Quickies for a Friday Arvo

Just a few quick links from around the traps today:

• 37 Signals have released Campfire - a group chat IM thingy. I quite like a lot of their stuff, but have no need for this one at all. I expect there are those that do, but I'm not one of them! I'll just stick with MSN Messenger.


• Scripto - it's Flash without Flash! Animations in HTML and CSS driven by Javascript. Will have to check this one out.


• And while we're on the subject of Flash, FlashObject lets you use Javascript to detect for the flash plugin and then embed the object. That should overcome those pesky validation issues with embedding Flash too.

Tags: campfire | 37 signals | scriptio | flash

Dropdowns for Google Search?

Heard a rumour tonight that Google are testing dropdown boxes for their search page. So instead of seeing different tabs for web, images etc, we might soon see just one search page with a dropdown box containing these options!

Can't find anything on Matt Cutts' blog or the Googleblog... so we'll see what happens there...

Technorati: google | dropdown | predictions

Google Acquires Measure Map

I was fortunate enough to be invited to join Measure Map some time ago - a great little blog statistics tool. Well, just found out that Adaptive Path (the developers) have sold it to Google.

Way to go Adaptive Path!

I'm not really surprised though. It's a great tool, simple to use, with a nice interface. One of the big boys were bound to pick it up.

Be interesting to see what they do with it!

Technorati: google | measure map

Music to Your Eyes

I've been keeping my eyes open recently for an easy way to keep this blog updated with my music playlist, and tonight I happened to stumble upon it!

First, sign up for an account with last.fm. Then download the plugin for whatever you play your music with. In my case, whatever I play in iTunes now updates my profile on last.fm - and this neat little Wordpress plugin automatically updates the sidebar here. (If you looking at my home page you'll see it - it's hidden if you're looking at this post's page.)

Installation is a breeze... And now the world can see what bad taste in music I have!

Technorati: last.fm | itunes | wordpress

Hey! A new look!

Feels like it's been ages since I posted here so I thought I'd make up for the lack of activity with a new look. Unlike last time I started with a completely empty stylesheet instead of hacking away at the one that came with wordpress.

You're looking at about 90 minutes (and 2 Woodstocks) worth of effort.

It's simple... But then again, so am I!

Technorati: woodstock | bourbon | redesign

Wordpress 2.0 is here!

Upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.0 last night, and was very relieved to find that it all went smoothly. This theme stayed intact (maybe that's not such a good thing!) and all the plugins I had installed previously still work.

The main difference so far is the Write Post page - we now have a WYSIWYG editor driven by TinyMCE. I keep hitting Enter twice to start a new paragaph, but with this now I only have to do that once. That might take some getting used to! Images and other files can be uploaded on the same page - no need to upload an image in one section, copy the URL, and go to another to write the post.

Also, extra fields around the post area (categories, timestamp etc) are tucked away and you can expand them when needed.

The preview post function now previews the whole finished, styled page - not just the text of your post. That's a bonus. My proof reading is pretty bad, I need all the help I can get!
Other than that - it still looks a lot like Wordpress, which stands to reason, I suppose!

Technorati: wordpress, blog, tinymce

Updated Phase Status Report

Don't know if anyone has noticed this before, but there's a small bug in the Phase Status Report in Netoffice 2.6.

Each project is displayed slightly narrower than the previous, and if you have a few by the time you get to the last one it can be virtually unreadable. I finally got around to tracking it down (just missing a couple of closing DIVs) and fixing it.

But wait - there's more! (And it's not a free set of steak knives!)

I also adjusted the report so that it shows open projects that don't necessarily have phases defined in them, so you can still get an overall picture of everything on your plate.

Also also, I have added a closing line with each project that lists the Client (Organisation) name.

Download Zip file, 9191 bytes
Unzip into your Netoffice installation and it should be right to go. Two files are changed, so check the contents of the Zip file for their name and location and back them up before you overwrite them in case you want to go back.

Technorati tags: netoffice, phpcollab, project management