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WordPress

Go figure I almost didn’t write about WordPress. I guess I thought because this blog is powered by WordPress, it wouldn’t really need any further notice. But then I thought some more and figured that I may actually have a series of WordPress posts. I’m working on a couple of themes (just mods of Kubrick, actually) and may try my hand at a couple of plugins.

I’ve been a fan of WordPress since it emerged from being called b2. If you are a blogger, consindering being a blogger, or just like nifty web tools, WordPress is worth a gander. I’ve tested a number of blog tools and found WordPress to be the best, IMO. Now I should say that I only tried free/open source tools so I didn’t consider Moveable Type, which I hear is very nice. And I have more than one place to host my blogs, so I didn’t have to consider the cost of web hosting. If you want totally and completely free, you probably should go to Blogger. It’s not a bad setup and has lots of support (hey, with Google standing behind you, how can you go wrong).

If reliability of your web host is not a factor, you can probably find a free web host. You’ll need one that has PHP and mySQL available to you. I feel like “you get what you pay for” and if it’s free, don’t expect 1. your site to be up 24/7 with 99.9999% uptime and 2. a lot of support. You should be able to find a web host for about a small blog setup for about $5 – $10 / month. If that’s the case, then I’d say definately consider WordPress. It has become evermore popular since its earlier incarnations. Due to its popularity and the fact that it is open source, there have been a great many improvements and there are a wide variety of plugins available. The ease and availability of themes means that you can make it look like whatever you want with ease.

The current version, 1.5, continues their tradition of the “5 minute” install. And I would say that if you are even technologically challenged, as long as you can read, you should have no trouble installing WordPress and be blogging in a matter of minutes. (Of course, for those with a weak stomach when it comes to software, you could always find webhost that offers to set it up for you.)

Version 1.5 available here.

Project Gutenberg

By Chad Butler Leave a Comment

If you are a reader and you haven’t seen Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/), you aren’t really a reader. What is Project Gutenberg, you ask? Their description says it all:

Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free electronic books (eBooks or etexts) on the Internet. Our collection of more than 15.000 eBooks was produced by hundreds of volunteers. Most of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are older literary works that are in the public domain in the United States. All may be freely downloaded and read, and redistributed for non-commercial use

You will never read through the mountain of texts in your lifetime (even if you are a speed reader, they keep adding new content all the time). Here is just a sample of what you will find there:

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
War and Peace by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
The Bible, Old and New Testaments, King James Version
Moby Dick, or, the whale by Herman Melville
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Odyssey by Homer
Ethics by Aristotle
Memoirs of Napoleon â€” Complete by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
and More!!!

The work is available in several formats. Since it is done entirely by volunteers, not all work is available in all formats. But for the techno saavy, you shouldn’t have too much trouble obtaining a readable version of what you’ve been dying to read.

Google Maps

By Chad Butler 1 Comment

Have you seen the new Google Maps? Check them out at http://maps.google.com/.

This is probably the best online map that I have used. Certainly better (IMO) than Yahoo’s or MapQuest’s. The biggest reason? It doesn’t reload the page everytime you scale/zoom or move side to side. It will continue to load new images into the map, but not the entire page. This is nice should you decide you need to hit the “back” button to return to the previous page or site. Now you won’t have to go through endless resizes, etc. of the same map.

Of course, as with any useful online map site, there are driving directions. The local search is very functional and also ties in to the driving directions. All in all, an easier interface than similar features on Yahoo or MapQuest.

The one creepy thing for me was that it is also tied in to the Google phone directory. Try typing your phone number into the main Google search (if you’re in the book, you’re in there), and you are presented map choices for Google, Yahoo, and MapQuest maps. I know it’s no big deal to look up a listed number and then find the address on a printed map, but it’s still a little spooky when you do it in a couple of clicks.

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