Twitter Guilt

Friday, April 03, 2009

Every now and then I get messages telling me that somebody is following me on Twitter. Sometimes it’s obvious link bait. But not often - usually the somebody seems to be a real person, who for some totally baffling reason wants to know what’s going on over here (very little, if you believe Twitter).

I suppose I should actually write something to satisfy my (slowly) growing audience, but what exactly ? Well, at least it gives me something to blog about. Maybe if I twitter about my blog I’ll solve both problems. Then I can blog about it!

It would be nice if you could send a short message when you start following someone, to say “hi”, and say why you’re following them…

iBlogger part 2

Well, I eventually managed to get it to work. The trick was to download ecto, the desktop blog editor from the same publisher, figure out how that communicates with Expression Engine, and apply the results to iBlogger. Result: success.

The main issue seems that I was stuck in a “this is how Mars Edit works” mindset. iBlogger (and Ecto) works differently. Not better, just differently, although actually in this particular case, it is better.

The only thing I still can’t get working is categories.

So now I can blog from my iPhone. If only I had something interesting to talk about…

iBlogger

Friday, March 20, 2009

I am now an official convert to the Cult of iPhone. Partly because I don’t need a Flash Lite compatible phone from day to day any more, and partly because I got really fed up of my latest piece of crap from Sony Ericsson. I’m not surprised they’re posting huge losses.

A huge attraction of the iPhone is the Application Store, and one thing I wanted to try was a blogging tool. This was also an ongoing saga during my time with Palm PDAs, and I never found anything that worked properly.

iBlogger claims to work with Expression Engine. Well, so far, it doesn’t, unless your definition of “works” is fairly loose. Yes, you can post an entry, but you can’t set categories, and you can’t use any fields other than “Title” and “Body” (actually this may be an issue with EE’s Metaweblog API, as I can’t with MarsEdit either).

iBlogger doesn’t have much documentation, either in the application itself, or the sparse and fairly wobbly website that hosts it. However, email support is fast and responsive.

Actually, iBlogger looks nice, and if only it would work, I’d love it. And Expression Engine is a bit of an edge case. But if the support isn’t there, it shouldn’t be advertised. And commercial applications, however they are produced, require at least some documentation.

So, for now at least, I’m afraid it’s a thumbs down for iBlogger. The search goes on.

Start New Game

Friday, March 13, 2009

After over two years of intensive work on the Playyoo Flash Lite user-generated casual game platform, I’ve now reached the final score screen and run out of lives…

Playyoo carries on without me, and, I can assure you, is under constant development by the team (in the office next door). I’m sure they’ll be only too pleased to take advantage of my unsolicited advice and opinions over the coming months

My own very mixed feelings about leaving it behind have been alleviated by the challenge of taking on not one but several key roles in Imaginventure’s next big thing (still top secret), and getting a very welcome and very clear statement of confidence from The Boss.

For the first time in my working life, I’ve also been offered the opportunity of working part time for a period, which I’ve grabbed with both hands, although I’m afraid it could go much faster than I expect.

Emiliana Torrini

Friday, February 27, 2009

Over a week ago we know, we had the pleasure to see Emiliana Torrini live in Zürich. A great evening: live performance adds a very noticeable edge to her performance, and her banter and humour really won over the audience. The band was pretty special too. Some of the songs, like “Birds” and “Gun” were incredibly powerful, whilst the more intimate stuff was not overwhelmed. Very impressive.