NevOn Experimental

A hosted server and Movable Type looking likely

I've had some helpful suggestions for the next step in the evolution of my blogs (do I stay with TypePad, upgrading to the Pro service level, or switch to a hosted server solution and run my own blogs).

In combining those suggestions with ones I've already had, plus my own thinking, things are leaning towards the hosted server solution. And I would very likely use Movable Type for my blogs; more on that in a minute.

So I've been looking around to see what's out there.

My first choice would be GoDaddy. My experience with them - I've bought domains there - is very good and their offerings for hosted space are also good. The only negative at the moment is that they don't seem too clued in about using their hosting service for running blogs, judging by the responses from their support team to my emails asking about Movable Type support.

I'm also looking at Bluehost and Midphase, two hosting services that seem to have rave reviews by users. Both offer very attractive deals. I used the recommendations from the Hosting Comparison site which has some great reviews of the various offerings out there.

I did look at PowWeb, but was a bit put off by lots of negative comments from users in their own support forum.

So, decisions to be made soon.

Meanwhile, I'm trying out Movable Type version 3.17 which I have as part of my membership in the Six Apart Professional Network.

I'm trying MT out on a local computer, set up as a server so it will run. I followed Six Apart's excellent step-by-step instructions for installing it on a Windows PC.

Still a bit of learning to do, though - while the MT install went perfectly, the MT-check script which ran on my first use this morning produced this error:

Bad ObjectDriver config: Connection error: Access denied for user ''@'localhost' (using password: YES)

Need to figure out what I did wrong in the configuration, which I suspect is more to do with the MySQL setup and access rights to the database than with MT.

Also getting some great knowledge from Learning Movable Type, a truly excellent resource by Elise Bauer.

Stay tuned...

Rethinking weblog structures and design

Tomorrow, 24 July, marks the one-year anniversary of when I first started my primary blog on TypePad. I actually started blogging in December 2002, with a BlogSpot blog, but it wasn't until a year ago that I really got into gear, so to speak, and became a regular blogger.

In January, I made a major design change to the main blog and started this blog, where you're reading this post. The design on the main blog has been in its current form since then.

When Six Apart upgraded the TypePad service earlier this month and included a raft of new design templates and themes, that got me thinking again about the look-and-feel of both of my blogs and is it to time to change. So with this blog, I applied one of the new designs (the Powell Street 2-column left template) which is what you see today.

I didn't apply any of the new designs to my primary blog. The main reason is that the blog currently uses a customized version of a standard 3-column template which I've changed quite a bit. So applying one of the new design templates would mean that I'd need to spend quite a bit of time in customizing that, and doing it on the live blog.

While I'm quite willing to spend time on customizing, the idea caused me to think more about getting direct access to the template HTML code and creating something a bit more unique from the design and layout points of view.

Trying out Gizmo internet phone

Does Skype have a serious competitor? According to the Gizmo Project, it does:

What distinguishes Gizmo Project from the other services out there, and why is Gizmo Project a better choice?

Skype: Like Gizmo Project, Skype has excellent sound quality, and is able to connect calls even in difficult home networks. Unfortunately, its technology is completely proprietary and you cannot contact their members without installing skype on your own computer.

That doesn't sound like a compelling differentiator to me. I've been using Skype for almost a year now and I have yet to find any other VoIP service that comes close to it in terms of overall tech reliability and scale of its user network.

But you have to start somewhere and competition is good. From a user point of view, Gizmo has many similarities to Skype: a peer-to-peer system, free calls to other Gizmo users, ability to buy credit to call normal phones, get a phone number so you can receive calls, get voicemail, etc. See the full story at Gizmo.

So I'll take Gizmo for a spin and see how it is. I will keep Skype as a) I'm happy with it overall, and b) I have a lot invested in it now (two SkypeIn numbers, for instance). Any alternative would have to be so compelling from many different points of view - wholly-reliable service and price being just two - that switching would be a no brainer.

Trying out Odeo

Last week, I received an invitation to try out Odeo, a podcasting service currently in beta, launched earlier this year.

What is Odeo? From the FAQ:

Odeo consists of three major parts: A catalog of audio content, of all types, which is constantly being added to. The Odeo Syncr, which let’s you download anything in the catalog (and, optionally, put it on your MP3 player). And creation tools, including the Odeo Studio, which let you publish your own audio content, which will then show up in the catalog. (The creation tools aren’t ready for public use yet, though.)

If you want to know more about the company and who's behind it, see How Odeo happened.

So, I've taken my first real look at Odeo today. When I first logged in and created an account, one thought I had was re what else is already out there in terms of finding podcasts and how would Odeo differentiate itself. There are loads of directories. Indeed, you're almost spoiled for choice at the moment of where to find increasing numbers of podcasts. Then there's Apple's iTunes Podcast Directory which looks like it will contain thousands of podcasts.

As the FAQ says, it's a catalog, a directory, with MP3 files organized by tags or categories. Unlike other directories, though, you have a much easier way to choose the content you want to subscribe to as you can get concise descriptions of each show plus the option to preview them (listen) before you download.

This reduced-size screenshot might give you an idea of that:

To download podcasts, you use the Odeo Syncr, a desktop applications based on iPodder. Once you subscribe to some shows on the Odeo website, you set them up to be retrieved by the synchronizer app, which then behaves just like iPodder, ie, it fetches your shows. Is this real podcasting, ie, making use of RSS as the delivery mechanism? No, but does that matter to the average user?

For Immediate Release is listed in the business directory (that's the bi-weekly show I co-present - plug!) so if you use Odeo and want to subscribe, here's the link.

Odeo is an interesting concept. I can see some great possibilities as a paid-for service, giving it some exclusivity. Right now, though, I can't see what a differentiator could be if it's just another open-access podcast directory (once it's out of private beta), no matter how sexy-looking it all is. The Odeo Studio creation tool looks like the big thing, but that's not available yet and I haven't seen what it looks like nor what it can do.

I'll be trying it out a little more over the next couple of weeks, so more commentary to come.

Playing with TypePad templates

This weekend, Six Apart is doing major upgrading of the TypePad hosted blog service to roll out a wide range of new features (see the post today on my main blog for some details).

One of those features is a raft of new templates. So I'm experimenting a bit with that. I've just changed the look of this blog, using the new Powell Street theme.

I like it. Do you?

It's just a two-column layout (I had three columns before) which is one of the new pre-defined themes choices under Cool Themes. I haven't included all the various different typelists I have, including a very lengthy blogroll (that's still on my main blog). I've used all the template defaults and not, as I did before, adjusted things like column widths, colours, etc.

Changing layouts on the fly on this blog is easy, much more so than making such changes on my main blog which uses a heavily-customized template. Plus I don't want to make experimental changes there - that's why I have this blog ;)

There might be more changes as I play around with this, so don't get too used to any theme at the moment.

Technorati tag: typepad

Web-based MP3 players

I started another new blog today, one that will help me focus some thoughts about podcasting and related tech themes. The new blog is hosted on Big Contact and it's simply called nevontech.

I found out about this service from PodcastNYC, a great place for podsafe music.

One of the very cool benefits that Big Contact gives you is a web-based MP3 player, what they call a channel player. It aggregates all your blog posts that link to MP3 files and gives you a playlist of those MP3 files with the content of your blog posts as the sort of show notes for reach MP3. This means you can get a sense of what each MP3 is about, whether it's a podcast or just music, before you click on that play button.

Once you launch the player (it appears in a pop-up window or new tab), it starts streaming the first MP3 file (so broadband is a good idea) and starts playing it. Pretty neat.

There is some code on the Big Contact site that I can include here so that you can directly launch the player. Unfortunately, that code doesn't work. I've emailed Big Contact about it and I hope to get it up here at some point.

I also discovered a rather neat Flash-based MP3 player. Produced by Jeroen Wijering, it's very nicely put together and dead easy to add your own list of MP3 content to the XML-based playlist. Take a look at my little experiment - this lists some of the For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcasts we've done this month that you can play with this player.

Similar concept to Big Contact's channel player - when it loads, it starts streaming the first MP3. You can configure it to start playing automatically or wait for a click.

Go on, give it a go!

[UPDATE 29/5/05] I had a detailed and very helpful reply from Nat at Big Contact about launching the MP3 player, as well as resolving an issue with MP3 sampling rates (separate post).

The link for the player works fine. You can try it here -

Why didn't it work yesterday? Not sure. I wrote this original post offline in ecto for Windows and tested the link in ecto's preview window. That's when it didn't work. But it works fine now.

Easy tag editor for music files - and podcasts

AudioShell is a Windows Explorer shell extension plug-in which allow you to view and edit music files tags directly in Explorer.

The extension supports all file and tag standards supported by Tag&Rename. AudioShell adds tag editor and viewer tabs to a music file's properties. You can edit tags file by file or by groups.

Supported files and tags formats: mp3 (all ID3v2 tag versions), wma, asf and wmv, Apple iTunes aac (m4a and m4p) and mp4 files, ogg, flac (vorbis comment tags), mpc , mp+, monkey's audio, wav pack, optim frog ( APE and APEv2 tags). The app include full Unicode support.

This looks very useful for MP3s used for podcasts, especially those you download that don't have any or sufficient tag information in the file properties that work with playlist identification in programs like iTunes - helpful for setting up smart playlists, for instance, which you want to auto-sync to your iPod.

Published by Softpointer. Still a beta, but worth a try. Requires Windows 2000 or later. Freeware. Download AudioShell 1 beta 1.

(Hat tip: Home Computer magazine)

Testing Skype voicemail

Yesterday, I joined the beta programme for testing the new voicemail service that Skype may be rolling out soon. I posted comment about this service last week on my main blog.

It works just like any voicemail service. If you call someone who's also in the beta programme, you can leave them a voicemail. I have it set so that another Skype user can leave me a voicemail if I'm not online. I also have it config'd so that if someone calls me on Skype when I'm already on the phone, the new call diverts to voicemail.

In a word, it's excellent. I'll post more comment about it here as I use it more.

When will it be available? Hard to say. My guess: sometime during Q2 if the testing is successful.

Just setting up

I've just set up this new experimental blog as a place to try out some things, mostly design and layout ideas.

I've not really explored all the options TypePad offer in this regard, and I don't want to mess around with my primary blog.

So let's see what develops here.