Blogging Blog

Google's Writely, and more

There is lots of conversation lately about is Google evil? What if Google decided to be evil (via Google Blogoscoped)?

But no one argues much about whether Google is useful.

I am a great fan of GMail, and have, one by one, abandoned all my other accounts. So simple, so efficient -- and I love search, don't sort. Some of you may have noticed that I now have email at my domain, which is thanks to GMail Domains Beta. I'm amazed that they let me in, this little one-person operation -- but I'm delighted. It's even better than regular GMail.

Do I mind the ads?

Could anyone who has ever used Yahoo Mail or Hotmail object to the unobtrusive -- and even sometimes interesting -- Google ads?

I signed onto Writely before Google bought it (I think someone at The Well pointed me to it) and now use it almost exclusively. When I first heard the prediction that one day we would do most of our work online, and our computers would be used mostly as terminals, I thought that was nuts -- of course I would want my own software on my own machine with all my own files. And if I were still working with client files and confidential information, I would no doubt still feel that way.

But now I'm at home, and have nothing that must be so guarded. I've experienced several hard drive crashes in the intervening years, and lost files due to my not-atypical haphazard backup practices. I've had TypePad crash repeatedly in the middle of preparing complicated posts.

Writely has never crashed on me, and when my browser has, the Writely document comes up exactly how I left it. Exactly how I left it, and accessible from any computer.

It was initially a bit buggy; less so every day. It offers direct publishing to some blog hosts -- not TypePad at present, which is not a problem for me. I prefer cut & paste and publish to draft in any case. Nice clean interface, all the usual bells & whistles, spellcheck, collaboration, and tagging! What more could one want in a word processor?

Only recently did I discover that I can offer it to you, even though it's currently not open for new registrations. The Writely Blog tells me:

No need to wait until Writely registration opens up again. When you have a Writely account, you have the power . . . Just add them as collaborators on a Writely document and click "OK" to email them. You can invite up to 50 new people by adding them as collaborators to Writely documents.

So, all 50 of you who would like a Writely account, drop me a comment or an email and tell me where to send the invitation. If GMail still requires invitations (surely not?) I can send you one of those, too.

[crossposted to Watermark]

Calling all geeks...

It would be really cool to have a widget to put on blog sidebars (especially, of course, TypePad blogs) that would let a reader click through to posts on that date from previous years.

Of course, I don't know if you folks would click that link -- but I would.

UPDATE Saturday 20 May: A response from TypePad Support --

. . . There is a Movable Type plugin that can do this but we're unable to use these with TypePad. Thanks for the suggestion though. We will keep this in mind as a possible future feature for the system.

TypePad Problems

05.02.2006

TypePad Update

Since approximately 4:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time, Six Apart has been the victim of a sophisticated distributed denial of service attack. This has affected all of Six Apart's sites, causing intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com. Our network operations staff is working around the clock with our Internet access providers to resolve the issue. We appreciate your patience and support, and will provide updates as we have them.

Update, 11:40 pm PDT: Access and availability to our sites has improved. We continue to work closely with our Internet access providers and will monitor the situation through the night.

Posted by Michael Sippey at May  2, 2006 09:03 PM |

Why do people do this? Is it just vandalism? I don't get it.

Renewal

I know, it's been months. This was intended to be a resource for bloggers, especially new bloggers; with links to lots of tools and toys. It still has those links, but being rarely updated, is rarely visited. But that's about to change.

Blogging Blog is going to be a group blog. Three other bloggers have agreed to contribute, and more may join in the future. Look forward to some fresh ideas and energy here. I'll be adding folks to the sidebar, and they'll be introducing themselves soon.

In the meantime, a bit of blogging-related news: Stewart and Caterina, of Flickr fame, are on the front page of Newsweek! They are so cute, and folks who have met them assure me they are just this cute in person. This article, about Web 2.0, or The Living Web, is really quite well done; it explains things well and seems to grasp the essentials:

"It's clear that the Web is structurally congenial to the wisdom of crowds," says James Surowiecki, author of a book ("The Wisdom of Crowds," naturally) that argues that your average bunch of people can guess the weight of a cow or predict an Oscar winner better than an expert can. . .

MySpace, Flickr and all the other newcomers aren't places to go, but things to do, ways to express yourself, means to connect with others and extend your own horizons. Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live. . .

My favorite is a quote from Caterina, about the culture of generosity:

. . . the most remarkable thing about Flickr is that the willingness to post pictures publicly—so ingrained in Flickr culture that you have to opt out to avoid it—creates a panoramic effect. Fake calls it "the culture of generosity," but knows that for some people, shedding privacy like that is a stretch . . .

Caterina and Stewart's generosity has been apparent at Flickr from the beginning; it's that open-heartedness that has won my loyalty there. That, and their sense of humor (Flickr has the hiccups.) This openness -- to blogging, to sharing, to mashups -- is an ongoing issue at Flickr, especially with new members -- and an issue bloggers must struggle with as well: how much to share; how much to keep to oneself; how to [realistically] relinquish control of what one sets loose in the world.

More -- much more -- later.

[Crossposted to Watermark]

GMail Invitations

I have six GMail invitations available; email me (link on sidebar) if you want one. Generally it will be first come, first served, except that my usual readers get preference.

UPDATE: All gone!

Comments Are Enabled

But I did it the easy way -- by correcting what I did at first.

It is, of course, more pleasant to do what I already know how to do; more difficult to learn something new. Besides, the sun came out.

First Challenge

Yukino says in a comment at Watermark:

SB, the reason comments aren't working is because you're linking to a permalink to an archive type that doesn't have a commenting form on it. If you want those links to work you have to set your primary archive type to be "Individual," or change the code on your index template to use the comment popup form instead of a # link.

Posted by: yukino | May 24, 2004 01:10 AM

Now, I did convert the template for this blog to "advanced", but I haven't used the advanced template; I just used the TypePad user interface to set the preferences, as I do at Watermark. I submitted a help ticket on this problem, but on reading Yukino's note, realize that this is an opportunity to begin my learning.

So, later today, I'll see what I can figure out. Wish me luck!