This Is A Test of the Emergency Broadcast System
I've just downloaded Windows Live Writer and hooked it up to this blog. Just testing to see how well it works with Blogger.
So far it looks like it takes a copy of your template from Blogger and uses the CSS when you are writing, so you have an idea of what the final output is going to look like. Sweet. The functionality is also offline, so I don't have to be on Blogger's site when writing/saving/editing posts/drafts.
One thing that it does seem to be lacking is the ability to use Blogger's label function. Maybe it's time to use the labeling/tagging function of a third party site.
Update: Duh. It's a nomenclature issue, not to mention a near-sightedness issue. There is a categories field below the posting window (they are called "labels" in Blogger), along with a field for force-setting the publishing date. NICE. What's not so nice is the interface for selecting/entering the category.
Update II: You can add plugins, of which there are a bevy. For instance, there is one for Picasa and for Flickr, which I often use for hosting images for this blog. SCHWEET.
Labels: nerdville, tech
Holy Sweet Mother of Potatoes
A solid state hard disk, starting at 640 GB and fitting on a PCI card. The performance doesn't look too shabby, either.
Looks like
my kvetching about our state-of-the-yesteryear technology in our computers may be coming to an end.
Via:
"echef" at SharePoint blogsLabels: nerdville, tech
10 Things We Can Learn From Apple
A brief list on things Apple gets right. I was familiar or recognized most things on this list that Apple does, but this particular one I didn't realize until I read it:
Hide The Screws. This is a classic Apple move. Mimic real world artifacts and make things feel less like technology devices and more like something you'd find in the real world. Pick up your iPod. It has no visible screws. It isn't even clear how the device comes together. Hiding the ugliness of technology makes these toys more endearing. Features like coverflow and the upcoming time machine further this notion of pulling design inspiration from the real world.
Labels: tech
Winchester Technology: I'm Not Dead Yet
"Robert X. Cringely" of
I, Cringely writes about an upgrade to hard disk technology that he is invested in, standard hard disk platters made of lighter, thinner aluminum or titanium foil. The result is more platters in a drive, more information packed on the platters, and a dramatic reduction in energy consumption. While the initial focus of the technology looks like mobile devices, the technology looks like it has application for the desktop:
The technology in question replaces the aluminum or glass platter in your hard disk drive with a "platter" made from stainless steel or titanium foil that is 22 microns or 25 microns thick, respectively. The materials cost more but we use so much less of it (the disk is so incredibly thin) that the total material cost is substantially less. This "floppy" material has the same kind of magnetic coatings used on standard disk drives and our drives live on the same technology growth curve as those others. The way we obtain greater storage density is simply by putting more platters in a drive (say 12-15 instead of 4-5 in an enterprise 3.5-inch drive) because they are much thinner and can be stacked closer together. The only parts of the drive that are significantly different are the platters and the heads and the heads vary only in having an extra slot. There is no rocket science here, but what science there is is patented.
Lot's more
in the original article.
I'm mostly for removing high-speed, low-margin-of-error moving parts from the computer, but this technology looks very intriguing.
[ via LockerGnome Nexus ]Labels: nerdville, tech
Solid State Drives Ramping Up
Here's another one coming out this year, this time by a company called PQI (kind of ruins the
alliterative branding that was happening). This one doubles up both the storage capacity of prior announcements (to 64GB) and the estimated on-the-street pricing (to $2k).
Hard to imagine what a perfectly quiet PC is going to be like. I'll have to be content with listening to the sound of the ringing in my ears.
[ via Engadget ]Labels: nerdville, tech