From http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/isslivestream.asx

I signed up a while back as I wrote about in this post for the google Friend Connect Preview and today got a mail that this site had been whitelisted to use it! While not replacing any of the login information of this site, its more an added feature letting you sign in to certain features of this site with using your Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account info. Its not incorporated into the core of wordpress which powers this site, it’s rather an added set of gadgets, or widgets if you prefer, such as the “shout out” box there to the right to let anyone post a quick comment or say hello. They have only a couple of gadgets available at the moment including a “rate it” gadget, with the promise of more to come, both from Google and independent developers. I was looking at several of these “shout out” widgets to use before , but most of them have so many proprietary links to ads ands services that i wasn’t interested. This is a very simple one, just comment and post! I have found over the years that no matter how easy it seems to me to post a comment to these blog entries a lot of web surfers really are just passing by and don’t have the time or know-how to do it. Well i think this one will work out well as most people I know have one of these id’s and it only takes a single click to join the site or sign in. As i mentioned its an early release so I don’t know if its available to the general public yet or not, I’m assuming so, but you know what that entails ;) It only took me a couple of minutes to get it set up on this site, the first step was to upload two files to the root of the server which lets the code work around the site. the next step was verify the files were there and the next was to generate the code for the widgets, its already set up on a default size so its only a few seconds to use that and have it running on your web-page. In my case i spent a few more minutes customising the colours to match the site. I chose two of the gadgets, a member gadget, and the comment gadget. I may play around with some others if they can do something that I don’t have already at my fingertips. I did run into a problem trying to post the code into a post- it wouldn’t work. Putting it in the sidebar widgets though was smooth as silk, worked instantly. I think it is a Wordpress specific problem as the sidebar is generated from a different directory that the post contents… I think.. well I’ll play around and see what I can do with it. Just as it is now I like it as a simple way for friends to say a quick hello. I’m sure though thats just the tip of the iceberg though. so check it out and say hello! I don’t know what the plans are for these hosted blog programs like blogger and the like as right now you have to be able to upload files to the server. But I see it somehow being incorporated into blogger very soon and actually transforming that into something similar to myspace or facebook! , well the social connection part anyway.

Ah the wonders of a notebook and and a wifi connection! :) Sitting out on the deck now on my second day off of this three day break. A much needed one too I might add. I was worried these days off would be similar to the ones we have had all month with heat indexes near 100 every day, but my break was blessed with a couple of days of cooler temps and a nice breeze today. Unfortunately the wind is coming from the North and the house is blocking most of it, but still its nice out here. With one exception, the heat pump unit is right here at the end of the deck so its always running this time of year and sometimes a nuisance. I guess over the years you get used to it though. I was thinking to have a Skype session with my baby here in a bit, but i dont know if she can hear me over the noise. worth a try though, I love hearing my Geordie girl’s voice, music to my ears. That really is one of the best programs we have used to keep in contact. Most times its crystal clear and no lag at all, amazing to me continuously how technology has advanced even from a couple of years ago. Her I am sitting out on the deck of my home, a wireless connection on this laptop and I took the pic above with my phone and sent it straight to the pc to put in this post. And with the built in webcam I can put in my own photo of me sitting here…

Pretty cool huh? Now let me add the tags and other little tidbits and I’ll post it right to my website. Just a few years ago this would have taken half a day to do probably to get the thumbnails and edit the html.. love it, 10 minutes tops to do this all, just still amazes me  now let me get this done and get on with more importsnt things, like loving up my Cyprus Angel! She’s off too today! ;)

Well I had to lose the other theme as I finally found some of those incompatibilty issues with WordPress 2.6  I was worried aboutafter making the sidebar useable.  Mainly the gallery functions were not working, it would load the gallery images in the post, but no support for the individual image pages themselves, and I really can’t do without them. But I still was able to retain the image header that I so dearly love :) And I still have a very clean looking theme as well, and very well maintained in regards to WordPress upgrades by the designer Sadish Bala on his site WordPress Rocks. He has a number of very well desgined WP themes available for free and a very nice selection of premium themes as well. I am tempted to see if he can take on the job of getting the old theme up to date as it was just so eye pleasing to me, not that this one isn’t though! It’s called MistyLook, and I actually use it on my WordPress as well.  Its solid and very clean and works very well. I should just stay with his designs as they are some of the best out there and I wont have to worry with hacking all these other ones to just get them to function, just dont have the time for it.  well off now to change the feedjit codes and some of the ad codes to match the site… again :( I’m not changing this anymore… for a while ;)  LOL

And I pray the last~ lol First of all , apologies to anyone visiting the site the last couple or evenings and being suddenly lost in a  completely different layout from one page to another, or one visit to another! :o) if you’ve been here within the last few days you may have seen or read the post where I had some trouble with the original theme just having a few bits of trouble with the latest WordPress upgrade, nothing major but it threw off the look of the sidebar widgets just a little bit, well no one would probably have noticed but me, but its those little things get on my nerves, I dont mind if most of the posts I make are lacking any real depth or information, but I want the site to look right at least. Well I have had my eye on this template now for a long time, the link to the original is still in the footer as it is mostly their work still. The only trouble was that it wasn’t ‘widget ready’ as it was advertised to be. Well yes it had a sidebar that could be edited manually, but I wanted to be able to use the widget administration capabilities available with the last couple of versions of WordPress. Just makes it simpler IF I do change a theme, the widgets are carried over to he next template without a lot of work. anyway I confess to not having any grand knowledge of the workings of a wordPress template. Well some of it. I’m fairly adept, if I say so myself, at playing around with the CSS and even adding a few codes here and there. But when it came to understanding how to make the sidebar widgets ‘editable’ (if that’s the word) from the admin area I was clueless. Well I have had this template now a few moths I think, even had the image header set up and couldn’t wait to use it! it was only then after I uploaded and activated it I realised it wasn’t working 100%. Well i have looked and looked how to widgetize a sidebar and to be honest i was lost trying to understand what to do. So that’s the reason I had that other theme going and I made that header image that I thought was very artistic :) Well you can see where the inspiration of it came from, I had this header image already in my head and really wanted to use it. Anyway this evening I was sitting around just messing with the site and css and the thought struck me… what if I replace the sidebar php page of this theme with one from a theme that had a single simple working sidebar already in place. My first attempt was a bit disappointing though. the sidebar appeared at the top of the page and that wouldn’t do. Well i got to looking at a few of the sidebar php files of a few different themes and happened to notice that most all of them had a specific ‘id’ in the HTML division tag at the beginning… EUREKA! I changed the id to the original one called for, refreshed the page and I was ECSTATIC! :) Can it really be this simple?? Oh I love this theme, even more than the one I had up originally. Its everything I wanted, a prominent place to show my Alison Michelle and me together first, then the layout is clean and simple and, to me, very easy to navigate and view the content too. The color scheme is pleasing to me as well. I just like it period. this is the one I will keep, just pray I don’t run into any trouble by failing to fix something else I don’t know about yet. Well as always with these theme changes, if you notice anything out of whack anywhere or any errors you encounter, please let me know. I’ll see what I can do to straighten it out.

I’ve just been playing with this new WordPress app on my phone and thought I’d add some screen shots of the Safari web browser on the phone. It’s a great browser actually with exception of it not having the best ‘flash’ support and rarely do embedded flash objects render anything other than that little blue icon occupying the space. One of the things in this latest software update was the ability to grab screen caps very easily, holding the power button and home button down simultaneously for a couple of seconds and releasing them will capture the screen image to your photo library on the phone. Sweet!

The first image is the site as it appears when a page is loaded.(unless the photos appear in reverse order from the way I added them, another test…)

however a quick double tap in a certain area will bring the view closer as in the middle picture. Also the zoom can be accomplished by using two fingers pn tne touch screen and spreading them apart over the area.

Here you can see it’s very easy to read the post itself or any area in the page.

Just amazed me to see these sort of abilities when I think it hasn’t been that many years ago I first used Internet Explorer 3 on my PC! Wonder what’s coming in a year or two?!!

Note – posted edited online later as images are only posted inline from the web app at present.

The One App I have been waiting for is out this morning in the App Store, WordPress for iPhone!! Whoohoo!! :-) thanks guys!

Edited 5:00 pm – I posted that message early this morning via the app the minute I got the setup done. It works beautifully. Now that I’m off work for today I will play a bit more, including this edit being done right from the phone. Sweet!! I’ve already tested out posting photos as you see in the entry above. Works great and allows multiple photos as well. I could only post one pic at a time to blogger and I had to email that, then import the post to WordPress! :o) so this will save a lot of time and steps! Great app guys, awesome release! My FAVOURITE APP!!

Edit 2 6:14 pm from the PC -  OK I’ve played a bit with this wonderful app and give it rave reviews right out of the box all around. The one feature I have been looking for is being able to post a photo from my phone right straight to a blog post. I would have settled for posting even just one pic at a time, but the wonderful developers at Automattic have given us the ability to post several, either taken right from the camera or added from the photo library of the cell! Amazing, I have waited so long for this. Previously, in order to post a pic form the cell I would have to wait until I got home and then copied the image to my PC and posted it, or another way was to email the photo to a blogger email address that I previously set up to use with my blogger mobile site, it automatically made a post with it. then arriving home at some point I would import the post into my blog and go and delete the one on blogger. a lot of work and steps! :( but it worked ;)

I was/am using a nice little plug-in called Wphone that lets me access the admin section of my blog through a nice interface, but the one thing is was lacking was being able to post photos. There was another plug-in I used, cant remember the name of it now, but I could write a post by email and I set up a special email account just for that. one the mail was sent I could access a certain page on my site and it would import the email as a post, but I never had a lot of use for it, it was just a bit cumbersome in a way, sometimes it would import, sometimes not.. gone…

So anyway I was tickled to death to see WordPress developing this App, and I’m sure a lot of others are as well judging from the comments there at the Wordpress for iPhone blog.

As I said this is the first release of it and I am sure there will be a lot of updates and maybe some slick features added in the future as its an open source program and some of the best contributors working on it. But its still fantastic just like it is and as long as I can put a pic from my phone to my blog in just a couple of clicks I am set :)  not that I don’t have my wish list already for it though! ;)

here’s what I would like to see at some point

WordPress iPhone App wishlist

• Comments support – managing, viewing, approval/deletion
• more image display options – thumbnail size, alignment
• Tags-  displaying click tags, adding a default tag to any post from the phone (ie. mobile post, iPhone post, etc)
• Something else I’m sure will come to mind ;)

I see this as a really big step to mobile blogging, not only with Wordpress, but any of the other blogging apps available or in the works. The iPhone is an ideal mobile blogging computer and I think that apps like this are going to open up a whole new world of blogging, for better or for worse in a lot of cases, but definitely a welcome change :) Thanks again to the development team for a great application! Cheers!

Here’s what all the fuss was about last week for the mad rush to download the new iPhone 2.0 software, its that little blue icon on the lower left of the screen, the iTunes App Store. the software allows you to download all these apps right to the phone now and they run from there, instead of the old way of using web applications, which really were useless with an EDGE connection, well not useless but definitely slower than if you were near a WiFi spot. 

With the limitation of the EDGE network’s download speed, there weren’t many fancy apps available, and games were often prone to just freezing or stopping or just not working right. I think Apple realised the limitations of web apps and saw their future limited even though I think they would have preferred to stay with them and keep the iPhone’s proprietary programs all bundled in the phone. I believe  personally that it was the success that people were having hacking the software and using the phone as you would a regular computer and downloading apps straight to the cell and running them from there, jailbreaking is what it came to be called and it was becoming a very easy thing to do, sure Apple would come out with a new update and in essence lock up those jailbroken ones, but guess what? In just a couple of days time the sly hackers found a way to jail break the new software. Apple must have seen an endless task ahead in trying to counter each of these new methods as they came up, so it was in their best interest I think to do just what they did , give the people what they want, a real mobile computer with the ability to run their own programs.. well there’s the catch.you are still limited to only the ones available in the App Store. Well its not going to get rid of those using jailbroken phones by a long shot, but it is giving those who just prefer to do things the ‘right’ way a chance to have these apps available in what is a very controlled way (meaning the apps are safe to use and have gone through plenty of checks). I see it as its a start to what I am sure will be an even greater version of the iPhone in years to come, something even more powerful and faster than anything we have imagined… OK maybe I’m dreaming but there is just something about an iPhone that’s different from any other web enable mobile device, it works well. :) I had a Windows Mobile phone before this and it was nice I admit but it was a pain to get things done and buggy too.. the iPhone is the simplest thing I have ever used and a very unique design.

Anyway all of this aside, after I finally managed to get that much anticipated update  I was off to the App Store  to see what goodies were there.. As I said in the post that first day I was a bit disappointed actually as I saw a good number of things that really were not worth any amount of money, not to belittle the efforts of those developing them. but they are just crappy, bottom line. There were of course a few jewels there and I am very sure some of the best are yet to come as its a whole new world here with these things and I’m sure some of the major players are waiting to see how things pan out before submitting their final efforts.  I know a few are in the works and I am checking every day now to see if the WordPress app has been released yet. hint hint

I’ve already given my wish list of apps I’d like see developed, so now i will list the ones I have found to be my favourites… so far… WordPress are you there yet? ;) .

1. AOL Radio  (entertainment) (free) Amazing app and I was surprised to see another music service on the iTunes App store but I have no doubt its going to be good business for both companies. amazing streaming Internet radio, Even on the limited stations available on the EDGE network. a must have app! YT video
2. Google Apps (Utility) (free) I already have many of the Google mobile apps built in through the web but this accesses them all from one screen and remembers my info
3. Pandora  (entertainment) (free) Another very good streaming music App.. YouTube  video
4. Aurora Feint (game) (free) Now you have to see this amazing game to appreciate the awesome graphics and the game play, I cant believe its a free game and I have already spent too much time on it, very addictive and fun. they even have a YT channel! you have to see this to appreciate it. Only thing is make sure you are having your charger near as its intense graphics and sounds suck that thing down quick! ;)
5. Spinblox (game)(NOT free) this is the only one I have purchased as I loved this game to pass some time and was one of the web apps I had. Had to get it. and this native application is having a better graphic system and more options than the web based one. just a personal favourite and of course there is a Youtube video demonstration
6. Facebook  (Utility) (free) Simple interface to access your Facebook account YT video
7. MySpace (Utility) (free) Simple interface to access your MySpace account YT Video
8. WeatherBug (Utility) (free) its a weather report and forecast thing.. duh.. but its cool. I like these weather things
9. Light (utility) (free) – Probably the simplest app there is, just  a blank white screen that gives off a very good light in the middle of the night! There are probably half a dozen flashlight apps available but I think this is the only free one and it works perfectly. Why would anyone pay for something like this?? and a YT video demonstration!
10. Evernote – (Utility) (free)  Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment (text, voice recording, photo) and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.
11. PhoneSaber… (entertainment) (free) ok that’s more than 10 but I love this little gizmo! its a screen with a Star Wars light saber on it and using the accelerometers built into the iPhone, it makes different realistic sounds of the light sabers in the movie when you swing the phone around. Ok I am easily amused sometimes… hey there’s even a demonstration vid on YT of it! cool!

I’ll be watching in the coming days and weeks for anything else that comes along that seems interesting to me.

Waiting on the iPhone software update to become available for download, thought it would be available early in the morning, but its not posted yet, I guess with the new iPhones already having it installed they arent so keen to have us old iPhone owners having a glimpse of the new toys before the ones shelling out $ for the new ones ;) Well I will just have to wait I guess. I just noticed they changed the site in the last few minutes, Apple – iPhone – Software Update , so maybe its getting close. they opened the Apps store yesterday and I had a look through the many that are available in a lot of areas. Was still disappointed there is no video recording for the iPhone, or MMS either. I do see a few things look interesting, for one a voice recorder. Hard to believe this being a phone and it not having audio recording capabilities in the original. I see a few games that I have used in the web apps format are going to be available so that should be nice to not have to wait for the game to load in the browser each time I want to play it.

I haven’t seen much in the way of utilities yet that appear to be of much interest to me in the apps store but I know one is in the works, just waiting first for the phone release at 8 A.M. this morning I guess. Its WordPress for iPhone (nonworking link now? :( site is gone?!), and I really want that one! To be able to post to the blog from my iPhone without a lot of redirection through plugins and the safari browser is just what I want, and especially being able to post photos straight from the phone, Excellent!! Thanks in advance for what I know is going to be my favourite App! :)
Well let me go check iTunes to see if the update is there yet… nope :( well I will just have to have another coffee and wait to try at 8.. hope this isn’t part of a lot of hype, I have heard people have got it somehow, whether by mistake or through a staggered release.. who knows.. I know I shouldn’t get so excited about something like this but i love my tech toys! lol like a kid I am in so many ways sometimes.. Updates to follow…

UPDATE: OK here i am over three hours later finally getting my phone working and updated to 2.0 :( must have been a hell of a lot of users trying to activate the phones, and for some unknown reason the software update had to be finished by accessing the iTunes store ? Well a million others are trying to activate their new 3G phones and then the old iPhone owners are trying to get the software at the same time, sort of ridiculous to me to not expect chaos on the servers.. Well my phones working again and I can get to the apps store from it but not through iTunes .. anyway I cant see but a few improvements so far, still cant find a simple audio recorder that allows you to email the audio either.. Well long as I can get the Wordpress app soon I will be happy :) UPDATE: the Wordpress site linked to above is not online at some times, still hope the Wordpress app is coming soon

In regards to the update I have to report as just 5 minutes ago I finally managed to get the iPhone completely synced with iTunes. Guess traffic to the servers is finally clearing up now. Only took me from 8:00 am this morning until 3:30 this afternoon to be completely set up and getting the update installed. I have a feeling this wont be a source of pride for Apple on the much hyped release of the new 3G iPhone. Still boggles my mind how they would have the release of the 2.0 software to existing phone users and activation of new phones all on the same day. I think they would have been better severed to give the old iPhone users the update a day or two ago, or even a day or two after the new phones went on sale. How can they can say it was more traffic than they anticipated. Many places were reporting low inventories of phones for sale to begin with, and Apple had to know how many phones were out there, and then the existing users, well you know each of them was going to want to update as soon as possible.. well they didn’t ask me did they?! ;)  All in all as far as the actual update itself it went smoothly and the phone even seems to be working faster to me on the regular apps as far as loading and use. maybe its just being without it all day that I think its faster now! ;) I can’t really say I am overwhelmed with the quality of the apps that are available, and some seem way overpriced, as many appear to be just slightly enhanced bits of sample codes form the SDK. Still disappointed at what seems a ack of genuine productivity Apps. I’m not a coder by any means, but how hard can it be to be able to attach an audio voice note to an email?? Seems something basic to me, but then again I am just an end user with little coding experience. Perhaps there are still some good apps in development and I wouldn’t mind paying for any that worth their salt, most I see are just fluff and glitter.. the ones I have tired and pleased with are the Facebook App, the Google App, AOL radio, and one of the simplest yet most useful is a flashlight App from http://ericasadun.com/ and its free :) , in fact all of these i have listed are. Now I don’t mind a bit to pay for one that is superior, but these free ones are superior to many or all that are being charged for  IMHO

Lets hope this isnt the shape of things to be for this App Store as it hasn’t impressed me in the least bit. the only thing so far I have noticed form the update is as I mentioned , maybe a bit more of the core speed of the OS, and the fact I can delete multiple mails at once now. What could and should have been a great show for Apple has been a complete disaster as far as public relations and the image of the iPhone it seems at the moment, but once this is passed and developement of the apps begin in earnest, I see good things ahead. love my iPhone!

I am beta testing an addition to the ScribeFire addon to the Firefox browser. QuickAds. Apologies in advance to any of my readers for some ads maybe appearing in odd places as I experiment a bit with this new addon. Any feedback would be appreciated if you see anything that is causing problems with you viewing the site correctly or something not working right. There shouldnt be any problems with site navigation or posting as it seems to be a very well written program and doesnt add any extraneous code to the site engine itself, just to the template page where the ads are inserted.