Archive for the 'Blogging' Category

New Year’s Resolutions from Alexis Lakes

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on January 3, 2007
in Blogging, Startups and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

My good friend Alexis Lakes, CFO of RWI Ventures, kicks off the new year right with some New Year’s Resolutions over at peHUB.

Alexis is a new VC blogger, and this is a great post.

Topics included:

  • HIDING THE DILUTION
    Resolve to never lose sight of ownership percentage and expected terminal value of your investment.
  • GOING ON HOPING SYNDROME
    Resolve to be bigger than your ego and do the right thing by your investors with respect to under-performing companies.
  • TAKING OVER PAYMENTS STRATEGY
    Small Fry: Resolve not to be star struck by big firms wielding crappy deals in hopes of getting on their holiday party invite list.
    Player: Um. Gee. If you can find a sucker to delay a fire sale of your company - possibly buy it a lottery ticket chance of success, what can I say? More power to you, as your actions benefit the company and your investors. Of course, I couldn’t do your job, that is for sure. I need my sleep.
  • DELEGATION DISASTERS (DDs)
    Resolve to trust your partners and to be worthy of their trust.

Thanks Alexis! And… Happy New Year!

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Adobe Contribute 4 Review

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on December 7, 2006
in Blogging, Mac OS X and Software
. 5 Comments

I completed my free 30-day trial of Adobe Contribute 4 in November.

I’m a blogger, not a serious web designer.

For me, as a blogger, I found Adobe Contribute to not quite be there yet. I will not be spending $149 to buy this as a blog editor (way over-priced for the blogging marketplace). I would like to see Adobe come up with a special edition which is really focused on being the best blog editor on the planet, at a very low price point. I think they would find a large and growing market for such a piece of software. Adobe Contribute can do it, but not in its present form. The blogging support felt more like an add-on to an already-existing product. I would be happy to be a beta customer for a true blogger-focused offering.

Here are the rough notes I took while kicking the tires on Adobe Contribute:

  • Crash == Lose Article!
    While writing my first large article, Adobe Contribute 4 crashed on me (I’m on a Mac), losing all of my hard work. Not nice. As a result, I’ve learned to save the document after every paragraph. I don’t want that to happen again. I would expect a publishing tool priced at $149 to save my document while I type and not lose data during an application or operating system crash.
  • The WYSIWYG editing is both too good and not good enough.
    The editing window is designed to look like how the article will look when it is actually on the blog. As a result, you get a giant screen filled with static blog junk all around it, which limits the working area for the article itself. That’s not really how writers want to write. Why can’t I turn off that part of the WYSIWYG and just have a box for the article that is WYSIWYG?
  • Formatting is unnecessarily restricted.
    I can’t center a paragraph, for example, so it makes it impossible to center a picture on the page. I think this is some limitation or bug with how Contribute interprets the CSS of my blog template (I use Wordpress). Still, it’s pretty annoying.
  • Where’s my cursor?
    At least on the Mac, I frequently cannot find my cursor, or the cursor is shown as being one space away from a character, but pressing Delete will erase the character instead of the space that was shown. Very annoying.
  • Multiple categories not supported for an article.
    I’m not sure that Contribute has full support for the MetaWebLog API. You could only specify a single category for a post. What? So, I had to edit each article in Wordpress after submitting it. Also, there’s no way to enter in Trackbacks to ping. What?
  • Bullets don’t look right.
    Could be another CSS interpretation problem, but my bullets have bad formatting while entering text, but appear correctly on the blog.
  • Spell-check is not performed automatically while I type.
    I have to ask for the spell-check to happen before I publish. That’s just another step in the workflow that I shouldn’t have to remember to do (and would often forget). Make it automatic with the squiggly red line under misspelled words, please. For $149, I completely expect this.
  • Insert Link or Image often fails with nasty error message.
    I start every article by inserting an image. After inserting the image, I would no longer be able to enter in a Link (anchor). I would receive a nasty "region" error message, implying that I was tring to edit something in the static part of the page. The workaround was to save the article and reload it.
  • Trackback support weak or completely absent.
    Trackbacks should be figured out automatically in the background, based on the links that I enter into my article. This would be a killer addition to the product for bloggers. The tool should determine the trackback address to use for each article that I link to.
  • Safari integration lacking.
    On the Mac, Contribute only support Firefox 1.5. I couldn’t get the toolbar support to work on Firefox 2.0 or on Safari.
  • Problems connecting with one of my wordpress.com blogs.
    I’ve got a test blog on wordpress.com that is separate from this blog. Contribute could not connect to it because I use a different user-id to edit that blog. Contribute expectes the user-id to match the name of the blog, or something silly like that.
  • Wrong installation path.
    Contribute installed into "/", rather than "/Applications" folder. I think I figured out that the Contribute installer application was different enough from the typical installer applications that, strictly speaking, this was my fault. However, I think Contribute should follow installer prompts in a way that follows the norm.
  • Adding an Image by dragging?
    I was never able to add an image by dragging it directly into the article. Furthermore, I could not add an image to an article by browsing to the page and selecting it. Contribute only allowed me to add images from my local hard disk. I.e., it was not nearly as helpful as it could have been for image management.
  • Setting publish date for the blog article?
    I found no way to set or change the date of an article.
  • Publish from Microsoft Office capability is Windows only.
    Why? I’ve got Microsoft Office on my Mac, too…
  • Integrates with NetNewsWire!
    I was pleased to find that Contribute integrates with NetNewsWire. However, the integration was pretty simple and I didn’t like the format of the articles/links that were chosen.
  • ##TITLE## with ##CONTENT## added as an entry to my RSS feed
    When i did my first post, there was a phantom entry made that ended up in my RSS feed, but not on the website itself. I have no idea why.
  • Can’t insert a bitmap "bmp" image?
    Contribute does not appear to be able to handl .bmp images. That’s unfortunate, and required me to convert the images manually.
  • Not a Mac Universal application at present
    That didn’t bother me, since I’m on a Power Mac, but for $149, it should be Universal by this time.
  • Firefox extension did not work with FireFox 2, and crashed Firefox 1.5.
  • How do I edit raw HTML?
    I could not find any way to edit the raw HTML that was being generated. I sometimes need to do that to properly embed videos or other media.
  • Trackback URL is NOT a list of Trackback URLs that you should notify of your post!
    Apparently, their use of Trackback URL is just to specify where other should trackback to this particular article. I leave that up to the Wordpress application, so I’m not sure why they exposed that field, but neglected to expose the list of trackbacks that you’d like this article to ping.

On the plus side, I did like the auto-resizing of images.

Contribute is a nice piece of software, but I just don’t see it being a match for the blogger community yet. Hopefully Adobe will take another crack at it, and fully embrae the Mac audience, which sorely needs a professional-grade blogging tool.

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Dan Primack Launches peHUB!

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on November 4, 2006
in Blogging, Startups and Venture Capital
. 0 Comments

Matt Mashall at VentureBeat gets an early jump on the new Private Equity Hub, known as peHUB, that will be announced on Monday and run by Dan Primack of Thomson Financial.

John Furrier interviewed Dan on PodTech.net. Here’s the MP3 of the podcast, and John’s write-up.

In the podcast, Dan says:

It’s supposed to be kind of a public forum for the private equity community. Everyone from early stage VCs all the way up to the mega buyout folks, and kind of everybody who touches them, whether that be entrepreneurs, or attorneys, or bankers, or business school students. Yeah, it’s blog-based, it’s going to be myself and the editorial team here writing, and we also have a group of about 50 guest authors who will regularly be contributing to the site. And, again, it’s a kind of wide range. We’ve got venture capitalists, we’ve got big buyout folks, we’ve got some entrepreneurs, we’ve got placement agents for funds, and limited partners — it’s a good group!

I’ve introduced you to Dan and PE Week before. peHUB will be must-read for the VC/PE community as well. Congratulations, Dan. I look forward to the conversations!

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MacBreak: The Road To 1080p

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on October 31, 2006
in Blogging, Mac OS X and Startups
. 0 Comments

+

MacBreak is a video podcast for the Mac crowd. Professionally done:

The only Macintosh video show you’ll ever need. Mac experts Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, Alex Lindsay, and Emery Wells talk about everything Mac, including hardware, software, pro apps, and tips. Shot in 1080p high def, because your Mac deserves the very best.

Alex Lindsay, Chief Architect at Pixel Corps, took care of the behind-the-scenes action:

The Pixel Corps is a guild for the next generation of craftsmen… digital craftsmen.

Alex did a great tutorial on why they filmed MacBreak in 1080p with a green screen. If you are into video, wonder about the difference between Black & White and Color TV, have never heard of “4 1 1″, “4 2 2″, or “4 4 4″ (and wondered what your DV camcorder records in), check out this nicely done walk-through.

Download the MOV here.

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Can Adobe Contribute To My Blogging?

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on October 30, 2006
in Blogging, Mac OS X and Software
. 2 Comments

I’m a Mac.

I mean, I’m a Mac user.

And a Blogger.

A Mac Blogger in search of the best WYSIWYG blog editor for Mac OS X that will allow me to create, edit, and manage my Wordpress blogs while online and offline.

I’ve been using Qumana and have been mostly pleased with it. Especially given the price (free!). I wrote about my initial experiences here. Qumana has always been a bit rough around the edges, but I have found sufficient work-arounds to justify my loyalty.

The Qumana problems came with the official 3.0 release. For some reason, the Mac version of Qumana 3.0 does not display the image dialog for me. I have submitted the bug to the Qumana team, including the Java stack backtrace showing the error, but one of the Qumana lead Mac programmers has recentely quit. I.e., I am S.O.L. and on my own.

I noticed that Adobe had recently released Adobe Contribute 4. So, I downloaded the 30-day trial (for the Mac) and decided to give it a go today.

My first impression is not great.

But, let me get some time under my belt and we’ll let you know how it goes.

Stay tuned!

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I Hate Spam: Trackback Edition

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on September 10, 2006
in Blogging and Startups
. 3 Comments

Just saw Tom Evslin’s post on Trackback Spam: Trackback and Kudzu. I’m a fairly new blogger, so I got thrown into this whole comment spam, trackback spam, trackback denials, comment denials, trackback reviewing, comment reviewing, pingbacks, etc. All I really want to do is get an automatic trackback to the article that I write. That rarely happens for me. And, what’s up with Typepad Trackback URI addresses? You can’t derive them from the article URL. It’s enough to make your head spin.

Anyway, Tom describes how he is trying to overcome the problem of spammers hitting his trackbacks. It’s a battle you can’t win by reviewing posts. Period. Don’t even try.

However, I’m on Wordpress and signed up for the free Akismet service. Stats from the Akismet site:

  • 188,126,901 spams caught so far
  • 1,458,600 so far today
  • 92% of all comments are spam

It works great. I can have trackbacks and comments wide open. Akismet catches the spam for me. Occasionally, something is marked as spam that is not, but it is definitely the exception. Most of the good conversations get through. And, I don’t have to spend hours each day fighting spam instead of adding to the global conversations.

Tom’s on Typepad. I don’t know if bloggers that use Typepad can sign up for Akismet or not. If they can’t, then they should consider switching to Wordpress and signing up for Akismet.

Of course, I did this article with a Trackback to Tom’s original post. We’ll see if it shows up!

Bottom line: Let’s all support Akismet and get trackbacks and comments open for humans and closed for spammers!

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Wordpress Trackbacks Not Working With Qumana

Published
by
Brian Berliner
on August 14, 2006
in Blogging, Mac OS X, Open Source and Software
. 1 Comment

I am a new blogger.

I have discovered that blogging tools are still somewhat crude.

I chose Wordpress as my blog server-side software, hosted by Dreamhost instead of using the Wordpress.com hosting service. Why? I already had the Dreamhost account and I wanted full control to use whatever version I wanted and to fix/enhance the software when needed. One of the advantages of an Open Source piece of software, like Wordpress, is that the user community gets to help make it better for everyone on the platform. A happy user community breeds a better Open Source product, and the cycle feeds, positively, on itself. I had dinner with Matt (Mr. Wordpress himself) at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference last October in San Francisco. Wordpress has really taken off since then, so it seemed like a reasonable choice. I have been mostly happy with it. Until…

I also chose Qumana as my blog-writing client-side software. I wanted a WYSIWYG blog writing tool that allows for offline editing since I travel a great deal. I run exclusively on Apple Mac OS X. Wordpress has a list of available clients. I tried them all. Qumana is the best that’s available today, but it has a number of annoying problems that I will get to in another post on another day. The current beta is free. TechCruch covers it here and here and here.

For today, I wanted to point out that, as a new blogger, the ability to send Trackbacks to articles that I comment on is pretty important. I am completely surprised that this appears to be a manual process:

  1. Visit the blog article that you are linking to
  2. Search down for "trackback" to see what the Trackback URI address is
  3. Select it and cut-and-paste, or right-clink and copy
  4. Paste it into the Trackbacks section of Qumana

OK, that’s a pain, but at least it’s a process with a known workflow.

The problem comes when you do "Publish Post" or "Update Post" to send your fine new article to your Wordpress server so that it can be posted, and can then ping all the trackback links for you. Wordpress 2.0.3 will not send out any of the trackbacks that you send it via the XML-RPC API that is used by blog editing software, like Qumana or MarsEdit or Ecto. When you edit the post in Wordpress, it will say "Send trackbacks to: Array". It will look something like:

Now, you are forced to:

  • Edit the article directly in Wordpress
  • Delete the "Array" part
  • Go find all your Trackback URI’s again, one-by-one, as in the previous steps
  • Paste them into the Trackbacks field above, separated by spaces
  • Save the updated post in Wordpress

The worst part, though, is that after you save the post, some of the formatting is modified by Wordpress, causing the lines to wrap in Qumana in ways that you did not intend. Ugh. Fix the line breaks in Qumana and update it again. Heaven forbid if you actually added another Trackback address. I need a drink.

Annoyed, I took the morning off to fix it today.

There appears to be a bug that was opened about this issue, Ticket #1452 on Trac. The bug was opened one year ago, on June 18, 2005. It was fixed promptly by July 7, 2005, but the fix never worked. In November, Matt saw that the fix did not work and moved the resolution out to the 2.1 release (whenever that will be). I needed a fix now, so I found the problem and fixed it (the API was feeding it an "array", but the trackback code expected to get a "string" of Trackback URL’s separated by whitespace). The fix was easy. Since I’m not familiar with the code, finding the fix took a couple of hours of old-school printf-style debugging.

My quick and dirty fix was as follows. Immediately after the following lines in xmlrpc.php:

$to_ping = $content_struct['mt_tb_ping_urls'];

Note that there are two lines in the file like the above line - one in mw_newPost and one in mw_editPost. You should add the following lines of code after each of them:

if (is_array($to_ping)) {
    $to_ping = implode("\n", $to_ping);
}

Update: As I wrote this article, I see that the Wordpress developers posted a patch for this very same problem TODAY at this link. Ah, if only I had procrastinated one more day… No matter. I learned a ton about PHP and the Wordpress architecture today. Also, their patch is completely different than mine and I have not tried their fix. Add a comment here if you do. Such is the life of concurrent software development.

Such is the life of a new blogger with fairly, ahem, "fresh" tools.

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