Newsgator problems

I emailed Newsgator this morning when I noticed that their site was down. I just had this response:

"Dan,

NewsGator Online has been experiencing intermittent system problems (Case 57879), starting late last night. We are working hard to correct this issue and expect the problem to be solved within the hour."

So now we know. I wish them all the best in getting this sorted - it's never easy trying to get a knackered system back online, let alone one with as many rss-addicted junkies users as Newsgator has. 

Google Calendar

I was using 30 Boxes and Skobee to keep track of gigs and events, but I can't see any reason not to shift everything across to the newly launched Google Calendar.

All of the functionality I need from Skobee (agenda view) and 30 Boxes (calendar sharing) is present here but with the Gmail UI that we all know and love. Calendar provides integrated notifications and address book functionality from Gmail, lets me log in with the same account, and ultimately looks cleaner than most of the other online calendar apps I've seen. As this is Google, you can easily search your calendar too, and there's the obligatory xml feeds.

It's not all roses though - there are a few bugs (creating additional sub-calendars was a bit flakey for me), and it's lacking a few features I'd like (fuzzy timings for events, like morning, evening etc, some sort of client-side tool so I can sync my phone, and better integration with Gmail; opening a new window isn't terribly slick) - but by and large it's a nice app. One of the nicer things that Google have done is create a set of "remind me" buttons, and accompanying html, which allow one click additions of events into your Google Calendar. This could really catch on - I'd certainly like to be able to add, for example, film timings to my calendar with one click.

Now, would someone please knock together a sync app so I can easily pull the calendar down to Outlook, or my phone! 

Alertbear (and RSS)

I had a brief play with Alertbear this morning - a new RSS reader which claims to adopt the "river of news" approach to reading your news. I'm not keen; this might be useful if you only read one or two feeds but for anyone with a large number of regularly updated feeds, this isn't going to be the best solution. The Alertbear "river of news" (a more attractive version of "toast": little popup panels above your task bar) looks nice, and works quite well. The scrollwheel can be used to flick up and down through new feeds, and there's a little slider that allows you to quickly traverse your list of feeds. It all feels a little bit clunky though. The client interface that's used to actually read your news really lets this down. It looks like an unfinished, early version of one of the more conventional RSS applications (like FeedDemon, RSS Bandit, SharpReader etc). At least the Alertbear team have tried something a little different though.

My personal favourite RSS client is still FeedDemon - I've been using it for a while now (a couple of years, I think, although that seems like an incredibly long time now I think about it) and the latest version, 2.0, adds a raft of new features which improve usability. If you've never tried an RSS client, or aren't familiar with RSS, I'd suggest you give one of the above a try. Alertbear might be a good starting point, and you can always export your feeds to another client if you want to try a new one.

Tags

I've been reading about tags vs categories for a while now. Lorelle is a big fan of The Ultimate Tag Warrior - a Wordpress plugin which makes the creation and management of a tag based site (or folksonomy) less painful. I'd like to say easier, but transitioning from categories to tags when you've already got a reasonable amount of content isn't. It's not exactly hard either - it's just not something you can leap into without a bit of thought.

As a starting point, I had a look at Technorati and discovered that of the 100 most popular tags, there are only really a handful of top level ones that I write about. Things like Apple, Film, Music etc. Of course, there is a level of variation within these categories, for example any piece of content written about Apple could also be classed as Mac, Apple Mac, iBook, iMac, and more. Film could be film, films, movies, flicks, dvds: you get the idea.

Tags are intended to provide additional information about a post or piece of content. I like to think of it as meta-information, although that's probably just the geek in me. Tags enrich the pool of information you're searching through and hopefully make the search for that information easier. My view is that they're also useful for adding additional contextual information to a post. So, to use my recent Hills Have Eyes review as an example: its new category will be Reviews, plain and simple. Previously it fell under film, horror, and review. With a tag based approach I could use tags like remake, gore, horror, Aja, Craven etc. It appears (in the context of the web) to be more "acceptable", and my own view is that it's more usable, to apply large numbers of tags and fewer categories. My thinking behind the acceptability of tags is that this approach provides the reader with a choice: Do I want to chose from a larger selection of "meta" data about this post, or do I just want to know what its reason for being is? And so that's how it all sits in my mind: Reason for being = Categories, meta or contextual information about a post = Tags. A reader can then browse through my site either by moving from post to post via tags (so each post would be quite closely related) or by categories (which would take a broader view of posts with a similar intention or origin).

Skobee

I'm currently using 30 Boxes to organise my gigs and things, but Skobee sounded like it might make an nice alternative. The idea of setting up individual events sound like it should be more efficient - no need to page through lots of empty days to find the particular event I want.

The problem is, Skobee appears to be US only at the moment. Which, as I think I read somewhere, sucks. Shame, I'd quite like to give it a go too. Yes, I know I could stick a US zipcode into the signup form, but that's not the point. Until Skobee is made internationally compatible (or at least compatible with the UK), I can offer no dazzling insight into how well it works. 

Wonderful things - two in an occasional series

1) I give you Shhh cards.

2) I give you "the granddaddy of all quantum wierdness".

This is a stunning little video that's certain to make your head hurt, but is highly recommended viewing. I've just watched it twice! I found it via digg, which I've heard an awful lot about but haven't really paid very much attention to. Until now…