MovableBlog: Asides: December 2003

December 30, 2003

Alternative NY Times link generator Actually, looks like it came in before Adam's, but I have the URL of the latter memorized, so... [#]

Convert your Nucleus entries to MT [#]

Add files to the end of your Winamp playlist rather than replace the entire thing Why is the latter the default and not the former? This tip, written in 2000, works for version 5.0 as well. [#]

Sir TBL [#]

December 29, 2003

Dave says accesskey isn't practical at CSS Garden Yep. [#]

December 28, 2003

Roland Tanglao pimps Blogware Please stop. Making me. Want to switch from MT. [#]

Mark Pilgrim updates the HTTP Authentication tests for Atom What he doesn't tell you is that he has deprecated his RSS 2.0 feed and asking people to subscribe to his Atom feed. Which explains why he removed RSS autodiscovery from his weblog. [#]

Ryan thinks Trackback spam is inevitable It's bound to be abused. Word is that Trackback management will be improved in the next major release of MT. Some have predicted the death of Trackback, but that was because of autodiscovery. [#]

December 27, 2003

Ryan says that there's RDF and Dublin Core "garbage" in MT's RSS 2.0 template In the comments, I express my disagreement. [#]

December 26, 2003

Hugh MacLeod wants a "publish to book" option in MT 'Movable Type meets Cafepress, as it were.' [#]

Lisa asks what the new features of Blogger are Weblogs are a decentralized way to evangelize a product by getting, y'know, the users to do it for you. I have an emotional attachment to MT, and hence this weblog. [#]

Jim Moore: the Dean campaign uses commercial and free software [#]

December 24, 2003

TypePadistas: a weblog about everything TypePad Oh good, and I was thinking of making a weblog covering TypePad exclusively. (Full disclosure; At one point, a weblog of mine was declared "notable" by the TypePadistas. Another full disclosure: I agree completely!) [#]

How to install MT on OS X Panther [#]

December 22, 2003

MT 3.0 to include comment registration, Atom API support Not to mention CSS (and no doubt XHTML) user interface and other features they're keeping under wraps for now. [#]

MT 2.65 adds Atom 0.3 support, security fixes I'm standing by my decision to wait for an Atom 1.0 release. For now. [#]

December 21, 2003

Ben Hammersley's brief review of MT [#]

December 20, 2003

Jon thinks Trackback is "a rather ugly kludge" A response to Jeremy Zawodny's notes on Trackback [#]

Patrick thinks that MT's default templates should show the commenter's name before the post, not after Since weblogs are becoming more ubiquitous, and services like Technorati and Feedster (not to mention one's own referer logs) make finding replies to your post eaiser. Comments are a too centralized system for responding. [#]

XFN creates more problems than it solves [fr] [#]

RSS enclosures are a "nifty DoS attack" A rebuttal here. [#]

A Radio user breaks free 'No longer will bugs be downloaded overnight.' [#]

December 19, 2003

IE security flaw also affects Mozilla 1.5 Just because a software package you dislike has a security flaw, doesn't mean the software package you do like doesn't. [#]

Aaron has some technology ideas to make public transit more usable All good ideas, but what transit really needs is wireless Internet aboard buses and trains. I wouldn't mind the length of the trip if I had the ability to instantly blog about how smelly my seatmate is. (Of course, my seatmate might read my weblog...) [#]

December 18, 2003

John Robb says Dave Winer is leaving Harvard Um...what? [#]

Notes on Atom autodiscovery Slowly, but surely, the standard takes shape. For the record, I'll support it on my weblogs at the 1.0 release. The exception may be if a new version of MT comes out of the box supporting an dot release. (Mark seems to have removed RSS autodiscovery from his site's index page...) [#]

Céline proposes FAQ for the French translation of FAQ It makes sense if you see what FAQ stands for in French. [#]

December 17, 2003

Mark Pilgrim on Atom Authentication 'There are thousands of real people like Bob.' [#]

[your favourite historical figure here] would have been a blogger I call bullshit on that. [#]

Tim Bray wants to see an open source search software that will "Just Work" There's that four letter word again. [#]

December 15, 2003

Scoble's advice to Harvard: make RSS 3.0 Too late. (A joke, yes, but still.) Evidently 2.0 is the last version of RSS, and I say "evidently" because at that link, there's no citation for Dave Winer's declaration. [#]

Scoble has some fears, uncertainties and doubts about Atom The title of the post (which appears in the RSS feed) is 'Syndication gets forked?' [#]

Ben corrects a misconception in the Baseline article MT is a co-operative effort between Mena and Ben, not just Ben. [#]

Choire Sicha: "For most blogs, using MT is sort of like using a nuclear bomb to clean your closet." MT Pro out in 'early 2004'. [#]

December 10, 2003

Jay says that tomorrow's Berkman meeting will be webcast That's all fine and good, but we Channel Z skeptics want (nay, demand!) a video webcast. I'll be writing an exam at the time, so the point's moot for me, but I'd like to see the software being demonstrated rather than hear or read about it. [#]

Thunderbird 0.4 released I've been using Thunderbird for some time now, and the icons have been markedly improved. [#]

Matt turns MetaFilter into a newsgroup As if it weren't one before. Maybe Scoble has a point. [#]

December 9, 2003

Decentralized comments bookmarklet for MT As seen on some popular guy's site. [#]

December 7, 2003

Jay responds to my Channel Z thoughts Er, yeah, thoughts. I've only seen a screenshot or two, and I'm basing my opinion on second-hand reporting. Jay points out the need to get a screen capture movie of the demo process. [#]

December 6, 2003

Current spam "solutions" exacerbate the problem Spam as a classic arms race scenario. [#]

The web is bigger than one application [#]

December 5, 2003

Hierarchical categories exist already in blojsom Evidently a Java-based blogging tool inspired by blosxom. Both bloxsom and Blogware. sound more and more compelling each time I read about them. [#]

Jay thinks Channel Z is powerful for 3 reasons Brief response to the reasons: 1) MT can do multiple categories at once, just not hierarchically. 2) Can't respond to that, an outliner for MT would be cool (it either exists or is coming soon, but not, granted, from Six Apart). 3) It's easy to assign categories in MT. If even does it with—gasp!—a left-click! (Many "features" of Channel Z seem just to be copied from already existing tools. Not that there's anything wrong with that.) [#]

Channel Z not so revolutionary after all Whenever I hear something as "revolutionary", I politely excuse myself. Any history major will tell you that the vast majority of revolutions were just revolutions in name only. See here and here for some more joking references. [#]

December 4, 2003

ed "would take genetic samples, and spawn archipelagos of Trotts to please the online cognoscenti" A devoted user. [#]

MeFi discussion about MT's spam flaw But you already read about it. (Especially those of you coming in from my having pinged movabletype.org.) [#]

PCMag review of weblog tools gives TypePad an Editor's Choice, MT gets 5 stars The review of TypePad says that it produces the best-looking weblogs: out of the box, maybe, but individual designers still do the best job. Interesting how PCMag thinks that UserLand controls the RSS 2.0 spec. The article gives MT the best rating, but notes the difficulty in installation. [#]

Japanese TypePad screenshots [#]

Japanese interview with Ben & Mena Little late to the game in blogging this one, aren't I? [#]

December 3, 2003

So some people *do* post to MT in Lynx See screenshots of an older version of MT in Lynx. It looks just as ugly in 2.64, although I imagine accessibility will improve markedly in future versions. [#]

December 2, 2003

5 XSLT Basics I'm far from an expert in XSLT (very far), but that article barely scratches the surface. [#]

Virus/worm may be posing as message from administrator, evidently targets spam critics 'Then they’ll attack you with the power of 100 million owned Windows boxes and knock you off the Internet.' --Mark Pilgrim [#]

Dave Winer suggests that Don Park wants MT to adopt RSS 2.0 Note that Don Park says no such thing about MT. [#]