I can't say enough about ScribeFire. It's a Firefox add-on that gives you an in-window blogging client. Here are just a few reasons why it's awesome:
You're blogging from within Firefox, and you can move among webpages while keeping your blog post editing window open. This comes in really handy when looking for references, quoting things, finding pictures, etc. It also makes it really easy to fire off quick posts -- no need to open up a new window, log in, etc., etc.
When you copy something to your clipboard, it's automatically pasted to the "insert link" dialog. So, for example, you go to a webpage (while keeping your editor open, see #1 above) and copy the URL from the URL bar. Then you highlight your text and click the "add link" button. Bingo! The URL is already pasted there, and all you have to do is press OK. Sweet.
You can write to multiple blogs from the same place. Very nice. Also a bit dangerous, as you could conceivably post to the wrong blog very easily. Hasn't happened to me yet, but I do have a lingering uneasy feeling about it.
So, if you blog and you use Firefox, get Scribefire. Go get it now. I promise you'll thank me.
I've been attending a lot of events lately, and one thing that keeps coming up for me is that the multi-day conference / workshop format is a bit broken. My main beef: by day two (or god forbid, day three) the audience has petered out and whatever energy was there on day one has been lost. I felt like this happened at last year's (excellent) Nonprofit DevSummit, and even at last week's incredible Open Cities Conference. It's a bummer, because these events always draw together really awesome people, but they can often fall short in a few regards. Here's how these events typically go:
Day 0 (evening before conf begins): maybe some late drinks with attendees as they arrive, or just heading straight to bed after travel.
Day 1: Conference begins in the AM -- introductions and big kickoff. Woohoo! Everyone is so psyched! Evening socializing (very important).
Day 2: Morning attendance shows that some people have split (sometimes for good reason, sometimes to get a breather or explore a city on their company's dime) -- participation is good but waning. More evening socializing.
Day 3: Lame-o stragglers pick up the pieces. Poo!
The ideal conference would keep everyone there and fully engaged for the whole time, right? So, what to do about it? Some suggestions I've heard: only accept RSVPs if people commit to all days (not realistic); schedule some awesome speaker for the morning of day 2 or 3, to draw people along (not a bad idea); limit conferences to just one day (sometimes tough to justify travel). But this morning, I may have come across the perfect format. Talking to John Barstow from Orton Family Foundation (about our joint project, the Community Almanac), he described how they organized their recent staff retreat:
Day 1: Conference starts in the afternoon, to allow for morning travel. Introductions and orientation. Excitement! Evening socializing.
Day 2: The real meat of the conference -- all day activities and good stuff. More evening socializing.
Day 3: Casual breakfast and wrap-up. Time to decompress, process what went down, schedule any ad-hoc follow-up, then plenty of time to relax and travel home.
I gotta say, I really love this format -- there's still enough time to get real work done, and there's no lame aftermath moment. I think I'll be scheduling my next event this way.
When I couldn't sleep the other night, I started mocking up a zippy drag-n-drop front end for Trac, based on the snappy UI of tools like Things (working title is FasTrac). Then, bam! Bitten by a weird, seems-like-a-bug w/ jQuery UI drag and drop. It appears that droppables aren't discoverable by draggables if the droppable has a fixed width. I have a hard time believing that's true, yet here I am. I posted to the jQuery UI list, but haven't heard back yet. Any ideas? I'm sure I'm missing something super obvious... Here's a working example illustrating the problem.
I can't say enough about ScribeFire. It's a Firefox add-on that gives you an in-window blogging client. Here are just a few reasons why it's awesome:
You're blogging from within Firefox, and you can move among webpages while keeping your blog post editing window open. This comes in really handy when looking for references, quoting things, finding pictures, etc. It also makes it really easy to fire off quick posts -- no need to open up a new window, log in, etc., etc.
When you copy something to your clipboard, it's automatically pasted to the "insert link" dialog. So, for example, you go to a webpage (while keeping your editor open, see #1 above) and copy the URL from the URL bar. Then you highlight your text and click the "add link" button. Bingo! The URL is already pasted there, and all you have to do is press OK. Sweet.
You can write to multiple blogs from the same place. Very nice. Also a bit dangerous, as you could conceivably post to the wrong blog very easily. Hasn't happened to me yet, but I do have a lingering uneasy feeling about it.
So, if you blog and you use Firefox, get Scribefire. Go get it now. I promise you'll thank me.
I've been attending a lot of events lately, and one thing that keeps coming up for me is that the multi-day conference / workshop format is a bit broken. My main beef: by day two (or god forbid, day three) the audience has petered out and whatever energy was there on day one has been lost. I felt like this happened at last year's (excellent) Nonprofit DevSummit, and even at last week's incredible Open Cities Conference. It's a bummer, because these events always draw together really awesome people, but they can often fall short in a few regards. Here's how these events typically go:
Day 0 (evening before conf begins): maybe some late drinks with attendees as they arrive, or just heading straight to bed after travel.
Day 1: Conference begins in the AM -- introductions and big kickoff. Woohoo! Everyone is so psyched! Evening socializing (very important).
Day 2: Morning attendance shows that some people have split (sometimes for good reason, sometimes to get a breather or explore a city on their company's dime) -- participation is good but waning. More evening socializing.
Day 3: Lame-o stragglers pick up the pieces. Poo!
The ideal conference would keep everyone there and fully engaged for the whole time, right? So, what to do about it? Some suggestions I've heard: only accept RSVPs if people commit to all days (not realistic); schedule some awesome speaker for the morning of day 2 or 3, to draw people along (not a bad idea); limit conferences to just one day (sometimes tough to justify travel). But this morning, I may have come across the perfect format. Talking to John Barstow from Orton Family Foundation (about our joint project, the Community Almanac), he described how they organized their recent staff retreat:
Day 1: Conference starts in the afternoon, to allow for morning travel. Introductions and orientation. Excitement! Evening socializing.
Day 2: The real meat of the conference -- all day activities and good stuff. More evening socializing.
Day 3: Casual breakfast and wrap-up. Time to decompress, process what went down, schedule any ad-hoc follow-up, then plenty of time to relax and travel home.
I gotta say, I really love this format -- there's still enough time to get real work done, and there's no lame aftermath moment. I think I'll be scheduling my next event this way.
When I couldn't sleep the other night, I started mocking up a zippy drag-n-drop front end for Trac, based on the snappy UI of tools like Things (working title is FasTrac). Then, bam! Bitten by a weird, seems-like-a-bug w/ jQuery UI drag and drop. It appears that droppables aren't discoverable by draggables if the droppable has a fixed width. I have a hard time believing that's true, yet here I am. I posted to the jQuery UI list, but haven't heard back yet. Any ideas? I'm sure I'm missing something super obvious... Here's a working example illustrating the problem.
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