, etc.), advanced search and replace and a ton of other features. It has a column editing mode (just press alt and use the mouse — as long as soft wrapping is turned off), but no obvious block-editing mode (adding characters in mid-column to a lot of lines all at once). But I figured out a hack to get this capability:
- Block select the text to which you want to append characters
- Go to Text > Prefix/Suffix lines
- Type the text that you want to add (as either a prefix, suffix, or both, depending on what you need to do and how you selected the text)
And you’re done. TextWrangler is a fantastic tool, and it’s free. Anyone who writes code — of any kind — should have a copy in their /Applications folder (and probably a copy backed up on CD, just in case).
$100 laptops
I just read in the Economist that the MIT Media Lab will authorize a commercial version of the $100 laptop with part of the profits going to pay for more laptops for students in developing nations. That’s a good idea — subsidize education for poor children by satisfying the demand for gadgets of the rich world. I’d buy one.
Themes
1. The upgrade to Hemingway is awesome. Before i didn’t like the darkness of the theme and the absence of the blogroll — both fixed. And, a long time ago, I wrote on another blog about how the perfect way to add customizability to blogs without required HTML (not that I mind coding, but many do). The theme options for Hemingway mirror my idea almost exactly. Too bad I’m not a Javascript genius — I’d have done it myself.
2. But the other themes that have been added lately are kind of… lame. Green Girl, Fresh Bananas, Banana Smoothie, that pink one. I’m sure that there are people whose blogs fit these themes, but they are kind of exclusionary. I would think that if you had a blogging tool where people couldn’t customize templates, you’d want your template selection to appeal to the broadest groups of people.
