Review of Buzzr, A Drupal Website Builder
Posted August 9, 2010 – 6:03 pmBuzzr is a new hosted website building platform based on Drupal, a popular open source content management system (CMS).
Buzzr: A Drupal Website Builder
Buzzr aims to make it much easier to build websites in Drupal by creating a user-friendly front end for the Drupal CMS. In a sense, Buzzr is a sort of WordPress-for-Drupal.
However, while WordPress is primarily designed to build blog-based websites, Drupal is fundamentally a more powerful and versatile website development platform that can be used to make virtually any kind of website. However, with this richness comes complexity that puts Drupal out of reach for many people.
Buzzr is trying to capture some of the superior functionality of Drupal while improving the interface to make it accessible to a much wider range of people. I think they have been largely successful in doing so.
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How to Add Custom CSS to Google Reader in Chrome
Posted July 30, 2010 – 8:28 pmWhen I switched to Google Reader from Netvibes Wasabi, I created a custom skin using a Google Chrome extension called Reader Plus. The result was to make Reader look a bit like my old Wasabi layout which I found so much more readable.
Here’s the details:
Netvibes Wasabi – A Very Readable Layout
Here’s a screenshot of my old Netvibes Wasabi reader – one of the basic ‘official’ themes of the zillions they offer. This layout was just a dream to read. I loved the spacing, the use of favicons, the nice date headers in the item stream, and the colors, among other things.
In general, Netvibes comes with a lot, lot more configuration and, especially, theming options than does Google Reader. One feature that I especially liked with the “Give feed items more space” option – this incrementally opened up the spacing giving feed items just the right amount of breathing room.
Google Reader – Too Dense and Cluttered
Here’s a screenshot of the same feeds in the default Google Reader skin.
The main differences are too much white, item list and feeds sidebar are much too dense, and there’s a lot of unnecessary visual clutter (e.g., stars on every item). It’s hard to believe that the same company that designed a clutter-free search page and it’s highly efficient and readable search results format came up with this.
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RSS Feed Readers: Changing from Netvibes Wasabi to Google Reader
Posted July 29, 2010 – 3:55 pmI’ve finally done it: I’ve changed over from Netvibes Wasabi to Google Reader as my main RSS reader.
Switching to Google Reader
Back in March, I did a detailed comparison of Windows RSS readers and concluded that Netvibes Wasabi and Google Reader were the two best feed readers.
For desktop viewing, the main tradeoff at that time was between design / readability and feed handling. Google Reader was hands-down better at handling a wide range of different types of feeds. Netvibes was, to my eye at least, the hands-down winner in terms of design and readability.
Despite the problems with the feed handling, I ended up sticking with Netvibes.
But as of yesterday, that’s changed: I have now permanently switched over to Google Reader and dropped Netvibes.
The reason for the change was three-fold:
- I have some new responsibilities and simply can’t work around Netvibes feed handling issues any longer
- I found a Chrome extension that allows you to easily create your own skin for Google Reader, so I added some custom CSS and now have a Netvibes-type layout (see separate post)
- I’m need better mobile access to my feeds and that favors Google Reader by a lot
Best RSS Feed Reader for Windows?
Posted March 7, 2010 – 5:39 pmRecently, I’ve been doing a deep dive comparison of the top RSS readers for Windows.
Netvibes Wasabi RSS Reader:
The Best Feed Reader?
It all started when I became aware of the new Netvibes Wasabi edition. This version was released last fall (here and here).
Wasabi provides an alternate format for viewing feeds within Netvibes. The new Wasabi reader is more in the style of Google Reader as compared to the ‘start page’ (or ‘widget’) style Netvibes reader I’ve been using for some years. You can switch back and forth between the ‘widget view’ and the ‘reader view’ with a click of a button.
While my initial reaction to Wasabi was very positive, I had some problems with my feeds. Thus began a month long re-look at all the major Windows RSS readers to see if there was something better.
At the same time I starting looking into the top feed readers, I also cleaned up and expanded my custom feeds. These include feeds generated by Yahoo Pipes, Google Alerts, Google News, and Twitter Search. Turns out these custom feeds are fairly problematic for many feed readers and were the stumbling block that got me looking elsewhere beyond Wasabi.
Here’s a recap of what I found about the best RSS readers for Windows.
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Drupal: comparison of ‘related content’ modules
Posted February 12, 2010 – 11:42 amI’ve been using two ‘related content’ modules on my Drupal websites for a while: Similar Entires module and Node Recommendation module. Now I want to trim back and use just one.
Drupal Related Content Modules
I came to use these two after trying out a whole bunch of Drupal related content modules. Check here for a good review of the related content choices – there are a lot of them. And here’s another useful, but less comprehensive review of Drupal related content modules. I suspect neither list is actually completely complete.
Most of these modules work off taxonomy terms in various ways. Some are more widely used than others and/or better supported. Interestingly, none seems to have really gained traction as the ‘go to’ module for related content.
I went with Similar Entries because it develops matches off the title and the body content vs. just taxonomy terms. In general, this seems like a good idea to me. As well, at the time I wasn’t using tagging on my sites, so Similar Entries was one of the few modules that would work at all. Now I do use taxonomy, but I’m not a prolific tagger, so I still like the idea of matching off titles and body content.
No Comments | Tags: DrupalFix missing or grayed out system icons in Windows Vista
Posted February 9, 2010 – 12:03 pmThe system icons in the notification area of my taskbar keep disappearing. It happens quite randomly – and fixes itself equally randomly.
Tray icons missing or grayed out
In my case, the missing icons are usually one or all of the volume icon, the network icon, or the power icon. The clock icon always shows up for some reason.
When I try to re-enable them, they are often grayed out and I cannot check the boxes. Sometimes, they aren’t gray.
After some googling, I found a solution to this missing tray icons problem – though apparently not a permanent one.
This page provides a recap of Microsoft’s official method for fixing the problem. It involves going into your registry keys, deleting the ‘iconstreams’ keys, and then restarting explorer.exe (which runs the taskbar / start menu). The fix works for Windows Vista and Windows 7.
I tried this method a couple of weeks ago – and it worked! — for a while. Unfortunately, here we are a couple weeks later and my icons are graying out one by one. Now back to where I started.
No Comments | Tags: computer tipsWindows UAC: Bye! Bye!
Posted February 2, 2010 – 3:24 pmUgh! I give up.
Windows Vista UAC Takes a Dive!
Yesterday, I disabled User Account Control (UAC) in Vista for good. Could there be a more invasive, yet ultimately useless program?
After 13 frustrating months using UAC, I still have no idea what it is supposed to be protecting me from — whatever it is, it has never, ever happened.
As part of my recent efforts to increase productivity and streamline workflows, I realized it was time for a change yesterday when, for the nth time, I tried to figure out what UAC is supposed to do — and I couldn’t.
In my search for answers, I found only techie jibberish or vague explanations, such as this from Microsoft’s website:
User Account Control (UAC) is a feature in Windows that can help prevent unauthorized changes to your computer. UAC does this by asking you for permission or an administrator password before performing actions that could potentially affect your computer’s operation or that change settings that affect other users. When you see a UAC message, read it carefully, and then make sure the name of the action or program that’s about to start is one that you intended to start.
Uh, huh. I suppose it sounds vaguely useful – until I realized that not once in the 13 months has it ever activated when I haven’t been explicitly trying to do something. Unlike my Norton Anti-virus program which is constantly (and more or less silently) picking off various threats that are invisible to me. UAC is constantly stopping me from doing things that I purposefully want to be doing. How is that helpful?
Even after trying to understand, I still don’t really quite know what the point is — or what some relevant ‘use cases’ might be. Is it to stop my cubemate from tinkering with my computer? Except I don’t have a cubemate. Is it supposed to prevent viruses that somehow get past Norton from doing more damage? Except that has never happened.
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Google Chrome browser gets even better with extensions
Posted January 25, 2010 – 1:40 pmI’ve been using the Google Chrome browser since Day One – in my book, it is the best everyday browser out there. Largely because it is lightweight and superfast loading pages.
Google Chrome launches extensions
I’ve been using the Chrome Developer version for many months – it was the only version that worked well with my dual monitor setup.
In December, Google launched an apps store for Chrome – except that they call apps ‘extensions’. I’ve been using these extensions for several weeks and LOVE them! but they haven’t been available in the general release versions of Chrome.
Today, Google unveiled a new general release version of Chrome – now extensions are available to everyone. You should definitely try them out. Quite fantastic stuff!
My favorites are:
- xmarks - manage bookmarks across browsers and/or computers located anywhere
- lastpass - manage passwords and login info across browsers and/or computers
- evernote - the official extension for the evernote note taking / web clipping service that is all the rage (and deservedly so)
- delicious - beautifully designed widget for adding bookmarks to your Delicious account. cleaner and better than the Firefox version.
- netvibes - auto-detects RSS feeds in Chrome and provides one-click button to add it to your Netvibes RSS reader (still only available for developer version, i think).
These are essential in my book.
1 Comment | Tags: web tools