Troll of the Month

In: , , , , , On: 2005 / 09 / 19 Short URL: http://ozh.in/8h

From an interview of Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, by Business Week :

“We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win the Web.”

Muahahaaha. Wait a minute, just to be sure : define:troll. Hmmkey, that's what I thought.

Won the desktop, for sure. In 2004, share markets for desktop operating systems was something like 1% of computer running Linux, 3% running MacOS and 96% running Windows (a source)

But come on. "Won the server". What. A. Joke. Just focusing on Web servers shows that Apache runs 70% of all websites while Microsoft's IIS powers 20% of them (source: Netcraft). I know you can run Apache on Windows, but I highly doubt that more than 5% would do so.

Now, about "will win the Web" : I guess Ballmer is foreseeing how the upcoming IE7 will take over the world and pwn Firefox. Sure. Maybe. Why not. But that's way too early hype marketing to be taken seriously and not as a blatant troll.

Type Tester: superb tool from the underestimated web designer Maratz that allows easy font screen comparison while you tweak styles (size, alignment, line and word spacing…). (0) «

Quintuplette

In: , , , On: 2005 / 09 / 18 Short URL: http://ozh.in/8f

Photomaton
Il fallait une photo d'identité pour l'école. Le choix final pour sélectionner la meilleure a été extrèmement difficile :)

Safety tip of the week : back up the internet from time to time (needs a few floppy disks) (0) «

Your WordPress Feed, on Steroid

In: , , On: 2005 / 09 / 18 Short URL: http://ozh.in/8d

To many, RSS feeds are an unfriendly dead end : from your feed reader, you read a post (or just flag it as "Read" if the title looks dull) and go read another post. You miss the connectivity and interaction a traditionnal website can provide : list of related entries that might interest you, comments and replies that fuel a discussion, handy links that allows one-click "Add to del.icio.us", this kind of features that feeds lack.

No longer.

"Add to del.icio.us" right from within the feed. "Read more (183 words)" in feed item where applicable. Custom copyright to annoy automatic content stealers that give no credit. These are just a few example of what you could add to your feed.

Open your favorite feed reader and add my own feed. Curious about that custom footer in every feed post ? Go read about my latest WordPress plugin : Better Feed.

Hey peeps, I have a crazy idea.

In: , , , On: 2005 / 09 / 17 Short URL: http://ozh.in/8c

Interesting quote from some blog, dated March 04, 2003 :

What's interesting is that people have been focusing on creating client side RSS aggregators. I think the world needs a very good server side aggregator. I'd use it. You could do all sorts of interesting things with a server side aggregator.

This is from Mark Fetcher's blog, who a few months later … founded Bloglines, the site with the best ratio uglyness / usability of the whole internet.

Feed readers of mine will notice some subtle changes here. Unless I get some bug report, I’ll release this week-end the plugin that’s responsible for this. So if somethings looks too funky or annoying, tell me asap :) (note that I’m playing with all its features, including truncating the feed where Wordpress usually displays a “Read more” link. Might sound a bit weird considering my recent praise about short feeds :) (0) «

How To Tweak WordPress Themes Without Messing Blog Around

In: , , On: 2005 / 09 / 15 Short URL: http://ozh.in/8a

Ever wanted to test or tweak an alternate Theme for WordPress, but don't want things to look messy for your visitors ? You have two solutions.

Another Test install
That's an easy one, just set up another WordPress blog and play with it, tweak it, break it, no once cares. The only thing you may want to check before playing is that it sends no ping (Options / Writing / Update Services) and no trackback (Options / Discussion) when you post random junk, because your test install will soon be discovered by others … and by spammers :)

Use the Theme Switcher
This solution doesn't even require you to set up another blog. It consists in installing a Theme Switcher, and making it available for you only.

  1. Get the plugin : theme switcher
  2. Activate it
  3. Add the following code somewhere in your sidebar.php :
    < View plain text >
    php

    1. <?php
    2. if (
    3.     (preg_match("/wordpressuser&#91;^=&#93;*=admin/i", $_SERVER&#91;"HTTP_COOKIE"&#93;))
    4. ) { ?>
    5.     <div id="themeswitcher">
    6.     <h3>Theme</h3>
    7.     <?php wp_theme_switcher(); ?>
    8.     </div>
    9. <?php } ?>

From now on, people logged in with "admin" will be able to see the theme switcher and select another theme. Others will stick to the theme selected by default.

News qui a 5 mois de retard : est-ce qu’on a eu cette pub (right click, save as, 5.5 Mo, .mov) pour la Golf GTI qui reprend “I’m Singing in the Rain” en France ? Punaise, mais j’adore ! (0) «

Five Reasons Why Partial Content Feeds Suck.

In: , , On: 2005 / 09 / 15 Short URL: http://ozh.in/88

Google's Blog Search has already one benefit : it appears that the debate about "full content" or "partial content" feeds (i.e. reproducing in your RSS feeds whole posts, or just the 50 first words) is back. Indeed, Google indexing only feeds at the moment, it appears much smarter to make it read the whole text instead of some irrelevant introduction if you want referral hits in return. This is good news. Spread the word : partial content feeds suck.

Five reasons why full content syndication is better than coitus interruptus syndication :
Read More

 « Previous page 
 Next page »