www.romanvenable.net:  Clark's Weblog

At last, I can write weblog entries right in the browser. I've been jealous of Windows users in this one regard for some time now (this, and the plethora of pop-up windows their browsers allow which give access to a rich assortment of products and services). Thanks to their suppor for Midas, either Mozilla or Internet Explorer can be used to edit entries in WYSIWYG mode.

For Conversant, this is big, as it opens the ability to do some more interesting things in weblog posts even for those who don't know hmtl (which is, like, everyone I know save three people), and is yet another reason new weblogger should consider Conversant (once Seth makes Midas-support generally available--but don't wait for that).

Can't wait to test more of this out and to see what html it actually inserts.

Categories: Conversant
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MacWorld magazine's July issue contains an article by Scot Hacker (great name for a computer magazine writer, no?) entitled 'Put Weblogs To Work' (sorry, not yet available on their site). In it, he compares seven weblog packages (Blogger Pro, Geeklog, iBlog, LiveJournal, Movable Type, pMachine Pro, and Radio). It's too bad he didn't think to include Free-Conversant (which this blog is built on). It competes extremely well in all categories he looked at, and then some. What's more, it adds depth to many.

Take 'Search', for example. Everything in Free-Conversant sits in a hierarchical database and one can performed very detailed searches (by date, author, subject, message body, etc.) and includes the ability to search for user-defined metadata. Take a look at Free-Conversant's Support site search page. Any weblog hosted there can have a similarly robust search interface.

Rich Site Summary. Every package he looked at can generate RSS. Conversant can generate numerous rss feeds via channels. What does that mean? Let's say you only wanted to see posts I make on a certain topic. With Conversant, I can give you access to rss feeds that are topic specific (see the right side of this page. See all those rss feeds? Lots of work, right? Wrong. All done automagically, leveraging Conversant's search capabilities. Pretty clever, huh?

If you wanna blog, take a look at Conversant. For me, it's not just a blog platform, however. Macrobyte (Conversan't creators) hosts my e-mail accounts, ftp accounts, and static web hosting. Macrobyte does custom developing, too. From really big stuff (like writing a Conversant plug-in to import xml data from the National Library of Medicine), to smaller stuff (like writing an Applescript that automates image uploading to the static server) and, soon, adding a WYSIWYG editor to my weblog posting interface.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a letter to write to MacWorld and Scot Hacker....

Categories: MacOS X, Conversant
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My alpha geek friend, Seth Dillingham, has written another neat Applescript for me. In his relentless quest to remove any obstacle that might prevent me from blogging more regularly, he made it easy for me to upload an image to my web server (um, well, his web server) by simply dropping the file onto the Applescript. Applescript launches my ftp client, Transmit, logs in, uploads the file, copies the url of where the file is to the clipboard, then quits.

Now,if I could only drag the image directly from my web browser onto the script....

Categories: MacOS X, Conversant
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