Common Craft - Modern Tech Topics in Plain English
September 19, 2007 | 3 Comments
Common Craft has built a series of presentations explaining modern tech topics in “Plain English”. What’s most interesting about their presentations is that they use a classic method of stop motion animation to explain these things. This counterintuitive approach is done entertainingly with paper cut-outs.
I think the Google Docs video I included above is their best, but if you were entertained by that, check out the older ones:
RSS in Plain English
Wikis in Plain English
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Tags: common craft, commoncraft, delicious, google docs, plain english, presentations, rss, social bookmarking, stop motion, video, wiki, wikis
Simple Safari News Aggregation
October 9, 2006 | Leave a Comment
If you are trying to stay up to date on multiple news sites or blogs, you already respect the power of RSS. I’ve been asked a lot about what I use for aggregation on the Mac. I’ve homegrown a quick and dirty little web-reader of my own, but I’m often tempted to use Safari’s amazing built-in aggregation ability.
A regular reader URL looks like this: feeds:nosheep.net/feed/
You may have discovered that when clicking the blue RSS link on the right of the URL bar. The more powerful aggregation can be found by creating a folder of RSS bookmarks. When you do this, you get the option to “View All RSS Articles”.
This creates a URL like: feeds:My%20News&nosheep.net/feed/&www.lifeaftercoffee.com/feed/atom/&borkweb.com/feed/
Each feed URL is delimited with a simple ampersand. You can extend this for as many feeds as you want. To get even cooler, add that link to your bookmark bar. As new articles are posted in any of the feeds, a little number will count up next to the bookmark for each unread article. This makes it easy to know when there is new stuff to read.
Tags: atom, bookmarks, feed, feeds, rss, safari
Marvel Podcasts
June 5, 2006 | 3 Comments
I am silly amounts of addicted to the Marvel Universe. As part of that I was pretty excited in January when I first discovered Marvel’s podcasts. Since then I have found myself waiting less than patiently for the semi-monthly or so releases. The insight into the authors, artists, and overall creative teams at Marvel has engrossed me even further into the Marvel Universe and the many exciting events that are currently taking place there.
The first one of these I casually listened to was with Damon Lindelof talking about Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk. Of course I have been rabidly following that series, at least for the first two issues. Where’s issue #3 Lindelof/Marvel?!?
Next, I heard Joss Whedon talk about his Astonishing X-Men series, which I immediately sought out the trades and am now following monthly. In fact, if you want to get in on a modern X-Men title, this is the one to read. The team consists of Cyclops, Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde, Wolverine, Colossus, and Beast. The series has dealt with some fantastic plot twists and events, including a story line about a mutant cure whihc is eerily familiar to X-Men 3’s major plot line. Understanding Whedon’s reasoning for building the team he did and why he is playing with the stories he is made the whole experience that much richer.
Craig Kyle was interviewed about the Ultimate Avengers movie. After listening I of course bought the DVD on launch day. If I hadn’t heard him explain in great detail about why he had changed many of the major story elements, I may have been annoyed at the film. Instead I enjoyed every minute of it and again found insights into the changed characterizations.
I was surprised to find Keith Giffen and editor Andy Schmidt raising my interests for Annihilation and all the cosmic Marvel heroes featured there. I had previously had every intention of being blissfully ignorant of this major event which follows primarily characters I find out of place and uninteresting in Marvel. Instead, Silver Surfer, Drax the Destroyer, and Nova have all captivated me into this major event. In fact I’m trying to find back issues of Drax the Destroyer which are proving to be as elusive as honest politicians… Granted, I still find Ronan and Super Skrull about as boring as anything ever written… but you can’t win them all.
The X-Office episode was an amazing amount of fun to listen to, but I haven’t been able to find much that is too interesting in most the X-Men comics these days. The exception is of course Joss Whedon’s previously mentioned Astonishing X-Men. The banter between the many editors, writers, and artists who participated in this episode made for the occasional laugh out loud moment and definitely made a flight from Orlando to Manchester entirely more tolerable.
The two Civil War episodes added to my already frothing excitement for this event. In fact, I’m not sure anyone has ever felt so giddy about an upcoming set of comics as I do about Civil War. I just wish I could sit down and read the 30+ comics that will make up this massive event in one long binge. Alas, I will have to wait for Mark Millar to layout his tale slowly over the next six months…
I could go on, because there are more great episodes to highlight (Neil Gaiman on Moon Night, Ed Brubaker on Daredevil, Daniel Knauf on Iron Man, etc). However, I just need to say thanks to Marvel and hopefully encourage at least one person to listen to these amazing podcasts. I’m certain they will continue, especially if the marketing team learns how addictive they may prove to be.
I will warn you though, listening to the Marvel podcast will be hazardous to your wallet! You’ve been warned, now go listen and spend money on comics.
RSS feed of the Marvel Podcasts
Tags: "astonishing x-men", "Damon Lindelof", "ultimate avengers", Andy Schmidt, Beast, civil war, colossus, comic books, comics, Cyclops, Daniel Knauf, daredevil, Drax the Destroyer, ed brubaker, emma frost, hulk, iron man, joss whedon, Keith Giffen, Kitty Pryde, mark millar, marvel, marvel universe, moon knight, Neil Gaiman, Nova, podcast, podcasts, ronan, rss, Silver Surfer, super skrull, ultimate hulk, ultimate wolverine, Wolverine, x-men
FeedBurner
May 18, 2006 | 5 Comments
Reading an article about Blog optimization yesterday (I lost the link…), I was pointed at a service called FeedBurner. Basically you install a plugin that takes over managing your RSS feed. So, you’re thinking, “I have an RSS feed, it works, who cares?” Well I thought the same thing and this is what sparked my curiosity.
It turns out FeedBurner rocks!
Before I go to far into why I love this service, first let me say, it is a breeze to install and enable. So, not trying it out is just plain lazy. If you don’t like it, come back and tell me why in the comments, but anyway, it’s easy to install so have at it.
The first of the two main features I like is getting statistics on who’s reading and clicking through to my stuff from feeds. The graphs are pretty and I now have an idea about readership through readers.
The second is the cool stuff they can add to the bottom of articles in feeds. Open up your reader and look at my feed. Along the bottom are some links like “Add a Comment”, “Email This”, “Digg This!”, etc. You can have FeedBurner add all kinds of sweet stuff to your articles, these are called FeedFlares.
My final comment on the service is that the overall style of the interface they use is awesome. Their help text is personable and entertaining while pointing useful things out and giving great help.
Tags: aggregate, blog, blogging, feed, feed burner, feedburner, feedflare, plugin, rss, wordpress
Import Remote RSS in WordPress
March 7, 2006 | 12 Comments
The delivered WordPress import utility for RSS is a little annoying in that it requires you to provide a file. Who actually downloads a copy of an RSS feed to their desktop?
Anyway, when we began alpha testing WordPress MU for deployment at Plymouth State, we realized we needed a version of the importer that would allow a user to simply give a URL of their RSS and have it work.
This is simply a modification of the existing RSS importer, a majority of the code is outwardly taken from that. This will work for both WordPress and WordPress MU.
- Download this PHP file.
- Drop it in your wp-admin/import/ directory.
- Go to the Import link in your admin interface.
- Celebrate!
Please use this plugin at your own risk, no warranties or guarantees are implied with usage!
Tags: blog, blogging, importer, plugin, plugins, rss, rss importer, wordpress, wordpress mu