Yesterday I found some really cool software called Sweetcron. What it does is gathers all the feeds you add and displays it in a variety of ways. It’s a self-hosted lifestream. There are a few themes out there already, helping you display it in a variety of ways. Creating themes isn’t the easiest, especially if you don’t know code, but hopefully as the software catches on more themes and better documentation will become available. Right now I’m displaying my major feeds in one of the default templates. I still need to figure out how to style various blog posts and delicious links to my liking, but it’s on it’s way. I don’t think I’ll abandon WordPress for my main blog (Sweetcron has a built in blogging system) but I will import the feeds. Check out the piece of shep lifestream.
I’ve not been updating this site much lately, besides the two posts over the weekend. Things have just been really busy for me. Busy at work and busy at home. With last week being the RNC, Political Jackass was taking most of my time from me. This also means that The Costanza Experiment has suffered in updates (the experiment is ongoing, I assure you) and The Technology Classroom. I’m trying to get some help on Political Jackass to take some of the pressure off me to update. I’ve got one person signed up and I’m hoping for more. If you are interested, drop me a line.
Hopefully this week I’ll be able to work on The Technology Classroom some more. I really like the idea of this site and am looking forward to what comes of it. I plan on updating the site with several new articles and even install some forum software on the site.
I know I shouldn’t stretch myself so thin with all the website, but I’m very passionate about technology and with this being an election year, I think it’s important to update Political Jackass as much as possible.
Vanity domain names seem to be the current fad. Apparently .coms are no longer cool in the web world. I’ve been debating a move from mikeschepker.com for a long time. Since the title of the blog is piece of shep it would make sense to move it to pieceofshep.com. Now I’m thinking of something entirely different. To go with the trend, maybe I should change the title of my blog and go with the domain I just purchased, shepis.me. The title of the new blog would obviously be shep is me. I don’t know yet. I also purchased imshep.com. Right now all these domains point to mikeschepker.com. Any thoughts? Should I move to pieceofshep.com or shepis.me or keep the site at mikeschepker.com?
In case you haven’t noticed, Last.fm has received a makeover. The new site looks fantastic compared to the old one. It probably has to be one of the best site redesigns by a popular website that I’ve ever seen. The best part about the redesign is the user profile page. If you look at mine, you can see how clean the new design looks. I love how it has thumbnails of the artists (or album covers) next to the recently played songs. The images for the artists in the user’s library are excellent as well.
Last.fm displaying artists I've played (click to enlarge)
Notice how nice and clean they look. They charts are now ajax-ified and are quite nice. The color scheme of the site is much easier on the eyes. They managed to create a new site that totally changes the look but still feels familiar. It goes to show you can have a complete redesign without losing your identity. Overall, it is a really successful redesign. Maybe MySpace and Facebook should take note. Much props to the design team at Last.fm.
There are a few shows I watch on TBS. I missed an episode of one of them. Luckily, at TBS.com you can watch episodes for free. Or not. I go there to catch up on a missed episode and guess what. We’re sorry, you must have Microsoft Windows to watch this video. Wtf? Seriously. Aren’t we at a point where specific operating systems shouldn’t be a requirement to watch a video on the internet? It’s not like my MacBook is a new invention and Macs haven’t been around for a while. They have. And their market share is growing. Rapidly. Support other operating systems so you don’t alienate users. I know I’ll never be going back to their website again. That’s a shame, because I could have generated them revenue by visiting to watch videos. Now if I miss episodes, I’ll have to find some other way to watch them.
Now if I could just get Adobe to allow for the most recent flash to be on the Wii so I can watch Hulu, I’d be happy. Not the Wii’s fault. Not Hulu’s fault. It’s all on Adobe.