stuart test blog

 I was wondering why the inline tags I was posting to WordPress with Windows Live Writer weren’t being translated into proper tags by the Simple Tagging plugin (as described here.) Turns out I was running an ancient version of Simple Tagging which didn’t have that feature. Simple Tagging is now on version 1.67 and introduces heaps of new features and better customisation.

My Tag Cloud looks a bit better now, but perhaps I need to be more liberal with my use of tags.

Simple Tagging is another tagging plugin for WordPress: smarter, better, faster

Simple Tagging for WordPress – Trac

I love reading Seth’s blog so I was surprised to see his post about Britain’s Got Talent winner, Paul Potts. I don’t think Seth understood the format of the show and I don’t even think he watched the whole video.

First, that Cord, the blogger who posted the video, felt like the singer had no confidence. I completely disagree. Bad teeth doesn’t mean no confidence. His posture on stage makes it clear that he has completely mastered his craft.

Firstly, Paul admits himself that he has no confidence in himself, which is probably why he was still just a mobile phone salesman. Secondly, nobody in the video comments that Paul’s got bad teeth so I’m not sure why Seth mentions this.

But the real takeaway for me is how small-minded, snarky and downright mean the three judges are. Even (or especially) when they are surprised by his performance, they act as if they somehow deserve to sit in judgment of him.

This is where Seth obviously doesn’t understand the format of the show. It’s like a Pop Idol show, but for all “talents” and not just singing. So you can imagine the absolute crap that they are bombarded with all day – especially from those that are just keen to get on TV. Also, singing opera is a skill that few have, so seeing an unassuming, mobile phone salesman, nervously walk on to stage and claim to be able to sing opera definitely deserves some skepticism.

I do, however, think that Amanda was a bit too condescending when she made the two comments indicating that Paul was either a lump of coal (about to turn into a diamond) or a frog (that would turn into a prince.)

But it’s such a great video, I’ll embed it again!

In my opinion, the only good thing to come out of the whole “Windows Live” fad is Windows Live Writer – and this rocks! If you haven’t tried this desktop blogging tool yet, then you’re really missing out.

The latest version was released a couple of weeks ago and it is a dramatic improvement over the previous beta. Some of my favourite features are:

• Improved spell checking (although no NZ dictionary available yet!)
• Inline adding of flash objects like YouTube videos or Picasa Web Album slideshows (you just paste the embedded code directly into the rich text editor.)
• Better built-in tagging support.
• Better blog provider detection with the ability to enable certain features depending on where your blog is hosted.

I would still like to see a tabbed interface so that I can have several posts open at once in the same window. And we definitely need to be able to country-specific dictionaries.

UPDATE: I meant to post this link to a great resource with lots more Windows Live Writer tips and tricks: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/get-productive-with-windows-live-writer.html

I found these videos via Miramar Mike. Paul Potts was an entrant on the British talent show called Britain’s Got Talent. He’s a shy, humble mobile phone salesman who nervously gets on stage and then blows everyone’s socks off with an amazing opera performance. If this doesn’t give you goose bumps, then nothing will.

Here is his first audition

And his performance in the finals. (needless to say, he won the competition!)

The layout of this site goes against all of the basic principles of web design, but it’s just wonderful! I read through the whole site! (Seth Godin would love it!)

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) announced today that the NZ music charts will include statistics from the various online music stores available in NZ. This includes iTunes Music Store, Digirama, Amplifier, and the Telecom and Vodafone mobile stores. I’d also like to see a separate chart for downloaded music as it would be interesting to compare how songs/albums sales differ.

Recording Industry Association of New Zealand President Adam Holt says with the early emergence of Amplifier and digiRAMA, the strong music presence on the Telecom and Vodafone mobile platforms and the recent launch of iTunes’ New Zealand store, legal digital downloading is now well established in New Zealand.
RIANZ says the market has established a strong digital sales base the changes are necessary to ensure the chart continues to reflect how New Zealanders are buying music.
Holt says he expects the addition of digital sales to have an impact on the chart, especially on the Top 40 singles.
“We believe the introduction of digital sales will make the chart more dynamic,” Holt says. “The singles chart will experience more change than the albums chart simply because of the sharp increase in the sales of digital tracks and singles over the past 12 months.”

I’ve just read through the validation tests that Pete McVicar put the NetGuide 2007 Web wards finalists through. Just one site passed both the valid HTML and CSS tests – Public Address. Pete criticises TradeMe for their use of tables for layout and Rowan responded with his own comments. I commented on Rowan’s site that there are a couple of tables that could be replaced with divs, but that tables should still be used for displaying the listings and search results.

This also prompted me to revalidate my own site and I discovered that my earlier post about the iTunes pricing was causing this site to fail validation. I had used Google Spreadsheets to analyse some data and produce a chart, and to embed the spreadsheet into your site, Google provides a snippet of HTML using the <iframe> tag. Turns out the <iframe> tag has been deprecated in XHTML 1.1 which is what the DOCTYPE of this site was using. After a bit of research, I found that the replacement for the <iframe> was to use the <object> tag instead.

So the original code is:
<iframe src="anotherpage.html"></iframe>
and with the <object> tag it becomes:
<object data="anotherpage.html" type="text/html"></object>

I feel good that this site conforms to the XHTML and CSS standards even though it is a bit more effort to do so – but I think it’s worth it.

Time to upgrade WordPress again as Matt tells us that 2.2 (Getz) has just been released. This seems to be more of just a bug fix release with a few minor features included. No built in tagging support yet as that has been moved to the next version, 2.3.

I had no idea that NZ had its own Digg-like social news website. It’s called Scoopit, and the blurb from their blog is:

Scoopit is a collection of links submitted and ranked by readers. Submit your own Scoop. View and vote for unpublished Scoops submitted by others.

There’s not much content on there yet as it’s only been launched within the last few months, but it’s good to see some good local content coming through. I’ll be adding a Scoopit button to my WordPress template so if you read something interesting here you may want to “Scoop it” so others can read it too.

Hmmm – their service has been down twice since I started writing this post but they are aware of the problem and hopefully can get it sorted out.

I was reading Jon Udell’s latest post this morning who is was in NZ on a speaking engagement as keynote speaker at the Govis conference. He praises the beautiful scenery here, especially the drive down the West Coast from Picton to Greymouth, then crossing Arthurs Pass to Christchurch, which Deb and I did a few years back.

He doesn’t have such good praise for the internet access here though, mentioning his bad experience with wireless access in Christchurch:

This card has only one purpose in life — to reveal a string of hex digits — and it cannot even manage to do that.

Wellington actually has really good wireless access as we’ve got a choice between CityLink’s CafeNet, or Telecom’s wireless hotspots. It’s not cheap though and because of this I only ever use it for occasional access.

He also comments on the number of internet cafes prevalent here, which I find interesting too. I often see internet cafes full as I walk past them in town and there’s always an interesting mix of people in them, from students and backpackers to adults and senior citizens. Does this mean broadband pricing is still too steep in NZ that people still are required to pop down to their local internet cafe to check their email. I know several people who are still on dial-up plans because they can’t afford broadband, which is frustrating because just a few years ago NZ was among the world leaders in internet penetration in homes.