Alan's Blog

w.bloggar

I've posted about this useful little free tool a couple of times. I've just discovered I missed a minor update to v.4.00.0193 made in March. According to the release notes, the following additions have been made:

• Support for MSN Spaces;
• New Languages: Spanish, French (Canada) and Russian;
• Button to import the xml file with the saved settings and accounts directly from the "Add Account" wizard.

In addition, the save post option now suggests the post title (when it exists) as the .post file name. There have also been a couple of bugfixes.

You can download it from http://wbloggar.com/.

Google ... again

I am not paid by Google to advertise their services, honest! I know that many people have reservations about the way that the company will put to use information collected from us while using Google, with all sorts of accusations of plans of world domination, etc. I value my privacy as much as the next person, but don't really have much of an issue with them. However, since Google is one of the most blogged-about companies out there, I figured I ought to put in my own two pennyworth.

Please note that the following is written from the point of view of a Web amateur, and is aimed at similar people. Professionals and experts will either not need services like those Google provide, or already know all about them, or both. It might be useful to those running small small businesses and amateur Web publishers, though

Google AdSense

I decided recently to add Google ads to my main site, Greenwich Guide. I don't really have any expectations of retiring early on the proceeds, but they should, I hope, help offset the server fees. I must say that Google make it fairly easy to add their ads, and they are fairly configurable. I had some trouble adding the code to the site as I used 'Find and Replace All' to insert the code on each page. Unluckily, the 'Quiz' page on the site uses JavaScript and the code was accidentally inserted in the middle of the script as well, totally breaking the page. Luckily I was able to find the problem by running Aptana (see previous entry) and it immediately found the offending lines in its 'Problems' view and enabled me to delete the offending lines.

Looking for a new HTML editor

I've mentioned Nick Bradbury's FeedDemon RSS aggregator and his TopStyle CSS/HTML editor several times on this blog. His software business was acquired last May by Newsgator and he has been spending all his time coding for FeedDemon. Although they have promised that they will continue with the development of TopStyle, they are still advertising for a Delphi developer to take development forward.

I don't hold out any hopes of an update in the near future, and quite likely not in the middle term, either. That assumes that Newsgator don't quietly drop all development.