I have added a new feature to my Wrinks app. In the spirit of FreshTags we have FreshRolls.

If you go to a wrink page (for example, the Blogger Hacks Wrink), you will note a third code option. FreshRolls are currently only available in JavaScript (no PHP yet). You can select what blog to exclude (or none), just as on the normal roll output, and whether this code is to be used in conjuction with ring code or not (more on that in a bit). The code is then a simple JavaScript include, as with standard rolls, that you place where you want the FreshRoll to appear.

FreshRolls attempt to detect tags and ‘passed tags’, just like FreshTags. If it finds some, it will display only those blogs which match the tag(s) found, otherwise it will normally display the entire roll. If, however, you told it you would be using it with a ring, it will not display a roll title and if no tags are detected will output none of the roll.

What is this ‘combo-mode’ useful for? Well, if you paste standard ring code followed directly by FreshRoll code set to ‘combo-mode’, if tags are detected the matching blogs will be displayed following the ring, otherwise you just see the ring. I have set it up this way in my sidebar. You can test it by appending ?tags=blogger to this page’s URL and reloading.

Blogger BETA compatible : Just create a new HTML/JavaScript widget on your BETA blog and cut-n-paste in the code(s) from Wrinks.

Please see my Singpolyma Templates for the New Blogger

This is the first Blogger BETA custom template based on my Singpolyma Templates. This will not be a final version because it still has some slight bugs, but I would like feedback from users before I make any changes. You can preview the new template at my BETA blog. The spirit and look of the original basic template has been ported to the new widget system, and all fonts and colours can also be edited from the new panel for that purpose. Minor known issues are:

1. Not even close to XHTML compliant. This is not my fault. There are significant JavaScript sections on Blogger BETA that are malformed XML and thus break any sort of compliance. I’ve written support, but I doubt that will do any good. We need to find a way to put serious pressure on them to correct this. The new template system is in XML, make XML-well-formed output (and perhaps even XHTML-compliant output) has never been easier, and yet so far away. The changes they would have to make are minor (like, adding commented CDATA sections around the JavaScript). I don’t see a thing about it on Known Issues.
2. Ditto to peek-a-boo comments. This is a limitation in the BETA as far as I can see… I really hope they can be persuaded to fix this.
3. The pre-included blogroll is XOXO compliant, but has fewer features as the manually-created ones did (ie, no option for feed data).
4. No link to main comments feed (it doesn’t seem to be generating, I believe this is a known BETA issue…)

The profile section supports both single and group blogs, unlike the original which assumed a single-authorship blog. I could also add previous/next links on item pages and a labels sidebar widget if people want it. Versions with my other hacks (as before) will be forthcoming.

To install this template on your blog, cut-n-paste the template from here into the ‘Edit HTML’ view on your BETA blog, click ‘Save’, and if you are asked to confirm the deletion of existing widgets click the affirmative option. Then you can add/edit widgets or change the colours!

Since I did all the research on this yesterday to get it working, I figured I’d share it with the world in case someone else is having problems with it too! These instructions assume Ubuntu, but should work on pretty much any Linux system with minor modifications.

1) You must have a GStreamer player installed. Totem (the defaul GNOME movie player/media player) is what I used because it was already installed.
2) Install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad with Synaptic
3) Go to MPlayer and download the binary codecs for Linux. Unpack the file into either the /usr/lib/win32/ directory or the /usr/lib/codecs directory (depending on your system, I put it in both to be safe).
5) Install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll with Synaptic (if available) or get it from a mirror.
4) Install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly with Synaptic

That should be it! You should now be able to listen to Internet radio stations in the Windows Media format.

Since the Blogger-released Widget Code Help and Johan’s Post, progress on BETA conversion has been much easier. Check my BETA Blog and you’ll find that I have most of the old post functionality and look done, with the following exceptions:

• Feed information (often hidden) in template header. This is because Blogger BETA puts feed information for the whole blog in with the posts (that’s dumb) and basically expects you to have it in the footer of ever post (even dumber). Have yet to find a way around this (besides hard-coding the links).
• Peek-a-boo comments… uh… Blogger? Little help? Comment data is only accessible on item pages…
• Date no longer links to archive… that data is gone (and wasn’t terribly useful anyway)
• I haven’t got it so the colour-changer works yet, but you can’t see that from my blog 😉
• Minor XHTML breakage because the widget tags generate divs, and divs aren’t legal inside ul tags

Improvements due to BETA:

• Tags look the same, but are now drawn from the new labels field
• Peek-a-boo backlinks are no longer a hack
• Comment author is now properly marked up as an hCard

The sidebar will come next (widitized! although I’ll leave the comments for full XOXO-compliant blogrolls for advanced users), then perhaps some new features (like next/prev links on item pages). Then work will start on comment forms, etc.

Why is it that while we all love IM systems (geeks especially loving our fair Jabber) we still use telephones? Is it that we like the voice aspect? Well, most IMs have that option. I don’t even like that option. So what is it then?

You don’t ‘turn on’ a telephone.

It’s just on. So if someone is home and you call them, you will reach them. No problem. With IM you have to wait for them to be online… what a pain.

Some systems have tried to overcome this with hardware, the Skype phone being a prime example. This works well as long as people can be made to understand that they must leave their computers on ALL the time for it to work. I can’t help wondering though, could this be similarly overcome directly from text-only IM software?

I think it can, but we will have to change the way many people think about IM. It seems that to many people, IM only works when a person is actively at their computer (which is mostly true at this point), so when someone is set to Away, etc, they do not initiate conversation, or even send a message. But what if the programs tried to ‘call’ a person the way a phone does when it rings? What if Jabber clients (or other IM programs) turned the volume up on your machine and played a really loud sound when someone initiated a chat while you were set to Away? They could then send an auto-message to the person telling them that the person they have started chatting with is away and it is trying to call them 1…2…3…4…up to a configurable number, then, please leave a message (easy to do in Jabber).

We would have to retrain ourselves to leave the computer on and signed in during all waking hours (or all hours period for Google Talk where offline messaging still doesn’t work). We would have to retrain ourselves to try talking to people set to away, we would have to be willing to ‘run to the computer’ when it ‘rang’ just as we do with our phone. We wouldn’t have the conveniance of cordless like we do for phones (not at first anyway), but we would save ourselves so much time and effort… and maybe finally kill ‘real’ telephony.