Archive for October, 2005

Back to WordPress?

October 24, 2005 at 12:41 am · Filed under Site

Yes it is true, I have gone back to wordpress. The reason is that I got a invitation to the invite only service, wordpress.com. Since it was invite only, and I was given an invitaion I just had to check it out, and man is it so much better than it was. The most obvious change that I noticed was the new composer. It is now just like blogger in that it works just as a WISYWIG editor works. Images and everything load as a webpage, not as straight html.

Also, there are some very cool new interface features. Everything is very easy to use and super user friendly. It makes it easy for even the most new html person. My only problem with it currently is that I can’t edit the template. For some reason the wordpress people have disabled editing and that bugs me. There are many little things that I would like to put in the sidebar or other places, that I just can’t do without manually editing the template. So, if any wordpress developers are listening tell them to enable template editing.

Also, I have 2 extra invites, so if you would like one leave a comment or email me at questions@rootsmart.com.

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Podcasting Requires Bittorent?

October 23, 2005 at 7:17 pm · Filed under Tech

This is my respons to Todd Cochrane’s article on podcasting and bittorent
I also posted this in the podcasters mailing list.

You know, It has been said here already and I would just like to make sure everyone got it. Bittorent is not ready for the average computer user. It requires client action beside just clicking the link. Maybe a future, more streamlined version of Bittorent will work. Until Bittorent can work on port 80 and require NO configuration, it just won’t go with the average user. Coral seems to be the answer, but there needs to be a way for people who have a nice fat pipe, but use about 10% of it to donate his bandwidth and set up a server. That way it will get some of the massive bandwidth charges from Coral. Then if coral can move the service to port 80, all will be good. Bittorent just isn’t the answer just yet.

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My Vision

October 23, 2005 at 7:16 pm · Filed under Site

I don’t know how many of you actually go to my main site at RootSmart.com, but I just posted, asking for anyone who wants to create content for the site. I have noticed that as time goes on, I have less and less time. As I have less and less time I can’t seem to get any content out. This really bugs me, and I want to get more content. So, I am asking for anyone that would like to create content, whether it is audio, video or text. This is basically what I am aiming for.

I want Rootsmart.com the become the source for tech content. I want there to be at least one new piece of content to be have added. That way, I can get more and more people to come. With the wealth of knowledge that people have, it would be wonderful if even a tiny bit of that could be shared with other people. These days, many people basically live on their computers. If we can make something easier for them, like maybe figuring out how to run Linux, and stop having to use Windows. I want to share that knowledge, but I just don’t have time.

Also, I want something other than just text. These days, text is getting old and A/V is new. If we could have a new video every day that would be wonderful. Video makes things easier, you don’t have to be able to explain things, you can just show them. It is also so much more personal, with video you don’t have to talk about every little detail, the viewer can see everything. Video is wonderful because it can allow you to share info, without having to be a great writer. I am definitely not the best writer, but I can very easily do a video, and the viewer understands everything. That is what is amazing.

Last, is audio. Audio allows you to talk, as if you were you talking with your friend. I am able to talk about some of these subjects for days. If you made me sit down and write them, I would not be able to. Audio is so much more conversational that anyone can do it.

So, I am asking, even begging, for someone to come and help me out! I know you all have knowledge in something, and I would to help you share that knowledge. So, email me at admin@rootsmart.com and we can get started.

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Rolllyo

October 23, 2005 at 7:16 pm · Filed under Cool Things


I don’t know if any of you have found a posting on Rollyo in your feedreader yet, but you need to check it out. I have created a portfolio already, and I will be posting some of my own searchrolls. Currently I have only played with one searchroll. The searchroll is on the RootSmart.com Family. It searches the main site, this blog and the podcast. That way you can search everything that I have posted up on any of the sites.

Now, when first playing with this site, I noticed a couple of things. The first and most foremost is that the search is powered by Yahoo. That means that Rollyo uses Yahoo’s index. This is fine, except that Yahoo’s index is not as large as Google’s. Also, I find that Google does a much better job and getting to every link and every image on a website. One major pitfall of this service is the fact that for a website to be searchable, it must have been indexed by Yahoo. As of the writing of this post, my blog has not been indexed yet. So, even though it says it is searching my blog, it isn’t. This is a major flaw, and one that Rollyo probably should post somewhere.

Other than that one gripe, I find services like this amazing. With the world of AJAX, all of this wonderful functionality can be integrated into the site, without huge browser requirements. That is a very new, and nice thing to have.

So, with that downfall in mind, go check out Rollyo and have fun with it. If you come up with some great searchrolls, post them in the comments and we will check them out.

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Blogger > WordPress?

October 23, 2005 at 7:15 pm · Filed under Site

Hey Joe, you have moved the Blog again, what do you like about blogger that you didn’t with word press?

This was a comment that Raysinboise posted. So, I decided to do a post on why I decided to switch to blogger.

The first, and biggest reason I switched was the compose feature. In WordPress the compose feature is ok. I repeat, it was ok. It was a very basic editor. You could add HTML tags to the post, and they would show up in the post. When you are composing, and you add a HTML tag it shows up as the HTML tag. That is what you see, the actual HTML tag. Now this is fine for me becuase I know HTML. Even though I know it, having just tags there was not ideal. With blogger, it actually shows the result of the HTML formatting. This is what I wanted. I wanted to see how the post will shape up when it is posted, without having to press a preview button or anything.

My second problem with WordPress was that I had to host it on my servers here. I was running out of MySQL databases. I wanted to use the MySQL database that my blog was using on rootsmart.com 2.0. So, that was another reason for going with blogger. It is just easier to have someone else host the files, then it is for me to host them. That way, if something breaks I have someone to blame beside me.

The last reason was the integration with other tools and websites that blogger has. The word plug-in is absolutly awesome. Generally, I don’t need anything like that to help me because I know HTML, and I have Dreamweaver to do any HTML programming, but you don’t know what you are missing until you use the simplicity of writing something in word and then posting it up with ease. Also, the tools with flickr, digg, and many other sites allow you to post content onto the blog.

So, that is the main reasons why I decided to switch to blogger!

-Joe

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Welcome

October 23, 2005 at 7:07 pm · Filed under Site

Welcome to The Burgess Blog. My name is Joe Burgess and I am from rootsmart.com. In this blog, I am basically going to just write about the adventures in computers and technology here. I will also, be sharing some comments about news articles.

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