In a previous entry about blogging software, I mentioned how rock sold Ecto is. Right after finishing that post, I noticed that a number of my posts were missing from Ecto. They appeared in both Live Writer and MarsEdit just fine. I tinkered around with Ecto for a bit but couldn’t get it to show the missing posts. It might be a bug in the application or a configuration error on my end. Either way, something is amiss.
(blogged from MarsEdit 2)
In my attempt to prove that the new Mac can do “everything” I’ve been looking for a blog editor that can hold a candle to Microsoft’s Live Writer.
For those of you who haven’t tried it, editing a blog using Live writer is simple and straightforward. It’s an extremely feature rich editor that manages multiple blog sites with ease. It provides a WYSIWYG editing environment so you can see *almost* exactly what your readers will see. (Other than differences in HTML rendering engines) If you’re setting up blog sites for someone else who may be less technical and you want them to be able to edit and manage posts without having “back end” access, then Live Writer works well also. Did I mention it’s a *FREE* download from Microsoft?
Anyone who can use a word processor can use Live Writer.
So far, on the Mac platform, I’ve found two shareware packages designed to edit blogs that I like but both fall short.
The first, Ecto has a number of excellent features. I like the general layout while editing blogs. I also like the fact that if you manage multiple blogs, the pages and posts for one blog are kept separate from the pages and posts of another blog. (Live Writer tends to mix everything up into one big set of posts or pages.) But, other than that there are no advantages over Live Writer and it lacks WYSIWYG functionality. Also, I wish the hierarchy of Categories was represented accurately in the editor. It displays them as a flat list with no way to tell whit are categories and which are subcategories. The UI is fairly drab too. Not a big deal but it tends to remind me of the old days of plain looking Mac apps.
Cost: $17.95 with a 21-day free trial.
The second, MarsEdit has similar functionality. Still no WYSIWYG editor. The cost is $29.95 for new users and much less than that for upgrades from previous versions. The version at the time of this writing is 2.1.2.
I just like MarsEdit better than Ecto. It has a nicer look and feel to the package. There are a couple of annoying issues though. First, it doesn’t refresh the list of posts when you start the application. Therefore if you switch back and forth from one machine to another (or one platform to another) to blog, you need to remember to hit “refresh” when you first load the program or you won’t see your latest posts. When you hit “refresh”, you’ll find the second annoying thing about the package, it doesn’t remember your password for the blog. Once you have re-entered your password for the blog it will be remembered for the duration of your session in the program. But next time you sit down to make a new entry, get ready to hit refresh and then type in your password… again!
MarsEdit has seamless integration with Flickr and allows you to insert Flickr photos in your blog very easily. It also allows you to use an external editor if you prefer, although the built in editor works just fine and didn’t appear to be lacking any functionality that I required.
At no time did I ever receive any “errors” from either of the Mac titles I tried. Once you get past some of the quirks, both programs appear to be rock solid. The last thing you need is a fatal error destroying 45 minutes of work mid way through a rant.
In summary, if you like to be able to see exactly what your posts are going to look like before you publish them as I do, then you’re stuck on Windows with Live Writer. (I don’t see Microsoft developing a Mac version EVER, but who knows.) If you don’t care, or don’t have the option of a windows machine, then both MarsEdit and Ecto are excellent Mac alternatives.
(Blogged from Ecto)
I just had another birthday. This poem seemed passionately appropriate.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
Well, it’s out and it appears to work. It is said to contain all the bug fixes from the last few months as well as some great new features. Don’t just read it from me, go and get it straight from the horses mouth.
A word of caution though, some of the things that used to work in previous versions of WordPress but weren’t supposed to, don’t work anymore. So, if you’ve been messing around with blog redirection and sub-domains to make things just kind of work, You’ll have to rethink what you’re doing and how you do it.
MY hats off the the ladies and gentlemen at WordPress for yet another fine product they have delivered.
SparkFun Electronics - Higher end toys for hackers and robotics enthusiasts. Great GPS and gyro/compass boards. While you’re there, check out the Port-O-Rotary: Rotary style cell phone. Just pop in your sim card and plant it on your dashboard in the car or pull it out of your briefcase during a meeting. OLD SKOOL at it’s best! I’m personally waiting for the shoe phone version so I can “Maxwell Smart it up”
fritzing.org - Need to make your own Circuit Boards? This (free) software will help.
Created by the University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Still in it’s Alpha stage as of this writing.
iRobot - Clean your home bots. I own the discovery scheduler version of this. It works “OK”. With three dogs in the house and never enough time to vacuum, It does better than I do but it’s not the Jetson’s robot maid Rosie by any means. (this same site also has the most awesome toy robot collection I’ve seen). If you’ve got mostly hard floors, no pets and a small abode, this thing is for you! If anything else applies, expect to: clean the internals of the robot daily to remove all the pet hair or buy three of them so you can vacuum the whole house. (iRobot seems to know this and they offer discounted packages that include two vacuuming robots and a floor washing robot. Also, a pet hair upgrade kit for most of their robots)
EXTREMLY hackable! (YES!!!)
As of the writing of this, refurbished units are available on-line for a fraction of the regular cost. With only a 90 day manufacturers warranty, you won’t feel so bad about ripping the guts out and modifying your bot.
As I mentioned in a earlier post, I recently purchased a Mac Mini.
Why buy a Mac?
There are a couple of iPods in the house and an iPhone. All the computers in the house that will support iTunes have it installed. I have a moderately extensive music collection and have found that iTunes on Windows just plain doesn’t work when you have more than a few gigabytes of music.
So far, so good. All my MP3 files are moved over to the Mac Mini with great success. The machine still works, is fast, can play iTunes and WOW at the same time, etc…
In a “driveway discussion” with my neighbor and a friend, we were discussing how to turn the Mac Mini into a full blown Media Server and about accessing iTunes libraries in remote places using the AirPort Express. If you’re not familiar with the device, it’s a small white brick with one ethernet port, one USB port and one mini stereo headphone jack with integrated optical digital output. It supports wi-fi (up to 802.11n) and can be used as a wireless access point (WAP), network extender or…. as a wireless remote iTunes player. (YES!!!!)
It’s a truly unique little device. Once on your network, iTunes just knows and will give you the option of playing through the computer speakers, the AirPort Express headphone jack (plugged into your stereo line-in, a set of powered speakers, or a pair of headphones) or any combination there of. Documentation (backed up by an apple store guru) says you’re limited to 3 AirPort express units on a single network. I’m lacking an extra few hundred dollars to test his out personally.
After doing a bit of research, I headed down to the local Mac Store to listen to some Bose speakers and purchase an AirPort Express for myself.
The first one lasted all of 4 minutes and then BRICKED itself. Apparently a bent-paper-clip assisted hard reset would put it into factory out-of-the-box mode but regardless of configuration, it never worked on my network or anyone else’s ever again. I returned it the next day and after 30 minutes or so of the technicians playing with it, they agreed that it was in fact not working as well as it should be and swapped it out for me.
The next one configured no problem on my network and worked flawlessly for almost a week. From the moment I installed and configured it, a pleasant little message about a firmware upgrade presented itself. I didn’t even worry about it until I had a couple of moments of network lag which caused a sort of “skipping” on the iTunes music being played. As with everything else Mac, the firmware upgrade seemed to go just fine. All was good and well with the world except that the unit never recovered after it’s post-firmware-upgrade restart.
The firmware upgrade from 7.3 to 7.3.1 is so new as of March 30th, 2008 that there is no information about problems with it on Apple’s site.
I paper-clip reset the device two dozen or so times trying various settings but nothing worked. Another trip to The Mac Store and a long conversation with a couple of the technicians there and a number of diagrams of my home network being drawn and allegations of the other non-apple equipment being incompatible and causing problems and so on….ARGH. I tried to explain that there were a number of other very happy wireless devices on the network already and they seemed to be working just fine. I then pointed out *AGAIN* that even the AirPort Express seemed happy until the firmware upgrade.
Well, it was decided that I would go home and spend another four hours messing with the firmware upgraded device. (yes, I know how it sounds but somehow those tech guys are very convincing and it kind of made sense at the time) Well, it turns out that the firmware upgrade from 7.3 to 7.3.1 apparently doesn’t like any sort of WEP encryption. I tried every combination of encryption from none to WPA/2 that both my wireless router and the airport express could use and the WEP, WEP (transitional), WEP 40 and WEP 128 will not work. So, now my network uses WPA and everything seems to be working just fine again.
So, I’ve finally done it. I went out and bought a Mac. I am the proud owner of a brand new Mac Mini as of Mid March 2008. I’ve had Apple computers before but not in some time. It’s refreshing to see that some things have changed with Apple. It’s also frustrating to see that some things haven’t changed at all.
The Good:
Look at the thing. It’s extremely cute and very functional. Everything, right down to the packaging the little bugger came in has the feel of a fine blend of form and function. I’ve never before tried to “save the wrapping paper” that an electronics device came in but there is the urge to do that because the degree of finishing everything has makes is seem “valuable”. I’m sure I’m not alone in this thought so don’t be surprised if you’re next present from a loved one comes wrapped in material that says “Designed by Apple in California”.
It’s sold as a BYODKM unit. (Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse) When you plug it in, there’s no mucking about in IP settings, it just works. There’s no worrying about drivers for anything because it’s a Mac, it just knows. (this is true for about 90% of devices you can plug into it) I plugged in my camera and was amazed at the seamless integration that iPhoto displayed in accessing my camera, downloading the pictures and integrating the pictures into it’s own photo library. There isn’t a bunch of extraneous software from AOL, or trial versions of software that need to be uninstalled either. It’s just a clean little baby that does everything you need it to. On a personal note, it also deals very well with a large iTunes collection and will share them on the network so that you can access it from other devices on your network.
A decade ago, getting Apples and PC’s to talk was far more difficult too. Apple has done a great job of making Windows shares accessible from within OS X. As I said before, “It just works”.
The Bad:
It’s a Mac. Those of you who are Mac Zealots are cringing and huffing and have immediately thrown me into the category of uneducated PC lovers. Well way before Jobs was liberating the OS look and feel of your beloved computer system from Xerox, I was playing around with computers you’ve most likely have never even heard of. I’ve seen numerous processors, architectures, operating systems and hardware styles and designed a couple of my own. The perfect machine has yet to be built.
The Mac’s problems mostly stem from the radiated attitude of the people who use them. Yes, the mac is pretty. Yes, there are some really cool things about how the operating system is structured, but an AS/400 will still blow it away for number of simultaneous users in a database, a UNIX box will blow away it’s I/O throughput and there are easily 100 times more Windows software titles out there than there are for the Mac. It’s not the end-all device for all users. I’m glad you love your Mac, just don’t bad talk another operating system or computer vendor to justify buying an overpriced electronics device that only has a 2% market share. Whew! I said it. Now, if you’re still reading, we can move on.
First off, for a machine that is touted as being more stable than a Windows box, I had to actually pull the plug out of the wall no less than once a day for the first 4 days I had the machine. All I was doing was browsing the web and loading up mp3 files into itunes. No, this wasn’t because I wanted to torture the machine, it’s due to solid lockups that a force-quit or holding down the power button wouldn’t resolve. The box shipped with 10.5 and downloaded almost 4 gigs of updates when I first plugged it in. Kudos to Apple for simplifying the update process and making it “just work”. Also, I had heard there were some stability issues with 10.5. Understood, it’s Apple’s new baby and it needs a couple of months to mature. However, when I mentioned this to the tech at the Apple store where I bought the unit there was a look of utter disbelief and after a 30 minute interrogation of what could have possibly been the problem or what I did to it, he discovered that I had three windows boxes on the same network and decided that they must have somehow been the problem. (um…. how??? Surprisingly, the tech didn’t seem to care about the Linux boxes on the network at all. Something about OS X being based on Unix.)
The problems occur when you try to get anything beyond basic level tech support for the unit. I called Apple to see if there was a way I could sync my iPhone with Outlook to keep my contacts and then use the iTunes on the Mac to sync music. After 10 minutes of reading que cards and support articles, the kind person on the phone broke down and told me to go into an apple store and ask them because phone support only had access to “Apple approved support articles”. Unfortunately, the “Apple Genius” (yes, that’s what they call them at the Apple Store) offered little help and suggested that I use Entourage and switch to the Mac exclusively.
The other bothersome thing is that Apple seems to have adopted the marketing strategy that once I’ve bought an overpriced computer, I should pay them for a service contract, access to online services, and other pay as you go services. The .Mac ties throughout the operating system are down right annoying. (.Mac is a monthly service that provides web basic web presence through Apple.) No, I don’t want to pay Apple for my web presence. I want to be able to say “Thanks for the offer, now don’t bother me anymore about it. Please remove all the menu items that offer to upload content to my .Mac account.”
All in all, it’s a fabulous machine from a fabulous company. For the average person looking to buy a computer that just plain works and handles e-mail, letter writing and web browsing, it’s an ideal fit. If, on the other hand, your computer use lies more on the fringe, (robot hacking, circuit board design, CAD) a PC will still give you greater options.
Processing 1.0 - Open Source programing language and development environment designed for advanced computing concepts (robotics, simulations, data visualization) targeted at artists, researchers and hobbyists.
Very cool stuff.