Laura J. Rinaldi

Usually Amazon follows what I have bought, and gets it mostly right. The other day, I got a notice that, wow, a book on Wordpress 2.7 was coming out soon, would I like it.

There are several things wrong here, but the main thing is…Wordpress 2.8 is out already. It came out shortly after WordCamp, back a few weeks ago. Most books get written while the product is in alpha or beta (as I did when I wrote a book about PageMaker, low those many years ago when it was the big thing.) I am a little surprised that someone wrote a Wordpress book without speaking to the people at wordpress, at least to get copies of the latest and greatest.

But, no, doing a search of Amazon brings up not only books about 2.7, but second edition books about 2.7. And I suppose most people won’t notice that it is the not the latest version, and although there are major changes, the look of the dashboard is pretty much the same.

Wordpress, a non-profit, could probably make a lot of money if they came out with books when the versions were released, but on the other hand, people who would be most interested wouldn’t think about buying those books, they would rather just read what they can on-line.

Me, I do like to have a reference guide around, I have several about CSS, but sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier just to have something bookmarked.

In designing for the web, it used to be that it didn’t matter what the mobile user was going to see, because the demographics were so small, but these days people are doing more browsing from their smart phones, and while that works just fine for a lot of the, and there are no adjustments that have to be made for the iPhone, there is still one thing that doesn’t work, and that is Flash.

But according to The Standard, at least one or two smart phones may soon get it. The Android and HTC Hero. But, Adobe says it is really hard to do one for the iPhone. It’s shame, really. You would think that Apple would want a feature like that on the iPhone, but then they weren’t too happy with desktop publishing when it first came out either, although without it, the Mac would never have gotten big.

Adium update box

Just after all the trouble with Adium working with Yahoo IM, I noticed that Adium updated. Normally I just say, update, and forget about it. I figure what is going to be fixed will have been fixed.

But this time, I read the box, and noticed the first fix was the one I blogged about the other day, the one where Yahoo IM was having trouble connecting. I installed it the moment I read that.

What is truly weird about the Yahoo problem is the fact that it locked out older Yahoo IMs as well as those like Adium that piggy backed on them. You would think that Yahoo would want to support older versions, but I guess they figure that everyone can upgrade, so why don’t they. My older version of Yahoo IM, on my older Mac, which I haven’t updated, hasn’t been working since last Friday.

So, cheers to Adium, a free product, for updating to cover this major issue.

Boo to Yahoo for doing it once again.

The problem with using free programs that piggy-back on other free programs is that when one of them changes, the others have to change as well. Yahoo IM keeps changing some setting, that makes Adium not work quite right. Adium is a multiple IM program that lets you connect with if not all, just about all the instant messging programs that are out there. Not all my clients are on Yahoo. Some are on Google talk, some are on MS, some are on AOL. Those are the only ones I use. I know, if I looked, I would see that it supports far more. In fact, the next build it going to include twitter. Not sure how that is going to work. Be prepared to get absolutly no work done. (As a side note, I noticed that I could link up my Faebook IM, but discovered that other than one client I had there, most of the people were friends, who wanted to talk, when I needed to work, so I had to turn it off again)

But this is not the point of this entry. The point is that once again Yahoo has changed it settings again. I went on google to search for a solution, then bagged that, and went to twitter, where I saw the disussion going on, and found the solution, to change the server settings to: cs127.msg.mud.yahoo.com

So once again, twitter has come to the rescue, helping me solve my problem, faster then any other postings out there. Of course, the real solution came from Cocaforge, where the tweet that solved my problem linked to.

At lot of the work I do, which I don’t write about here, involved NDA (non-disclosure agreements). I have signed quite a few over the years, and this restricts me talking about any of the cool stuff I am up to. It is quite odd, for writing a blog, that the stuff that would be the most interesting, is hiding behind an NDA.

I recently had to rewrite a blog entry, retroactively, because I wrote it before I signed the NDA, and the client saw what I had written and asked how I could have said what I said, having signed an NDA. I rewrote the blog, took out anything the was troubling them, and they was fine with it after that.

The journalism major in me, doesn’t like having to do that, but the business woman in me, says, do it, and be continue to get the work.

The advice that one of my friends always told me was to always check for coupons before you order anything. I used to think, yeah, right, that there would be coupons for what I wanted, but I am just one among many on the web, so there are people out there, that not only post coupon codes, but blog about them apparently.

One of the problems with having two tracks at a conference is that you can’t attend both speakers. When I was at WordCamp this weekend, the conference for people who are using WordPress, they had two tracks going most of the day. 

http://wordpress.tv/So, I got on Twitter. Patrick Mountain, who came with me, asked how that was going to help. I said that while I sent out tweats, with the #wordcamp, others were going to be doing the same, and all I had to do was follow the threads, and I could see what was going on, and sure enough, I was able to. And others were doing the same thing, commenting on what was being said, as well as making stupid remarks about the squeaky chairs.

But, oh, how interesting to watch and listen to one presentation, and then follow what we being said in the other room. It was a great place to get the main points. And this is what I will have to live with, until the videos are posted on the wordpress video site.

It so heavy with traffic on twitter, that we made the top 10 list of subjects being twittered about, which was both cool, and annoying. Cool, for the usual reason, annoying, because we kept getting false posts just to get their twitters read.

And as I looked out over at the sea of laptops screens, I could see that others were doing the same, both reading and commenting as the sessions went on.

Best use of twitter I’ve seen yet.

I designed my first user interface for an iPhone app this weekend. Another thing I can add to my resume. It isn't too much different than anything else one can design, as long as you know the specs, which I didn't at first. 

One of the things you learn in college, at least good colleges, is that everything is interconnected. There is always a reason that one classes teaches one thing, and then the other, and they all fit together, and you can grab bits from everything. 

OK, it sounds strange, that I am still using TypePad, but promoting WordPress to all my clients, but there are stranger thiings that happen in this world. I like TypePad for what it does for me, for now. I like WordPress for what I can do for my clients, and thus I am going to be attending WordCamp at the end of the month.

I love that it is open source, and people are always coming up with new skins, based on CSS, and that it is constantly evolving. This is not to say that TypePad hasn't kept up, but it often feels as though the two are in competition with each other.