Err, sorry for that childish breakdown of purposeful misspellings, lolcat-esque grammar and misuse of capital letters, I just got a bit excited. This thing is 10000% better than Wordpress 2, and I mean it. I loved Wordpress 2 from the minute I started using it, but, sort of in the same way I love VectorDesigner, it bugged me in a lot of small-ish ways. The Wysiwyg editor messed with my posts, plugins had to be manually updated, the dashboard was almost entirely useless, and the interface would quickly become cluttered with the multitude of space-hogging plugins. Wordpress 2.5 fixes EVERYTHING that I hated about Wordpress 2, and then ads on top of it with some amazing features that I never knew I needed until now.

The new feature that I really like is the easy picture uploader, and inserter. You can use it for individual pictures or you can easily make really cool gallery pages and stuff (which I will demo later on). I think wordpress 2 had something like this, but it wasn’t anywhere near as smooth. This uses a lightbox style effect to put all of the dialogs and stuff into a neat and clean window. There are similar dialogs for video, audio, and other media (like embedded flash I presume). Lemme tell ya, these dialogs will save me SOOO much time I now don’t know what I would ever do without them, and this is the first post I’ve written in 2.5! So maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but they’re great, I can do more with my blog now that inserting stuff is seamless. I do have a few disappointments, for example you can’t grab a youtube link and have wordpress auto-insert the player for you (which would be really nice), but other than that it’s just really neat.

There are also a lot of little things that add to the overall experience of wordpress. The interface is much brighter, neater, and cleaner. Lists are better laid out and easier to read (like the Page Manager, pictured left), Tags auto-complete, categories sort by most used, little things like that. There are also some little new features that can add some more customizability to your blog, like the ability to edit the permalink of the post (notice the permalink for this post doesn’t have the FULL name of the post in it, to keep the URL short). Everything is much better laid out, and in general just looks better. I must say though, I was a bit shocked when I first logged into my new Wordpress, it is REALLY different from 2.0 in visual style, and things are laid out a bit differently, so there might be a tiny bit of a learning curve.

It’s not absolutely perfect though, it still has some (major) bugs, like, oh, not being able to add images when using Safari, but I’m sure they’ll get those sorted out. Overall: TOTALLY FRICKEN AMAZING! 463.58 Million thumbs up. Now, to demo the spiffy gallery feature:

10. Quartz Composer (Mac, Free)

Mac OS X has had the Quartz framework for a long time. In some ways it is very simmilar to Leopard’s Core Animation. It allows developers to add animations into their software. Programs like iMovie (’06 version, for themes), PulpMotion, and Photo Presenter use this technology. Using Quartz Composer (Which comes with every mac as part of Xcode) you can easily make interactive, real time animations fed by data as opposed to keyframes. You can make Mac Screensavers, modify or create iMovie themes, extend programs like PulpMotion, or just make a cool looking animation. Well worth trying if you’re on a mac, especially since it’s free.

9. TivoCast (TiVo, Free with Tivo subscription)

Tivo’s been doing some cool stuff with the ability to network Series 2 and 3 DVR’s. You can dowload shows from your TiVo onto your computer, you can schedule shows from your machine, and, biggest of all IMO, you can watch video podcasts. Unfortunately, mostly because of TiVo’s odd encryption, very few shows support it. With TivoCast, shows like ‘DL.TV’ and ‘CNET’s tips for digital living’ end up right in your now playing list. I’ll take that the couch over my desk chair any day. I think TiVo is to blame for the not-very-wide adoption of this, they seem to only be giving their encoding technologies to a small group of testers, not quite ready to open the floodgates of Vodcasts on the TV, but if it gets big, the line between big networks and small sites will be blurred even more.

8. GarageBand (Mac, $79-$99)

I know I know, again with the mac stuff, but I think garageband deserves to be here not because nobody knows about it, that’s certainly not true, but because it’s being used as a ‘toy’ more than an actual tool. It is great for making music and podcasts, and I don’t know why more indie bands and podcasters don’t use it. The pro’s probably have reasons to use other software like Logic, but I really can’t think of much that GarageBand really lacks (although i’m definetly not an audio engineer). It’s a great toy, but I think it can be more.

7. Miro (Win/Mac/Lin, Open Source)

Video podcasts are the future of entertainment. Getting good shows whenever for free is just awesome. iTunes does a pretty good job of aggregating, downloading, and organizing them, but when you want some more features and power (or you wanna use it on Linux), Miro is the way to go. It has a very large iTunes style ‘Guide’ to many video podcasts. It uses torrent technology so you can actually download HD video podcasts, which is more than you can say for like, umm, my TV. There is a great color-coding system so you can easily see what’s unwatched, what’s downloading, and what has yet to be downloaded. It even has a built in iSquint kinda thing going on, you can download videos from 6 different sites including YouTube and Google Video. Unfortunately there’s no iPod syncing and no Front Row style interface thingy, but that’s not a deal-breaker for me. When I can’t watch something on the TiVo, Miro’s got it.

6. Multimedia Fusion (Win, $100)

As crazy as this sounds, i’m actually gonna go ahead and mention a windows-only app (It kinda works in WINE, not all that great though). Multimedia Fusion is a program that allows you to make 2D games and applications with absolutely no coding. It’s so easy to use, I had it down when I was 8 (Not to brag … or insult people who can’t figure it out). It’s a lot of fun to use, and there is a relatively large community of people to help you out with it. Plus, it’s an easy way to learn some simple concepts used in real coding (if’s, and’s, functions, etc). If you’ve got windows, switch to mac, buy parallels, and run this.

5. Mogulus (Web, Free)

Hey, who says websites aren’t tech products? This Adobe Flex based app is amazingly powerful, plus it’s ad based, so it’s free. Mogulus allows you to stream your own live TV channel over the web. You can not only stream your web cam like with Ustream, you can mix it together with other peoples cams, youtube videos, and titles. I think they may be coming a little too late, but it’s a really cool site and I hope it goes somewhere. It’s currently in private beta and I can definetly tell why, it’s not feature complete at all, and the servers constantly get overloaded. It’s got great potential and I think it should be getting more hype than it has.

4. EffectsLab (Win/Mac, $100-$150)

I’ve always wanted to make special effects in movies, but, y’know, Motion runs at $1300 plus the cost of a mac that’ll run it, that’s way out of my range. Luckily for me I stumbled upon these guys. Their stuff isn’t as powerful as Motion, no, but it’s a LOT cheaper and can do quite a bit of VFX stuff. Not quite professionall, but it’s easy to use and get’s some pretty good results. You can do particle systems, muzzle flashes, lots of optics stuff, color grading (kinda like the new Apple Color), and image filters. There are also other programs they make where you can do Green Screen and stuff. Over all, a little slow, but cheap and easy.

3. Adobe Flex Builder (Mac/Win, $500-$700)

People who follow me on twitter will probably be sick of me talking about this, but I think it should be in this list. While it is easily the most expensive thing here, I think it’s worth it. It is an IDE for Flash web apps, Flash Builder is made for animation, with some interactivity thrown in, Flex Builder is made for apps. Examples of sites include TweetAhead, Mogulus, ScrapBlog, and much more (Bigger list here). It’s based on the eclipse IDE, so it features Drag and Drop layout, Code Hints, Autocomplete, Property setting, and all that good stuff. It’s really easy to use and really powerful. It’s expensive, but with a student discount you can get it for as low as $80, plus there is a free trial version.

2. Blender 3D (Mac/Win/Lin/Solaris/BSD/Iris(?), Open Source)

Oh look, another program that my followers are probably sick of hearing about! Blender is an open source 3D modeler. It’s got a weird, kinda crazy interface. It’s hard to get used to, but is actually really really intuitive. Not really noobie freindly, no, but really quite powerful. There aren’t really any amazing features that nobody else has, although it does pack the power of quite a few professional programs into one. It’s got a modeler, a complete game coding system, a nodal compositor, a movie editor, and an audio editor. Granted most of the tools that arent modeling are a little weak. I make my theme songs in it, and a lot of other people have done some really good looking things.

1. Linux (OS, Open Source)

I know you were all hoping for the amazing killer app that NOBODY has ever heard of that washes your dishes, does your homework, and buys you sodas, but no, this one is old news to nerds. I put linux at number one because I think it’s still a nerdy kinda thing, but will soon emerge as a household term. Ubuntu is, I think, easier to use than Windows. It’s finally ready for the big time, it’s finally ready to be on the old junker machines and the new ‘eww, vista’ machines. Yes, linux is currently being under-used. It’s great because it’ll run just about anywhere, like on my 8 year old laptops. It’s very customizable and very stable. Most of these others are not very widely recognised even in the tech community, linux is in the next class, not widely recognaised in the mainstream.

So, there you have it, some of them maybe a little lame, I know, but I hope you all fond something new. I dunno how I run into all this niche stuff, but I do and I love it all.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Top, 10, Tech, Products

To me there are two good alternatives, Faceebook and Virb. Facebook is way more popular than virb, but virb is very shiny. I was torn, that is, until yesterday. Facebooks recent addition of apps has pushed me over the edge, that and the fact that a third of my school is on facebook (Too bad none of them are by freinds).

 See, I got twitter, I got RSS, and I might add some more stuff too. The facebook design isn’t quite the same as the rich, javascript, really shiny virb, but facebook it still a trillion times better than myspace (once again, i’m totally not negative).

Anyway, this apps thing was a good idea on facebooks part, they won me over, for about a day and a half, by which time I will have forgotten about Facebook completely. Now I just have to convince my friends that 1999 wants their myspace design back (I know, not an original joke, AND NO I’M NOT FRICKEN NEGATIVE!!!).

technorati tags:Facebook, apps, twitter, RSSbook, virb

Blogged with Flock

To be honest, it’s probably not gonna be as exciting as this teaser makes it out to be, but I hope to have a channel cram packed full of all sorts of stuff. 2 live shows are in the works, so those, cool youtube videos, me reviewing things, and some ustream style screencasting, will all be on the channel.

As soon as I get mogulus, it’s on!

technorati tags:Mogulus, Invite, Live, Keaton, Channel

Blogged with Flock

The {Hello World} blog (helloworld.grotonma.net)

Enjoy and happy learning!

PS. The title is simplified code that would (in some langauges) come out to be “{Hello World} is really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really awesome”.

Sorry. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be a scam or anything, they make their money off ads. The more you search for stuff, the more ads they show, the more points you get, the more you win. You can also gamble your points at the arcade, or get points for reffering people to Winzy or putting banners on your site (Well, yeah, that could have played a part in the creation of this post). Anyway, it’s a really cool service, I think i’ll continue to use it, and I think you should check it out by clicking the banner above.