Tags: Desktop Sidebar, Yahoo! Widgets, Konfabulator, Widgets, Productivity Tools, Windows, Tips

Given that yesterday I created a rather lengthy weblog entry I thought that today I would just create a quick post to actually share with you one particular productivity tip that I have been enjoying myself for the last few weeks. It actually has got to do with a piece of freeware that one colleague of mine shared in his Intranet weblog some time ago and which he thought would be worth while checking for other folks. And I must say that it surely is because it provides a new, and interesting, experience with your own (Windows) desktop. It is called Desktop Sidebar and you can download it from here.

Long time readers from this weblog would probably remember how in the past I have been weblogging a few times about what it used to be Konfabulator, now Yahoo! Widgets. Another superb piece of freeware that would allow you to have a number of different widgets with lots of different bits and pieces of information readily available directly from your Windows desktop. Yes, I know that Mac fans do have similar capabilities available. In fact, it all started with them

Well, I have been using Yahoo! Widgets  for a number of months now and have been making use of it quite extensively all along and *loved* the experience thus far. Till I actually read that other weblog post from that colleague of mine in his Intranet weblog where he encouraged folks to give a try to Desktop Sidebar. So I did. And WOW! I got rid of Yahoo! Widgets! I now got a new favourite Windows desktop tool, called Desktop Sidebar and with some really nifty features.

To start with, it comes up with the following set of pre-installed panels:

Not bad, eh? Well, it gets better. Because, perhaps one of the best, and most interesting, things is the fact that there is  also an ever growing set of additional plugins that people have been creating and making available on the main Web site. Really nice! Certainly a very healthy sign that this particular piece of free software has got a long history of enhancement after enhancement. There is almost a plugin available to perform an incredible set of actions or get information from a wider range of information resources.

Thus you can see why I have now switched over from Yahoo! Widgets to Desktop Sidebar. I could go on and on and on detailing some more about the different features and so forth, but I am just going to leave it over here and just encourage you all to download it and give it a try for a week, in case you haven’t done so already. I bet you will not be back. At least, I haven’t. Oh, and before you ask, yes, this is an application for those of us still on Windows 

Enjoy it!

(Previously, on elsua - The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Giveaway of the Day, Software, Freeware, Open Source, Licensed Software, Productivity Tools, Metablogging, Post2Blog, Qumana, Performancing for FireFox, Performancing, w.bloggar, Flock, WordPress, Roller Rollerweblogger, ITtoolbox, Flickr

I am not really sure any longer where I actually got the link from, but I am surely glad I actually bumped into it in the last couple of weeks. I guess that plenty of other folks have already been working their way through it because, according to Technorati, it has been creating a massive buzz over the last few weeks already. So I am thinking that this may be something that most of you probably already know about. But just in case here we go.

As most people who know me would tell you, I have always been very much in favour of free software. Everything that is Open Source I am up for it. Thus when I ended up bumping into Giveaway of the Day I just had to check it out. It is a completely new, and different, approach towards everything that is not free software.

The way it works is every day, and for a limited period of time, you get a chance to try out fully a piece of software that in any other circumstance would have cost you some money. You can then download the software, install it and play around with it. That way, at a later time, you would have a much better, and informed, opinion as whether you would want to purchase future upgrades or not.

And that would be it! The rest is down to you to see how much more involved you would want to get with the folks over at Giveway of the Day, because at their Web site you can rate the software download, you can share your opinions about it (Whether you liked it or not) and you can even place a banner in your Web site showing that you are currently playing around with that tool. Pretty nifty !

I must say that every day I get to pop over and check out what they have got to offer. Well, I don’t pop over. I am just subscribed to the feed, but I have been observing how the community of folks has been forming around such initiative and it is actually quite impressive, to say the least. Very engaging and lots of candid feedback on each of the tools shared over there thus far. Worth while a look, indeed!

That is, how, for instance, I have been finding out and, of course, testing out, tools like the one that was shared a couple of days ago: Post2Blog. It is actually another offline weblogging tool, pretty much along the same line as Qumana, Performancing for FireFox, w.bloggar, or Flock’s weblogging component. Except that, for this one, you actually have got to pay for it.

Since I am always looking for ways to improve my own weblogging efforts I decided to actually give it a try and download it. I know that if I would have to pay for this piece of software I wouldn’t have probably done it, but now that I have been given the chance to test it out I guess it is of no harm to test it out and see if it would be worth while the money.

So I got it installed, setup and ready to go within minutes. Really good! Pretty much the same experience as with Qumana. It works really well with two of the main weblogging platforms that I get to use on a daily basis: WordPress and Roller Weblogger. I wish it would work as well with ITtoolbox, but apparently it doesn’t. Sigh. But the setup is actually quite nice and intuitive.

From there onwards you actually get to experience some really nifty features, like WYSIWYG editor capabilities, Flickr integration, integration as well with other tools like Word, RSS Bandit or Sharp Reader, built-in smileys, live spellchecking and a whole bunch of other capabilities you would be able to read about on its homepage. Impressive.

So the next thing is to actually go ahead and create a weblog post, which is what I am doing at the moment with this particular entry. I must say that the experience is not as easy as I thought it would be. It takes a little while to get used to the different menus and options and somehow some of the keyboard shortcuts do not seem to be responding very nicely. Go figure.

I can see how pro-bloggers would want to explore this particular tool and perhaps use it. I bet that after a few weblog entries it would be very easy to share content, but I must say that if I have to compare Post2Blog with my current default offline weblogging tool, Qumana, I am not totally convinced. Qumana still remains as my default offline weblogging software. Perhaps if the software would be made available for free I would think about it. But the way things are at the moment, 39$, is just a bit too much. At least, for me.

You see? That is one of the great things about Giveaway of the Day. The fact that they give you the chance to find some interesting licensed software out there, try it out for yourself and see if it would be relevant for your needs or not. And if yes, you can then proceed further with the purchase of future upgrades. And if not, at least, you have tried it out and can move on.

So, off to the next one!

Tags: Metablogging, Blogroll Management, Blogroll, Bloglines, Omea Pro, Knowledge Management, KM, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Social Networking, Social Software, Blogosfera, Gofiosfera, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0

If you remember, a couple of days ago, I created a weblog post where I was actually indicating some of the different issues I was having while updating the blogroll from this particular weblog. I probably should have created that weblog post some time ago, because, right after I created it, Miguel Guhlin was kind enough to provide me with plenty of different tips I could try out in order to fix it by creating a post directly in his weblog: Blogroll Management.

So after trying out a couple of things and different tools I have finally decided to go for the approach of making use of Bloglines in order to import all of the different links as part of my blogroll. Originally, I had about 700 Web feeds to work on, but from there onwards I have actually performed a bit of housekeeping for the blogroll and added those that I feel would be the most representative ones. 448 in total.

I still have got the other 250 which are basically aggregators, tools related blogs, etc. etc. Yes, that is right. All this means that I am not going to make use of Bloglines to manage my feeds. I am still quite satisfied with Omea Pro and will continue to make use of it for some time more. However, if you would still want to check out the feeds I regularly read on a daily basis you can find my Bloglines account over here. Or just simply read through the blogroll appearing now in the left column of the blog template.

I must say that I didn’t think that it would be just that easy to import the blogroll from Bloglines, but since they say that "you are what you read" I guess it made sense that in the end I would be sharing mine with you all so you would be able to see where I am coming from and what I read nowadays. More than anything else because, as you would be able to see, there are a number of different categories I have put together that will help me set up the direction I will be taking with elsua for what is left of 2007.

That is why you would notice how I would be talking not only about Knowledge Management and Learning, like I have been doing all along thus far, but also topics that deal with Social Computing: Metablogging, Social Media, Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. At the same time, I have shared as well some of the different weblogs I am following up from the Spanish blogosphere, along with some other Technical Blogs.

And, finally, you will notice as well how I have been including a number of the different weblogs that I keep following on a regular basis from some of my IBM colleagues or from other folks who talk on a regular basis about IBM related topics, specially around the world of KM and social computing.

Thus there you go. After a long wait, my blogroll is now up and running and will be updated on a regular basis as we go along. I think that it is now time for me to go, have a good rest and get over that nasty stomach bug that has nearly knocked me down over the last day or so. But more on that later. Time to recover now…

Tags: Metablogging, WordPress, Blogroll, Plugins, Categories, Hacks, Tips, Links, Blog Template

Yes, here we go again with another change that I am working on at the moment for this particular weblog. One that, hopefully, you would be able to benefit from a bit as well. You may have noticed already, if you have visited the site, that at this point in time I do not have a blogroll in the left column of the weblog template and the reason for that is because I thought I would go ahead and update it first with my latest additions, taken from my RSS and Atom feeds, so I decided to start from scratch and reload the list again. It was also a good opportunity to do some housekeeping and get rid of the feeds that are broken or those where no new content has been shared in a long while.

However, this time around I decided to split up all of the different feeds into various categories, so that it is easier for me to track down the folks I read on a regular basis based on whatever the topics and then other categories with feeds that I just get to check every other day. So I have now got my RSS feed client with a good bunch of categories and their corresponding feeds split up quite nicely. At least, easier to read, manage and navigate for me.

Thus I was hoping to keep that same structure in my WordPress weblog while updating the blogroll, but to my surprise WordPress does not seem to take the updated feeds per category. It just dumps it all into a single massive list of links very difficult to navigate through and find your way. I thought though that seeing how the vast amount of WordPress plugins keeps growing further and further with some impressive hacks that there would be one that I could use to display my blogroll in my site based on the categorisation structure that I put together.

But, alas I have not been able to find such plugin. At least, not yet, which is a pity. So here is the challenge. I know I could go ahead and add that blogroll with the categories manually one by one (That is not too difficult, I must say), but somehow I am not really sure I would want to do that for the over 500 feeds (Out of the 700 I currently have) that I want to display in my blogroll. That would be too much time consuming and perhaps too much effort put into it.

I have been searching around for a while and have not been able to find anything that would be easy to apply and that would do the trick. So I am writing this weblog post over here to check if any of you, folks, have been facing the same thing for your WordPress weblog(s) and find out how you actually solved the problem. I would love to hear from you how you actually managed to display your blogroll in your weblog template using the same categorisation structure you may have from your RSS feed client, whatever it is. Thus any ideas? Anyone out there who may be able to help me out with a cool tip on customising the blogroll with the least effort possible and obtaining the end-result I just described? Feel free to comment over here if you have got any suggestions, or contact me offline, on how to get that blogroll updated. Your help will be greatly appreciated since I would then be able to share with you all some of the latest additions to my blogroll. Yes, indeed, there are some surprises. And very shortly I will explain why…

Tags: Metablogging, Enrique Dans, Blogger, WordPress, Libertad Digital, Plugins, LiveCommentPreview, Ease of Use, Open Source, DeLurking, Blogstudio

Continuing further with some of the recent changes that I have put together over here in elsua, here I go again with another metaweblog post to give you some details, and some further food for thought, on one particular addition that I have put together not long ago and that, till recently, I really didn’t think about it that much, until I finally saw it in one of the weblogs that I get to read on a regular basis: El Blog de Enrique Dans, one of the most influential weblogs out there, written in Spanish. No doubt.

Yes, that is right, but before I go into it, let me just give you a little background of where I am coming from. I have been reading Enrique’s weblog for quite some time now, even from way before, when he was still using Blogger as his main weblogging engine. Time and time again I was having a number of different issues with it, specially while reading it through my RSS feeds by creating double entries, read marks turning unread again for no apparent reason, etc. etc. So when he decided he was ready to make the move away from Blogger and into WordPress, I thought it would be a really interesting experience to see how things would improve from there onwards. On both sides, for himself as the weblog writer and for me as one of his many readers.

Oh, yes!!!, and how that experience has changed the way I enjoy his weblog articles nowadays! From what I can tell, things have changed as well for him, from the perspective where it looks like he has just  opened himself to a whole brave new world with WordPress. At least, that is what you would be able to read from his recent contribution to Libertad Digital (Article written in Spanish, by the way) and which he mentioned as well over at his own weblog. It looks like he has enjoyed quite a bit the particular move to this weblogging engine that most of us have learned to appreciate and praise.

Yes, his experience, detailing how he has managed with the move from one weblogging platform to another, has been quite revealing, to say the least. Check out the much more detailed account provided by the folks who helped him with the transition. The guys over at Blogestudio. So much so that while reading through it all I just couldn’t agree more with how lucky I was at the very beginning of my weblogging attempts for being exposed to WordPress and decided to stick around with it. I don’t think I would have been weblogging till now if it weren’t for such a platform. As simple as that. The level of detail, the ease of use, the huge amount of incredible developers putting together some of the most impressive plugins under an Open Source license, the level of support, the amazing response time to security issues with the platform and so forth (Did I mentioned that it is free as well? ) are just perks that we always seem to take for granted but perhaps we shouldn’t.

Take, for example, the latest plugin addition to this particular weblog of mine: LiveCommentPreview. How something so simple, and relatively easy to install, as providing a user interface towards typing your own comments in real time to a particular weblog post can be yet so powerful. Yes, indeed, LiveCommentPreview may be a really simplistic plugin, but it is actually that particular capability what perhaps attracted Enrique to put it up together in his weblog in the first place. And like him, myself, too!

For a number of weeks, I have actually been thinking about how unfriendly it is actually to leave comments over here, in this particular weblog. I know that quite a few folks out there do have a preview option, and some others really handy WYSIWYG text editors, but I was actually looking for something a whole lot easier to install and use. And with LiveCommentPreview I found it. So I installed it and you would be able to see it now up and running for every single weblog post. That way you get a chance to check what you type before you submit it in real time. Quite handy, if you ask me! I wish many other weblogs out there would have the same capability.

Either way, what it started as watching how an influential weblogger detailed his experiences moving from one weblogging platform to another, which happens to be the same one I am using, has given me the chance to put together some further improvements for the user experience of this particular weblog. So next time you share a comment over here, yes, I realise that National Delurking Week is now over, I hope that user experience is a whole lot easier. If not, give me a shout. If yes, all I can say is …

WordPress rocks!

Tags: Snap, Snap Preview Anywhere, Metablogging, Widgets, WordPress, WordPress.com, Thumbnails

Yesterday I mentioned how over the course of the next few days I am actually going to introduce a number of different changes here in elsua in order to try to help improve the user experience not only for myself but also for yourselves, the readers of this weblog. So for the last few weeks I have been following up on a number of different offerings, services and widgets that I feel would be worth while exploring further and I have already decided on implementing a couple of them and see how things would go further from there.

One of the offerings that I have found quite interesting and worth while deploying over here as well is one that has created quite a bit of controversy out there in the blogosphere. To me though is perhaps one very interesting option, specially for those particular weblogs that have got a tendency to link multiple times to other various resources in a single weblog entry. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Snap Preview Anywhere.

I first saw it implemented in a number of the different weblogs that I follow and in most of them the reactions from the audience were rather positive and since I quite enjoyed myself I thought about giving it a try and so far I am loving the experience quite a bit. What a fantastic tool, folks!

The way it works is pretty easy. You just basically enter the URL of your weblog, or Web site, then enter a security token and your e-mail address, accept the terms and conditions and off you go. You get a javascript which you can include in your weblog template and ready to go. Well, it gets better, because there is also a WordPress plugin available for it (Notice as well that Wordpress.com is already trying this very same tool in some weblogs) with which you would just need to have a key and activate it like you normally do with other different plugins and ready! You got to love WordPress. Nifty!

Thus from here onwards you would notice how I have added Snap Preview Anywhere over here in elsua and every time that you hover over a link or you head over to one you would see a small pop-up window coming up that would give you a snapshot or thumbnail of the link where you would be heading, so you can just have a quick look and decide if you would want to go there or not.

As I said, quite a nice addition to any particular weblog or Web site and worth while installing for those folks who tend to link quite often to other weblogs. Highly recommended!