FeedDemon vs. MyNT

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

As you probably know by now, the popular RSS reader FeedDemon is now free. The maker, NewsGator, has decided to start making money solely off their enterprise customers. So they decided to make FeedDemon available to anyone who wants it (don’t worry, it’s still in active development).

I decided to take this as an opportunity to compare “normal” feed readers with my own MyNT RSS reader. How? I kept a record of the amount of time it took to read my RSS feeds for a total of one week (using MyNT). Next, I repeated the test with FeedDemon. Here is a chart of the results:

(more…)

No Comments »

Get Photoshop For $300

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Don’t have Photoshop, but don’t want to pay $650 for the latest version? Luckily you have some alternatives.

  • Amazon currently has several copies of Photoshop CS2 (the previous version) for around $300.
  • Here’s a little secret: You can buy a very old copy of Photoshop on eBay (like Photoshop 7) for under $100. Once it arrives, you have a serial number…which you can use with the $250 Photoshop CS3 upgrade disc. So you buy an ancient copy of Photoshop, and upgrade. I did the same thing with Flash. I upgraded to Flash 8 after buying Flash 3. Unfortunately Adobe released Flash CS3 two months after…

Just thought I’d point this out.

2 Comments »

Websites as Graphs

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

This is either a useful tool or a fun toy. Websites as Graphs is a Java applet that renders your website’s (X)HTML structure as a graph of colored dots.

You enter a sites’ URL into the form, and the applet puts a black dot on the screen (representing the root <html> element). Quickly, more connected dots expand outward. Each dot is color-coded to match a group of elements. The blue dots are links, the red ones are tables, etc. The graph shown to the right shows this site (note the lack of red dots :D ).

It’s fun to enter a bunch of your favorite websites and compare them (maybe it is a toy rather than a useful tool…), and compare them to your own as well. Try it out, it’s fun to watch if anything.

1 Comment »

Don’t Block Firefox!

Saturday, August 18th, 2007

A site has sprung-up recently called “Why Firefox is Blocked.” They claim that webmasters should block all users running the Firefox web browser (sorry, morons, but Firefox is king) because of the AdBlock Plus extension. They claim that users of the extension are thieves because they use websites while blocking the advertisements. By some weird logic, they believe that webmasters should be given the option of blocking AdBlock. Seeing as they aren’t, they think that Firefox itself should be blocked.

There are several holes in their argument. (more…)

84 Comments »

SimplePie: Parse RSS With PHP

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

LastRSS. MagpieRSS. Neither have been updated in over a year. What’s the best way to parse RSS feeds and output them with PHP? Simple, use SimplePie.

What is SimplePie? It’s a file you include in your PHP scripts, allowing you instant access to RSS-parsing capabilities. You can display RSS headlines/items on your website, combine several feeds into one, and anything else that you can think of. If you know a little PHP, the possibilities are endless.

You see this PHP code:

require('simplepie.inc');
$feed = new SimplePie("http://feeds.feedburner.com/Webmaster-source");
$feed->handle_content_type();
echo "<h1>".$feed->get_title()."</h1>";
foreach ($feed->get_items() as $item) {
echo '<h2><a href="'.$item->get_permalink().'">';
echo $item->get_title().'</a></h2>';
echo '<p>'.$item->get_description().'</p>';
}

That’s all you need to display a feed’s headlines and descriptions. Of course, that was only a simple example. It’s unbelievable what you can do with SimplePie.

Over at NTugo, SimplePie is used extensively. The MyNT RSS reader is powered by SimplePie. The “Recent blog posts” and “Recent posts from the NTugo Network” boxes on the home page are built with SimplePie. The RSS feed aggregated from all of the NTugo blogs? SimplePie again! It’s amazing what you can do with SimplePie.

If you know PHP, you’ll definitely want to take a look at SimplePie.

2 Comments »

10 Widgets For Bloggers/Webmasters (Yahoo Widget Engine)

Saturday, July 14th, 2007

If you’ve spent any amount of time on the web, it’s likely you’ve heard of the Yahoo Widget Engine (formerly known as Konfabulator [before Yahoo bought it]). With YWE, you get a Mac-like heads-up display that overlays your screen (activated by a hotkey), displaying your widgets. The widgets can also float around on your desktop, but generally I stow them in the heads-up display. YWE is not just useful, it’s pretty cool. Check it out if you haven’t already.

After installing YWE, you’re not-so-subtly steered toward the Widget Gallery, a place where you can search/browse for new widgets to install. A lot of people’s first thought is “Whoa, that’s a lot of widgets.” How do you sort through them all? I can help.

If you’re a blogger, or just a webmaster, I can recommend some widgets. Here are some of my favorites in the “webmastery and blogging” category. (more…)

No Comments »

MyNT (My NTugo)

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

RSS is one of the greatest web technologies invented in the last ten years. It enables us to keep up with our favorite sites, listen to podcasts, and get niche news easily. Forget annoying old newsletters! Who needs them when you can just open your RSS reader and skim through headlines, looking for things of interest?

Ah, the RSS reader. Like with web browsers and email clients, everyone has a different preference. Some like desktop programs, while others like web-based apps. There’s no shortage of choices. You have Feedreader, Netvibes, Bloglines, etc. I don’t like any of the choices. I’m a big fan of RSS, but I’ve never really liked any RSS reader other than Firefox’s Live Bookmarks feature. Recently I’ve had two problems. Number one, my feed collection outgrew Live Bookmarks. Number two, I’ve often wanted to read my RSS feeds on other computers.

What did I do? I threw together my own web-based RSS reader. I call it MyNT (say “Mint”), which is short for My NTugo. It’s a little innovative, as I added a few…different features to it.

My favorite feature: You can read your RSS feeds without logging in at all (just go to http://my.ntugo.com/yourusername.html). Just bookmark that URL and you can check your feeds with a single click (let’s see Bloglines do that).

Take a look at MyNT, you may like it. I can’t guarantee everyone will like MyNT. After all, I made it mainly for myself (and anyone who thinks that most feed readers are too bloated). I wanted to capture the simplicity of Live Bookmarks in a different form, and I think I did a pretty good job at it.

Well, MyNT’s URL is http://my.ntugo.com, and you can read the official press-release-sort-of-thing here.

No Comments »

Wordpress Vs. Movable Type

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

So, which is the better blogging software? Wordpress or Movable Type?

Movable Type is one of the older blogging packages. Once they were the cutting edge, and the most popular blogging tool. Nowadays, that title has been given to Wordpress.

Wordpress, though in development back in 2001, is officially successor to the old B2 blogging script. I don’t believe they share any code, though. Currently Wordpress is the most popular blogging tool, thanks to it’s power, flexibility, and ease of use.

Can Movable Type still compete with Wordpress? Let’s see. (more…)

2 Comments »

Google Custom Search or Direct Database Search?

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

Here’s an important question: Should you use Google Custom Search (GCS) on your site? Or would it be better to directly search your database.

It depends on your point of view. Some bloggers use GCS, while others use their blog software’s built-in search tool (which acceses the database and searches it). Which should you use? Let’s take a closer look at each option. (more…)

1 Comment »

8 Useful Wordpress Plugins

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

In no particular order, here are some Wordpress plugins I find useful.

No Comments »

« Previous Entries

Close
E-mail It