Blogger is broken again - BlogThis and authentication

Blogger's been doing great for months -- after a near death quality disaster in the winter of 2004. This past week, however, they did something to break their BlogThis! and Googlebar Blogger functionality in both Safari (Mac) and Firefox (PC/Mac). If I'm not authenticated, the first attempt to create a post fails with scrambled headers. Very annoying.

Presumably they know there's a problem.

Google Desktop Incorporates a blend of Launchbar and Spotlight

Google Desktop 2.0 is big disappointing.

Update 8/24: Even bigger disappointment. After it finally built my indices (took days) I tried it out. I learned that:

1. It doesn't match on folder names. In other words, to GoD folders are invisible annoyances. ARGGHHH. The fools, the fools. This one just bit the dust.
2. It took forever to build the index, and you can't relocate it to a non-backed up drive without an unsupported utility.
3. Lookout search works, but I couldn't contrain what things were indexed and I couldn't restrict search to particular object types (tasks, etc).
   

I'm back to Yahoo Desktop! and Lookout for Outlook (now a zombie -- no further development going on post-Microsoft acquisition). I may try a look at MSN search sometime but I fear it doesn't include enough of Lookout's capabilities to be worth a switch.

Update: Biggest disappointment -- I can't find a keyboard shortcut so I can search and execute without a mouse. I'm sure one will be added shortly!

One of the most interesting features, however, may be a blend between OS X Launchbar (my favorite must have OS X utility) and Spotlight (which I'm still trying to find a use for -- if I didn't use Launchbar it would be more useful). That blend is precisely what I've been missing. They probably haven't incorporated, however, Launchbar's brilliant machine learning algorithms. (BTW, why doesn't Launchbar wrap Spotlight? Update 8/24: I'm told it will!!)

Quick Find makes launching applications and searching your desktop easy and fast. From within any application, just type a few letters or words into Sidebar's search box and you'll see the top results pop up instantly. You can use Quick Find to launch applications without having to deal with the Start menu; for example, if you have Microsoft Word installed, you can launch it by just typing 'wor' into the Sidebar search box and selecting 'Microsoft Word' in the list of results that appears. You can also use Quick Find from the Deskbar and Floating Deskbar, which are described in a separate section.

A few quick notes:

1. It's supposed to index tasks, calendar items, etc. We'll see. They mean Outlook but I wish they'd say so.
2. You can index networked drives and non C:\ drives. That's big, this was a major limitation of 1.0.
3. The Sidebar is an application deployment environment (aka an 'operating system' in which one can install other applications. Shades of Konfabulator and OS X Widgets. This is a shared desktop that can be accessed via any XP box (but NOT a Mac -- peculiar that Google should be driving their audience to Microsoft's platform)
   
4. You still can't move or relocate your index file, so you have to explicitly avoid backing it up. Annoying.
5. GMail indexing is most interesting. In my case, makes up for not indexing Eudora.
6. The deskbar does replace the Start menu.
   

A flaw in OS X design: Library should be in Users

I'd just installed the Google Maps Widget when I realized that, for all users to see it, I wanted to move it to the main Library. Which is not in Users. I only back up Users on this machine.

Very annoying.

Apple should have put the Library for items common to all Users as a folder in Users. At least I know to add it to my backups.

TextWrangler: free text editor, free GREP manual (was BBEdit Lite)

Bare Bones Software : PRODUCTS : TEXTWRANGLER

I've posted on this long ago. TextWranger is the free version of BBEdit. The free version is one of the best text editors in existence on any platform. My comment here, however, is not about the software. I happened today to glance at the manual. The section on GREP is an impressive tutorial on pattern matching and grep. I'm sending a copy of the manual to my office as a reference for Grep use (on my PC I use TextPad's GREP, which is pretty good - but no match for TextWrangler!).

Niceties of the OS X GUI

GUIdebook > Articles > Interview with John Gruber

John Gruber discusses some niceties of the Mac UI:

For example, I recently discovered that if there are two or more files sharing the same name in the Open Recent menu, Mac OS X also shows where do they come from – a very nice touch.

It’s not recent, but the most delightful surprise I can remember from the last few years is when I discovered that you can use Command-Tab switching when you’re in the middle of a drag. So you can start dragging something in one app, then use Command-Tab to switch to another app, and then complete the drop in the new app. I don’t even know when this happened – it might have been like this on Mac OS X all along, but I don’t think I noticed until sometime during the 10.2 era. This also works with things like Exposé and Dashboard.

It sounds obvious, but doing something like that was completely unheard of on the old Mac OS.

A lot of the stuff I wrote about in my Tiger details report delighted me to some degree. For example, I love that you can now click in the very top-left pixel of the main display to trigger the Apple menu (and likewise for the top-right pixel for the Spotlight pseudo-menu thing). I think the Apple menu should have worked like this all along.

The pixel clicks are indeed nifty. That inspired me to see what happens when I option-click the green 'window grow' icon. My window pops over to the top left of the display. Nice surprise.

Blogger for Word: a mixed bag

Blogger: Download Blogger for Word

On the one hand, this sounds great. On the other hand, I hate Word and I don't want to buy a copy. Fortunately it supports my ancient version of Word 2000.

Now you can use Blogger right within Microsoft Word. Just download and install the Blogger for Word add-in and a Blogger toolbar will be added to Word allowing you to:

* Publish to your blog
* Save drafts
* Edit posts

I hope there's an API someone else can use ...

Logitech mm50 Portable Speakers for iPod

Logitech Products > Speakers > Stereo - 2.0 and 2.1 > Logitech mm50 Portable Speakers for iPod

A quite competitive portable or small room iPod speaker solution. Good for the kitchen. Cheaper than some of the Altec Lansing solutions and has its own LiOn rechargeable batteries.